Does a doctor or midwife have the right to determine the gender of a child at birth?
Not if you ask Kori Doty, a “non-binary transgender person” who identifies as neither male nor female. Doty gave birth to a baby last November and has been battling ever since to keep the eight-month-old’s gender off all British Columbia government records. This struggle has now culminated in Canadian authorities issuing a health card to “Searyl Alti” with no indication of gender.
The health card has a “U” in the space specifying 'sex' meaning either “unassigned” or “undetermined”. British Columbia is believed to be the first public authority to issue an official card without gender identification. It’s the first time in the world that a health card has been issued to a baby deliberately omitting indication of gender.
But apparently that is not enough. Doty is now waging a legal battle after government officials refused to issue a birth certificate without an indication of gender.
Human rights lawyer barbara findlay [sic, no capitals, like e.e. cummings] is working with Doty, a member of the Gender-Free ID Coalition, on fighting the Vital Statistics Agency’s decision to refuse issuing a birth certificate to Searyl without gender marking, arguing that the refusal is a violation of the baby’s right to "life, liberty and security of the person, to freedom of expression, and to equality under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms."
Meanwhile, two other Canadian provinces, Ontario and Alberta, are now also considering making the move to offer a third, non-binary option available in government documents.
The matter is obviously not confined merely to the welfare of the baby. It is much more concerned with pushing political limits to their extremes. Scandinavia has, in recent years, witnessed such examples by gender ideology proponents. A couple of years ago, the Danish Social-Liberal Party launched a bill with a similar proposal for introducing gender-neutral passports for transgender persons. Up until now, the proposal has not found sufficient support to be passed.
In the summer of 2012, the Danish Folketing passed a new marriage act which reinterpreted marriage as gender-neutral out of concern for homosexuals. In practice, this means that marriage certificates no longer indicate spouses as husband and wife. Both Sweden and Denmark have had gender-neutral kindergartens for several years. Teachers working at such establishments address children as neither “he” nor “she”, only as “hen”.
At Egalia, a Swedish pre-school that attempts to "engineer equality" between the sexes, gender is viewed as a “social construction,” an idea shared by like-minded proponents of gender-neutral parenting.
There are other ways this idea is gradually going mainstream with little public debate. Swedish author Åsa Maria Kraft, for example, has published the novel Selvpornografi Akt 1, in which she also abolished the use of 'hon' and 'han'. Instead, she consistently applies the pronoun 'hen' to her central characters. Sweden also has its first gender-neutral children’s book, whose main character is neither a boy nor a girl but a hen by the name of Kivi.
The question is whether such an approach actually gives children "more freedom" if they are given the ability to choose their own gender. Or will they end up as victims of an ideology that controls children more than ever? It is an easily established fact that their parents are anything but neutral. They intend to rob the child of its natural gender identity with which a child is born in order to promote a political goal that disregards nature. It is indisputable fact that all children are born with genitalia. And congenital deformities which render the determination of a particular sex difficult are extremely rare. A crucial part of our identity rests on our sex. It is not possible to separate a person from having a gender.
The first thing said about a baby born into this world is, “it is a boy” or “it is a girl.” The most fundamental element of what we know about ourselves is whether we are male or female. Boys may put on a dress when they are playing, or girls may play with swords and armor with no major issue at stake. Insights into the mind of the opposite sex are part of becoming wiser and learning more about navigating the world. Telling a child that it is neutral, however, in the sense of being neither male nor female, but merely an individual, is about as divorced from reality as anything can get.
Jay Belsky, a child psychologist at the University of California, has expressed reservations about the idea and specifically about the impact it may have on boys. “The kind of things that boys like to do – run around and turn sticks into swords – will soon be disapproved of," he said. "So gender neutrality at its worst is emasculating maleness.”
The dissolution of sexual identity has already created many problems pandemic to modern society, especially at the level of private relations. So why this urge to pursue the issue into the twilight zone of absurdity? If this gross manipulation and redefinition of reality continues, we can expect to see an entire generation suffering from severe identity problems.
Individuals raised under the gender-neutrality regime will likely develop a need for expensive therapy in order to find out who they really are. They may discover that it is increasingly difficult to form lasting relationships, much more so than their parents, who grew up with women’s liberation and suffered a tsunami of divorces. This could realistically end up placing a heavy burden on society. We just don't know, because this is all radical new territory.
The obvious question, however, is whether the family as a social institution can survive if gender-neutrality gains ground and we end up as lonely androgynous entities. Not only will the wonderful complementarity between the masculine and the feminine, upon which the world is based, be lost, but the entire cohesive power of society will vanish because individuality will dissolve and crumble.
This radical deconstruction, it seems, is preparation for the introduction of a new world order, a world order acceptable only to individuals who have abandoned the traditional family foundation and replaced it with a relativism that has been destroying the West over the past century.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.