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First baby born without a gender in Canada

Sunster

Member
It's hardly a world first, for government documentation of a baby's sex to essentially list "undetermined"/"unidentified" (or similar words or symbols). Many intersex people worldwide have "Indeterminate" listed as their sex.

dismiss first. research never.
 

Plum

Member
Just because you are in favor of socialism does not mean you will stop paying your bills with actual money.

If we lived in an ideal society this would not be needed because people would KNOW that the difference between sex and gender is huge. Society does not know and act like they are the same. See bathroom laws.

So then why make society's understanding of the two terms more hazy? The medical note says "sex" which, based on pretty much all gender studies, has nothing to do with gender. We have examples in this very thread of people questioning the correct definitions because of this incorrect usage of them.
 

Alienfan

Member
But to claim that parents assuming a child us hetero during their life is worse than this is exaggerating. Sorry to what happened to you, but the vast majority of the population is heterosexual, so a parent assuming that for their child from the time they're born and can't speak until the point they can actually come to terms with their sexuality does not make those parents worse than these

Children come to terms with their sexuality as early as 7, if their only concept of love is between a man and a woman because that's all their parents have talked about, how is that not going to be confusing and potentially damaging? Fostering an accepting environment isn't that hard. Explaining that they can love a man or a woman, instead of just a woman, makes a difference more than you think and "coming out" a hell of a lot easier. Half of the coming out process and why it can take so long is because you don't know how people will react, you usually come to terms with your sexuality years before
 

mnz

Unconfirmed Member
Help me because I don't see it. She can say 1+1=4 but that doesn't make it so.
Kori Doty, who prefers to use the pronoun they, argues that a visual inspection at birth is unable to determine what gender that person will have or identify with later in life.
They want to keep Searyl's sex off all official records.
"I'm raising Searyl in in such a way that until they have the sense of self and command of vocabulary to tell me who they are, I'm recognising them as a baby and trying to give them all the love and support to be the most whole person that they can be outside of the restrictions that come with the boy box and the girl box," the parent was quoted by CBC as saying.
There
 

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
I understand that gender is undetermined at birth, but sex as well? Is that true?
The article (and the lawyer) seem to mix up the terms. Are they synonyms now? I always thought it was important to stress that gender and sex are not the same thing.

No, it's not true. Biological sex is usually quite obvious at birth.

By the way, it's not a fucking hate crime to assign your kid a gender either. Because if it's a biological female there's about a 90+% chance they'll identify female. If you call your kid "her" you aren't a bad person.

When it goes bad is when that kid starts wanting to play with boys' toys and you tell them no, or refuse to accept it if they discover they're transgender.

Can someone post a study that finds that sex and gender are not linked in any way?

Not being an ass, I'm genuinely interested and looking to expand on my views.

They are obviously linked and anyone telling you otherwise is letting their desire to be progressive cloud their common sense.

You can accept that biological females are also usually socially female while also accepting that some people are different and that should be embraced.
 

Sunster

Member
No, it's not true. Biological sex is usually quite obvious at birth.

By the way, it's not a fucking hate crime to assign your kid a gender either. Because if it's a biological female there's about a 90+% chance they'll identify female. If you call your kid "her" you aren't a bad person.

When it goes bad is when that kid starts wanting to play with boys' toys and you tell them no, or refuse to accept it if they discover they're transgender.

who said it was?
 
But the parent is refusing to have the doctors log the childs biological sex even. This has nothing to do with their wish about how to raise the kid.

They're refusing to allow gender on a birth certificate. Why would they mean they will withhold medical information? Seems like quite a leap. They want the best for their child.
 
No, it's not true. Biological sex is usually quite obvious at birth.

By the way, it's not a fucking hate crime to assign your kid a gender either. Because if it's a biological female there's about a 90+% chance they'll identify female. If you call your kid "her" you aren't a bad person.

When it goes bad is when that kid starts wanting to play with boys' toys and you tell them no, or refuse to accept it if they discover they're transgender.

No one is arguing you shouldn't be allowed to assign genders to your kids, don't worry. Nor should you be forced to. Quite simple, really.
 

Condom

Member
This is harmful to statistics and the design of government policy and should only happen in special cases. Unless sex/gender is separated here?
Edit: it is. Well ok then.
 

Kinyou

Member
It's hardly a world first, for government documentation of a baby's sex to essentially list "undetermined"/"unidentified" (or similar words or symbols). Many intersex people worldwide have "Indeterminate" listed as their sex.
Intersex is based on biology though, isn't it? This case has nothing to do with biology which makes it dumb to describe the biological sex of the baby as "undetermined"
 
Let's see how the kid turns out.

The choice was obviously motivated by the parent's desire to project their own ideology and issues onto their child.

