Why does California want me to have government ID that says I'm both male and female?

I'm taking time off during a workday to write this, but damn it, if I don't, I'm just going to explode here.

About midway through 2011, when it looked like there was a good chance I was staying in California for a while, I went to get a California's driver's license. I had had a CA license before, using my former legal name. This time, I checked off male as my gender, since I had my passport with me (which I'd already had corrected) and nobody was likely to question that I was male. The worker at the DMV looked up my old records when I said I'd previously had a driver's license in CA (I didn't mention that my name was different, since he didn't ask) but he didn't find anything. A week later or so I got a new CA license in the mail.

An entire year later, I got a letter in the mail from the DMV asking me to submit a DL-329 form to change my gender, with a threat that my driver's license would be invalidated three weeks from the date of the letter if I didn't do this. (They took a year to figure out they'd made a mistake, but gave me three weeks to address the issue.) I called the number on the letter, and talked to a person who works for the Records and Security Division. She explained that because there were two entries for people with the same Social Security number but different names and genders (my old name and my new name), that looked as if there were two people using the same Social Security number. To prove that these were the same person, I sent them a copy of my legal name change decree from five years ago, as well as my passport. That was about a month ago.

Since I'm buying a car, I wanted to check that my license was still valid, so I called the person I talked to before again. She said that she had received the documents, but if I didn't submit a DL-329 form, the DMV would invalidate my current license and I would have to go get a new license with an 'F' gender marker. I asked her if it was correct that she was asking me to carry a driver's license that says I'm female, and a passport that says I'm male, and she said that was correct. I asked how she expected me to prove that I should have an 'F' gender marker, since when I went to the DMV the worker would clearly see that I present as male. She said I should bring a copy of my birth certificate. I asked if it's correct that California disregards federal law by requiring people to have a different gender on their ID than the gender on their federal government ID. She said yes.

I am not up for debating why I don't want to fill in the DL-329 form and I will delete any comments that try to argue with me about this. I don't agree with the idea that either the motor vehicle registry or a doctor is more qualified to assess whether my "demeanor" is "male" or "female" than I am. I also don't know what it means to have a "male" or "female" demeanor. If I put barrettes in my hair, does that make my demeanor "female"? I don't think the DMV or anyone who was involved in making the law that underlies this form knows what it means to have a "male" or "female" demeanor, either.

Besides that, it's sex discrimination to subject trans people to a process of having their "demeanor" assessed as male or female just to be able to drive a car (and what if your demeanor is neither male nor female?), when cis people aren't required to prove what their gender is or get a doctor's signature to prove their demeanor is male or female.

So, now I have the options of either not only not driving, but not having any government ID other than my passport; or turning in my current driver's license in exchange for one with the wrong gender on it. I honestly don't understand why California feels the need to have a definition of what gender I am that's different from the federal government's definition. (Yeah, I know legal gender doesn't actually exist and is just a name to cover up a process of institutionalized bullying -- that's sort of the point.)

I don't see why I can't just keep my driver's license the way it is, especially given that having the correct gender on my license for the past year hasn't harmed anyone.

I would like suggestions, but "ask _____", where the blank is filled in with any well-known trans rights organization, is not going to cut it. Sorry. All the organizations that I know of appear to think that the current process is just fine and there's nothing wrong with making trans people, but not cis people, fill out a DL-329 form to get correct ID. If you have actual evidence that this isn't so, please share, but otherwise, yes, it has already occurred to me to talk to whatever organization you're thinking of, and no, I don't think that's going to work. Many trans people are happy with the current system of gatekeeping and don't see a reason to change that. I just don't see why anyone should have to fill out a demeaning and dehumanizing form just to be able to drive a car or, less than that, write a check or buy liquor. And as I said, I'm not up for debating this, only for receiving practical suggestions about solving the problem at hand. As such, all comments are screened.

I'm also wondering what happens if I correct my birth certificate before going to the DMV, and thus have no documentation left to show that "proves" I'm female (let's not talk about the absurdity to have to prove something that's false in order to get a driver's license). Unfortunately, Massachusetts's requirements involve proof of what they erroneously call "sex reassignment surgery", and while I happen to have that, I don't want to tacitly approve of a system that says that having surgery changes people's sex or gender, which it doesn't do. Then again, is it a lesser evil to supply proof of surgery in order to get a correct birth certificate that I can then use to buffalo California and their unarguably more objectionable rules?

TMI: Research Talk Etiquette

Because I'm having a few moments of emo and angst about the difficulty of understanding Rust code that's recently been rewritten, as well as the eventual fate of seemingly every major project I undertake, instead of writing a daily blog post today I'm going to talk about something different. (After all, my blog is on Dreamwidth, not LiveJournal, so emo and angst shouldn't be the order of the day.)

I went to a Mozilla intern's final research talk today. It was a good talk, covering some impressive work. Here are some hints for people attending research talks. Actually, they're more like requirements than hints.

1. If the speaker answers a question in a way that you think is naïve, consider that you may have misunderstood what they said. It is always possible that you are wrong, and that what you think was an assertion of fact was actually intended as a hypothetical, simplifying assumption that the speaker does not actually think is true. Under no circumstances should you burst out laughing. Laughter has the tendency to get the rest of the room laughing too, whether or not they actually understood the reason for the laughter. At any rate, laughing at a speaker is really not appropriate under any circumstances unless they have just told a funny joke.

Even if you are friends with the speaker and think that your laughter is appropriate given the terms of your relationship, not everybody else in the audience knows that. Your behavior sets an example: in this case, that it's okay to laugh at people. It has an effect. Try to make it a good one.

2. If you have something snarky to say about the contents of a talk, say it to your friend afterward. Write it down, if that helps. Don't say it out loud during the talk, even if you think no one else can hear you. Always assume you're sitting next to the lead developer on the project that the speaker is speaking about, and that they have excellent hearing.

Respecting people isn't hard, but when people do stuff like this, it fosters a disrespectful culture. It also creates an environment where people are afraid to speak up, make mistakes, and be wrong. Everyone should be able to experiment, take risks, and express bold opinions without fear of being made fun of for not knowing something. When somebody needs to boost themself up at another person's expense, I always assume that they're deathly insecure and afraid of having their own ignorance exposed. But there's no need to be afraid. Building software is difficult, and nobody is naturally good at it. We can all build an environment where no one is afraid to expose their weaknesses -- which is to say, where no one is afraid to learn and grow.