
Oregon Court Allows a Person to Choose Neither Sex - peterkshultz
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/us/oregon-nonbinary-transgender-sex-gender.html
======
kiba
People from fifty years ago would look upon us with fear and trepidation,
right?

They would look at us as moral degenerates. But despite this, our society
manages to function quite well, roughly.

Correspondingly, we think our ancestors are the bigots.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> our society manages to function quite well, roughly.

I don't think that's true at all. It's only true if "roughly" means "for
specific kinds of people". I think that clause is necessary for the sentence
to be true. And with it, we've contradicted the statement "our society
generally functions well".

~~~
hx87
It functions at least as well as it did 50 years ago.

~~~
raddad
In 1966 we had a middle class. In 1966 minimum wage was $1.20 which is $8.29
in 2012 dollars.(1)

(1) [https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-
wage/chart1](https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/chart1)

~~~
erikpukinskis
I am unsatisfied with the state of things, but I don't think low wages is
fundamentally a problem. Ideally we are able to do more and more with less and
less money. In an ideal society you don't need money at all unless you want to
do a long-term project that requires a financial instrument.

------
KnightHawk3
Before people start saying "you can't be neither sex" (theres already one
deaded), I would like to remind us that intersex people exist and can be
indeterminate.

~~~
gravypod
Isn't someone being defined as being intersex someone who is transitioning to
another sex?

Wouldn't it just make sense to let the person choose if they would like to be
defined as their current sex or what they are transitioning to? So for
example, if the person is MtF and they want the government to call them F,
they can just ask the government to switch their sex status.

Having a "T" class doesn't make much sense since it doesn't really model what
is happening. T is not in itself a sex, it's the representation of people
transitioning from one sex to another. That inherently means it is not a state
but instead it's a mutation.

~~~
KnightHawk3
At the moment, if you are born with abnormal chromosones your genitals can be
ambigous at birth, doctors to this day will perform a "corrective" surgery to
make you "right"

Intersex people are not a fan of it for the most part and are calling for the
practice to be illegal.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex)

What you are describing is transgender people which is not intersex people,
however both could have an ambigous gender.

~~~
nostrebored
Intersex people do not have an ambiguous gender, they have an ambiguous sex
based on genitalia. However, "In humans, biological sex is determined by five
factors present at birth: the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, the type
of gonads, the sex hormones, the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the
uterus in females), and the external genitalia".

So really none of it is that ambiguous.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Intersex people do not have an ambiguous gender, they have an ambiguous sex.

Intersex people may have an ambiguous socially ascribed gender, and are
probably more likely than most to have unclear gender identity. (Given that
gender identity, while _obviously_ highly personal, is also clearly influenced
by social cues, including both ascribed gender and social expectations about
the relation between gender and physical sex traits.)

~~~
nostrebored
>Intersex people may have an ambiguous socially ascribed gender, and are
probably more likely than most to have unclear gender identity.

That's interesting, because of the numerous population studies in intersex
people, this has never been one of the conclusions. Same sex attraction is
more likely, however.

I think you have a misconception regarding intersex people -- their
presentation aligns with their birth sex. I.e. if they are a female, they will
have female secondary sex characteristics.

------
metagender
There's been a lot of focus on LGB issues but it's time transgender people get
their due recognition too. Here's something from my home state:
[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Third-sex-gets-
offi...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Third-sex-gets-official-
status-in-Tamil-Nadu/articleshow/2869909.cms)

------
dragonwriter
Legal sex is more a form of socially-ascribed gender than tightly bound to
biological sex, and this is simply progress in aligning socially-ascribed
gender with gender identity.

~~~
TruthAndDare
That's such a "politician's statment". Nothing of that is the contested point.
The very question is whether the official system should care about genders at
all or just stick to regular old sex.

------
Lawtonfogle
We have to come to terms that we have built an abstraction on nature and it
has leaks. Let's move away for a moment from this issue and consider the issue
of some animal being of a given species. A highly scientific classification
with little political nature (at least if we stay away from our own species).

Reality is that species as a concept is an abstraction placed on nature. It
works well for most cases. A cat is not a dog. A cat is not a lion. Pretty
clear. But even without considering past species, we see instances such as
ring species. Are they one species or not? And we see animals that can breed
but who almost always have infertile offsprings.

In the same way, sex is an abstraction we place on our world. It works in most
cases with a few errors. Incorrectly classifying a testosterone immune man as
a woman, failing to classify someone born intersexed, failing to differ the XX
from the XXX or the XY from the XYY, and sometimes failing to account for
cases where the brain might not match the phenotype.

Sticking to our abstractions even in these cases is as I'll advised as
sticking to programming abstractions when they leak, if not even more so.

(Bonus round: are there X and Y chromosomes or are those an abstraction as
well?)

------
niftich
In the legal system, what is the relevance of one's sex? Are there laws that
apply to a specific sex, or apply differently based on the person's sex?

------
vorotato
It's okay guys just set it to a nullable bool and you'll be alright.

------
m1n1
Honest question: how is a man who thinks he is a woman different from an
anorexic who thinks he is fat?

