Apple, Amazon, Google and More Than 50 Other Companies Sign Letter Against Trump Administration's Proposed Gender Definition Changes (cnbc.com)

Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, and dozens of other tech companies have come together to condemn discrimination against transgender people in the face of actions President Donald Trump is reportedly considering to reduce their legal protections. From a report: The move is a response to an Oct. 21 New York Times report that the Trump administration is considering limiting the definition of gender to birth genitalia. "Sex means a person's status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth," the Department of Health and Human Services proposed in a memo obtained by the Times. If legislation were to move forward, it would jeopardize legal protections for an estimated 1.4 million Americans who identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth, the Times said.

The statement from the companies, which have nearly 4.8 million employees, said diversity and inclusion are good for business. "Transgender people are our beloved family members and friends, and our valued team members," the statement said. "What harms transgender people harms our companies."

Comments

brave

[Orrin Bloquy]

Signing a letter. I guess the pen is mightier than the lawsuit.

Re:brave

[Anonymous Coward]

So we have...
Apple that basically uses slave labor in China to make money...
Amazon that abuses warehouse employees...
And Google that pays tens of millions to cover ups sexual abuse of employees..

Telling the reset of us how to be morally correct.

Re: brave

[Type44Q]

They should at least get it right: Trump et al are the ones resisting 'gender definition' changes.

"LGBT - Which of these letters has nothing in common with the others?"

Re: brave

[Rick Schumann]

..and small-mindedness is small-mindedness.
Oh and by the way you're so brave posting on this subject as an AC.

Re:brave

[cayenne8]

Geez, what has happened to us?

As short as a decade ago, it was really easy.

You have a pee-pee, you're male gender.

If you don't, you are female.

If you are one of the rare ones that don't fit in the first majority two categories, you fit into 'other'.

Now, whatever you want to call yourself, however you want to dress...that's up to you, but for filling out a form, pick one of the 3 choices.

That makes bookkeeping easy, and doesn't have a damned thing to do with how you dress or what you want to fuck in your daily life.

Re:brave

[mikael]

Many of their employees have these conditions. Some people do get messed up at birth genetically, hormonally and psychologically.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/...

Re:brave

[SuricouRaven]

It'd probably avoid a lot of complication to just take that box off the form entirely.

Re:brave

[TheFakeTimCook]

It'd probably avoid a lot of complication to just take that box off the form entirely.

Best Suggestion Yet!

Re:brave

[gman003]

a) That's sex, not gender. Sex is biological, gender is a social construct. Consider the "third gender" seen in some Southeast Asian cultures. It was only "really easy" a decade ago if you ignored anything except traditional post-medieval Western gender norms.

b) Sex is a bimodal distribution, not a boolean. You can get all kinds of weird things - XX phenotypes that are morphologically male, for instance. Or a whole spectrum of intersex types - how would you classify someone with a semi-functional penis, no testes, and ovaries?

The fact that it makes bookkeeping easier doesn't mean it's an accurate model of reality. Otherwise, we'd all be using 64-bit unsigned integers instead of names.

Re:brave

[cayenne8]

a) That's sex, not gender. Sex is biological, gender is a social construct.

Again, as I mentioned, how you want to dress and who or what you want to fuck, is up to you, but has nothing to do with how you fill out the forms. If you have a dick, use the mens restroom, if a vagina, women restroom.

Easy peasy.....we're talking a VERY small minority of people in the world that have these issues.....why should the majority get all bent out of shape for this insignificant number of people outside the norm?

I really don't care what an adult does, or two consenting adults do....in private, but don't force the masses to cow-tow to them...there should not be special treatment for acting outside the norms. You shouldn't be persecuted for it, but you also shouldn't expect special and protected treatment in every day life either.

Re:brave

[jpaine619]

Geez, what has happened to us?

As short as a decade ago, it was really easy.

You have a pee-pee, you're male gender.

If you don't, you are female.

That was never the definition. Example: A male soldier has his genitals blown off by a mine.. He didn't automatically become a female after he was mutilated. Same is true with someone born with a birth defect.. The lack of a penis doesn't (and never did) make you a female.

The standard is, and has always been, your genetics.. XX = Female. XY = Male. End of story.

