Gender Legislation in New York
Originally published at Geekstress. Please leave any comments there.
Kristen Philipkoski at Wired’s Bodyhack wrote about some interesting legislation in New York that would allow transsexuals to get gender congruent ID possibly prior to (or without) having SRS. The comments, naturally, got a little heated, as everyone debated the validity of transsexualism rather than the legislation itself. I left a comment that ended up so long it ought to have just been a post:
Contrary to the common conception, many transsexuals are actually quite hidden. They are very normal people, with normal jobs. After the very challenging and emotionally raw process of transition they are looking to let trans things slip into their past so they can just live their lives. When the legal system makes it impossible to get congruent documentation a lot of very simple things become humiliating. When a transsexual is pulled over in traffic, flies on a plane or buys a bottle of wine they must place these documents in front of an individual who is extremely likely to not know or understand what a transsexual really is.
Many of the comments on this post are the exact reason why a transsexual does not want to be forced to disclose their status. I don’t mean to insult any of you. I was very judgemental myself about this at one point. There is just a lack of knowledge on the subject that can be embarrassing if not dangerous for the transsexual without congruent ID. The playing field of sex and gender is more comlicated than most people know because the cases that lie outside the normal binary system are so rare. As mentioned numerous times above (i’m reiterating for emphasis) there are many chromosomal variations that are not simply XX or XY.
Beyond that, the chromosomes themselves are not the actual determiners of an infants sex. In fact, there are a series of hormonal baths that occur in the womb that are (generally) triggered by one’s chromomes. These hormonal baths cause the various physiological sex differences to appear, including changes in the genitalia as well as small (but significant) variations in the size of certain brain areas. The going theory (supported by both expirimental animal studies and post-mortem brain measurements in humans) is that transsexualism is due primarily to a miscue during one of these hormonal baths. This results in the brain tending toward the direction of one sex, while the body goes toward the other sex. Then, once the gonads are in place, they start pumping out hormones, producing the rest of the exogenous sex features.
I’m sure all of your feelings on how someone should deal with this incongruenty differs and thats absolutely fine. But individuals suffer from this incongruity, there is at least a fair amount of evidence to support their described feelings and in a free society I believe individuals ought to be supported in the approach they take to dealing with this. A law like this provides documents to prevent an individual’s choices from becoming a source of humiliation or a cause for physical harm, and as far as I can see it hurts no one.
Just in case you’re worried that it makes things too easy, don’t worry. In lenient states like California, the trip to a doctor other than your own (you need two usually) and finally a trip to the DMV and courthouse, is still a difficult and humiliating experience. Also, no matter what the laws are regarding identification, the Standards of Care for transexuals requires quite a bit of therapy and one year spent living full time in the new sex before any of this is even relevant. Trust me that this is anything but a convenient loop hole.
Yeah … I’m a little vehement on this topic. Its very easy to dismiss a topic like this because it seems weird and foreign to most everyone. But the means are there now for anyone to do the research. They just don’t take the time.