In a country that continues to segregate and discriminate by gender, you’re going to keep getting government stamp your documentation for proper sorting.
My country DOES have an option to remove the gender marker from ID and all official docs/files BUT it’s only for intersex people 🙃
how do you become intersex then?
You gotta be born with both male and female parts. Not just in your brain, in your body
makes sense. so it’s determined at birth?
Yeah, unfortunately.
Person from the original comment, in the country where gender markers are only possible if you’re intersex. Some people are determined to be intersex at birth, but you can get diagnosed later. That’s usually when you phenotypically fit into the sex binary, but your hormone levels are above a certain threshold.
The threshold is kinda low, so e.g. me, AFAB, will get tested for T levels, and, if I’m lucky, be diagnosed as hormonally intersex, and be able to match the official gender marker to my gender (I can choose between X, something that’s currently eluding me and no marker, and will go for the latter). Kinda like how some cis women are excluded from women’s sports for having too much T, except in this case, it’s wanted. Low key considering using bodybuilder T to skew the test, since it’s bullshit that the gender marker can’t reflect my gender.
Edit: T is testosterone. There’s also many other types of intersex that also aren’t ‘having both parts’. Could be that there’s ovaries inside and masc-reading genitals outside, or that the genitalia doesn’t match the sex chromosomes, could be having more than two sex chromosomes (like XXY or XYY instead of just XX or XY), could be you go through a kinda puberty that doesn’t match a purely estrogen based or testosterone based puberty, e.g. growing both breasts and a beard. There’s sooo many possibilities, some of which will easily be caught at birth, some of which will only be caught later, or even never.
In my state (in Australia) we don’t have a gender marker on our licenses at all, which is great for every other time you use a license. But a cop can just pull your file on their computer and it displays it there. Seems like the pawblem is just cops, i dunno fam ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
European driver’s licenses don’t have gender.
In France I believe they do, they are all masculine. “le permis de conduire”
They’re masculine in German too - “Der Lappen”. Despite that fact, some men get quite upset when you call them Lappen. How dramatic 🙄
In polish they’re neuter - “prawo jazdy”, such a win for nb people
You don’t mean the infamous criminal Prawo Jazdy do you? >Prawo Jazdy
They do state the ID-number, which has digits that can be used to determine the registered gender.
Are drivers licenses standard for all of the EU or do they vary by country?
They vary some in design elements, but mostly they we all have the pink card format license now, and the info on them are mostly standardised across all countries.
They’re not mostly pink though.
Looking through the list there, most of them has pink as the main colour.
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This is more in line with why non-binary came about. Though, broadly, it was always a rejection of the social or cultural concepts of gender—of which it was just the typical two. Somehow this attracted the idea of wanting to still have a gender (for some reason), just not one of the two existing ones. It has more practically evolved to this now.
Over time, those that once were non-binary have to explain themselves, which I find fucking ironic.
Ya can’t just say, “I don’t have one” or “I don’t align to any” because it’s a required field full of nonsense you don’t follow and non-binary means something else now or at least opens people up to assuming you’re one of many things you obviously are not.
N/A would be great.
Agender?
Yeah, that’s how it rolls now, but you won’t find that on a form.
And even if it were, of course, “You identify as an agender. What’s that?”
“I’m not “an agender”, it’s a position. I just don’t care for them. They don’t matter or mean anything.”
“So like a non-binary?”
“Yeah… Well, no. Look, I really don’t fucking care. It’s an identity thing so it’s all up to your perception of me anyway. Whatever first pops in your head, just go with that. Just don’t be surprised if I do things that don’t fit into the social stereotypes of it or any of the other ones.”
“I’m confused.”
“Uuuuuugh. I’m just me, okay. Fuck, just imagine it’s N/A and we’ll move along… See, this is why-… ugh, nevermind.”
This is why i just say ‘queer’ and tell people they dont need to know and dont have time for the truth. Sometimes i add ‘which lie would you prefer?’.
which lie would you prefer?
Perfect.
This is exactly my approach to gender. I’m glad it matters so much to some, and that it can bring them great joy. To me it’s just not really a consideration.
I say he/him because it’s easy and problem free, but you’ll never view me with the same lens I do anyway, so it doesn’t actually matter. I know who I am.
