Althouse: "Germany must create a third gender category for people who do not identify as either male or female or were born with ambiguous sexual traits..."

November 9, 2017

"Germany must create a third gender category for people who do not identify as either male or female or were born with ambiguous sexual traits..."

"... the country’s constitutional court ruled on Wednesday, finding that binary gender designations violated the right to privacy.... The ruling arrives as society, medicine and law increasingly recognize the ways in which gender is socially constructed and not necessarily fixed or stable.... 'The assignment to a gender is of paramount importance for individual identity; it typically occupies a key position both in the self-image of a person and how the person is perceived by others,' the court found. 'It also protects the sexual identity of those persons who are neither male nor female.''

The NYT reports.

122 comments:

Henry said...: Germany must revise its entire language and culture the country’s constitutional court ruled on Wednesday.; 11/9/17, 8:04 AM
J. Farmer said...: Thailand has had some variation of this for many years with the so called "third sex" or what are called kathoey, Although, as far as I know, the only practical result of this is that they are segregated from male or female populations in jails and prisons.; 11/9/17, 8:04 AM
tcrosse said...: Der, die, oder das ?; 11/9/17, 8:05 AM
robother said...: If only genetics offered some scientific method to clearly distinguish male and female. Perhaps in another millennium or so.... Until then its just blind guesswork.; 11/9/17, 8:08 AM
Barry Dauphin said...: You will have a third gender category and you will like it!; 11/9/17, 8:09 AM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: I doubt this really matters. The Germans still know how to build things and run an economy. Whether they have two or twenty sexes isn't going to affect the fundamentals very much. On the margin maybe it is a good thing if the Germans loosen up a bit.; 11/9/17, 8:12 AM
Henry said...: I can see the necessity for the court's decision and agree with it. If you have a legal system that binds people to certain laws and contracts based on gender, you need a way to make the laws and contracts non-discriminatory (this goes for the U.S. too).

But Germany of all places!

Mark Twain comes to mind.; 11/9/17, 8:14 AM
Anonymous said...: as tcrosse already pointed out, the German language already handles this, but I guess the drivers licenses don't and we all know how the Germans feel about "show me your papers". "Alles in Ordnung!"

Der, Der, Das,
He, She, It; 11/9/17, 8:15 AM
J. Farmer said...: The notion that "gender is socially constructed" is obviously true but still completely misses the point. The vast, overwhelming majority of people experience no conflict whatsoever between their gender and their biological sex. And this is true for so called masculine women and feminine men. Even while recognizing that they are outside the norm, most of them do not believe they are in the "wrong body." People who are transgendered, perhaps one-third of one percent, have obvious psychiatric issues. If they find that crossdressing, or attempting to "pass," or surgically altering their bodies brings them some relief, I'm certainly not going to argue with them, even if the long-term data is not exactly optimistic. Being transgender is no reason to treat someone poorly; every human being deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. But it's no reason to celebrate them, either. And we certainly should not allow this tiny fraction of a minority to redefine gender and sex for the whole world and act is if we are the ones operating under some kind of delusion.; 11/9/17, 8:15 AM
Henry said...: Being transgender is no reason to treat someone poorly; every human being deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

That's why we have laws.

Laws exist in the vacuum of dignity and respect.; 11/9/17, 8:17 AM
Balfegor said...: I really don't think people who call themselves transgender should be lumped together with people who are actually physiologically or genetically intersex. They're really not the same thing.; 11/9/17, 8:18 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: In a few years Germany's Constitutional Court will find themselves up against the wall for the unpardonable crime of lumping together people of a third sex with people of a third gender.; 11/9/17, 8:19 AM
buwaya said...: The Germans real problem is that they are running out of Germans.; 11/9/17, 8:19 AM
Oso Negro said...: Denying biological reality is a sign of real progress.; 11/9/17, 8:21 AM
The Vault Dweller said...: How long till our courts discover a similar requirement that was hidden in the 14th amendment for 150 plus years?; 11/9/17, 8:24 AM
MayBee said...: The ruling arrives as society, medicine and law increasingly recognize the ways in which gender is socially constructed and not necessarily fixed or stable.

Interesting, isn't it, what isn't listed in there?

(funny, too, considering the neighborhoods I drive through where people have put these "I believe in science!" signs on their front yards); 11/9/17, 8:24 AM
Oso Negro said...: Blogger buwaya said...
The Germans real problem is that they are running out of Germans.

11/9/17, 8:19 AM

Their culture was broken in the 20th century.; 11/9/17, 8:24 AM
Curious George said...: What's German for "Freak?"; 11/9/17, 8:24 AM
Jim Gust said...: Germany has jumped the shark.; 11/9/17, 8:25 AM
Fernandinande said...: 'It also protects the sexual identity of those persons who are neither male nor female.'

IOW, they are not proud.

