Legal Gender Beyond the Binary
Susanne Lilian Gösssl* and Berit Völzmann**
*University of Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn,
**Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
ABSTRACT
The article explores the fundamental rights regarding a person’s status registration as neither male nor female and, thus, gender registrations ‘beyond the binary’. The authors analyse the fundamental rights of the individual as codified in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and examine ‘third options’ in jurisdictions and recent court decisions in Europe. They analyse to what extent similar results might be achieved at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
I. INTRODUCTION
Western society and law traditionally assume that there are two sex or gender categories, male and female. This is called the ‘binary’ system. While these categories are usually regarded as based in physical or biological facts (this has been criticized by many already, see eg Greenberg, 1999: 270–71; Cruz, 2010),1 this notion has been repeatedly challenged by interest groups, academia and, most recently, national legislators and courts. The distinction between gender and sex is difficult to draw and in the areas concerned, often blurred. This article will use ‘gender’ as the main term, as national courts and the ECtHR seem to tend to use that term. One reason for this challenge of a binary gender concept is the fact that there are people born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy to which these common definitions do not apply, now most commonly referred to as intersex people. Intersex people have biological features that are neither exclusively male nor exclusively female but typically both or neither at once (Agius, 2015: 12). Most jurisdictions do not differentiate between male, female, and a third category, but regard the latter as an ‘abnormal’2 or unusual version of the two former ones (Agius, 2015; Agius and Tobler, 2012: 83–4; Ghattas, 2013: 24). The second reason why this notion has been challenged is grounded in the changing attitude towards the definition of ‘sex’ or ‘gender’.3 While the traditional approach understands gender as merely biological, defining it with references to the physical features of that person, more recent models define gender based on the social aspects and, most importantly, based on their gender identity and self-determination. This article seeks to explore the fundamental rights regarding a person’s status registration as neither male nor female and, thus, a ‘non-binary’ (e.g. ‘non-binary’, ‘inter’, or ‘diverse’). Contrary to some national approaches, we do not limit the understanding of ‘intersex’ to mere biological features but include aspects of gender identity. And while we do understand that many intersex people do identify as female or male and want to be registered as such (Agius, 2015: 15), we want to focus on persons who permanently identify as non-binary – irrespective of physical characteristics.
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VC The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com 403 International Journal of Law, Policy and The Family, 2019, 33, 403–429 doi: 10.1093/lawfam/ebz009 Advance Access Publication Date: 8 September 2019 Article Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/lawfam/article-abstract/33/3/403/5565278 by guest on 06 June 2020
Mein Ansatz ist die Intertextualität und die Performativität in dieser Kunst-Forschung in Bezug auf Philosophie.
“es“
Zwischen “Er und Sie“ liegt ES.
E von Er und S von Sie.
Er – ES – Sie
Jede und Jeder haben ihr eigenes ES,
Wie eine genetische Information der Erinnerung.
Die Erinnerung “ES“ ist von einem Mann,
und von einer Frau.
Die Erinnerung der Duplikationen.
Die Erbinformation in der DNA,
die über 1 Million Jahre zufällig generiert wurde.
Wir haben jede und jeder ein ES,
egal ob es eine Frau oder ein Mann ist
– ein zufälliges Individuum.
Erika Matsunami, 2020
This artistic research is the (philosophical) essence for my art project as well as site-specific and/or spatial work in and from 2020.
Artistic research:
Experimental Poems by Erika Matsunami No.1 – No.4 (Feburary – Decembr 2020)
Sound composition
No.1
No.2
No.3
No.4
(Life means deeply, how I can express about life..., in word?, in image?, or in sound composition?, or?)
If one strand of DNA has the following sequence 5’-GTCCAAT-3’,
the following sequences 3’-CAGGTTA-5’ makes up the complementary strand.
5’-GTCCAAT-3’
3’-CAGGTTA-5’
If one strand of DNA has the following sequence 5’ -TGCTAGC-3’,
the following sequences 3’-ACGATCG-5’ makes up the complementary strand.
5’ -TGCTAGC-3’
3’-ACGATCG-5’
AT
GC
- The complementary nucleotide bonding GC is strongest in DNA.
- DNA replication has 3 sequential steps these are initiation, followed by elongation and finally termination.
- During DNA replication, DNA polymerase is the enzyme that adds free nucleotides to the growing DNA
strand by pairing them up with the existing strand.
