So good. Binary conceptions of gender really need to go the way of the dodo.
I mean, I have no problem with men who want to identify as women, or indeed with men who want to identify as $6.99 Ikea table lamps, but the existence of such men isn't a challenge to binary human/lamp classification schemes.
prevalence of Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY male, with symptoms): 1 in 1000 men
prevalence of Transsexual men ("biological" men who identify as women): 1 in 30,000 to 1 in 4,500
(source: Wikipedia, but the references for these statistics appear to be in legitimate scientific publications)
But I don't think we were talking about transsexuality, which is something different from the intersex conditions which might make this whole business of sex testing more complicated than one might expect.
If your mother is Jewish, then the Jewish establishment would consider you Jewish. You are considered Jewish if you convert.
>That sort of makes it an ambiguous term, no? Unlike other religions, Judaism is a religion and a cultural identity. Many Jews are secular, but still have strong cultural connections.
>What if someone was born to two parents that are not of Jewish ancestry, but converted to Judaism? Is that person a Jew by birth?
That person is not a Jew by birth, but that person is a Jew by conversion.
Historically, the only real test of "Jewness" that matters is this: if the Nazis were around, would they want to kill you?
It seems sorta sad if that's what the Jewish community uses as an 'Are you a Jew?' litmus test.
Sad? It's survival. (And yes, it is sad that antisemitism exists.)
I'm talking about what the Jewish community currently uses. It seems sorta sad that they would adopt the same attitude toward 'Jew-ness' that the Nazis used... In a Helsinki-syndrome sort of way.
The Helsinki syndrome has nothing to do with this.
>Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response sometimes seen in abducted hostages, in which the hostage shows signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker, regardless of the danger or risk in which they have been placed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome]
I suppose it could be more confusing with people of mixed ancestry, but we can probably generally find a usable definition by context.
http://www.hrc.org/issues/9598.htm
The first lists the number of Jewish people in the US as roughly 6.5 million (2.2% of total), the second lists the number of transgender people as between 0.25 and 1% but warns that may be under counted.