Why Passports have Sex -- Trump v Orr, SCOTUS, Bad Habits, and Imagination [View all]

https://open.substack.com/pub/erichensal/p/why-passports-have-sex

Why do we list sex at all on a passport? Obscure treaty obligations aside, what’s the benefit? Before photos and biometric data, sex helped confirm identity along with height or hair color. But are we still listing sex simply out of habit—one born more than a century ago?

“Habit is the flywheel of society,” said William James in his Principles of Psychology at the last century’s turn. For those less mechanical, a flywheel is a heavy wheel within an engine that is hard to get spinning but, once moving, keeps an engine’s power steady. Habit does the same for society—a set of routines we learn once, then repeat without thought. If, one day, everyone had to relearn how to bank, drive, or even when to say “good morning,” society would collapse.
Bad Habits

Social habit is necessary but also enforces oppression with a flywheel’s constancy. Consider Jim Crow. Southerners did not everyday carry an apartheid rule book on oppression; rather, they had expectations, received from their mothers and fathers, of Black folks’ place, and vice versa—this was the foundation for Jim Crow injustice.
Bias breeds bias

Progressives must see how habit holds onto our racism, sexism, classism, and every bias that oppresses someone else. People just hold onto habits and assumptions that feel so fundamental no one questions them. But questioning assumptions is critical for ending injustices. Let us take a simple, not life-or-death, example—why do girls play softball?

**SNIP**