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The problem isn't the two major gender classifications, the problem is that it's impossible to objectively classify all humans at birth into either category. M

The problem isn't the two major gender classifications, the problem is that it's impossible to objectively classify all humans at birth into either category. Most people are genetically either XX or XY, but some aren't. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome) Most people are born with either male or female genitalia, but some aren't. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_hermaphroditism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_hermaphroditism) Most people's genitalia corresponds to their genetic gender, but for some it doesn't. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivit...) Most people's psychological gender corresponds to their genitalia and their genetics, but for some it doesn't. (The entirety of the trans* issue) The only reasonable way forward is to make legal gender optional and changeable. The idea that you can, or worse, should, classify every human into one of two options is wrong. It's a bizarre conservative, Victorian idea that nature should somehow always be neatly categorized, and when it can't be, those that don't fit in are somehow "wrong". No, the reality is that nature is messy and anything but neatly categorizable, therefore our systems should be flexible enough to handle that.

harshreality 8y ago
How are you going to have sports, many of which have a substantial male/female performance difference between the distributions? Either everyone's lumped together and you have sports that exclude the vast majority of women, or you do away with individual sports and force (force... that doesn't sound gender-neutral to me) 50/50 split for teams. Gender identification may not be directly relevant to narrow performance in a lot of other areas, but it is relevant to overall human behavior, which affects personal choices that end up affecting things (like work and hobbies) even when performance on specific tasks is not directly affected by gender differences. Just because corner cases cause problems doesn't imply we should do away with any attempt to identify anyone as anything. Not identifying people according to easily discernible (in the vast majority of cases) characteristics causes its own problems.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Either everyone's the same and you have sports that exclude the vast majority of women Most sport, at any serious level, exclude the vast majority of people regardless of gender, gender identity, or biological sex, and sports with a significant sex-associated performance difference offer substantially fewer and poorer paying opportunities for the lower-performing sex whether or not they are sex-segregated. What does fixed legal gender buy you there?
  - harshreality 8y ago
    It means you get to choose whether to watch men's tennis or women's tennis; men's gymnastics or women's gymnastics; men's track and field or women's track and field. It means you don't have to deal with as much social and sexual drama between team members for team sports, which I suspect (but don't have data because I don't think adequate studies have been done) distracts from practicing the sport. This is a similar problem to mixed-sex infantry squads. You can wish for all the equality you want, but you won't get it. It means you have many varieties of sports with women competing that girls and other women can look up to as role models or inspiration or motivation to participate in sports.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      No, it doesn't mean any of that because sports governing bodies can divide up divisions irrespective of legal gender (e.g., the Olympics handles this, and their standard isn't “look at the legal gender of the athlete and stop there”.) There may be a good reason to segregate some sports by some traits linked to sex (but “genitals at birth” probably isn't the best standard for that), but even if there is it doesn't require immutable legal gender to do that.
      - harshreality 8y ago
        So are you saying we should do away with legal gender only to have de-facto legal gender used for all sorts of things like sports or insurance policies? Who's going to standardize those determinations if it's not the government? If the government's standards aren't good, and are in fact simply "genitals at birth", then that needs to be fixed, but as far as I can tell that's not true, at least federally or for the state I checked. If you transition, you get a court document with a doctor's statement certifying it, and you update your gender on your official documents. Right? There probably need to be different legal standards based on the purpose the gender is being used for, too. Being a trans woman shouldn't allow you to compete in women's MMA, for instance; there's already been an instance of that happening and it was a disaster. What concrete problem or injustice are you trying to correct? That people can't decide to change genders for a day, or decide they want to be officially recognized as the opposite gender before they transition? Is that a problem? People seem to want [biological] sex labels to mirror how they present themselves to others, instead of mirroring (as closely as possible, based on the reason the gender label is being requested) the underlying sex characteristic / hormonal physical reality of their body. That strikes me as a problem. In the limited situations and cases where people are asking for [biological] gender and need to know, how you present yourself ceases to matter. If they don't need to know, they you can use whatever label you want. Same with your name, or your date of birth, or anything else. But it's almost always pointless to informally declare your gender, because anyone interacting with you is going to pick up on what gender you present yourself as (whether verbally, in temperament, or physically). Labelling yourself other than your biological gender isn't needed for enlightened, tolerant people, and will only antagonize people who aren't comfortable with the whole trans/non-binary thing.