- During termination, the last RNA primer sequence is removed from the end of the lagging
strand. This occurs on the end portion of the strand, called the telomere, a repeating noncoding sequence of bases. After each cell replication gets shorter to the length of the
telomere.
- In 3' to 5' direction is DNA read by DNA polymerase.
- In humans, each cell normally contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46. Twenty-two of these pairs, called autosomes, look the same in both males and females. The 23rd pair, the sex chromosomes, differ between males and females. Females have two copies of the X chromosome, while males have one X and one Y chromosome.
Erläuterung/explanation:
季節は変わり春になり、心地の良い日暮れて間もない春の夜に、桜が散らぬかもしれない（桜がいつもと違う）、何かわらない自然現象への不安を感じるけれども、晩餐のハレの集いで、この平穏に生きている短い時間が夢ではないかと感じながら、時を過ごす。
（生きていることの方が夢だと思えるぐらい、死は、突然に襲ってくるけれども、いつくるかわからない死に対して、どうすることもできない。それならば、日常の中で、奪い合い、殺し合うのではなく、人々と時を共に過ごしながら、ささやかな幸福を感じていたいという平和への願いの短歌。）
Die Jahreszeiten ändern sich und der Frühling kommt, und in einer Frühlingsnacht kurz nach Sonnenuntergang fühle ich mich wohl, aber die Kirschblüten werde nicht blühen und (werde nicht) sich verstreuen. Etwas ist anders, nicht wie immer (Warnung), irgendwie habe ich Angst von den Naturphänomenen, die ich noch nicht kennen kann.
Ich verbringe Zeit bei diesem gemeinsamen Abendessen unter dem Kirschbaum (Frühlingsfeier), während ich mich so fühle, dass diese kurze Zeit des Friedens, das Leben ein Traum sein könnte.
(Der Tod schlägt plötzlich zu, wenn das Leben ein Traum zu sein scheint, aber (Ich kann) nichts gegen den Tod tun, ich weiß nicht, wann der kommt. Es ist vielmehr ein Gedicht „短歌/Tanka“ eines Friedenswunsches, der bescheidenes Glück empfinden möchte, während er Zeit mit Menschen verbringt.)
The seasons change and spring comes, and on a spring night just after sunset, I feel well, but the cherry blossoms will not (won't) be blooming and (will not) be scattering. Something is different, not as always (warning), I'm somehow afraid of the natural phenomena that I cannot know yet.
I spend time a dinner together with people under the cherry tree (spring celebration). While I enjoy this short time of peace, I feel therefore that life could be a dream.
(Death suddenly strikes when life seems like a dream, but (I can't) do anything about death that (I) don't know when it comes. If it, in the day-to-day, while spending time with people, I want to feel the modest happiness rather than kill each other, that is a poem „短歌/Tanka“ of wish for peace.)
春の宵
夜桜の散りぬ
宴にて
つかの間の世の
夢に漂ふ
(Harunoyoi
Yozakurachirinu
Utagenite
Tsukanomanoyono
Yumenitadayofu)
短歌/Tanka Untitled 無題2020, March, 2020
Erika Matsunami, 2020 March
I can write a poem in Classic Japanese, Modern Japanese, German, and English. To write a poem in English, I'm been renewing my knowledge in English. After English, I'd like to renew my French.
俳句/Haiku: 5-7-5 (17 Mora) Fixed verse
短歌/Tanka: 5-7-5-7-7 (31 Mora)
In Tanka express the season that doesn't use season words such as 'spring/春 (haru)', in which rule of Haiku uses the Season words. 'Season' is expressed in Tanaka is through the association. For example "In the distance, Voice of bush warbler..." means coming spring.
Experimentation in Tanka Untitled 無題 2020:
Tanka (hereafter referred to as waka) consists of five lines (literally “phrases”) of 5-7-5-7-7 on or syllabic units. Usually, the Expression of Tanka is the perception of things in events and its environment by words without season words, furthermore, I attempted to express by words the geistig dimensions through the notion of season words 'spring/春 (haru)'. The notion of season words 'spring/春 (haru)' such as renewed in the circle system, or helix of time, it is 春分/Shunbun in Buddhism's culture and Easter in Christian culture.
In the Japanese Calendar/Kyureki 旧暦 that was based on the lunisolar Chinese calendar, 春分/Shunbun on the 20th of March in 2020 is on the 12th of April in 2020 in the Gregorian calendar. On the 12th of April in 2020 was Easter Sunday.
