Happy Pride everyone. In Stockholm there’s a parade today, but hell, let’s celebrate it everyday. (Not with a parade everyday though, because they really mess up traffic and people still have to get to dagis and to the dentist and make a living and the rest of it.)
Sweden is generally on the forefront of accepting people for who they are, but SvD reports today that Sweden is falling a bit behind these days. In particular, says, Alexandra Ward Slotte who travelled up for the parade, Sweden does not have a legal recognition of non-binary, or third gender (). Germany, Australia, New Zealand, various US states, India, Bangladesh, Canada, Columbia and more, recognise a third legal sex on official docs. Some can do this without any medical “test” or surgery, and in other countries a gender can be changed retroactively. So what is up in Sweden?
Of course, making available a third sex in official contexts has been talked about, but when even a person’s personnumber indicates their sex you know it’s not going to be an easy adaption. (Check the second to last number in yours – even numbers for women, odd numbers for men. I checked mine, and yup, there it was. It felt sort of weird, and wrong – what else is in there?)
Sweden’s Television did a quick survey as part of their 2018 election coverage and found that the Social Democrats, Green, Center, Liberal and Left parties indicated they thought making a third gender option was a good suggestion while the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats (surprise! not) thought it wasn’t. It’s unclear what the question was exactly, but this gives an idea of how the parties are thinking about it at least.
Meanwhile, Sweden’s statistical bureau (SCB) has opened for a change to its guidelines regarding making room for a third gender, and has sought out responses (remissvar) from a slew of other government agencies (). So far, at least, the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) has returned a positive answer.
It makes you wonder, when a statistics agency, of all agencies, is ahead of the curve.