On the afternoon of May 4th,
2004, my quiet life was disrupted after the Social Security Administration had
notified my workplace that my gender at work did not match the gender marker on
my Social Security file. I had known that
the Social Security Administration still had me listed as my birth sex, and
that they would not change my record to female until I had completed the sex
reassignment surgery. But others had
assured me that my workplace would never find out about this, so I could move
to a new job where nobody knew about my past, and then work to save the funds
that I needed for my SRS.
What had I done to attract the
attention of a federal agency? I merely
strived to be known as just another woman among my neighbors and coworkers
while I was still pre-op.
In response to fears after
911, the Social Security Administration quietly changed their
policy and stated that they would not change the gender marker on a
person’s record until she had completed sexual reassignment surgery. Until now, some transitioners
were able to have their markers changed after merely beginning genital surgery
by getting an orchiectomy, or sometimes a clerk would have sympathy and change
the gender marker for anyone who was changing their name and was serious about
making the social transition.
It had taken me several years
to save the funds for the facial electrolysis and hair replacement system which
would make my successful transition possible.
I was transitioning two months too late to have my Social Security
gender marker changed.
Earlier this month a county
judge had approved of my court ordered name change to Sherry, and I was eager
to have my name changed on other documents.
Today I got off of work early enough to drive to the local Social
Security office before it closed.
The clerks were more than
willing to process my name change, but they told me that they could not change
the gender on my record even though I already had an orchiectomy. I would have to obtain SRS before they would
change my marker. Worried, I asked the
clerk if the Social Security Administration would ever tell any workplace that
I had transitioned or that I still had a male gender marker, and she assured me
that they would not. I left the office
believing that I could work anywhere without my workplace finding out about my
history.
Some TS friends at a support
group had assured me that I should be able to go stealth
wherever I moved to, and added to the clerk’s reassurance to not worry about
the gender marker on my Social Security record.
The chicken plant where I was
working at permitted me to transition in their workplace. But the management was reducing everyone’s
overtime hours, and I feared I would not be able to save funds to get my
surgery and finish my process. I also
began to develop carpal tunnel syndrome from my many years in the chicken
plant, and knew that I needed to find different work to save my hands. As a result of my transition, I was free to
be and act like myself all the time, but I felt that I was missing something by
working with coworkers and living with neighbors who knew about my transition.
In the fifth month of my new
real life, I decided to quit my job at the chicken plant, and move away to
another city where I could live with neighbors and coworkers who didn’t know
about my past, and would therefore treat me as another ordinary woman. It would take a few years for me to save the
funds for my final surgery, and I did not want to wait until I was post-op to
be stealth.
One week after I moved to my
new city, a temp agency placed me in a light industrial assignment. I had put my transition to the test, and had
successfully passed that test. I had
found employment in the name of Sherry, and I soon moved to a safer
apartment. I immediately noticed a
difference in the way neighbors and coworkers perceived me, and realized that
this was how I had always been meant to live.
75 days later, the company where I was assigned hired me permanently,
and I could now begin to quietly accumulate the funds to finish my transition.
My life settled back to an
ordinary routine of working, resting, and working more, but now I was living
this ordinary life as myself, and I was being treated as myself.
I thought the storm was over,
and that it would be calm from here on out.
I would just quietly accumulate the funds for SRS, and then have that
surgery and quietly finish my transition.
Perhaps I was just in the calm eye of the storm, because almost a year
after I moved here, the second half of the storm suddenly arrived with a
vengeance.
May 4th, 2004
At eight minutes before 2:00
PM, we had finished production and I was cleaning up the station before turning
it over to the second shift workers.
After stocking the station with parts, I was carrying two emptied boxes
to the dumpster. They had let me come an
hour early this morning at 4AM to help set up the department. My ten hours for today was almost finished,
and I was ready to go home and rest before the next workday. Eight more minutes, and I would be one day
closer to my SRS and my body the way it was supposed to be.
One of the HR clerks had
recently left the company, and the man who had replaced her seemed to appear
from nowhere, and asked me if I had filled out something like an I-9 form. Do you have your drivers
license and Social Security card with you?
There was some problem with my file, and they needed to verify my Social
Security number and birthdate. Had there been a problem with my name change
that was now catching up with me? Then I
remembered the gender marker. No, they
had told me that would never happen.
I feared that something was
terribly wrong. OK, I can’t have this
happening out here in the production floor; I must move this into the privacy
of the HR office. So I told the clerk I
would show him my driver’s license if he would take me to his office. I hoped this was nothing. It has to be something like a keystroke error
on my Social Security number, so the clerk will look this up on the computer,
and everything will be all right.
