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There's been a bunch of discussion about Prop 8 (to ban gay marriage) in California on my flist recently. Now, not being californian or even american it's not something I have much specific to say on but it got me thinking.
First, some links:
Ithiliana thinks a federal push to recognise all sorts of relationships is better than a state-by-state push for just marraige and from the comments:
beyondmarriage.org, who are arguing for a wider speration of church and state, and protection/recognition for everyone (not just monogamous couples)
I've seen a couple of people make vague grumblings about the fact that black voters seemed to be more against the bill, today I came across a few debunkings of that: first, that there simply aren't enough black californians to have made a difference either way, second that they actually didn't vote that differently to white people, and third that what little bias there might have been is less likely to be due to inherent homophobia and more to the fact that the "No" campaign made MUCH less of an outreach to the non-white and poor community than the "Yes" campaign. This post has a nice collection of the ideas and some links.
Finally, via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shineys_are_us, an argument that if nothing else, the fact that gender is impossible to quantify makes "heterosexuality" impossible to police.
I'm not so sure about this: it works as long as everyone has an "M" or "F" label on their government records. Intersex and trans* people have been around for a pretty long while, and the law had no trouble being heterosexist despite them. But I do think that, somewhat separate to the gay rights issue, awareness of non-cisgendered people is growing and the government (our and theirs) is going to have to do something about it.
From what I've seen the australian bureaucracy really has no decent way of dealing with people outside the neat M/F box, at least not at a global level (individual groups may have room on their forms for it here and there, though afaict none of the big ones like the electoral roll do) Unfortunately fixing this is going to require more than just a lack of prejudice(*) and think the main issue is bureaucratic inertia and logistics.
So, as I ponder the logistics, my questions:
What alternative classifications could we use? None? M/F/Trans/Intersex? M/F/Other? Do other countries have any clever ways around the problem?
And apart from marriage, what other laws specifically mention the gender of the person they're talking about? Could they be easily changed to either not mention gender or make space for people whose gender is ambiguous or complicated? (pregnant men, for example) I think the references that are hardest to remove are those which are based on real biological differences ie things to do with pregnancy, but maybe you could just change that to "a person who is pregnant" or "A person with a womb" (for say rubella shots). There's also laws against gender discrimination, and this sort of thing is where you get a lot of friction between the "Fight for women's rights!" and "Remove the gender dichotomy" goals (both entirely worthy) I mean you can still say it's illegal to discriminate based on gender (as a perceived social construct rather than legal pigeonhole) but there are things like "Women's rooms" etc. I know some of you are against that sort of thing anyway, but for those who aren't, can you think of a way of protecting them without rigidly enforcing gender in the law?
(*)Unlike gay marriage, I don't know that ordinary people would actually be that offended if you added an "other" or whatever category to government forms. And the couple of times we've encountered what seem to be transpeople in the records at work the reaction is "Hmm, I think this person is trans, but unfortunately there's no way to tell if it's just a typo etc", I think if the people who made the records started adding it as a field we'd adjust ok (though it might take a while to fully integrate it into the system). I don't know what the opinions (or practicalities) are at a lower level (in hospitals etc)
I could be being naive about the level of opposition there would be to this sort of measure though.
First, some links:
Ithiliana thinks a federal push to recognise all sorts of relationships is better than a state-by-state push for just marraige and from the comments:
beyondmarriage.org, who are arguing for a wider speration of church and state, and protection/recognition for everyone (not just monogamous couples)
I've seen a couple of people make vague grumblings about the fact that black voters seemed to be more against the bill, today I came across a few debunkings of that: first, that there simply aren't enough black californians to have made a difference either way, second that they actually didn't vote that differently to white people, and third that what little bias there might have been is less likely to be due to inherent homophobia and more to the fact that the "No" campaign made MUCH less of an outreach to the non-white and poor community than the "Yes" campaign. This post has a nice collection of the ideas and some links.
Finally, via
shineys_are_us, an argument that if nothing else, the fact that gender is impossible to quantify makes "heterosexuality" impossible to police.I'm not so sure about this: it works as long as everyone has an "M" or "F" label on their government records. Intersex and trans* people have been around for a pretty long while, and the law had no trouble being heterosexist despite them. But I do think that, somewhat separate to the gay rights issue, awareness of non-cisgendered people is growing and the government (our and theirs) is going to have to do something about it.
From what I've seen the australian bureaucracy really has no decent way of dealing with people outside the neat M/F box, at least not at a global level (individual groups may have room on their forms for it here and there, though afaict none of the big ones like the electoral roll do) Unfortunately fixing this is going to require more than just a lack of prejudice(*) and think the main issue is bureaucratic inertia and logistics.
So, as I ponder the logistics, my questions:
What alternative classifications could we use? None? M/F/Trans/Intersex? M/F/Other? Do other countries have any clever ways around the problem?
And apart from marriage, what other laws specifically mention the gender of the person they're talking about? Could they be easily changed to either not mention gender or make space for people whose gender is ambiguous or complicated? (pregnant men, for example) I think the references that are hardest to remove are those which are based on real biological differences ie things to do with pregnancy, but maybe you could just change that to "a person who is pregnant" or "A person with a womb" (for say rubella shots). There's also laws against gender discrimination, and this sort of thing is where you get a lot of friction between the "Fight for women's rights!" and "Remove the gender dichotomy" goals (both entirely worthy) I mean you can still say it's illegal to discriminate based on gender (as a perceived social construct rather than legal pigeonhole) but there are things like "Women's rooms" etc. I know some of you are against that sort of thing anyway, but for those who aren't, can you think of a way of protecting them without rigidly enforcing gender in the law?
