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Canadian man changes gender on government IDs for cheaper car insurance
- reaperducer 8y agoNext step: Olympic gold!
- stuckinarut 8y agoI feel like that would be mocking. This is pretty great though. Is it a bit of an abuse of the system, sure. But honestly, if he's being charged more for the same record just because he's a man then I approve of him doing this. Course I'm a bit annoyed with insurance right now. I made a mistake about 1.5 years ago and was speeding. It was empty highway and I made the stupid decision to go too fast. Got caught. This is, I paid my fine. I have no accidents, no other tickets. I'm still stuck paying massively increased premiums for years.
- morgtheborg 8y agoGender identity is one thing, power to you, but at the point we start to let males compete in females sport we've lost our minds. How do we make it fair? Is it sufficient to lower T to get rid of the advantage? What about females who naturally have higher T levels? What if, shockingly /s, bone density and height are relevant as an advantage in some sports? God, I hate even thinking about it. Transgender rights > Female rights, with the harm going to female athletes. How unsurprisingly sexist.
- ccozan 8y agoI am actually a fan from Serena, but could not hide the fact that she might have a slight advantage....
- morgtheborg 8y agoThat woman is an Amazon, and I love her for it. I'm happy to celebrate a female that is uniquely physically excellent in terms of strength, coordination, etc. There's hardly anything unique about a born male being physically more capable than a born female, however, and I have no interest in celebrating it within the context of female sporting events.
- empthought 8y agoThe world record women's 800m time is surpassed regularly by high school boys.
- belorn 8y agoWe already have that problem with genetics interfering with sports. Height has a strong correlation in basketball, and blood levels with endurance sport. Weight and height are used to limit unfair competition in horse racing and boxing. So one way to keep our minds and still eliminating segregated women and men sport is to segregate based on other attributes that correlate to an unfair advantage, just like those examples above.
- morgtheborg 8y agoI'm cool with that as well. Happy as a clam if we want to start making a bunch of sport distinctions around advantages such as height, T, bone density, etc. However, until we do so, the problem remains that there are clearly advantages physically to being a man and that is why we have male and female sporting events. That distinction doesn't magically go away because someone does not identify with their gender. The division isn't about gender, it's about sex.
- belorn 8y agoWhile we are in an agreement on optimal solution, I don't see why we need to wait. We still have NBL running, and the average hight for men there is about 1 foot (30cm) more. Similar, there were a study rather recently that looked at winter OS winners and found that about 80% of them had blood levels that represented (if I get the zeros right) 1/1000000 chance of naturally occurring. OS is not being put on hold. Those problems have remained for a very long time and yet we have done very little to remove those clear unfair advantages. What should we do until we fix them? I prefer common solution to similar issues so what ever fix that is deemed acceptable should be usable for all form of genetic advantages, and it would likely resolve a bunch of doping problems at the same time.
- schappim 8y ago.
- ythn 8y agoDefine "discrimination" Is is discrimination to require a fitness test be taken for certain jobs/insurance?
- gameswithgo 8y agoDiscriminating based on fitness instead of gender is exactly the sort of thing one should do, if fitness is really what you are worried about. That way, the occasional woman who is if fit enough can still do the thing that needs doing, and flipping genders on your birth cert doesn't game the system.
- tomp 8y agoHow about non-unisex toilets and women-only domestic violence shelters? Personally, I oppose them, but it appears that most people support them, "discrimination" not-withstanding...
- dsfafsdaf 8y ago"women-only domestic violence shelters" what exactly do you oppose? That there are no equivalent men's shelters, or that men aren't allowed in? To this day my wife refuses to tell any man the location of her shelter from when her ex abused her. Might not fit into the modern gender zeitgeist, but I fully support her.
- klipt 8y agoDomestic violence agencies could certainly abuse male victims less. A study of male domestic violence victims who contacted local domestic violence agencies for help found that 40.2% were accused of being the batterer by the person "helping" them: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175099/#S12title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3175099/#S12tit...
