From the people who brought you the Exxon-Valdez oil spill and Sarah Palin comes a law requiring any MTF transperson to bring proof of surgery in order to get their gender changed on their driver’s license. It doesn’t matter if your U.S. passport and work documents all identify you as a female, without the receipt from your boob job and penectomy you ain’t getting a license.
But luckily for K.L.—a transperson who has lived as a woman for two years—the ACLU has just filed a brief against the Alaskan Department of Motor Vehicles asking the state to remove the surgery requirement.
K.L. says, “Having a driver’s license that doesn’t match my appearance and identity would place me at risk of discrimination and physical harm.”
Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the ACLU of Alaska adds, “It is unfair and unnecessary to require that transgender people undergo prohibitively expensive and drastic surgery in order to have accurate identity documents. No one should have to disclose sensitive personal information or be forced to make major medical decisions in order to get a driver’s license.”
How about we take this to the next level?
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This situation kinda reminds us of the French bureaucrats who refused to changes a transwoman’s official gender because her tits were too small. They wanted her to get more surgery as well.
A full MTF sex change in the U.S. can cost about $75,000 including the costs for counseling, psychiatric assessment, hormone prescriptions, speech therapy, facial and body hair removal and any necessary augmentation, mammoplasty and facial surgery. For FTM people that price can rise to $100,000 including a more expensive genital surgery, a bilateral mastectomy, a hysterectomy and an oophorectomy (that is, ovary removal).
And you thought the $20 renewal license renewal fee was too high.
Luckily, the Alaska supreme court has already found that the Alaska Constitution’s privacy clause protects individuals’ right to self-expression and limits the government’s ability to make a citizen’s personal health care decisions.
Here’s hoping she’s on the open, ice-covered roads soon. Just watch out for stray moose and wolf hunters in helicopters.
Cole
I… what? Seriously. Really? That’s… what?!
beerwad
It’s not just Alaska – many states require proof of surgery to change gender on birth certificates and other identifying documents. And many don’t consider a boob job/top surgery to be enough. Makes it really difficult to get a passport with the correct gender.
Cece
It’s the same thing in NH, only breast augmentation is not required. Instead, we just have to have proof that we allowed someone to take a scalpel to our genitals. Unless someone has cut off your penis or ripped out your vagina, you can not have your gender changed on your licence in NH. I do not intend to flash people on the street or in the grocery store, so II see no need to make that sort of thing required. They don’t make anyone else take off their pants to prove their gender, so if we look the part they need to just let us have it.
gherkin
So anyone should just be able to waltz into the DMV and demand a sex change on their license? No proof, no doctor’s note, nothing? Sounds shady.
tab
I don’t see anything about requiring a boobjob in the source article…
Boobjob is NOT required in any US state- wanna know why? WE CAN GROW OUR OWN BOOBS. Like on us! Pretty simple. I’ve got a pair of them now- it’s as simple as Just Add Hormones.
And penectomy… Seriously? Penectomy is only done in third world countries and by crazy self surgeons (and of course the extreme body mod community). We have Modern Medicine and do a penile inversion, not a freaking removal. That means you NEED the original skin as donor material for a VAGINA- not a stump where the penis was hacked off.
Not really all that hard to Not completely misrepresent us there. Stick to the source material and a few jokes/sarcastic remarks, rather than writing us back into crude early methods.
tab
@gherkin: Umm… No. Not at all. The request is for those Living as their gender not for just anyone. And the best way to prove that is still going to be with a therapist that has seen them, so yeah… Still going to have a profedsional involved to confirm. It’s not just gonna be anyone coming in and getting it changed.
Daniel Villarreal
@tab: Hey tab, I admit I did a quick web search to find a list of gender re-assignment surgeries seeing as the ACLU’s article did not mention the specific surgeries the Alaska DMV requires for a gender change. I meant no disrespect and apologize for mentioning these “crude early methods.”
Might you provide a good, more current resource where I and other readers can learn more about modern gender re-assignment surgeries?
tab
Wiki is iite and as always has it’s citations to look to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_reassignment_surgery#Differences_between_trans_women_and_trans_men_SRS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaginoplasty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_reassignment_surgery_(male-to-female)#Genital_surgery
Quick search on the requirements for driver’s license change yields (ftm centered site, but first up on the googles):
http://www.thetransitionalmale.com/dlchange#2
A bit general and no more info than the article provides, but that’s just about all you typically can find as searching through the exact laws is usually more difficult than you want to think. These laws tend to have the same kind of requirement: either “permanent genital surgery” or (explicitly) “sex reassignment.” Permanent genital surgery allows for some much cheaper methods that while not full genital surgery can be sufficient to get by.
