Senseless Regulation

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority is requiring the gender of the person who bought a transportation pass be stamped on the pass. This is a senseless regulation that creates undue hardship on the trans-community. They claim this will stop people from sharing the pass. At first glance you might think this is a good idea, but it is not a good idea on several levels…

First, people can still share transportation passes with friends of the same gender.
Second, agencies sometimes buy passes for their clients so that they can get to appointments or job interviews. Here in Connecticut, the Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition buys buss passes for trnas-people who have a doctors appointment and they need help in getting to the doctors office.
Third, it creates undue hardship for trans-people who maybe have to go to work in their birth gender and at night they go out in their true gender.

In a staff editorial in the Swarthmore College newspaper, The Phoenix, they write,

… This policy, a weak attempt to reduce prohibited sharing of passes, unfairly forces transgender and gender-non-conforming riders to identify as either male or female. It also compels SEPTA conductors to act as “gender police” as they are responsible for judging whether or not cardholders’ gender matches the category indicated on their pass, resulting in many a situation in which a rider whose gender is misperceived by the conductor may be denied the card discount if not denied access to SEPTA transportation entirely.