Welcome to 2017, where everything’s made up and the fact don’t matter.
Germany’s highest court has ruled that forcing people to register on official government records as either “male” or “female” is unconstitutional, mandating that the government must either give people the option to register as some unknown third gender, or simply not ask about gender at all.
The whole case started when the plaintiff, identified as “Vanja,” said he/she/it wanted to be registered as “inter/diverse” or “diverse” on his/her/its birth certificate, arguing that he/she/it was born with only an “X” chromosome (whereas men traditionally have “XY” chromosomes and women have two “X”s).
If it’s indeed the case that Vanja has only one “X” chromosome, there’s actually a name for that. It’s called Turner syndrome, and it specifically affects females. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, Turner syndrome is a genetic anomaly in which little girls are born with only one X chromosome instead of the normal two, but still have ovaries and female reproductive parts, though these don’t usually function correctly. The NLM notes that Turner syndrome occurs in about 1 in 2,500 newborn girls, though many babies who develop the condition are stillborn or miscarried.
While just as tragic as any other birth defect, Turner syndrome does not suddenly cause a female to not be a female, but rather one whose parts don’t work the way they should.
But apparently, a German court thinks it does. After a three-year-legal battle, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court determined that “the sexual identity of those people who can be assigned neither to the male nor the female sex is also protected” under the country’s law.
So now, because one biologically female, genetically anomalous person decided to make an issue out something that doesn’t affect 99 percent of the population, the entire country’s government gets to come up with a brand new system, and brand new official forms, that either include a third non-male, not-female gender option, or just scrap asking people to identify their gender altogether.
It also doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that in no way under the sun is this option going to be limited only to those born with chromosomal abnormalities, while being denied to any Sam who decides he’d rather be Sally. After all, caring about things as biologically basic as gender is so 2008.
(Cover Photo: Ludovic Bertron)