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.