I'm sure some SJW is gonna accuse me of being a hater or some other bullshit.. But facts are facts..

"Transgender" people do NOT become the opposite sex. At best they appear to be the opposite sex to the naked eye. And honestly, I'm fine with that. If you're a male who wants to live as a female, more power to you. But don't you dare ask me to discard reality and science and consider you to be a genuine female. A male->female transgender cannot have babies, does not possess a uterus, does not have ovaries, and still has a Y chromosome in every single cell in their body (assuming a post-op trans with no testicles remaining).

Re:brave

[shess]

a) That's sex, not gender. Sex is biological, gender is a social construct.

Again, as I mentioned, how you want to dress and who or what you want to fuck, is up to you, but has nothing to do with how you fill out the forms. If you have a dick, use the mens restroom, if a vagina, women restroom.

Easy peasy.....we're talking a VERY small minority of people in the world that have these issues.....why should the majority get all bent out of shape for this insignificant number of people outside the norm?

I really don't care what an adult does, or two consenting adults do....in private, but don't force the masses to cow-tow to them...there should not be special treatment for acting outside the norms. You shouldn't be persecuted for it, but you also shouldn't expect special and protected treatment in every day life either.

So, just to be clear, what you're saying is that restrooms should be provided as a service to _you_, but they shouldn't be provided to those other people who are different from you?

And, again, just to make things clear to me, you would prefer to have a person dressed as a woman come into the men's restroom to use the stall, versus having them go into a women's restroom to use the stall, or vice versa? When answering, keep in mind that they are dressed to look like a woman (or man), and like most cisgender people they would prefer not to have other people looking at their genitalia outside the privacy of their bedroom at home.

[Personally, it would make me more uncomfortable to have a man dressed as a woman come into the restroom to use a stall. Having a woman dressed as a man come in to use the stall wouldn't make me comfortable or uncomfortable, I simply wouldn't even notice, just like I react when a man dressed as a man does it.]

Re:brave

[laie_techie]

a) That's sex, not gender. Sex is biological, gender is a social construct. Consider the "third gender" seen in some Southeast Asian cultures. It was only "really easy" a decade ago if you ignored anything except traditional post-medieval Western gender norms.

b) Sex is a bimodal distribution, not a boolean. You can get all kinds of weird things - XX phenotypes that are morphologically male, for instance. Or a whole spectrum of intersex types - how would you classify someone with a semi-functional penis, no testes, and ovaries?

The fact that it makes bookkeeping easier doesn't mean it's an accurate model of reality. Otherwise, we'd all be using 64-bit unsigned integers instead of names.

I came here to say something similar. People confuse sex and gender. Over 99% of all individuals are sexually either male or female. Gender and gender identity are a never-ending spectrum. I don't know if sex should be defined based on phenotype or genitalia. Genitalia is generally obvious with zero cost to determine (whoever delivers the baby looks the genitals and declares boy or girl). Phenotype and genitalia normally agree, but not in 100% of cases. Gender not only isn't just a spectrum, it's fluid. A person who self-identifies one way today may self-identify differently in the future.

Re:brave

[laie_techie]

Easy peasy.....we're talking a VERY small minority of people in the world that have these issues.....why should the majority get all bent out of shape for this insignificant number of people outside the norm?

You underestimate the number of people with such "issues". And why care about sex-segregated bathrooms at all? They're not even a fixture of classical Western society - they were mostly introduced post-Civil Rights era to keep the "good, noble" white women from being even potentially contaminated by contact with "black savages". Why not just have unisex bathrooms?

The company I work for is moving to unisex bathrooms. In practice, this turned into a row of single occupant restrooms (no urinals). Individuals do not need to declare their sex nor gender when waiting for an open restroom. A larger issue will come into play if / when the company decides to unify our locker rooms / changing rooms.

This article is an insult to my gender

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama, without statute, redefined gender to be whatever someone claims it to be. Trump changed that back to an objective standard.

How can you have fairness in Title IX protections when it's not at all clear who they apply to and I can claim that any random thing I don't like was discrimination because I identify as a unicorn and nobody can prove otherwise? Of course, that was always the point, to make these into something that would be easy to abuse, turning a standard that was supposed to promote fairness into a codification of favoritism.

