Gender neutral ID update

[kengr]

Pakistan has issued its first passport with an X gender marker. Washington, DC has followed Oregon in allowing an X gender marker on IDs and reportedly, both California and New York state are in the process of allowing it.

I'm fairly sure I'd heard of at least one other country allowing an X marker on passports.

DC should be interesting, as if there's any sort of legal challenges it goes straight from the local court system to the US Supreme Cort (that's how a couple of 2nd Amendment issues that the FEDS had been studiously avoiding for three quarters of a century wound up before the Supreme Court).

And with California and New York, that's a big chunk of population and *votes* that will be behind this.

There's also a case in Colorado involving an intersex person who is trying to get a US passport that doesn't have an M or F on it.

The State Department's replies to letters from doctors certifying that the plaintiff is intersexed are ludicruous. They are saying:

“The Department is unaware of generally accepted medical standards for diagnosing and evaluating a transition to any sex other than male or female,” reads a US State Department refusal letter dated 1 May 2017. “Thus, the Department does not accept a medical certification that specifies transition to a sex other than male or female as evidence for the issuance of a passport.”

Yep, they think the person is *transitioning" to a non-binary gender. Sorry guys, this person was *born* non-binary.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/06/27/federal-court-allows-intersex-person-to-reopen-lawsuit-over-gender-neutral-passport/

Comments

[conuly]

Oh, dear.

[stickmaker]

So how do they treat an XY with androgen insensitivity? Without a thorough exam they appear completely female, but a DNA test shows male.

Or some of the unusual but still real genetic variants, such as XYY or XYXY?

(Sorry; rhetorical questions.)

It's bureaucratic ignorance such as this which has led to several women being told they weren't the legal mother of children they gave birth to!

[kengr]

They are suffering from "script syndrome" as I call it. Normally seen in customer (dis)service workers, it's where you don't actually *read* the message, you just skim it looking for keywords and regurgitate the canned response for the problem most often associated with said keywords.

They aren't interested in genetics. Nor medical anything. all they care about is that you fit their nice little boxes.

They "know" there are two sexes (the X gender on legal IDs is going to cause them some real problems soon enough). They don't know the difference between sex and gender.

They (reluctantly, I suspect) know that there are people who transition from male to female and vice versa.

Like most people they haven't a clue that mammalian biology has a lot more possibilities.

btw, if you want fun, there are a few known cases of *fertile* XY females. As in they had a kid via normal sex.

And think of the fun if a guevedoce was enrolled in a school in some states. Puberty hits and her testicles drop and enlarge and her clitoris starts growing into a penis.

I wanna see the arguments about which bathroom *he* has to use. :-)

I'd also *love* to see what one of those states with the "you are the sex on your original birth certificate" bathroom bills would do when confronted with the person in that passport case.

And one of my stories deals with the fun if we actually tried to use genetic testing.

https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/55415/intended-consequences

[stickmaker]

Bureaucrete.

That's what destroyed _Columbia_ and her crew. The engineers told the managers there was strong potential for heat shield damage and they could lose the orbiter. The managers looked at their spreadsheets, saw "tile damage" listed as a turnaround time problem and not a safety one and ignored the engineers.

One of my stories involves a young man who has never felt comfortable with his body. He discovers that he's a chimera - nonidentical twins who fused in the womb - and actually mostly female. The title is "Unwanted Child" and it will hopefully be coming out through Doppler Press. Eventually.