Washington Post: Transgender Texans blocked from changing sex on driver’s licenses
Needless to say, this is controversial. Anumita Kaur reports:
Transgender Texans can no longer change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses to match their gender identity, according to a state policy rolled out this week. Advocacy groups say the new rule further harms a vulnerable community already targeted by anti-trans efforts in the state and around the country.
Previously, Texans could present the agency with a certified court order or an amended birth certificate to change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses.
"Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, said the new policy denies dignity to the state’s 92,900 transgender adults."
Leaving aside the pros and cons of accurately listing a person’s gender on a state-issued ID, or even whether a person’s gender should be listed, the issue begs the question—What is a “transgender adult?”
Now, according to the economist and historian Dierdre McCloskey, who as a man actually went through the agonizing medical process of becoming a woman, a true transgender is a person who actually “crossed over,” not simply identified as such. In her book, Crossing, a Transgender Memoir—which I have read—McCloskey documents the years-long, grueling process of "Donald" becoming Dierdre that she endured in the 1990s. Being not only a person who has actually crossed over, she is also a leading living public intellectual—and one of my favorites. This in my view gives her tremendous credibility.
As I understand her, "crossing" is synonymous with transgender. If Pritchett’s statistics are correct, transgender adults account for about 1 in 322 Texas adults. But in her book, McCloskey also cites statistics, one of which is that the number of people who ACTUALLY CROSSED OVER to the other gender is 3 in 10,000—or about 1 in 3,333. This means that the figure cited by Pritchett in the article actually grossly overstates the number of transgender adults in Texas by more than 10 times. In reality, then, there are statistically about 9300 transgender adults in Texas, not 92,900. But what about the other approximately 83,600? McCloskey characterizes them—people who "identify" as the other gender, and live as such, but have not crossed over, as impersonators. McCloskey defends gender impersonation as an individual right. She herself, as Donald, before crossing over, referred to herself as a female impersonator. But should female impersonators be able to change their legal gender status, simply because he decides "I am a woman" while factually still being a man? Reality doesn't bend to personal choice, wishful thinking, or whim.
Mischaracterizing and exaggerating transgenderism, as the activists and their media enablers do, does no favors for actual transgender adults. It trivializes what they go through and went through to actually get to real transgenderism. To be fair to them, we need to get our facts straight. My study of the issue leads me to this: In Texas there are 83,600 gender impersonators, and 9300 transgenders. only the 9300, it seems to me, should be able to update their licenses. That the Texas policy won't allow it may be largely the fault of the transgender activists. What is the state to do? There is a clear difference between being transgender (crossing the gender line surgically and emotionally) and identifying as what we might call a transgender impersonator. By whitewashing that distinction, it is primarily Brad Pritchett and his Equality Texas ilk, not just the Texas policy, that "denies dignity to the state’s transgender adults." *
* [Texas doesn’t allow any change from the original birth certificate. Perhaps if people were more honest about their personal condition, the state will allow it for the 9300. In any event, it should.]
Related Reading:
Crossing, a Transgender Memoir by Dierdre McCloskey
On the ‘Transgender’ Phenomenon
Why elite women’s sports need to be based on sex, not gender Doriane Lambelet Coleman
The Problem With Saying ‘Sex Assigned at Birth’ by Alex Byrne and Carole K. Hooven
The Courage to Follow the Evidence on Transgender Care by David Brooks
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