I'm logic-gendered, so if you disagree with me, it's an insult to my unique gender and you deserve punishment, bigot.

Re:This article is an insult to my gender

[gtall]

Yes, it is an objective standard...and one that does not follow science in any way. He has an objective standard on air pollution: more is better than less. He has an objective standard on health care: no one but he needs it. He has an objective standard on dictators: dictators good, democratic leaders bad. He has an objective standard for everything, they are just the particularly demented standards of a 12 year old.

Re:This article is an insult to my gender

[Solandri]

Yes, it is an objective standard...and one that does not follow science in any way.

Skipped the chapter on reproductive biology, did you?

The thing most people seem to be missing from this debate is what is the purpose of defining gender in society? With the SCotUS decision allowing same-sex marriages, there are no more legal barriers imposed by gender. About the only issue that remains is which bathroom or changing room people can use. Those in support of LGBT rights consider only the plight of transgender people, and thus come out against bathroom use restrictions based on physical or genetic gender.

But think about it - how does this affect non-transgender people? Why do we have separate male and female bathrooms? What purpose do they serve? It's not the transgender argument - so men can be self-assured in their masculinity by going into the men's bathroom, or women can have their sense of femininity reinforced by stepping into a bathroom marked women-only. The purpose of having separate bathrooms is simple - to make it harder for perverts to peep. Since the vast majority of the population is heterosexual, the vast majority of perverts are also heterosexual, with male perverts wanting to get into the women's bathroom (and I suppose a few vice versa). Imposing restrictions on bathroom use based on gender is a simple way to thwart them. That's the purpose of bathroom gender restrictions. Heterosexuals created separate bathrooms as a way to thwart perverts. They didn't create them as a tool to oppress transgender people, and you arrive at a baseless conclusion if you assume they did.

That's the trade-off here. Like most things in life, there is no solution which results in the best outcome for all. You have to pick the solution with the fewest drawbacks.

• If you enforce bathroom use based on physical gender, you stop the perverts, but you inconvenience transgender people.
• If you enforce bathroom use based on claimed gender, you accommodate transgender people, but you also eliminate the barrier against peeping perverts (who simply have to claim they're transgender) and inconvenience everyone not wanting to be peeped upon.

The bigger cost to society here is in the second case, since it defeats the entire reason we have separate bathrooms in the first place. So the best choice is to restrict bathroom use based on physical gender. Actually, the best compromise is probably to use apparent gender rather than physical gender. Most peeping toms are unwilling to cross-dress, while most transgender people are happy to. So allowing only people who look like women into the women's bathroom, and people who look like men into the men's bathroom yields the best overall outcome. Thwarts most of the peeping perverts, while allowing most transgender people to use the bathroom they feel they should. After that, completely enclosed single-toilet bathrooms are the next best option.

Woke rules

[Kohath]

Rules should benefit 0.01% of the population, because they matter most. Everyone else should change behavior and culture and their understanding of nature and the world to make these 0.01% of people feel comfortable.

The rest of us can expect nothing in return for the effort to accommodate the 0.01% of people who matter.

Re:Woke rules

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rules should benefit 0.01% of the population"

Seeing as that's how the US economy works, I don't see why we can't use that standard for other stuff as well.

Re:Woke rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Rules should benefit 0.01% of the population, because they matter most. Everyone else should change behavior and culture and their understanding of nature and the world to make these 0.01% of people feel comfortable.

I completely agree! Small sections of the population (man, what a clunky turn of phrase! lets just call them, for now, "minorities") should not have any rules made to benefit them.

The rest of us can expect nothing in return for the effort to accommodate the 0.01% of people who matter.

And yeah, shameful how little we can expect to receive in return for a modicum of human decency. When my Grandma calls me up to drive her to the grocer, I always think "what's in it for me??"

Re:Woke rules

[Rick Schumann]

Oh, okay, so maybe Trump should repeal the Americans With Disabilities act while he's at it, since it's such a bother to have to make places accessible to someone in a wheelchair or otherwise physically disabled to the point where, say, getting up stairs is impossible for them. Obviously, their so-called 'disability' is part of God's Plan for them, so why should anyone subvert His will, right?

