A friend who is a police officer, I’ll call him Jim, also works part-time doing security in an office building. Jim is required to check visitor’s IDs and have them sign in. He told me that recently, a very tall, professionally-dressed woman came into the building and when Jim asked her (we’ll call her Casey) for ID, Casey presented a driver’s license. The photo on the permit revealed a man with a five o’clock shadow, and the gender identification showed M.
“This ID indicates that you are a male,” Jim said politely to Casey. Casey replied cheerfully, “Actually, I was born a male, but I am in the process of transitioning to female.” Although there was some resemblance in facial features, Jim felt that the person pictured on the ID and the one standing before him might — or might not — be the same person. So, what’s a person to do when that happens? The issue is not only a quandary for people like Jim, but others are also concerned about how to handle this kind of situation, now and in the future.
When we are born, our gender is recorded on our birth certificate. Do transgenders receive an altered birth certificate to reflect their sex change? Will birth certificates eventually be revised to include a blank line following the word sex or gender with a check-box “To be determined.” Or will sex be presented as a multiple choice option? Please check one: __male, __female, __ both, __ other.
I am not trying to be funny or mean-spirited. It’s a fact that things are changing in this world at warp speed and many changes are beyond the scope of imagination, or to put another way — stranger than fiction.
Wasn’t it enough for people to make an effort to substitute gender-neutral pronouns: he/she or him/her? Now we must try to figure out if a person really is who he/she presents him/her self to be. This could definitely pose a problem for a woman who wants to date a man who was actually born that way or vice versa. Face it. People lie. Everyone will not be honest enough to tell you that they had a sex change.
Jim’s dilemma was this. If he let Casey into the building and he/she turned out not to be who he/she claimed to be, Jim could be in trouble. On the other hand, if he refused to allow Casey to enter the property, he could not only face heat from his employer, he might even incur the wrath of the World Homophobic Society. (To my knowledge, there is no such group as the WHS. I just made it up for the sake of argument.) But as I know Jim thought – and the point is – you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Change will never be embraced by everyone, nor will resistance to change prevent it. Whether we like it or not — change happens. As for me, I long for the bygone days of what many thought was a “normal” society, because as I see it now, the so-called new norm is a hot mess.