California is joining Oregon in having X in addition to M and F as an option on drivers licenses and state IDs. It is one-upping Oregon by having the option on birth certificates as well.
And the opinion you are looking for is?
I’m curious and don’t know – do birth certificates these days have an opt-out for things like race, name and other information as well? The last birth certificate I’ve looked at personally was maybe 1980 or so and I have no idea what is current.
As for the OP: In a general sense I like it; “refuses to disclose”, so to speak, isn’t a bad option to have.
Then you can have “refuse to register birth”. There is a reason why they are mandatory. However, I doubt if there is actually a statutory penalty for failing to register a home-birth.
Til it’s time to insure said baby or register in kindergarten or get a ss# or any number of processes you have to navigate when you have child.
Well, the forum is In My Humble Opinion, not Let’s Have a Poll.
I had an internal debate for a bit trying to decide where to put the post, including MPSIMS; I figured a Mod would move it to a more appropriate one, if applicable.
I don’t quite think I’m on board with being able to retroactively change a birth certificate. I very much understand, and highly support, changing your gender as you get older and understand yourself, and I think it should be an option to change on your drivers license because it’s who you are NOW but that’s not who you were THEN. Just because you’ve gone through the operations and are currently a (let’s say) male, that doesn’t change the fact that you were actually born a female.
Unless the parents can opt out of having it on the certificate, which is okay? I guess? Kinda stupid but whatever
So what you’re saying is that, in practice you don’t support trans people being able to get proper documentation for their gender because an arbitrary ‘M’ or ‘F’ at the time of birth is sacred and immutable for… what reason exactly? Is there some deep philosophical function of birth certificates that overrides their practical function of recording people’s identity?
I mean, when even Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi are more progressive on an issue than you are, you really might want to rethink your opposition.
It seems to me that a person can change the actual name that appears on a birth certificate. What’s the difference between that and changing the gender?
Not all states even have ‘race’ on the birth certificate, and if they do it generally doesn’t have any good rules to handle mixed-race individuals, Native Americans, or uncommon races (Australian Aborigines get lumped in with Africans Americans, for example). Racial tracking on birth certificates is of questionable utility and has some significantly racist origins, and really shouldn’t be on there.
I’m also not sure why you’re treating the X as simply an opt-out; there are lots of people that simply don’t fit the binary gender model (some of whom are in societies that recognized such before Europeans even landed in America), and a smaller number that don’t fit the binary sex model. Refusing to acknowledge these basic facts simply doesn’t make sense.
If a person is born with complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, what should the birth certificate say for gender?
Because of my personal experience. A lot of times options such as that are used by people who don’t fit in one prepared form/definition or another but sometimes it is by people who just have something against labeling. Take race for example; one of my co-workers has a grandparent from each of four separate racial/ethnic groups and always marks “other” or “non-disclosure”. But I know others who clearly seem to belong in one group or another and pick the same thing. I have a feeling the same thing may happen here; people will use it in a wide variety of ways for a myriad of reasons.
Yes please?
For me, it all boils down to the fact that I don’t think birth certificates should be allowed to be changed at all. If you were born a female, named Susie Buckets, in Dallas, TX, then there is nothing you should be able to do in your future to change that because nothing you can change now will retroactively change all of that information.
If Susie Buckets grows up and wants to change her gender because she feels she should have been born a man, or is a man in a woman’s body, or the legion of reasons a person wants to change their gender, then she should have the full right to change everything about her current documents. However, just because she’s enjoying her full life as Sammy Buckets doesn’t change the fact that she was literally born a female with the given name of Susie Buckets in Dallas TX.
It has nothing to do with gender or gender issues. You shouldn’t be allowed to change your name on a birth certificate, or where you were born either IMO.
Well, at least that is a consistent viewpoint.
That’s a legitimate opinion, clearly expressed, but why not?
It wasn’t me who said it, but it would make sense for a birth certificate to be a record of birth–a record of the facts at the time of birth. You can change your name, gender, what-have-you, but it doesn’t change the facts at the time of birth. The only legit change should be to correct an error.
Birth certificates have never worked the way your theory has them work. In the real world, you have to change your birth certificate to change the other documents. So in theory, you have a position on how birth certificates should work, and want to enforce it. In practice, what you do is to oppose trans people being able to get documentation with the correct current name and gender out of some weird philosophical stance that has little to do with reality.
Also it’s interesting that you make a bald statement like ‘born a female’, as though the sex on a birth certificate is never incorrect. There normally isn’t anything more than a quick visual inspection done to establish sex at birth, chromosome testing or verifying the existence/lack of internal sex organs simply isn’t a routine procedure. Your philosophy leads to people who would test as a different sex than their birth certificate forever listed as an incorrect sex because a brief look decades ago could never be incorrect. (And of course there’s no gender testing at birth at all, the person isn’t even acting in a social role yet)
Exactly this. There is nothing a person does NOW that changes the facts of who/what they were THEN. Unless there is an error, the certificate should be ironclad.
Your first paragraph took a simple statement of mine “I don’t think you should be able to change a birth certificate” and took it (and my intentions) WAAYYYY to left field to paint me as a bad guy. You’re not going to win many arguments or change many minds doing that. I never said I actively wanted to change the policy, I never said I wanted to revolutionize the way birth certificates or name/gender changes work, hell, I even went so far as to say “It’s not a gender issue as all for me”. And yet, you automatically took my statement, extrapolated it to an extreme and transformed it to be some oppressive line of thinking to, what? make me feel bad? Change my mind?
On to your second paragraph where you not only assume that I think doctors at birth are always correct 100% of the time (I never said or insinuated something like that) but you, again, reference “my philosophy” as if I layed out a 10-point plan on why birth certificates are the end-all be-all for the human condition. Then you go to an even further extreme to bring in chromosome testing, the biology of internal/external sex organs and bring up the difference between “sex” and “gender”.
I’m going to throw you a couple grains of salt because you typed all that without knowing my answer to the “why do I think this way” question, which, again, is simply a “facts in the past” issue and I think birth certificates should be changed if there’s an error. I’ll also give you some salt because this is an issue you’re clearly way, way more into than I am and saw my statement as an opportunity to get your opinion across.
That being said, your gross misinterpretation of my words and my intent certainly took me aback. Especially since you jumped at me and assumed these negative intentions right from the get-go
Ok, but in that case, why have a birth certificate at all? Why would anybody care enough about ‘the facts at the time of birth’ to make a record of it?
I’ve never heard that the governmet had any such interest-- AFAIK, birth registration was introduced to prevent infanticide – and then extended to handle localized social-security and child-support, None of that actually needs or benefits from long term recording of ‘facts at time of birth’ – it just a historical anomoly of paper-based record systems.
I’m only a little bit libertarian, but I don’t see that recording facts just for the sake of having recorded facts has any obvious benefit.