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Transgendered travellers worry rule need to match appearance with sex on ID will bar them from flights

National security and modern concepts of gender identity appear to be colliding in the sky.

Advocates for transgendered people are worried pre-flight screening rules requiring a person's appearance to conform with the gender listed on their identification will bar some from flying.

"We cannot have regulations which judge people on how they appear to be gendered. It's unacceptable," Christin Milloy, a trans-identified blogger, said in the Toronto Star.

Milloy posted an item on her blog Monday about screening regulations first published in 2010.

One section says an air carrier can bar someone if the passenger "does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents."

The regulation snares transgendered people who are in transition because the sex designation on a Canadian passport cannot be changed without proof the person has had surgery or will have it within a year.

"So for non-operative transgender persons, for gender nonconforming (genderqueer) persons, and for the vast majority of pre-operative transsexual persons, it is literally impossible to obtain proper travel documentation marked with the sex designation which 'matches' the gender identity in which they live," Milloy contends.

"In the eyes of the honourable minister of transportation, that makes trans people unfit to fly in Canada."

There have been no reports of transgendered travellers actually being barred from flying and a Transport Canada spokesman said the regulations do offer a way out.

"If, for medical reasons, a passenger's facial features do not correspond to the photo on his or her identification, the air carrier may authorize the passenger to board a plane if he or she provides a medical certificate relating to this," Patrick Charette told the Star via email.

He noted the department was unaware of any transgendered or transsexual person with a medical document being refused boarding under the new rules, adding the rules conform with those of other countries that belong to the International Civil Aviation Organization.'

The NDP's critic for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered issues said the medical exemption is not enough.

"If they're going to interpret that to cover transgendered people I suppose that's better than denying them the right to fly, but what's the problem we're fixing?" Randal Garrison told the Star. "How does it make every person at the gate of an airplane a gender expert? It's sledgehammer for a flea again."

Liberal MP Justin Trudeau, who tweeted on the issue Tuesday, suggested the male and female designation on passports and other official documents is unnecessary in an era of photo ID.

"If it (the rule) was updated for modern times it simply should have said: 'The person cannot board the plane if they don't match the ID they provide, which seems eminently reasonable and which would be exactly right to cover all bases on a security level," Trudeau said Tuesday.

Egale Canada, a national LGBT rights group, issued a policy paper Tuesday recommending changes to the sex designation on Canadian passports.

"There is an overwhelming sentiment among trans and gender diverse Canadians that the inclusion of a sex inscription on the Canadian passport, and on government-issued identity documents more broadly, is a barrier to travel and to economic and social participation and integration more generally," the Egale paper says.