Marcela (she/her)Have you experienced a drop in customer service after socially transitioning?
dandelionIt varied, but yes - I had much worse customer service experiences (and just interactions with the public in general) caused by discomfort with my transition.
On the positive side of things (I guess, if you consider it positive), cis allies who wanted to communicate they supported me tended to bomb me with compliments and kindness. I would be standing in line and a random woman would come up to me and start touching my dress and ooing and awing about it and asking where I got it. Random workers in the health food store who had ignored me for years would start randomly complimenting my clothes. That kind of thing.
An area where customer service really became worse was when I would make phone calls, e.g. to financial institutions, utility companies, medical providers, etc.
It was especially bad when routed to a call center in the “third world” (e.g. India), and when I had to either update my name & gender, or otherwise out myself as trans over the phone.
One example: it took me several months to recover a financial account; not only were there problems with their information systems, but culturally it was a shock for people on the phone to be dealing with a transsexual and I think they either sabotaged, resisted, or otherwise were negligent with the process of updating my information.
Voice training really helped with this, and making an effort to update my name & gender wherever I could in conjunction with voice training meant I had fewer and fewer situations where I had to out myself.
One of my worst experiences was trying to get my marriage license updated. The clerk wouldn’t issue a new license and only issued an invalid one where the old name was left visible with a thin line through it and they scribbled the new name in next to it by hand, and they used white-out on my gender marker instead of changing it (or even just removing it properly). I’m fairly certain that’s illegal and my only legal copy of my marriage license is now semi-illegitimate, as well as outing me clearly to anyone who sees it. At this point I’m just waiting for Trump to lose power and for the cultural and political winds to shift. Currently civil rights lawyers are completely swamped and the courts are increasingly hostile anyway, so I don’t see what I can do other than wait.
I see. You make very good points.
It certainly sounds safer to keep a low profile and wait right now.
I could see a practical argument in favor of waiting to socially transition until you’re starting to pass with strangers, but for HRT and medical transition I wouldn’t wait - the risks far outweigh the benefits for waiting.
EDIT: I would never want someone to hold off on their transition because of these stories - I strongly feel people who have gender dysphoria need to take seriously their need to transition; even as I went through these difficulties, the reality of repressing and not transitioning was much, much worse.
Every day of my life pre-transition I wanted to be not alive and most days I actively wanted to exit, but once I transitioned it didn’t take long for me to feel life-affirming and the feelings of not wanting to be alive became far less frequent (for the first time in my life, mind you). This was despite increased social stigma from looking trans, I called it my “irrational happiness”.
So, the awkwardness of a few phone calls does not justify risking your life and staying closeted or repressed. The empirical evidence backs this up, too - it’s not just anecdotal.
This was despite increased social stigma from looking trans, I called it my “irrational happiness”.
Pretty much the same. I didn’t mean postpone transitioning, furthest from my mind. I might add an edit actually if there is grounds for misunderstanding.
I meant going after legal recognition in documents, drivers licenses, birth certificates. IN THIS ECONOMY? Didn’t we just read what happened in Kansas last week?
So to put it more clearly: Interactions with US institutions related to trans stuff is actively dangerous right now.
I think some lawyers might agree with you, and furthermore you just can’t update certain documents with the federal government right now (like social security and passports, both of which won’t respect your gender identity and will only use assigned sex).
However, I tend to think this is a mistaken view overall - probably you will be targeted for being trans whether you update documents or not, and the on-the-ground risks of outing yourself is worse by not updating your name legally.
Think of interactions with the police: would you rather have an updated name and marker on a driver’s license in that interaction and the possibility of passing, or would you rather that interaction guarantees you are treated as a trans person as soon as they see your license whether you pass or not?
I lived in a state that would not let me update my gender marker, so I had interactions with the police where I passed, but once they looked me up in their database (based on my passport with a correct gender marker), they were able to know I was trans, but that wasn’t relevant in the moment because they only learned after my interactions with them that I was trans. They treated my as any other cis woman because I had updated my documents and happened to have a document with the correct gender marker.
I also left that state and moved to another state that does allow me to update my gender marker on my license, and now I have a passport and driver’s license both of which are in my correct gender and name. This is a great situation to be in, and I tend to think any person who is transitioning and is a woman or man should strive for that as well, for safety reasons.
Think of all the cases where someone needs your ID - signing up for gym membership, at physical therapy, at the eye doctor, at a bar, when buying alcohol, etc., if you start to pass all of those interactions become vectors where you will out yourself if you don’t update your name and gender marker, and often people don’t even notice a wrong gender marker (though it’s still a risk, I know someone who ended up being mistreated by a gym because her license had “M” on it).