The traditional name of the month of March in the Japanese calendar is Yayoi弥生 that means “new life“.
->To be in contrast to a mechanism in the same origin, it is a kind of Antibody in biology, it calls a kind of harmony.
-> Today's new knowledge is „In humans, each cell normally contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46.“. It means that we found more possibility of variations in human sex.
Wenn ich dieses Gespräch nochmal lese, ich habe das Gefühl, wie weit die Gesellschaft liberelisert und demokratisiert wurde, und denke ich nach, wie wir uns dabei bemüht haben. (Gott,) Schau bitte uns an, wie wir Human heute uns mit sich selbst ohne Gott (Herrschaft) sicher fühllen.
Der Ethik der Sorge um sich als Praxis der Freiheit
»L'éthique du souci de soi comme pratique de la liberté«
(...)
– Sie sagen, dass es die Freiheit ethisch zu praktizieren gilt ...
– Ja, denn was ist die Ethik anderes als Plaxis der Freiheit, die reflektierte Praxis der Freiheit?
– Das heißt, Sie begreifen Freiheit als eine bereits in sich selbst ethische Realität?
– Die Freiheit ist die ontologische Bedienung der Ethik. Aber die Ethik ist die reflektierte Form, die die Freiheit annimmt.
(...)
– Ein Imperative, der die Assimilation der logi, der Wahrheiten impliziert.
– Ganz gewiss. Man kann sich nicht um sich selbst sorgen, ohne zu erkennen. Die Selbstsorge ist selbstverständlich Selbsterkenntnis – dies ist die sokratisch-platonische Seite –, aber sie besteht auch in von Prinzipien, die zugleich Wahrheiten und Vorschriften sind. Sich um sich selbst sorgen heißt, sich mit diesen Wahrheiten auszurüsten: Dies ist der Punkt, an dem die Ethik mitdem Spiel der Wahrheit verknüpft ist.
In my artistic research, what I research on Leading and sound composition in which text was read by a German actor (male) Christoph Schlemmer. A text in German and a Poem (Tanka) in Japanese. I wrote this experimental poem - Tanka original in Japanese and its explanation in German without gender roles in terms of the question on the topic of 'geistige Intelligenz' of a person (Menschliche kognitive Intelligenz). e.g. such as by Goethe.
In the subject of internal language and external language, I explore its Sound (Klang) organisation with Vowel and Consonant as creativity in a transcultural approach.
Artistic research:
- REFLECTION ON THE AUDITORY AND VISUAL ASPECTS OF 'SITE-SPECIFIC' IN ARTS
Divergent acoustic properties of gelada and baboon vocalizations and their implications for the evolution of human speech
Morgan L. Gustison,* and Thore J. Bergman, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan
Corresponding author: gustison@umich.edu
Abstract
Human speech has many complex spectral and temporal features traditionally thought to be absent in the vocalizations of other primates. Recent explorations of the vocal capabilities of non-human primates are challenging this view. Here, we continue this trend by exploring the spectro-temporal properties of gelada (Theropithecus gelada) vocalizations. First, we made cross-species comparisons of geladas, chacma baboons, and human vowel space area. We found that adult male and female gelada exhaled grunts–a call type shared with baboons—have formant profiles that overlap more with human vowel space than do baboon grunts. These gelada grunts also contained more modulation of fundamental and formant frequencies than did baboon grunts. Second, we compared formant profiles and modulation of exhaled grunts to the derived call types (those not shared with baboons) produced by gelada males. These derived calls contained divergent formant profiles, and a subset of them, notably wobbles and vocalized yawns, were more modulated than grunts. Third, we investigated the rhythmic patterns of wobbles, a call type shown previously to contain cycles that match the 3–8 Hz tempo of speech. We use a larger dataset to show that the wobble rhythm overlaps more with speech rhythm than previously thought. We also found that variation in cycle duration depends on the production modality; specifically, exhaled wobbles were produced at a slower tempo than inhaled wobbles. Moreover, the variability in cycle duration within wobbles aligns with a linguistic property known as ‘Menzerath’s law’ in that there was a negative association between cycle duration and wobble size (i.e. the number of cycles). Taken together, our results add to growing evidence that non-human primates are anatomically capable of producing modulated sounds. Our results also support and expand on current hypotheses of speech evolution, including the ‘neural hypothesis’ and the ‘bimodal speech rhythm hypothesis’.
Key words: primate; comparative communication; vocalization.