I know what you’re thinking. “Simon, you’re a guy.” And I tend to agree with you. All my dingily dangles confirm to me that I am indeed male. But according to a proposed new rule being considered by the Board of Health in New York City I could actually be a woman.
The rule will let New Yorkers change the sex on their birth certificates without going through the inconvenience of actually changing their bodies. This has been greeted as good news by America’s growing transgender community which argues that gender is more complex than genitals and that some people simply don’t have the money to have sex-reassignment surgery. At the recent final public hearing about the proposed rule various advocates and transsexuals suggested that commonly held definitions of gender, in particular its reliance on medical assessments, should be set aside in favor of a more open minded view of what defines a persons gender.
But for a Steve to become a Steph there will still need to be a number of steps before he can legally consider himself a new woman. Affidavits from a doctor as well as a mental health professional will need to be provided explaining why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex. For this to happen Steve will need to have lived as Steph for at least two years, plus he will be required to legally change his too.
Speaking for the New York Transgender Rights Organization 52 year old lawyer, Joann Prinzivalli, called the new rule progress and was encouraged that New York was playing a significant part in changing America’s misguided fixation on genitals as the basis of a persons gender identity. “It’s based on an arbitrary distinction that says there are two and only two sexes,” said Ms Prinzivalli who has lived as a woman for the last six years.
The rule looks almost certain to be passed in December and will put New York state among a small number of states that already do not require surgery for an individual to request their gender be changed on their birth certificate.
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New York Plans to Make Gender Personal Choice
Among the Transhumanists
Wrote the following comment on Nov 14, 2006 at 10:29 pm
Do you know what burns my ass about that? Some dude can demand to have his gender changed on his birth certificate and everyone is just fine with that.. But I lie about my weight by 5 measly pounds at the DMV and I get the evil death glare. NOT FAIR!
Wrote the following comment on Nov 14, 2006 at 11:20 pm
i am so glad i do not have that to struggle with.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 14, 2006 at 11:37 pm
One thing I’d be interested in is seeing figures relating the cumbers of men who are women, compared to the number of women who are men. My interest would be in seeing if there were a significant number more than the other and if so why that might be. Though I realise these days I shouldn’t refer to them as “one and the other” as we have to now recognize that there is more than 2 genders! (?)
Wrote the following comment on Nov 15, 2006 at 12:06 am
Sorry, but I can’t get past the “dingily dangles”.
Nonetheless, gender CAN be determined through DNA, and there are cases of individuals born with genitalia of the opposite sex, with DNA showing the opposite of the genitalia. The cases are rare, and reversible.
There are no more than 2 genders, and I refuse to let the gender-confused call me ignorant or uninformed for thinking so. Gender change surgery is mutilation of the body, clear and simple, though the gender confusion issues are not simple, but quite complicated. So I’m sure this will not be the last we hear of the battle over whether there are only 2 genders or not.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 15, 2006 at 12:13 am
It appears that it wasn’t much of a battle though. The only serious objection came from physicians who felt it was not right to go back and retrospectively change the sex on a birth certificate when Seff clearly was born as Steve. The New York Times also asks the questions…
Would a man who becomes a woman be able to marry another man? (Probably.)
Would an adoption agency be able to uncover the original sex of a proposed parent? (Not without a court order.)
Would a woman who becomes a man be able to fight in combat, or play in the National Football League? (These areas have yet to be explored.)
Wrote the following comment on Nov 15, 2006 at 2:37 am
i dont even know what to think about this.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 15, 2006 at 2:57 am
Great… that’s all our society needs to be even more sexually confused! Maybe we should all just be come drones and let the scientist handle procreation.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 15, 2006 at 6:20 am
And people wonder why the family unit is falling apart… and why kids are so confused… maybe its because women are trying to be men, and men are trying to be women… that would really mess up Erikson’s stage: gender identity v. confusion.
50 years from now:
kid: mommy my teacher looks like a man but she says shes a woman on the inside. How can you be a woman on the inside and not the outside?
parent: well, sometimes people’s insides and outsides dont match…
kid: does my inside match my outside?
slight exaggeration.. but still. this is foder for confusion.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 15, 2006 at 2:04 pm
“It’s based on an arbitrary distinction that says there are two and only two sexes.â€
I hardly think that when you were born with…er…”dingily dangles” and were considered male is an “arbitrary” assessment. To me choosing to live as another gender and having your shrink confirm it is more arbitrary. In that case (and since there are more than 2 sexes?) I need to legally be an androgynous cyborg from planet MD348. That’s just how I feel and I’m sure I can get some “doctor” to confirm it.
Wrote the following comment on Nov 15, 2006 at 4:39 pm
okay, is it politically incorrect or ‘insensitive’ for me to call this gender confusion issue really friggin’ wierd?! Can I say that? I mean Mr. Joann seems to think Americans have a, “misguided fixation on genitals” in determining gender. That’s not very sensitive. “Fixation on genitals”? I mean really, in the course of a day how many of us stop to ponder our naughty bits?