So in general I think the pragmatic safety value of updating documents far exceeds the risk of being targeted by the government, and if the situation has devolved to the point where that risk flip flops and the gov’t will really be hunting down trans people, the goal at that point should be escaping the country at all costs, because the US gov’t (and their private partners) have significant capacities for data collection and spying and it won’t matter if you never updated your documents.
For context, in the US, car companies already listen to your conversations and use the data they collect to categorize someone’s sexual orientation and gender identity. The store, Target, builds intensive profiles about anyone who goes to a store. Being visibly trans is enough to get you logged that way in a million ways by a million companies. Companies like Google, Oracle, and Facebook track what people do online and build profiles (even if you don’t use their services or visit their websites).
The cooperation between private companies in their data collection and the US gov’t is already strong, but the US gov’t also has a history of forcing companies to disclose information to them and using legal measures to prevent the companies from notifying victims or the general public.
And ICE has already asked & received data from Google on pro-Palestine activists, and when ICE asked, Google broke their own policies to release that information to ICE without a chance for the activists to take legal action to prevent that data being handed over.
So, yeah - changing your documents might be one way the US gov’t tracks trans folks, but it won’t be the only way, and you have to weigh the cost / benefits either way.
I tend to think it’s better for me to have as-accurate-as-possible official documents to prevent hassles. Recently I’ve even had trouble with convincing people I really am the same person I was before I transitioned, so even if it’s not related to trans stigma, having updated documents is also important for avoiding suspicion of committing fraud or having illegitimate documentation (even if it’s actually legitimate).
the on-the-ground risks of outing yourself is worse by not updating your name legally.
Of course. That is why we get the legal right in the first place.
and if the situation has devolved to the point where that risk flip flops and the gov’t will really be hunting down trans people, the goal at that point should be escaping the country at all costs, because the US gov’t (and their private partners) have significant capacities for data collection and spying and
That is fair reasoning, but unfortunately, this is what many fear it has come at.
it won’t matter if you never updated your documents.
Coming from several privacy conversation this could be a form of defeatism. The Kansas case shows they use legal transition data in flagging trans people. Of course an actual holocaust is a whole other ballpark, but even then they will be desperate for info on who is who. You don’t think there’s anything worth saving privacy-wise for trans people?
So, yeah - changing your documents might be one way the US gov’t tracks trans folks, but it won’t be the only way, and you have to weigh the cost / benefits either way.
OK this more or less answers my question above. The thing is, none is really sure how the Kansas DMV pulled it off. Bottomline is they’re running OSINT and keep tabs on trans people. I also recall the attempts of Texas to get medical info on transitions from Seattle.
You make valid points for the necessity of pursuing legal recognition, but these cases are troubling as long as this situation goes on.
That is fair reasoning, but unfortunately, this is what many fear it has come at.
based on what? as far as I can tell it’s only anticipation of possible future risk that leads to this thinking, not any actual direct risk right now. There is still largely no criminalization, no camps, etc. The main way trans people are oppressed right are mostly through other categories like poverty and race - those people experience more deaths, violence, disease, and imprisonment (but not for being trans itself, that’s just a compounding factor in their poverty and the way they are targeted or forced into illegal activities like sex work for survival).
The Kansas case shows they use legal transition data in flagging trans people. Of course an actual holocaust is a whole other ballpark, but even then they will be desperate for info on who is who. You don’t think there’s anything worth saving privacy-wise for trans people?
I don’t mean to imply a defeatist attitude, I think it’s a misreading of my point - my point is only that not updating your documents to reflect your actual name and sex is a miscalculation of risks, prioritizing unrealized fears of possible future risks over on-the-ground and actual / direct risk trans people face. I’m not saying there is no benefit to not updating documents or that it never makes sense to not update documents (that would be defeatism), I’m saying despite the possible risks, it often still does make sense to update documents for a lot of trans people.
The reality is that the US even in its right-ward turn is still one of the safest places to be trans, and one of the best places to transition - with greater access to care and better legal rights than most countries.
We don’t know whether the current administration will succeed in their goals, and the situation varies from state to state.
People should probably prioritize getting to safe states, and forming escape plans to leave the country if need be. But updating documents is still a practical step that should be taken by many of us, and the risks of not updating documents seems to far exceed the possible or anticipated future risks of persecution by the government (which again, I don’t think will be a campaign of oppression that does not just hinge on whether documents were updated).
as an aside (footnote)
In some cases it’s straightforward that the risk of updating documents outweighs the benefits.
I think it absolutely makes sense for non-binary folks (or gender non-conforming folks who may be many years into medical transition and don’t have the money or genetic-luck to pass) to have the option of falling back to their assigned sex if they still can pass as their assigned sex and to leave their documents in a way that allows them that safety fallback even if it is not perfectly affirming or representative.
That is, a gender marker like X on a passport is an obvious increase in on-the-ground risk, so it’s a clear example where updating the document would be an increase in potential future risks that isn’t justified by the alleviation of immediate, concrete risks.