While we're at it why are we tolerating children with autism or similar disability? They're just disruptive and a drain on everyone around them and they couldn't possibly ever contribute to society.

And you know, now that I'm thinking about it, all these old people hanging around, being useless, some of them being all crazy and shit because they've got 'Alzheimers' or whatever, are just such a downer, why are we putting up with them? Can't we 'do' something with them? Clearly their usefulness is past.

..and you know, these whiny crybaby military veterans need to STFU, they knew what they were getting into when they volunteered, so it's their fault if they get their legs blown off. They should just suck it up instead of being leeches on government money.

Similarly to all the above, gender identity is scientifically proven to be a choice, even if they're single-digit age, so they should just have to suck it up and be in whatever body they were born in, even if it doesn't match their 'choice', right? And if they kill themselves because they just can't live with it, then so much the better right? Then nobody has to put up with all those confusing, scary feelings you get when you try to wrap your head around the audacious idea that someone could be 'different' from your concept of 'normal', I mean who does that, right? They're clearly choosing not to live according to God's Will therefore they should just be left to suffer.

</EXTREME_SARCASM>

Re:Woke rules

[Kohath]

And yeah, shameful how little we can expect to receive in return for a modicum of human decency.

We don't receive human decency in return.

Re:Woke rules

[Kohath]

If I was one of the special people, you would have a responsibility to accommodate my personal problems. But I'm just a regular 99.99% person, and people like us can fuck off.

Re:Woke rules

[Rick Schumann]

'Accomodate YOU'? What, precisely, do you expect them to do to 'accomodate' you? Really, I want you to answer that question.

Re:Woke rules

[Dan East]

When your straw man argument is this illogical and off topic (and throws in some religion bashing for good measure)....

Oh, okay, so maybe Trump should repeal the Americans With Disabilities act while he's at it, since it's such a bother to have to make places accessible to someone in a wheelchair or otherwise physically disabled to the point where, say, getting up stairs is impossible for them. Obviously, their so-called 'disability' is part of God's Plan for them, so why should anyone subvert His will, right?

Who defines who has disabilities? That's what we're talking about here with gender - what is the *definition* of gender, from a scientific, objective, legal perspective. You better believe that "disability" is extremely well defined. There is an entire segment of the law (and lawyers) dedicated to proving a person has disability to the government. If you think that currently any person can merely claim they are disabled and get government assistance, or even just a handicap parking permit to hang in their window, then you're very much mistaken.

Re:Woke rules

[Drethon]

Half-true. The stalls take up more space, but that's more than countered by needing fewer of them. Rather than needing one male stall, a urinal wall and three female stalls, you can just have four co-ed stalls. The overall space works out around the same or slightly smaller.

Here in the UK you also need the giant disabled toilet, which takes up a lot of space due to all the extra handles and fittings. I am sure the retail sector is disgusted by this accommodation wasting precious space they could use to display goods for sale, but there's not a lot you can do about that. Maybe throw a few million quid towards prosthetic limb research and wait another decade or two.

Just so long as a couple of stalls are marked for peeing while standing up. I've seen the lines to the women's rest rooms and would rather not stand for 15 minutes for something that takes 30 seconds. ...sorry, just had to.

Re:Woke rules

[jeff4747]

Or you could just not care and let them do what their biology is demanding. It's not like you're being forced to change your gender.

Re:Woke rules

[Kohath]

There doesn't exist a small enough violin for your hurt little 99.99% feelings

Yeah, that's exactly telling us we can fuck off.

Status?

[Calydor]

If your sex defines your status then we don't have the equality we keep saying we have. Shouldn't we work more towards getting THAT in order and leave gender as simply a physical trait similar to 'has two arms'?

Re:Legislation & Gender

[Jarwulf]

The government is changing (back) its definition for its purposes. The companies don't have to attentionwhore about it and can continue using their own definition for their own internal purpose if they want to.

The only thing I agree on with the conservatives

[RickyShade]

Transgender is a lie. Getting surgeries, chopping off your weewee (optional of course) and taking hormones does not mean you're now a woman. It means you look like a woman (sort of, some cases are definitely better than others). Sorry my fellow liberals but I just can't get behind this trans movement. People with gender dysphoria should be treated for their mental disorder in a different way than sex 'reassignment'. Let's quit lying to ourselves and each other. Dudes are dudes and dudettes are dudettes. The only people with a legitimate case for benefiting from sex (re)assignment are those who were born with ambiguous genitalia.

