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1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment

atlasobscura.com

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Re: 1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment

#41

Post by Pixeleen »

jfk13 wrote: post #29
Pixeleen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it was only once with a cop in recent memory, and yes it was for a traffic violation. I am a frequent international traveller as well. In neither circumstance should what the computer has about my previous genitals come into play. I write that I am a transsexual here for simplicity, but I am not "trans". That is not who I am. I am a woman, not a woman with an asterisk.

That would seem to depend on one's definition of "woman". Is yours somehow the definitive one?

Not just my definition, but that of my loved ones, the DSM, and the US Department of State, and that is good enough for me.

Re: 1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment

#42

Post by grzm »

shiohime wrote: post #19
arkona2 wrote: post #10

Seems like Hacker News is being co-opted by people with an agenda. I see more and more of these off-topic articles popping up on the front page

lol this and so many other articles aren't even remotely related to development. Literally off topic according to the site guidelines.

It's clear you care about what content appears on HN. HN members help curate the submissions by submitting and upvoting pieces they think are interesting and by flagging those they believe are off-topic. As for the guidelines, they also mention:

> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it."

> "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

> "Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create them routinely. On HN, users need an identity that others can relate to."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Be a part of the HN community: post constructively, submit good articles, and please under your primary account.

Edit: fixed copy-paste from guidelines

Re: 1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment

#43

Post by orf »

khedoros1 wrote: post #26
orf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point me to the guideline that says stories must be related to development please?

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points. There's some overlap between hackers and people interested in the history of gender politics and sociology, but I'd say that something like this is closer to an "ideological or politi…

Perhaps, but it's not literally off topic and the implication that articles have to be related to development in some way is false.

Re: 1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment

#44

Post by shiohime »

Lazare wrote: post #37
shiohime wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol this and so many other articles aren't even remotely related to development. Literally off topic according to the site guidelines.

> Literally off topic according to the site guidelines. You literally didn't read the site guidelines, did you?

I mean if you don't think that talking about trans people in the Weimar Republic and how their life was affected by the rise of Nazism is opening yourself up for a political battle or talking point I don't know what is.

Re: 1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment

#45

Post by heterodoxia »

I created an account to comment here on the topicalness of this.

Given many of us on HN work in the field of online identity, this is supremely relevant topic.

As someone who has had acquaintances who transitioned, (one operation, one "asterixed" as another commenter described) and worked with a more than a few non-binary people, identity as experienced, and how it gets implemented by bureaucracies, companies, and the state, is an area where engineering runs up against basic philosophical problems.

One example was a mental health intake assessment that needed to handle patients who would present at different service providers as male or female separately. Given they may or may not provide govt ID that specified a gender, and different drugs and protocols for serving them would apply based on both their eligibility, history and the identity they were last treated under, providing identity to people with dynamic identities is requires non-trivial solutions, with life altering impacts.

Prior art from pre-digital culture for handling dynamic identities is a really big deal. Even as someone of a decidedly unsympathetic political stripe, one would be missing a lot of facts to believe what we now call non-binary gender identities are merely a modern thing.

The association of a changed identity with criminality is more a peculiarity of very recent mentalities than trans identities. I have worked on a variety state identity schemes and candidates for them, mainly steering them away from being used as a way to oppress people.

In non-health environments, the trans case was not a significant use case because we worked on the credentials, treating the legitimacy of identity as something for the customer to decide, but the trans identity use case would actually serve as a useful limit on how deterministic an identity credential or document is.

I get that there is a lot of political stuff around this topic, and talking about it is difficult because of the political consequences for wrongthink, but HN is probably one of the most relevant places to talk about the significance of dynamic identity.

Re: 1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment

#47

Post by Lazare »

shiohime wrote: post #44
Lazare wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Literally off topic according to the site guidelines. You literally didn't read the site guidelines, did you?

I mean if you don't think that talking about trans people in the Weimar Republic and how their life was affected by the rise of Nazism is opening yourself up for a political battle or talking point I don't know what is.

Unlike the linked article, your comment actually IS explicitly against the site guidelines, so I maintain my view that you did NOT read them before posting, and are now just trying to come up with an argument retroactively.

> "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it."

Second, I think the argument you have come up with is laughable. No, I don't think historical details about the Weimar Republic are actually just talking points for current political fights. If you do, I think that says more about you than about the article.

Re: 1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment

#48

Post by Pixeleen »

heterodoxia wrote: post #45

I created an account to comment here on the topicalness of this. Given many of us on HN work in the field of online identity, this is supremely relevant topic. As someone who has had acquaintances who transitioned, (one operation, one "asterixed" as another commenter described) and worked with a more than a few non-binary people, identity as experienced, and how it gets implemented by bureaucracies, companies, and th…

I do not want to make political noise. I have nothing to do with non-binary identities. I do not have much sympathy for those who oscillate between genders. Doing that in the context of medication seems like asking for trouble. Doing that in everyday life is disrespectful to regular people who are just trying their best. My F marker on my ID matches my genitals. I just want to live my quiet life, after being successfully treated for a serious disorder, but those damn old records keep coming up.

Re: 1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment

#49

Post by lovich »

irrational wrote: post #11
Pixeleen wrote: post #9

There is a field in state IDs and US passport files for previous names. It is ostensibly there for maiden names or fraudsters. Countless times it has outed me as a transsexual, and causes me to face harassment from cops or ICE agents.

I'm curious, what are you doing that cops are looking up your information so often? Is this from being pulled over for traffic violations? I'm struggling to think of the last time I had any interaction with someone who wanted to see an ID from me. Maybe I just don't get out often enough ;-)

You probably don't. Arizona had their version of "papers, please" until it struck down and NYC has/had stop or frisk. Then there's the Constitution free zone around the borders which covers the majority of the country population. You may not be from the US, in which case I can understand the incredulity. In the US however you are at whims of local law enforcement for if your day is going to get fucked/life ended. The only protections against them are _after_ the fact and in recent times only if you are rich or your situation gets viral support from the nation

Re: 1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment

#50

Post by heterodoxia »

Pixeleen wrote: post #48
heterodoxia wrote: post #45

I created an account to comment here on the topicalness of this. Given many of us on HN work in the field of online identity, this is supremely relevant topic. As someone who has had acquaintances who transitioned, (one operation, one "asterixed" as another commenter described) and worked with a more than a few non-binary people, identity as experienced, and how it gets implemented by bureaucracies, companies, and th…

I do not want to make political noise. I have nothing to do with non-binary identities. I do not have much sympathy for those who oscillate between genders. Doing that in the context of medication seems like asking for trouble. Doing that in everyday life is disrespectful to regular people who are just trying their best. My F marker on my ID matches my genitals. I just want to live my quiet life, after being successf…

One of the things I fought (using PIAs) was automated warrantless police access to certain records because the data would get shared with foreign border agencies as part of data agreements, causing the very headaches you imply.

I got shared role accounts banned across a sector, and per-user database lookup transaction logs added to a solution so that at least the breadcrumbs would exist. It cost a lot, including my own renewal on the contract, but a couple years later it caught some pretty bad actors.

The challenge is that the bad stuff happens to the square pegs first, and tech creates a lot of square pegs. If nobody resists, they apply it generally. Nobody is obligated to be a poster child, and that sucks you have to put up with it.

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