But for trans people who are men or women, and who are early in transition and don’t yet pass but are likely to, or are starting to pass as their gender - those people have a lot to gain by having documents that align with their gender.
I changed most of my documents before I was passing, and thought I would never pass - I generally think trans people underestimate their future or present capacity to pass as their gender, so I would even lean towards general advice being that you should update documents regardless.
As always, don’t think of my responding as disagreeing.
I think it is important that you integrate passing in your analysis, and indeed it is a factor to consider either way.
But I beg to differ on the state-sponsored genocide thing. There have been several analyses on that, but I don’t want to be grim. I will leave it at that. There is a prior and a posterior probability at all times that things will get worse in that direction, and we have to update this with every new development. I don’t believe it is an immediate danger, as it is a long term non-zero possibility.
Otherwise, I agree on the necessity of social and legal transition as the medical one. And the on-the-ground risk analysis. I think you provided some original thinking here. I hope people find this helpful.
The genocide is not a potential future, it’s currently happening, and it’s happening more in some places (like Florida prisons and in states that institute “social death” policies like refusing to acknowledge trans or intersex people as existing) than others - genocide is not just the death camps and gas chambers, it’s all the stuff leading up to it, aimed at eliminating a group of people, and some of those things are very much already in place (such as dehumanization and the stochastic violence our community faces, etc.).
I think the state won’t be limited in their tools to identify trans people to just document changes, so again I think that under-determines the risk of being targeted while increasing real, concrete risks (including outing yourself and making yourself a target) in the meantime.
Also this argument against updating documents is a similar argument that could be made for never getting gender affirming care, both create paper-trails that expose you to being identified and put on a list. The federal government is taking strategies that anti-trans state governments in the past have successfully pulled off, like using the attorney general to subpoena private medical records of trans patients from hospitals. This means that if you get surgeries, hormones, etc. from a hospital, you are also taking a risk of putting yourself “on a list” in some ways that are similar to the risk of updating documents. This isn’t just theoretical, the hospital that provided my bottom surgeries was also a hospital that previously had been forced by an attorney general to hand over all records of trans patients - I take it for granted that my personal and medical history will be handed over by this hospital to the anti-trans politicians who want it.
At some point the reality is just that transitioning at all is going to be a risk in a society that is trying to eliminate trans people, but the reality is that people with gender dysphoria need that care.
Social and medical transition is life-saving and significantly improves health.
When I consider whether I should have repressed and not transitioned given the risk of genocide looming ahead of me, I know that this genocide we are facing is still less risky to my health and well-being than what I was going through pre-transition. I nearly didn’t survive repression, I landed in the ER multiple times, and the evidence we have is that this is common - most of us don’t survive repression.
So in my mind, it’s a matter of a concrete and probable death from refusing to transition weighed against the dynamic and changing oppression trans people face in the US. Currently they don’t seem to have death camps on the mind as much as criminalization as a pipeline to forced detransition in prisons, so the worst case scenario is looking like ending up in a prison where you have to go back to repressing.
(Not that I want to diminish the other horrible places trans people end up and how those are linked to oppression, I just wanted to stay more focused on the specific risks of the US government instituting more advanced genocide.)
When I consider whether I should have repressed and not transitioned given the risk of genocide looming ahead of me, I know that this genocide we are facing is still less risky to my health and well-being than what I was going through pre-transition.
Let me underscore this once more: I suggest none of a) not medically transitioning b) not socially transitioning c) not legally transitioning. All are life saving, each on of them is conversion and gatekeeping.
I did bring up that © might be an immediate risk for getting targeted.
I appreciate all of your insights about the whole context, but I am not clear about your estimate probability of systematic elimination of trans people. Agreed that trans genocide is a broader concept and it is already ongoing. But people are worried about the systematic death thing, and the enemies explicitly want it. My estimate is it could happen somewhere in between 5 to 10 years, all the infrastructure is there. A Holocaust scholar left the US, saying they believe that the plan is 1) round us up with pathologization and criminalization of being gender non-conforming, 2) euthanizing us. This is not unheard of, Nazi death camps were build with the know-how Nazi’s had gained from Action T4, a euthanizing program for mentally ill people. The scholar asks why would MAGA take all the preparatory steps for genocide and then just turn around and not do it. Why would they?
I am unclear, on one hand you say that mass murder ideas are purely hypothetical because camps don’t exist, on the other hand you recognize that genocidal rhetoric is broader and all-encompassing. Keep in mind that many people in Nazi Germany did not die in the well known death camps, as the industrialized process was kept mostly for Jews. Trans people in particular they were mostly murdered early on in political prisoner camps, as antisocials. There are camps right now, they’re called detainment centers, and some racialized trans people have found their way there. So there is a class and race aspect to it.
this genocide we are facing is still less risky to my health and well-being than what I was going through pre-transition.