Speaking of "its", this it has reached its Peter Principle global maximum:
"Hillary Clinton guest-edits Teen Vogue print edition"; 11/9/17, 8:26 AM
sparrow said...: "I doubt this really matters. The Germans still know how to build things and run an economy. Whether they have two or twenty sexes isn't going to affect the fundamentals very much."

Fundamental dishonesty about human nature changes quite a bit. It's not dramatic however because the lie needs to fester a bit before consequences are visible and because other preceding lies have already eroded Western civilization. So this is just a another step in their slow suicide.; 11/9/17, 8:26 AM
richlb said...: >>That's why we have laws.

>>Laws exist in the vacuum of dignity and respect.

Jim Crow would beg to differ with you.; 11/9/17, 8:26 AM
MayBee said...: I'll add that it isn't something I really care about--- I'm not against people deciding they want to live as another gender. But I don't want to see people doing that to their children, and I will start getting mad when people are deemed "haters" if they don't think this is a fine idea.

Lobotomies were once a fine, medically sound idea.; 11/9/17, 8:26 AM
MayBee said...: But it's no reason to celebrate them, either. And we certainly should not allow this tiny fraction of a minority to redefine gender and sex for the whole world and act is if we are the ones operating under some kind of delusion.

Yes, I like the way J Farmer phrased this.; 11/9/17, 8:27 AM
Bad Lieutenant said...: AReasonableMan said...
I doubt this really matters. The Germans still know how to build things and run an economy. Whether they have two or twenty sexes isn't going to affect the fundamentals very much. On the margin maybe it is a good thing if the Germans loosen up a bit.
11/9/17, 8:12 AM

Dude. Have you SEEN their pr0n? Loose is not the problem there.; 11/9/17, 8:29 AM
sparrow said...: I concur with J Farmer. Transgenders have mental health issues and need treatment, but what is missing from that observation is the recognition that these unfortunates are being used as props in a political battle to further erode moral constraints on law and society.; 11/9/17, 8:31 AM
Henry said...: @richlb -- Bad laws also exist in the absence of dignity and respect. Jim Crow is an example.; 11/9/17, 8:31 AM
AlbertAnonymous said...: This country is always behind the times. Even in the social justice race to the bottom they are trailing the US. Our high Court jumped the shark on this indecipherable jibberish in Obergefell. All hail Justice Kennedy and the express constitutional right to privacy that guarantees every Stan/Loretta the dignity and self respect (and respect from others) to marry whoever he/she wants to marry. Its right there in plain English in Amendment No. 9 and 3/4.

Oh, but we’re taking away your guns. F the 2nd Amendment and that stale vestige of the white heterosexual patriarchy.; 11/9/17, 8:37 AM
traditionalguy said...: Talk about divide and conquer. Now the Germans have subdivided the men and women.I suspect a mega AI computer, that has propagated this reprogramming of humans as a joke and is now laughing its hard drive off, has inserted this.; 11/9/17, 8:39 AM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Bad Lieutenant said...
Dude. Have you SEEN their pr0n?

No. As a connoisseur what do you recommend?; 11/9/17, 8:41 AM
David said...: Why only 3?; 11/9/17, 8:42 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: "Blogger buwaya said...
The Germans real problem is that they are running out of Germans."

My first thought as well. We're in such a strange place, where whistling past the graveyard is held to be the highest virtue by a half our populations. Still, the very fact that they discourage speaking about it clearly indicates that it's on everyone's mind. I have a lot of faith in Darwin, though. Reality will tolerate being ignored for only so long.; 11/9/17, 8:44 AM
tds said...: Argument about privacy is strange. If they have to explicitly declare themselves third-gender, then they must come out in the open; 11/9/17, 8:45 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I get the sense Allah is considered male.; 11/9/17, 8:48 AM
tim maguire said...: Rather than muddying up the gender categories (which, let's be honest, are biological and there are only 2, with a very small number of exceptions that don't need their own industry to accommodate), wouldn't it make more sense to simply decide gender identification isn't that important? There's no reason for it to matter at all beyond the basic biological implications that aren't affected by whether we decide to call a tail a leg anyway.

On another, related, note, is't it remarkable how fast we went from hardly thinking about this at all to demanding we not object to it at all? Hysterical activists are really hitting their stride with this.; 11/9/17, 8:48 AM
Sebastian said...: Wait, so the right to privacy demands public recognition of one's third whatever in public for public purposes?

This must be just what the postwar framers of the German constitution had in mind. I guess they have a living constitution, too--until local progs declare it dead and unalterable.; 11/9/17, 8:49 AM
Sebastian said...: "But it's no reason to celebrate them, either." Oh, and why not? Not only must you accept the wisdom of your progressive superiors, thou shalt celebrate.

