Are there more than two genders?

Allowing more than two genders would require too many changes to our society

Question: Are there more than two genders?
Position‹2 of 4›: No, there are only two genders
Argument‹4 of 4: Allowing more than two genders would require too many changes to our society

Most societies have traditionally recognized men and women as the two genders. Changing this system would require drastic changes. It would be impossible for every institution to catch up to all of the changes that would be necessary to allow more than two genders.

The argument

It would be too confusing to allow for people to identify as a gender other than male or female. The concept of a third gender is confusing and it’s difficult to use pronouns like they/them. There have always been men and women, but there have only recently been people who identify as neither. We should stick with the traditional system of two genders because changing the system is highly impractical and unnecessary. We use the gender binary (male and female) for driver’s licenses, other IDs, birth certificates, passports, court orders, financial records, insurance records, academic records, employment records, immigration papers, and a variety of other important documents. If we allowed more than two genders, all of these systems would have to be edited. This process would be complicated and could lead to issues like identity fraud, with people hiding behind the label of a third gender to disguise who they are. In 2016, the U.S. State Department has pointed out that allowing more than two gender fields on a passport form would hinder efforts to combat identity theft and passport fraud. All of this is unnecessary work and thus we should not recognize more than two genders.

Premises

[P1]Proponents argue that recognising genders beyond male and female would be impractical and confusing, requiring changes to the sex fields on driver's licenses, birth certificates, passports, court orders, and countless other official records. [P2] They contend this costly overhaul could also open the door to identity fraud — citing a 2016 U.S. State Department warning that additional gender fields on passports would hinder efforts to combat passport fraud — making the change unnecessary work. [C] Because allowing more than two genders would require too many impractical changes to society, proponents conclude there are only two genders.

Counter-arguments

Just because something is difficult does not mean that it shouldn't be done. For instance, before Prohibition, there was no national minimum age to drink alcohol in the United States, and most states did not enforce a drinking age at all. It was not until after Prohibition that more states began enforcing a drinking age. Setting and enforcing a drinking age required massive changes in U.S. society. Just because this transition was difficult does not mean that it was not worth it, as it's had many health and safety benefits. Thus, just because something may require many changes does not mean that we should not pursue it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Administrative difficulty is an argument about implementation rather than about what is the case, and the premise treats the two as one. Records are altered routinely — name changes, marital status, new document formats — and several jurisdictions have added a third marker without their systems failing, which is direct evidence against the practicality claim. [Rejecting P2] The passport warning concerns adding fields to one document at one time, and it is a security assessment rather than a finding about the underlying question. The fraud concern also does not follow: identity documents are verified against issuing records, so an additional value in a field is no more exploitable than any other, and no mechanism is offered. [Rejecting C] The conclusion is the non sequitur the counter identifies. Granting every practical difficulty, what follows is that recognition would be costly and complicated — a claim about administration, from which nothing whatever follows about how many genders there are.