all that energy into making X an option for gender markers when we all should have been trying to get rid of gender markers altogether

fun fact: US passports did not have a field for gender at all until the 1970s, and explicitly as a response to more and more people adopting an androgynous gender presentation. US officials have publicly joked that it was added because of david bowie.

gender markers on state documents exist solely as a means of social control and re-sexing bodies with ambiguous sex signifiers. allowing a third sex on these documents serves only to validate them and provide clearer targets for scrutiny

we will never stop using this as an example of the failures of liberalism as a framework for ending patriarchy

@dangerdyke if you call it "the federal genital registry," which is exactly what it is, it helps convince some people.

@dangerdyke hard to escape that conclusion, yeah :/

@dangerdyke sometimes there's a tendency in activism to work on what's possible instead of what's helpful

@ireneista i think that there was a period very recently where abolishing gender markers on state ID, at least in some places, would absolutely have been possible, if the advocacy for X markers had instead been directed towards that. as i mention elsewhere, gender markers have only existed on US passports since the 1970s. but it’s not the line that advocacy groups were telling the people in power

the issue is what activists think is possible, versus what could be possible. i think collectively, there was a failure to even consider a world where states keep documentation on fewer aspects of our personal lives

@dangerdyke @ireneista

As one who has done formal advocacy at both a provincial and federal (#Canada ) level, I concur completely.

That said, I did support the expansion to making an X marker available as this was already part of #international standards for #passports under the #ICAO -- this made it harder for other governments to claim there that no other options were even possible.

Expedience seemed prudent at the time.

1/x

@dangerdyke @ireneista

The constant challenge with the way #ID documents work is that they are often multi-jurisdictional even within a single entity: eg, provinces and states manage birth registrations and issuing certificates, whereas nations manage passports.

Then, should one travel, their documents at their destination's #PortOfEntry are expected to align with international standards, which ICAO limited to F,M,X.

2/x

@dangerdyke @ireneista

And if one is immigrating, things are yet more complex: amended documentation is helpful for day to day stuff but nations often require the full record.

In Alberta (and likely the same in Canada and elsewhere in N America due to other reasons) the complete record has a birth record, and then two 'event' notifications, one showing #LegalChangeOfName, the other showing #LegalChangeOfSex.

3/x

@dangerdyke @ireneista

I won't blather on and on here -- I cover some of this in my Master's thesis, avail via my bio.

Basically: yes, gender markers are utterly useless for just about anything *excepting* some medical matters (eg: statistical modelling used by diagnositic machinery can give very different answers depending on whether one's body matured as an M or became one later).

Even then, though, ID docs don't fix the issue …

4/x

@dangerdyke @ireneista

… as healthcare workers tend to assume lifelong congruency with that F or M marker and don't necessarily alert the patient of the need to know certain other quirks.

Even just understanding what they're seeing is tricky: I once had a scan that resulted in unnecessary nuclear isotope imaging to ensure my cancer hadn't come back, all because a radiologist didn't recognise a complete hysterectomy on an M image (and didn't talk to me).

5/x

@dangerdyke @ireneista

Anyhow, apologies: I don't mean to hikack your point, which I fully agree with.

The trouble is that pragmatically, our ID is demanded constantly today (especially post-9/11), and those markers cause consistent, persistent issues. So until such time that they are eliminated, life is far easier for individuals who able to gain congruent ID docs across all relevant jurisdictions.

😐

6/fin

@likelyjanlukas @dangerdyke no, no! this stuff is super useful, we're always thrilled to learn from activist who've focused on areas we haven't

@likelyjanlukas @dangerdyke @ireneista That’s an excellent example of why “medical” is not a good reason for gender markers, actually. It lures people (even those who should know better, like the radiologist) into a false sense of simplicity, which hurts trans and inter people in particular. Healthcare workers should always ask (or examine, if unknown but needed) about the specific characteristic that’s relevant in the given context, not guess from a gender marker.

@airtower

I completely agree. In one sense gender markers *could* be useful but they are so packed with assumptions they are useless in the real world.

Fwiw, the imaging company completely revised their forms after this incident. They now are more of a "check all that apply" approach to things that could show up on imaging. 🙂

@dangerdyke @ireneista