Gender Classification Policies

     Our society implements the gender binary with sex markers and sex identification. This implementation is used with restrooms, identification documents like passports and driver’s licenses, and prisons leading to the enforcement of gender normativity in our society and exclusion of individuals that society deems to be pushing the gender boundaries. In environments that use gender classification policies, individuals in charge are given the power to judge and justify a person’s gender. This room for individual discretion and bias leads to discrimination against members of the transgender community which, in this paper, is used as an umbrella term that encompasses transgender, non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals. In Heath Fogg Davis’ article “Sex Classification Policies as Transgender Discrimination: An Intersectional Critique”, Davis argues for the abolishment of these harmful gender classification policies.​

     While judicial policies have been put into place that battle discrimination based on gender, many of these are targeting policies that “disadvantage women in relationship to men”. These policies do not, however, cover the binary categories of sex classification policies that police gender performance of those who may not identify as one of the binary categories. In his article, Davis argues for the abolition of sex-classification policies using the reasoning that following anti-discrimination law, “sex-classification policies must be at least rationally related to legitimate employment, business, or educational goals”. In most situations these policies are unnecessary. When being used for verification of identity, other aspects of an individual’s personal information could be used and would be more secure for identity verification than gender. In medical fields, instead of wording questions about gender in a binaristic way, they should be about biologically what the doctor needs to know such as if the person is able to get pregnant or not. A mainstream location of these arguments is the bathroom debate. While many of these arguments have focused on individual cases or how to determine who should be allowed in each gendered restroom, Davis argues that what should be focused on instead is “whether the existence of sex-segregated facilities” is violating discriminatory laws. As long as we continue having restrooms divided by gender, individuals outside of the socially accepted gender norms will face discrimination at the discretion of individuals through public policing. ​

     Sex-classification policies discriminate against individuals outside of gender norms by giving the public power to police their gender expression. These policies do not fulfill any legitimate goals and therefore, should be abolished as they do not serve any purpose outside of fulfilling socially accepted expectations of gender.