Gender ID and HealthyWagers: Something to Watch For

‘X’ now available as gender alternative on Washington licenses, IDs

Now in Washington state, gender can be defined as ‘X’:

SEATTLE — Washington residents can now change their gender designation on their license or identification card to read “X.”

The “X” is an alternative to the “M” for male and the “F” for female.

Anyone is able to change the gender on their identification to reflect “X.”

The same applies in California, Maine, Oregon, New York State, and Washington, D.C. (link to Minnesota story from 2018)

I have highlighted in this blog that women get offered more money than men on HealthyWagers.

So going forward, there will be opportunity for biological males to identify themselves as female when they sign up for wagers, so that they can get paid more for the same weight loss.

Healthy Wage uses your drivers license, or other government ID, to verify height. Presumably, they verify gender via the same document. This takes place when the HealthyWager concludes, and you are verifying a weigh-out to collect your prize.

If you sign up as a female, Healthy Wage will not necessarily be able to verify that fact with your drivers license in the “X” jurisdictions.

Putting aside the aforementioned scamming opportunity, this can make things awkward for transgendered people who are trying to play legitimately. Yet, Healthy Wage needs to make a profit as they are a business.

I would think the referees who view the videos and have to make calls are going to have a tricky time with this. I mean, what does a ref do when faced with somebody like this on a weigh-in video?

So how does Healthy Wage deal with this?

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I actually asked them! My question below was posed to Amanda Stewart, the marketing manager at Healthy Wage:

I was curious—how does Healthy Wage verify participants’ gender?

It’s usually on ID, but some jurisdictions are allowing non-binary designations now on Drivers licenses and other ID.

I know you use ID to verify height.

Thanks!

Amanda wrote back after a day:

Hi Michael,

We use government-issued ID to verify gender. Our verification for handling non-binary IDs is developing.

In my opinion, a perfectly acceptable response. It’s vague, but I can totally understand it.

I’ll watch this closely as time passes.