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoWell we've all thought of it now someone's done it (well lots of people have probably done it, this guy is just the first one to risk telling people he's done it). $91/mo adds up.
- ythn 8y agoI expect games like this to extend into all areas of society as gender identity politics become mainstream. If there is any advantage to be had by whimsically switching genders, people will do it. And in the end, it's biological females who get the shaft because biological men identifying as women will assert their physiological advantages whenever possible.
- gameswithgo 8y agoIf only women had any physiological advantages.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoWorking in confined spaces is easier for the average sized woman than for the average sized man.
- phil248 8y agoThis is why I've always thought manned space programs should be designed primarily for petite women. Not even joking.
- DoctorOetker 8y agoFor planetary colonization programmes you want women anyway, because sending sperm up with women results in doubling the colony size any point in time from the second generation on (when comparing with sending up equal amounts of men and women, for the same total amount of people on the trek). The petite women will need to wear thick lead chastity belts to protect their ovaries from radiation though.
- dsfafsdaf 8y agoLike making a baby?
- kolbe 8y agoHow the could car insurance cost $4500 a year? What are you doing in Canada?
- breitling 8y agoThe icing on the cake is that he's not even in an area known for expensive insurance (Toronto)
- stuckinarut 8y agoAccidents and multiple tickets crank it way up.
- mrtron 8y agoMinimum coverage is fairly comprehensive, and they love to charge the hell out of younger folks.
- theandrewbailey 8y agoIf a car loan is involved, maximum insurance might be required as a condition. Combining that with young male driver, you get a very large number. Also, Canadian dollars, not USD.
- nikanj 8y agohttps://globalnews.ca/news/2447804/metro-vancouver-the-luxury-car-capital-of-north-america/ https://globalnews.ca/news/2447804/metro-vancouver-the-luxur... Repair costs go hand-in-hand with car prices. Add in icy roads for extra fun.
- slavik81 8y agoIt's a $30,000 car and the insurance is probably comprehensive. He could save money by only buying 3rdparty liability (the legally required coverage). If you could afford to replace the car, that's usually the better option.
- qbrass 8y agoThe problem with just having liability is that it greatly reduces the responsibility of others to repair or replace your car if they hit it. Depending on where you live, you might only get a few hundred dollars from them if they total your car. You may be willing to pay out of pocket if you crash your $30,000 car into a tree, but you'll probably want someone else to pay for it if they run into it while it's parked.
- tudelo 8y agoI wonder... is there any good solution to this issue from either side? Outside of legitimate gender change (bear with me -- I know some of you don't think this is possible but lets go with the assumption) can you really blame the guy? And as an insurance company what can you do about it? I would say maybe we could have flat rates but then that just incentivizes the "good" class to go to an insurer who values their "goodness".
- QasimK 8y agoAs a society you can make it illegal to discriminate on factors that a person has no control over.
- tudelo 8y agoIs paying different amounts based on measured risk factor really discrimination in the way you intend it?
- oh_sigh 8y agoYes, because the risk factor isn't that you're a young male, it is because you are a dangerous driver, which is correlated with young males. But it also means that there are safe driving young men out there who are subsidizing dangerous female drivers.
- QasimK 8y agoYes it is. Should the cost of car insurance, health insurance, or life insurance vary based on the measured risk from your skin colour, or height for example? A “lucky” individual has reduced premiums, while an “unlucky” individual has increased premiums, and neither has any control over it! Comparatively, someone benefits and someone suffers (both are undeserved). After thinking about it, I want to hear from someone who thinks the opposite to me - that it is perfectly fair for someone to pay more and, thus, someone else to pay less, due to a factor that neither has any choice about.
- 8y ago
- GhostVII 8y agoIt's interesting how people generally consider it acceptable for insurance companies to discriminate based on gender, when that discrimination would probably not be considered OK in other areas. You don't choose your gender, why should you be punished for it? Would people also be OK if insurance companies discriminated based on race? Surely there is some correlation between race and collision risk as well.