Maybe it’s time to stop giving so many shits about what is in people’s chromosomes, between their legs, or what they prefer to fuck. This is so insanely engrained into modern society. If I see a bald little baby and tell the mother “he’s very sweet, what’s his name?” she may scowl and say “Her! It’s a girl!” taking my polite gesture and souring it as if I did something offensive. How in the world did we end up caring so much about this? Obviously that situation is an easy mistake to make and bears no consequences whatsoever. Alternatively if you say" what’s it’s name" this is viewed as dehumanizing, you really can’t win. Kid hasn’t had a chance to even decide it’s gender and we are all up in arms about what people call it as soon as it’s born.
it’s so insanely engrained into modern society
If you want to read something deeply uncomfortable about how language shapes society and how blind we are to the pervasiveness of gender: I think about this essay a lot (CW. Predudice)
https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html
Spoiler for after reading:
::: spoiler So I probably don’t need to explain that it isn’t about racism, it uses racism to explain how gendered our language is and how gross that looks to anyone who hasn’t become numb to it over a lifetime. But some people I have shown this too have been very confused :::
I am extremely confused. Thank you. I have been studying language, in particular English, mostly, but there a bit of a few others, in different ways than most do. This opens a whole other (set of) dimension(s) into my understanding that is exactly the sort of thing I’m actually studying.
Language isn’t actually what I am focusing on. It is but yet another carrier of mostly, somewhat, in some ways, partly, whatthefuckever, “invisible” dimensions.
I have a friend that’s explained to me, you know times are good when we’re battling each other over social issues like gender.
Huh? How?
Well most of us are healthy, have homes to live in, there’s no war, economies are good, but our tribalistic nature needs to tear down others for something. The better things are the more absurd and hopeless society will seem.
Maybe we do need another world war or something… Kind of like a weird fucked up way of how we get all our pepped up frustrations out and progress forward again with post-nut clarity.
There have always been more than two genders, there were never two existing genders
That’s subjective to the society, culture, and/or timeline. But there definitely hasn’t “always been”. At one point there were none. We’ll get there again.
Gender is a social concept. Even the word originates from linguistics, not social studies. Some cultures have nonbinaries, some cultures have in-betweens, some cultures have two-spiritied people.
They can probably tell.
I’ve heard a few stories of actual transgender people leaping to the defense of merely non-confirming cisgender folks, particularly when police or some TERF activists decide to storm a restroom.
Sex: yes
Gender: noSex: yes
angry Ace noises
The license already has a picture. Neither sex nor gender provide any value in identification, and have lead to misidentification of cis people too.
I think its less a data point they want for checking id (although I did know a dude who got busted trying to use his sister’s ID while underage. She had short hair and a gender neutral name, but he had a mustache. Otherwise he looked plausibly like the photo, but there was that pesky F on the liscence.)
I think its more a matter of having it as a search criteria for narrowing database searches. Which logically should make it more useful as a ‘gender presentation’: M/F/other.
Got surveilance tape of a clearly masculine perp? 5’8, caucasian, blond hair, dark beard? You dont want your search clogged up with all the AMAB, who dont match the photo because they’ve transitioned, and missing all the AFABs whove started HRT and now have/ could have a beard.
I know plenty of girls with full beards. And plenty of guys who can’t grow them. It’s not common, sure, but a female perp could just get a fake beard if we go by the gender presentation on a license.
I stand by my statement.
why does a license even need sex, though? like when is it ever used as proof of identity by dropping your pants?
why does a license even need sex, though?
It gets lonely
Sometimes I find mine cuddling with my CC.
look at mister goosmoos here, thinks licenses should be condemned to never fuck
they can handle it themselves like the rest of us if they get the urge
handle it themselves
my license ain’t got hands is mine defective
No, just expired.
see what happens when you don’t let your license fuck?
Us licenses are crazy in general.
Why it needs to list your height, weight, eye colour and sex at all make no sense.
It’s literally a tool meant to identify you. It listing obvious physical characteristics to describe you makes common sense. Simply having a picture isn’t that descriptive considering it’s just a headshot.
Why should a drivers license include more personal information than a passport does?
A passport has waaaay more personal info than a driver’s liscense. That’s been part of the move to chipped passports, they can now have basically any biometric data.
Personally I don’t see an issue with height, weight, eye color, etc. None of that is exactly a secret, a fairly unobtrusive way to narrow down identification. The only thing I think is iffy is address but that’s often out of date anyway. I’ve also only ever heard of that used to mail lost wallets.