However, I won't criticize the choice until we can see the results. It could end up leading to a wonderfully unique child with boundless self confidence or a totally discombobulated social pariah who questions why his/her parents can't just let him/her be "normal."

Wouldn't really seem fair to put the blame on the parents. If as the child gets older it starts to want to consume content aimed at males, then encounters other children and those children treat that child as male, then he or she will continue to grow and explore their gender identity eventually deciding at a later age. It's really not that different from if a parent tells their male child that they are a boy, while allowing him to play with toys aimed at girls and watching TV shows aimed at girls. Either way, the child will drift towards something it identifies with.

How I see things going with this family is that the child may ask "am I a boy or a girl?" and the parent(s) will say "You're just you. It doesn't matter and its nobody's business. Dress however you want, play with whatever you like. Just be happy" not necessarily with them responding with a big spiel about how gender is a social construction and is actually fluid and can exist on a continuum etc. etc.
 

mnz

Unconfirmed Member
The parents don't seem to know that. The sentence with gender is directly contradicted by the sentence with sex.
No you don't seem to understand their intention. They want the sex off the record so that it doesn't influence their gender, basically.
 

ramparter

Banned
Stupid.

We all are born male or female (save for a few hermaphrodite cases etc).

Now, if you want to raise them gender neutral, fine. But scientifically, biologically, that baby has a gender.
. Agree, why confuse biology with sexual preferences?
 
They're refusing to allow gender on a birth certificate. Why would they mean they will withhold medical information? Seems like quite a leap. They want the best for their child.
Birth certificate has sex on it, not gender. This has nothing to do with what it best for the child. Logging their sex has no influence on how they are raised.
 

Platy

Member
So then why make society's understanding of the two terms more hazy? The medical note says "sex" which, based on pretty much all gender studies, has nothing to do with gender. We have examples in this very thread of people questioning the correct definitions because of this incorrect usage of them.

And maybe the kid was born with undefined genitalia.

And NOBODY questioned this.

See how everyone knows that sex is different from gender ?

Sometimes you just want people not to assume anything and live your life. Not everything needs to be raising a flag to explain the poor cis people how it is.
 

Plum

Member
That the latter can cause the enforcement of the former is the thesis.

Yes, but they are still different things and if that distinction is ever going to be seen by society at large (and therefore lawmakers) what help is there in intentionally making them the same thing in the eyes of the law?
 

Plum

Member
And maybe the kid was born with undefined genitalia.

And NOBODY questioned this.

See how everyone knows that sex is different from gender ?

Sometimes you just want people not to assume anything and live your life. Not everything needs to be raising a flag to explain the poor cis people how it is.

...this is a decision from the parents, not an actual example of someone being born intersex as I'm pretty sure that would be mentioned in the news article.
 
They're refusing to allow gender on a birth certificate. Why would they mean they will withhold medical information? Seems like quite a leap. They want the best for their child.
It's pretty simple isn't It? I'm not sure how people reaching other conclusions think it's logical.

Not wanting an official record of the child at birth doesn't mean they will withhold that information should it become necessary for treatment, and I'm sure they won't.

Birth certificates are being used to force transgender people into situations they don't want to be in, right now, in places around the world. So they don't want that to potentially happen to their kid.

I'm sure they don't care if their kid is cisgender or transgender or not conforming to any gender. They just want something that was very difficult for them to not be difficult for their kid.
 

Platy

Member
...this is a decision from the parents, not an actual example of someone being born intersex.

And this is a decision from the parents, not an actual example of people protesting that sex is different from gender.

STOP ACTING LIKE IT IS A CHOICE FROM THE TRANS COMMUNITY.

This person is not doing this to teach anybody anything. They are just doing so people stop assuming things from the children.
 

Kinyou

Member
And maybe the kid was born with undefined genitalia.

And NOBODY questioned this.

See how everyone knows that sex is different from gender ?

Sometimes you just want people not to assume anything and live your life. Not everything needs to be raising a flag to explain the poor cis people how it is.
In this case that's not a decisions the baby made but its mother.
 

Blue Lou

Member
My name is spelled without capital letters. People make many assumptions about why that is. Here is the story. I have always signed my name without capital letters. When I was taking a Master of Laws degree in 1990, I had letterhead designed and my name was in lower case. I liked it, so I continued it when I returned to private practice in 1992. What an uproar! Lawyers called me up to say that they had a vote in their firm about why I chose that spelling; a court rejected an Order because my name was not properly spelled; and the local queer newspaper refused for years to spell my name without capital letters.

http://www.barbarafindlay.com/about-me.html
 

Birth certificate has sex on it, not gender. This has nothing to do with what it best for the child. Logging their sex has no influence on how they are raised.
Ok, so what's the problem? Assignment of sex at birth is as complicated and thorough as the doctor looking at the genitals and picking. If there is a medically relevant issue with the reproductive system, the doctor is gonna need to do a lot more than just eyeball it. So what's the problem? It's not a like a 13 year old kid will come in confused about their period and the doctor will go "But your birth certificate! I can't do anything!"
 