I let the HR man look over my
driver’s license, and then he went to my record on the computer. Is this your correct number? Yes. Is
this your correct birthday? Yes. I was getting increasingly nervous. Why was I in here? He then opened the E-Mail that the corporate
headquarters had sent to the local plant regarding ten employees with
discrepancies in their files, which did not match the Social Security
record. He found my name, followed by
the statement ‘Number and birth date match, gender does not match’. The clerk at the Social Security office had
told me this could never happen.
Oh no, what do I do now? I comment that I never saw a gender marker on
my Social Security card, and ask why they would bother with a gender marker if
my name, number, and birthday were all correct?
The HR man told me that either his predecessor in HR or else SSA had
made a typing error. The HR clerk
thanked me for my time and for verifying my number and birth date.
But I am feeling no better
after I leave his office to clock out, gather my
things, and go home, because I now know that the feds are going to keep
after him about the gender inconsistency until either my company
figures out
my past, or SSA actually looks into my file and tells them about
the history
of my name changes. OK, this
is going to get out, and very soon, oh no, can
I possibly contain this? Will the HR person keep this to himself once
he
finds out, or am I in for disaster?
But if I don't tell him, won't
he find out anyway as he communicates back
and forth with the corporate headquarters and the feds? So there's nothing
to gain by not telling him at this point?
One conclusion I reach is,
until the HR person solves this mystery, suppose
he would keep this to himself, but before he figures this out he
might
involve others in this investigation without knowing the consequences
for
me, and the more people who find out, the more likely everyone
would find
out. Oh no, I think I need to
return to his office and make a preemptive
disclosure, maybe I can keep this contained?
I waited for a short while
until he finished with a man in there, probably
an employee who has a mismatched number or birth date with the
SSA. When
this man is finished, I reenter the office and again lock the door
behind
me. I ask if I were to tell
him something would it stay in this room, that
I was taking an awful chance,
and that he might find this disturbing.
Well
he indicates that he would.
So now I tell him that I am TS, and that I've
pretty much made the transition, but that I haven't yet completed the
genital surgery, and the SSA won't change my gender indicator until I
complete the surgery. I didn't tell
him about my orchiectomy, but instead I
indicated that I had a 'first stage' surgery, but needed to save funds
before I could get the final stage in two to four years from now, so
that
was the whole mystery behind the gender marker discrepancy.
So now he again tells me that
he won't tell anyone about this, and assures
me he understands and that he knows of some gay people. I am really worried
that he might spread this, or even if he does keep this to himself,
he
either promotes or leaves the company and then I must face this all
over
again and take my chances with another HR clerk in 2005 when the feds
do
this again. Life has been good
since transition, and I am really afraid that I could lose the new life I
worked so hard to gain last year.
Nothing else happened for two
weeks. I worried a lot for the next
couple of days, and then felt more and more like nothing else would ever
happen.
May 18th, 2004
Late in the workday, the HR
man approached me again and asked me to come to his office after work. Omigod, what was happening now, had I been disclosed to management? I worried for the hour and a half until I
could go to his office.
He told me that he was
concerned about possible legal ramifications from my using the women’s restroom
while I was still pre-op, and feared that if anyone ever found out about me, a
woman might try to sue the company over my use of the women’s room before I had
completed the surgery. The restroom
contained lockers and showers. I had
worked there for almost a year now, yet I had never noticed anyone changing
clothes, and nobody had ever used the showers.
Perhaps the showers had not been used for years, because that is where
the janitor stored all her cleaning equipment.
But just because the showers were there, and there was a theoretical
possibility that someone might change clothes in there, the HR man was worried.
What could be done about
this? The man told me he was subordinate
to the other HR clerk who was his boss, and that he would have to disclose me
to her. He then called her into his
office, and I had to disclose all over again.
Now there were two people who knew, and I worried how much farther this
would go.
There was one other restroom
in the plant. It was a single unit
unisex room that the quality control associates used. It was far enough away from my work area that
I did not even know where it was, and in an area of the plant where I was still
unfamiliar enough to get lost. But I
expressed my one true fear about having to use that restroom. If I always walked all the way over there to
use that little restroom at the exclusion of the main one, coworkers would
notice and wonder why I wouldn’t use the main restroom with the other
women. Then my social perceptions there
would be in jeopardy, and I could be outed to the
rest of the workplace.