Re:Great

[lgw]

America must be doing awesome if THAT is the problem the president keeps himself busy with.

We are, thanks.

Trump has done very little to appease the social conservative side of his base. He hasn't built any walls, and it's not like his choice of Pence as VP actually affects anything. Still, I'm surprised he's doing even this much: the Bushes did nothing beyond saying conservative things from the podium, and they still got the so-con votes. Trump himself is far from so-con, so this is clearly political horse-trading.

I woudn't think this would be his priority either. I wonder what he's getting in trade.

Okay fine, but what's the alternative?

[elrous0]

In 2016, NYC had to release a list of 31 recognized genders, and even that wasn't enough for some, so they had to expand it even further.

How the fuck are you even supposed to put that on a form??

Re:Okay fine, but what's the alternative?

[Talderas]

As a series of five 0s and 1s.

Re:Okay fine, but what's the alternative?

[Drethon]

In 2016, NYC had to release a list of 31 recognized genders, and even that wasn't enough for some, so they had to expand it even further.

How the fuck are you even supposed to put that on a form??

Male, Female and other, given that other for the moment is a fairly small percentage of the population? Not guaranteed to stay that way though.

Re:Okay fine, but what's the alternative?

[Drethon]

In 2016, NYC had to release a list of 31 recognized genders, and even that wasn't enough for some, so they had to expand it even further.

How the fuck are you even supposed to put that on a form??

Male, Female and other, given that other for the moment is a fairly small percentage of the population? Not guaranteed to stay that way though.

That being said, I wonder if we are getting the point where that question doesn't belong on a lot of forms anymore.

Re:Okay fine, but what's the alternative?

[ceoyoyo]

Sounds suspiciously binary.... ;)

Re:Hypocracy

[lgw]

Conservatives: "We want personal liberties, get the government out of our lives, freedom!"

Also Conservatives: "Thank god we have the Government telling people how they are allowed to identify themselves."

The government isn't telling people how they can identify themselves. They are setting down how people will be identified by the government. Since there are no mandatory federal IDs in the US, I'm not sure how much it matters to people who work for tech companies, not the government. Might be annoying for passports, I guess (though you won't get much sympathy for how other countries treat US citizens at the border, given the reverse).

Letter Against

[CranberryKing]

"We received a Letter Against today". "OMG, was it signed, too"? "Yes it was"! "Oh crap, we are screwed now"!

Let's have no gender assignments

[MooseTick]

Why does the government need to assign/recognize gender now? Its not like anyone has more/less rights due to their gender. Women are now allowed to own property, serve in the military, etc. If the govt didn't bother recognizing gender, it would save a lot of time, money, and those arguments. And I honestly don't care who is using what bathroom. If some woman feels like a man and wants to use the men's room, I don't care. And if some man feels like a woman and wants to use the ladies' room, that's fine too. It still doesn't give them the right to molest or attack someone. And I honestly don't believe the current laws are what keeps most perverts from exploiting this now.

But I don't think the govt should recognize marriage either. Ending marriage recognition would end the debate over who can get married. Do whatever you want in your church, temple, or backyard shack. Make whatever legal agreements with whoever you choose. I don't care or need to know about it.

Sure, ending recognition of gender and/or marriage will complicate some other issues, but it would stop this never-ending debate over who is what and what should be allowed.

Re:Let's have no gender assignments

[Shotgun]

Take the sport of wrestling. Recently, a state champion for the girls division in Texas was a boy. Some girls would not even wrestle him, because they worried about getting hurt. I coached for a while, and I can tell you that the girls simply can not compete. The best girls will have excellent skills and conditioning, but no where near enough strength. There is already a JV/Varsity division. Should the girls be relegated to the JV team....forever?

Re:Great

[cascadingstylesheet]

Trump himself is far from so-con, so this is clearly political horse-trading.

I woudn't think this would be his priority either. I wonder what he's getting in trade.

Trump's a regular guy (in the sense of being common, coarse, etc.).

Sure, he has no coherent political philosophy, but he is a regular guy (which is what many elites actually dislike about him).

