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Paper short abstract

What is hostile about state identification systems when they are designed to only inhabit binary gender as the default mode of life? This talk focuses on the Danish CPR-number as a hostile binary design that is encoded into the digitalised welfare state and systematically excludes trans lives.

Paper long abstract

Defaults are powerful. They are designed to seem apodictic, objective, and often hide in plain sight as seemingly 'natural'. Binary gender classification within nation state systems is no different. In such way, what is hostile about these state identification systems when they are designed to only inhabit the idea of the gender binary as the singular, default mode of life? How are trans bodies coded under the design of such state technologies? How do these identification systems, in accordance with colonial imaginaries of the gender binary, represent a state precariousness that exclude trans people by default from their design and become increasingly embedded with algorithmic modes of verification and surveillance? In posing these questions, this presentation turns to the case of the personal identification number, the Danish CPR-number, as an example of such hostile binary design that is encoded into the foundation of the digitalised Danish welfare state with unexpected, yet systematic ramifications for trans lives who do not conform to this binary notion of liveability. This analysis thus works to unveil the stealthy, dangerous hostility underlying cisnormative design of technologies and its exclusionary interactions with colonial legacies of state infrastructures as they implicate trans lives situated within the nexus of sex/gender systems, nation state policies, and algorithmic infrastructures.