Coding Needs to Get Beyond the Gender Binary

When technical writer and former WWII pilot Jonathan Ferguson changed his gender in 1958, it made the news in Britain. I've imagined the moment many times since I first read about it in a paper called "Hacking the Cis-Tem" by scholar Mar Hicks. Ferguson's name change, according to the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, was straightforward: someone took a pen and amended a line in the Official Register. In my imagination, it was a fountain pen and written with a flourish, and in that moment Ferguson felt truly seen after years of hiding his true identity. I'm embellishing, but I want it to have been simple and meaningful.