And like it or not, regular guys know the difference between boys and girls. Sure, they may pretend to go along with the mass hysteria, to keep their jobs and not be labeled social pariahs, but they know, in reality.

Large tech companies are anti-science? WEIRD!

[Chas]

I don't give a shit if a man wants to live as a woman or vice-versa.
I don't care if someone wants to mutilate their genitals.
I don't care if someone wants to call themselves some newly invented "gender" and live a certain way.
What they do in the privacy of their own life is their own business.

But science says there are two genders. PERIOD. There is one other state, biological intersex, where the person has BOTH. But it's a mutation and rare to boot (maybe as high as 1.7%).

Also, the government should not be expected to subsidize these people's lifestyle choices in their documentation. Nor should someone be able to go back years later, cross things out, and scribble "Whatever!" in the margins.

Re:Great

[rogoshen1]

shhh, we're supposed to go a step beyond merely tolerating other people's delusions; and actively engage and foster them.

"Reduce their legal protections?"

[Drethon]

OK I'm not particularly thrilled with this in general and get people want to identify as whichever gender they feel fits them and I'm more than happy to let people choose for themselves, but "reduce their legal protections"? Yeah this prevents them from choosing to change their gender identity but I'm honestly curious what legal protections forcing someone to identify as their birth, rather than chosen gender, is preventing?

(White hetro male born and remains this way so my opinion or lack of understanding may mean precisely squat)

Re:"Reduce their legal protections?"

[SuricouRaven]

The obvious solution would be unisex rooms, but a lot of people react to the suggestion with horror. Such a massive violation of taboo just feels sickening - but that really is not a sound basis for public policy. If we refused every change that makes people feel sickened, America would probably still have racial segregation.

Re:Legislation & Gender

[Pinky's Brain]

Civil rights act declared sex a protected class which comes with privileges, so it's a matter of government to define it. Marriage comes with privileges, again necessitating the need to define it.

Remove the privileges from sex/race/religion (ie. abolish the civil rights act and remove special tax exemptions for religions, instead just combining them with charitable organizations) and abolish federal marriage law and government can get out of it.

Re:Large tech companies are anti-science? WEIRD!

[SuricouRaven]

Not quite. The field of sociology makes a distinction between sex and gender. Sex is the simple biological part to which you refer: Male or female, and in a very small percentage of cases intersex. Gender is the social expression and recognition of sex, and it's a lot more complicated and flexible - gender is what determines how you should dress, which jobs you are expected to go into or to avoid, which restroom you can enter, and if you are socially allowed to carry a handbag. Usually sex and gender are in clear alignment, and everyone is happy - people know their place and how to behave. When they do not align, unpleasantness happens.

Re:Great

[farble1670]

He hasn't built any walls

Yes but to be fair that's Obama's fault.

Re:Large tech companies are anti-science? WEIRD!

[Theaetetus]

But science says there are two genders. PERIOD. There is one other state, biological intersex, where the person has BOTH. But it's a mutation and rare to boot (maybe as high as 1.7%).

Insists that science says there are two genders. Immediately notes that science identifies more than two genders.

/and this leaves out the whole gender!=sex thing

Re:Great

[WaffleMonster]

Regular guys believe and are very sure that they know the difference, just like
they are sure about many other things they have no clue about. It's called ignorance and yes, this is a common feature of the so-called regular guy.

All you are doing is making a bigoted blanket statement about "regular guys" exposing your own biases.

Some degree of ignorance is useful and necessary in order for people to function in the real world and get anything at all accomplished.

Some assume too much for their own good while others are too careful and indecisive for their own good. If you feel compelled to judge try doing so on an individual basis using something resembling objective criteria.

Re:Perhaps there is a need for dual defines

[Baloroth]

We already do have that distinction in the language: sex (which is biological and generally binary, albeit in very rare cases it can be slightly less binary), because that's what the word "sex" means, and gender, which can be whatever society wants it to be, because gender refers to the societal presentation of masculinity/femininity/whatever else. People sometimes confuse the two (such as in the summary, which claims that a sentence that explicitly says "sex" is talking about "gender").

Re:From a country that still only has two genders

[Tablizer]

You from Iran?

