This came up in the sex change thread and got me wondering. What are the legal definitions of male and female? Is a male to female transsexual legally a woman? I remember an interview with an androgen-insensitive “male” that stated that she was legally a woman in England but a man in Scotland. What are the criteria in the U.S.?
I don’t know the answer, but I’m not going to let a little thing like that stop me from answering!
What I do know, however, is that transsexuals have to go to court to get a legal gender change (so that they can have the right gender listed on their driver’s license, birth certificate, etc.)
Apparently, it’s a royal pain; you have to go to each bureaucratic organization in turn and do the paperwork. You know what it’s like to go to Motor Vehicles to get your driver’s license renewed? Just imagine …
However, even after their gender change, trannsexuals cannot (in the U.S., at least) marry a person of the same gender as their birth gender.
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather
I would imagine that your legal gender depends on your primary sexual organ at birth, i.e. penis = Male and vagina = female.
Yes, they can. I know several who have (and yes, they were legal marriages, not commitment ceremonies). This may be true in some states, but IIRC once the official records (birth certificate, etc.) have been changed, the records are sealed, so there’s no evidence that the individual in question was ever the other gender. Once this happens, there’s no bar to getting a marriage license.
Except that some children are born with ambiguous genitalia (hermaphrodites). IIRC, since the advances in genital plastic surgery, there have been cases where parents were asked to decide what gender they wanted their children to be so that doctors could perform surgery, and hopefully give the child a greater chance at a normal life. I think there have been cases where a child was born with male genitalia, yet had female internal organs (ovaries/fallopian tubes/uterus). I’m thinking that perhaps in those cases the child had a penis but no testicles, since the testicles and ovaries are the same in the earliest stages of embrionic development.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank
Marriage was one thing I was wondering about. Another was military service. Would a transsexual be disqualified from enlisting as either a man or a woman? What if there was a draft?
Maybe I’m being too picky, but shouldn’t we be using the term “sex” here instead of “gender”? I realize that “gender” is often used nowadays to refer to one’s sex because in some situations it avoids misunderstanding with the other definition of sex, aka sexual intercourse (which by the way is definition #5 in my dictionary). But when no confusion would occur, using the word “gender”, which technically doesn’t fit, seems sloppy.
Good catch, Shayna. There was a substantial article in Discovery last month on children with ambiguous genitalia. Evidently the regular medical custom is to “assign” a gender to the ambiguous child and modify the genitalia to suit.
Yeah, CurtC. I’m forced to admit that I know the distinction and used the word “gender” in the title to avoid the inevitable jokes that a thread titled “Legal definitions of sex” would…engender.
Thanks Polycarp. Did that article mention any instances of babies being born with conflicting internal and external sex organs? I’m just curious how those cases were resolved, if at all.
CurtC posted:
Well according to my Webster’s, the 2nd definition of “gender” is “Classification of sex.” So I’m not sure the use of the word “gender” is inappropriate when asking the question the OP did. Or am I reading this definition incorrectly?
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank
Isn’t the old saying
Nouns have gender people have sex.
Is it really appropriate to call people with ambigous genitalia “hermaphrodites?” In biology, isn’t a hermaphrodite a species with two sets of fully formed genitalia? Things like slugs and worms have sex with each other and then each get pregnant from the other’s semen. Noone’s ever accused me of being politically correct, but it seems to me to be a terrible insult to compare the abovementioned people with slugs.
–It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
re: hermaphrodites–
last i heard, the medical community referred to them as “sexual mosaics,” but there may be a newer term in use.
…women are not the better sex, the inferior sex, or the opposite sex – carol tavris
Sexual Mosaics??
Once again we’ve destroyed a beautiful word.
Hermaphrodite = Hermes + Aphrodite, the union of a god and goddess and revered (If you wanted to be put on display) in the ancient world as incarnations of the divine.
1 in 1000 births are of ambiguous gender. Thats a lot.
Markxxx: [open embarrassment]Oh DUH me![/embarrassment]. Thank you for the reminder. I used to know that. Honest, I did. I blame it on a brain burp. Yeah, my brain had gas. Well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Diceman: My humble apologies. Again referring to my (sometimes ambiguous) Webster’s; “Hermaphrodite n 1. One who has the sex organs and many of the secondary sex characteristics of both male and female.” I thought I was using the proper medical name for persons with such characteristics. I never intended to insult or offend. Again, I apologize if I have done so.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank
CatInHat, I stand corrected; it varies from state to state.
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather