Documenting sex and/or gender

montrer patte blanche as ambiguous expression of proving one's credentials

Sanja Milutinović

pp. 195-203

in: Social objects from intentionality to documentality, Rivista di estetica 57, 2014.

Abstract

La Fontaine’s allegory of “montrer patte blanche / showing the white paw” – from his fable «The Wolf, the Goat, and the Kid – should help me trace the problem of documenting sex and/or gender. In the first decade of the 21st century, the legislative bodies of certain social democratic countries (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, Nepal, Germany) have made a change into the binary system of presenting sex or gender on official identification documents, by introducing a third possibility – that of gender indeterminacy. Would it now be possible to issue an official Id without knowing the precise sex of the person? My questioning tackles this new practice, measuring it from the standpoint of social ontology.