Weight’s kinda stupid seeing as it can vary so easily
I had to go back to my car for my wallet at Costco recently because I’d lost so much weight since the membership photo was taken in April, they didn’t believe it was me. (60 pounds down!)
My point is, it’s more information than is required.
In the interests of privacy we should be required to provide only the minimum necessary detail.
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Optical identification.
Height and Weight is actually useful for medical purposes in emergencies. You don’t want to be given too much or too little of a blood transfusion.
If its critical to be precise, no doctor is relying on the numbers on th license.
And if its not, then can do what the rest of the world does, or what they do for anyone who doesn’t have a license.
If it’s critical, you don’t have time to take them to a weighing machine and measuring them.
It’s also why most licenses have blood type listed.
So what do they do for any of the millions of people without licenses?
And what do they do in countries that don’t have this practice?
You can insist its an important medical intervention if you want, but there must be options and process in place that do not require it. That alone means it is not essential.
O- / O+
But not enough people donate blood so they’re always pretty low on it, especially since not everyone who donates has those blood types.
What does blood type have to do with weight… “take them to a weighing machine” or “give them O+/O-” makes no sense as a dichotomy.
in the US they will always run a test to confirm blood type before starting an infusion
If it’s an emergency they’ll run O- because there isn’t time for that test, and if there’s no O- they’ll go based off info
ah, I didn’t know about this - it does look like O- is used (and sometimes O+ if risk assessment allows when O- blood is not available).
I’m also reading there are rapid tests used in emergencies, too.
Which states have blood types on ID? I haven’t seen that
I don’t remember which states, but some countries do / did. El Salvador and Japan I believe are some. Finland doesn’t, but that’s because our ID can be scanned to get our medical info if needed, and we have Kela cards anyway as well even if you don’t have ID that do the same
Gender is imaginary, people’s gender/sexual identity is complex.
Consider Cartesian coordinate system such that the horizontal x-axis, called the real axis, is formed by the real numbers, and the vertical y-axis, called the imaginary axis, is formed by the imaginary numbers.
The complex plane allows for a geometric interpretation of complex numbers. Under addition, they add like vectors.
Gender is imaginary
Its a public perception. I wouldn’t say its “imaginary” any more than facial expressions or ethnic complexions.
“I don’t look angry, because anger is imaginary” doesn’t address why you’re beat red with steam coming out your ears.
The complex plane allows for a geometric interpretation of complex numbers
Geometry is a good tool for describing points relative to one another. “You look more/less <thing> than <reference point>” is as valid an observation in terms of height or weight or degree of tan as gender. Also very easy to be wrong, because of your own biases and misconceptions.
But these are all things you can observe and report and evaluate from some objective framing.
100% agree.
I don’t give two fucks what gender your brain tells you you are, but medical professionals might want to know what sex you were born as.
Why would they need to know that?
What if we had like a database of medical information available to medical professionals so that they didn’t have to guess everything about us based on vague demographic info?
Okay, so tell them if you want them to know.
Not always possible if it’s an emergency
Well than I’m sure if they have time to go through your wallet or purse, they have time to open your pants. It’s an emergency after all, and one where presumably consent cannot be given (unconscious?)
But really that is such an extreme situation, why would a doctor need to know a persons gender in an emergency? Best to not accommodate such unlikely scenarios and focus on the more likely harm that can be prevented.
Medical dosages and drug interactions would be the main legit reason.
Except most doctors / medical institutions ignore modified dosages women should have anyway in most cases.
Other than that, I suppose knowing if you take hormonal therapies would be useful in very niche and rare cases, like after you’ve been put in a medically induced coma, but there’s so few trans people in the population + that’s such a rare emergency procedure that I doubt it even happens once a year. It’s also not a problem in most countries because they have more centralized medical records than the USA does.
I don’t think some people can handle the idea that I can respect them as a person regardless of any gender and still think it’s a good idea that they get the correct medical attention?
They literally can and do look into your wallet. Opening your pants could interfere with other operations or be unsafe or plain unhelpful (such as with a mutilation). Handing a wallet to an assistant is easier than playing a guessing game.
Knowing generally how your hormones/blood indicators should be balanced can help give an accurate diagnosis. Eg: you’re in a coma and a reading outside of the M/F band could catch an early organ failure.
And what does that help if they were born male, are trans and now look female or vice versa?
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