The reason they’re able to challenge this specifically is the AK Constitution’s privacy portion.
Sweetbrandigirl2004
This is nothing new DMV have always required GRS before changing Drivers License…. and I feel thats how it should Gender period and in the eyes of the state as long as you have a penis your male doesn’t matter how you Identity or how you dress or how you appear or live if you have a dick your a man end of story. This suit has ZERO chance of winning just like the one in NY it’s a waste of time. It’s just another example of the Transgender Machine trying to flex it muscle and bully society into accepting their third gender.
Hyhybt
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: What if, rather than merely *having* one, you *are* one?
Laughriotgirl
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: Funny, we got the policy changed here in Ohio two years ago… no surgery, just a note from an Edno, GP, or Therapist. Seems Passport policy changed also.
Considering that the requirement for accessing surgery according to the SoC is to live as your target gender (oops… Dr. Benjamin used that word…) for a minimum of a year, why should someone out themselves for every check they write, beer they buy, club they enter, utility they turn on, house they rent, etc. etc. etc.
I know you have a hate-on for trans women who can’t get their stuff done under 5 minutes – but seriously, a medical condition that someone is treating isn’t the business of the clerk at the gas station. Attitudes like yours tossed out the idea that HIV+ people should have to mark that status so people wouldn’t inadvertently interact with them. Since transsexuality is a medical issues, we have an obligation to try and accommodate people as they are treated for the issue, not reinforce barriers to living.
Personally, I’ve been contacting Hot or Not to get them to identify post op transsexual lesbians trying to get creepy validation from straight men to have a special mark on their bikini shots – so far they are very receptive.
JM
@Laughriotgirl: Not that I disagree with your point about HIV+ people, but that *is* an infectious disease. I’m going to go ahead and be the bastard, and say that maybe, just maybe, an HIV+ person should be required to ID themselves with a little more frequency than a trans person. Discreetly, though. Point is, I don’t think being trans is comparable to HIV+ status when it comes to identifying one’s medical history. And no, I don’t think HIV+ folks need to disclose to get a driver’s license… that would be a step *back*, not forward.
Sweetbrandigirl2004
@Laughriotgirl: You can contact anyone you like my dear but it will be you asking to have barriers installed that separate HBS women of history and marks them as different and if vengeance floats your boat go for it I really couldn’t care less. As for the one year requirement of RLT that you mentioned thats a “pre surgery requirement” it was not meant or intended that an Individual would NEVER have surgery, Dr Benjamin also said that. See thats how you transgender work you take something and twist it to fit your wants distorting it to the point that it bends to fit your needs then you use it to bully state and local government thats one of my biggest problems with your people. You did the same thing with GID diagnosis which none of including the person in this story has. You “Claim” to have the gender Identity of the opposite sex but you lack proof and you think the world is just supposed to believe you hahahahahaha you need to wake up and smell what you’re shoveling, because in the world we live in no ones going to believe anything that you can’t prove
I’ll be so happy the day DOMA falls because when it does it will be the end of the Tranny nation they will lose the support they currently get from the gays and lesbians and won’t have a coat tail to ride on any longer then they can crawl back under the rock they came from and go play dress up in their basements or a hotel room again.
laughriotgirl
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: Per usual, you missed every point. Per usual you make weird creepy assumptions, per usual you are incorrect on just about everything you typed.
Specifically, do you *know* the woman requesting her license? Do you know her doctor? Do you know her diagnosis status? I think your understanding of what a “pre-surgery requirement” is, doesn’t actually fit what the term actually means. One must do the RLT to have surgery, desire for surgery is not required for RLT to be suggested/ undertaken.
You fail to address why you advocate placing barriers in the lives of people treating a medical condition. Do you go into a rage at crosswalks that make noises so that blind people can use them?
The rest is just more of your creepy assumption about my body. Please, lady, stop it. I think you talk about penis more than most gay men I know. You also seem to be under the impression that I find any use in “transgender”… I don’t and I’ve made that quite clear to you before. If anything, you are far more hung up on your “gendered presentation” (your words not mine) like most weekend gender warriors, than I am. There are some valid useful distinctions that need to be made between transsexuals and cross dressing heterosexual men. You just don’t make any of them and you make it harder for people with an actual message to communicate that message.
Libertarian Larry
I’m really beginning to think that being “gay” means being able to say/do anything you want with impunity. It’s patently absurd to think that anyone can walk into a DMV dressed in a costume and claim, “This is who I really am, not what my proof of identity states, so deal with it, bigots.” Insanity. Can I paint my face brown and tell them I’m of a different race? No, no more than I can shove a couple balloons in my shirt and tell them I’m of a different gender. Want the government to recognize who/what you are? Then bring proof! Christ, such childishness.
