(Note: this post has links aplenty, but there's a video from A Bit of Fry and Laurie embedded at the end that's both funny and directly relevant to this discussion.)
Many problems noted in the Slashdot discussion relate to different cultural and linguistic practises, not to mention the need to accommodate non-Latin written scripts.
One Slashdot commenter links to another blog with a post called Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names by Patrick from Kalzumeus Software. The post and its entire comment thread are well worth a read.
Items 32-37 are of particular interest to trans folk:
32. People’s names are assigned at birth.
33. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth.
34. Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth.
35. Five years?
36. You’re kidding me, right?
37. Two different systems containing data about the same person will use the same name for that person.
Assuming a trans person doesn't have complicating factors such as having been born in a foreign jurisdiction using a non-Latin alphabet or a naming convention atypical for North America (which seems to assume firstname middlename lastname is the gold standard), the practise of many institutions of establishing system identity using information from a birth certificate poses substantial problems.
Before peeking at those problems, let's take a brief look at some of the non-trans complications that occur when names and databases collide (through specific comments on the Falsehoods article) :
1. Organisations insist you must be identified by names you never use
2. Due to prior technological limitations your name is changed to a shorter character length yet multiple records may now exist
3. Your legal name is required (by law) yet the database structure doesn't accommodate your actual legal name
4. Multiple cultures and nationalities use divergent standards yet local laws require different standards that conflict with these many divergencies
5. The same person may be identified in different places in different ways in accordance with local practises
6. Some types of assumed names are considered acceptable, while other types of assumed names are considered to be criminal, even if all name usage is actually non-criminal
7. Names may not be registered at all or may be adopted names rather than legal names
8. Conflicts between how a name is rendered by the database and the person's real name results in substantial problems when dealing with large institutions, including government
As noted by one commenter in response to the notion of "don't let the ideal be the enemy of the good" is that "the problem is that the majority of systems in use today aren't even good."
For trans people, these systems seem to be peculiarly not good:
For trans people, these systems seem to be peculiarly not good:
- The system can't handle a person changing gender
- In addition to gender being non-conforming, a person's title (or titles) may vary widely by language and occupation
- Beyond names, a system might also be complex due to being capable of entering highly-divergent sex differentiation
- A system capable of entering highly-divergent sex differentiation may be making assumptions about the actual genetics of the person in question
And of course, unlike married people adopting names as part of a non-legal but commonly accepted tradition, a trans person changing gender causes databases to be destroyed.
Yet appropriate possible solutions must exist. For example, some places--such as hospitals--have to be capable of handling individuals who may not have a name or whose name may be unknown. These records may be tied to other systems with the weight of law behind them, such as a government.
Despite all this, many people want to be called by their proper identity, an identity determined to be proper according to their own norms, not imposed externally.
(Note: this video was sourced thanks to links posted by some commenters to the Falsehoods article.)
No comments:
Post a Comment