harshreality 8y ago

How are you going to have sports, many of which have a substantial male/female performance difference between the distributions? Either everyone's lumped together and you have sports that exclude the vast majority of women, or you do away with individual sports and force (force... that doesn't sound gender-neutral to me) 50/50 split for teams. Gender identification may not be directly relevant to narrow performance in a lot of other areas, but it is relevant to overall human behavior, which affects personal choices that end up affecting things (like work and hobbies) even when performance on specific tasks is not directly affected by gender differences. Just because corner cases cause problems doesn't imply we should do away with any attempt to identify anyone as anything. Not identifying people according to easily discernible (in the vast majority of cases) characteristics causes its own problems.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Either everyone's the same and you have sports that exclude the vast majority of women Most sport, at any serious level, exclude the vast majority of people regardless of gender, gender identity, or biological sex, and sports with a significant sex-associated performance difference offer substantially fewer and poorer paying opportunities for the lower-performing sex whether or not they are sex-segregated. What does fixed legal gender buy you there?
- harshreality 8y ago
  It means you get to choose whether to watch men's tennis or women's tennis; men's gymnastics or women's gymnastics; men's track and field or women's track and field. It means you don't have to deal with as much social and sexual drama between team members for team sports, which I suspect (but don't have data because I don't think adequate studies have been done) distracts from practicing the sport. This is a similar problem to mixed-sex infantry squads. You can wish for all the equality you want, but you won't get it. It means you have many varieties of sports with women competing that girls and other women can look up to as role models or inspiration or motivation to participate in sports.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    No, it doesn't mean any of that because sports governing bodies can divide up divisions irrespective of legal gender (e.g., the Olympics handles this, and their standard isn't “look at the legal gender of the athlete and stop there”.) There may be a good reason to segregate some sports by some traits linked to sex (but “genitals at birth” probably isn't the best standard for that), but even if there is it doesn't require immutable legal gender to do that.
    - harshreality 8y ago
      So are you saying we should do away with legal gender only to have de-facto legal gender used for all sorts of things like sports or insurance policies? Who's going to standardize those determinations if it's not the government? If the government's standards aren't good, and are in fact simply "genitals at birth", then that needs to be fixed, but as far as I can tell that's not true, at least federally or for the state I checked. If you transition, you get a court document with a doctor's statement certifying it, and you update your gender on your official documents. Right? There probably need to be different legal standards based on the purpose the gender is being used for, too. Being a trans woman shouldn't allow you to compete in women's MMA, for instance; there's already been an instance of that happening and it was a disaster. What concrete problem or injustice are you trying to correct? That people can't decide to change genders for a day, or decide they want to be officially recognized as the opposite gender before they transition? Is that a problem? People seem to want [biological] sex labels to mirror how they present themselves to others, instead of mirroring (as closely as possible, based on the reason the gender label is being requested) the underlying sex characteristic / hormonal physical reality of their body. That strikes me as a problem. In the limited situations and cases where people are asking for [biological] gender and need to know, how you present yourself ceases to matter. If they don't need to know, they you can use whatever label you want. Same with your name, or your date of birth, or anything else. But it's almost always pointless to informally declare your gender, because anyone interacting with you is going to pick up on what gender you present yourself as (whether verbally, in temperament, or physically). Labelling yourself other than your biological gender isn't needed for enlightened, tolerant people, and will only antagonize people who aren't comfortable with the whole trans/non-binary thing.