This item appeared first in News and Notes: November 7, 2016
The LIRR’s way of running a railroad is heavily reliant on various archaic practices, things that railroads around the county and around the world no longer really do, abandoning old practices in favor of newer things that are either easier, more reliable, more cost-effective, or better for their customers. While the LIRR has historically been
very slow to update their ways of doing business, there’s one particularly unsavory practice that really needs to go: gender blocks on monthly and weekly commutation tickets. According to the railroad’s tariff rules, monthly and weekly commutation tickets are non-transferrable, and they can only be used by the person who first presents them. In order to try and protect against this, the railroads adopted a practice of indicating the passenger’s gender on the ticket—tickets have either a “M” or “F” block, and the conductor that first services your ticket is supposed to punch either one of those blocks. That way, if someone of the opposite gender presents the ticket, the conductor can see that, and take some sort of action (what’s supposed to happen is, on the first time, they can correct the gender by circling the block and writing the correct gender on the front of the ticket, and after that, they allegedly confiscate the ticket and give you a receipt).
But in an age when we understand that gender is not binary, the concept of assigning either “Male” or “Female” to every rider is not reasonable, appropriate, or fair to riders. If a rider better identifies with a gender that doesn’t necessarily match their appearance, who is the LIRR to tell them otherwise? It’s not their place, and what gender you identify with is none of the railroad’s business.While having some sort of protection in place to prevent the abuse of these passes isn’t terrible, this application of it is. While it might not impact all that many people, it is a pretty big deal for those that are affected by it. Imagine if instead of indicating gender on tickets the LIRR had race blocks, where on the first working day of every month, conductors went through indicating your race on your ticket by punching one of “A”, “B”, “H”, “I”, “P”, or “W” depending on how you looked to them at that moment. How would people feel about that? What if we had religion blocks? Discrimination on the basis of gender identity is discrimination, it’s just not illegal (yet).
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A screen on a Metro-North TVM asking riders to select the
gender of the user. (Photo: Jason R.) |
The LIRR is one of the only, if not the only, railroad’s in the country to continue this practice of having conductors punch gender on tickets. Railroads like Metrolink, MBTA Commuter Rail, MARC, VRE, NJTransit either have never engaged in this practice or hasn’t for a really long time, SEPTA
eliminated gender stickers on their passes in 2013, and last summer, Metra in Chicago
stopped marking gender on tickets, as the then-new Metra Board of Directors was in the process of going through and reviewing “historical practices from another era.”
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eTix users also
have to select their gender
when purchasing commutation tickets.
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Metro-North still denotes gender on monthlies and weeklies, but at least MN has riders select their gender on their own when they’re buying the ticket (and it’s printed on the ticket), so it’s a
little bit better—you at least have the ability to select what gender you identify with instead of leaving it to a train conductor to decide for you. And while they still do this, I’ve heard that Metro-North has all but stopped checking the gender printed on tickets, so it doesn’t matter what people select, you won’t be bothered about it. But the LIRR is stuck in the 1980’s, so the practice is still alive here.
If the railroad says that they need the gender blocks to make sure unlimited tickets aren’t abused, don’t listen—in addition to them not being fair to riders, they don’t really work…I have used other people’s monthlies—including tickets punched “F” for female—hundreds of times over the years, whether they were tickets originally used by siblings, parents, spouses, or friends, and nobody has ever said anything to me. And this happens all of the time, and it goes unnoticed almost all of the time. Eliminating the gender blocks won’t be the end of the world—SEPTA and Metra have both eliminated gender blocks on their tickets and they’re still around today, so the LIRR can manage.
Public transportation should be open and fair to everyone, including those who are transgender, bisexual, asexual, or intersex. This practice is discriminatory and unfair, and should’ve been eliminated years ago.
