Notion of man, woman not absolute based on genitals: Supreme Court

The very notion of a man and a woman is not an absolute based on genitals the Supreme Court said on Tuesday while discussing the ambit of gender and whether it expanded beyond the biological sex of a personIn a daylong hearing on the pleas seeking legal validation for samesex marriages a fivejudge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud took note of submissions in favour and against the petitions and one of them was that even the Special Marriage Act has terms like a man and a woman and hence using term person instead may unsettle existing statutesSenior advocate A M Singhvi appearing for one of the petitioners said samesex marriage was a narrow term and if the court were to grant marriage equality to gay couples it should be for consenting adults across bodily gender and sex spectrumThere is a whole range of combinations of persons with special biological features It is not only men and women One category is sex and the second category is genderAlso Read Bilkis case Centre Gujarat govt tell SC they may seek review of order on production of remission files of convictsSo a male body can be imbued by female psychological instincts and vice versa and there is LGBTQIA lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer questioning intersex pansexual twospirit asexual and ally This has a whole spectrum of hues and colours he saidSolicitor General Tushar Mehta appearing for the Centre countered Singhvi saying the biological gender was the gender of a personOn the issue of using the word person in the Special Marriage Act in place of a man and a woman the law officer said the legislative intent throughout has been a relation between a biological male and a biological femaleThe bench intervened and said The very notion of a biological man is absoluteThe law officer said Biological man means biological man there is no notionThere is no absolute concept of a man or an absolute concept of a woman at all It is not the question of what your genitals are It is far more complex thats the point So even when the Special Marriage Act says man and woman the very notion of a man and a woman is not an absolute based on genitals said the bench which also comprised Justices S K Kaul S R Bhat Hima Kohli and P S NarasimhaThere is a very important value judgement you law officer are making that the very notion of the biological man is absolute or that the notion of the biological woman is also absolute which is incorrect the bench saidThe law officer said Biological man means genitals you have I did not want to use that expressionHe said irrespective of other attributes than the genitals separate marriageable age limits were prescribed for men and womenMehta said there were several laws which the court will be making redundant inadvertently if it chose to give legal backing to samesex marriagesThe law officer gave the example of the Code of Criminal Procedure CrPC and said a woman cannot be called for examination after a certain time and there could be a situation where a man says that though he has the genitals of a male he is not a manI may have the genitals of a man but I am otherwise a female as possibly suggested then how would I be treated under the Code of Criminal Procedure As a woman can I be called for the section 160 CrPC statement after a particular hour and may say that this is only a notion I may have the biological genitals of a man now I am a womanthere are several issues which have to be gone into Better they are gone into by Parliament the law officer saidThere is always change in the society and it begins from somewhere the bench told MehtaThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever