UK Supreme Court: No to gender-neutral passports

Those documents are perfectly legal, and can indeed be used as supporting documentation for a range of purposes, one of which includes either applying for a new passport, or changing the name on your passport.

It IS sex or gender, in UK law at least, and the point was made by Lord Reed, president of the Supreme Court, that they are terms which are used interchangeably, by way of supporting his opinion that gender was a biographical detail which can be used to confirm a person’s identity, and it is therefore… well -

It is therefore the gender recognised for legal purposes and recorded in those documents which is relevant," he said.

I’m perfectly aware that sex is based upon science insofar as science is relevant, but in the meantime where law and civil and human rights are concerned, the whole “sex based upon science” argument is as weak sauce as the Lord Reeds effort to justify maintaining the status quo because it would be an administrative headache to change it.

It strikes me that there is a possibility of unintended consequences for people who declare themselves with a non-traditional gender on their passports. There are countries in the world that have a very black and white view (often driven by a dominant religious ideology) about gender-related matters. Extremely conservative societies with laws to match. It's pretty easy to envisage that X gender on a passport could trigger an immigration official to make your life miserable for some time as you try to enter their country. Or more significantly, it could be used against you under the bizarre morality laws that some countries have to convict you of a crime.

Obviously, this shouldn't be an issue in the more liberal parts of the world. At best that's a bit confining. But there are possible issues with transiting through airports in more conservative countries (Which include some of the biggest airline hubs in the world), and in extreme cases ending up in one unexpectedly (like the passengers in an intra-EU Ryanair flight which ended up unexpectedly landing in a very non-UE country earlier this year. Things don't always go to plan)

If you reversed the argument and said that all non-binary gendered people HAD to be identified as such on their passports there would be uproar (and rightly so).

I have no idea either way. One would be one too many.

I'm just pointing to the possibilities. I know in my own case I would like the absolute minimum amount of information on my passport. I thoroughly dislike filling out forms (such as the U.S. ESTA) that ask for way beyond the minimum.

Some people have multiple passports to obfuscate even the minimal amount of information that a bog-standard passport provides. Irish passports have been popular as second passports for people who wish to obfuscate their "original" nationality. Declaring more information than necessary on your passports goes against this kind of thought process.

I think non binary people are probably aware of the negative reactions and violence already.

Of course. And then also not having the marker of their preferred gender identity could cause trans people all sorts of hassle and problems too.

"These are nothing more than personal descriptors for someone's personality. And that's fine - but it is absolutely non-objective and should have nothing to do with national identification."

This is your opinion, you are perfectly entitled to hold this opinion but you hold it because its an emotional response to something you don't like as you stated earlier in the thread.

Others hold a different opinion to you, an opinion which they are also fully entitled to hold, just because you say something is so does not automatically mean it is so.

Go into the Christianity forum and tell them "god" is not real and thier beliefs are not real

"because they are based on subjective personal experience." And not "backed up with evidence and logic and reason."

Let me know how that goes for you.

Meh

In the real world trans people can already get passports. All your whataboutery makes no difference.

You're well able to dismiss yourself 😉

Not really. Irish and UK laws allow trans people to use passports for a long time. The Irish government is moving towards legal recocgnition of non binary people.

Official documents are not supposed to be about someone's opinion though.

There is no burden of proof on the state to prove or acknowledge the existence of someone's chosen deity. Freedom of religion, is the right to practice your chosen religion free of discrimination or prejudice.

I have no issue whatsoever, with anyone choosing to live their life as gender neutral. Good luck to them, I hope they're happy and enjoy a prejudice free existence. Certainly they won't receive any discrimination from me anyway.

However, lying on an official document is a step too far. If you're going to put something completely unsupported by science on that document, you might as well just fabricate everything else as well. In that scenario, the rest of the population could just put any date of birth they choose - basically whatever age they feel like. Because that's essentially the only criteria for being gender neutral - you FEEL like you're gender neutral.

So, what's to stop you FEELING just about anything else you please?

This is one of the problems you run into in modern western culture, when feelings have become more important than facts.

I’m making the point though LB that the people who’s argument generally consists of “sex based upon science” and “biological reality” and all the rest of it, are unlikely to have ever opened a science textbook in their lives. They are perfectly willing to lean on scientific evidence when it suits their opinions, and reject scientific evidence when it doesn’t suit their opinions.

I do see where you’re coming from with the idea that omitting gender altogether from being recognised on passports would settle all arguments, but I don’t think it would, as it would still mean that people would wish to have their gender recognised by their respective political entities, and the UK in particular would like to have it no other way -

It’s the current legal status of those people who’s gender does not conform to how gender is currently recognised in law (as binary), who are seeking legal recognition of their gender which currently does not have equal status in terms of legal recognition, representation or protection from unlawful discrimination. Their argument is that current lack of recognition is inadequate and they are forced to use inadequate and inappropriate terms which do not refer to their gender and do not reflect their identity.