A whole can o' worms

The New York Times has this article on making your gender "optional" on your birth certificate...including those who haven't had surgery: New York Plans to Make Gender Personal Choice. If you recall, I posted this earlier in which I mentioned my main concern (through another's quote):

One rider feared predators might dress as women and lurk in the women's room.

Guess what...it didn't take long:

“I’ve already heard of a ‘transgendered’ man who claimed at work to be ‘a woman in a man’s body but a lesbian’ and who had to be expelled from the ladies’ restroom because he was propositioning women there,” Dr. Paul McHugh, a member of the President’s Council of Bioethics and chairman of the psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in an e-mail message on the subject. “He saw this as a great injustice in that his behavior was justified in his mind by the idea that the categories he claimed for himself were all ‘official’ and had legal rights attached to them.”

One problem with flinging oneself headlong into some measures like this one is that they assume everyone will use it properly. In addition, what do emergency workers do when they come on scene and find a female who...well...isn't. The physiology of men and women are different...even normal vital signs are different. You look for something that isn't there, it costs valuable time. At any rate, I plan on watching from the sidelines as this plays out. I really don't think it'll go the way these people think it will.