drivers license

The brief winter of our community’s discontent with the state Department of Licensing is finally over. We can all party like it’s 1999. For me, I can party that like that first day in 1987.

 

It was a rare sunny January morning in Seattle in 1987 and I felt pretty — at least on the inside of my 300-pound frame. It had been a few weeks since I confessed to a magistrate of the King County Municipal Court  and to my therapist that despite my still-foreboding five-o’clock shadow, my baritone voice, and my penchant for playing with computers — I was a creature of the opposite sex. A couple of years of Ingersoll support groups, several “beauty consultants,” and a class in the mystique of the feminine walk, had convinced me that I could correct a mistake of nature. Finally, the state of Washington had graded me with an “F” on my driver’s license — a definite upgrade from the “M” that had followed me from the day that doctors in a German hospital had wrongfully diagnosed me with what was once a terminal disease for infants and a gender designation that proved more threatening  in my adult life.

 

The ink on that “F” on my driver’s license was not yet dry on this January morning when I treated myself to a Saturday morning brunch at a tasty restaurant. The license change was like a photo of your grandkids that you insist on sharing with the world at a certain age. It is Pride, Mardi Gras, and “Survival of the Fittest” all at once. I was feeling great — I was dining alone — but I was on top of the world. A few glasses of orange juice and several cups of coffee later, I was on top of something else. The sign on the door said “ladies,” and armed with my official designation, I had nothing to fear but public wetness.

The State of Washington has turned down the heat of an intense battle for identification in a more security-conscious world by eliminating the requirement for an updated birth certificate before changing a gender marker on a driver’s license. The state returns to a simpler time when a medical letter from a certified professional and a current driver’s license is all that’s required for individuals to participate in their transition to new identities. 

The decision comes after months of negotiations between the state and gender identity specialists — including representatives of Ingersoll Gender Center. “I thank all my colleagues for their tireless work in accomplishing this goal,” says Ingersoll founder and Board chair, Marsha Botzer. “We have worked long and hard on this project - and indeed, we will not ever quit until full equality is a fact for all Trans and Gender Identity people.”

 

New rules indicating the change will soon appear on the Department of Licensing Web site at http://www.dol.wa.gov/driverslicense/change.html .

The following paragraph will be removed from the current requirement:

The change in rules earlier in this decade was a response to the Bush administration’s “Real ID” call to upgrade standards nationally for the identification Americans typically use to board an airliner. Washington was one of many states that refused to comply with the “Real ID” act, even though the administration threatened to bar anyone without a “real ID” – compliant license from boarding a plane.   Still, the state did stiffen its license regulations — including the rule to change a gender marker. 

Washington is the ONLY state in the union where natives of the state can change their birth certificate gender without undergoing surgery, which state officials thought would make the new rule less threatening. However, many who seek Washington state driver’s licenses come from states or countries that either require surgery for gender marker changes or do not even allow any changes to an original birth certificate.

 

 

 

At a time of economic crisis, when too many promissory notes are in default, Dr.