Zoe Brain
Libertarian Larry – the woman in question already has a female passport and other identity documents. For everyone else, a passport is considered good enough.
You’re raising a straw man.
Suppose when you went to get your DL, the DRV asked for medical proof that your dick was of the appropriate size? And required evidence from the surgeon of penile reconstruction to a length they thought was necessary? Maybe shorter than what you have now? You’d have to guess what theor requirements are of course, they’re not specified anywhere.
Maybe you can give me a rational basis why genital configuration is important when deciding if someone is to be issued a DL, given that they already have Female ID documentation?
Sweetbrandigirl2004
@laughriotgirl: I think it is you that doesn’t have a grasp of the purpose of transition to begin with otherwise you never would have said.
“One must do the RLT to have surgery, desire for surgery is not required for RLT to be suggested / undertaken ”
UH DUH ! Transition was never Intended for anyone not wanting surgery and or for anyone who doesn’t have the opposite brain gender of the sex they were born to and who have a GID. There has to be a “NEED” to transition in the first place it is meant has a cure for a birth defect not some way for fetish cross dresser who’ve become to engulfed in their own fantasy top live out those fantasies.
As to real life therapy is is meant as a precursor leading up to surgery and as a last step to be sure transition to the opposite gender is right for the individual so if it’s not there still time to back out, No one should be transitioning in the first place if they are wanting surgery duh thats a given.
Sweetbrandigirl2004
@Zoe Brain: Female Identification that they lied you get you mean, She used her drivers License to get those other pieces of Identification ie; passport and pilots licensee then DMV revoked the Drivers License once they discovered they’d been duped. Driver License are not meant to describe ones Gender Identity they’re meant to describe ones True Gender and in our society whats in your pants is important since our society is separated by genders.
laughriotgirl
@Libertarian Larry: Did you stop getting IDs in the 70’s? I can’t remember ever even being asked what my race is on my ID.
One would think that a Libertarian would process your hypothetical situation differently. If a person “shoved balloons up their shirt” but wasn’t actually transitioning, then they would have to deal with the consequences of having mismatched IDs – what this is trying to avoid. Thus, there would be plenty of social pressure to restrict this action as it would simply not be practical.
The case is also not trying to remove *any* proof as far as I know to change gender markers on IDs. It is changing what is required as proof. Do you need to tote your landlord to the DMV if you change address? I mean, that’s actually a useful bit of information that law enforcement can use. Does your lending institution have to confirm the purchase of a home for the change of address?
Who knew that a Libertarian would favor the government demanding that a DMV clerk have access to a citizen’s private medical records just to be able to drive or open a bank account.
“I’m really beginning to think that being “gay” means being able to say/do anything you want with impunity.” – Obviously you DO believe this, to bad trans people aren’t letting that happen so much.
laughriotgirl
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: Brandi – Sex has a specific meaning and “gender” has another. Only CD’s and TV fetishists insist on using them to mean the other. It is an unfortunate trend that has caught on in the mainstream. Given your need for hetero male validation, your need to post bikini pics on news sites, and your obsession with trans women’s gentile status, AND your continual confusion regarding “sex” and “gender” I can’t help but think of you as a cross between Anne Lawrence and Virginia Prince… with additional creep factor.
Libertarian Larry
@laughriotgirl: Your “change of address” analogy is, not surprisingly, quite laughable. Listen, I’m not trying to give the chick a hard time, it’s just that I worked at the DMV once, and people are constantly trying to obtain false identification through myriad means, so the authorities have every right to demand that you show legitimate proof of who you are (not who you feel like you are). She’s not being harrassed, she’s being asked to adhere to the law.
Josie
When the states start handing out free SRS to its mostly poverty stricken, transgendered citizens, then it may have room to even bring this type of nonsense up for discussion. Regardless, why is so important that everyone needs to know what is between your legs? It appears that whole of a person is based on a few extra or missing parts, as your genitalia marker plays some pivotal role way one is treated by society.
Sweetbrandigirl2004
@Libertarian Larry: Thats exactly the point I was trying to make. These transgender people think society is just supposed to play long believing whatever they tell us about what sex they feel they are and were supposed to give them Identification to match the sex they feel they are. I’m sorry but the world doesn’t work that way. Just because you “FEEL” like a women inside doesn’t make you one, besides how does a transgender person have any Idea what a women feels like it’s not like they have any personal experience to draw’n upon. No I think it’s pretty simple were a two sex society and if you have a stick you’re a “boy” if you have a hole” you’re a girl even a transgender can understand that I would think.
laughriotgirl
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: “No I think it’s pretty simple were a two sex society and if you have a stick you’re a “boy” if you have a hole” you’re a girl even a transgender can understand that I would think.”
