My complaint to the passport office and the response I received…

[PassportProblemo]

So, I recently applied for a new UK passport. During the application process, I was asked for my “gender” and given the options “male” and “female”. At no point was I asked my sex. Assuming there was an error, I submitted the following complaint to the passport office:

"Hello,

I recently applied for a new passport as mine is nearing expiry.

As part of the application, I was asked to provide my "gender". The options offered were "female" and "male". As "male" and "female" refer to one's sex, I do not believe that this section is correct in asking for the applicant's gender.

Therefore, may I ask why you are using the term "gender" rather than "sex"? Also, do you plan on ever correcting this to avoid confusion to your customers?

Kind regards,"

During the complaints process, it asked if I would like my response via phone or writing. I requested writing.

Two days later, I received a phone call from the Passport Office… The woman said that the office is just following their internal guidance here, which says that this is what they should do. I asked for her response in writing. She sent me the following email:

“Dear PassportProblemo,

Thank you for your enquiry.

The passport application process is structured in accordance with The Gender Recognition Act 2004 which came into effect on 4 April 2005.

For more information on The Gender Recognition Act 2004 and how it applies to the passport application process please see the below link:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/7/contents

Yours sincerely,”

(I have removed the satisfaction survey link they included in their email)

Right, so what do we do next? How do we challenge their holy “internal guidance”?!?

@ScaryFaces we don't have to work hard to make gender ideology make no sense, it is already pure nonsense through and through.

True. true. They'd also have to change their name presumably, so perhaps we should place a ban on people changing their name on their passport as well? Afterall, Sally Smith wanting to change her name to Sally Jones because she's got married could be providing an unwitting cover for a nefarious criminal.

Or, you know, perhaps we could recognise that someone obtaining a false passport with a new name and identity to hide criminal activity is obviously very different to someone who has a legally issued passport on which they have legally changed information?

Well that is very interesting. If that's the case why did the last Olympics committee say anyone with an F in their passport can compete in women's sports...

Your user name suits you.

I dont think much happens with a change of gender on a passport. Its just a reissue of the original one, in much the same way as a name change would, or if its renewed.

The passports sees the same person, if that makes sense?

It does. But unusually for me, I've thought about this topic a fair bit. And I've marvelled at how many otherwise intelligent people have fallen for such a pile of obvious claptrap.

Thank you. As I said, I'm asking because you seemed to be knowledgeable about it. I am trying to be courteous enough to assume honesty on your part, and would appreciate it if you could assume likewise. I'm an adult - perhaps not neurotypical, which might not help - but I'm not playing games or setting up or anything. This is something I'm trying to understand, and I had thought perhaps understanding is a common goal!

if you find the term "gender identity" uncomfortable, then think of it as a perception of your own sex vs how others perceive that sex.

But the way I perceive what my sex is - with my eyes - is the same as how others perceive it. My vision works ok, so how I look to myself is broadly how I look to others.

Do you mean some other meaning of 'perceive' that I haven't grasped, that's not about the body or how it looks? Sorry if this sounds basic, I'm trying to work through step by step what you're trying to convey.

But even as a more general question, not specific to me - does 'not having a gender identity' match, or not match, being female?

I would have expected there to be some acknowledgement of people that can't pinpoint a gender identity within themselves, or are they just excluded from this whole discussion?

Passport standards are international. If UK passports do not meet international standards, then they are of no use.

But one needs to buy the ISO/IEC standard to see what it says. It is nothing to do with any ideology or campaign group.

ISO/IEC 7501-1:2008 | IEC

Not excluded from the discussion at all, but as I said, no one else can tell you if you're trans or not, so I can't answer that for you. If you feel your perceived lack of gender identity creates a genuine incongruence with the fact that your body is female and/or that you are perceived as female by the world, then that might be a basis on which some people might identify as trans. Whether that applies to you or not, only you can say. If on the other hand, you are female, you are perceived as female, and you are quite happy with that state of affairs - or at least do not feel any strong urge or compulsion to change it - it is difficult to see on what basis you might claim to be trans as there is no incongruence there.

I can’t believe you actually wasted your (and their) time on this OP.

We can talk about courtesy when I'm free to post on the UK Trans Reddit using my choice of language, as you are free to post here using yours.

I don't think your language is wrong; it is wrong.

OK thanks - so I think we've concluded that if you don't know, and I don't know, whether "not having a gender identity" makes someone cis, trans or otherwise, then perhaps it's not as simple as is commonly claimed!

I know what a common experience it can be to have 'who you are' generally not even considered when discussing stuff - the discussion is often dominated by those for whom anything different from 'the norm' just doesn't factor in.

Let's hope open discussion and questioning can help include those who don't know where they sit by definitions that don't quite apply to them.

There are definitely times in my life where not being perceived as female would benefit me. And there are definitely times when I would prefer it if I was treated as neither male nor female (as in, if people treated both equally). Yet there are times when my body being female is essential to be perceived as such - medical treatment, etc.