"And we certainly should not allow this tiny fraction of a minority to redefine gender and sex for the whole world and act is if we are the ones operating under some kind of delusion." Who dat we? Once our overlords decide, that's it. Time to enlighten the deplorables.; 11/9/17, 8:53 AM
whitney said...: 3 genders is not going to cut it. The end goal is probably 7 billion; 11/9/17, 8:56 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Oh for Christ's sake. Is this lunacy ever going to end?; 11/9/17, 8:57 AM
I'm Full of Soup said...: What DBQ said at 8:57AM.; 11/9/17, 8:59 AM
Fritz said...: You gotta register them before you round 'em up.; 11/9/17, 9:01 AM
Paddy O said...: Nicely said, J. Farmer.

Though I still quibble with the idea that gender is socially constructed. Gender stereotypes are certainly socially constructed. These conversations tend to reinforce those stereotypes, as if someone of one gender can know what it is like to be another gender, and then act in accordance with their assumptions. Again, not a reason to treat people horribly.; 11/9/17, 9:02 AM
JPS said...: J. Farmer, 8:15:

I largely agree. Funny thing is, ten years ago your comment as written would have put you way out ahead of the curve on transgender acceptance. Ten years from now it'll get you fired....; 11/9/17, 9:06 AM
LYNNDH said...: I am never going to be "woke" on this. There are two sexes, male and female. Now, I also believe that someone can be one sex visually but actually be of the other sex. That is not a social construct.; 11/9/17, 9:06 AM
Chest Rockwell said...: It will end.

*How* it will end is anyone's guess, but I can't imagine it will end well.; 11/9/17, 9:07 AM
Truthavenger said...: Only three?; 11/9/17, 9:10 AM
CStanley said...: Amendment No. 9 and 3/4.

LOL I'm stealing this.

On another note, I agree completely with J Farmer here.

I also am curious, assuming that the number of people with gender dysmorphia has actually increased (as opposed to these poeple just getting a megaphone) how much estrogenic chemicals might be playing a role. It would explain this phenomenon as well as rising infertility rates.; 11/9/17, 9:11 AM
Chest Rockwell said...: "According to Lambda Legal, an American organization that works for the rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people, at least eight countries — Australia, Bangladesh, Germany, India, Malta, Nepal, New Zealand and Pakistan — recognize more than two genders on passports or national ID cards."

Well, that's a rather non-Western leaning group. Although I don't really trust the NYT to report this honestly.; 11/9/17, 9:11 AM
rhhardin said...: Das Fraulein is already a third gender.; 11/9/17, 9:11 AM
pdug said...: Protects them from what? Biology? Because when we hear you were born with a penis we will know you're a man with a mental problem?; 11/9/17, 9:13 AM
robother said...: The problem illustrated by Bruce Jenner, who now claims to have always been a female misidentified from birth, is how will German hospitals know which gender to put on a birth certificate? The only safe choice will be "TBD." Since most new-born children in Germany are likely Muslims, this should make for some... vibrant vibrancy.; 11/9/17, 9:21 AM
Henry said...: 3 genders is not going to cut it. The end goal is probably 7 billion

From a anarchist libertarian point of view, that would be a good idea. Ever law assumes everyone is an individual.; 11/9/17, 9:24 AM
Birches said...: J Farmer nailed it. And I agree with Paddy O too.

As a woman who rarely wears make up and isn't particularly stereotypically girly, I resent the idea that my outside appearance and interests have more bearing on my femaleness than my womb. Most Male to Female transgender individuals reinforce gender stereotypes that women have been fighting to eliminate.; 11/9/17, 9:25 AM
William said...: I understand that there is such a phenomenon as a person feeling that he was born into the wrong sex. That person has a problem and he/she should be treated sympathetically. But with all the good will in the world, they're going to be looked at funny and treated differently. I suppose their plight is comparable to those of midgets. (Can you even say midgets anymore?) It's quite possible to have a condition that you consider tragic and that the world at large considers rather amusing.; 11/9/17, 9:26 AM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: Blogger Chest Rockwell said...
It will end.

*How* it will end is anyone's guess, but I can't imagine it will end well.

11/9/17, 9:07 AM

It will end when minors undergoing sex change treatments now with the approval of medical professionals will start suing those professionals 10 or 15 years down the line. Or when unforeseen health problems, like increased cancer rates, start showing up among the "transitioned."

Remember when hormone therapy for women going through menopause was discontinued after a breast cancer link was discovered? Bear in mind that that was giving biological women female hormones. And we're told it's OK to flood biological male bodies with female hormones, or biological females with male ones. No long term effects at all? Oh, OK, then.

In 30 years, people will look back and consider this the same way we look back on the once common practice of lobotomizing patients now.

