{"id":11197,"date":"2022-02-12T15:09:17","date_gmt":"2022-02-12T04:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/?p=11197"},"modified":"2022-08-16T18:59:00","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T08:59:00","slug":"sex-gender-and-identity-its-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/12\/sex-gender-and-identity-its-complicated\/","title":{"rendered":"Sex, gender and identity: It\u2019s complicated"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mp_wrapper\">\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-excerpt\">\n    <p>In this era of a greater focus on individual human rights, many minorities and oppressed or ignored sections of society are standing up and demanding that the law of the land reflect and support their newly acquired equal status.\nFor over two centuries, this has been occurring with the larger minorities \u2013 slaves, women, \u2018sinister\u2019 left-handed people, racial underclasses, homosexuals, the disabled, and so on.\nBut smaller minorities have also become a part of this social and legislative shift in who may or\u00a0 may not be discriminated against. For example, transgender and intersex people have agitated to be able to alter their birth certificates, to be referred to as she\/her, he\/him or they\/them as they request, to enter women-only sports competitions, and to use the bathrooms or changerooms that match their internal psychological gender identity.\nAs with almost every new social issue, the initial positions of many on both sides of these policy arguments have been emotion based and extreme. At one extreme, someone like Caster Semenya, the South African winner of the last two Olympic gold medals in the women\u2019s 800 metres athletics, refused to abide by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ruling that an entrant in the Tokyo competition must have been found to have less than 10 nanomoles of testosterone in their blood for 12 months at least.\nSemenya argued she would not \u201clet World Athletics drug me or stop me from being who I am\u201d.\u00a0 The very same argument could be advanced by a t...<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-message\">\n    <hr style=\"width: 100%;max-width: 1000px !important;height: 5px;border-width: 0;color: red;background-color: red\" \/>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">\n<h3><em>You're part way through this article. Want to keep reading?<\/em><\/h3>\n<h4><em>Only members of the Rationalist Society of Australia can read our Premium articles.\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>\n<h3 style=\"height: 20px\"><span style=\"color: #c83200\"><em><a style=\"color: #c83200\" href=\"https:\/\/rationalist.com.au\/membership\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Become a member today.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n<h4><em>Already a member? Log in below.<\/em><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n  <\/div>\n  <div class=\"mepr-login-form-wrap\">\n            \n<div class=\"mp_wrapper mp_login_form\">\n                  <!-- mp-login-form-start -->     <form name=\"mepr_loginform\" id=\"mepr_loginform\" class=\"mepr-form\" action=\"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/login\/\" method=\"post\">\n            <div class=\"mp-form-row mepr_username\">\n        <div class=\"mp-form-label\">\n                              <label for=\"user_login\">Username<\/label>\n        <\/div>\n        <input type=\"text\" name=\"log\" id=\"user_login\" value=\"\" \/>\n      <\/div>\n      <div class=\"mp-form-row mepr_password\">\n        <div class=\"mp-form-label\">\n          <label for=\"user_pass\">Password<\/label>\n          <div class=\"mp-hide-pw\">\n            <input type=\"password\" name=\"pwd\" id=\"user_pass\" value=\"\" \/>\n            <button type=\"button\" class=\"button mp-hide-pw hide-if-no-js\" data-toggle=\"0\" aria-label=\"Show password\">\n              <span class=\"dashicons dashicons-visibility\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span>\n            <\/button>\n          <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n            <div>\n        <label><input name=\"rememberme\" type=\"checkbox\" id=\"rememberme\" value=\"forever\" \/> Remember Me<\/label>\n      <\/div>\n      <div class=\"mp-spacer\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n      <div class=\"submit\">\n        <input type=\"submit\" name=\"wp-submit\" id=\"wp-submit\" class=\"button-primary mepr-share-button \" value=\"Log In\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"redirect_to\" value=\"\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"mepr_process_login_form\" value=\"true\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"mepr_is_login_page\" value=\"false\" \/>\n      <\/div>\n    <\/form>\n    <div class=\"mp-spacer\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n    <div class=\"mepr-login-actions\">\n        <a\n          href=\"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/login\/?action=forgot_password\"\n          title=\"Click here to reset your password\"\n        >\n          Forgot Password        <\/a>\n    <\/div>\n\n      \n    <!-- mp-login-form-end --> \n  <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this era of a greater focus on individual human rights, many minorities and oppressed or ignored sections of society<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":11199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[437,344,75,382],"coauthors":[229],"class_list":["post-11197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law-politics","tag-gender-issues","tag-lgbtiq","tag-premium","tag-sex-and-relationships"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11197"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11204,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197\/revisions\/11204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11197"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}