Continental Europe enters the gender wars

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

One of the weird things about the debate (there are actually several hundred weird things about the debate, but whatever) is that in practice "self-ID" is already in place for driving licences and passports, the two pieces of ID used most often day to day. The "Self-ID" legislation is just a way for birth certs to also be updated in a similar way (normally with a letter of approval from a doctor).

I think in practice, both sides often agree that the trans population is small enough that we can be considered on a case by case basis. Someone who just said they were trans yesterday should be treated in a different manner than a fully transitioned person who is for all intents and purposes, cis (or whatever PC word people who aren't trans prefer to be called): the deranged desire to bureaucratically treat all trans people the same is wrong-headed (in regards to prisons, sports, shelters, gender quotas etc). Someone with a lifetime of experiences as a woman is going to have different socializations as someone who transitioned at 12, and both of them have different socializations as someone who transitioned at 22, and all of them are different to someone who transitioned at 65.

Warning this next paragraph is probably an expression of my own internalized bitterness, and will almost certainly be the cause of my cancellation one of these days.

This comes down to an extremely unfortunate, and very unfair conclusion: it's all about passing, really. Although both sides will try and make out it's something different, the GC side because they want more of a philosophical basis for their views, the trans side because they want to be nice: the simple fact is that passing essentially solves the problem, and fixes the issue of instinctive revulsion everyone feels towards people who are unaesthetic, like so many late transitioners are.