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Over 2,000 gender confirmation applications made since last April | Wednesday marked one year since gender confirmation has been simplified in Finland
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- Published
- Apr 3 2024
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- 298 words
Emphasis mine - barbaric practices just 1 year ago. I was debating putting that in the title but just used what the source did.
And 2000 this year compared to 20 per month the year before - an increase of nearly 1000%. Staggering numbers.
Is there a (good) reason to continue tracking gender at a national level like this? Like why not solve the problem by removing that field from ID, not requesting it on birth certificates anymore, etc.?
Probably within our life time it'll still be tracked, because it still divides the population "roughly" (like
coarse sand papera rusty saw) in half like no other statistical grouping has the power to. But considerations are going to be put in place much sooner, I believe, with categories "choose not to respond" becoming more frequent the way "race" boxes have started to disappear within our generation, and like "religion" boxes have disappeared nearly completely from official forms. It used to be that someone couldn't even become monarch or stay alive if they chose the wrong religion. Now it's not even on our forms.You know, yesterday I was filling out an application for renewing a Canadian passport, and one of the fields is what used to be called "mother's maiden name" only a few years ago. It's now called "Parent's surname at birth". Sex is now "Sex as it appears in the previous passport".
The expanded instructions say, " surname of one of your parent's at their birth. If your parent's surname is unknown enter 'unknown'". Not mother's, and does not assume it's something everyone has.
Sex is F Female, M Male, X Another gender. The expanded instructions are " as shown on your most recent passport. If you request a different sex identifier, you cannot use this form, visit [link] for more details." -- so not quite streamlined yet and kinda dumb and inconvenient, but at least there is another way offered.
I mean the race boxes have not existed for a long time in many European countries for, uhm, certain 1933-1945 reasons. Also, in Denmark it is ackshually in the constitution that the monarch must believe in the Christian Evangelical-Lutheran God.
Just some annoying nitpicking, don't mind me!
this is oddly specific, is there some interesting history here?
Not sure! There's a little bit here but not a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Denmark#Church_and_state
AGAB is still pertinent to medical situations. I have an F on my ID and everything, but it was rather important that surgeons knew I was AMAB when I went in for an orchiectomy! ..and a whole lot of other things that are more common with one biological sex than another. On the other hand, it clearly doesn't work as it should because after changing my legal gender, I received a notice that I am entitled to a screening for cervical cancer lol
oh yeah for sure. I guess I can see the argument that you want this info very easily available on someone's ID but if anything that's going to increase health risks for trans people whose ID gender doesn't match their AGAB. So I would think that should be kept to medical questionnaires or like how some people carry their blood type with them (although I don't think that that does anything since they always would give you O blood unless they tested you themselves?)
That's really funny! haha
OTOH, reliance on AGAB is dangerous to rely on as the sole medical determiner. Most medications that have differing effects or doses based on "sex" actually differ based on hormonal sex, ie whether your system has been estrogen-dominated or testosterone-dominated for a prolonged period of time. The problem with over-reliance on chromosomes for sex determination is that you can very easily fall into the trap of viewing chromosomes as "real sex" and assigning medications and dosages accordingly. You might harm someone with a Y chromosome by giving them the "male dose" of a medication, because you naively assumed that their "biological sex" was defined by their chromosomes, not their hormones.
Or another case. I am trans myself, MtF, post-op. According to official CDC guidelines, every few years I'm actually supposed to go in for a pap smear. That's not just me seeking what is female-typical; those are actual CDC recommendations. Yet if I naively assumed that what people would call my "biological sex" governs, I wouldn't seek out the care I need.
Biological sex is important for medical purposes. But despite what bigots would have us believe, it goes far beyond simple chromosomes. I've heard a lot of people try to argue that ID documents should correspond to genetic sex. They'll even justify it citing concerns for the health of trans people. However, in most cases where sex actually matters for medical treatment, hormonal sex is what matters, not genetic sex. Requiring IDs to list genetic sex puts trans people at risk not only of discrimination from forced outing, but it also puts us at risk of medical errors from naive EMTs and other practitioners who would naively and ignorantly assume that sex is just chromosomes.