CREATIVE NON-FICTION

Another Kind of Gender Transition

Changing my name and gender marker will make a lot of things easier

I’m currently in the process of two different types of gender transitions. I’m transitioning socially and medically. I’m soon about to embark on a third form of gender transition.

What’s a social transition?

As someone who’s socially transitioning, I’ve let everyone know that I have a new name and that my pronouns are now he/him. I wear different clothes from before. I cut my hair short. I often say that passing, being seen by others as looking like my true internal gender, shouldn’t be a requirement to be trans. I truly believe that. That said, I confess that I’ve spent countless hours reading and studying up on how to pass as a man. Why? Because it hurts to get misgendered all the time.

My most recent gender therapist offered websites to help me pass as a man. There are countless details that affect whether strangers will at a glance read me as a man, a woman, agender (someone who has an absence of gendered traits), or androgynous (demonstrating aspects of both genders).

For example, before I ever started taking testosterone, I shaved my face regularly because cis women tend to have peach fuzz from not shaving, while adult cis men who shave wouldn’t have this. I also learned quickly to stop apologizing for things that aren’t my fault. Very few cis men do that, linguistically speaking. I started trying to speak in shorter sentences, using fewer niceties.

When sitting, I made a point of taking up more space. I open doors for people, but otherwise don’t tend to hesitate when walking into a crowd anymore. I changed my posture and the way that I carry myself, imitating what I see cis men doing. I changed a thousand other little mannerisms. Most of these are cultural stereotypes that mean nothing in isolation, as this part of gender is a social construct, but collectively, these changes really help to make people assume I’m a man, when I put in the effort. Social constructs are real because we collectively accept them as real.

It gets exhausting at times, paying attention to all these details. Ultimately, this is less about being true to myself and more about helping others to understand who I am by translating myself into a gender language that they recognize. What’s problematic is that some of the details that would help me pass socially feed directly into misogyny. This left me with complicated decisions on how far to go with these changes.

Prior to beginning my medical transition, the temptation to go too far was very real. Some of my work duties were customer service related, so I was misgendered hundreds of times a day, even after all my effort to take on some of the more innocuous stereotypes of manhood. The things that got me gendered correctly were the ones that pushed up against the line of male privilege. Taking up too much space, not apologizing even when appropriate, and speaking in a gruff, impolite, and overconfident way were the quickest and easiest ways to pass as a cis man. The trouble was that I didn’t like the person that I was becoming on days when I leaned into that persona to get a break from misgendering. This was a huge factor in my decision to medically transition.

What’s a medical transition?

If you aren’t familiar with what medicine and/or surgeries can do for transgender people, you might assume you can tell whether someone is trans or not. You might also assume you can tell what (if any) direction a gender transition is moving in. You might assume you can guess what decision a doctor made about the assigned gender at birth of a person. I once had a cis woman berate me in the comments of a social media post for “appropriating women’s experience” by discussing my experience as a man with a uterus. She apparently thought I was a trans woman who was not speaking literally about my possession of a uterus. That discussion truly made my day.

I understand how this happens. Thanks to Testosterone, there are times when strangers read me as having been assigned male at birth by a doctor. My body produces muscle much more quickly with exercise than before, so I’m stronger than the average cis woman who does the same amount of exercise. I can lift things that I couldn’t possibly have lifted before. My shoulders are broader from the muscle changes. My fat has redistributed to make my hips look smaller. My face looks more angular and my neck a little wider. The hair on my head is gradually squaring off the way it would for a man in his late thirties. My voice has deepened; when I touch my neck, I can feel an Adam’s apple growing.

Given all of these changes, if I’m feeling lazy and don’t perform all those culturally masculine mannerisms, or if I opt to dress in drag by throwing on some of my favorite old femme clothes for fun, I can easily be mistaken for a trans woman who doesn’t pass very well.

Thanks to all these physical and social changes, it’s getting more and more complicated to navigate the legal aspects of my existence. Even if hearing my deadname wasn’t painful, reminding me of a prior life that was full of disassociation and suicidal ideation, I know my medical transition is going to eventually take me to a point where I’m unrecognizably different and can’t reliably pass as the person who was born with my deadname. For this reason, I feel like moving forward in my life requires another kind of gender transition.

