Pick Your Gender and We’ll Enforce Your Choice, Says New York City’s Board of Health

George Reisman's picture
Submitted by George Reisman on Mon, 2006-12-11 08:01.

Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery.

Under the rule being considered by the city’s Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent.

Applicants would have to have changed their name and shown that they had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years, but there would be no explicit medical requirements.

The meaning of these statements is that if you’re a man and want badly enough to be a woman, or if you’re a woman and want badly enough to be a man, in New York City you soon will be able to be so. In New York City, at least according to the city’s government, wishing to possess a different gender will actually make it so.

The Times confirms this judgment when it explains that “the proposed change … is an outgrowth of the transgender community’s push to recognize that some people may not have money to get a sex-change operation, while others may not feel the need to undergo the procedure and are simply defining themselves as members of the opposite sex.”

So, in New York City, starting soon if this rule is adopted, all you’ll have to do is define yourself as a member of the opposite sex and, according to the city’s government, you’ll be a member of the opposite sex. True, this isn’t strictly all that’s required. You’ll have to change your name appropriately, e.g., from Al to Alice, or from Samantha to Sam. And you’ll have to show that you’ve lived in your “adopted gender” for two years.

Please observe. This is not a matter of individuals being free to indulge in their sexual fantasies in their own bedrooms or in private clubs, or in any other private facility whose owner is willing to allow it to be used for such a purpose, whether it be a bar, a hotel, or an athletic stadium for that matter. No one who upholds private property rights can make objection to such a thing, irrespective of his personal evaluation of such behavior.

What is present in the rule being considered by New York City’s Board of Health is an attempt to forcibly impose the fantasy of some people on everyone else. It is an attempt to elevate fantasy to the level of actual reality and to compel everyone else to accept it as though it were reality.

The validity of this conclusion is demonstrated by The Times’ account of a young man who claims to be female and who said “she wanted a new birth certificate to prevent confusion, and to keep teachers, police officers and other authority figures from embarrassing her in public or accusing her of identity theft.” The Times recounts that when this individual recently visited a welfare office, “she included a note with her application for public assistance asking that she be referred to as Ms. when her turn for an interview came up. It did not work. The woman handling her case repeatedly addressed her as Mister.” The Times also states that “[t]he eight experts who addressed the birth certificate issue strongly recommended that the change be made, for the practical reasons [this individual] identified.”

What New York City’s Board of Health’s new rule would do would be to compel whoever handled such a case to refer to this young man as a woman, to call her “Ms.” and in every other respect treat her as a woman. Refusal to do so would necessarily constitute an actionable offense of some kind. For it would be refusing to comply with an official, governmental designation and doing so to the alleged hurt and humiliation of the person so designated. Refusal in such circumstances would have aspects of a “hate crime.”

Everyone who came into contact with an individual officially designated as a member of the opposite sex, and who refused to accept that designation, could potentially be accused of some form of hate crime. Supermarket checkers, cab drivers, waiters, repairmen, sales help of all kinds, and landlords and their employees, would all be at risk, along with doctors and nurses, policemen and firemen, and numerous other categories of people.

To comply with the law and avoid possible prosecution, people would be put in a position in which they would have to deny the evidence of their senses. Confronted with someone obviously belonging to one sex but claiming to be a member of the opposite sex and officially so designated, they would be compelled by the law to deny what they saw with their own eyes and to affirm as true what they knew to be false. Thus, what the New York City Board of Health is setting the stage for is the forcible violation of the human mind. In spirit, but on a far more mundane scale that can show up in the everyday lives of ordinary people, it is the heir to those who threatened Galileo because of his loyalty to the facts.

In its vicious treatment of Galileo, the Catholic Church claimed that it was acting to defend the foundations of theology and morality, which it believed required the anthropocentric view of the solar system that Galileo overthrew. What the New York City Board of Health is acting to defend is nothing nearly so grand. What it is acting to defend is a mere species of literal insanity: the insanity of fantasy indulged not now and then for a few minutes or a few hours, in the knowledge that it is fantasy, but raised to the level of a day-in, day-out way of life and regarded as reality. It wants to impose on everyone who may come into contact with those suffering from such delusion an obligation to participate in the delusion and to affirm that it is not delusion but reality.

A classic illustration of insanity is someone believing that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. The same logic that is present in its proposed new rule on gender identity would require the New York City Board of Health to certify such an individual not as insane, but as Napoleon. If someone changed his name to Napoleon Bonaparte, walked around in replicas of Napoleon’s uniforms, with his right hand always tucked into his tunic, and called his wife “Josephine,” and did such things for two years, he would have to be certified as being Napoleon by New York City’s Board of Health and the New York City government, if they were logically consistent.

