There is a new law on gender transition going through the final stages in Finland. The new law is to replace the previous one, that is 20 years old. The old law required that the person wanting to transit from one gender to a nother went through psychological evaluation, complex medical process and had to be sterile. The new law requires none of these things. It simply makes the entire thing into a self proclatory event.
The new gender will be changed to all official documents that mention gender and that’s it. Only adults may make the change for themselves.
Rather surprisingly the opposition to this new law from Conservative parliamentary representatives has been pointed at two very specific points in the law:
1. That young men might transition just to avoid mandatory military service.
2. That men might transition just to get to peek at public saunas on the womens side.
As you can see these issues are very Finnish in nature – and extremely stupid (wich is less surprising, considering what values their suggesters hold).
If a youth wishes to avoid military service, all they need to do is either serve in civil service duties, such as in a library, hospital, in the firedepartment, kindergarten, or old folks home, OR they can go total and refuse to serve at all in wich case they have to have a tribunal and carry a locator collar around their ankle for a year and stay at their home community for that period. They could also join Jehowas Wittnesses, who enjoy a special discompensation not to serve. Far easier options, than a change of their gender, with all included implications, I’m sure. Besides, if any person would be willing to use this as an evasion of military training, how effective combatant would they make anyway? This kind of stupidity, that the representatives have showed, reveals the malice in their nature. They do not seem to see military, or civic service as a communal thing done out of responsibility towards the common good, but as some sort of a punishment for having been born an able bodied man.
It is essentially of the same nature, as when some Conservatives demand pregnant women not to have an abortion because they need to be punished for having sex. As a punishment having been born a woman. As if punishment was the driving force of society.
The sauna issue is just as alien to reality. There are separate compartments for men and women in a lot of public saunas, but it is also not uncommon at all, that the Finns go to sauna totally naked together regardless of gender. By far most families do so. Groups of friends do so. Working buddies do so. University fraternies do so and so on and so on. Lots of people learn to know each other in sauna. If anyone missbehaves they are thrown out and are never wellcome again. We can not set laws based on every potential weirdo and imaginable perversion, to limit our lives. If anyone misbehaves in a public sauna, there are employees there to remove and ban them. If the misbehaviour is severe there are the police and judical systems to deal with such individuals. If a person does not want to be seen naked by anyone, or someone that might have sexual desire towards them, they have the option of not attending a public sauna. There are no laws to restrict lesbians attending female only saunas and any such would be impossible to enforce. What people feel inside their heads, what desires they have, are private matters, while how they behave can be restricted and limited.
You may think your particular god disaproves transgenderism and you may even find some confirmation to this from your holy scriptures (though I doubt it), but in a secular society nobody gets to make laws, that restrict your behaviour according to what they think your, or their own god disapproves. If you find it very important to live in a country, where this sort of thing is forbidden and the weather is mostly cold, like in Finland, you might want to consider moving to Russia.
Now, you may point out, as your opinion, that transgenderism is not natural, but we do not evaluate what is moral, or indeed set laws according to what is percieved “natural”, or not, but according to a harm vs. benefit analysis. As a phenomenon in human culture it is as ancient as gender roles are. We have record of stone age cultures, such as some Native American hunter gatherer groups, having had people transitioning from gender related roles. So, airline traffic, or driving a car are far less “natural” human behaviour. Do you want to forbid those?
You might claim transgenderism is harmfull, because it causes emotional trauma and that plastic surgery should not be used to repair mental problems. Be that as it may, I would call you out on hypocricy, if you were not demanding abolition of all plastic surgery, based on the same line of argumentation. In any case, the mental trauma driving some people to transition has already happened and we have no other treatment, than to let them be how they see and feel themselves. It is their private matter and if it affects others, so be it. If others get anxiety from the change in those individuals, then the problem is in the head of the person feeling anxiety and repairable by a change. Nobody is demanding anybody else transitions from their percieved gender. Ultimately this new law diminishes the pressure transitioning people may feel to take the step to have surgery, as it emphasises less of the physical gender and focuses on the emotional perception people have about themselves.