Progressives today never consider that future generations might just regard practices they champion, like late term abortions and sex change operations, as barbaric and stupid. That's because progressives are sure they are right and correct about everything.; 11/9/17, 9:30 AM
Anonymous said...: Bad L:

AReasonableMan said...
"I doubt this really matters. The Germans still know how to build things and run an economy. Whether they have two or twenty sexes isn't going to affect the fundamentals very much. On the margin maybe it is a good thing if the Germans loosen up a bit."
11/9/17, 8:12 AM

Dude. Have you SEEN their pr0n? Loose is not the problem there.

Germans have the weirdest pr0n because they don't loosen up, not because they do.

It's never a good idea to tell people who don't know how to loosen up to loosen up. They invariably get it all wrong, often with unpleasant consequences for the rest of us. (Tell them to stop being racists and xenophobes, and do they just chill? No, they get "refugee" mania and then try to bully everybody else into laughing along with that hilarious Teutonic joke, hahahahaha.)

Let Germans cultivate German virtues, for the benefit of themselves and the rest of mankind, while the rest of us keep an eye on them to make sure they don't decide to "loosen up" to our detriment. (You can probably substitute any other nation for "German" here, and the rule still holds.); 11/9/17, 9:30 AM
William said...: Slightly off topic: Why do we hold Hitler against the Germans, but consider Stalin and Mao to be irrelevant in our estimation of the Russians and the Chinese?; 11/9/17, 9:32 AM
David Docetad said...: J. Farmer said...

"The notion that "gender is socially constructed" is obviously true..."

Gender is either the same as sex, or it is a grammatical term. Don't fall into the trap set by those who want to destroy society by destroying language.; 11/9/17, 9:33 AM
Marty Keller said...: Well, 1984 always read best in the original German.; 11/9/17, 9:34 AM
Gahrie said...: Are humans the only animal with three genders?; 11/9/17, 9:35 AM
The Vault Dweller said...: "Gender is either the same as sex, or it is a grammatical term. Don't fall into the trap set by those who want to destroy society by destroying language."

I think what he means is that gender roles and the associated gender related behavior is a product of society. I think this is true in part. Society places different expectations of behavior on men and women. However I suspect that a large portion, perhaps even a majority of the behavior associated with gender roles, is based off of innate different tendencies of behavior and mentality seen in the populations of women and men as a whole.; 11/9/17, 9:40 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life

Germany is known to be the world's #1 lover of liberty, so this follows.

Why only 3 though? Sort of seems like having an "other" category as the only non-binary option is a bit...othering, no?; 11/9/17, 9:41 AM
J. Farmer said...: @David Docetad:

Gender is either the same as sex, or it is a grammatical term. Don't fall into the trap set by those who want to destroy society by destroying language.

That is not true. Gender and biological sex are obviously strongly correlated, but they are not the same thing. Take, for example, the wearing of dresses or skirts or stilettos or the use of makeup or the wearing of a suit or shaving certain hair off your body. Those are all expressions of gender, but they have nothing to do with biological sex. And gender expression varies widely across time and culture. At one point, it was considered perfectly masculine to wear powdered wigs and rouge. To concede an obvious point, though, does not require one to believe the rest of the dogma.; 11/9/17, 9:43 AM
J. Farmer said...: @The Vault Dweller:

However I suspect that a large portion, perhaps even a majority of the behavior associated with gender roles, is based off of innate different tendencies of behavior and mentality seen in the populations of women and men as a whole.

I agree with this, but it's amazing how difficult it is for people to grasp this concept given how statistically innumerate large parts of the population are. So, for example, women tend to be more neurotic than me. That is, as far as I am concerned, an uncontroversial point. But for whatever reason, certain people are intent as hearing that as "all women are more neurotic than all men," which is an obviously foolish statement. Men tend to be taller than women, too, but there are obviously taller than average women and shorter than average men. The latter observation does not dispute the former.; 11/9/17, 9:49 AM
Nonapod said...: Humans are the only animal with 3 "genders", but there's protozoans with 7 different sexes.; 11/9/17, 9:49 AM
robother said...: "Sort of seems like having an "other" category as the only non-binary option is a bit...othering, no?"

Not that there's anything wrong with othering.; 11/9/17, 9:50 AM
hombre said...: Flash: German judges determine/decree that a third (Fourth? Fifth?) gender category is not a "social construct," it is REAL.

Henceforth the right to be "xe" joins other judicially decreed examples of reality such as the right to abortion and the right to same sex marriage with similar effects on society. It must be as exciting to be a judge as it is to be God.; 11/9/17, 9:53 AM
Henry said...: Are humans the only animal with three genders?

Some fish switch genders. In that case, the choices would be [ ] Male [ ] Female [ ] Pending; 11/9/17, 10:00 AM
Tommy Duncan said...: The notion that "gender is socially constructed" is obviously true...

Can someone provide some real life examples that bear out this obvious truth? (Please pardon my density on this issue. I'm a STEM guy.)); 11/9/17, 10:19 AM
Anonymous said...: DBQ: Oh for Christ's sake. Is this lunacy ever going to end?