Consider the impact

[ColdBoot]

I'm not arguing for or against. But we need to consider the impact of dumping binary genders. I'll focus on Title IX. Let's say I'm a boy that is very good at soccer but not good enough for a scholarship. I can beat most girls and if I was a girl, I'd likely get a sports scholarship. Hmmm... I suddenly decide I'm a girl and apply. I get the scholarship. play for 4-years and then decide, after graduation, that I was wrong and I'm a boy after all. Nothing to prevent that.

There are lots of laws giving women extra rights and benefits. If any man, at any time, can declare he is a woman, those extra rights are worthless. Are we prepared to take away from the women what they have fought so hard for?

Re:Large tech companies are anti-science? WEIRD!

[ceoyoyo]

Science definitely does not say that. Science says it's complicated. Genetically we associate maleness with having a y chromosome, but there are XX people who are male by pretty much any other measure, and XY people who are female. Embryology tells us that sexual characteristics are strongly influenced by the hormonal environment in the womb, which is in turn influenced by all sorts of things. If you expand to other species, there's pretty good evidence that at least some cat mothers can influence the sex of their unborn kittens, and do so based on environmental stress. In other species sex might be assigned by things like the temperature. Some species, famously, can switch, even in adulthood.

In humans there was an idea that every fetus starts out female, then some develop male characteristics. Not surprisingly, it's more complicated than that. Every fetus basically has both sets of sex organs, and it seems that a complicated orchestra of hormones and signalling proteins is required to fully develop either set of organs (and suppress the other).

And that's physical sex. Science supports the idea that gender is, if anything, even more complicated, and equally "real."

Re:From a country that still only has two genders

[Anonymous Coward]

Gender Disphoria is not currently classified as mental illness.

Yes, but by any objective criteria it clearly should be. If someone believes that they are Napoleon or the King of England then we treat this as a mental disease because their brain is telling them something that is contrary to objective reality. The exact same situation applies to transgendered people: they have a brain that is telling them something that is completely at odds with objective reality.

This does not mean that we should not treat them with compassion or understanding nor does it mean that they cannot be productive members of society. However, passing laws that require everyone to just follow along with their mental delusion is simply wrong just as it would be to pass laws requiring everyone to go along with someone else's delusion about being royalty.

In many ways the transgender issue has become like a road runner cartoon where the coyote can walk on air over the edge of a canyon without any problem provided nobody points out the reality of his situation to him. However, at some point reality always catches up with him and the result is always disastrous. Instead of trying to force everyone to ignore reality which is simply never going to work we need to admit that gender dysphoria is a mental condition and concentrate on understanding and compassion for those afflicted with it.

trisexual tribulations

[swell]

In the mid 1970s, when I published the TriSexual Review, our kind were rarely discovered and poorly understood. Without the internet as a means to discreetly find each other it was rare for one of us to ever meet another. We were surely one of the smallest minorities on earth and that is possibly why the print publication failed after the first issue.

A clever researcher today could find us online. We, individually, discover the trisexual links only after exhaustive effort driven by extreme loneliness. We try scores of keywords that humans would probably never search for. There's no telling how many trisexuals out there have still not found our online home.

Because we are basically incompatible with normal human anatomy we are shunned in any attempt at sexual encounters. We could give some pleasure to both males and females, but neither are willing to engage once they see our unusual configuration of equipment. Sadly, even if humans were willing, it is unlikely that we would receive as good as we give. Only the luckiest of us will ever know the joy of connibulation with two of our own.

We've even been excluded from the LGBTQetc community; they think we are strange. It's not just that they already have a 'T' in their name; we don't have to use T, we would accept '3' for our part. No, they just don't like us crowding the ever growing list of letters or perhaps due to the fact that there are too few of us to contribute to their huge political action fund.

Which bathrooms do trisexuals use? Next time you meet someone who might be trisexual, engage in a thoughtful conversation. Demonstrate that you're not a hater, a bigot, a Trump supporter. If you seem like an open minded individual, it might answer the bathroom question for you.

Re:Large tech companies are anti-science? WEIRD!