They asked me when I would get
the surgery, so that I would be post-op and then this issue with the restroom
would cease. I told them that I didn’t
have the funds to have SRS yet, and that I estimated my surgery for mid-2006.
For now the HR clerks would
not insist that I go all the way to that restroom, and I could continue using
the main restroom for now, but they would consider this. It has been almost two weeks since this
second shock, and I still fear further effects from the SSA having outed me.
I certainly thought it was
unnecessary. To inform employers that
the gender markers of their pre-op employees do not match does not further
homeland security. Perhaps this reflects
the conservative and rigid attitudes of many of our present-day leaders?
The HBIGDA SOC requires that
we make our social transition one year or longer before our surgery. I have no objection to those who wish to be
out about their transition, yet I do believe that those of us who wish to be
stealth should be permitted to do so even while pre-op. I knew it would be a few years before I could
get my surgery, and I did not want to wait that long to live life the way I was
meant to live it. I wish only what almost
all of the three billion women on this planet take for granted, to be seen and
treated as just another woman.
Since you had the orchiectomy, couldn’t you already have the gender markers on your SSA record and your birth certificate changed?
When I had transitioned at the
end of 2002, it was already too late to have my gender markers changed based on
my orchiectomy surgery. I did tell the
SSA that I had orchiectomy, but it was not enough for them.
Recently a doctor informed me
that she could not write a letter stating I was female because an external male
organ still remained. Some transsexuals
still claim that they can have their gender markers changed after a mere
orchiectomy, but I have found out for myself that this is not true. As long as a penis remains, a doctor could
not write a satisfactory letter implying complete sex change surgery without
perjuring themselves. Since the SSA
would probably not accept a surgeon’s verification letter from Thailand, a
post-op who had her surgery in Thailand could probably have her doctor write
and notarize a letter stating that she is now female, but a doctor cannot do
this for me until I’ve actually had SRS.
To read more about the
impossibilities of changing the gender markers after just an orchiectomy, go to
my essay on Changing
Legal Documents After Orchiectomy?
So all I can do for now is
hope that nothing else happens at work, and continue
working to save funds for my SRS, after which I hope to finally be able to
change the gender markers on my Social Security records and birth certificate.
It is now May 4th,
2005, one year after the SSA outed me to my
employer. I have been fortunate to
contain the knowledge of my history in the HR department, and I continue to
work toward my SRS later this year. I
have been fortunate than many others who have also been outed
by the SSA during the past three years.
After returning home from my
SRS in October 2005, I went through a long and sometimes discouraging process
to obtain a new birth certificate with my corrected name and sex. Finally, on April 25th, 2006, I
presented my surgery letters and a corrected birth certificate to a local SSA
office. The clerks kindly took me to a
back area so I could be interviewed quietly, and then they changed the sex on
my Social Security record to female.
It is very relieving to
finally have this corrected.
Meanwhile, our US Congress has
passed a Real-ID act. Beginning on May
11th, 2008, states will be required to request your birth
certificate (or other proof of US citizenship or legal residency) and your
Social Security number when issuing drivers licenses and IDs. Many states, including the one I now reside
in, already match your information with Social Security. I strongly recommend correcting both the name
and sex on all of your records if at all possible.
Links to some more relevant information:
Transadvocate
article on SSA policy
Another TS who was outed
by the SSA
A clerk at the local SSA
office assured me that the administration would never out me at work. However, in only a few weeks after my visit
to that SSA office (in December 2002), the SSA began using a new SSNVS employee
verification system to match gender and other identity information provided by
employers. A few months later, this
transsexual in Connecticut was outed in her workplace
by a no-match letter regarding her gender.
SSA
policy for changing name and other numident data
Although you will need to have
SRS before changing your gender marker, you can still change your name on the
SSA record as you commence your legal and social transition.
More
and more states compare data with SSA for driver's licenses
If you were fortunate to receive a driver’s license with a gender marker which matches your true gender identity, there is a risk that your state might demand that you exchange your license for one depicting your physical birth sex if your SSA record still has the marker from your birth gender.
Social Security Administration Policy Outs
Transsexuals!
SSA reply to a
transsexual about gender marker policy (Adobe PDF file)
Note that if your employer
voluntarily provides your gender along with other information for reporting
wages, the SSA will inform the employer if the listed gender does not match.
Transcending Gender articles:
Pre-op
Transsexuals Outed to Employers by Social Security
Administration
More
About Outing by Social Security Administration
This article is about the
current legal and social status of transsexuals, and
several options for living in the current social climate.