Probably not what you’d expect, but for now (and I’ve learnt to qualify almost everything with “for now” because who knows what I’ll decide to do in the future) I have no plans to change my gender marker on any of my documents*.

If you’re not sure, the gender marker is that M for male (or masculino in Spanish) or F for female (or femenino) that appears on a passport or driver’s license or a few other documents. Most people wouldn’t even think about it, but as a “trans” person I have given it a lot of thought. One of those thoughts was a bit of my struggle to decide to post this article or not. For me my current decision to leave the gender marker unchanged is very personal and private so I wasn’t sure if wanted to share it. On the other hand I’ve received comments from the people I’ve told that they find it odd. So for that reason I thought it would be interesting to expose this very personal decision.

Wait. What? Not changing it? Why?

The most direct answer is that I don’t want to change the gender marker. A more convoluted answer is that it doesn’t affect me the way it is. The only people that have seen or may see a gender marker in a document would be verifying my identity, like a border agent, at the bank, when boarding a plane, the police, etc.  In these cases what I’ve seen is that they give more importance to the photo on my IDs. By the way, I still haven’t updated any official document’s photo either.

Up to now presenting in the opposite way as the gender marker in my IDs has not been an issue. In my passport I have a Post-It that says that I’m transgender. When I’ve traveled abroad my Post-It has done all the explanations**. Only once I was asked about my gender or my presentation and it was the security guard prior to boarding a flight out of Paris. I just explained with my documents in hand and off I went.

This next one is not a main reason, and I don’t know if my assumption is correct though, but I get the idea that changing the gender marker is not simply filling a government form and that’s it. It feels to me like it would be one of those things that years after the official documents were changed, that at the very worst time I would still be encountering circumstances where it hadn’t been updated and becomes an issue. For example, renewing or updating some old insurance policy, or some old registration for something… As I review this paragraph, I think I’m just making excuses, but if I can save myself a bunch of surprise bureaucratic processes, well that works for me. After all I’m perfectly fine (for now) with the male marker on my documents and that’s how I like it.

Isn’t That Confusing?

A few weeks ago I was on the phone with a friend and I said something that just flipped her. She stopped me and told me “you’re just full of contradictions”. I know I’m full of contradictions and I’m kind of ok with it. This decision to maintain the M gender marker definitely fits her comment; it might be a big contradiction.

It probably may be confusing to the person checking my documentation, but certainly it’s not confusing to me.

I am who I am, and I’ll tell you that I know who I am.

In another occasion, another friend asked me why I’d want to go through the hassle of being questioned and having to explain myself every time someone sees my identification. My answer is that it doesn’t matter to me and hasn’t been a hassle at all. I am aware that I may be putting myself in situations where I may need to do some explaining; probably I like explaining myself.  I’m not hiding anything, I’m super proud of the person I am, of the changes that I’ve made and, what I have accomplished.

These people checking my ID want to make sure that the person in front of them is the person that claims to be in the document. What they care about is that I’m not a criminal or that I don’t have obscure intentions. To me I feel more secure explaining myself, and that’s if I have to explain myself in the first place. The explanation I give is simply the truth, and comes out without hesitation.

Remember: it has not been an issue even when I have been questioned. In a couple of cases I’ve even received positive comments on how much I’ve changed (physically). I guess you wouldn’t expect that from a TSA officer, right?

On that same discussion with this friend she followed up with another question. She said “so why, if it doesn’t matter to you, not just change your gender marker?” It came as a surprise to me, but it does matter, at least it matters enough to me for now to keep it the way it is. The most honest answer is that’s who I am. On the other hand, the part that doesn’t matter to me is explaining myself.

As of now, I wouldn’t feel more validated or recognized or complete or empowered if I’d change my gender marker to F. I get validation, recognition, completeness, empowerment, etc. from people’s reaction to ME and not from a gender marker on some document. Probably I’m not ready to change the gender marker yet and is too early for me. Probably I don’t need to do it for myself. Probably I’ll never change it… Who knows? Probably I’ll change my mind in the future and I will change that big uppercase M to F.

For now, the M stays.

Notes:

* There is a single case where there’s an F in a document and it’s the lab requisition form and there are 2 reasons for that: 1) it was the endocrinologist decision to make a stand, and 2) it compares my lab results to that of a cis-female opposite to a male.

** My trusty “I’m transgender” Post-It has been so useful that it deserves its own blog entry in a near future.