Alberta man changes gender to save money in car insurance

[OBCT]

I'm a 33 year-old man who pays more for auto insurance than my wife despite very similar profiles. I'm not offended by this, because I've seen the statistics.

That said, I think those who are advocating to remove the "discriminatory" risk factor of sex from automobile insurance premium calculations make some strong points in this thread.

However, if you remove sex from the equation, I believe anything else potentially discriminatory must also be removed, including age. Dan02's post #59 has a good list of items that logically should not be allowed.

Or maybe you simplify it further and legislate that only collisions and specific traffic offences may be considered in auto insurance premiums. No more fancy, complicated "discounts" and "clauses".


Mostly, this thread just makes me yearn for the inevitable complete autonomous vehicle takeover. Preferably before my daughter turns 14.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Makarov

I suspect that determination of whether or not this person's gender identification to his insurer was sincere and in good faith has nothing to do with his fashion choices and everything to do with how he identifies in other similar areas of his life (such as to his bank, to the Canadian government, to his employer, etc.)

His government-issued identification now lists him as a woman, so there's that taken care of.

Again, what does that even mean, how he identifies in other areas of life? How is anyone going to say that someone isn't living enough as a woman or too much like a man. Just imagine for a moment what that conversation sounds like, imagine applying that to anyone else, not just a trans person.

My comment on his fashion choices not carrying any weight is to stop this insipid suggestion that one could simply out him for being a man based on how he lives, when men and women can live however they please and people in the trans community that so many think this is an affront to (it has nothing to do with them, really) are typically the ones who would be fighting for exactly this sort of freedom; to be able to identify and live however one desires.

This is still ultimately irrelevant though, and Locke made a good point using medical risk as an example. A middle-aged man can identify however he wants, but his risk of congenital heart failure remains the same because how you identify does not change your biological predispositions.

[spuzzum]

Society sure likes to make things complex and it gets dumber and dumber every year.

A male and female is by biological definition easy to illustrate from DNA. We take it a step higher and define it at an anatomical level.

If you want to become a man or woman, pay the piper, have a surgery and it's clearly defined. Medically certified. Until such time, check the box that applies to you what's residing down south in your pants.

I can't wait to hear replies about 'what about poor little Johnny who can't afford a change.'

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Slava

But this is the issue with this case; he isn't doing anything illegal. It's immoral, and that's really it. The insurer isn't going to take aim at people who identify as transgendered because it would be a PR nightmare. One false accusation and the blow back would be immense. I'm not even sure how they could do it. So aside from changing the way they rate the policies and how they calculate the risks, it's a non-starter.

He likely did do something illegal. He signed a false affidavit with the government when he changed his gender.

I agree that aside from this newspaper article where he admits doing it it would be a nightmare to investigate but I suspect that people that do this are idoits and Brag about it via social media. So when claims come in you probably have a lot of self incriminating evidence of specially admitting to doing it rather than trying to infer based on how female they are living.

[OMG!WTF!]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

First, his name isn't "David", it's a pseudonym to protect his identity (presumably from people who think like you).

Second, we're told gender roles are social constructs, and our ideas of how men and women dress are as a result of society suggesting that men and women ought to dress differently. Those societal norms are now being challenged.

So accepting that, and getting back to what V said, who are you to make the determination of what constitutes male or female dress or behavior? What does living as a woman mean, a woman can live however she pleases. A biological female who identifies as a woman could have a garage full of old muscle cars she works on for fun, a better power tool collection than any guy in this board, hate watching The View, and name her favorite place to shop as Home Depot. Would you insist that she's clearly living as a man, and thus a fraud as a woman?

In case it wasn't clear, you don't get to decide how people live and whether or not they are who they say they are. And that is why this is not as cut-and-dried as "oh it's insurance fraud". The insurers themselves are using gender to determine insurance risk, risk that is actually based on biology, which sex you are. So if something is so easily changed or rejected, why are we paying more for insurance because of it?

If the insurers weren't idiots, "David" would never have gotten an insurance discount because his biology is what influences his risk, not whether or not he wears a dress to the pub.

Super goofy rant. You're blasting me for something I didn't say. I'm not saying girls have to play with dolls. Then you go on to contradict your whole thesis by saying it's biological anyway. People who change their sexual identity typically do so because they believe their biology is incorrect. Someone transitioning to a woman from being born a man is likely more in line with female risk patterns than with male ones anyway. So for you to say insurance premiums are based on biological sex you're implying that transgendered people are all scamming the system. They're not. They're aligning themselves with what they consider to be the correct biology for their body. The idiot doing this to save a buck it taking a giant dump on those who are sincere in their transition.

