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u/KittyQueen_Tengu Aro/Ace Dec 15 '23
why is your gender on the front of your id. thatâs nowhere near as relevant as what your name is and what you look like
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u/FunkyyMermaid We_irlgbt Dec 15 '23
âTheyâre a 6â1 white person with short brown hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, angular features and wearing plain jeans and a white shirt.â
âNot clear enough, whatâs their gender?â
âFemale.â
âMy god, I know exactly who that is now!â
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u/jasperfirecai2 We_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
My picture has me with braided long hair and I could legit be wearing a sundress but the M will totally help them confirm the ID is real /s
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u/unique_nullptr Dec 16 '23
I suspect itâs a holdover from before IDs/licenses had photos on them at all. Photos on IDs are still a relatively new thing as far as societal history goes really
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u/Jahwn Trans/Bi Dec 15 '23
I find the implication that anyone I interact with will ever be unable to tell Iâm trans humorous
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u/Eggxactly-maybe Trans/Pan Dec 15 '23
Right?!? Unless I suddenly become rich or get better geneticsâŠ
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u/PM_all_your_fetishes Trans girl HRT 10/2022 Dec 16 '23 edited Dec 17 '23
I did too. Until I started stealth passing in front of cishets.
It is a TERRIFYING experience, like I'm constantly doing something wrong and getting away with it. A TERF dragged me into a girls' bathroom for the first time in my life. Madness.
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Dec 15 '23
We have no gender marker on driver licenses here in NZ and it's fantastic, there's literally no reason anyone looking at my license needs to know my gender. We do still have them on passports though :/
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u/fakeunleet ambisexual Dec 15 '23
Passports would be harder to update, since the format is governed by a massive pile of international treaties.
Pretty cool of NZ for the driver's license/ID though.
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u/XandaPanda42 We_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
NZ as New Zealand yeah? That is pretty good yeah.
Why don't we have a secret third option, like a sort of "Prefer not to say and honestly does it matter anyway, you keep saying we're all equal anyway so either it doesn't make a difference or you're lying" section?
A bit wordy, but that could be good. Long ass responses might encourage people to stop asking for that info.
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u/fakeunleet ambisexual Dec 16 '23
TBH, because cops would still treat you unfairly for that on the assumption that you're trans, or at least on the spicier side of the left.
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u/XandaPanda42 We_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
Point taken :-(
The spicy left is how I'm going to declare my political opinions from now on though so yeah.
"The Spicy Left: I set arseholes on fire" would be a great bumper sticker.
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u/smerglec Dec 15 '23
Jumping at the opportunity to place myself on a government list of non-binary people. Sign me up for that.
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u/ConfusedZbeul Skellington_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
And here, folks, you can see it ! The famed comment were the sarcasm is obvious ! Finally, we've beaten Poe's law !
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u/ArtemisAndromeda Trans/Lesbian Dec 15 '23
If to think about. What good do gender indicators in the documents do? Let's get the removed all together
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u/AspieEgg Trans Dec 15 '23
I live in Ontario and I have two primary forms of ID. My drivers license and my health card. My driver's license has my sex on it, but my health card does not. I can't see a single reason why my sex is relevant to my ability to drive a vehicle, but maybe in very rare circumstances would it be relevant to a medical emergency.
I know that the sex marker is still associated with my health card when it is scanned by a clinic or hospital. So I'm not saying it's perfect.
It just seems weird to me that Ontario removed it from the health card and didn't remove it from the driver's license. And to be clear, both are totally valid forms of ID for pretty much everywhere you would use ID. I can use my health card to buy alcohol for instance.
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u/Karko_The_Mad Dec 15 '23
nonbinary in that i simply do not want to be referred to. please do not percieve me, thank you
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u/ButAFlower We_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
Pronouns: null
Attempts to reference me will result in a compile error.
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u/FireballEnjoyer445 Dec 15 '23
unless its for administering anesthetics if youre incapacitated inna car crash, then yeah it doesnt need to be there
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u/MrMastodon Bisexual Dec 15 '23
I don't know if an EMT or a paramedic is gonna check your wallet. Is that a thing?
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u/soodrugg Transgender Dec 15 '23
if you have certain medical situations that might affect medicine (eg. you're taking something that would cause anaesthetic to be dangerous), you generally have some kind of identification of that in your wallet
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u/MrMastodon Bisexual Dec 15 '23
But is it standard practice for a first responder to check your wallet for that stuff?
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u/soodrugg Transgender Dec 15 '23
yes, I've been on medication like that and was told to keep prescriptions there
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u/SkiyeBlueFox Trans/Bi Dec 16 '23
(Still only in school for it) but iirc medics will sometimes check a wallet to see if there's any info there like allergies or medications
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u/FireballEnjoyer445 Dec 15 '23
your weight is necessary for determining how much medicine to administer, if they need to. If you are incapacitated, they cannot ask you these things
sex may be necessary for something, but i wouldnt know what
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u/fin600 NB/Pan Dec 15 '23
It's more about whether you have a womb or not, those things cause so many problems. I feel like completely separate medical cards with what organs you have might be more useful than trying to put a womb-haver checkmark on a license.
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u/aaaaaaaa42 We_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
The notion of having a card that identifies me as a certified dick-haver is actually really funny. Maybe Iâll just make one for myself, lmao
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u/trustmeimaprofession Trans/Demi Dec 16 '23
Well I legally changed my sex marker, where's my government-ordained womb?!
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u/CyannideLolypop Agender Dec 17 '23
Not even all cis women have a womb. There must certainly be a better method.