If the New York City Board of Health does in fact enact its proposed rule on gender identity, its members who vote for the rule will have demonstrated a major loss of their own capacity to distinguish between fantasy and reality. They will deserve not only to be thrown out of office but also, it could reasonably be argued, to be committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Of course, it is next to impossible that they would be committed, because the source of the rule they are considering is none other than New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In New York City, the inmates, or those who arguably should be inmates, are literally running the asylum.

*****
1
Of course, it is an unjustified act of physical force to commit anyone against his will to a psychiatric hospital who has not himself previously initiated the use of physical force. And this applies to those who believe they are members of the gender opposite to their own. It also applies to those who may believe they are Napoleon.

So long as they do not initiate the use of force, they should be free to come and go as they please. But by the same token, no one should ever be threatened with the use of physical force merely for refusing to support their delusions or for contradicting them. That threat of physical force is what is coming out of New York City’s Board of Health.

This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman.  George Reisman is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.  This piece was originally posted on Prof. Reisman's blog located at www.georgereisman.com.


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Individual Right to What?

VSD's picture
Submitted by VSD on Wed, 2006-12-13 09:12.

... do I have an individual Right to Not reveal my sex or gender in an ID?

think about how much of our current society and government is built on this sex-seggragation: marriages, parenthood, jobs, pensions, access to sex-seggragated places, even taxes still are to some extent based on sex and gender!

I don't want my rights as a woman or even as a gender-bender protected (three IDs to match whatever gender or non-gender I currently want to express) I want my 'right' (if such exist) not to identify as one to be protected ...
even if there were such an objectivist utopia where that were possible, do you really think it possible to have such a government and society in a world as sexually biased as our current surroundings?

to quote from a wonderful shortstory from 'GenderFlex' (Circlet Press):
'Imagine a world where the most exciting gender is: 'I'm not telling!''

VSD


"... if the government were

Jason Quintana's picture
Submitted by Jason Quintana on Wed, 2006-12-13 00:05.

"... if the government were to completely scrap any reference to sex and/or gender from their IDs and leave me to express myself as I see fit without having my ID or my gender questioned, would that satisfy your 'limitation of arbitrary government power'?"

Yes, I think this is probably a good answer.. I've been trying to think about cases in which it is NECESSARY for the government to identify a person by their gender, and those cases are very rare. In those rare cases I think it should stick to objective criteria. But a lot of the instances where such identifications are made now are in tasks that I don't think the government ought to be involved with in the first place. Most official ID cards are necessary for interaction with government bureaucracies that I would like to eliminate altogether.

I am all for individualism and personal expression, even when I think the results are silly (and that doesn't necessarily apply to all of the transgendered, my Darth Vader example wasn't meant as a direct equivalent). People who want societal recognition and validation via government decree are making a deal with the devil. They are better off in the long run just demanding government protection of their rights.

- Jason


Randian Science

F L Light's picture
Submitted by F L Light on Tue, 2006-12-12 16:18.

Randian persuasion exercises real

Exactness in your mind, not what you’d feel.

http://theeleutherian.blogspot.com


Gender itself is not a

Summer Serravillo's picture
Submitted by Summer Serravillo on Tue, 2006-12-12 12:28.

George and Jason wrote (respectively), ...

"Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery."

"...Gender itself is not a choice, it relates to male and female sex organs (or a rare third choice being the lack of either). Among human beings there is a clear A is A definition relating to gender. "

Those are rather gross oversimplifications.  How would you classify someone born with some combination of underdeveloped male and female sex organs?  How 'bout someone with Androgen Insensitive Syndrome, who has male internal sex organs (internal testes) but is, by all outward appearances, female?  And what about people with Klinefelter's Syndrome or one of its variants?  And True Hermaphrodites (both male and female sex organs, some 46,XX and some 46,XY, either ambiguous or female appearance)?

(See also: http://www.medhelp.org/ais/24_RELATED.HTM

Synopsis:

  • 'XX Female' Conditions
  • True Hermaphroditism
  • 'XY Female' Conditions
  • Failure of Testes Formation
  • Under-development of Leydig Cells
  • Enzymatic Defects in Testosterone Biosynthesis

    • Consider the following:

    5-alpha-reductase Deficiency

     

    5-alpha-reductase is an enzyme that converts the weaker testosterone into the more potent dihydrotestosterone (DHT). When this enzyme is deficient (a condition known as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency) the baby develops as a girl. However, at puberty testosterone production usually increases and is enough to cause virilization, so in such cases (where the child identifies strongly with a female role) it is advisable to perform a gonadectomy before puberty. On the other hand, there are cases where the child naturally migrates to a male role. Therefore, a conservative approach that incorporates listening to the child is imperative. 5-alpha reductase deficiency, unlike AIS, involves a defect on an autosome (not on a sex chromosome) and requires two mutated genes, one from the father and one from the mother.

