Gender-neutral passport option to end ‘scary’ situations

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This article was published 26/08/2017 (2965 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg transgender advocate is applauding news the federal government will allow Canadians to identify their gender as “X” on passports beginning Aug. 31, saying she hopes the change will be replicated with driver’s licences and health cards in Manitoba.

The “X” will indicate an unspecified gender for those who don’t wish to select male or female.

Shandi Strong, a transgender woman, says the change is overdue and will help alleviate the “embarrassing, scary and frustrating” situations transgender and non-binary people are often forced into when interacting with authorities.

“We have learned more about gender expression over the years that we didn’t know when passports were created,” Strong said Friday.

“We’re becoming aware that people are not just male or female because a doctor looks at your genitalia when you come out of the womb. And this day and age, there’s no real reason for people to know what’s between your legs — to be blunt.”

Proponents of the passport change draw a distinction between biological sex and gender identity. Put simply: biological sex refers to one’s genitalia, while gender identity refers to an internal sense of self: man, woman, non-binary, fluid, etc.

With the stroke of a doctor’s pen at birth, Strong says, transgender and non-binary people are forced into social roles and expectations that don’t correspond to who they are as individuals.

Strong hopes the change to passports, and potential future changes to provincial identification, will help authority figures be more sensitive to those who are transgender and non-binary.

“Trans people get asked all sorts of rude questions when interacting with authority figures all the time,” she said.

“People are made to feel uncomfortable about who they are and it feels pretty awful. There’s stigma and you don’t understand how somebody else is going to react to it. You’re forced back into a box when you’ve just started to feel good enough about yourself to crawl out of it.”

Most Manitobans, however, do not agree with the government’s move. A poll from the Angus Reid Institute, released in early July, showed 65 per cent of Manitobans oppose gender-neutral birth certificates — higher than the 58 per cent nationally who opposed the idea. Even within the transgender and non-binary community, the move to include “X” on passports wasn’t universally applauded.

The Gender Free ID Coalition said in a news release Friday it reacted to news of the change with “dismay,” saying it wasted an opportunity to address an important issue facing transgender and gender-diverse Canadians.

“While it is welcome that the Canadian government is explicitly recognizing non-binary genders, this is an unimaginative change,” the news release said. The organization instead wants the federal government to move to identification with no gender designation, saying an “X” on a passport places “a target on their forehead” when travelling to “places where being trans can get you killed.”

When contacted for comment, the City of Winnipeg confirmed it was transitioning to gender-neutral forms for all city business, although no estimate was given for when this process might be complete.

A spokeswoman for the province was asked Friday afternoon if gender-neutral driver’s licences and health cards could be in Manitoba’s future, but was unable to provide a response before publication. In a past statement to the Free Press, a spokesperson for the province said Manitoba’s government would monitor how the changes to gender-neutral identification in Ontario and B.C. went before making any decisions.

With the change Canada will join Pakistan, New Zealand, Australia, Denmark and Germany as countries that provide an “X” designation on passport identification.

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca