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They note several negative outcomes if the sex marker were to be removed - some excerpts:
> Border authorities would be less able to establish the context of a passenger's travel and do risk assessments before passengers arrive. Knowing the passenger's gender is useful in determining if someone matches the profile of a person of interest. This cannot always be done using a passenger's name because some names are unisex.
> A significant problem for border officials is the detection systems used to process passengers would be less reliable. Automatic systems such as watchlist checks would bring up more false matches if a passenger's gender information is not entered in border control systems. Excessive false alarms may undermine security as officials are more likely to ignore alerts if they are constantly dealing with false matches. These false matches would also decrease the speed passengers are processed.
> Upgrading and modifying software would impose significant costs on border authorities and airlines. Ongoing costs would be high as the systems used to read travel documents would have to handle processing the two types of travel documents for a significant period of time. If ICAO made not displaying the gender field mandatory, this period would be around 10 years. If displaying the gender field became optional, this period of having to modify software to process the different types of travel documents would be indefinite.
> The common secondary use of travel documents to provide identification in non-travel situations may be undermined if the gender field is removed. People issued a travel document that does not display their gender would lose an official way to prove their gender. This may be inconvenient where someone is required to provide an official document that displays their gender, perhaps to access a service restricted to only males or females.
The same doesn't apply to whether a person is left-handed or right-handed. Usually, that information is recorded nowhere.
In particular, all of your quoted arguments would proceed identically with `s/gender/race/`. However, race is not something we specify on passports currently, and a call to add the field would be solidly rejected.
I also don't really understand what parallel you are attempting to draw between sex and race - they're very different types of classification, in many ways. For example, sex is either male or female, and typically easily determined by fundamental biological features - but how would you even begin to usefully classify race, and from the global, international perspective expected of passport documentation?
> The costs of the removing the requirement to display the holder’s gender on travel documents outweigh the benefits at this stage. The costs of the change would be more significant given the adverse affects on the operations of border authorities and the potential inconvenience for passengers.
In particular, they noted that border authorities use this data for risk assessment, the significant cost of modifying existing software that processes this, and that many countries would not accept passports without a sex marker.
[1] https://www.icao.int/Meetings/TAG-MRTD/Documents/Tag-Mrtd-21...
It's likely the picture will not be useful for determining their sex. This is why male / female was useful.
There seems to be this attitude taking hold whereby people who are (probably) overwhelmingly young and ignorant challenge everything they consider "not progressive". Clearly all the people who came before us were a bunch of idiots, so how could they possibly do anything right? It's an arrogant hubris. I say that as someone who is only in their mid 30s.
What I have come to realize is that everything people do (including those things I consider stupid, like organized religion) has a purpose. Once in a while the justification is weak. But if you find yourself wanting to eliminate some social practice because you think it's stupid and can't possibly comprehend why we would do a thing, that's a sign of ignorance.
Only after you understand the purpose can you start to talk about whether something is actually still useful.
This assumes an overwhelming adoption of the X gender marker. I don't think that's a reasonable assumption; I'd expect the number of folks who do adopt an X gender maker to be an incredibly tiny and easy-to-spot minority.