    How would you classify any of these people as male or female, unless you asked each, "Who are you?"  And if such genetic and congenital abnormalities can manifest in obvious physical/gonadal abnormalities, why should the brain itself be immune from abnormalities affecting gender identification (as at least one study suggests is the case with True Transsexuals (see: http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/85/5/2034))?

     

    Jason wrote:

    Your notion of gender is that it has something to do with personality types. Do you really want the government officially categorizing and enforcing personality types -- especially if they are on totally subjective, arbitrary grounds?

    The government is already categorizing people based upon arbitrary criteria, because those criteria are most often correct and appropriate.  But in such cases as I've outlined above, should the government stick to these criteria to the detriment of those whose who don't fit the anatomical norm?  Wouldn't you view that as "arbitrary power"?  How would allowing for known variants increase the scope of gov't power?

     

    Trans gendered people and other people who have life styles that are beyond the mainstream are much better off advocating a clear libertarian position of demanding that their individual rights be recognized -- i.e. the demand that any initiations of force against them be repelled. Once they get into the game of using the government to trample over other people they will have started a losing battle because they are vastly outnumbered and the same kinds of nonsensical laws and regulations could be used to turn the tables on them.

    The above I agree with whole-heartedly, except that for some, "gender bending" (for lack of a more clinical term) might be less a lifestyle issue (or what George Reisman referred to as a "sexual fantasy") than a medical one.  And if that's true, then why would one oppose allowing such individuals to change their legal paperwork to reflect their identity?

     

    George wrote:

    Everyone who came into contact with an individual officially designated as a member of the opposite sex, and who refused to accept that designation, could potentially be accused of some form of hate crime. Supermarket checkers, cab drivers, waiters, repairmen, sales help of all kinds, and landlords and their employees, would all be at risk, along with doctors and nurses, policemen and firemen, and numerous other categories of people.

    That allegation, if true (I don't trust the NYT), would be the only part of this new rule that I'd disagree with.  None of us has the right to go through life without being insulted, and using the criminal justice system to punish those who insult others is NOT the proper role of government (to put it mildly).  But I tend to doubt that the allegation is true.  It's more likely that government employees will be held to the new rule while in the discharge of their official duties and at the peril of their jobs, but people in the private sector will not face the threat of criminal prosecution. Yes, I suppose one could have a civil suit brought against them for the insult, but that's already a possibility (unfortunately).

     

    If the New York City Board of Health does in fact enact its proposed rule on gender identity, its members who vote for the rule will have demonstrated a major loss of their own capacity to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

    That's a rather odd statement for you to make, given that the board members seem to have a better grasp of the issues of gender identity, possible variants and the related legal concerns than you do. 

     

    We won't even discuss the "Napoleon" and "Sith Lord" analogies...

     

    "I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.
    "


    OK - then let me turn the table ...

    VSD's picture
    Submitted by VSD on Tue, 2006-12-12 12:01.

    ... if the government were to completely scrap any reference to sex and/or gender from their IDs and leave me to express myself as I see fit without having my ID or my gender questioned, would that satisfy your 'limitation of arbitrary government power'?
    problem is: they'll never do that because most people feel a mite uncomfortable of adressing a woman as a woman who might turn out to be a man - so government instituted gender-stereotypical IDing to prevent such embarrassment ...
    among more pertinent reasons of sex-seggragation which would require a host of laws to be changed if we scrapped sex and gender from our IDs ...
    which is exactly the reason why my individual rights to sex and gender will never be recognized in this society or this government: this sex-discrimination is currently still to their benefit because I (as an individual) am as you rightly say 'vastly outnumbered' by those profiting from it
    so the least I can expect from the official moron of the day is not to discriminate me any further than his sex-IDing already does by calling into question my gender-expression that does not match that ID ... it's not about forcing others to accept my chosen identity, it's forcing government officials to accept what dichotomy they themselves have created!
    and yes: gender definitely is a choice - even sex up to a much more varied degree than you here allow! let me know if you want to start a sex/gender variation discussion Smiling
    VSD


    Limiting Government

    Jason Quintana's picture
    Submitted by Jason Quintana on Mon, 2006-12-11 23:07.

    "I demand a little respect from my 'opposite others' to accept my gender as I see fit to express it, I don't need some smart-aleck 'official' throwing my ID back in my face ..."

    If we want to limit the power of the government we have to make sure that we give the government as little arbitrary power as possible. Gender itself is not a choice, it relates to male and female sex organs (or a rare third choice being the lack of either). Among human beings there is a clear A is A definition relating to gender. In a government classification, this gives a clear objective criteria (which is clearly needs).

    Your notion of gender is that it has something to do with personality types. Do you really want the government officially categorizing and enforcing personality types -- especially if they are on totally subjective, arbitrary grounds?

