So a man getting an ID card with a typo in the gender field makes him female?
Legally, maybe so, at least until the error is corrected. You’d have to ask a lawyer to be sure.
ID cards are a physical object, which is not determined by biological sex, since as a question of legal fact one can get an ID card of one’s self-identified gender if one jumps through the appropriate hoops, even without sex reassignment surgery. (At least that’s how it works here in California. I have no idea how it works in other states or countries.)
This seems to me a counterexample to the claim that gender, as distinct from sex, doesn’t correspond to anything. Social interaction is another: for example, women are much more likely to ask each other if they want old clothes before giving/throwing them away, and much less likely to get asked to be someone’s Best Man at a wedding.
How about not “every five minutes”, but whenever he feels like going to the women’s bathroom to ogle/be generally creepy?
By far the dominant hypothesis here would be “you’re lying”, but failing that probably yes, gender identities aren’t supposed to be able to work that way.
“Your gender is whatever you say it is” is a social norm, not a factual claim. Saying you’re a woman doesn’t make you a woman. People just don’t generally assert it unless they actually want to be treated as a woman. Creeps, or other people lying for personal gain, seem exceptionally rare—probably because it’s a giant hassle, and the institutions they’d want to take advantage of don’t obey that norm anyway.
If transition ever became socially easy and stigma-free, we probably would need a different anti-creep mechanism.
I agree that genderfluid people might break gjm’s model, although he seems to have some wiggle room as written. Of course, I don’t know if this is a deliberate result of accounting for their existence, or a lucky accident.
Good I’m glad we agree on this. Now, why are you trying to defend positions that rely on denying this claim?
I’m not. I entered this discussion mostly to point out that you were equating “corresponds to social behavior” with “does not correspond to anything”, which is silly.
It’s worse than gender not corresponding to anything. Like in the standard example, it corresponds to multiple things, which don’t necessarily agree.
ETA:
Yes, and creeps, or example, want to be treated as a woman with respect to which bathroom they enter.
Do they? I mean, as a theoretical problem, sure. But to my knowledge this is a vanishingly rare event.
Legally, maybe so, at least until the error is corrected. You’d have to ask a lawyer to be sure.
ID cards are a physical object, which is not determined by biological sex, since as a question of legal fact one can get an ID card of one’s self-identified gender if one jumps through the appropriate hoops, even without sex reassignment surgery. (At least that’s how it works here in California. I have no idea how it works in other states or countries.)
This seems to me a counterexample to the claim that gender, as distinct from sex, doesn’t correspond to anything. Social interaction is another: for example, women are much more likely to ask each other if they want old clothes before giving/throwing them away, and much less likely to get asked to be someone’s Best Man at a wedding.
By far the dominant hypothesis here would be “you’re lying”, but failing that probably yes, gender identities aren’t supposed to be able to work that way.
“Your gender is whatever you say it is” is a social norm, not a factual claim. Saying you’re a woman doesn’t make you a woman. People just don’t generally assert it unless they actually want to be treated as a woman. Creeps, or other people lying for personal gain, seem exceptionally rare—probably because it’s a giant hassle, and the institutions they’d want to take advantage of don’t obey that norm anyway.
If transition ever became socially easy and stigma-free, we probably would need a different anti-creep mechanism.
I agree that genderfluid people might break gjm’s model, although he seems to have some wiggle room as written. Of course, I don’t know if this is a deliberate result of accounting for their existence, or a lucky accident.
Ok, now I officially have no reason to care about Wes_W!gender.
So you agree this social norm has no factual basis to it.
Good I’m glad we agree on this. Now, why are you trying to defend positions that rely on denying this claim?
Yes, and creeps, or example, want to be treated as a woman with respect to which bathroom they enter.
I’m not. I entered this discussion mostly to point out that you were equating “corresponds to social behavior” with “does not correspond to anything”, which is silly.
It’s worse than gender not corresponding to anything. Like in the standard example, it corresponds to multiple things, which don’t necessarily agree.
ETA:
Do they? I mean, as a theoretical problem, sure. But to my knowledge this is a vanishingly rare event.