Ok I am quoting the same line twice now. The absolute necessity of all these aspects of transitioning is why trans rights are civil rights and human rights. Also this calls for an advancement in privacy rights, and special protections for trans-related data. Solidarity with the rest of the oppressed Black activism, Hispanic, neurodivergent, disabled people. Can we agree that trans people must collectively and politically organize to advanced levels of resistance and survival? I certainly wish I saw more of that.
I did bring up that © might be an immediate risk for getting targeted.
sorry, I don’t know what © means here.
but I am not clear about your estimate probability of systematic elimination of trans people
I do think death camps are a possibility, but the US and Germany are in very different places, and I think the current administration is less blood-thirsty for death camps than they are invested in creating the appearance of fulfilling that blood thirst in their constituents. Trump is under pressure by an anti-trans movement to deliver, and he has done many things to make good on his end of the deal. But I don’t think Trump is anything like Hitler in terms of being a “true believer” of transphobia, and there have been times the anti-trans movement has been very critical and upset with Trump because he’s not willing to go as far as they would like.
I think death camps are a more distant / remote possibility than criminalization and forced detransition in prisons. Florida flirted with using capital punishment as a systematic way to kill trans people, so it’s not like that couldn’t easily go from one to the other - but I think some of the most extreme anti-trans movement leaders are not interested in literally re-creating Nazi programs like T4 and gas chambers as they are invested in the steps that come before: criminalization, forced detransition in prisons, etc.
I think the anti-trans progress in the US has been slower because of the restraint courts and laws still have - and while Trump has done plenty to help erode these things, I don’t think the consensus of scholars is that he has fully succeeded or that a coup has been completed. The Nazis were enabled by a context of eliminating all checks and balances, and we just haven’t seen that process happen in the US yet - but I fully expect Trump to try it if not in the next year, possibly by the end of his presidency.
But regardless, Trump and MAGA do not have the full control of the government in the US, and they have plenty of enemies - and importantly, Trump is old and not likely to live much longer (maybe 10 years?), so even with a successful coup, it’s unclear how long he would remain in power or what he would accomplish in his geriatric years. All this to say, we don’t know whether they will succeed in criminalizing and imprisoning trans people to begin with, let alone trans adults - or what that timeline looks like. I’m inclined to think it could take them >3 years to do so, esp. since even with the current control over the gov’t, Trump failed to get his strongest / most supported anti-trans bill passed: the athletic ban. So I am far less confident than you that death camps are 5 years away, even if it could be more or less than that in reality depending on how the situation deteriorates.
Even in the worst anti-trans states like Texas, they were unable to even get support within their party for a bill to criminalize trans adults as committing “gender identity fraud”. There just isn’t an appetite for this among the Republicans, even in the most extreme states. What I think is more likely are things like public cross-dressing bans, and laws that try to criminalize trans people for engaging in “sexual acts” by living as themselves - but even those laws we haven’t seen proposed let alone successfully passed and put back in law (unlike in the US in the 1970s when cross-dressing was criminal in many jurisdictions across the US).
Also this calls for an advancement in privacy rights, and special protections for trans-related data
I obviously agree, one change I would love to see is that credit reporting agencies like TransUnion not disclose deadnames on credit reports. This essentially outs trans people to landlords, employers, banks, etc.
Can we agree that trans people must collectively and politically organize to advanced levels of resistance and survival? I certainly wish I saw more of that.
While it’s obvious that trans people are the most impacted by anti-trans policies, I don’t think trans people could possibly be successful in their resistance - we are a tiny minority of the population and spread out across the country. We lack the numbers and the capacity to gather in person necessary for a meaningful resistance to arise. Instead, trans people need to recognize we are a weak minority that depends on alliance with larger groups - particularly I think we should seek alliance with women, immigrants, sexual minorities (gay/lesbian/bisexual, etc.), and economic justice movements (e.g. labor unions, consumer advocacy, housing co-ops, etc.).
I also think while it’s obvious that resistance is important, I think resistance and politics in general is a matter of power and resources, and the oppressed are often the least capable of organizing meaningful resistance - that is, trans people most need resistance and survival, but are often least empowered to do so.
So, I tend to think trans people should prioritize their own needs first and foremost, and then as they establish safety, stability, etc. they should seek to cooperate in those alliances and ideally local community to help others out as well.
I’m not sure what you consider “advanced levels of resistance and survival” - but I think placing further demands on trans people to engage politically misplaces responsibility on some of the least capable members of society, and while it would be nice if we could all cooperate and push back together, I don’t think trans people have some kind of unique responsibility to do this, and sometimes prioritizing individual survival is more than we are capable of. I don’t think we should make trans folks feel ashamed for not doing more, esp. when they are in a position of being able to do so little.