    Now I don't care if a person wants to dress in a Darth Vader costume and refer to themselves as a "trans species cyborg Sith Lord". I would think it is strange, but it is none of my business. But once they start demanding that the government recognize that there are actually "more species then people feel comfortable with" and enforce their "right" to be "socially recognized" then we end up with a very serious, self defeating problem because the government now has additional arbitrary power.

    Trans gendered people and other people who have life styles that are beyond the mainstream are much better off advocating a clear libertarian position of demanding that their individual rights be recognized -- i.e. the demand that any initiations of force against them be repelled. Once they get into the game of using the government to trample over other people they will have started a losing battle because they are vastly outnumbered and the same kinds of nonsensical laws and regulations could be used to turn the tables on them.

    - Jason


    PS:

    VSD's picture
    Submitted by VSD on Mon, 2006-12-11 19:00.

    ... would be interesting to see how they'll handle parenthood or marriage (plus their attached adoption, inheritance, custody, support and tax regulations), when this regulation comes into effect ... I'd suspect they'd find some quirks they couldn't possibly think of before putting this regulation into effect Smiling
    VSD


    GRRRRR!!!

    VSD's picture
    Submitted by VSD on Mon, 2006-12-11 18:32.

    ... right about now I'd be sorely tempted to use a lot of swear-words, but I learned long ago that editing is 'de rigeur' in Linz's living-room so I'll restrict my push-button-reaction to the headline (and the eco-hotel comment on the older post) ...

    1. Checking Premises
    I don't need that ID to make me a woman or a man, I need that ID so it matches my perceived gender when I do such simple tasks as collecting my mail at the post-office and have to ID myself (among other more important official business) - I'm getting tired of having to strip down (from figuratively to almost literally on occasion) to convice that moron behind the counter that it is actually, really and un-falsifiably my ID and that he should please hand me my mail now as I've already wasted an hour convincing him that he has no (f*...oups) clue whether that ID belongs to a man or a woman ...
    there's always second-handers and moochers trying to make an (emotional) living off this new regulation, but limiting your diatribe to those 'individuals' (if you can call them that) says more about your attitude than the issue at hand, which does bear further investigation beyond the front-page of a third-rate tabloid, which is all the execution of regulation by government officials merits ...

    2. Either - Or
    if I tell you that I'm a woman (or a man) who are you to disagree with that? do you have the ultimate knowledge of what is male or female?
    I know a tiny petite woman, totally femmed up, who is tougher than nails, with three black belts and two custom-made self-built bikes in her garage ... I know a man built like a roman legionaire with manners, thoughts and emotions so feminine, I'd almost be tempted to make him my lesbian lover (which his current girl-friend actually tries to do right now)
    if you say you're a professor of economics I can either believe it or not - your framed title in your office won't convince me, just as an ID won't convince you of my gender ...
    so make up your mind on your own, and let others do the same for themselves ...
    and if you actually believe that someone called Napoleon with a wife Josephine is the historical figure of that empire, then I'd rather pity your naivete than their delusion - I can still call him Napoleon ...

    3. A is A
    but what is A? who gave the beaurocrats this god-like authority to split the nation in male and female anyway? I move from male to androgynous to female to none of the above with an ease and frequency as other people change wardrobe - who gave you (or this government) the right to force me into a restrictive, arbitrary definition of male or female?
    who decrees that someone has to undergo surgery to fit that elusive, never-fully-defined ideal? some might not have the money, other may not want to injure their bodies, more again may simply want to chose a gender beyond their pr.. sorry: 'genitalia' ...
    you want your definition of male and female 'straight' up and fully ID'd ask Linz: he probably has the only definition of male I'd accept on this forum in the form of his 'harem', and even there you'd be hard pressed to detect a 'deviation' or two ...

    - You can't Cure an Illness by Eradicating it's Symptoms
    If of course you're simply lamenting the non-sensical idiocy (easy girl - you're at it again) of a beaurocratic regulation, then good luck spending the rest of your life writing articles about them - they keep posting these regulations on a daily basis ...
    and the only way to make them work is force - as usual ...
    what I'm trying to say (even though most of you probably won't read through this far enough to reach this sentence) is that there's more genders out there than most people feel comfortable with and enforcing them has never been for their benefit - if I demand a little respect from my 'opposite others' to accept my gender as I see fit to express it, I don't need some smart-aleck 'official' throwing my ID back in my face ...
    and hitting him with a club won't change his opinion - at least we agree on that one ...

    VSD

    Which Gender is but the Illusion of Sex,
    which is only an Arbitrary Definition of Genitalia,
    which are handed out Randomly before, during and after Birth.

    ~ Unless it's an Attitude you Live ~


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