RETHINK GENDER IDENTIFICATION
It’s an invitation to discriminate, says Aaron Devor.
Discriminating on the basis of gender has been against the law in Canada since 1977. Yet our governments still mandate the collection and public display of gender information on virtually all forms of personal identification.
Why? That’s a key question to ask in light of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent apology for decades of discrimination against Canadians who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or queer. Long-standing laws prohibiting sex discrimination aside, allowing governments and most public and private enterprises to routinely collect, store, share and reveal a person’s gender information is a virtual guarantee that discrimination and sexism will continue to flourish, most especially for people for whom gender identity is a more complex matter.
Being required to identify your gender when you are trans, gender non-binary or two-spirit is essentially an invitation to others to discriminate. Every time you’re requested or required to complete a form asking about gender, you’re confronted with a dilemma: risk the considerable anti-trans stigma, discrimination and violence that’s a fact of today’s world or claim a standard man/woman gender and possibly misrepresent yourself by doing so.
People who identify as a gender that differs from an earlier point in their lives run the risk of being judged as dishonest, or possibly delusional, in the eyes of people who don’t yet “get” the issues around gender identity. Stigma and discrimination can intensify, sometimes in violent and lethal forms.
People who are trans, gender non-binary or two-spirit frequently live for a year or more looking ambiguously gendered, whether by choice or necessity. Many will live most of their lives never looking like the people who fit tidily into societal assumptions of what constitutes a “man” or “woman.” A growing number of people, particularly younger generations, are now finding their own gender identities outside of traditional definitions.
Recent data from a large survey of trans, gender nonbinary and two-spirit people in the U.S. reminds us that, even for those who choose to identify as men or women, only a very small percentage have gender presentations and physical bodies that fully conform to societal expectations for their gender. Also of note from that study is that only five per cent of trans men and 12 per cent of trans women have had genital surgery, further complicating the outdated belief that gender is determined by what’s between your legs.
What this means in practical terms is that, whenever a trans, gender non-binary or two-spirit person is asked to produce almost any piece of ID, the gender displayed may not match with how they appear to the world or how the world expects them to appear. Given that a request to “show your ID” generally comes from an authority figure or person in power, this leaves them vulnerable to refusal of services, abuse and violence.
As long as our gender information is routinely recorded, stored and casually shared by organizations throughout society, none of us has any real control over who knows our gender or how that information is used. All members of society are thus open to discrimination on the basis of gender. The vulnerability is compounded for trans, nonbinary and two-spirit people who risk being “outed” through the dissemination of personal records without their knowledge or consent — something that can have dire, and even deadly, consequences.
The chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission supports a review now underway of gender requirements on federal documents. I urge the B.C. government — and public and private institutions — to do the same in the areas where they have jurisdiction.
Our governments need to review the circumstances when it’s legitimate to collect gender-identity information from individuals. In cases where the information can be aggregated anonymously, it should be. In cases where gender identification is deemed essential, then governments must establish who should have access to that information and under what circumstances, and then treat it with as much privacy as is now given to medical records.
Were such practices to become the norm for governments in Canada, gender information would be collected, stored and shared under much more restrictive conditions. Gender markers would no longer be the unthinking default requirement for standard government ID.
Of course, gender markers should remain an option for those who want the benefits of formal government confirmation of their gender. But no one should be forced by the requirements of their ID to face gender-based discrimination. Making gender a private matter is a mere administrative adjustment, but one with the potential to profoundly undermine sexism and transphobia.