Toward a Nonbinary Model of Gender/Sex Traits

Abstract

I argue against the exclusive female/male divide, referring to the phenomenon of epistemic injustice in the cases of people with nonbinary gender identities and people with intersex traits. Such people have traits that are counterexamples to the binary female/male model. I have separated female and male traits into nine basic layers, five of which belong to sex (chromosomes, gonads, internal sex organs, external genitals, and secondary sex characteristics) and four to gender (gender identity, legal gender, external gender presentation, and gender pronouns). In every layer, I have found traits that are neither female nor male, and the application of the model to individuals provides examples of clusters of traits for which one layer is male and another female. Such traits and clusters of traits create the category of the nonbinary. Table 1 provides a sketch of a nonbinary model. The nonbinary category takes its name from the existing category of nonbinary gender identity; however, in the current model, it is a third category of traits, not of people. Under the nonbinary model, the basic gender concepts do not disappear. S is a woman if S is a human being with enough female traits, and the trait of having self-determined female gender identity is sufficient but not necessary.

Opportunities and challenges with the German act for the protection of children with variations of sex development

“…Intersex activists in particular have decided to turn to law enforcement and focus on human rights violations to create change. Pioneering laws have been passed recently in Malta ("AN ACT [sic] for the recognition and registration of the gender of a person and to regulate the effects of such a change, as well as the recognition and protection of the sex characteristics of a person"), (Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act https://legislation.mt/eli/act/2015/11/eng/pdf) Portugal ("Right to self-determination of gender identity and gender expression and for the protection of each person's sexual characteristics"), (https://dre.pt/pesquisa/-/search/ 115933863/details/maximized), and Germany (on which we focus here in detail) (https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/246/ 1924686.pdf) to protect children with VSD from so-called normalizing surgeries and to recognize additional legal categories relating to gender such as "diverse" and "open" to provide more possibilities for gendered self-identification in relation to one's sex characteristics [40] (The list of countries that legally recognize non-binary genders (i.e., which have additional options for gender categorization besides only male and female) can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Legal_recognition_of_non-binary_gender#cite_note-19.…”