------
hockeybias
I don't say this in a mean-spirited way whatsoever, but your sex is whatever
sex you were born with. There is nothing complicated about that fact. With
rare exception, a person comes into the world as a male or female.

~~~
ubernostrum
First off, it's likely that "sex" is much harder to define than you'd think.
Human genitals all develop from the same proto-bits, creating more of a
spectrum of configurations than a stark "clearly this one" or "clearly that
one" binary. And chromosomes are not super useful either; just taking stats
for two conditions off the top of my head, there are probably at least 1.75
million people walking around who are genitally "male" but chromosomally
"female" \-- the difficulty of detection (you have to literally look at
someone's DNA) masks a lot of that stuff, and probably it's even more common
than we currently estimate.

Second, "sex" in legal terms (for identity documents, etc.) is rarely
necessarily tied to genitals or chromosomes, and more often is tied to a set
of expectations about how the designated person will appear or behave. So even
though the legal system uses "sex", what they're really describing is
"gender".

~~~
nostrebored
>Second, "sex" in legal terms (for identity documents, etc.) is rarely
necessarily tied to genitals or chromosomes, and more often is tied to a set
of expectations about how the designated person will appear or behave. So even
though the legal system uses "sex", what they're really describing is
"gender".

Really? I would say genitals as a heuristic for your legal status is probably
extremely accurate.

Are you denying that humans are sexually dimorphic?

~~~
Avshalom
The thing about "heuristics" in this case is that it's a fifty-cent word for
"generalizations" and generalizations are almost universally insufficient.
Especially when it comes to a legal system.

~~~
nostrebored
What regarding the "generalization" of sexual dimorphism causes legal issues,
in your estimation?

~~~
Avshalom
The Olympics actually gave up on sex testing once (not sure if they started
again or not) because it turns out trying to lump people into two categories
is an exercise nonsensical exclusion. Also both historically and currently
there have been various category beyond "two" that have had legal
distinctions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender)

And of course we've got shit going on right now in the USA like
[http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-north-carolina-
bathrooms...](http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-north-carolina-
bathrooms-20160601-snap-story.html) where that sexual dimorphism (thanks in
some cases to modern science and in some cases to the the non-binary nature of
human genetics) where that "di"-morphism (morphism meaning shape or
appearance) directly contradicts the theoretical intent of some law or
another.

~~~
nostrebored
An exercise in nonsensical exclusion? Men taking testosterone blockers still
have more testosterone than women at the third standard deviation. There are
skeletal differences in men that create an advantage in a number of high-
impact sports.

"Third gender" is bullshit precisely because it tries to create a preexisting
dichotomy that doesn't exist. I'm not a masculine caricature. My wife is not a
feminine caricature. The people you meet day to day aren't walking gendered
cliches.

~~~
Avshalom
You wanted examples where genitals where an insufficient distinction for the
legal system? You're free to argue about why they were insufficient or whether
they should be/have-been sufficient but there they are.

~~~
nostrebored
Mmm. I moved the goalposts in my second reply to 'where sexual dimorphism is
insufficient'. Sorry if that created confusion.

I still maintain that genitalia are a very good heuristic for determining
someone's sex.

------
NoMoreNicksLeft
How do we know our society manages to function well?

When I look at organisms, it's clear that there is a general trend, the larger
the animal is, the more its life seems to be in "slow motion" compared to
smaller ones. Its heartbeat, it's lifespan, it's reaction times, everything.

If this is generally true, then societies have lifespans measured in
millennia. It's in an even higher degree of "slow motion".

That you look at it and think that it "functions well" because it hasn't
fallen apart in 3 years is like a veterinarian examining an elephant just
injured and 2 seconds later declaring "it's not dead yet".

Change for change's sake, imposed by angsty college-aged kids upset that all
the worthy causes were fought-and-won decades ago.

~~~
rayiner
> Change for change's sake, imposed by angsty college-aged kids upset that all
> the worthy causes were fought-and-won decades ago.

Hardly. I'm a 90's kid and I already amazed by how far we've come. In the
mid-90's, only about half the country approved of interracial marriage. The
"liberal" position on LGBT rights was "don't ask, don't tell." Marital rape
was still legal in a couple of states.

And there is so much left to do! E.g. Gay marriage is legal now everywhere in
the U.S., but it'll be awhile before a church refusing to perform a same-sex
marriage is regarded as aberrational as a church refusing to perform an
interracial marriage would be seen today.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The "liberal" position on LGBT rights was "don't ask, don't tell."

No, it wasn't. It was the _Clinton Administration_ policy on LGB (but not
actually T, which the policy didn't recognize _at all_ , though this obviously
had impacts on bi- and _hetero_ -sexual transgender individuals in addition to
the other specific issues they faced as transgender individuals) conditions of
service in the military, which that administration took after being elected on
a promise of taking the _actual_ liberal position in that domain, which was
full acceptance without qualification.

~~~
rayiner
I know what DADT was; I was taking a little poetic license. Clinton
represented the mainstream-left party, and signed both DADT and DOMA. In the
1990's, even the mainstream-left wasn't willing to throw its weight behind
LGBT rights.