(*)Unlike gay marriage, I don't know that ordinary people would actually be that offended if you added an "other" or whatever category to government forms. And the couple of times we've encountered what seem to be transpeople in the records at work the reaction is "Hmm, I think this person is trans, but unfortunately there's no way to tell if it's just a typo etc", I think if the people who made the records started adding it as a field we'd adjust ok (though it might take a while to fully integrate it into the system). I don't know what the opinions (or practicalities) are at a lower level (in hospitals etc)
I could be being naive about the level of opposition there would be to this sort of measure though.
Tags:
no subject
Physically? There aren't massive differences, sure, some bits grow differently, produce different hormones, the hormones do different things to the body.. but really.. it's not like they are massive differences..
The rest of the differences (clothing, dress, society's roles etc) are all related to upbringing.
no subject
I think it's going to be a long time before socially acceptable gender roles become fluid enough to fully accommodate trans, intersex, genderqueer, gay etc people. But as it is, in a lot of cases they're not so much discriminated against by the law as ignored(*). Acknowledgement isn't the same as equality, but it's still an important step.
(*)Which in practice has a similar effect to active discrimination, though I guess in some cases it might be better to fly under the radar, the way that lesbians did for a long time
no subject
"In any written law...words denoting a gender or genders include each other gender".
This is mainly to get around the fact that a lot of laws say 'he' (for simplicity I guess. Maybe some say 'she') but are meant to apply to everyone. But it makes me wonder about the interpretation of all those laws that say 'marriage is between a man and a woman', or about IVF only being available to couples 'who are male and female'. But I expect most of them would have some provision that the definition in the Interpretation Act doesn't apply...
no subject
Thankyou, handy internet laywer :)
no subject
I don't have to record my eye colour, different hair curling patterns or pigmentation over different parts of my body, etc in most interactions because these details are trivial, irrelevant and mostly unnecessary for the provision of many government services. The same is true of these other categories; they are socially important, often make up part of an individual's personal identity, but should not - must not! - be a criteria for services such as Centrelink support or taxation requirements etc.
Let's begin by asking why precisely such a registration is necessary in each and every case. Remove it unless necessary, and then begin asking if it is necessary perhaps which categories need to be identified?
no subject
no subject
I agree(*), but I think making that change would require a much larger change in attitudes, and in the mean time there needs to be something to acknowledge that not everyone is m/f. ie I think selectively (and incrementally) removing gender references is going to be easier than removing them all and adding them back as necessary, at least to begin with. But I think the endpoint we want is the same, and once the incremental process was far enough along it probably would be best to do a wholescale de-gendering.
(*)Well, as someone whose job involves using pretty much every sort of government record that exists for demographic analysis (the census is too infrequent, lacks certain information, and doesn't have any information on the ways people's live change over time), modulo issues of practicality and privacy etc I'm in favour of as much relevant information being collected as possible. But not to be used to make decisions about any individual, just to study large scale trends.
no subject
Physically? There aren't massive differences, sure, some bits grow differently, produce different hormones, the hormones do different things to the body.. but really.. it's not like they are massive differences..
The rest of the differences (clothing, dress, society's roles etc) are all related to upbringing.
no subject
I think it's going to be a long time before socially acceptable gender roles become fluid enough to fully accommodate trans, intersex, genderqueer, gay etc people. But as it is, in a lot of cases they're not so much discriminated against by the law as ignored(*). Acknowledgement isn't the same as equality, but it's still an important step.
(*)Which in practice has a similar effect to active discrimination, though I guess in some cases it might be better to fly under the radar, the way that lesbians did for a long time
no subject
"In any written law...words denoting a gender or genders include each other gender".
This is mainly to get around the fact that a lot of laws say 'he' (for simplicity I guess. Maybe some say 'she') but are meant to apply to everyone. But it makes me wonder about the interpretation of all those laws that say 'marriage is between a man and a woman', or about IVF only being available to couples 'who are male and female'. But I expect most of them would have some provision that the definition in the Interpretation Act doesn't apply...
no subject
Thankyou, handy internet laywer :)
no subject
I don't have to record my eye colour, different hair curling patterns or pigmentation over different parts of my body, etc in most interactions because these details are trivial, irrelevant and mostly unnecessary for the provision of many government services. The same is true of these other categories; they are socially important, often make up part of an individual's personal identity, but should not - must not! - be a criteria for services such as Centrelink support or taxation requirements etc.
Let's begin by asking why precisely such a registration is necessary in each and every case. Remove it unless necessary, and then begin asking if it is necessary perhaps which categories need to be identified?
no subject
no subject
I agree(*), but I think making that change would require a much larger change in attitudes, and in the mean time there needs to be something to acknowledge that not everyone is m/f. ie I think selectively (and incrementally) removing gender references is going to be easier than removing them all and adding them back as necessary, at least to begin with. But I think the endpoint we want is the same, and once the incremental process was far enough along it probably would be best to do a wholescale de-gendering.
(*)Well, as someone whose job involves using pretty much every sort of government record that exists for demographic analysis (the census is too infrequent, lacks certain information, and doesn't have any information on the ways people's live change over time), modulo issues of practicality and privacy etc I'm in favour of as much relevant information being collected as possible. But not to be used to make decisions about any individual, just to study large scale trends.