Third gender continues to divide opinions in Norway
A person walks past a Transgender flag. Photo AFP, Leonardo Munoz
Northern Europe
The introduction of a third gender has been on the agenda of the Norwegian Parliament for a while. However, the issue continues to divide the population.
The new Minister of Culture and Equality, Lubna Jaffery, is in favour of introducing a third legal gender category in addition to male and female. She said in an interview with Vart Land that she is personally in favour, but cannot say anything about the implementation of such a thing.
Jaffery did not initiate the debate about a third legal gender. Instead, she succeeded Anette Trettebergstuen a few months ago, who raised the question. Nevertheless, Jaffery agrees fully with the course of her predecessor. “A third gender category can help alleviate some of the feelings of not belonging”, she said during the interview.
Young people
Of young people in Norway, two out of five are against a third gender, Vart Land writes. A survey shows that 40 per cent is against a legal gender, while 33 per cent is in favour. The participants of the survey were between 15 and 25 years old.
Students Herman Winter (22) and Eskil Rørmark (24) say to the newspaper they are surprised by the lack of support for the initiative. “I would have thought there was more support among young people”, Herman Winter responded. “Many of the liberals are very open and verbal about their opinion, and then there are probably many who are liberal on some issues and conservative on others”, Rørmark explains his surprise. The fact that more people with conservative attitudes are afraid to speak out can create the impression that few young people have conservative attitudes, as the students who are part of the association for conservative students believe.
At the same time, they know that it is hard to speak about questions concerning third-gender and trans issues. “You can be portrayed as strict or that you do not want to help a disadvantaged group. Nobody wants to be labelled as strict or mean”, Winter says.
Dawkins
The well-known atheist and biologist Richard Dawkins is also against a third gender. In the podcast “The poetry of reality”, he says that “anything else is a distortion of reality”.
Dawkins argues that gender must be defined biologically and not based on personal experience, Dagen writes. “Gender is binary. You are either male or female. For me, as a biologist, it is strange that someone can simply declare that they are a woman, even if they have male genitalia”, he says.
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