According to New York City, there are 31 officially recognized genders, and room for more.
Gender is really a tricky thing. One one hand, gender itself was socially constructed to classify humans into boxes. On the other, our society has been that way for so long it is almost impossible to believe it could be any other way. My person belief is that gender shouldn’t exist at all. No human being in the entire world fits entirely into one box or another, and trying to force people into those boxes is like asking them to go against their human nature.
The Commission on Human Rights of the city of New York, as part of its non-discrimination policy has released a list of 31 different genders that businesses must abide by, or risk a six-figure fine.
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Using the wrong pronoun repeatedly, and with malice against someone could result in a steep fine.
The exact wording for the rule is as follows:
“Intentional or repeated refusal to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun or title. For example, repeatedly calling a transgender woman “him” or “Mr.” after she has made clear which pronouns and title she uses.”
This all makes sense to me, because people should be able to decide what gender they identify as. However, I think the larger problem is that gender exists at all. If we didn’t feel the need to classify the people around us, and people were allowed to act, dress, and identify however they wanted to, we wouldn’t have a problem in the first place. I know I’m talking about a perfect world here, but we can all dream right?
Here is the released list of ‘official genders’:
- Bi-Gendered
- Cross-Dresser
- Drag-King
- Drag-Queen
- Femme Queen
- Female-to-Male
- FTM
- Gender Bender
- Genderqueer
- Male-To-Female
- MTF
- Non-Op
- Hijra
- Pangender
- Transexual/Transsexual
- Trans Person
- Woman
- Man
- Butch
- Two-Spirit
- Trans
- Agender
- Third Sex
- Gender Fluid
- Non-Binary Transgender
- Androgyne
- Gender-Gifted
- Gender Bender
- Femme
- Person of Transgender Experience
- Androgynous