- derefr 8y agoI know you’re trying to do a reductio ad absurdam here, but insurance companies already do discriminate based on race. In fact, it would be irresponsible for medical insurance providers, in particular, to not discriminate (that is, have different premiums) based on race. Black people have more heart attacks, white people are more likely to develop Seasonal Affective Disorder in the same geographic region, etc. It’s nothing to do with predicting behaviour, it’s just differing physiologies, causing different levels of risk of certain physiological conditions irrespective of the choices we make or how we’re raised. As well, different races respond better or worse to different drugs. There might be a cheap way to treat hispanic people for a condition but only an expensive way to treat any other race. In that situation, if there was actuarial data saying that Hispanic person A and non-Hispanic person B had an equal chance of developing that condition, it would make sense for person B’s premiums to be higher, no? If you can predict, per person, not only the chance of an event causing a condition requiring an insurance-covered response; but also predict, per person, the size of the total insurance pay-out from a given event, then people who will need more expensive treatments for the same condition will need higher premiums. It’s like flood insurance: insuring a house closer to the coast costs more, but insuring a larger house also costs more. Because the pay-out will have to be higher to fix a larger house, even though the flood was the same. Same damage—more expensive solution required.
- GhostVII 8y agoWow, I had no idea they discriminated based on race, that sounds kind of wrong to me. I mean for medical purposes it makes sense, do they also do it for auto insurance, where, in theory, your race does not make a difference?
- derefr 8y agoBritish Columbia will soon support answering “not specified” for gender on identity documents. I wonder how insurance providers will cope with that. Will they demand you tell them a gender? Will they try to infer it? Will they use low-statistical-power actuarial data for the insurance usage rates of “not-specified people”?
- lykr0n 8y agoChange it to "Sex" or add have both "Sex" and "Gender" fields.
- i_am_nomad 8y agoThey’ll just buy your demographic profile from a broker for a pittance and use that.
- stavrianos 8y agoEasy: anyone who isn't specified gets the higher rate.
- empthought 8y agoThis is exactly correct.
- jedberg 8y agoThis is a perfect example of "AI gone wrong" even though there was no AI involved. The costs of insurance are based on actuarial tables, which are really just calculations based on large chunks of historical data, much like an AI. And much like an AI, the result essentially magnifies the biases that already exist in the data (biases that may be accurate or may not be). The tables, nor the AI, care about ethics or perception. They are simply the result of the inputs given. Do men really have more tickets and accidents? Maybe. Or maybe they just get caught more. It just highlights how careful we have to be about biases, real or accidental, as we rely more and more on mathematical models based on data.
- tathougies 8y agoThis has nothing to do with AI. Men have been charged more for car insurance (at least in America) for many years. I mean, when my brother got his license almost 15 years ago, he was charged more, and so was I when I got mine.
- jedberg 8y agoYes I know, that's why I said "even though it has nothing to do with AI".
- quxbar 8y agoMen measurably impact the bottom line of insurance companies more. Actuarial math is not 'AI', there's no 'magnification of bias'. The whole point of the calculation is to eliminate bias so that the company makes sound decisions. Please don't generalize things that you haven't made an effort to understand. When you say stuff like this, you're making it harder to fight actual bias in the world, because you make people not take your point seriously.
- jedberg 8y agoI have a pretty deep understanding actually. Please explain to me how making an actuarial table with different data sets would get you the same answer without bias.
- notadoc 8y agoIs it gender discrimination to charge one gender more than another for the same service? And if so, and more broadly, is there a problem with changing gender identification to gain a preferential price or service?
- quxbar 8y agoLet's see if he'll keep the identification when he next applies for a job or a home loan?
- dsfafsdaf 8y agoWhy not? IIRC, in Canada, its illegal to ask those questions during the application. Then, when HR is doing their diversity calculations, he boosts their employed woman trans numbers. Don't see him loosing out much.
- theandrewbailey 8y agoDepends on where the application goes to. Many companies want to appear politically progressive.
