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varjohaltiaThe highest court in Finland just gave their decision in a case where a transsexual person had requested that their unique personal identifier, basically their SSN, be changed to reflect their new gender. By extension, this would change their legal gender in virtually all official contexts.
Here's where the geekery comes in. Every Finn gets, automatically, an ID number. It consists of six digits: day, month, last two digits of the year. Then there's a separator, which marks the century (+/-/A), a three-digit sequential number which is even for women and odd for men, and then a checksum alphanumeric digit (take the digits in the ID, treat them as a number, divide by 31, take the remainder and map it through a table into a letter or digit). It's neat because there's an ECC with pretty good Hamming distance, so if you ever give out your ID number verbally and there's a miscommunication, it's quickly found. Also, you only have to remember three numbers and one alphanumeric digit in addition to your birthday. In the case of transgendered individuals, neuters or hermaphrodites the ID will force one to pick a gender -- essentially your SSN is gender dependent.
Anyhow, the court declined the request. The ground was that the person in question was married, and their partner would not give consent to commute the marriage into a registered partnership. Marriage is strictly defined as a union between a man and a woman -- either the partners are legally separate genders (though not necessarily biologically, one assumes) OR they can only be entered in a legally somewhat less equal union that is not marriage. In order for the marriage to be converted into a registered partnership, both husband and wife have to agree.
This gets a bit more quirky when it's pointed out that marriage can be either a religious church marriage, or a civil marriage from a magistrate or such that's entirely non-religious.
Here's where the geekery comes in. Every Finn gets, automatically, an ID number. It consists of six digits: day, month, last two digits of the year. Then there's a separator, which marks the century (+/-/A), a three-digit sequential number which is even for women and odd for men, and then a checksum alphanumeric digit (take the digits in the ID, treat them as a number, divide by 31, take the remainder and map it through a table into a letter or digit). It's neat because there's an ECC with pretty good Hamming distance, so if you ever give out your ID number verbally and there's a miscommunication, it's quickly found. Also, you only have to remember three numbers and one alphanumeric digit in addition to your birthday. In the case of transgendered individuals, neuters or hermaphrodites the ID will force one to pick a gender -- essentially your SSN is gender dependent.
Anyhow, the court declined the request. The ground was that the person in question was married, and their partner would not give consent to commute the marriage into a registered partnership. Marriage is strictly defined as a union between a man and a woman -- either the partners are legally separate genders (though not necessarily biologically, one assumes) OR they can only be entered in a legally somewhat less equal union that is not marriage. In order for the marriage to be converted into a registered partnership, both husband and wife have to agree.
This gets a bit more quirky when it's pointed out that marriage can be either a religious church marriage, or a civil marriage from a magistrate or such that's entirely non-religious.
