Recommended post: RPG and transitioning

Well worth reading: a fantastic reflection by Samantha Allen about role-playing games and transitioning, Boob Sliders, Or How Role-Playing Games Helped Me Transition.

Hat tip to E for spotting this for me.

Who are you?

Over on Slashdot, a discussion looking at name conflicts in automatically-generated email accounts includes a variety of problems that arise from making assumptions about identity as expressed by names.

(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:

• 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.)

Mediated life: digital afterlife

An entertaining and surprisingly (disturbingly?) familiar look at what the future might entail:

Who upgrades the upgraders?

One for all, and all for one

The old saying one for all, and all for one takes on a deeper meaning in a story in The Economist. Me, myself, us argues that a human is much more than simply a man or a woman: we are complex beings inhabited by substantial numbers of microorganisms essential to our survival, known collectively as the microbiome. According to the article, "[a] healthy adult human harbours some 100 trillion bacteria in his gut alone. That is ten times as many bacterial cells as he has cells descended from the sperm and egg of his parents."

Understanding the human as a complex, multi-organism being may open the way for very different ways of approaching medicine and human health. Dealing with disease may turn out to be a matter of better managing the balance of organisms that comprise any given individual. According to the Canadian Microbiome Initiative, "microbes play an important role in human health, not just as pathogens, or as benign communities that keep pathogens at bay, but also in association with a number of chronic health conditions including gastrointestinal diseases, obesity, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, asthma and cardiovascular disease."

For a slightly tongue-in-cheek look at what a microbiome-positive world might look like, see Tuberculosis bacteria join UN by microbiologist and science fiction writer, Joan Slonczewski.

Future-perfect: the rationally designed human

A bioethicist suggests that genetically engineering babies along a "rational design" would benefit humanity.Professor Julian Savulescu of the University of Oxford is quoted as saying, "Indeed, when it come to screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence, you could argue that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children."  

What else might be erased under the notion of a 'personality flaw'? Would humanity truly improve by removing perceived flaws or is there a net benefit to retaining diversity? As the professor notes, "routinely screening embryos and foetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down's syndrome" results in "little public outcry."

Earlier this year, there was public outcry when it was discovered that an American reproductive clinic offering gender selection services was advertising its services in Canada. Sex-selective procedures are illegal in Canada under Section 5(1)(e) of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act. Advertising such services is also illegal under the Act.

Also under Section 5(1)(e), though, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act does allow for sex-selective procedures "to prevent, diagnose or treat a sex-linked disorder or disease ...". Under the DSM and it's proposed revisions, a substantial list of conditions fall under the broad category of Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders. How broadly applied might legislation allowing genetic manipulation actually be?

I think it's fair to state that Western culture remains heavily biased towards a sex binary and that as such, the dominant culture might consider eradicating the possibility of trans at a genetic level to be a perfectly acceptable and even non-contentious decision.

But is eradicating the trans experience from the human experience actually such an easy decision? Would those who have undergone this experience agree that the possibility of being trans is itself problematic?

Is there value to undergoing the trans experience? Does such an experience have lessons to share with those who haven't and won't undergo that experience? As trans people, would we be comfortable with trans identities never having the opportunity to exist? Is there some sort of intrinsic value to coming to know ourselves as not fitting our assigned identity and undertaking the journey to uncover and assert ourselves as who we are?

Telegraph article originally linked via Slashdot.

On disguises and lawful excuses

Bill C-309–the Preventing Persons from Concealing Their Identity during Riots and Unlawful Assemblies Act–has passed second reading and is now heading to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Bill C-309 will make "wearing a mask or other disguise to conceal [a person's] identity without lawful excuse" a criminal offence should such a mask or disguise happen to be worn during a riot.

Authorities have been known to accuse trans people of wearing a disguise or be suspicious based on apparent gender non-conformity (p. 53), sometimes for the purposes of engaging in prostitution. At least one elected official has suggested that Canadians who fail to have matching identification are a security threat to air travel.

The Preventing Persons from Concealing Their Identity during Riots and Unlawful Assemblies Act is sponsored by MP Blake Richards, who has previously claimed that granting explicit federal protection for gender identity and gender expression should not be allowed on the grounds that "gender identity is subjective ... ." Bill C-309 also appears to include subjective terminology: it does not define what counts as an "other disguise" nor does it explain what constitutes a "lawful excuse" for such a disguise.