Comment on Why do we need legal genders at all?
gastroglizzy@piefed.social 7 hours ago
The two biggest reasons i can think of are:
It’s medically relevant information. If you’re incapacitated, this could be vital information to whoever treats you.
Legal protections. Gender is a protected class. To receive those protections and to know when they apply, this information is required.
It's medically relevant information. If you're incapacitated, this could be vital information to whoever treats you.
This one is overlooked and can be literally a matter of life and death. Certain medications react differently based on hormone levels for example, so even if someone was born male if they have a nominally female balance of hormones they need to be treated (medically) as female.
We only issue a passport with an M or F sex marker that matches your biological sex at birth.
— us gov
Counter point: Intersex
To be pedantic you’d want to know sex not gender for medical reasons.
I made an entire comment about this but I’ll address 1 point here quickly: people like to forget that transition drastically changes your body in a way that only recording “birth sex” does not encapsulate. Both are absolutely medically relevant.
You might want to know both in certain situations.
It’s very difficult to know what will/not be medically relevant in any given situation.
Lol our answers were identical but yours came later and got more votes.
Could be because others (like myself) have tagged you as a troll
Whats your defence of that stance? Because I fight Tankies?
Up/down votes are weird. Good thing they don’t mean much here.
(I am not arguing with you, just thinking through the ideas out loud) 1. It seems like it could be tracked in the same manner as all other necessary medical information, such as diabetes status 2. There are other protected classes that we don’t make a big deal of legally unless it’s relevant, such as orientation
The medical relevance just involves the parts you have, though. Instead of just documenting someone as male and female, just keep an inventory of the parts they have (especially when there are differences from the norm).
hungrycat@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I’m not sure if OP meant sex or gender. I can’t think of a medically relevant reason to know an incapacitated person’s gender. Maybe someone with any experience or knowledge there can chime in.
My understanding of the legal discrimination argument is that whether someone holds a particular gender identity is irrelevant. If the perpetrator perceives someone to be of a particular gender, and acts with intent to discriminate against someone based on that belief, regardless of whether or not it’s true, that still constitutes gender discrimination. But IANAL.
otter@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
Gender, and other factors that aren’t as “medically relevant”, might still be helpful if it helps the staff pick between two treatment options. The patient’s comfort and happiness can affect their overall wellbeing.
Say someone grows up in a culture where their gender (or some cultural group the person can belong to) usually has long hair. A particular treatment may have two options:
Knowing what gender (or other group) the person belongs to might inform their decision.
Note, this is about why medical staff might want to know about gender identity and not the original question of how many we should have.
Nibodhika@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
For your shaving the head example I would argue that if the person is incapacitated and needing urgent care the solution with the most chance of success should be preferred regardless of gender norms. If both are equally likely the one that doesn’t remove hair should be preferred. You might be a man with attachment to your long hair even in a society where that’s uncommon, gender does not dictate anything of the sort. So I still don’t see a reason why gender is relevant medically.
Ghoelian@piefed.social 48 minutes ago
As a guy with long hair i can tell you i would be pissed if they shaved my head while an alternative was available.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
We need to finish naming all 12,000 mushroom genders before we can make laws about them
gastroglizzy@piefed.social 6 hours ago
Pretty sure you’re right about that. A person’s state of mind (or “mens rea” if you’re in the profession) is an often crucial component of criminal acts. If someone assaults someone because they think they’re Muslim, the fact that they’re actually Mexican doesn’t make it ok.
BUT, the other side to that is, say for example someone’s gender is male and their sex is female, but they present masculine. If they reveal their sex to someone, and that person discriminates against them for being a woman, how is the victim supposed to claim their protected status? If it’s not apparent not documented, it will be difficult to claim those protections in court.
I am also not a lawyer 🤷♀️
cecilkorik@piefed.ca 3 hours ago
Just spitballing here, but:
Maybe we need to turn this around, maybe we should consider defaulting to the assumption that people should not be able to discriminate against other people for any reason instead of just being protected against “certain” kinds of discrimination. If we are going to allow discrimination for certain reasons, maybe we should make those allowed forms of discrimination the ones that need to be spelled out explicitly. If you don’t have a good reason to discriminate against someone about something, maybe don’t discriminate them? Maybe that’s a bit outlandish, maybe I’m not thinking it through, I don’t know, but it seems reasonable enough to me.
Ghoelian@piefed.social 46 minutes ago
You’re getting into limiting free speech area there, im sure a lot of people would be very against something like that, however good the intentions may be.