Juridiskt kön och identitetshandlingar - en queerteoretisk analys

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay is to study the law on legal gender and two kinds of identity documents – driving licenses and passports – and to analyse this law using queer theory. My theoretical framework revolves around the heterosexual matrix, performativity, and power, and with them I describe how the legal gender’s presence can affect transgender people, persons with intersex variations, and other persons with gender non-conforming expressions. Legal gender is something we are assigned at birth and those of us who know what we are looking for can see it in someone’s personal number. On the driving licenses that is the way to see someone’s legal gender, while it is marked with either “M/M” or “K/F” in the passports. There is a risk to show one’s identity documents for those whose outer appearance do not match their legal gender, and that means that they must adjust according to the gender norms to minimise that risk. The legal gender in itself contributes to a worse quality of life in some groups; something that might be remedied somewhat by introducing a third legal gender. In the future, however, we should abolish the legal gender altogether, as it is a part of maintaining the gender norms.