Sure. Brilliant. As we all know, facially neutral statutes & standards have a long history of promoting real equity & actual justice for members of communities historically subject to discrimination & abuse.
Sorry that is not the question. The question is: How does removing gender from id’s promote equity? Removing gender from id reference is a false fix because gender has many proxies (name, job history, etc) & cannot be obscured in real life. It allows discrimination behind a facade of neutrality.
Since this is obviously a rhetorical question, you tell me. And no lie, I believe you sincerely believe there is a benefit to gender-neutral id but please explain how that actually plays out in real life. X to Y to Z.
The purpose of a government ID is to provide some proof that an in-person human being is who they claim to be, via a biometric (face comparison) and a unique numbering authority (ID #) so that the person can claim rights or benefits of that specific legal personhood.
The benefit seems pretty obvious with regard to transitioning. Getting all your government paperwork changed is a massive pain in the ass. Not having to change it at all because the government isn't using your assigned gender as a form of verification is the easiest solution to this.
If they can know your gender without it, then it is unnecessary. That means the only reason to keep it is to remind a segment of the population they aren't wanted. Sounds like removing that would equitable. Maybe I'm just a special snowflake who thinks degrading people is wrong.
You can do census type stuff with anonymized data, you don't need a giant list with everyone's name and SSN attached to the sex the bureaucracy has assigned them. The sole reason to have granular information on every individual is as a method of State control, like passport checks at airports.
In fact, having total access to extremely granular personal data is actually a negative if you want to do population studies. You're selecting against everyone too wary to hand over their government ID's, which systematically biases your data against quite a few minority groups.
Start with the fact that "race" as a concept was invented by slavers to justify enslavement, surveillance, and oppression of other human beings via mechanisms of law and pseudoscience
Obviously, of course, but to fight against that racism we need to do things like statistics and diagnostics. Government demography can reveal the impacts of racism so they can be undone.
Wild that’s an actually a thing. Like how does that even work? Do you get to choose, or does the government have some kind of melanin chart and skull measurements?
Instructions unclear, government issued ID will now include all piercings, tattoos, scars, your blood type, your thumb print, and your steam achievements
I used to give a talk for tech workers where I would pull a bait-and-switch on this, starting out by discussing data inclusion and expansive ways to reflect gender in systems before flipping the premise and arguing that in most cases you shouldn't collect that info at all for safety reasons.
Gov systems are a clear site of danger, but I hope that one day we advance far enough in privacy + data collection regs in the U.S. that private companies can't collect your gender info by default or without clear business functionality justification. It doesn't need to be normal!
Just found one old rendition of the talk that I apparently turned into a blog post on an abandoned Medium account. I don't think I'd present the same topic exactly the same way today, but this is what I was thinking of:
Thank you for this. I actually work with a data analysis/viz company that integrates with our clients databases, and I’m going to ask that we stop bringing in gender, sexuality and race demographics. Do you mind if I use this blog post to do that, or will you write up a new version?
I'm not planning to create a new public version right now, since I don't do much work-related speaking anymore. Feel free to use that version, with the understanding that we've had six more years of scholarship, advocacy, and evolution of horizons around this topic since it was published.
Remove it from marriage licenses too. My partner and I are engaged but I’m worried about getting a license now in case things go south and they start using gender markers on marriage licenses to discriminate or worse.
I can’t believe a two-sentence microblogging post didn’t cover all the particulars of how abolishing marriage licenses would work and the utility of bestowing benefits via marriage instead of some other means.
There are some survivorship and medical proxy rights that can be had other ways but it’s nice to have an easy vehicle for them (just make it for everyone).
Everyone join Texas in recognizing common-law (no license needed)? Or abolish the legal aspects of marriage, so it's just a religious function if you want one like a bar mitzvah but has no legal effects?
The most positive thing that could come out of this is everyone realizes this. If there is a photo ID there is no argument you need to have additional physical descriptors besides maybe "wears glasses" (which would make more sense on a passport than gender since you cannot wear glasses in the photo)
With HRT, cosmetic surgery and SRS being at the level they are today, I don't even know if it serves a useful purpose as identification unless they're gonna do chromosome tests along with facial scans (and even then, intersex people exist...)
I wish I could afford that stuff, but some of us are not going to get pass such scrutiny, we are just people trying to live our lives in the best way we can to get by, contribute to society, enjoy life, deal with personal issues that come up, like everyone else.
Comments
why does gender matter for that
How is gender or race any different?
https://bsky.app/profile/aridrennen.bsky.social/post/3lipc34xuls2p
The government doesn't need to know who anybody is unless somebody gets hurt or needs their wealth redistributed
If you don't care about the government benefits, then sure, don't tell them anything.
im gonna need to see your genitals before you use the washroom, y'know for national security