Today, the ACLU filed a lawsuit suing the state of Alabama for restricting transgender individuals from obtaining a driver’s license that reflects their gender identity.
Alabama is one of just nine states that require residents to provide proof of gender-confirmation surgery before changing gender on identification.
This is not only a violation of doctor/patient privilege but can also cause undue stress, fear and confusion for transgender individuals in Alabama.
According to HRC.ORG (Human Rights Campaign) in 2016, 23 transgender individuals died from violence and already in 2017, we have seen 28 of our brothers and sisters killed for being themselves. That’s interesting — seeing how we live in the "land of the free."
The state of Alabama is currently denying the right to safety and privacy for transgender people who feel their gender is different from that which was assigned to them at birth.
I know the arguments of the ignorant: gender isn’t a choice. It’s your gender. That would be understandable if gender and sex were the same things.
However, they are not synonymous.
The sex of a person refers to the physical and biological characteristics, associated with reproduction. The gender of a person involves a more complicated process of defining appropriate actions associated with either masculinity or femininity.
Gender is a learned identity and it can change over time, often as one grows into themselves and realizes they don’t identify with their assigned gender.
Think of it like this: your gender is the mortgage that you have to pay to live in your own body in a society that demands you squeeze yourself into a box to be checked — male or female.
Your sex is the combination of organs that produce children — if you’re a woman — and the patriarchy if you’re a man.
But there is one thing exactly the same about these two words and that is that neither of them has a fucking thing to do with the ability to drive.
So Alabama — we get it. You’re racist. Ya don’t like gay people too much and you’re extremely finicky about your bathrooms. But isn’t “Sweet Home Alabama” supposed to be sweet for all those who call it home? Or just the white ones, with penises? Not the women who get penis’s though, those ones are cast out, ostracized, forced to live in other people’s perceptions of the “appropriate” gender.
Alabama, I and the ACLU implore you to strike these laws that punish your residents for the freedom granted them as an American citizen to life, to pursue happiness, and to the freedom that is so inalienably given to white cis-gendered individuals.
Our laws may not have been written for those we call minorities, but they sure can be changed. The land of the free is filled with the brave. And there are very few things braver than being a transgender individual.
