This is going a step further than what I always thought as being unnecessary: having your sex on ID and passport.
I don't see any real reason why this is still required, or why it matter that the sex of a person be present on an ID document.
The purpose of the ID is to identify the bearer. Most ID are now biometric, meaning the identification relies on unchanged physical features, like geometric relationships of the face.
A simple photo should be enough to confirm the ID of the bearer.
How about the American Medical Association make things better by increasing the number of doctors that can be licensed instead of this vacuous bullshit? They are one of the primary reasons that healthcare expenses are as high as they are and they want a fucking pat on the back for this?
> Sex should be removed as a legal designation on the public part of birth certificates, the American Medical Association (AMA) said Monday.
Yet shortly after.
> only 10 states allow for a gender-neutral designation, usually "X," on birth certificates
So now sex and gender are the same?
> "Assigning sex using binary variables in the public portion of the birth certificate fails to recognize the medical spectrum of gender identity," Underwood said, and can be used to discriminate.
It looks like.
I'm skeptical about gender theory (or rather, wary of the identity politics that seem to come along with it), so bear with me if I misunderstand something.
Assigning sex assigns sex, not gender. It's a birth certificate, not a "birth fact sheet that needs to be amended in the future with things that can't be known at birth" certificate.
I see sometimes (this article included) the argument that when birth certificates are required, it will force trans/queers to "out" themselves in situations where it's not safe for them, but that's disingenuous because, at least in the countries I'm familiar with, you can't change your name in your birth certificate to begin with, and when you can there's the original + amendment. So you're still gonna have John in it even if you're Jane, which raises more questions than an M/F field.
You generally obtain a name/sex recognition certificate and with those you can go and obtain updated duplicates of your driving license, ID, passport, diplomas (outing yourself every single time in the process).
Personally I see no particular reason to require birth certificates for any purpose when any other government produced document is available, except, maybe, when acquiring citizenships. Maybe that's the way to go, rather than removing sex (or gender) from the birth certificate itself.
On a related note, was watching Olympics yesterday. It was a shooting day, and I was kind of surprised that men and women competed separately. I understand separation in physically demanding sports like weightlifting, but pistol and rifle shooting have no such requirements. And historically war snipers were a mix of men and women.
> It was the last Olympic skeet competition open to both men and women, and the only mixed shooting competition at the Olympics ever won by a woman: Zhang Shan.
I was thinking about it, like why there are separate competitions in chess or cybersport or like you said shooting. Can't say for sure, but probably it is because tournament is a tip of the iceberg of what contenders are actually competing in.
For non physically demanding sports most of the work is in training prior to this competition: being able to find good coach, stick to regime, balance life vs sport, emotional control, managing finances and sponsorships, chances of getting into the sport in the first place etc. These aspects are quite different for men and women, so they naturally have separated tournaments.
As far as I know about chess, there are no men-only tournaments in chess. Instead everyone, both men and women, can compete in the "usual" tournaments. But because there are so few female chess players around, to encourage girls and women to play chess women-only competitions were introduced. Some think that such women-only tournaments work as intended by promoting chess among females, some don't. Famously arguably the strongest female chess player in history Judit Polgár never competed in the women's world championship.
IMHO it should be the same in sports. This would also make it easier conceptually to prevent trans women from competing with other women iff they have an unfair advantage, as the other category woul not be marked as men only.
Twice as many events and medals for competitors, assuming you don't buy into the idea that men have their own competitions so they don't have to lose to women (see also: ski jumping).
Chess is special case. Women are allowed to play in men torunaments. Not reverse.
There are even special rules (since 1976) which specifically says that women cannot be prevented from participating based on gender (it wasn't clear to Indians at this time).
Some (Judit Polgár,Vera Menchik) almost never played in woman ones.
Chess rating system didn't take take gender into account but in 1986 active woman chess players excpt Susan Polgár got small bonus to rating.
There is research from 2007 ( https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ejsp.440 ) which shows that if is via Internet and women thinks their opponent are men - they show worse results. If gender is not known to both sides - results are mostly same.
It's not currently clear if M2F transgenders should be allowed to play in women competitions.
This is one of the weirdest for me, because there's literally no barrier that can justify this separation. And GMs like Hou Yifan for example can go toe to toe with anyone now.
In theory there's no reason. Yet aside from Yifan and Polgar there is no women GM which could go toe to toe with the top male GMs. The same is true historically.
