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to promote civic engagement in the Philadelphia region.Opponents to SEPTA’s male/female train pass labels emerge on Facebook
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 4:09 pm - by Alan Tu. Filed under: Community.
Logo from a new Facebook page
(update 7/20/09: On Thurs, July 16. SEPTA rejected its Citizens Advisory Committee’s recommendation to end the male/female sticker policy. SEPTA General Manager Joe Casey says the stickers remain a useful too in discouraging train pass sharing.)
If you are a regular rider of the Philadelphia region’s commuter rail service, then you’ve probably purchased a weekly or monthly train pass. The ticket agents require that each pass be identified with an F for female or M for male. SEPTA uses this to help reduce train pass sharing among friends and family.
Today’s Septa Watch blog reports on a new Facebook page that aims to end SEPTA policy of asking customers to say male or female when purchasing a train pass. The Facebook page is titled “Stop SEPTA from using Gender Stickers on Transpasses.” It urges people to turnout for the next Septa Citizen Advisory Committee to raise the issue. The website lists some of reasons its authors oppose SEPTA’s current polilcy.
-The use of gender stickers discriminates against transgendered individuals.
-Using gender stickers to prevent pass sharing is ineffective.
-If the government is going to institute a discriminatory policy to solve an economic problem, then the burden is on SEPTA to prove such a problem actually exists and exists to such a scale to justify the problematic solution
Septa Watch also mentions that Equality Advocates Pennsylvania has in the past filed a complaint with the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. I left a message with EAP to see where things stand on that complaint. I also sent an email to SEPTA PR to see if it foresees any changes to its policy. I’ll let you if either group gets back to me.
In the meantime, Do you think the gender stickers are needed? Do you know how other transportation agencies try to prevent ticket sharing? Have you ever been given a train pass and it had the wrong gender on it? Should SEPTA employees be required to wear a badge stating their gender?
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
The stickers (theoretically) prevent you from sharing a pass with somebody of the opposite sex. There is nothing preventing anybody from sharing a pass with somebody of the same sex. Affixing a sticker adds time to transaction, and incremental costs in time and materials (the stickers themselves). Philly is the only place I can think of that differentiates between male/female.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Philly is the only place I can think of with the stickers.It’s never seemed like it was uniformly enforced, though I was once asked to pay cash or leave since iwas using my male boss’ pass for work business. It certainly seems discriminatory toward transgendered folks in a city that’s supposed to be lgtb friendly. Maybe it’s time to switch to a gender-neutral, rechargeable passes like NY or Montreal? Wpuld also seem greener, wouldn’t it?
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Plan is to go to rechargeable passes, but in the mean time, there is a huge amount of fraud. How significant is the transgender issue really? Many more people trying to use sister’s or mother’s or dad’s pass, then a whole bunch of transgender folks angry that they have to pick one?! Besides - solveable by how the transgender person identifies, nothing to say person had to have started out male if s/he now identifies as female - female sticker okay presumably.
June 2nd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I hear regularly from transgendered peoples that this is one of the biggest, clearest problems they face. It’s such an easy one to solve — solving it would make people in our community feel safer, reduce paperwork costs, and make us inline with most other cities.
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:51 pm
SEPTA is researching new payment technologies, so this argument will be irrelevant in the next year or two.
Is there equal opposition to the Department of Motor Vehicles requiring a sex on the license? I see the issue as being the same, if equity is a concern for transgendered people.
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:50 pm
To the SEPTA insider:
Most often, one’s legal sex is decided at birth based on the absence or the presence of a penis. It is absolutely possible for someone who is actually male to be born with a disfigured penis and decided female at birth. Your state ID or license reflects your legal sex. This, too, is problematic and other efforts are in place to combat this.
In Western Civilization, only 2 genders (or sexes) are recognized: male and female. In other places like India, however, 5 genders are recognized.
SEPTA patrons are going to share transpasses regardless of a gender marker. Many people will often swipe the card in a way where the sticker is not visible to the SEPTA employee. Sometimes people will actually remove the sticker entirely, conjuring a myriad of reasons why the sticker is missing.
Since it’s so easy to bypass this anyway, what’s the point of having? Like Chris said, we’re wasting time and money on obtaining the stickers and affixing them.
June 3rd, 2009 at 8:49 am
It’s unfortunate but I don’t think SEPTA will move on this until their new fare payment system is in place. My main problem with this is that it’s just so arbitrary. Why gender? Why not age or hair color or height? I’ve used my wife’s pass a number of times and as long as I’m entering the system at a turnstile, I’ve never had a problem.
I’ve even used it on trolleys and buses by strategically positioning my thumb over the sticker so as not to draw attention to it. These bus drivers don’t want to be jerks about it but they have to say something if you don’t at least try to obscure the sticker.
The sooner they get rid of that sticker, the better.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Andrew, not all TG people present just one gender all the time. Many are in transition or closeted in situations, so the gender expression varies. There are others who don’t feel any desire to ever categorize themselves, and just present themselves as whatever gender they feel is “right” for them that day.
The Facebook group’s third point is particularly well-articulated. It doesn’t take a particular sensitivity to TG issues to see the trouble these stickers can cause its members (and the trouble they’ve caused already), and how worthless they are in achieving SEPTA’s supposed goal.
I don’t foresee SEPTA’s changing this policy (though I can’t see why it’d be difficult to just ditch the gender stickers in the next ten minutes if they wished to). It’s sad, because TG people have enough other problems in this gender-strict world, they shouldn’t have to deal with one so petty and ultimately worthless.
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Making it easy for me to lend my pass to my partner (thereby saving us maybe $8-12 annually) is one of the best benefits that the city of Philadelphia offers to me and all the rest of its gay and lesbian citizens.
It helps make up for the thousands of dollars in additional income tax that my partner and I–quite unlike any “married” couple–have to pay in order for him to have basic health insurance coverage through my job. (And incidentally, even that only became possible about five years ago, when my employer finally began extending health insurance coverage to “domestic partners.”)
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Yes, I was being sarcastic, in case anyone couldn’t tell. Clearly the gender stickers are stupid and pointless and offensive.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:59 am
The gender sticker issue is not actually solvable by how a transgender person identifies, because SEPTA workers generally pick what sticker to put on your pass when you buy it; you don’t get to pick yourself.
July 20th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I’ve heard people approach a SEPTA ticket window and specify the gender sticker that they want. I figured it was either people whose genders are unclear, or who were buying passes for others. They could put out ‘T’ stickers for those hardy enough to request them, but this could be seen as more discrimination, not less.
I never liked the gender stickers, but since I’ve never reviewed SEPTA’s accounts, I’m not really in a position to say whether they have been effective in stemming the pass sharing. I imagine it wouldn’t be, but I really don’t know.