Article ID: CBB071329740

Hacking the Cis-tem (2019)

unapi

This paper looks at the case of transgender Britons who tried to correct the gender listed on their government-issued ID cards, but ran up against the British government's increasingly computerized methods for tracking, identifying, and defining citizens. These newly computerizing systems show some of the earliest examples of transphobic algorithmic bias: explicit attempts to program trans people out of the system can be seen in the programming of the early Ministry of Pensions computer system designed to apportion benefits to all tax paying British citizens. Transgender citizens pushed back against these developments, attempting to hack the bureaucratic avenues and categories available to them, laying the groundwork for a coalescing political movement. This paper argues that uncovering the deep prehistory of algorithmic bias and investigating instances of resistance within this history is essential to understanding current debates about algorithmic bias, and how computerized systems have long functioned to create and enforce norms and hierarchies.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB071329740/

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Authors & Contributors
Coeckelbergh, Mark
Joanna Weidler-Lewis
Luis Humberto Fabila-Castillo
Hopkins, Nancy
Masha Raskolnikov
Moa Carlsson
Concepts
Gender
Gender identity
Technology and government
Computers and computing
Transgender
Medicine and gender
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
Medieval
Ancient
Early modern
Renaissance
Places
Great Britain
United States
Ghana
Wales
France
Finland
Institutions
MIT
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