All things pass. Eventually. This sort of silliness, despite the delusions of its perpetrators, has nothing to do with any kind of social or scientific progress. It's not news that there has always been a small minority of physical/behavioral exceptions in an overwhelmingly binary distribution.

The giveaway is the dishonesty: the effort to conflate things that are not the same in the public mind, as others have discussed above. E.g., gulling the public into thinking that "transsexuals" are the same thing as intersexuals, or that all transsexuals belong to the class of those physically highly masculinized females/feminized men who would be happier living as a member of the sex to which their interests/appearance/behavior already so closely conform.

This deliberate confusion limits the ability of people to acknowledge, let alone articulate, their sound instincts that sometimes what's being shoved in their faces is a fetish/perversion/mental illness, not an individual trying to deal with the unusual condition he was dealt by nature.

What we're seeing now is just the degeneracy that always starts pouring into the streets, scaring the horses and demanding PAY ATTENTION TO ME, in periods of social fracturing.; 11/9/17, 10:21 AM
MAJMike said...: This is a silly as anything the Vril or Thule Societies proposed during the Weimar Republic.; 11/9/17, 10:23 AM
J. Farmer said...: @Tommy Duncan:

Can someone provide some real life examples that bear out this obvious truth? (Please pardon my density on this issue. I'm a STEM guy.))

The existence of masculine women and feminine men. That is not the same as transgender, but it reveals that there is some degree of fluidity to gender. Take, for example, expectations of masculine and feminine dress or what roles in society are expected of men and women. There is nothing innately biological about that, though gender is obviously highly correlated with biological sex.; 11/9/17, 10:31 AM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: If the Germans are saying that they need a new pronoun for "intersex" people, they maybe have a point. If they are conflating this with "gender is socially constructed,", they do not.

Intersexuality does exist. There are people with traces of one sex or the other, or full-on presence of both. There was an article in The Sciences decades back titled "The Five Sexes." People with, er, ambivalent genitalia are out there. They are few, but they exist.

But this has exactly zero to do with "social construction of gender." Gender isn't sex, for starters, and the intersexed are not socially constructed; they are what they are. If I happen to have both a penis and a vagina, I am intersex, and I likely would want a new pronoun. This has, however, nothing at all to do with gender, and I resent the implication that it does.

FWIW: Not intersex here. 100% female.; 11/9/17, 10:37 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: I have varied thoughts here. On the one hand, there is a privacy interest here. I would probably use NA or something if I could get away with it, just like I give fake email addresses, real addresses, zip codes, and even birthdates (though I got in trouble recently with Skype, when they disabled my account until I got permission from my parents - who would be in their mid 90s if still alive. Luckily, I ultimately was able to enable myself from my existing MSFT account).

On the other hand, this gender thing has gotten out of hand. M/F is convenient for identification because it neatly divides the population into two, essentially equal sized, subsets. It is efficient. Just like with specialized or idividualized pronouns, a third gender, or none at all, is not efficient. M/F is sufficient for > 99% of the population. It can no longer, essentially, be encoded in one bit. And, with that, what does coding gender actually provide? Are there actually people who would be otherwise misidentified if all you had were their name and birthdate? I think highly unlikely, esp since most of our first names (in English) already strongly suggest our sex/gender, which essentially makes coding it almost redundant.; 11/9/17, 10:40 AM
madAsHell said...: Now we know who gets the pink triangles!!; 11/9/17, 10:52 AM
Anonymous said...: William: Slightly off topic: Why do we hold Hitler against the Germans, but consider Stalin and Mao to be irrelevant in our estimation of the Russians and the Chinese?

I don't think "we" hold Hitler against the Germans. But to answer your question as you framed it, it may be because the people who hold Hitler against the Germans but don't hold Stalin and Mao against the Russians and Chinese don't really think Stalin and Mao were bad guys.; 11/9/17, 10:52 AM
wholelottasplainin said...: Dummheit macht frei!; 11/9/17, 11:10 AM
Bay Area Guy said...: The Left continues to march down the path to fantasyland. If I say I'm a unicorn, dammit, who are you to say I'm not!

At first blush, this may seem silly and harmless. But there is a cost. The "traditionalists," at some point, get mad and get organized, and fight back.; 11/9/17, 11:13 AM
Megthered said...: In 100 years they will dig up the bones of these confused people and do a dna test or just look at the bones and say they are man or woman.; 11/9/17, 11:16 AM
dgstock said...: Just the beginning.

The Intersectionality survey for Women in Literature lists as genders, inter alia: butch, femme, demigirl/demiwoman, CAFAB (coercively assigned female at birth), mahu, and TMC (transmisogynist constrained). Well on the road to seven million genders. And they'll all demand a separate bathroom.; 11/9/17, 11:24 AM
J. Farmer said...: @Peggy Coffey:

In 100 years they will dig up the bones of these confused people and do a dna test or just look at the bones and say they are man or woman.

