Digitizing Difference: Fraudulence, Gender Non-Conformity, and Data A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Lars Z. Mackenzie IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Jigna Desai, co-advisor Aren Aizura, co-advisor March 2019 Lars Z. Mackenzie © 2019 Acknowledgements Thank you, thank you, thank you! As many have said before me, you just can’t complete a PhD without the help of countless people supporting you. I’ve been very lucky to receive a lot of help. Thanks first to my friends. I was lucky enough to develop great friendships in this extremely cold and sometimes unfriendly state. To my pals who I’ve met or shared time with here - Emily, Laney, E.G., J., Carrie, Madison, Elizabeth, Conrad, Caitlin, Simi, Caitlin, Tia, Alanah, Charlie, Karen, Jen, Libby, Mingwei, Kristen, Rita, Angelica, Sen, Jess, Becca - I literally could not have survived without you guys. I’m also blessed to have a group of friends from way back that have turned into family - Jess, Joe, Lauren, Candace, Nieves, Sheila, and Rachel. I’m so grateful to have each of you in my life and for the connections we’ve maintained over more than a decade as we’ve grown up and away from each other. Whenever I’ve doubted this path in my life, leaning on you all has helped me keep going. I’ve received lots and lots of support from my family -- from them coming to visit me here in the middle of winter, to regular phone calls, and collective television watching via group texts. Mom and Dad thanks for your constant support and laughter. Jodie, I’m glad you’re part of our family. There really isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t talk to my sister Kelly what feels like 50 times. Thanks for always being encouraging in all aspects of life and keeping me in the loop with current memes. Joe, I’m so glad you’re my brother. Sarah, you’re both friend and family and my favorite human out there. Thanks for being by my side for the past eight (!) years. It’s been great fun. Here’s to lots more! I’ve been lucky to have great colleagues who are friends, too. Thanks so much to Tia-Simone Gardner, Caitlin Gunn, Madison Van Oort, Mingwei Huang, Joanna Nunez, Sami Poindexter, Simi Kang, Jayne Swift, Shana Ye, Kong Pha, Rahsaan Mahadeo, Elena Hristova, Lisa Gulya, Katie Bashore, Robert Smith III, Jesus Estrada-Perez, Karisa Butler-Wall, Elizabeth Williams, and Aaron Mallory for sharing writing, ideas, and care over the years. Being in conversation with each of you has been so rewarding. My committee has provided me with wonderful guidance and support over the years. Thanks to Jigna Desai, Aren Aizura, Catherine Squires, Annie Hill, and Miranda i Joseph. I am especially thankful for your support, Jigna, and the many, many forms it takes. I could not have asked for a better mentor. Thank you for always being three steps ahead, scheming, and inspiring me to imagine more for myself. Aren, thank you for coming on as my co-advisor. It’s been wonderful to work closely with you and I thank you for your guidance. I also want to thank the many people who have done the administrative labor to keep things afloat in GWSS for myself and others, but especially Cassie Misgen, Ashley Beltrame, Jess Guisti, and Idalia Robles De Leon. My research has been graciously funded from a number of different sources. I would like to thank the Steven J. Schochet Endowment Interdisciplinary Fellowship in Queer and Trans Studies, the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, the Susan Geiger Fellowship, the Informatics Institute “Where is the Human in the Data?” summer fellowship, and the Gender Policy Report Graduate Research Partnership Program for providing fuel to this project. Special thanks to Christina Ewig at the Gender Policy Report for serving as my mentor. I was also fortunate enough to participate in a Dissertation Writing Retreat through the Writing Center, which helped me push through an entire chapter! Some of the most professional fun I’ve had at the University of Minnesota has been working on interesting projects outside of my research agenda. I want to thank those who have helped me learn about a whole world of cool things you can do during working hours. Justin Schell, thanks for introducing me to the world of educational technology and the “digital humanities,” and for your help in scheming up a dissertation project. Thanks to Cristina Lopez, Ann Fandrey, and Colin McFadden in LATIS for invitations to participate in educational technology projects and your openness to my curiosity to explore this field. Thanks again to Jigna Desai and Catherine Squires for being persistent in your pursuit of digital research projects and your belief in ethical and transformative technology. Working for and with you both to help bring these visions to life has truly changed my career path and has taught me so many invaluable skills. Thanks also to my collaborators in GIGSS -- Robert Smith III, Jesus Estrada- Perez, Madison