A really Bad Argument

One argument, as defined by the OED, is "a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong", is being the devil's advocate to put forth a position which is bad to begin with and then gets worse the longer the writer, or speaker, continues to propose it. Really? And here?

Or rather with transpeople. Roland Hulme wrote a piece, found here, which suggests transpeople, at the end of their transistion should not be able to get their birth certificates changed to reflect their innate gender from their birth sex.

He used the recent law suit in New York City brought to remove the necessity for surgery, the standard in 48 states (Ohio and Tennesse excludes that right) for transwomen to get their birth certificates changed from male to female. The laws in most states allow transmen to get the change without surgery as it's medically risky and too expensive.

The problem there is many, maybe almost all, transpeople oppose this lawsuit. The petitioners' case has merit as some transpeople can't get surgery for medical or financial reasons (the latter is the common rule for most transpeople as it's not covered by the majority of health insurance plans). But the case includes a transman who can get a judge's order for the change, something a transwoman can't get, necessitating surgery.

The reason they oppose the lawsuit is that it removes the dividing line between the in-transistion and post-transistion women, and some men (exception for them in most states) being surgery (sex/gender change surgery) and creates an indeterminate and indisguishable area defining sex and gender under the law.

This opens the door for early transistioners to get the change to be legally female while being mostly male, and it allows crossdressers and others who dress as women for personal or professonal reasons to find someone who'll agree to cerify their transistion when they're not in transistion or have any goals or plans to transistion.

And as we know, it opens the door to the proverbial media hype that even most transwomen oppose, the "men in dresses in women's bathrooms" idea or the disguse of the ultrafeminine dressup model idea. Neither of which are how transwomen want to be seen. They want to be, live and get on with their lives as women, real, ordinary women.

Transwomen, in-transistion but especially post-transistion, want to be women, and not seen or feared as crossdressers, transvestites or anything the media tries portray them for hype and ratings. And they want to be legally defined and identified as women. That's the law. Something Mr. Hulme doesn't understand.

Oh yeah, he's playing devil's advocate all right. But does he really, as he suggested, believe birth certificates are absolute documents and not fluid? We know can change your name, correct mistakes for parents and other information to get an updated or amended birth certificate. And we know intersexed people can get their sex marker changed from mistakes at birth (assigning the wrong sex) or after surgery to correct it.

I had three birth certificates issued for me for two name changes in two weeks. Is he suggesting my first one was absolute? And if I decide to change my name from what my parents decided three times, he would deny me that right? And all the transwomen and transmen the right to be who they are physically and mentally and not just defined by their genes?

The devil's advocate got his argument lost in his own details, which is mostly his own ignorance of the facts and his own inhumanity for others.