So if it's really so damn hard to tell who's male, who's female and who's scamming the system...go walk into the other sex's locker room at the gym. Tell everyone you've legally changed your m to an f or vice versa and see how that goes over.

Men and women are different. There are those who blur the boundaries of course. But those people are typically not the ones willing to go through a transition to become one or the other.

[killer_carlson]

Story picked up internationally and is on the front page of foxnews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/07...ce-report.html

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

Super goofy rant. You're blasting me for something I didn't say. I'm not saying girls have to play with dolls. Then you go on to contradict your whole thesis by saying it's biological anyway. People who change their sexual identity typically do so because they believe their biology is incorrect. Someone transitioning to a woman from being born a man is likely more in line with female risk patterns than with male ones anyway. So for you to say insurance premiums are based on biological sex you're implying that transgendered people are all scamming the system. They're not. They're aligning themselves with what they consider to be the correct biology for their body. The idiot doing this to save a buck it taking a giant dump on those who are sincere in their transition.

So if it's really so damn hard to tell who's male, who's female and who's scamming the system...go walk into the other sex's locker room at the gym. Tell everyone you've legally changed your m to an f or vice versa and see how that goes over.

Men and women are different. There are those who blur the boundaries of course. But those people are typically not the ones willing to go through a transition to become one or the other.

Super goofy rant? Heh, piss off and come back with a compelling argument instead.

I'm not blasting you for what you didn't say, I'm taking this idea you're talking about of verifying that someone is "living as a woman" and trying to put it into practical terms, and the result is completely unworkable. Even a M > F trans person may still use the men's locker room if they're pre-op, there are plenty of reasons why they may blur the lines, you said it yourself.

I'm not saying anyone is scamming the system except insurance companies charging us premiums based on a biological predisposition, but using gender as whether or not those are assigned.

The fact that the person's secondary sex characteristics that visually identify them as male or female sex have developed, irrespective of whether or not they identify as that gender, is a direct result of the very hormones that influence our behavior such that our insurance risk is different. If you've got testes, safe to assume you're producing far more testosterone than anyone without them. A trans man who takes testosterone will grow facial hair, the voice will generally deepen, and their behavior may change to exhibit what we would typically associate with masculinity. Because hormones matter.

Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!

People who change their sexual identity typically do so because they believe their biology is incorrect.
...
They're aligning themselves with what they consider to be the correct biology for their body.

Your biology still doesn't change, you'd have to properly undergo HRT in order to start aligning biologically (in the areas where it matters for our discussion, i.e. behavior) and there is no requirement for trans people to do that if they don't wish to. Trans people are changing their gender to what they feel they align with mentally. Trans people are saying "yes, I was born with a male / female body, but I identify as the other"... which is to say their body does NOT match who they believe themselves to be.

This of course is all still beside the point that this is about insurance companies calculating risk due to biological factors, but charging them based on gender identity, which is patently absurd.

[Raekwon]

Something tells me the discount isn't going to be worth the negative attention he/she is about to receive.

[Fuzz]

All the insurance company has to do is link this guy back to the news story. He's blatantly admitting committing to fraud. If he wanted to have a chance, he should have kept his yap shut.

[OMG!WTF!]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

The fact that the person's secondary sex characteristics that visually identify them as male or female sex have developed, irrespective of whether or not they identify as that gender, is a direct result of the very hormones that influence our behavior such that our insurance risk is different. If you've got testes, safe to assume you're producing far more testosterone than anyone without them. A trans man who takes testosterone will grow facial hair, the voice will generally deepen, and their behavior may change to exhibit what we would typically associate with masculinity. Because hormones matter.

Your biology still doesn't change, you'd have to properly undergo HRT in order to start aligning biologically (in the areas where it matters for our discussion, i.e. behavior) and there is no requirement for trans people to do that if they don't wish to. Trans people are changing their gender to what they feel they align with mentally. Trans people are saying "yes, I was born with a male / female body, but I identify as the other"... which is to say their body does NOT match who they believe themselves to be.

This is where you've lost the plot. None of this is true. It's likely we're both more interested in being right at this point. But the fact is that transgendered people align from a biological perspective more with the gender they identify with that the gender they were born with. This makes it more likely that a transgender man is more likely to be in line with risk profiles of males than females even though he was born female.

