"For me, the body is just a suitcase for carrying your gender"
June 3, 2018 4:54 AM   Subscribe

Having lived as a woman for the past 17 years, she is comfortable using female pronouns rather than “they” or “them” but describes herself as gender-fluid. “My breasts are real, my skin is smooth, I don’t have a beard or take hormones but now I am 57. I have lived life on both sides; sometimes I feel as a man, sometimes I feel as a woman, sometimes I don’t feel anything.”
The Guardian interviews Leonne Zeegers, who just won a court case that established the right of people to not be registered as either man or woman and that the Dutch legislature should provide laws to that effect.
posted by MartinWisse (11 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
The fact that she had to submit anatomically explicit images disgusts me.
posted by lilies.lilies at 5:04 AM on June 3, 2018 [12 favorites]


I agree, but the fact that she won makes me happy.
posted by Pendragon at 6:10 AM on June 3, 2018 [6 favorites]


I'm glad Zeegers won, and I hope it becomes an easier process for the people who follow.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:08 AM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Huh, I'd never heard of the Yogyakarta Principles. Ironic that they were signed in Indonesia, which imprisons and whips gay men and trans people.
posted by AFABulous at 9:35 AM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


The court said that self-identification prevails over bodily appearance or medical status.

Hopefully this means that the new laws will not be restricted to those born intergender.
posted by Vesihiisi at 12:02 PM on June 3, 2018 [4 favorites]


Great read, thanks!

I'm not sure I understood the way she explained her politics surrounding sex/gender and trans* issues in the last 5-6 paragraphs, can anyone clarify?
posted by alon at 1:37 PM on June 3, 2018


I'm not sure I understood the way she explained her politics surrounding sex/gender and trans issues in the last 5-6 paragraphs, can anyone clarify?*

Can you be a bit more specific? She's pretty vague on whether she sees policy implications (and I don't know that I would agree with her if she does), but "Sex is between your legs, gender is between your ears" is a pretty standard slogan (though not one without problems). I think she's trying to make a point that sex (as determined by chromosomes and phenotype) might be reasonably categorised into a relatively small number of classes (though certainly more than two--it's not hard for biologists to come up with 5 or 6), but that is not true for gender.
posted by hoyland at 2:05 PM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


Thanks, holyland.
Specific idea I didn't quite grasp: "[...] it is not time to have a third gender, it’s time to have a third sex."
posted by alon at 2:08 PM on June 3, 2018


I read that as being a lead in to trying to differentiate sex and gender, but there's honestly not enough detail in the article to know what she means.
posted by hoyland at 2:13 PM on June 3, 2018


I suppose I should say there is also an interpretation that would suggest a position I'd find problematic, to say the least, but the article doesn't exactly have a lot of depth, so I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt.
posted by hoyland at 2:28 PM on June 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


Clearly a milestone on the way to a more just society. Not an endpoint, but a first step away from the gender binary. Let's keep going.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:57 PM on June 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


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