Tranny Queer, Genderless Identification
The Artist D
In the world of the Gender Outlaw it sounds like a step in the right direction that the state of Oregon and the District of Colombia have begun issuing gender neutral driver license identification cards. I’ve been hashing this out for weeks with my co-hosts on our live stream broadcast, Fourthought. Most of us have come to the conclusion to err on the side of the Gender Outlaw and assume that it’s just fine. Let them be who they want to be!
My initial knee jerk reaction however was completely the opposite. I find it very strange that we can legally claim to be neither on official documents. After all most people do have a penis or a vagina and it is their “sex” we’re talking about, not their “gender.” The indicator on the licenses is for Sex, not Gender. I had always assumed that this indicator of sex is for official and medical purposes. It’s not that they want to know if you are presenting as a man or a woman. The officials wish to confirm if you have a penis or a vagina.
But why? That was the question that kept coming up on our weekly broadcast.
Is there a reason that government officials really need to know what is between your legs? Nothing came to my mind until I began thinking in terms of the normal populace. When someone’s sex is involved it is often assumed and required to deal with someone of that same sex. What will happen now?
For example, normal people prefer to be strip searched by people of their own sex. Women police officers are called to the scene if a woman is needing further physical interrogation. Who are they going to call now when your license is Sex X? Will it add an additional layer of social discomfort to both parties making the officer now ask which actual sex you are before touching you since you are probably not a hermaphrodite? Are you going to stand there like the bad kind of Social Justice Warrior and tell them that now you get to choose who strip searches you?
Disclaimer, this article is more of an internal debate on what in the world is going on here. I personally don’t care which sex touches me. It’s more that they are indeed touching me that is the problem.
And what happens for people who insist on going to Doctors of the same sex? Do you now have to start advertising if you are a Sex X Doc?
Our most important vital hypothesis was what if you are in a car accident and are being treated as a male with a vagina (or vice versa). Does your treatment differ? We supposed it could, but in most ways it seems to not really matter. Perhaps it would matter if you were in an accident completely marring your genitals and while you were in a coma they decided to put you back together again. They’d need to know which way to go with the plastic surgery! So, in that context your sex identifier would be important if you were unconscious and Humpty Dumpty. Otherwise it seems like most medical treatment would be similarly administered. And please feel free to comment if you know otherwise, we’d love more information on this!
Reading through the articles on the Sex X identifiers makes it sound like this is a gender thing more than a sex thing. The people protested that they wanted their gender to be respected and the government responded by allowing them to alter their physical sex identifier to absolutely nothing at all. It sounds like they should have rallied to change the identifier type from Sex to Gender. If the fight was to put what you identify as on your license then that would have made all the sense. But I keep jumping to the literal. They were talking about sex. They were having you disclose your sex because somewhere in this society it appears important for people checking ID to know if you have a penis or a vagina.
And after all of the debate about identifying as male or female no matter what junk you have these folks want to be neither. Gender X. Sex X. They don’t want to be either. We’re going to have to agree to disagree because this must be one of those things you just have to personally feel to understand. Because I wouldn’t want to be neither. I can be a woman with a penis. I can feel like a woman. I can feel like a man. I can feel like a reincarnated unicorn from Planet Zoltar. I can put that down on my Gender identifier. I can be a Gender Outlaw like that. A reincarnated unicorn with the sex of male or female. That makes a lot of sense. But neither? Nothing? You are X? It seems so neutral.
What do you think about being neutral, neither, nothing in between? Is there a medical or legal reason to post our genitalia on government documents? Inquiring minds want to know.
To be continued . . .
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Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion
About the Author (Author Profile)
The Artist D is a true raconteur and provocateur! He has been performing online since the mid 1990s. A relic from the cam show age before MySpace was any space. Author of In Bed with Myself, an autobiographical tale of transgenderism and Internet celebrity. Executive Editor of Fourculture Magazine and host of the Kawfeehaus podcast.Subscribe
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Thought provoking as always, D.
On the related subject of ‘being assigned at birth as’ one sex or the other, isn’t it rather amazing that all those obstetricians doing the ‘assigning’ seem to get it right 99.9% of the time? IOW, the ‘assigned’ sex of the newborn corresponds to its gender identity virtually every time.
Since those doctors are just flipping a coin, so to speak, you gotta admire their track record. Expected 500 of 1000, actual 999 of 1000.
What are the odds of that?!