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this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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(obligatory) Why does a passport need a gender marker again?
for the same reason a birth certificate, drivers license, social security record, or any other official document does: no reason at all!
It doesn't even make sense in medical contexts, where what matters is more the ability to become pregnant than something like your socially-assigned gender, so in an ideal world a medical chart might record the presence of organs like a uterus or medical capacities, for example to indicate a need for pregnancy testing before administering certain treatments, but not something like "male" or "female" which doesn't correspond to the reality of biological sex and will miss important nuances.
Ontario’s health card doesn’t even display a sex marker on it, though it is part of the information associated with the card. I really don’t understand why other forms of ID need it. It isn’t relevant toward identifying you or your ability to operate a vehicle. So why does it exist? Like you said: no reason at all!
The US social security card does not have a gender marker. However, the database entry associated with the card does, and that database is what the feds use as the primary reference for determining someone's gender in federal systems.
There are no circumstances where an ID card would be unable identify an individual but for the gender marker. Gender markers should not exist. Gender shouldn't even be recorded.
Examining the genitals of newborn babies and recording the findings is weird unhinged behavior. It should not be normal.
Imo,
It makes sense for a hospital birth record (not a government document) to note "observed sex at birth", alongside other measurements like length and weight, since it's a medical record and gives then a moderately good first guess about internal organs.
It makes sense for drivers license and passport to have "gender expression" alongside hair and eye color, height, weight and if you wear glasses. Everything in that section is self-reported and helps make sure you're the person on the document, but they're all things that can be situationally different or go out of date. With how dimorphic our fashion is culturally, gender expression can be pretty identifying, similar to the other qualities.
Every other government document has no business recording sex or gender in any capacity. Neither of them is the government's business.