In the mid-1990s, his group examined the postmortem brains of six transgender women and reported that the size of the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc or BNSTc), a sexually dimorphic area in the forebrain known to be important to sexual behavior, was closer to that of cisgender women than cisgender men.2 A follow-up study of autopsied brains also found similarities in the number of a certain class of neurons in the BSTc between transgender women and their cisgender counterparts—and between a transgender man and cisgender men.3 These differences did not appear to be attributable to the influence of endogenous sex hormone fluctuations or hormone treatment in adulthood. In another study published in 2008, Swaab and a coauthor examined the postmortem volume of the INAH3 subnucleus, an area of the hypothalamus previously linked to sexual orientation. The researchers found that this region was about twice as big in cisgender men as in women, whether trans- or cisgender.4And it’s not just brain structure that appears to link transgender individuals more closely to people of their experienced gender than those of their natal sex. Functional similarities between transgender people and their cisgender counterparts were apparent in a study led by Julie Bakker of VU University Medical Center and the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam that examined neural activity during a spatial-reasoning task. Previous studies had indicated that the exercise engaged different brain areas in men and women. Bakker and colleagues found that trans boys (who had not been exposed to testosterone, but had had female pubertal hormones suppressed) as well as cisgender boys, displayed less activation than cisgender girls in frontal brain areas when they performed the task.5

https://www.the-scientist.com/featur...r-people-30027


The brain can become masculinized of feminized regardless of the presence of testosterone or estrogen. Hormones do not matter in the way you think they do.



Anyway, David is committing fraud. He's creating a need to start questioning the legitimacy of transgender identity.

[llwhiteoutll]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

All the insurance company has to do is link this guy back to the news story. He's blatantly admitting committing to fraud. If he wanted to have a chance, he should have kept his yap shut.

He used a fake name, the news never showed his face and I don't recall the company being named either. While companies could scrub their files for people who have switched their gender of record, the amount of backlash that they would get if they started asking trans people to "prove" their gender would outweigh any gains they could potentially get from finding him.

Sooner rather than later there will be a court case if a transgendered person is asked to prove it. I don't think there is any standard that companies or groups have to follow for accepting stated identity and that's probably going to start becoming an issue, especially now that the government has removed the need for a doctor's sign off

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by llwhiteoutll

He used a fake name, the news never showed his face and I don't recall the company being named either. While companies could scrub their files for people who have switched their gender of record, the amount of backlash that they would get if they started asking trans people to "prove" their gender would outweigh any gains they could potentially get from finding him.

Sooner rather than later there will be a court case if a transgendered person is asked to prove it. I don't think there is any standard that companies or groups have to follow for accepting stated identity and that's probably going to start becoming an issue, especially now that the government has removed the need for a doctor's sign off

It wouldn't be all that hard if they wanted to. Young male(err, female) recently insuring a Chevy Cruise born in July in Alberta. I'm not suggesting looking for all trans registrations(nor should they do that), I'm just saying if they want to bust someone for insurance fraud, this wouldn't be to hard for them to do since he admitted that was the reason he did it.

[White Out 403]

Is it fraud? He's legally a female. What does the motivation matter?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by White Out 403

Is it fraud? He's legally a female.

He committed fraud when changing his gender with the government. He had to submit an affidavit saying he identified with a Gender different from his birth certificate.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by White Out 403

Is it fraud? He's legally a female. What does the motivation matter?

Yeah it’s fraud.

[Fuzz]

It sure seems fraudulent, but I guess maybe not?

[White Out 403]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

Yeah it’s fraud.

Changing your gender is fraud, or, changing your gender for a reason you don't like is fraud? Help me out here.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by GGG

He committed fraud when changing his gender with the government. He had to submit an affidavit saying he identified with a Gender different from his birth certificate.

How do you know it is fraud? What does identifying with one gender or another really even mean anymore? What is the definition of identifying as female?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

This may be of assistance.

Fraud

380 (1) Every one who, by deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means, whether or not it is a false pretence within the meaning of this Act, defrauds the public or any person, whether ascertained or not, of any property, money or valuable security or any service,

(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to a term of imprisonment not exceeding fourteen years, where the subject-matter of the offence is a testamentary instrument or the value of the subject-matter of the offence exceeds five thousand dollars; or

(b) is guilty
(i) of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or
(ii) of an offence punishable on summary conviction,
where the value of the subject-matter of the offence does not exceed five thousand dollars.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by White Out 403

Changing your gender is fraud, or, changing your gender for a reason you don't like is fraud? Help me out here.

Neither. He didn’t change his gender. He lied to get a doctor’s letter then lied to the insurance company to get his premiums reduced. Sounds like fraud to me. The companies either need to stop the gender stuff or (my preference) investigate this case and his company should reinstate him as male and charge him the lost premiums. I think the doctor should be investigated, too. Do you realize that if many men did this it’d affect your premiums?