I think I’m very glad that I had the presence of mind to get my son’s passport prior to 1/20/25. I’m sad that not everyone had the same foresight, or had the same opportunities (I live in a red state but my son was born in a blue state that allowed us to change the gender on his birth certificate). I’m all for anything that makes it harder for bigots to bigot so that normal people can get on with their normal lives.
Saying “Oh, we just need to solve transphobia, then there’s no problem” is kinda insulting to people just trying to do mundane stuff like get a passport renewed.
I agree. Except for an occasional, and preventable mix up in the neonatal ward a sex category is not going to help identify people. And in those cases baby footprints or just an ink stamp will suffice.
I was a college student in the 1970s and got assigned to read the 1972 short story The Story of X. In the story, the government arranges an experiment with some parents that the gender of their new baby is not announced. Despite the concerns of neighbors and relatives, the child grows up playing with dolls AND trucks, wears red and white checkered jumpers, etc. The child and world are happy and understanding.
That was 1972, with a thought that government wouldn’t really care or need to know a person’s gender. Wishful thinking, indeed.
For one, how does the state decide whether you go to a men’s or women’s prison if they don’t have your sex on file anywhere?
And the problem, again, is with transphobia preventing us from treating trans people humanely. Not with the very fact that the government tracks sex in and of itself.
And do you think having a birth certificate with no gender on it would help, or would Trump’s federal government demand other medical documentation showing gender at birth?
Do you think if a liberal state has absolutely no documentation of sex or gender at all, a Trumpy government would just shrug and let them identify as they wish, or would they place the burden of proving your sex assigned at birth on the residents of that state?
That’s a problem with transphobia, not with sex being on the birth certificate.
Again, the problem there is transphobia, not the birth certificate.
So if you come from a state with no gender on the birth certificate, will the feds:
let you identify as you wish
Or
place the burden of proving your assigned sex at birth on you
Or it targets everyone, cis and trans, until they somehow produce documentation of their sex assigned at birth…
I don’t think that you should be able to declare any sex on a government form. If you are trans, there should be a process to go through to tell the government that, but I don’t believe it should be completely self-identification. And that means tracking that information at a level beyond just asking people.
I wouldn’t want to be drafted but I understand why it has been necessary at certain times.
On the prison issue I am in favor of keeping penises and vaginas separate because I don’t need to support pregnancies that are between two different inmates, forced or unforced. Plenty of rape in prison already no doubt, we don’t need to add pregnancy to the mix. So for prison purposes yes the government gets to make that decision.
I know a lot of people who have been sent to prison and not one provided their birth certificate to the Department of Corrections for classification. Somehow they figured it out with the birth certificate.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the last draft was for Viet Nam, wasn’t it? According to Uncle Cecil that draft may not have been legal.
I don’t see another draft coming any time soon. While we have de facto been at war various times in my life (I just turned fifty), we have never legally been at war.
I never said ‘no sex on file anywhere’. Please stop putting words in my mouth. I said, and I repeat, there is no need to list sex on a birth certificate.
Yes, transphobia is the problem. That transphobia has been enshrined into law. We must deal with that law and protect poeple as best we can. What actual actions would you suggest we take? Why exactly does issuing birth certificates that do not list sex not helpful?
Yes, yes I do. Why wouldn’t it?
Again, I never said “no documentation of sex or gender at all”. I said that birth certificates should not list sex.
Again, the transphibia is now law in a few states, and very shortly under federal law. What specififc actions would you suggest? How does removing sex from birth certificates not prevent laws denmanding ‘conformity’ to the sex on your birth certificate from having their intended effect?
I don’t know. I do know that right now trans people and non binary people are screwed. Unless they get screwed worse by not listing sex on birth certificates, there is no reason not to try it,.
I find that highly unlikely. How exactly would that happen?
That process no longer exists. What would you suggest?
Then I repeat that this wouldn’t solve the issues you’re worried about, since it doesn’t matter whether the sex is on a birth certificate or elsewhere.
Because either you’re not tracking sex at all, which is problematic, or you are, in which case it doesn’t matter if transphobes find it on the birth certificate or on another document.
The law says that if your birth certificate sex doesn’t match your stated sex, you’re in trouble; if your birth certificate doesn’t list a sex at all, everyone is in trouble.
“Everyone goes to the prison that matches their physical genitalia” is a solution, but I don’t know if it is the one that most trans allies prefer.
Also, the quote you’re responding to had nothing to do with birth certificates:
DocCathode said that he believes there is no valid reason for the state to have someone’s sex on file. Not on the birth certificate specifically - on file at all.
He may have walked back that statement afterwards, but that’s what I was responding to when I brought up prisons.
Thet depends on the criteria for establishing the sex listed elsewhere. At present, the doctor looks at a newborn’s genitrals, ticks a box, and that sex follows them around for life.
If self-identification won’t work, try something else. Why stick with the sex on the birth certificate?
I agree. That is why I never once said that we should not track sex at all.
Again, the sex on your birth certificate is assigned by a doctor at birth. You have no say in the matter. If we find another way, a trans woman’s (for example) driver’s license would list her as femanle. What would the transphobes do about that?
I asked exactly how it would happen. Rather than proposing steps it would happen in, or actually explaining and defending your statement, you simply repeated it in a different wording. I ask again, how exactly would that happen?
And just how do we do that with Trump and other bigots in power? Please be specific.