Who Am I? I Know, I'll Ask my Friendz at BigGuv!

Alright, well, this is news to me, but probably shouldn't be suprising, really:

Spain is at the forefront of equality legislation and has since March allowed transsexuals to legally change their gender without having a sex change operation.

What a load of rot! Legally change your gender without having a sex change operation??? Whatever will they think up next? I get more and more convinced with roughly each passing second that about 90% of the "complexities" of gender are entirely imaginary.

Alright, so someone out there explain this to me, please. What could POSSIBLY be the point of having your gender legally changed without having a sex change operation? Is this maybe so on the off chance the person is arrested they'll be put in prison with girls? Or so that they can take advantage of some perky female-only welfare handout? Because otherwise, I can't really see what the legal consequences would be.

This has got to be the best example of the childishness of the GLBT rights movement I've seen to date. So you think you're a man trapped in a woman's body (or whatever else). Well, that's just dandy. It is, of course, your business, and if that's the way you feel, then who am I to say you're not? But why do you need for THE GOVERNMENT to know? I mean, honestly, what is it with GLBT people that they think that nothing under the sun ever really happens or is really true without a government stamp? I get SOOOO SICK of hearing the argument in favor of gay marriage that people just wanna "affirm their love." They do? Really? Well great! Peachy! But what does this have to do with THE GOVERNMENT? Honestly, about the last people I think of when I think of "love" are politicians and the police! And I really, honestly, don't need the "male" box checked on my birth certificate to know I'm a man! That bleeding scrap of paper can say what it likes: I am what I am.

This stuff is so ridiculous at this point that I can't believe it even makes the (serious) news anymore, let alone actually moves real legislation through the diet! Which Spanish MP stood up and said "Si, senor Speaker, I have a bill I'd like to propose - we're gonna let people change their genders on their birth certificates for no reason, you know, just if they want to?" And what hundreds of others thought "GREAT IDEA! I mean, I guess we should be worried about unemployment or healthcare or the integrated European immigration policy or something, but why the hell not? We'll let people legally change their genders just for shits and giggles. 'Cause that's what we here in the government are all about - good times and fun parties!"

When are these people going to get it through their heads that the government doesn't exist just for vanity plates and welfare handouts? This "issue" of whether your birth certificate accurately reflects your "gender" is not an issue at all, really. The birth certificate should record what the doctor sees when you come out (in the original sense) into the world. If the doctor sees a penis, you're "male." If he sees a vagina, you're "female." And if you come, with time, to feel your "gender" doesn't match your "sex," well that's all fine then, feel free to identify with another gender. But what you physically were at birth should stay in the "sex" blank on your birth certificate. Why there is even a "gender" blank at all is beyond me (since what 2-minute-old has a gender identity yet anyway?) - but if there is one let's just remove it. Nowhere does it need to be recorded for any reason what "gender" (as distinct from "sex") a person is. And it seems to me that even those who go through and get a sex change operation need to keep their original sex on their birth certificate. After all, that's the sex they were when born! It isn't as though surgery were retroactive! (I guess cancer would be a lot less painful if it were... Just think of the paradox. "I've removed the tumor, Mr. Smith, which means you never had it. Which means I can't have removed it, since it was never there for me to remove. Which means...Dear God, the universe is going to fall into an infinite regress loop!") Maybe they could just stamp the birth certificate with something that says "some facts noted here have changed, see Vital Statistics for clarification."

In any case, I find it deeply offensive that GLBT people think that the government paper-pushers should cater to their self-esteem issues in this way. They need to grow up and learn that the government isn't a Giver of Identities. Your legal identity is NOT the same as your personal self-image, nor was it ever intended to be, nor should it be. Or - maybe - "offensive" isn't the right word. "Frightening" is probaby a better one - because it's symptomatic of the fact that people are coming more and more to see the government as a kind of deity. It provides them with manna from Heaven when they don't want to work, it tells them who and what they are, it alone (apparently) can give sanction to love, etc. That's frightening.