Finnish Christian Democrat: Male and female remain important

In an opinion article on the website of the Christian Democrats, Kaunismäki criticises an article that states that "one should not assume the gender of an unknown person." The moral of that writing is that it is easy to be considerate to all people if we don't make any assumptions about strangers.

In practice, this is impossible, Kaunismäki writes. "We constantly make assumptions. For example, we assume a person's mother tongue based on spoken language, place of residence from dialect, wealth from income level and age from facial furrows." Also, people automatically make assumptions about the biological gender and sexual orientation of their conversation partners.

Sometimes, this results in an embarrassing situation when the guess is totally off, the politician states. That shows that assumptions can offend people, according to him. "It does not even always matter whether the assumption turns out to be completely correct. Some may even feel distressed that their age or ethnicity was assumed to be just right. Someone always gets hurt."

Naturally, people should not offend each other on purpose, Kaunismäki states. At the same time, he questions whether it is wise to define men by their genitalia and women by their uterus and speak about penile or uterine instead of males and females. This would also lead to new problems, as some "women do not have a uterus", the Christian Democrat points out. "The use of this word is also far from neutral." Of all the possible terms, male and female are the least emotional because statistically, it can be stated that humanity is divided into male and female biologically, he writes.

Justice

Kaunismäki is critical that "in today's society, it is acceptable to offend the large majority of people in their everyday lives if that serves to obtain an assumed justice for a minority of people." According to him, the minority may not even want the special treatment themselves. Still, others may have deemed it necessary for them."

The politician pleads for keeping male and female as distinct classifications for people based on their biological sex. "Biological gender may already have medical significance in terms of patient care", he writes. At the same time, he emphasises that "every person and patient must always be treated with respect, dignity and tact."