I take your point, but why exactly are we digging up bones 100 years from now? After all, the history of the early 20th century is not exactly a subject of archeology ;); 11/9/17, 11:24 AM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: "If I happen to have both a penis and a vagina, I am intersex, and I likely would want a new pronoun."

What did those unfortunate few do before they became a cause
among the progressive set? I would guess they quietly choose which sex they most identified with and lived as a man or a woman.

As I mentioned the other day, XY women, who have both a vagina and internal testes, are disproportionately represented among both world class women runners and fashion models. They are usually taller, with long legs and narrow hips, which give them an advantage both on the track and the catwalk. (Paradoxically, they are also often quite feminine looking, despite the testes.) That condition, of course, is quite different from someone who was just an average athlete when competing against men, but transitions and starts kicking ass when competing against women.; 11/9/17, 11:31 AM
Tommy Duncan said...: J. Farmer said:

"There is nothing innately biological about that, though gender is obviously highly correlated with biological sex."

If gender is obviously a social construct, why is there is "high correlation" with biological sex? If it were a largely social construct I would expect little to zero correlation.; 11/9/17, 11:31 AM
Jupiter said...: Until some time in the late 70's, it was universally acknowledged that people have a sex, male or female, while words sometimes have gender, masculine or feminine. Although very few English words are gendered, some languages assign gender to all nouns.

Then some females decided that they were not happy being females, and invented a batch of poppycock about "gender" as an attribute of humans. This rigamarole is nearly as complicated as astrology. So, this is roughly the equivalent of the German court decreeing a thirteenth Zodiacal sign. Flatus, the Broken Wind, perhaps.; 11/9/17, 11:33 AM
Big Mike said...: The German language already has three genders.; 11/9/17, 11:34 AM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: Peggy Coffey said...
In 100 years they will dig up the bones of these confused people and do a dna test or just look at the bones and say they are man or woman."

You don't have to wait 100 years. If, say, Caitlin Jenner is the victim or perpetrator of a violent crime (neither circumstance is something I wish on anybody) and leaves blood or hair at the crime scene, the lab results will identify Jenner as a man. It doesn't matter what Jenner calls himself, or if he gets "Bruce" erased from his birth certificate and Olympic medals and replaced with Caitlyn. The lab results say "Bruce."; 11/9/17, 11:39 AM
Jupiter said...: Tommy Duncan said...

"If gender is obviously a social construct, why is there is "high correlation" with biological sex? If it were a largely social construct I would expect little to zero correlation."

"Gender" is highly correlated with sex because your mother, who is female, dresses you differently, based upon your sex. Instead of attempting to determine your "gender". Of course, since "gender" is a social construct, there could not possibly be any way for her to determine it that would be any better than peeking under your dress, or your pants, as the case may be. So, this is a step beyond "a distinction without a difference". It is a dispute about a distinction without a difference.; 11/9/17, 11:40 AM
J. Farmer said...: @Tommy Duncan:

If gender is obviously a social construct, why is there is "high correlation" with biological sex? If it were a largely social construct I would expect little to zero correlation.

There is wide variance in human behavior. Think of a stereotypically feminine woman and stereotypically masculine man. These traits are, I believe, grounded in biological differences between men and women, but they are not absolute. There are plenty of masculine women and plenty of feminine men, which has nothing to do with their biological sex. Again, sex and height are also correlated, but that does not mean that there are not short men and tall women.; 11/9/17, 11:44 AM
J. Farmer said...: p.s. In other words, a woman who chooses not to wear dresses or skirts, high heeled shoes, use makeup, or grow her hair long may not be considered traditionally feminine but would still nonetheless be consider an obvious woman. There's nothing about having two X chromosomes that determines these things. That's because what is considered "masculine" and "feminine" has a socially defined component.; 11/9/17, 11:48 AM
AlbertAnonymous said...: When my son was little he would tie a blanket around his neck/shoulders and run around the house showing off his "cape" and claiming he was superman.

It didn't make him superman, no matter how much he identified as superman, and it didn't make him leap tall buildings in a single bound.; 11/9/17, 11:49 AM
Anonymous said...: The real conflagration here (and elsewhere) is the confusion (intentional?) of "Gender" with "Sex." I'm not sure why we all of a sudden decide, world-wide, that we should start identifying people by some subjective, internal "sense," which is culturally malleable and apparently flexible and unmoored in anything objective.

