Category gender identity

Advanced topics in “gender identity:” improper purpose, male nudity, and basic fraud prevention

Popular progressive political discourse, fueled by the sloppy legal strategy of LGBT organizations, insists that adding “gender identity” to existing anti-discrimination statutes by legislative amendment is an urgent and necessary legal protection for transgendered and other gender non-conforming people. In fact, however, judicial interpretation of sex discrimination law already prohibits gender-related sex-stereotyping. More than being benignly redundant, […]

Improper purpose, an introduction to the concept.

The language of “gender identity” legislation is fraught with confusion. The complexity of issues swirling around reproductive sex and its connection (or lack thereof) to gender requires extreme attention to terminology and a delicate balancing of interests. Feminist legal critique demands that women’s need for sex-segregated boundaries be both recognized and weighed against the violent enforcement […]

“It is inaccurate to conflate sexual orientation with gender nonconformity, and such semantic sloppiness has no place in the law…”

These are the wise words of Ilona Turner, Legal Director of the Transgender Law Center, from her 2007 law review article entitled Sex Stereotyping Per Se: Transgender Employees and Title VII (95 Cal. L. Rev. 561 (2007)). I must admit, I whole-heartedly agree. Just as it is inaccurate to use “gender identity” as a replacement for sex, homosexuality […]