So… trans guys don’t exist in your world?
“…how does a transgender person have any Idea what a women feels like it’s not like they have any personal experience to draw’n upon”
Now you get into some additionally fuzzy essentialist stuff. Since every woman of any status and background has given me wildly differing answers to this very question… So, great arbiter of what is a woman… what does “feeling like a woman” mean? Make sure your definition is universal and true for every single woman.
Sweetbrandigirl2004
@laughriotgirl: My comments weren’t meant to include trans men other then having three or four trans male friends I don’t known very much about their transitional process nor do I claim to. I solely restrict my comments to MTF transitions. Unlike you and many others I don’t speak of what I known nothing about. It is plainly known that all Cis Men have penis and if given a choice I guaranty you that the vast majority of trans men would elect to have a penis if it was possible As for your loaded question of what it means to be a women I’ll leave that alone I’m not even going to answer you because no matter what I say you’ll pick at it and find something else to argue about….so nice try but I’m not biting.
Laughriotgirl
@Sweetbrandigirl2004: You wondered how a “transgender” could know what it feels like to be a woman – why ask a question you can’t answer? That is the bottom line with you Brandi, you make assertions and assumptions and grand declarations without thinking them through – just like with trans men… claiming “I don’t know them” is a cop-out. Especially when we are dealing with legal things like issuing ID. You see, we stopped making different sets of laws for men and women some time ago. Your stance that genitalia alone makes one the sex they are erases the lives of the vast majority of trans men.
“Unlike you and many others I don’t speak of what I known nothing about.” I never make statements that I can’t defend. You on the other hand apply circular logic and magical thinking and reference evidence that neither confirms what you think it does and was used to deny transition to transsexual lesbians – like you.
Sweetbrandigirl2004
@Laughriotgirl: You can call it a cop out if you like I’m sorry that you weren’t able to grasp that my comments were referencing cis gender society which makes up the vast majority of the population, I didn’t think it nessacasry to prefaces that,but I guess dealing with you I should have.. I never siad I can’t answer the question I said I wasn’t letting you bait me into another argument.You really are naive if you think we as a society have the same rules for men as we do for women. Do women make the same money as men NO When a women screws several guys she’s a slut when a man does it he’s a stud YES there are VERY different rules for men and women.
Laughriotgirl
@Sweetbrandigirl2004:
“You really are naive if you think we as a society have the same rules for men as we do for women.”
LEGAL things Brandi.. I said LEGAL things… While laws may be applied differently based on sex or race or a host of variables, they are not written that way. We do not have “man law” and “woman law” – or are you claiming they are?
The cop out comment is about trans men, how you read that to men cis society is really beyond me. You make a sweeping statement that erases trans men and when questioned about it, you “don’t know enough to comment on their issues”. THAT is a cop-out, since your position would DIRECTLY AFFECT THEM. You don’t think your assertions and generalizations past your own seemingly limited experience.
Again… you make smug statements, and again the premise you built them on was… well… crap. Bits of advice Brandi: think your position through. Don’t assume anything about another person. Read what you are arguing against. Remain consistent. This was posted in good faith.
Tiffany_M
@Sweetbrandigirl2004
I really hope that your wanting to more or less stab us in the back once Doma gets repealed, isn’t the way most of the larger gay and lesbian population feels.
That would be sickening to say the very least after many trans men and women, myself included have fought for your rights.
Thankfully I would think most gays and lesbians would understand that given the fact they have had to fight and fight for their own rights… that everyone deserves civil rights and to be treated fairly and justly under the law.
Samantha
I think that there should be proof from a therapist…thats pretty much it.
And to the person who says that we dont know what its like to be a woman, i may not be able to give birth
but damnit i would like to one day…if you want to talk about how i feel i get hotflashes constantly and get migranes from hell. And yes i get subjected to sterotyping all the time, i was lucky enough to start HRT early in life and look decent enough and i found a great boyfriend who treats me like im his whole world regardless of whats down there and if you would get to know me you would think no differently of me then everyone else. So please stop all these rude and hurtful comments, i supported LGB rights as well and theres no reason for yall to be using the i dont believe in someone being able to be themselves like the religious bigots did to you. If you ask me this feels like highschool, its a chain of bullying and it needs to stop.
I AM A WOMAN and i know what it feels like to be me.