Why are we indicating "gender" on driver's licenses--not objective, biological "sex" (XX, and XY--genetically Intersex may choose)?; 11/9/17, 11:49 AM
J. Farmer said...: My point is that a lot of transgender activists take the obvious banal truth about the social component of gender and act as if biological sex is irrelevant or that what makes a man and a woman is simply a state of mind. I think that is obvious nonsense. The old feminist lioness Germaine Greer made the same obvious point about Caitlyn Jenner and was pilloried for it.; 11/9/17, 11:50 AM
Anonymous said...: The real conflagration here (and elsewhere) is the confusion (intentional?) of "Gender" with "Sex." I'm not sure why we all of a sudden decide, world-wide, that we should start identifying people by some subjective, internal "sense," which is culturally malleable and apparently flexible and unmoored in anything objective.

Why are we indicating "gender" on driver's licenses--not objective, biological "sex" (XX, and XY--genetically Intersex may choose)?; 11/9/17, 11:50 AM
Yancey Ward said...: A world of das.; 11/9/17, 11:53 AM
Yancey Ward said...: You will need more than three if you really need more than two.; 11/9/17, 11:55 AM
J. Farmer said...: @AlbertAnonymous:

It didn't make him superman, no matter how much he identified as superman, and it didn't make him leap tall buildings in a single bound.

That reminds me of that great comedy Working Girl. Joan Cusack tells Melanie Griffith (a secretary pretending to be the boss), "Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn't make me Madonna. Never will."; 11/9/17, 11:56 AM
robother said...: This may all be a devious plot to restore the Olympic medals to the (formerly East) German she-males.

If gender is just a social construct, the whole premise of the WNBA is profoundly (indeed maybe Constitutionally) flawed. That's the bad news. The good news: power dunking comes to the WNBA!; 11/9/17, 11:57 AM
n.n said...: Humans have a binary sex: male and female, expressed on a gender spectrum consisting of mental and physical characteristics constructed from two genders: masculine and feminine, which are normally distributed with respect to the male and female sex, respectively. Some aspects of gender, including presentation, occupation, etc. are culturally constructed, but, generally it is nature that drives the narrow distribution and high correlation between sex and gender.

The transgender spectrum includes homosexual and bisexual orientations (i.e. mental transgenderism), as well as transvestite and crossover (i.e. mental and/or physical transgenderism).; 11/9/17, 12:00 PM
n.n said...: The reason for the socially-driven aspects of gender (e.g. women wear dress, apply makeup) is to emphasize and make plain the differences between the male and female sex, between masculine and feminine genders, and to force a bias that disfavors sexual confusion and favors a heterosexual orientation, a functional orientation necessary to realize the natural fitness function: reproduction and propagation. That function may be have adjusted through technological development, or it has reduced men and women to sperm donators and commodity wombs, respectively.; 11/9/17, 12:11 PM
Jupiter said...: There is something both amusing and telling in the way those who decry the distinctions our society draws between the sexes never wish to abolish the practice, but only to further complicate it. If Gloria Steinem had actually wanted equality with men, she would have called her magazine "Mr". But that would hardly have been feminine, and Gloria Steinem was intensely feminine.

It is rather as if the Allies had invaded Germany in 1945, saying, "It is wrong to put yellow stars on the Jews and pink triangles on the homosexuals! From now on, the homos get a star too! And what about the Commies! Look at all these poor Commies you've got locked up in here! Right now, we want red stars for the Commies!"; 11/9/17, 12:16 PM
buwaya said...: "I think that is obvious nonsense. "

On one level its nonsense, on another it has a perfectly sound and evil purpose.
Its Orwells thing in "1984", and this is a banal observation. Its that creepy power move of making people see four or five fingers as directed.; 11/9/17, 12:22 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: I'm not a huge fan of radio host Michael Savage (from the Bay Area!). He's a little too coarse for my tastes.

But he has said for a long time that Leftism is a "mental disease."

He's totally right. They're like highly functioning zombies. They eat, they speak, they write, but they are bleeping clueless on matters of pure common sense. Also, they're dangerous. They destabilize societies and traditions. So, they need to be hammered.; 11/9/17, 12:38 PM
urbane legend said...: "... the country’s constitutional court ruled on Wednesday, finding that binary gender designations violated the right to privacy....

Then don't all gender designations violate the right to privacy? The law enforcement officer writing a ticket has no need to know what gender you prefer, or your sex. A doctor needs to know if you are male, female or trans something, but who else needs to? If you are dating you probably want to know. That information should surface fairly quickly, wouldn't it?; 11/9/17, 12:42 PM
Scott M said...: Why do we hold Hitler against the Germans, but consider Stalin and Mao to be irrelevant in our estimation of the Russians and the Chinese?

Who is this "we", Kemosabe?; 11/9/17, 12:44 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: If the Shocker fits then you are a chick.

Done.

I am Laslo.; 11/9/17, 12:44 PM
JAORE said...: "On the margin maybe it is a good thing if the Germans loosen up a bit."

