Constantly in the process of becoming
From the Australian Feminist Law Journal, an abstract:
Sexually Dimorphic Bodies: A Production of Birth Certificates
Birth certificates produce bodies? Who knew?!
Registering a newborn’s gender/sex on the birth certificate is usually seen as a mere formality that reflects a natural state of affairs. This article, however, shows that the registration of gender/sex does something else than record naturally given sex differences in bodies; it actually produces and shapes bodies to develop in a way conformant with understandings of sexual dimorphism.
Hmm. I wonder what Lena Holzer means by “shows.” I say that because I doubt that a journal article can “show” something nonsensical.
Sexed bodies are therefore not pre-discursive and static objects, but they are constantly in the process of becoming, influenced by socio-legal procedures, including gender/sex registration.
Well obviously living bodies are not static, because a static body is dead. And of course bodies are in some sense always in the process of becoming, because they’re constantly changing in various ways.
The jargon makes this abstract look more like literary “theory” than law. You know you’re being conned (or if you don’t you should) when instead of “living bodies change constantly” you get “bodies are not pre-discursive and static objects.” It’s not difficult to think of obvious points one can make to demonstrate that being classified female or male leads to many effects that shape females and males, including their bodies…but that doesn’t sound clever enough for a journal.
By analysing the effects of registering the legal gender/sex on birth certificates and the change of gender markers thereof in various jurisdictions, in particular Australian states and territories, the article aims to show how bodies of intersex as well as endosex cis and trans persons are made into what they are expected to be: sexually dimorphic.
Oh yes? Then how does it work with all the other sexually dimorphic species? They don’t have birth certificates, so how do they manage to be sexually dimorphic anyway? How does the bull moose know it’s time to fight all the other bull mooses and impregnate as many cows as possible? Does someone pass him a note saying “You are a bull”?
It concludes that legally assigning a gender/sex has intrinsically violent effects on bodies, something that could be avoided by eliminating the public registration of gender/sex.
Where did “intrinsically violent” come from?
Whatever. I can tell you this much: if you visit Yosemite or Yellowstone in autumn don’t try to get friendly with the bulls. Rutting season is no joke, birth certificate or no birth certificate.
Oh FFS.
Humans are demonstrably physically sexually dimorphic. Less so than some species, more so than others.
Rare intersex individuals exist. Rare individuals with specific mutations or other abnormalities causing their genetic, gonadal, and/or endocrine sex to be mismatched exist. Nevertheless, sexual dimorphism as well as the variation therein is important to understand for medical reasons.
Gender roles are socially assigned/assumed. Beyond “can bear children”, the characteristics of these roles have no proven biological basis in humans. Styling of clothes and hair and nails, eating habits, emotions available and expressed… any behaviour outside of reproductive roles in humans is not reliably linked to sex. Ethically and morally presumptions about such characteristics based on whether an individual is perceived as male or female should be considered bullshit, and dismantled at every opportunity.
There are not enough facepalms for me to deal with those who claim otherwise.
If sexual dimorphism is caused by recording birth sex, 1) what is the physical mechanism? 2) why does this mechanism not cause spontaneous sex changes when somone changes their legal sex? 3) if humans grow up in a system that does not record birth sex, such as in a highly impoverished country with no hospitals to register such things, why does sex, with all the usual primary and secondary differences, still exist in that country?
Obviously the article is pure pomo bullshit, yet it still beggars belief that such bilge is accepted. Even in the TRA Twitter walled garden, surely they would notice the complete lack of my q2 taking place. Trans people would save a small fortune if legal changes caused biological changes.
I have to assume that there is some degree of wilful dishonesty going on in such circles; not even Abbey, WMDKitty etc. Are quite THIS irrational. I hope.
There is an old American folksong which I first heard in my formative years as recorded by the immortal Burl Ives.
“From here on up, the hills don’t get any higher./ From here on up, the hills don’t get any higher. / From here on up, the hills don’t get any higher…./ But the hollows get deeper and deeper.”
In honour of which, I humbly offer this more contemporary version:
From here on down, the bullshit don’t get any more awful. / From here on down, the bullshit don’t get any more awful. / From here on down, the bullshit don’t get any more awful. / But its chuckers, get ever decreasingly, dimorphal.
(Well, I think it’s good for my first try.;-)
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=519rPmxnnYQ
Shouldn’t that be the Australian Misogynist Science Fiction Journal?
No.
It has been demonstrated that ADULT’S behavior toward infants is sharply differentiated by the perceived sex of the child. The same baby, costumed in pink, or blue, will get drastically different treatment from adults of both sexes. Hanging their birth certificates around their necks is unnecessary.
Yes, but that is not the creation of sex. It is the creation of a set of gendered societal expectations that then lead to differences we see in men v. women when they are studied, set in long before adulthood, and duly recorded by researchers as innate, inborn differences in cognitive function, caring, and other things that are tied to the ridiculous notion that women are somehow a different, lesser species of human than men (and since there is only one species of human currently extant, that becomes confusing, so people can twist it out of all proportion to create such utter nonsense as the article posted in a nominally scholarly journal),
If the TRAs would work to abolish gendered stereotypes (which are, in spite of their ‘arguments’ – by which I mean shouting – tied to biological sex), their time would be much better spent.
Well, that’s the game, though, isn’t it? All that post-modern talk of discursive construction is, at bottom, a literary analysis. That is, it is an analysis of language. It does not analyze concrete states of affairs, and the magic trick is acting as though it does.