Since I've undertaken my gender voyage I've been told I couldn't do many things. Since I'm also stubborn, as many of you well know, I do them anyway. I've been told that I must give up cabinetmaking. I may later on, but it won't be because a lady shouldn't do that sort of work. Lately I've been told I cannot change my name in Ohio without a "legal" name change. I just did it and in doing so made it possible for others to do the same.
I do believe that I was born transsexual for a reason, that I had to finally deal with it when I did for a reason, that the Goddess is guiding me on my course. When I first tried to get my Driver's License changed, it got all the way to having it printed out before it was snatched out of my hands at the last minute. I talked on the phone to representatives of the Ohio DMV, listened to their excuses and argued my case to no avail. I talked to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and was told that as a transsexual, I have no civil rights. I talked to the Ohio Attorney General's office and was told by a extremely rude lady attorney that my choices in the matter were limited to sueing the State or getting a legal name change. I was advised by many of my sisters to just "bite the bullet" and do the change.
There are very good reasons why I didn't want to do a legal name change. If you live in Franklin County or one of the other large Ohio cities' counties, the "legal" change requires publication in either the newspaper or a legal notices newsletter that only attorneys and bill collectors read. If you live in a rural county however, as I do, your only choice is the local paper. In Delaware county that means the Delaware Gazette. They publish their legal notices on page two in bold (and I do mean bold) print. You are out to everyone in the county, right now, bigot and nice people alike. You are a target for hate crimes and you just aimed the bigots straight at you. Think it can't happen? Think again. Why do you think we keep our meeting locations and times confidential? The club gets a number of threatening calls on our screening number on a regular basis. There are people out there who want to hurt us.
A state that refuses to acknowledge basic civil rights for transsexuals demands that those same transsexuals publish their names and addresses in the local paper! That they make themselves targets for hate crimes the state will do nothing about. That they expose themselves to discrimination the state will not protect them from.
Had I succeeded in getting my DL changed that first time, no one but myself would have benefited. It would have been due to sloppy procedure on the part of the clerk and the next TS still would have had a problem. I don't think the Goddess let me have it because I needed to change the system for the others. She held it out and then took it away to drive home the point. I was supposed to do this "right". This is why I didn't take the advise of some other sisters to claim a Franklin county address and do the change there. It wouldn't have been right, I would have been cheating. I have no intentions of apologizing for my spiritual beliefs here, what happened today seems to confirm them, for you see, She did it again. I almost got my gender marker changed as well as my name, again from a sloppy procedure by a clerk due to a series of accidents. It once again was snatched at the last minute out of my hand after it was printed and ready to hand over to me. That battle still needs fought and won for all of us and the same lesson was given me a second time on a different angle.
This is how I did it, how any TS in Ohio can do it and what happened about the gender marker. I had already changed my social security account name. This is fairly easy to do. A letter from your therapist with both your old name and your new name on it works just fine, but it must be the original, not a copy. For a second id I used my Crystal Club id card. I got my hands on a copy of the Ohio administrative code that covers the requirement of identity for getting either an Ohio Driver's License or State ID card. I had been told over and over that it required me to get that "legal name change" It doesn't. It says that if you cannot produce two forms of identification that have your legal name on them, establish your date of birth and your social security number, then you can use a legal name change court order and your old id. It lists the criteria for the legal documents used to identify yourself. They must be "certified" or otherwise official and they must be verifiable. What I did was take my social security account card, go to the social security office and get a printout of my account. It was stamped, making it certified. It had my new legal name, my social security number and my date and place of birth on it. It fit all the criteria listed. The secondary document requirements are much much looser. In my case my therapist's carry letter was more than enough. The key is that the printout from the Social Security people MUST be stamped, if not it isn't certified and you can be refused. The second part of the code gives examples of primary and secondary documents that are acceptable, and a printout from SS is listed as a secondary document. This means nothing! It is simply a list of what they will accept, by naming the criteria in the first part of the code, they established what is needed.
The same DMV office that refused me the first time had to accept my documents the second time. For what it's worth, a passport would have also worked but I'm not planning on leaving the country and I didn't want to spend the money required. So what happened on the gender marker? I asked the clerk to change it and she said she wasn't allowed to. I pointed out that nowhere in the law was gender or sex defined and that of seven different ways of determining sex, I was female by five of them, possibly mixed on one and only male by one. She almost bought it, asked and was told "no". I didn't fight it.
After my picture was taken, there was a mix-up on my new License. It stated that I needed an interlock device on my car for a drinking and driving offense. That isn't true so they had to change it and do it again. The new clerk asked if everything else was right and I said "I wish you'd correct the gender" She did. The new License was printed but the machine was acting up and the original clerk came by and asked if they had fixed the problem. She looked at my new License and said "she can't have the 'f', it's got to be done over again. More calls to the State office and no, Cathy isn't a woman according to the state. Once more something that would have been only for my benefit was shown to me, almost mine and then snatched away. The message is clear, that battle needs to be fought for all, not just slipped by for myself. In the meantime, I'm now officially Cathy Platine and no one can say different anymore.
I'll get the "f" as well and in such a way that all after me can do the same.