The world would benefit by also considering that it may NOT be a good thing prior to such changes.; 11/9/17, 12:54 PM
Paddy O said...: People keep redefining what gender means and then expect that definition to somehow have official status. But it's really just a posture that assumes a cultural authority that's really more religious in nature than scientific. Religious as in it addresses what makes a person a person and how a person can thrive in this world.

Which makes it culturally driven as well. Which is fine. But not when it's accompanied by an assumption of objective reality. It's a non-deistic religious perspective based on hyper-individualistic relative perspective.; 11/9/17, 1:10 PM
Ambrose said...: Once Germany creates this new gender, I bet it will last for a thousand years.; 11/9/17, 1:15 PM
mtrobertslaw said...: If "gender" is a socially constructed, why not the notion of "species"? After all, if given their progressive marching orders, the media could easily turn up hundreds of those who are classified by society as "human beings", but who have always believed they are lions, eagles or wolves.; 11/9/17, 1:23 PM
ALP said...: Why do we continue to use gender as an identification variable anyway? In the future, identity will be based on an algorithm based on an iris scan or fingerprint. The old height, weight, hair color, gender thing will be considered so very primitive.; 11/9/17, 1:45 PM
Matt said...: Gender HAS to be socially constructed, otherwise the transgender thing goes out the window. Since a man is not born a woman (and vice versa), he can't inherently know what it is to be a woman. He can only feign it based on his observations and interactions with the feminine side of the population.

I find it fascinating that feminists won't push back against the patriarchy if it shows up in a nice floral skirt and five o'clock shadow. One would think they'd be hypersensitive to males in any guise horning in on everything they've achieved over the last 50 years.; 11/9/17, 2:37 PM
wildswan said...: How all this began. It began with a little boy named David Reimer (1965-2004) who was forced by a John Hopkins psychologist to live as a girl after he lost his penis in an accident. David Reimer was miserable as a child, discovered what had been done when he became an adult, tried to be the man he felt he was, was overwhelmed by his own story and killed himself. John Money wrote a book explaining that David Reimer was perfectly happy as a girl, that gender was learned and a social construct. Now everyone is saying it.

The point of David Reimer's story was that even though he lost his penis as a baby in an accident he still had male chromosomes and so he had male hormones bathing every cell in his body. Money tried to reverse this fact about Reimer's cells and what they were doing with female hormones and surgery and indoctrination. It didn't work, the poor little kid was miserable but the Johns Hopkins scientist proclaimed it all a success and it's the Johns Hopkins scientist that "society, law and medicine" are attending to.

The future will be thousands of David Reimers. Look at the suicide rates following gender reassignment and you see his story is the typical story. But our elitists will say they have bent the moral arc of history - in a good way. They just don't care.

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl. John Colapinto (2001).; 11/9/17, 3:11 PM
American Liberal Elite said...: To riff on Mark Twain: I'd rather decline three drinks than a new German pronoun; 11/9/17, 4:40 PM
Richard said...: Oh, for fuck's sake! There is no new quark here. There are men, and there are women, and some of those favor their own. Sadly, the rest have "issues".; 11/9/17, 5:03 PM
Phil 314 said...: I'd like to hear Gunter from Sprockets take on this.; 11/9/17, 5:10 PM
Skipper said...: Do they have a category for the ubermensch?; 11/9/17, 7:11 PM
n.n said...: c. 1300, "kind, sort, class, a class or kind of persons or things sharing certain traits," from Old French gendre, genre "kind, species; character; gender" (12c., Modern French genre), from stem of Latin genus (genitive generis) "race, stock, family; kind, rank, order; species," also "(male or female) sex," from PIE root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.
- gender

Just call it transgender, that is exhibiting mental (e.g. orientation) and/or physical traits outside the normal distribution of masculine and feminine gender corresponding to male and female sex, respectively, and call it a day. Should it be normalized/promoted? Tolerated? Or perhaps rejected/aborted?; 11/9/17, 8:53 PM
Peter Irons said...: It is not true that medicine and science indicate that gender is socially constructed. Exactly the opposite is true.; 11/9/17, 9:26 PM
Martin said...: Only a culture of cretins would make something "socially constructed and not necessarily fixed or stable" ... "of paramount importance for individual identity."

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and the people who wrote it, even if they are senior judges in Germany, are blithering idiots.; 11/9/17, 10:09 PM
Kirk Parker said...: Skipper,

No, only for untermenschen.; 11/9/17, 10:33 PM
J. Farmer said...: @n.n:

Should it be normalized/promoted? Tolerated? Or perhaps rejected/aborted?

No. Yes. No.; 11/9/17, 11:19 PM
stlcdr said...: “Blogger Sebastian said...
Wait, so the right to privacy demands public recognition of one's third whatever in public for public purposes?“

Exactly what I saw; we have to publically accommodate a private thing. I thought we were moving away from this? What we do in private is now the public’s business?; 11/10/17, 4:26 AM