Wrote the following comment on Nov 15, 2006 at 6:06 pm
So, after Steve becomes Steph, is he/she going to demand a standup urinal in the women’s loo ?
Wrote the following comment on Nov 21, 2006 at 5:28 am
I’ve been visiting sites that I have found by googling myself, and where the occasion comes up, I am posting my observations.
The first thing is, the NY Times article from 11/7 was awfully slanted. Gender won’t be a matter of choice for transgendered people born in NYC – it is a matter of correcting an error.
Sex is assigned at borth on the basis of a simple visual examination of genital shape by the attending physician. This is an approximation that happens to be right more than 99% of the time. That’s pretty good, except for that 1/1000th (and while older estimates had FTMs as less numerous than MTFs, it seems as if the numbers are nearly equivalent), or more if you include those who are born with ambiguous genitalia or other issues, such as androgen insensitivity syndrome.
DNA, like birth genital shape, is only one factor. I suggest for those who are interested, that you google BSTc and look at the articles that touch on the studies that were made on the structure of this small area of the brain.
If I was born with male genitals but grew up with a female brain, of course it is going to be an issue. At one point, if you could have fixed my brain, I would have been happy to live a “normal” life – but no one could fix my brain. Fixing my body is an option.
I have had hormone therapy for years – and what hormones do is put you through puberty – all of us have the blueprints in our genes to be either male *or* female, and sometimes a bit of both.
If something already developed one way, it won’t shrink – but if it did not grow during puberty, it will grow with hormone therapy, unless like bones, the bones have a cap growth.
For FTMs, Testosterone leads to beard growth, male pattern baldness, a hairier body and a deeper voice. It does not reduce breasts, but enlarges what used to be the clitoris.
For MTFs, estrogen does spur breast growth and softens skin and some features, but does not make an adam’s apple smaller, or raise the voice, or stop beard growth. It does halt male pattern baldness, but does not restore head hair. Spironalactone also inhibits sex drive.
MTF’s do not want a urinal in the ladies’ room. Even pre-op MTF’s sit to pee. Some FTM’s who are pre-op/non-op do want to stand up to pee, and some will use a device that I think is called a trucker’s friend that allows this. The Times made an error in calling me a man. I may have been assigned male at birth, but that was an error. If you saw the print version, there was a photo of me on Page B8 – and I don’t think you would want to see me, or any other woman, in a men’s room.
Let’s try a thought experiment for you cisgendered folks. Let’s say that you have to live the rest of your life trying to pass as a member of the opposite sex (from the one you were assigned and identify with). You know inside you are a member of that original sex, but everyone expects you to be someone you are not.
Maybe for a couple of days, you might enjoy the experience of being on the other side – but after a while, the whole thing will be rather stressful.
Anti-transgender lesbian writer Norah Vincent wrote a book in which she dd exactly that, and thouh she doesn’t realize it, she had such an MTF transsexual experience! She even gavce herself a case of what I would identify as gender identity disorder! (Norah insists that her experience wasn’t a transsexual one, but she is thinking only of the FTM experience.
But Ned, her alter ego, would be an MTF transsexual who is really Norah underneath.
Anyway, despite Norah’s lack of understanding, I highly recommend this book – it is a good peek at the experience of Ned, a simulated male-to-female transsexual.
Anyway, here is an op ed piece I wrote for the New York Times but which they did not have the courge to print.(https://joannmp.livejournal.com/)
Wrote the following comment on Nov 21, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for the response Joann, it made for interesting reading. Though you used a few acronyms and an expression I’d not heard of. When you wrote MTF I figured out there was little chance you were referring to Modulation Transfer Function so I googled it and found that it stands for Male To Female, so therefore FTM becomes obvious.
“Cisgendered” had me perlexed though. Heck I wasn’t even sure how to actually say it! Dictionary.com didn’t have the word, neither did the Oxford English or American Standard. But good ol’ google was once again able to answer my question.
Cisgender (cis-, “on this side of, not across;” compare cisatlantic, cisalpine) is a neologism meaning “not transgender,” that is, having a gender identity or performing in a gender role that society considers appropriate for one’s sex. The prefix cis- is pronounced like “sis.”
I don’t doubt there are a very few people who are born ‘wrong’, but the problem is that for every one person that is genuine could it not be argued that there are many who might actually be just confused? Childhood may have thrown their gender identity into dissoray maybe?
I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to live your life in many respects. But I wasn’t clear, do you have documented medical evidence to prove you have a female brain, and how does one define a male or female brain?
Plus, if you’ll allow me to ask this. How has this affected your relationships? You’ve only lived as a woman for a relatively short period of time, before this time how did you identify yourself in relationships? We’re you ‘gay’ or are you now a lesbian of sorts?
I also appreciate how blunt this question is, and where it looks like I’m going with this, but can I ask you what your childhood situation was? We hear in the media that a lot of these kind of cases involve abused children, or children from so called ‘broken homes.’ Of course this wouldn’t invalidate your argument if any of that were true in your case, but surely you campaigners must be secretly wishing for more white picket fence all American family types to step up and tell the world about their gender birth errors?