Van Oort, Katy Mohrman, Elizabeth Williams, Anne Wolfe, Karisa Butler-Wall, Angela Carter, and others. Creating space together during the early years of ii grad school made me feel like I had a place here and taught me how to organize the things I want to see happen. I have learned immensely under the direction of Stef Wilenchek at the Gender and Sexuality Center. Thank you, Stef! I am especially grateful to the people who volunteered to participate in focus groups and interviews for this research. Thank you for sharing your insights and experiences with me and allowing this work to grow. I often joke that I came to graduate school for the health insurance. While this is partially true (thanks for those good years of coverage), I’m very grateful for the connections I’ve made, skills I’ve gained, and projects I’ve created over these past six years. I hope that this work gives back. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..i List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………..v Introduction, “Tracing Fraud Through Trans Life”……….…………………..……….1 Chapter 1, “Sexual Fraud, Narratives of Deceit, and the Limits of Consent”…..……..49 Chapter 2, “Denial: Trans Necropolitics in Healthcare”….……………………….......112 Chapter 3, “The Afterlife of Data: Identity, Credit Reporting, and the Right to Be Forgotten”……………………………………………………………………………..177 Chapter 4, “Identity Thieves: Seizing the Means to Gender Self-Determination”……234 Conclusion, “Critical Trans Data Praxis & Debugging the Dissertation”…………….286 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….309 Appendix A: Guiding Questions for Focus Group Interviews…….…………………324 iv List of Figures Figure 1: State of Minnesota Name Change Petition Application…………………….1 Figure 2: Facebook Data Center, Altoona, IA……………………………………...…194 v Introduction: Tracing Fraud Through Trans Life “I'm just gonna get my name done, right? So, I do all my stuff. Show up for court. And suddenly he's asking me the standard questions, is this for fraud, blah, blah, blah?” (Sharon, Focus Group #3) Figure 1: State of Minnesota Name Change Petition Application In the state of Minnesota, people who petition to legally change their names must affirm that they are not seeking a name change in order to deceive others. They are required to make a sworn oath that their application “is made in good faith, without intent to defraud or mislead” (Minnesota Judicial Branch, n.d.). In this opening example, Sharon, a participant in one of my focus groups nonchalantly remarked upon this mandate, describing her interaction with the judge who authorized her name change: 1 “And suddenly he’s asking me the standard questions, is this for fraud, blah, blah, blah?” To Sharon, a middle-aged, middle-class, white trans woman, the requirement to attest that her name change was in “good faith,” as in, that her legal transition was legitimate, seemed reasonable. She was not trying to defraud or mislead anyone. She had expected this question. It appeared on the application form that she filled out weeks before her court date (fig. 1), and others who had gone through the name change process before her had warned her about being asked it. This question aims to ascertain the reason behind a name change—the intent of the individual petitioning. Some judges use the question in order to interrogate petitioners about their motives, particularly when they are changing their names across genders, such as from a traditionally male name to a traditionally female or gender-neutral name, or vice versa. Sharon’s categorization of the question as “standard,” and “blah, blah, blah,” suggests that this type of inquiry seemed reasonable or normal to her. Even if it was unpleasant, she understood why she would be asked about her intentions before she could legally change her name. Changing one’s name enables individuals to assume a new legal identity, potentially shedding any reference to one’s past. Sharon’s understanding of the fraud question as expected, perhaps unremarkable, and standard illuminates the importance of identity verification in the US and the presumption that changing an identity signals potential malicious intent. The capacity to elude identification produces profound anxieties in a surveillance-driven culture, where unknowable subjects seemingly present infinite risks. Changes to a name and especially a name and sex designation challenge core tenets of identification, and often also norms about data structure within information 2 management systems which presume that a person’s first name and sex classification will remain stable throughout their life. Because their bodies and identities change in unexpected ways, trans and gender non-conforming people can appear out of place, incompatible with normative ways of making sense of identity in interpersonal interactions and data systems, especially those that compare data across institutions in order to verify identity.