Friday, August 17, 2007
New Zealand: Gender inquiry loses plot
The signs are not hopeful for the country's first major inquiry into the rights of "transgender" New Zealanders, writes JOANNE PROCTOR.
In March, the Human Rights Commission released a summary of submissions from its "transgender" inquiry.
The final report is due in September. But already it is looking like a case of good intentions, discredited theories and a lost plot.
The commission's intentions seem obvious enough, the theories less so. Many pre-date the 1960s. Some contain echoes of feminist gender politics from that time. All are rooted in behaviourism. Because neurobiology has moved on, they should be past their use-by date. But they are proving hard to kill.
Take the "tabula rasa" theory, for example. According to it, a newborn baby's brain is a complete blank. It has the capacity to absorb and retain information. It has the potential to become sentient, but is unencumbered by those things when it emerges into the world.
The theory had pretty much disappeared by the 1990s. Before that, many experts regarded it as the psychological equivalent of a Newtonian law.
The expert who invented "gender identity" believed in the tabula rasa theory. His name was John Money. He defined gender identity as the "private experience of gender role". Then he defined gender role as the "public expression of gender identity".
Essentially Money's concept can be reduced to a little formula: A + C = D, where A is anatomical correctness, C is gender role conditioning and D is gender identity.
It works like this: first, you have a baby that is a tabula rasa. If he has a willie, then he is anatomically correct. You dress him in blue and call him Colin: that is gender role conditioning. After a while, he learns that people with willies and names like Colin are males. Then he realises he is male, too. Now he has a gender identity.
If the baby has not got a willie, you use pink instead of blue. You put suffixes like "ette" or "a" on the end of names like Colin. You know the rest.
Money believed that humans would not know if they were Arthur or Martha without gender-role conditioning. And Arthur could grow up believing that he actually was Martha if the conditioning was inappropriate. That is called "gender-identity disorder" and transsexuals are commonly accused of having it.
By 1975, the formula had assumed the status of a Newtonian law, and the concept of gender identity had evolved into a sacred cow. Actually it is an idee recue: it exists because people think it does. For all anyone knows, it is the biggest red herring that has been dragged past any inquiry in the last hundred years.
While Money was inventing theories, other experts were busy having arguments with each other. One was over what transsexuals should be called. Some experts believed that anyone who thought it was possible to change sex was seriously deluded. They thought that terms like transsexual and sex reassignment were reinforcing the delusion. Others argued that post-op male-to-female transsexuals were just castrated males who were changing gender roles.
The arguments lasted several years and ended with a decision to use the term transgender to define transsexuals. Transgender is shorthand for "transiting gender roles". Before the 1980s, the word had allowed some distinction between transsexualism and the gender-role transgressive behaviours such as transvestism. . . .
Thailand: Mixed response to poll on transsexuals
The Nation's Internet poll on whether transsexuals should have the legal right to use a gender title of their choice drew mixed reactions from those visiting our website.
Published on August 18, 2007
Here are some of the comments posted:
"Transsexuals should not be allowed to use a title of their own choice.
"They should only use the title that they were born with.
"Also, transvestites have no business in this affair." - True Grit
"No. They should use the title Near-Miss." - Dr Frankenfurter
"It only matters to people who hate anyone different - let them do as they please." - Not bothered
"People should have the right to choose their life since they are human." - Somebody in Thailand
"They are as good as any other human beings and have every right to use the title of their choice." - Anil Parimoo
"It's crazy to allow transsexuals to use a title of their choice. I want to get married with a real girl who is a Miss. If this was allowed, I could have got incidentally married with a former male who changed his title to Miss. It's a horrible idea." - Yes Vote
"Same as basic rights of gays and lesbians for jobs, social recognition and education, rights for transsexual people should be respected as well. Otherwise, society would become a distorted one where people of such sexual inclinations are discriminated, which will make them revengeful, extreme and destructive." - Basic rights
"I do not think being a transsexual make you a woman. Being a woman is about much more than hormones, surgery and titles." - Alan Mercer
"To avoid confusion and to be fair to all parties, it should be Miss or Mr as their choice but with T for transsexual in parenthesis. For example, Ms(T) Albert Choice or Mr(T) Albert Choice." - Mr X
"They should not be allowed to use a title similar to naturally-born women or men as their physical facts are different. However, I agree that they should not be treated as men as they will be faced with lots of disadvantages." - Bangkokian
Nepal: Mention child’s gender as ‘both’: Ministry
Kantipur Report
Sending a letter on Sunday, the Ministry asked Bara DDC to reserve the right of the child's parents to correct the gender and name of the child in its birth certificate if its gender is finally determined through modern medical science.
"Since it is the right of the child to get its birth registered, the personal incidents registration office has been asked to give birth certificate to the "hermaphrodite" child mentioning gender as-both," the Ministry's letter dated 24 June stated. The ministry took the decision last Thursday, according to the letter.
The Kathmandu Post in its Saturday issue carried a news report mentioning the suffering of the child's parents due to refusal of local authorities to register the child's birth. The parents who suffered much due to the behavior of society, had moved to Kathmandu and knocked on the door of the Local Development Ministry.
