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Welcome to Eszter's Weblog Here you will find my thoughts and comments about all sorts of things from sociology, the Internet, academia, teaching, research, books and movies to current events, fun Web stuff, art, gadgets and just about anything else that comes to mind. If the inspiration strikes you during your visit, feel free to leave a note via the comments link.

[Previous entry: "Cool Google features"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Oh-oh"] "Sex unknown - now passport-proof" 01/23/2003 Entry I was excited to read that Australia has issued the first passport to a person of "indeterminate sex". My interests in classifications and gender issues merge in the case of the very widespread binary approach to gender: you are either male or female. But some have argued for a while now that such classification leaves many people behind. Lots of babies are born on the intersex spectrum without genitalia that clearly identifies them as male or female and without the 46XX or 46XY chromosome mix. Often such situations lead to "emergencies" in the hospital as doctors scramble with the parents to "fix" the babies. Such "fixes" can then lead to confused lives. If there wasn't so much focus in society on gender distinctions and differences then perhaps these ambiguities wouldn't lead to such crises in hospital rooms. But as we know, there is a lot of focus on gender issues and we are raised - whether at home or once we enter the school system - along gender lines from what clothes we are given to wear to what activities we are encouraged to pursue. One of the most basic questions on most surveys is about your gender where two options are given: male or female. I may get frustrated that the American Sociological Association won't let me check off "information and communication technologies" as an area of specialization within my field, but imagine how annoyed you'd get if you had to check off a gender category with which you don't really identify (my related personal frustration is that I have to check off anything for gender as if it should really matter to everything). One of the most intriguing tidbits in that article is the following: "The X signifies unspecified sex or intersex and is the only other sex category allowed under International Civil Aviation Organisation guidelines for machine-readable passports." So what's the background on that? How come the Civil Aviation Organisation has such an option? Am I missing something obvious here? In any case, I think this is a nice little step toward moving past the binary gender classification scheme. January 2003 S M T W T F S       1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31   Links of Interest How to win the Nobel Prize Click for Mammogram Play "Match That Blogger" Blogathon 03 Archives Recent entries » Extending Internet access to low-income communities » Shattered » The story behind red alert » Weekend trivia » Would you cut up a book? » Pizza, cholesterol check, the works » Welcome » A different kind of road trip » Allowing comments on blogs » Paddling for bandwidth » The right to a soda.. at any price » Online communities » Silly.. but we all do it » Paris notes » New book on Social Inequality Previous entries May, 2002 - July, 2003 Blogger info Eszter Hargittai Communication Studies Department Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois 60208 blog at eszter dot com Blogs I Visit The small print A few words on what I will and will not post on this blog (taken from my E-LIST entry of January 2, 2002). I have nothing against posting commercial sites as long as they come highly recommended. In fact, I'm quite interested in improving informed consumer choice so I'm very curious to hear about good experiences with online retailers. What I will refrain from posting are sites that require plug-ins or programs that are painful to deal with. Example: I will not post anything that only works with RealOne/RealPlayer as that program is intrusive and annoying beyond belief and I am not willing to reinstall it on my machine (it was hard enough to get rid of it completely in the first place) nor do I want to encourage others to have it. If your site has audio content, please make it available in multiple formats or choose one that can be run on multiple players (e.g. .avi). Feel free to link to my Weblog with or without this graphic button. http://www.esztersblog.com

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