Estelle's Passport Emergency
The Trump administration is attempting to erase trans people from legal existence by denying us the ability to change our legal genders, and by defining gender as the genitalia you were born with. The administration is not listening to science, to the current understanding of what gender is (a social construct, an idea, something that varies and carries different meanings from culture to culture, mutable, unfixed, not-the-body), or history (trans humans have existed as long as cis humans humans have existed: forever). Biological determinism--the belief that the body, specifically genitalia, determines gender--has historically been used to prevent trans people's genders from being seen as legitimate and to disqualify us from so many social systems dependent on gender, and now the administration is attempting to wield biological determinism like a broadsword to cleave us out of existence.
The administration is creating a blitz for trans people to obtain ID. I am lucky compared to a large swath of other trans folks who haven't overcome the massive hurdles to obtaining ID out society erects before us. I changed my legal name as a Christmas gift to myself at the end of 2016, when I had income from teaching. I changed my Social Security name and gender at the beginning of 2017. I obtained a Driver's License at the end of 2017 that says my legal name and correct gender using the name change paperwork. I obtained a nondriver ID a month ago that says my legal name and correct gender also, should I ever lose my license again. It all cost hundreds of dollars and years of labor, bureaucratic, emotional, and physical. My birth certificate still says the wrong information, but Missouri law (the state I was born in) currently prohibits me from changing the information on it until I become rich and get bottom surgery, so I'll just have to live with that.
The linchpin for having my ID settled and put behind me is getting a Passport. Not only will the passport allow me to leave the country, but it carries the same bureaucratic weight as a birth certificate, to my understanding, in that government agencies often lump it in the same category as a birth certificate regarding processes that require ID. Meaning, if I can get a passport, I don't need to worry about my birth certificate outing me on job applications, tax documents, during travel, and anything else that requires you prove who you are using the authority given by certified paperwork, like you would for a pet or for a collectable figurine. My word means nothing against paperwork.
I have a Master's degree, a Master of Fine Arts degree (equivalent of a PhD for creative writers), and two undergrad degrees in Communication and English. You'd think I'd be in a decent spot economically. They reality is, I have been unemployed for roughly eighteen months now, and since I healed enough this summer to look for work in earnest again, I have interviews set up and promises from potential low-wage employers. I'm struggling to pay rent and maintain a place to live ($350 a month). My food stamps stop at the end of October unless I can find a loophole to recertify them with, and with them goes my ability to feed myself again until I find legit income (food stamps provide close to $200 a month, more if I use the local programs that give me more money if I buy lots of produce). I have so many transition related expenses I can't afford right now either--hormones ($100 a month without insurance), electrolysis (hundreds to thousands a month), wardrobe (incalculable, as I haven't bought clothes in a year and a half), voice therapy (I haven't even looked into it because so much else needs to happen first), normal therapy (covered by the advocacy organization I'm working with), surgery (nope, too far down the road, tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars anyway, out of reach), etc. My student loans are in default. My credit cards have been maxed since last winter and are now in the stage where the phone people call me every day and threaten my accounts going into collections if I don't pull money out of the air to give to them. My phone was disconnected over the weekend and I dipped into the money I had saved for rent to keep my phone going because I need to receive callbacks from potential employers in order to get enough money from potentially working for them to pay rent.
Even with all this in front of me, I am only raising money for the Passport right now, because the Trump administration has put a time limit on my ability to prove who I am, to force people to refer to me with the name and gender that grant me the basic dignity I deserve as a human being, for employers to treat me with respect, for hiring documents to be benign and simple to fill out, for the paychecks to go to the right person, for my financial accounts and official records to be nothing more than financial accounts and official records, for interactions with law enforcement to be relatively more safe than if I had to explain why my ID says something else than what I am telling them. So that takes priority over all this other madness.
A passport costs $160 for me to obtain. The passport book itself costs $110, and the fees for the photo and processing total $50. I'm setting the goal at $200 because I need to pay for transportation to and from the post office as well--Lyfts/Ubers/cabs.
I have an appointment set up with the post office for the morning of Halloween to obtain my passport. Any little bit helps with this. Five dollars, ten dollars, twenty dollars, please give what you can. Thank you for anything you can provide.