- DoctorOetker 8y ago"A crossdresser can dress like a woman in the weekends, and dress like a man during the week. Who is the goverment to tell me to keep the same sex all the time?!!!1" how about legally recognized "contextual gender", i.e. a woman while driving the car, a man while applying jobs etc... /s
- friedButter 8y agoA male pretending to be a female has an edge over males,females and females pretending to be male when applying for jobs.. Atleast in an unscientific study by interviewing.io
- 1996 8y ago> "I'm a man, 100 per cent. Legally, I'm a woman," he said. > "I did it for cheaper car insurance." Yeah, I see what you did. "it's because of the insurance!! I swear!!"
- marianov 8y agoAn man in Argentina changed legal gender so he can retire earlier : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5544173/Argentinian-man-legally-changes-gender-retire-earlier.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5544173/Argentinian-...
- tathougies 8y agohow is it okay that a woman can retire earlier? Men die earlier than women as it is, so this law effectively doubles the amount of time women can enjoy retirement..
- LordDragonfang 8y agoSo the simple solution to this type of manipulation is adding a part to the gender change request that says "I swear under threat of legal penalty that I identify as [gender]". Doesn't hurt trans people and makes abuses of the system like this clear cases of legal fraud.
- natrik 8y agoHow would you be able to tell the difference between actual personal identification and a lie?
- donald123 8y agoWhat if the insurance company used machine learning to calculate the premium, which resulted in correlations with gender, race, etc.? Is that also considered discrimination?Whose fault is that?
- empthought 8y agoYou would have to show that gender/race were not inputs to the machine learning algorithm. Correlations with inputs that were not restricted would not be a problem (in many situations ZIP code is "close enough" for race.)
- janlukacs 8y agoThe amount of attention and resources spent on "genderism" in the western world is really astounding and accelerating. One has to ask why?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tathougies 8y agoFavorite quote: > "If you're going to declare on any document, you need to be truthful," he said. "If not, you're making a fraudulent claim. This could impact you for any future insurance application that you make, or any other aspect of your life." Unless the insurance commissioner is going to provide an objective definition of gender that can be externally and independently verified, I'm afraid that he really has no grounds on which to claim David is a man, rather than a gender-nonconforming woman who prefers male pronouns.
- cameldrv 8y agoIt’s a tough philosophical question as to whether it is fair to discriminate based on gender to determine insurance rates. In the U.S. we split the difference. For car insurance and life insurance, where men have significantly greater risk, men pay more, because they cost the insurance company more. For health insurance, where women cost the insurance company more, insurance companies are forced to charge the same rates, because it’s wrong to make someone pay more for something based on an inherent trait they have no control over.
- perl4ever 8y ago"For health insurance, where women cost the insurance company more, insurance companies are forced to charge the same rates, because it’s wrong to make someone pay more for something based on an inherent trait they have no control over." I don't think this hypothesis is consistent with the fact that ACA plan rates depend on your age, which you have no control over.
- cameldrv 8y agoThey split the baby on that one too. Old people can only be charged 3x as much as young people, but the actuarial difference between an 18 year old and a 65 year old is something like 10x, which used to be the price difference too.
- thrden 8y agoThat doesn't seem like splitting the difference as much as putting the costs on men...
- rabboRubble 8y agoObviously you never tried getting private insurance that covers pregnancy pre-ACA. Always a separate rider, always expensive. Whoopsie if you didn't catch that fact, failed to get a separate rider, then went on to have pregnancy complication. Hello bankruptcy! Hell, even with the pregnancy rider, a complicated pregnancy put a lot of insured people into the poorhouse.
- aequitas 8y agoIn the Netherlands we had a similar thing. An car insurance marketed specifically to woman, with lower rates, nice pink website and you even got a free purse as a welcome gift. But due to anti-discrimination laws you could simply apply as a man as well, if you could stand the pink website. Of course you got the free purse as well.
- EMRZ 8y agoHere in Argentina a man from Salta changed his gender to retire early.