Tuesday, May 26, 2015

The Tyranny of the .1 Percent

An article in the NatPo informs us that the transgender lobby in British Columbia is hard at work, trying to obliterate those old-fangled categories "male" and "female":
After successfully lobbying provincial and federal governments to make it easier to amend sex designations on key identity documents, transgender Canadians are now pushing for another change: to abolish gender references altogether from birth certificates. 
The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has agreed to review complaints filed by the Trans Alliance Society and a handful of transgender and intersex individuals, who argue that doctors should stop assigning the sex of a baby based on a quick inspection of the baby’s genitals at birth when there’s a possibility they may identify under a different gender, or no gender, years later. 
“Birth certificates (may) give false information about people and characterize them in a way that is actually wrong, that assumes to be right, and causes people … actual harm,” said Morgane Oger, a transgender woman in Vancouver and chair of the society. 
“It’s considered true and infallible when it isn’t.”...
Here's my response to that:
The chair of a British Columbia transgender lobby wants to abolish the categories of "male" and "female" on birth certificates due to the "actual harm" such a characterization can cause to those who are transgendered. One can sympathize with those who suffer because, for one reason or another, these two categories don't quite work for them. At the same time, however, it behooves us to reflect on the "actual harm" that will occur to both individuals and society should we do away with "male" and "female," biological designations that accurately describe the gender of 99.9 percent of the populace.

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