“I am a woman. And I am here to seek justice.”
Last month, I stood on the steps of the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Kansas, and announced that I was joining a lawsuit brought by Lambda Legal and the law firm of Bryan Cave to sue the State of Kansas for denying transgender people like me an accurate birth certificate; for denying me the ability to live authentically as the woman I am.
I joined three other transgender Kansans – including Luc Bensimon, a Black trans man, and Jessica Hicklin, an incarcerated white transgender woman – as well the Kansas Statewide Transgender Education Project (K-STEP) in the lawsuit challenging Kansas’s birth certificate policy so that transgender people born in Kansas are able to correct the gender marker on their birth certificate to accurately reflect who they are.
Kansas is one of only three states that do not allow transgender people to correct their birth certificates. In other words, Kansas refuses to recognize me as who I am.
Being kept from correcting my birth certificate makes me feel trapped. Let me tell you, the government does not get to define who I am nor does it get to disclose to others my transgender status.
That’s why when I heard the news that the Trump-Pence Administration is floating a proposal to erase transgender people from federal civil rights law, I felt our case became even more important. The Trump-Pence Administration cannot ignore federal civil rights law and Kansas cannot ignore the U.S. Constitution. It is crucial that we work as hard as we can to protect our rights at the local, state and federal level. Simply put, the State of Kansas should not be able to discriminate against us or refuse to recognize who we are. This is unconstitutional and a violation of our rights. That is why I joined this lawsuit.
A birth certificate is more than just a piece of paper. It is a necessary and vital tool to navigate life. By denying me a correct birth certificate, Kansas is forcing me to lie and present inconsistent documentation that exposes me to discrimination, prejudice, rejection, humiliation and even violence. Transgender people suffer disproportionate rates of discrimination, particularly Black transgender women like me. When the government denies our existence, it has great consequences in our daily lives.
For example, after I began living openly as a girl, I was forced by my public school to take night classes, separate from the other students, because school officials considered my “transgender presence” to be disruptive. Later, I tried to enroll in college, but, because I did not have an accurate birth certificate, I had to wait another year to enroll to take a class I needed.
This is just one example of how not having an accurate birth certificate has affected my life. There are many more ways in which transgender people born in Kansas (or Ohio or Tennessee) are negatively affected when they are forced to carry inconsistent documentation and out themselves, whether they seek to enroll in a class, get a driver’s license, or even vote.
In this country, doing anything while Black could be deadly, but imagine being Black and transgender. Our communities face violence and discrimination while driving, having BBQs, or simply gardening, but that discrimination could become dangerous for a Black transgender woman when she has to show police an ID that is inconsistent with who she is.
Should the Trump administration follow through on its threat to radically and narrowly redefine “sex” and deny our very existence, those instances of discrimination, abuse, rejection, and violence will multiply, endangering transgender lives across the country.
For transgender people, it is not just a fight for a correct birth certificate or going to the bathroom, it is so much more; it is about our human dignity, about our existence.
Black transgender women have always existed. We were there at the Stonewall Rebellion that started the LGBT movement and we are here still fighting today. We are not going anywhere. We #WontBeErased.