The entire phenomenon seems to stem from strict perceptions of gender roles. Stereotypes of behaviour indoctrinated to us from a very early age onwards. Pre-expectations on an individual based on nothing, but genital organs. As if those ultimately defined us, what and who we can be. In reality by far most differences percieved between the genders are cultural concepts. The differences that do exist are mostly averages. The biggest difference is, that no man can give birth and no woman can impregnate, but not all women give birth and not all men impregnate. In both groups you have plenty of people who could not, even if they would. Our masculinity and femininity are not defined by even these biggest of nominating differences, so in my opinion we should grow up about this issue and stop defining each other by such arbitrary ways of grouping people. These roles and expectations clearly cause harm and anxiety to a lot of people and not much good has come out of them yet. However, because the vast majority of us thinks the roles are important to them and provide a sense of identity to them, as if they had nothing more personal to build their identity on, the least we can do is to release others from superimposed roles they do not feel comfortable in.
In my opinion the gender identification in any official documents is pointless. Here in Finland we could just get rid of it and make military/civic service mandatory to all citizens.
World's Pain 
January 16, 2023 at 4:08 pm
Something I continue to wonder about — as you (and others) have pointed out, the gender issue has been around for a very long time. So I can’t help but wonder why it has suddenly become one of the big-time issues today? Yes, one could point the finger at politics or the church, but they were both around in the days before all of the hullabaloo. Frankly, I’m really getting tired of it. Let’s move on! There are FAR more important things to focus on that affect EVERYONE … not just folks who don’t like the body there were born with.
January 17, 2023 at 1:10 pm
I guess there are bigger issues and I must admit, I am a bit bored with the subject, or at least the poor quality of conversation about it. Yet, freedom and rights are not reached without a struggle. As long as the Conservatives dare to put out as stupid and petty excuses to hinder progress for a better world, as the two examples, that prompted me to write this post, the stupidity and malice in them must be pointed out. Again and again and as many people as possible should use their free speech rightsn in this, because otherwise there is a danger, that far too many people will start to think they are valid points, just because of the noise they are making. In such a case Democracy may turn on itself and a critical mass will vote into power a dictator, as has happened in Russia, Hungary and Turkey, just to name few. As almost happened to you in the USA. At that point it is too late and free speech is taken down by the very same morons who now make the most noise about it (because they are hurt, that someone else has the audacity to point out their ignorance and stupidity and to question the morals of their immoral opinions).
I think the bigger issue at play here is actually restrictive and toxic gender roles, that – as a sidenote – create the gender “dysphoria”, why many people are not happy in their birth bodies, or mostly just their superimposed gender roles.
To be fair though, there are a lot of progressive people promoting the cause of freedom with just as bad argumentation, like the “born this way” -trope, that should be understood as a totally moot point, as it has nothing to do with what we should think something is moral or immoral. A person may be seen as a natural born killer, but that in no way justifies the killing. A pedophile might appeal to such nonsense, like they were “born this way”, but again, it justifies nothing. The real moral question should be what harm does transgenderism cause and the answer should be clear, hardly any at all – especially in comparrison to the harm to these people themselves, if we do not allow it to them.
January 17, 2023 at 4:55 pm
Your perspective: “far too many people will start to think they are valid points, just because of the noise they are making.” is reasonable, but that works both ways. After awhile, the issue loses significance because it’s constantly “in your face.” That’s kind of the way I feel about the trans discussions. And I doubt that I’m alone.
Further, there are those who feel it’s become so prevalent that it’s become “woke” to propagate and defend the issue … which then results in a type of he-said/she-said situation.
Anyway, since neither of us rule the world 😉, I guess all we can do is go with the flow and hope our personal outlook wins out in the end.
January 18, 2023 at 12:48 pm
Perhaps a danger exists, especially in this kind of identity issue, that the people who struggle for the right to exist in the public space, wil start to see the existance in the public eye as their identity and ultimate goal of the struggle. That may even defeat part of the goal, but most people who get annoyed about it, are those who never accepted them there. Who can not stand “woke” precisely because it stands for social justice. Not because there are inevitable exaggeration and occasional unreasonable demands, but because every attempt to balance the society appears to them as a threat towards what ever miniscule priviledge they think they have the right to enjoy.
One of the problems may be, that since the need for the transition appears to come from deeply internalized toxic gender roles, the trans people are unable to get over them and continue to propagate them. Yet this is not necessarily the case for all of them.
Yes, you are right, there is precious little you and I can do and we get frustrated and annoyed precisely because we are responsible people. The constant demands are at our faces, as if we were guilty of the situation and of not doing enough. As you say, we can only vote according to our reason & conscience and hope for the best.
January 25, 2023 at 2:21 pm
Thanks for an awesome entry on the matter!