Changing ID if shrinks approve

ABC TV News reports:

Lauren Grey didn't think much about the gender recorded on her Illinois driver's license until she went to test-drive a new car. Although she had been living as a woman for months and easily obtained a license with her new name and a picture reflecting her feminine appearance, Grey's ID still identified her as male, puzzling the salesmen and prompting uncomfortable questions.

"They are like, 'This doesn't match.' Then you have to go into the story: 'I was born male, but now I'm not,'" said Grey, 38, a graphic designer living in suburban Chicago. "And they are like, 'What does that mean?' It was super embarrassing." Similarly awkward conversations ensued when she tried to rent an apartment, went to bars or was taken out of airport security lines for inspection.

Yes, I would be super embarrassed to say, "I used to have testicles, but I had them chopped off."

Advocates recorded their latest victory Friday, when the Social Security Administration announced that it would no longer require proof of surgery to alter the gender identification of individuals in its computers and records.

The move mirrors similar actions by the U.S. State Department, which amended its passport application policies three years ago to do away with the sex reassignment surgery requirement, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which last year did the same for green cards, work permits and other documents it issues. ...

As a result of lawsuits and lobbying, about half of U.S. states — most recently Illinois, Alaska, Virginia and Idaho — now allow residents to revise the gender designations on their driver's licenses without first undergoing surgery or getting a judge's approval. Applicants instead must provide a letter from a health professional stating they have received counseling, hormone therapy or another form of gender-transition treatment. ...

Meanwhile, acquiring a new birth certificate still requires proof of surgery in all but three states: Washington, California and Vermont, according to research by Lisa Mottet, director of the Transgender Rights Project at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

News to me. So if I just go to the California dept. of records and flash a letter from a counselor saying that I had begun thinking of myself as a woman, then the state will re-issue my birth certificate saying that I was born as a woman?

"She had the gumption to ask for a manger. But can you imagine how it adds to your anxiety and depression to be turned away after you worked up the nerve to go into that office and tell your story?" Hudson said. "A lot of transgender people are going to want to just tuck tail and run."

Tuck tail? Do they get tails as part of their re-assignment surgery? I am losing my ability to tell what is for real.

I think the terms father and mother will soon be bigoted terms. We will have parent-1 and parent-2, and maybe parent-3 or parent-4. Or maybe we won't have legal parents at all, and just have guardians who are like foster parents, with any substantive decisions having to be approved by a social worker or shrink. Already we have schools that teach LGBTQIA in grades K-12, and letting boys use the girls rest room.