“It’s the economy, stupid” was the phrase used by Bill Clinton against George W.H. Bush in the 1992 election, which some people claim was the one that gave the Democrat the victory over the Republican who was seeking reelection. A phrase that became popular as “It’s the economy, stupid.” and which has been used ever since, paraphrased, for the most varied issues.
Recently, a member of Adriano Antinoo’s Krisol Pro Intersex Human Rights shared a screenshot of the survey produced by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (INSST) and the TRES-i Research Group, on hyperconnectivity on the mental health of the working population, whose first question is: “1. Sex”, the options being “Male / Female / Intersex”. A conceptual absurdity that was possibly written with the best of intentions..
This screenshot has encouraged me to share my opinion in this article, which I have titled. “it’s the gender stupid!”The questionnaire is a very difficult question to answer for people who are committed to the diversity of corporeality, identity and orientation.
The first question.
The first thing is to ask yourself what information you are trying to get with the typical first question in most surveys. Because we should not think that the main interest of the people who write them is curiosity about the way the sexual organs are shaped (i.e., the penis and scrotum or the vulva and clitoris, of the respondent) and whether they follow the usual standards (for endosex people) or not (for certain – not all – intersex people).
I’m afraid, most of the time, it is a protocol question, which does nothing to help the purpose of the survey.. Such is our custom that it seems inconceivable to us to conduct a survey without including this first question, even if the information collected is not going to be used.
But where this information will be used, we can imagine that the aim is to know whether the person has grown up as a man (i.e., in the masculine gender) or a woman (i.e., in the feminine gender), with the social mandates that this implies, using the “sex” that appears in the Civil Registry notation of each of the citizens of our country.
The first mistake is to equate sex in the registry with gender.
In Spain, the Civil Registry is the one that allows compliance with Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “every human being has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”. As recognized by the Spanish Data Protection Agency, “identity may include elements such as name, surname, date of birth, gender or nationality”. […] although there is no universal standard or agreement”.
That is to say, the objective of the Civil Registry is to individualize the individual (to make him/her unique and identifiable) that allows the recognition of his/her legal personality. But including one element or another in the list of data to be collected for registration is a cultural and social issue, not predetermined by norm or science. In the United States, for example, the inclusion of racial data in the census data is mandatory, something that in our country not only surprises us but may even seem discriminatory.
Since the publication of the Provisional Civil Registry Law in 1870, our entire legal and administrative culture has turned the sex of the registry into an essential element for the identification of citizenship. A sex fixed according to a determined genitality: if the person had a penis and scrotum, the sex was indicated as male; if he or she had a vulva and clitoris, the sex was indicated as female. And if it was not possible to determine the identity of its genitalia, the baby was registered with one sex or another, according to the most varied criteria. A well-known Spanish intersex activist said that she was registered as female on the doctor’s recommendation so that she would not have to suffer the scorn during her military service, which she would have to do if she was registered as male..
And it is that, historically, it was taken for granted that the sex of the baby always corresponded to the genitalia described in the clinical document of birth or the declaration of the person who went to the Civil Registry to register the birth, but there was no subsequent means of verification. And even if an error was discovered, the procedure for modification of the registry was very complex, and only by a final court decision.
The registry sex, therefore, only aims to describe, at best, a certain corporeality, but does not aim to establish the baby’s gender, which corresponds to the gender identity he/she manifests once he/she becomes self-aware.
But from the registry sex we have built a legal system that establishes in a pre-determined way the gender of the person, surpassing the initial objective of the Civil Registry.
When we make equality policies we talk about gender, but to establish gender we rely on the registry sex. That is, we presuppose gender from a physical description.
And it is this custom, which does not make much sense, that has turned the Civil Registry into a battlefield that far exceeds its purpose. The problem is not the Civil Registry but the social and legal prejudice that is made of its registry data.
How relevant is it to know a person’s genitalia in a questionnaire?
We will agree that, a priori, no team considering designing a questionnaire is interested in knowing the description of the genitalia of the people who fill it in, however morbid it may be for some people.
This is a question that, if it is not going to contribute anything to our work, should be eliminated, since it may raise objections in some of the people who have to answer it.
In the case that it is of interest to know the gender of the person (to know its impact on the object of the study, for example), a question in this sense makes sense. But we already know that the gender assigned at birth may, or may not, correspond to the self-perceived gender.
And in those cases where the object of study is the variable endosex/intersex (i.e., if their genital features correspond to penis and scrotum, to vulva and clitoris, or to another reality), and therefore the description of genitality does make sense, it does not make sense to talk about male/female.
A proposal open to debate.
Given that the corporeality used in the Civil Registry is not necessarily accurate (it excludes intersex corporealities and does not ensure the fidelity of the registry data with the bodily reality), for social purposes what has always been relevant has been the gender that society assigns to the newborn. Because all people are assigned a gender with which they grow up and are socialized, even if later they may or may not agree with it.
For the elaboration of questionnaires it would be necessary to eliminate, therefore, the category of sex, ambiguous and equivocal. But even replacing it with registered sex, which does not determine identity based on sex, but only asks about an irrelevant administrative fact when determining gender, can be distorted by the changes in sex registration allowed by current legislation.
So in my opinion, what would be relevant to the studies would be to ask about the gender assigned at birth.
Because in a culture that assigns gender based on registered sex, by asking for the assigned gender we will be able to know, if the data were relevant to our study, the initial registered sex, since there is not a single documented case of anyone registered with one sex who was raised and socially viewed with the opposite binary gender.
Thus, the question in the questionnaire could be:
Gender assigned at birth: male / female.
And this data, the assigned gender, is indeed relevant, since it is what conditions us socially and that, ultimately, is what matters to gender studies.
It can be complemented with the self-perceived gender at the time of completing the questionnaire, as follows:
Self-perceived gender: Male / Female / Other.
And if desired, within that “other” one can clarify whether “non-binary”, extrabinary, etc.
In the case that in the study the feature of corporeality is relevant, I propose that to the category of assigned gender the following category be added:
Corporeality: endosex / intersex.
And I don’t talk about intersex genitalia, because. within intersexualities, many of them do not show genital differences, but chromosomal differences, hormone levels, etc.