Yes, but they are still different things and if that distinction is ever going to be seen by society at large (and therefore lawmakers) what help is there in intentionally making them the same thing in the eyes of the law?

They're not.


The only boy/girl identifier on ID cards and what not is sex. So they're taking it off so that no one assumes the child's gender when they see the ID card.
 

Plum

Member
And this is a decision from the parents, not an actual example of people protesting that sex is different from gender.

STOP ACTING LIKE IT IS A CHOICE FROM THE TRANS COMMUNITY.

This person is not doing this to teach anybody anything. They are just doing so people stop assuming things from the children.

I'm not acting like that. It's a decision made by the parents that harms the definitions the trans community are trying so hard to teach people.
 

KillLaCam

Banned
And maybe the kid was born with undefined genitalia.

And NOBODY questioned this.

See how everyone knows that sex is different from gender ?
Pretty sure if it was this situation they would have mentioned it. That would be a pretty important detail. I actually clicked on the article expecting that to be the case.

But there's no way that this article would have omitted that after taking the time to mention that the lawyer doesn't like capital letters
 

StayDead

Member
The issue is here and is usually with this sort of topic is it's confusing two things:

Gender - sexual orientation
Sex - biological

On your birth certificate you do not put gender as that would make no sense. It uses the words Male and Female based on the biological evidence of if the child has male reproductive organs, female productive organs, both or none.

Having undecided as Sex (or written as gender sometimes which is where the confusion comes in) makes genuinely no sense on a birth certificate. For instance someone may grow up and discover that they like the same sex, or they want to transition to the other sex and people should have the right once they transition to update their official documentation to show that, but they were not "undefined" when they were born.
 

Chuckie

Member
Ok, so what's the problem? Assignment of sex at birth is as complicated and thorough as the doctor looking at the genitals and picking. If there is a medically relevant issue with the reproductive system, the doctor is gonna need to do a lot more than just eyeball it. So what's the problem? It's not a like a 13 year old kid will come in confused about their period and the doctor will go "But your birth certificate! I can't do anything!"

You were replying to someone who is saying that this parent refuses to have the sex logged of the child on any official documents by saying it was only about 'gender on birth certificate'

I am merely correcting you. It is not about 'gender on birth certificate' it is about 'sex on all official documents'.
 
Ok, so what's the problem? Assignment of sex at birth is as complicated and thorough as the doctor looking at the genitals and picking. If there is a medically relevant issue with the reproductive system, the doctor is gonna need to do a lot more than just eyeball it. So what's the problem? It's not a like a 13 year old kid will come in confused about their period and the doctor will go "But your birth certificate! I can't do anything!"
You can then advocate for removing the logging of sex on your birth certificate and other documentation. But in this case it seems they want the kid to make the decision later on. Which does not really add any positives here. And you can change it already later on if you want to.

Tell that to girls being forced to use the boy's room based on what their birth certificate says.
That is a societal problem though about gender, nothing to do with that is on your papers.
 

Plum

Member
They're not.


The only boy/girl identifier on ID cards and what not is sex. So they're taking it off so that no one assumes the child's gender when they the ID card.

So why not campaign for a seperate gender box instead of breaking down definitions and making things even more confused? You cannot have an undefined sex unless you are one of the very few cases of being medically intersex, so putting undefined in that box is literally wrong.
 

Platy

Member
I'm not acting like that. It's a decision made by the parents that harms the definitions the trans community are trying so hard to teach people.

It is how bathrooms have "male and female" instead of man and woman ... but they actually mean man and woman.

This is the kind of thing that USE makes sex=gender.

It is not that simple
 

Sunster

Member
The issue is here and is usually with this sort of topic is it's confusing two things:

Gender - sexual orientation
Sex - biological

On your birth certificate you do not put gender as that would make no sense. It uses the words Male and Female based on the biological evidence of if the child has male reproductive organs, female productive organs, both or none.

Having undecided as Sex (or written as gender sometimes which is where the confusion comes in) makes genuinely no sense on a birth certificate. For instance someone may grow up and discover that they like the same sex, or they want to transition to the other sex, but that still doesn't change that biologically when they were born they had a certain sex.

They want the sex removed until the child determines their own gender. Anyone who reads these cards will gender the child if the sex is included. That is what they want to avoid. They do not want society to gender their child. They want the child to discover their own gender. At that time cards can be modified.
 
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