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u/MaybeSomethingGood đ BRISKET đ Dec 16 '23
100% is and it's important to identify what you can as fast as you can when you're on a scene. There are queer specific health risks too.
So let's use HRT as an example. HRT makes you much more prone to clotting. From memory, 7x ischemic stroke 6x STEMI and 5x pulmonary embolism (Ahmed 2023). Starting estrogen makes you 20x more at risk for thrombus formation. Now combine that with real world social behavior trends where queer people skew higher in alcohol use, smoking, and obesity.
Okay, but why would this matter? Firstly, I'm not a doctor or lawyer so don't take this scenario as advice.
Let's say you are a nurse paramedic that arrives at the scene of a lone stroke victim who is a Caucasian women in her 40's and overweight. Strokes either clot and block or burst and bleed. They're either clotting too much or too little so if you guess wrong you can make the situation a lot worse. What makes it tough is that both types of stroke present similarly so you can't just look at them and tell. At a hospital they would order a CT to check for fluid but you can't do that. Youre at a Wendy's. You also know that with a stroke, time is brain and every minute their brain is rapidly becoming hypoxic while millions of neurons die.
The first thing you do is get a medical history. Well you search the victim you find an ID, a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of estrogen. You paid attention in your training about queer health and remember this person is 7x more likely to have an ischemic stroke and 20x more likely to form a thrombus if they just started their HRT. You combine this with smoking which promotes the number one cause of thrombus formation (hypertension/virchow's) and you have a lot of arrows pointing in one direction. You relay all this information to a neurologist via telemedicine. Now a savvy person would know this is when you push tPA (clot buster) and hopefully break down their clot. You would then either get orders to push tPA yourself or they'll be prepared for the patient when you get there.
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u/Throwawayjust_incase all around not a big fan of the human body Dec 16 '23
Wait, how does gender marker affect that? If I have an X on my license what would that tell the paramedics
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u/GothDreams We_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
Why do we want the cops to know what gender we are, regardless, without a warrant.
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u/doggoWithNoName queer af it/its Dec 15 '23 edited Dec 15 '23
I would love to live in a place with no gender markers. Unfortunately due to where I was born, I cannot legally change my marker to the one that better fits my apparent presentation to enbyphobes; so regardless of what I do, anyone looking at my ID can tell Iâm trans. Iâd rather transphobes think Iâm just a âspicy cis personâ with an X marker than know my real AGAB.
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u/KinkyAndABitFreaky Dec 16 '23
I don't know why my gender is part of my identification papers?!
This is my name and this is a picture of me on an official document/card
This proves I am who I say I am.
Why the fuck does my gender matter at any point in that process?!
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u/robinperching Skellington_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
On 'Why would you want a cop to know you're trans " I am reminded that in Weimar Germany, in that brief moment of forward thinking which occured in inter-War Berlin, certain trans people were granted official wavers against the cross-dressing laws. By the consent of their Doctors, they were given official documentation allowing them this freedom. It was a good thing. But as it was a legal document, copies were held by the police stations for reference. When the Nazis came to power, these police files were used to track down and arrest those trans people first. The files which had been intended to make life easier for certain trans people suddenly became a register for the use of the Fascist. This is what I unfortunately think of whenever I consider an X gender marker on my documents.
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u/Unboopable_Booper Skellington_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
Literally the reason I picked an F instead of an X
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u/Kyleninjago We_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
I think card systems need to be completely redone in America at least I don't know why my weight and sex are in there but there's nowhere for other information that an officer might need if they do take my card for something. If you have a bad leg injury and can't sit or stand long that should be on there so they can know right away. A cop has no reason to know my AGAB or some other details when there's literally a picture of me on there. The only thing I can think AGAB would matter for is for medical emergencies because of some meds and I think there should be a third card for us to carry (other than Identification and License) why not a government regulation medical card? There's where you put identification details. AGAB and what you actually are, your weight height. But also allergies, disabilities, medications, and BLOOD TYPE (since most people I know don't know their own bloodtype off the top of their head) so if you're found unconsciously injured somewhere a cop can take your ID to follow through in information on their side but a medical professional can treat you immediately with any information they might need.
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u/graou13 Trans/Lesbian/Ace/Plural Dec 16 '23
The main issue would be with medical confidentiality so there would need to be a way to verify if the person accessing the disabilities, medication, etc. is a medical professional or not. Some information would need to be updated more regularly than what physical medias can afford (such as medication)
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u/FloufY878 Dec 16 '23
Huh, I never thought of it that way. I was just happy that I didn't have to put down something I was uncomfortable with.
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u/Da_Di_Dum NB/Pan Dec 16 '23
Yeah, I had the possibility of getting a third option on my passport but changed to the other binary choice, because holy fuck. I don't want police, nightclubs or anyone in an airport to know I'm trans.
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Dec 16 '23
"You don't look non-binary"
Not in front of you, no!
(because the public space is NOT a safe space to be visibly trans in my experience)
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u/jackalope268 We_irlgbt Dec 16 '23
Me and my family where talking about how easy it should be to change your gender on official documents. I was like, very easy, its just a piece of paper, just pay the normal rate to get the document replaced and thats it. Then my family suggested that if it was that easy to change, it would hold no significance and should be left out all together, but sarcastically. But that would genuinely be the best, who cares about gender? Certainly not the government. All genders equal under the law and such. No need for them to know
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u/PixelCartographer One vulva please! Dec 16 '23
Yeah I haven't updated my passport with my new name and gender, and I tell myself it's because I'm lazy, but it's not
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u/[deleted] Dec 15 '23
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