UK - Sense Spoken in Parliament re Trans People and ID Documents

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

I'd just like to take a moment to draw attention to something my MP, Julian Huppert, said yesterday in committee in respect to transgender people and identity documents, the selected transcript is taken from here. For background, the committee is engaged with dismantling the previous government's Identity Cards Bill, in which transgender people were to be issued with two ID cards - one male, the other female. Anyway, I think the following is made of total win:

There are a number of different circumstances: there are people who are neutrois and inter-sex people—there is a complicated collection. The simple solution to many of these circumstances is just not to have gender information on any of these identity documents. The people I spoke to would push for that very strongly. They are concerned about a repeat of what happened in Trafalgar square at Pride 2008 when there were inappropriate demands for gender recognition certificates. Hon. Members will know some of the history of that.

There does not seem to be a need for identity documents of any kind to have gender information. It is not a very good biometric; it is roughly a 50:50 split. Military ID, such as the MOD90, which obviously can have quite a high security clearance, contains no gender information. That might be what we should look at.

The emphasis is mine. I am so very proud of him :-)