It is unclear why, this requires further research - the Chess world decided to just roll with it and have separate tournaments.
You can't just make stuff up. Hou Yifan says herself that chess is very exhausting and men have an advantage in this aspect.
"I think there is a physical aspect because chess exhausts a lot of energy, especially when games last 6-7 hours, and here women could be more disadvantaged."
Why deny differences in biology to further a false reality?
I'm not disagreeing with her opinion or negating her experiences, it's not my place. That said, classical (3h+) isn't the only form of chess, and it could be something that is personal to her and not representative of female players as a monolith.
Logically speaking, it's still a disadvantage even if it's one that matters less in some scenarios. Gender is highly predictive of a lot of biological statistics. Truly, we should be basing brackets on the biological stats themselves and make gender segregation a thing of the past. How will people react when the brackets reflect genetic potential rather than gender potential? Probably just as oppositional. People hate being told that someone else has a higher potential than them even if it's true. I don't blame them. But we can't live in a reality where we pretend that some aren't better built for certain endeavors.
Gender, sure.
But surely from a medical perspective it's important to know what kind of hardware a person has. I mean if you start having problems with your prostate it might be helpful to give the doctor a heads up.
This is also an argument for including your blood type, ethnicity (risk of certain genetic issues), and known allergies on your birth certificate.
Is this meant to be a medical document, or a legal one? If medical, then it shouldn't be allowed to be required for identification for privacy reasons. If legal, then why does it contain medical information at all?
I think this is a fairly radical idea, beyond the role of the AMA etc. and only serves to drive massive political wedges in the population.
I suggest the vast, vast majority of the population is fine with the system the way it is, and that there isn't really evidence removing gender will help.
This gives further credence that many of our institutions have been radicalized.
If someone from the AMA were to have 'made a point' or hinted at a study, that would be find, but making such recommendations is beyond pale.
This looks like it is being done for reasons that are kinda stupid, but it reduces the amount of data collected by the government. So probably a good move for privacy and so forth.
In case you missed it in the article, it explicitly says that they still suggest sending the data to the government:
> A person's sex designation at birth would still be submitted to the U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth for medical, public health, and statistical use only, report authors note.
Maybe they should first ban corrective surgery on intersex individuals or at least accept the intersex condition as normal, not an illness that needs to be cured, at least not until the person involved has come to an age of reason where they can decide themselves. Note that some forms of intersexuality only appear during puperty.
Issue 1 - A karyotype that is as accurate as the age-old glance at the newborn's genitals would require lab work. Mandating such a change at scale would see push-back from almost all of the parties involved, from new mothers to insurance providers.
Issue 2 - You are suggesting an objective and emotionally (fairly) neutral fix for a hot-button culture war issue. While admirable, this is much like hoping that pacifists will win a shooting war.
My guess is same argument as adding blood type to ID: it could help you in situations like emergency or accident (checking blood type is a few seconds anyway, but there might be situation where a test kit is not available when needed).
Take for example the state of lebanon today. You can draw a straight line from data on IDs, to the collapse of government of 2021.
The lebanese govt was collecting religion data in their IDs back in the 20th century.
On the run up to the 1970s civil war and during the war , people were stopped, harrassed and later murdered based on their stated religion.
After the civil war concluded this was taken off official documentation but the damage was already done: sectarianism had taken root in society and laws passed designating that the PM must be from X sect, the president from Y sect, etc.
This took cronysm and sale of offices to new heights, culminating with the bloodsucking of the state via revolving door between the major sects that had granted themselves permanent state powers.
Now the country is bankrupt, with massive brain drain, and sectarian strife.
The less groups the govt can create, the healthier we are as a a society
Just let people provide a key => value map and let them write whatever they want to make themselves feel comfortable: man, woman, him, her, they, black, white, #555555, gay, straight, it's complicated.... Etc
I think it can potentially be problematic if someone changes gender to win an Olympic medal.
The rest of your essay I do not agree with though.
In general, just call people what they want to be called and let them use whatever bathroom that is most convenient for them. It's not that hard.
There is very little evidence of transgender people using this to molest others. The fact is that they are the group that receive a lot of hate and struggle a lot, so be nice instead of moralistic.
I don't see any real reason why this is still required, or why it matter that the sex of a person be present on an ID document. The purpose of the ID is to identify the bearer. Most ID are now biometric, meaning the identification relies on unchanged physical features, like geometric relationships of the face.
A simple photo should be enough to confirm the ID of the bearer.