The Swiss government has rejected the idea of introducing a “third gender” or “no gender” option for official records.
Last week, Switzerland opted not to hop on the “gender identity” ideology bandwagon that its European neighbors have deferred to. Swiss residents will continue to be entered into the nation’s civil registry as male or female, with no exceptions.
“The binary gender model is still strongly anchored in Swiss society,” the Swiss Federal Council said in response to two proposals from parliament, according to the Associated Press.
“The social preconditions for the introduction of a third gender or for a general waiver of the gender entry in the civil registry currently are not there,” it added.
The Associated Press noted that the Federal Council had said that including alternative options for gender markers would require “numerous” changes to the Swiss Constitution and to laws both at the national and state (canton) level.
The process of revising the country’s Constitution is complicated. According to the Swiss Parliament, a partial or complete revision of the Constitution needs to be approved by both a majority of the voters and also a majority of the nation’s 26 cantons.
Switzerland’s political system includes four parties whose views range from left to right and frequent referendums are held on a variety of issues.
Switzerland’s neighboring countries, Germany and Austria, as well as other Western European countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands, have all modified their civil registries to include “third gender” or “no gender” options. In the United States in April 2022, the Biden administration opted to include a “third gender” option (“X”) in passports.
Switzerland is known for its no-nonsense, tradition-based culture and adherence to reason and science-based policies. Swiss residents enjoy low unemployment, a stable economy, and one of the highest life expectancies in the world.
Despite how one chooses to “identify,” human sexes come in two varieties: male and female. Biologists who have not been captured by political ideology agree that sex is “real, immutable and binary.” Despite the way that trendy pop-science articles portray sex as a “spectrum” by including the existence of intersex conditions, these disorders of sex development (DSD) do not discount the binary nature of sex.
“‘Actual science’ done by biologists shows 2 sexes, one with small mobile gametes and the other with large, immobile ones,” said renowned evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne in response to one such pop-science representation of sex as a spectrum.
“There is no third sex,” Coyne added. “Disorders of sex development are not new sexes, and biological sex is binary. Let’s not conflate sex, gender & developmental anomalies.”