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Kansas will no longer change transgender people’s birth certificates to reflect their gender identities, the state health department said Friday, citing a new law that prevents the state from legally recognizing those identities.
The decision from the state Department of Health and Environment makes Kansas one of a handful of states that won’t change transgender people’s birth certificates. It already was among the few states that don’t change the gender marker on transgender people’s driver’s licenses.
Those decisions reverse policies that Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration set when she took office in 2019. They came in response to court filings by conservative Republican state Attorney General Kris Kobach to enforce the new state law. Enacted by the GOP-controlled Legislature over Kelly’s veto, it took effect July 1 and defines male and female based only on the sex assigned to a person at birth.
The issue is that listed sex on a birth certificate has actual effects that limit the options available to trans people. Like if you otherwise pass as your gender but say your passport lists your birth sex you are immediately recognizable as trans to immigrations officials in airports or border officials will treat your documents as suspicious which means chances are way better of you being detained, harassed and abused by security personnel.
If it’s on a driver’s licence then that immediately opens you up to bigoted behaviour by anyone you need to hand that document over to. Cops can decide that maybe they want to find something worth arresting you for since they already have you pulled over, that apartment you were applying for to rent? Well you’re noticeably trans on your documentation so maybe they just put you to the bottom of the stack.
A lot of trans folk look at being able to pass as their window of hope to walk the world more safely. If you have a full on beard, deep voice, male sounding name but an F in the sex category on your passport travelling becomes an absolute misery.
You’re actually making an argument that government officials and authority figures need more training or different officers that can actually handle this shit.
In an ideal world people would be disqualified from these positions if they were bigots. But good luck getting any trans friendly protections on the books. People over the past decade have become way more comfortable in harassing trans people in public in a general sense. Enforcement is also spotty. Airline security particularly is given a lot of benefit of the doubt and not an amazing amount of oversight. Systemic persecution of Muslims has been an issue for decades and surprise - people still get hassled. Police, police unions and the courts of law they serve are also often very good at covering for each other.
In reality these issues apply on a worldwide scale. If you are traveling by air and have even a layover in a country where it is not safe to be openly trans you are in danger every time someone asks to see your documents.
Also every border guard or police officer in every country is a patchwork. All it takes is one particularly bad one and you could end up with PTSD, injured or dead. There is good reason why police officers in uniform are generally not welcome at Prides. It is a known trigger that causes folk who have experienced this kind of violence to have involuntary flashbacks or panic attacks.
It is ultimately safer to give someone the tools to be safer than to trust every official in every country you might ever want to risk visiting to be a good official. Even if you are going to one that is supposed to be safe.
And for that reason I think it’s important to only list gender on passports and other identification. But your birth certificate has nothing to do with that.
Depends on the country how often those documents are actually used. In some places (like Canada or the UK for instance) your birth certificate needs to match those other documents or else you are SOL getting your passport and driver’s license updated. Otherwise as a document it can also play a role in applying for government services or schooling in a lot of places which means you can get misgendered during times where you are already under duress or opens you up to being forcefully outed to post secondary administrators and teachers.
Medical records are usually better served with more accurate information because if you’ve transitioned your reactions to medication are more closely linked to your horomones meaning the dosages you receive by any trans health untrained doctor may be off and it is actually safer in most emergencies to have their first instinct be to treat someone as their listed gender and not their birth sex.
From a beaurcratic standpoint listing the sex of someone on their birth certificate isn’t exactly useful past a point either. The main purpose of the things is to establish a time or location of the person’s birth for determining nationality. That’s why you can change your name regardless of what you were called at birth, so it remains a reflection of your current state… Also census data logs everything at your registration so later changes don’t impact anything significant. The other reason birth certificates exist is for enthusiasts to track genealogy.
There isn’t exactly a compelling reason to disallow people some autonomy over how they are recorded for posterity sake… aside from a lack of empathy.