So I'm none the wiser.

The passport office said that a passport isn't proof of sex, that why they have always allowed cross dressing men to change the marker to female.
Any cross dresser can change the marker on their passport without doctors letters or a GRC.

Really?

"Gender change
Send one of the following when you apply for a passport:
a Gender Recognition Certificate
a new birth or adoption certificate showing your acquired gender
a letter from your doctor or medical consultant confirming your change of gender is likely to be permanent"

https://www.gov.uk/changing-passport-information/gender

I would have asked for advice as to how to complete the form if I have no gender.

It isn't that it isn't simple, it's that some things are for a person to decide for themselves if this label fits them or not? As an analogy, pretend you're asking me right now if you're really straight, lesbian or bisexual. I'd tell you I don't know, I can't see inside your head and tell who you're attracted to. I could make a guess based on your behaviour but behaviour doesn't always match orientation, and ultimately only you know who you're attracted to deep down, and only you can say which label feels most right to you. This doesn't mean the definitions of the words "straight", lesbian" and "bisexual" are complicated, they aren't, they're pretty simple. Likewise, only you know if you feel a significant incongruence between your birth sex and how you perceive yourself/others perceive you, but the concept of that incongruence being something which exists for some people is not in itself that complicated.

Yep.

Also, how is a child or a person with learning difficulties/ low IQ meant to answer this?

Oh come off it, "gender" isn't some obscure concept you have to be an adult or high IQ to be aware of - it's very commonly used as a synonym for sex, anyone who is intelligent enough to fill in the form is perfectly intelligent enough to understand what this question means. If they aren't, they're going to struggle with a lot more than this one question and "we can't ask about gender because a hypothetical 5 year old might have been left by a neglectful parent to fill in a passport application on their own" is obviously an absurd position.

The only times where I think gender (or sex) might be useful is if immigration is looking on a database to draw up a list - for example of criminals they are looking for.

Or maybe some very unusual circumstances where somebody has for example had some big accident abroad and they can’t be properly recognized by their face so a few other bits of data would be useful.

I think also there is an international standard for passports (DF used to work in international standardization of all kinds of things eg airport signage) and I expect gender/sex is one of the information fields within the standard. I expect if you were to look at an EU, US, Canadian, Singapore or Australian passport, they contain the same data. (An educated guess - please correct me if you know otherwise),

The fact that there is an international standard for passports indicates that OP's query is not just quibbling.

It needs to be made absolutely clear just what information that field is supposed to capture.

"Gender" can mean, variously, "a polite synonym for one's sex", "how one identifies" and "how one presents", all of which could be out of alignment. It's not a clear term by itself.

Given that passports are now in common use as ID in all sorts of situations beyond the original context of travel, the people who need to know what a passport does and doesn't prove are far more numerous than just passport office employees and customs and immigration staff.

Some of those other situations - now or in the future (demanding sight of ID seems to be a growth area these days) - may require proof of sex. A lot of people won't realise that a passport is unfit for that purpose.

As someone up the thread pointed out, even something as apparently unrelated to passport control as an Olympic boxing contest can be affected.

It isn't that it isn't simple, it's that some things are for a person to decide for themselves if this label fits them or not?

That's a given: that's what I've been trying to do, by looking closely at 'the label' and what I am told in words that it means.

The label assumes either
that everyone has a gender identity, or
that they can tell which of

a) 'having a gender identity that doesn't sit comfortably with your sex'
or
b) 'having a gender identity that does sit comfortably with your sex'

is more likely to include 'not having a gender identity at all'.

You haven't found it simple to say which of those two fits 'not having a gender identity at all', so I would say, it isn't simple.

I could decide either of those for myself, but as a way of communicating a common meaning, that's not helpful. I could decide that 'trans' means 'being left-handed' but that isn't helpful either to work towards a common understanding particularly when 'cis people' and 'trans people' are discussed as a group, or even as having protected characteristics.

Shouldn't it be the opposite? Even if the photo shows someone who looks male, the sex marker should say female (or the other way around). This would determine eg. who this person can get searched by. Otherwise you could have a man posing as a woman getting searched by a female officer. How would you protect female officers from this?

I have no patience with people who act dumb to try and make a point. The OP knew fine damn well which box to tick, and instead of rolling eyes and then doing that, chose to cause a whole lot of quite innocent people a whole load of hassle.

avoids clunky constructions like talking about "non-trans women"

Women is the answer. Not a Latin prefix co-opted in 1994 by gender ideologists in an attempt to pretend that men are any kind of woman.

Not non men. Not cis women. Not whichever bullshit term is being peddled now.

Women.

This is why those of us who are women i.e adult females, and know we are women, without in-depth rumination about what that means and what gender we identify as, don’t want to be called cis women. We are not the opposite of, or non, anything - we are the definition of women, not a subset, and require no further identification, especially not to keep other people happy.