[iCEBaLM]

Infact, the word "gender" was synonymous with "sex" up until the mid 1960's, in which feminists and "gender studies" professors started to redefine it as something different in order to further their ideas that gender was "socially constructed" in some way. We've all be duped. Gender isn't socially constructed and shouldn't be thought of that way. They were successful in their attempts to change peoples perception of the word.

Re:Large tech companies are anti-science? WEIRD!

[Alypius]

To be fair, he said science, not sociology

Trump is not a regular guy

[rsilvergun]

unless you define "regular guy" as somebody whose dad funneled millions of dollars through him when he was a kid to dodge taxes. Me? I'm a regular guy and I was lucky to get a couple books and a Nintendo from my Dad. I also don't go out of my way to be a jerk to transgender people to score cheap political points with my base. Go figure.

Re:Hypocracy

[Rick Schumann]

So if someone is born biologically male, gets gender reassignment surgery because psychologically they're female, and now they feel like what they are is normal, the government is supposed to treat them as male anyway? What could POSSIBLY go wrong!? Or are they supposed to not get the surgery and 'pretend' to be a man their whole lives, even though they go through life feeling like they're living a lie?

Re:Great

[Cajun Hell]

America must be doing really shitty if the constituents who want this are statistically significant.

Re:Great

[reboot246]

Where you're all going wrong is that there are very, very, very few people born that way. From the news and articles published in the last few years, you'd think that as much as 20% of the population has some kind of sexual physical abnormality. Try way less than 1%.

Nature makes mistakes, but far fewer than you'd think.

Re:Large tech companies are anti-science? WEIRD!

[ceoyoyo]

People with XX chromosomes can have normal male genitalia, including testicles. So your classification comes down to producing viable sperm. The male infertility rate in the US is around 9%. Since you argue there are only two sexes, those people are female?

I'm not sure you know what science is. Which wouldn't be terribly uncommon on the Internet.

Re: Great

[Cmdln Daco]

Left handed people are a much larger minority and the egregious damage that right-hand bias clearly imposes on our lives doesn't for some reason foster champions of social justice to save us.

No, it's a sex thing, more than a 'plight of the minority' thing. An opportunity to be loud and brash, which is always a fun adventure.

Re:Great

[djinn6]

It doesn't have anything to do with hitting on them. Gender is a very significant part of how we perceive and understand others. Throughout in every culture in human history, men and women behave differently and are treated differently. To pretend they're the same or interchangeable is intellectually dishonest.

It's as if your boss believed in flat earth and everyone must behave as though the earth is flat or be referred to HR. It probably doesn't affect your work much (who needs time zones anyways?), but I can see why some people might object.

Fashion != Gender

[Roger W Moore]

No, that's a concrete, undeniable example of how fashion changes. A boy is still a boy whether he is dressed in blue, pink, yellow, green or any other colour and the same is true for a girl. You cannot change your gender simply by changing your clothes any more than wearing a saddle would make you a horse.

Since when does "self identity" matter?

[sabbede]

How someone "self identifies" has no bearing on the real world. Self identity is how you imagine yourself to be and nobody is under any obligation to care, let alone agree to pretend that's how they see you too. Islamic terrorists self identify as heroic moral champions and holy martyrs, but that doesn't mean we have to see them as anything but the mass murderers they objectively are.

Pretending a transgender person is not of the sex into which they were born is a courtesy, not a legal necessity. How they see themselves is irrelevant when it comes to what the word "sex" means. That facts undermine the self image a person may have constructed in their own imagination does not make them any less true.

And gender is not "assigned at birth", it is defined by sex at a time when they can be nothing but identical. Framing it as "assigned" implies that it has no more of an objective basis than someone's self-image. Even if gender is a social construct, it is based on biological fact. A self-image that contradicts biological fact is that person's own problem, and cannot outweigh that which is based on fact.

I know some transgendered people

[rsilvergun]

nobody, and I mean nobody would claim to be transgendered to peep on girls in a bathroom. The shit you get from everybody for being trans is insane. At least some of your family will turn against you if not most of it. Everyone looks at you funny. And you worry when you're walking around at night that some drunk frat boy is gonna decide you made a pass at him and deck you. I know a gay guy beaten half to death for that. Spent a few years in a coma...

It would be like claiming to be a Nazi for the beer and schnitzel at the local KKK rally. It's just not something people do.