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friso1100 t1_iry0ktz wrote

Reply to comment by offeringathought in New York residents who don't want to choose a gender can now choose "X" as a gender marker on a New York State license by maxcrazy

It's mostly a leftover from when as a society we didn't label the divide between gender and sex i think. It would make more sense for the id to say gender. That's the way it's used in practice

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speederaser t1_irz6xx1 wrote

That makes me wonder why we have it on the license at all? Surely there's a reason.

If it's so a medic can identify the correct medicine to give you based on your sex while you are unconscious/dying, that would be pretty important to have that correct on your license.

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friso1100 t1_irzv8th wrote

I don't think they use your license for that. Also it is just not that simple. I'm trans so i use hormones. This means a lot of processes in my body run as if i was a woman. Not everything of course, but it certainly isn't black and white. So if you did follow my id and i wasn't able to change it then they may make mistakes the other direction in. But again, i don't believe they use your id for that.

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T0WERM0NKEY t1_is0isjx wrote

Why list race? Lots of people don't fall neatly into race boxes.

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speederaser t1_is29oqp wrote

Probably for visual identification right? But I agree, race is obviously a bad solution. What if we instead assigned everyone a hexadecimal color code like in MS Paint? That would be much more effective.

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T0WERM0NKEY t1_is2vflg wrote

Just don't list it at all. It's a problematic concept to begin with

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speederaser t1_is32oq5 wrote

That's an option, I'm just seeing if we can improve upon the original reason it was put there. If it's so the Silver Alert system works, then that's pretty important, we can just decouple it from Race.

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T0WERM0NKEY t1_is3fh2p wrote

The original reason is that we used to use very rudimentary concepts to differentiate people.

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speederaser t1_is3lan3 wrote

Agreed. Hex color codes would be a modern solution.

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T0WERM0NKEY t1_is401tz wrote

For what? There's a photo of the person right there. Just look.

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speederaser t1_is44c1h wrote

Well when licenses were invented they probably couldn't just send a quick pic of the person. So color id was necessary. If that was the reason behind it, then we could eliminate any need to list race or color because everybody has cell phones now.

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