What is a legal gender transition?

I recently went to a name change clinic through the Colorado Name Change Project. It was a small first step in the direction of completing my legal gender transition. This means that I’m going to change my name and the official gender marker on all my legal documents. Doing this will make a lot of things in my life easier.

For example, it eliminates excuses for doctors to list me under the wrong name, sex, and pronouns in my permanent medical files. This is no small issue, as my most recent doctor’s office in North Carolina has me listed as an Asian male, using she/her pronouns under my current legal name. They’re so thoroughly confused. I’ve tried to correct them but will ultimately just have to explain to my next doctor that they mixed me up with my wife in some weird way.

It also will hopefully prevent any future employers from ever knowing my deadname to use it against me. Since my last employer outed my deadname to the entire staff at a time that coincidentally followed an uncomfortable discussion about her racist hiring practices, I’m not eager to go on another job interview until I can make sure that no one has this power over me again.

Changing my name legally would prevent me from getting confused looks from bank employees checking my driver’s license prior to a deposit or withdrawal, since my driver’s license picture no longer looks like me. As I pass more reliably as a man, I’m going to look less and less like a person who could possibly have my deadname. Without a name change, this could put me in uncomfortable or even dangerous situations in airports, if stopped by police, or under other circumstances where a convincing ID card is required to function safely in society.

Here’s what I learned during the name change clinic*

Though it’s much easier to make this change in Colorado than in North Carolina, where I come from, it will still be a challenging and somewhat expensive process. There’s an incredible amount of support here though, including financial assistance for people who can’t afford this process.

Thanks to Jude’s Law in Colorado, it appears that I don’t have to go through something really uncomfortable and possibly dangerous that I would’ve had to deal with in North Carolina. I don’t have to take out an ad in the newspaper announcing my deadname and new legal name. I also don’t have to allow my private personal address to be publicly posted alongside a notice that essentially outs me as transgender by showing my old feminine name alongside my new masculine name. According to the Colorado Name Change Project Clinic’s PowerPoint presentation, in order to take advantage of this law, I can answer question 9 on my local name change petition by writing: “Petitioner is exempt from publication under the provisions of C.R.S 13–15–102(4), as codified by HB 19–1039”.

Before I do all of that, I need to obtain proof of residency. Then, I need to get fingerprinted and get an FBI background check completed. That will cost $81.50. Once that is completed, I have 90 days to submit all of my paperwork to the county court. That will cost roughly $88. I may be required to have a court hearing before I can get my name officially changed. Each certified copy of the name change will then cost $20. I’ll need a few of those to get other legal documents changed, which will involve additional fees.

All told, it sounds like this part of the process will cost a minimum of $189.50, before taking into account changing each official document, such as my birth certificate, my social security card, my driver’s license, and my passport. Medical, education, and financial record changes will require some additional hoops to jump through as well.

To change my gender marker on federal documents, I will need a note from a doctor, as well. This doesn’t require a medical transition, but it does require an appointment with a doctor who’s knowledgeable enough about trans issues to recognize that someone is transgender. For someone who doesn’t meet common stereotypes of transitioning, such as the misconception that someone must experience dysphoria to be legitimately trans, this could require appointments with different doctors to find someone qualified enough to make that determination and provide that note. I suspect that my medical transition will make this search quicker and easier for me, than it might be for others in my community who haven’t or don’t want to medically transition for any number of reasons. I hope I’m wrong about that difficulty but would love to read about other people’s experiences with this in the comments.

Overall, legally transitioning is its own process that takes time and some money.

What about you?

Have you or someone you’ve known gone through a gender transition? What type(s) of gender transition were involved? What were your experiences with it? I would love to hear all about it!

*Note: I’m not a lawyer and none of this is to be taken as legal advice. This is just what I’ve learned through my own research as a trans man attempting to get his name changed in Colorado in the United States.

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