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Does anyone know whether ISO 5218 is used in any passports visibly or invisibly?--Jusjih 03:35, 21 February 2006 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The ISO document itself reads "not applicable" for gender 9; anda ccording to http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/gdsc/html/frames/PersonGenderCurrent.htm :

• '9' 'Not Specified' means indeterminate, i.e. unable to be classified as either male or female.
• '0' 'Not Known' means that the gender of the person has not been recorded.

"Not applicable" has a different thrust to it than the previous "not specified": from reading this article I would think that a genuinely indeterminate human would end up in 0 "not known". But from the UK article and from the ISO standard I believe "it" should be encoded as 9. Xueexueg 15:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Reply[reply]

To expand on the previous statement, a known hermaphrodite is not "not known" and not "not-applicable". To me, not known implies you do not know what the gender is - it could be male, female, or hermaphrodite. Not Applicable implies gender is not relevant. Hence, these terms do not accomodate hermaphrodites (and the various combinations thereof).Mingramh (talk) 12:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I know this is not the forum for this comment, it should go to ISO, but SEX is not the best term for this field. In English, gender would be more appropriate since sex also refers to the physical act.Mingramh (talk) 12:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

AFAIK words have gender, lifeforms have sex and sex_code refers to human beeings and organizations PPOST (talk) 15:55, 18 February 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Life forms have both sex and gender. A male-to-female transgendered person would be of male biological sex but female gender. 67.240.138.106 (talk) 23:36, 8 April 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It is a gross misunderstanding (although widespread) that in biology two precisely distinct genders would exist. That is not the case. In most cases it is true, but definitely NOT in all cases. Each an every cell in the body has its own sex and cells by no means have to be all the same. And in addition to that, psychology may play a very different game. For all those reasons, German supreme court has ruled that forcing the gender classification of any German citizen into either male or female constitute a violation of that citizens constitutional rights, therefore ordered that the German law that regulates the record-keeping of german administration to register any German citizen who so chooses to be "diverse" as a third gender. Therefore ALL IT systems must adapt to that, and that means world-wide, because some day the first EU passport might be issued carrying a 'D' as gender entry. 134.247.251.245 (talk) 08:59, 6 February 2020 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Superseded by 2022 version. As always, it's not publicly available on the internet, and the text is copyrightet. https://www.iso.org/standard/81682.html 2001:A61:BE9:1401:DDF8:6419:D0FB:B763 (talk) 12:58, 24 July 2022 (UTC)Reply[reply]