Removing Gender

As an IT consultant, my job often involves clarifying with clients exactly what it is they want a software system to do, and contribute suggestions because, quite often, what they think they want isn't actually what they want. Today, while meeting with a client for this purpose, we discussed a piece of their software which allowed them to search for a person in their database.

The criteria for searching were pretty typical: first name, surname, etc. That is, except for one particular field - gender. My clients had asked for the ability to search by gender.

Now, it's not my place to tell clients what to do as such; moreso, I'm there to, well, consult. So I pointed out the gender criterion and subtly asked if having to specify gender was actually how they wanted the searching to work. And they sat there and thought for a moment, blinking as though wondering why they'd included gender at all.

And the reason? They had no idea. In their case, there was no practical use for searching by gender (it wasn't as though the clients were running a dating service or anything). If anything, it's rather impractical to have to specify someone's gender when searching for their records, especially if you only have a(n often ethnic) name to go by.

So we struck it off the list. Gone. No more having to discriminate by gender when searching.

A part of me recognises that this was some sort of overlapping line between social traditions (where gender has historically - for whatever reason - been part of identifying someone) and social reality (where it doesn't make sense for a modern business like this particular client to distinguish between male and female). The rest of me is just happy because we got rid of a silly search field and made some clients lives easier.

Radio

Some time ago, an ex colleague asked if I'd mind appearing for an interview on a community radio programme which he hosts. Well, over a year later, it's going ahead - the Orange Ribbon programme airs on Melbourne radio station JOY 94.9FM at 7pm AEST on Wednesday, 18th June. You can also catch the show at the JOY 94.9 website by clicking the Listen link at the top.

Yes, I'm nervous about saying something stupid that will upset someone in the LGBT communities, or plainly sounding dull as a bollard, or having a fit of inarticulation. It will be live, too, so more's the worry.

Legalities of Gender, Part III

My application went through, and my legal details have been amended! The certificate lists my name, gender (female), date of birth, and country of birth (Malaysia). Where I might ordinarily provide a birth certificate to identify myself, I can produce this instead.

What does this mean? Well the short answer is, it means I'm legally female!

The longer answer is that it means I can finally have that pesky M on my bank account/insurance/passport changed to an F, and that I have the same legal rights as any woman, entitling me to do things like marry a man (but prohibiting me from marrying a woman, since gay marriage is still illegal in Australia, of course).

Something I haven't gotten my head around is that they've also canceled my change-of-name certificate. I'm not exactly sure what this means, but it seems to imply that, officially, my name has always been Amanda and I've always been female. This raises the question of what I'm going to do about some vestigial things which are still in my old name; I can foresee a lot of confusion if I try to request for a name change using the canceled certificate, and the new Recognised Details certificate doesn't contain any details to link me to my previous name. Hmmm.

The really surreal part is that to me, and to most of the people around me, who I am has become so obvious that the official stuff just seems odd and overstated. But that's our society for you. :)