Trans people in Florida can no longer update their driver’s licenses: A new state rule may expose trans people to criminal or civil penalties if they try to update their documentation. - eviltoast
  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    This doesn’t even make sense from an administrative standpoint. The purpose of government identification is identification. If I can’t update my driver’s license to make me easier to identify then the entire purpose of having a gender on the ID card is moot

    • anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 months ago

      It gives cops an excuse to arrest (and beat up) trans people on charges of false ID.
      Edit: spelling

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Oh absolutely, it’s just meant to out us to every cop that sees our ID so they can decide to ruin our day. They won’t actually admit that, though.

          • pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe
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            11 months ago

            To benefit the dominant humans at the expense of everyone else.

            That’s the only reason it’s ever been around. You were just bamboozled into thinking it was about enforcing universal principles.

    • CameronDev@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      This is a weak justification, but here is a strawman:

      If a person is involved in a firey buscrash, it is helpful to the coroner to know what biological sex someone was born as to help with identification (different bone structures etc).

      To tear that strawman down again, there is absolutely no reason that the drivers licence couldnt show their gender, and the authority could also track their sex in their system.

      Of course, this is Florida, the answer is obvious, they are doing it to fuck over trans people…

      I understand that not being able to change forms of ID can cause problems for trans people, but if I were trans, I would be terrified to out myself to the state of Florida. I feel for my brothers and sisters affected by this bullshit.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        That justification gets even weaker when there’s no fire in the lethal crash. They’re not looking at burned skeletons, they’re just looking at corpses.

        Also! Skeletal differences are actually minimal in people who transitioned at a young enough age, so that wouldn’t even be helpful in their case.

        • CameronDev@programming.dev
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          11 months ago

          Yeah, its a weak justification, but worth lining up, so that it can be knocked back down.

          In this strawman, the point is to be prepared for the worst case, which would be skeletal remains only.

          The skeletal differences being minimal depending on the age of transition is interesting, do you have a source? Id like to know more.

          Of course that gets even muddier for this strawman, because the authority could make up arbitrary rules like “If you transition before X years old, you can change your official gender”. Which ends up essentially the same as the “when is it life” discussion, and we all know how that panned out.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            11 months ago

            The defining skeletal differences are mostly in the pelvis, which undergoes much of its development in puberty. Intervention in those years should allow for trans teens to develop along affirming physiological lines, rather than being mutilated by a dysphoric puberty.

            Buuuuut I did overstate my case, though; such early treatment is still on the rarer side, so it doesn’t look like there’s definitive answers on how that impacts skeletal development. We can draw conclusions, I think, but the literature is mostly focused on the psychological development rather than looking at physiology.

            • CameronDev@programming.dev
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              11 months ago

              Yeah, possibly needs more research. I read something about bone density being mostly unchanged, but that may also be intervention age dependant as well. Also, as a fairly contentious issue, the literature is also prone to biases.

              Thanks for your response though, I appreciate it :)

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        11 months ago

        If a person is involved in a firey buscrash, it is helpful to the coroner to know what biological sex someone was born as to help with identification (different bone structures etc).

        Yeah… no. The bone structures aren’t that different. It’s more likely that anthropologist can’t identify the sex by bones alone than they can. I also can’t think of a different reason for it, but there really doesn’t need to be a reason for them to just be bigots.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Well, what is the function of having sex/gender on an ID? It’s to make someone more identifiable, right?

        That means that “verification” only needs to be visual. The purpose is to be able to tell, at a glance, that the ID and the person are a match. That’s why eye color and height are on there too. Precise record keeping is for the court house and hospital records, not a driver’s license.

        By using sex and making that unchangeable it actually makes my ID less useful for identifying me.

          • Saxoboneless@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            This process is already gatekept, to my knowledge. In my state, changing your legal gender id or name requires going through the courts and a substantial amount of legal paperwork - even if you do so without a lawyer, there are some substantial fees associated with that process. Not to mention if someone wanted to become less identifiable, they probably wouldn’t want to do that in a way that is available as public record. Personally, I’d probably just get a haircut - they’re a lot faster and a lot cheaper.

            Additionally, banning everyone - especially banning exclusively trans people - from fixing their documentation is not a reasonable solution to your hypothetical problem, a fact so obvious anyone arguing in good faith almost certainly would have caught it.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            11 months ago

            Then they’d get harassed by cops for having a suspected fake ID and have to go through the trouble of proving its their actual ID.

            Like I am going to be when we get a law like this.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        That’s an advantage that trans people who can ‘pass’ have, but not every person looks physically enough like their expressed gender and suddenly they’re “a man in a dress” or something.