SYLVIA MCKEOWN: Technology may be a value-neutral tool, but what of the people who use it?

This past Sunday the New York Times reported on a US health and human services department memo indicating that the Trump administration is moving to strip away the rights of about 1.4-million Americans, specifically those who have chosen to identify themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into. The memo insists that “the sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence”. Or, as the Times put it, “the department of health and human services has privately argued that the term 'sex' was never meant to include gender identity or even homosexuality, and that the lack of clarity allowed the Obama administration to wrongfully extend civil rights protections to people who should not have them”. Civil rights protections to people who should not have them? Surely everyone’s civil rights should be protected? Isn’t that the point of havin...