Transgendered children

[Tiberius]

Sex is fixed. You're born a boy or a girl. Who can really deny this?

Nobody is denying this. People who undergo sex change operations aren't in denial about that fact that they were born a boy or a girl; it's the fact that they were born a boy but feel that they are a girl (or vice versa). The sex change operation is to make their outward appearance match how they feel.

I am in disagreement when people are allowed to change their birth certificates to change the sex that they are born as. I think this is actually really wrong. I do understand how people can grow up, have a sex change and then have issues legally (like marriage etc.). But there should be another way around it.

You're essentially changing your personal history to suit your own preferences. I don't think this is all that right. That's just my opinion though. What is really of concern is gender. Gender is different to sex is it not?

It's not changing your personal history to suit your own preferences, as should be obvious by the fact that I can't go and change my own sex on my birth certificate without first having a sex change. You can only change that detail (as far as I'm aware) if you first actually change your sex, so it's nothing to do with personal preference, and everything to do with anatomy.

In a sense it's changing "history" because yes the person wasn't born with the sex they currently are, but that brings me on nicely to my next point, which is that birth certificates aren't just used as a document proving you were born; they are used as documents which carry basic information about the person, such as your name, eye color, etc. A birth certificate is a valid form of identity in a number of situations, and having invalid information on it doesn't make sense from a identification point of view.

In addition, if you change your name legally, in most places you can request that your birth certificate is updated for precisely these reasons. If you can change your birth name, you should be able to change your birth sex (especially since changing your name is far far easier to do).

Now, the hospital records of your birth will probably have your actual birth name and sex, and I doubt it's very easy to get those documents changed, so there will always be some kind of "birth accurate" record, but I think it's understandable at least why people are allowed to change their sex on their birth certificates when birth certificates are used as identification.