Welcome to #TransTuesday! In a lot of these I talk about things that are rough, or upsetting, or downright awful, because so much of our society is set up to treat trans people that way. But I also like to talk about the good stuff, so let’s discuss: INCLUSIVE BUREAUCRACY.
That is an exceptionally weird thing to call it, and probably doesn’t sound all that interesting, but stick with me because there’s something very important going on here.
Also! This is very much a companion piece to last week’s DISCRIMINATORY BUREAUCRACY, so be sure you’re aware of how rough things can be for us when parts of our society simply do not account for the fact that we exist… even when they’re the ones providing our care!
Getting your name and gender updated everywhere, in every facet of life where it needs to be, is… a lot. It’s a lengthy and time consuming process. It’s all kinds of things you maybe never even considered if you’ve never changed your name.
Here’s a bit about LEGAL NAME AND GENDER MARKER CHANGE.
Of course I don’t want to see my deadname or be listed as the wrong gender anywhere, but there’s so much there’s just no way I could do it all at once. For more on deadnames, see the trans tuesday on NAMES AND PRONOUNS.
If you’ve read last week’s thread on Discriminatory Bureaucracy, you know what a frustrating, long process just getting this information changed in ONE place can be. And again, that was the very place providing my transition healthcare, and they still couldn’t handle it very well.
So you have to space these things out. Or I do, at least, because there’s only so much of that I can go through at once. I don’t have infinite energy, and I have a lot of other things to do (writing, running a production company, being a wife and parent, and more).
But it’s not just that my to-do list is long. You have to understand how difficult it is to notify someone that your name and gender have changed and you’d like that change reflected in whatever their service is.
In a lot of these cases you have to make phone calls (why? I have no idea), which makes it even worse because you call and give them your account number or whatever, and they address you by your deadname and they call you “sir.”
Then I have to tell them “I’m not a sir, I’m a woman and that’s no longer my name,” and my voice STILL isn’t where I want it to be after a year and a half of voice therapy, and it may never get to where I want it to be. So they think they hear a man and get confused.
I did a three-part series on TRANS VOICES.
Also, y’know, there’s that thing where about a third of the US actively hates trans people, and did you know those bigots have jobs and some of them are in customer service and administration at companies where you have to get this stuff changed.
There’s always a chance that in outing myself to this complete stranger, things are gonna get awful. And to have to face that over and over and over and over and OVER again… like I said, there’s only so much of it I can take at once.
So you do the most important stuff first and work your way through the list. Social Security, driver’s license, bank, credit card, health insurance/medical provider all take precedence. Some went fairly smoothly, some were agonizing. You get through them as best you can.
But every time you have to work up the nerve, and brace yourself for the chance it could be awful and all the emotional energy it’ll take to deal with that. Each time you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop and have it entirely fuck up your day.
And so it can be such a welcome surprise when things… could not possibly go better. I want to talk about what happened in a recent experience with this, and how great it was, because there’s enough bad in the world and we need to also celebrate the good.
Working my way down the list of stuff I still had to change my name/gender with, I got to @AAASoCal. My first step with things like this is to look online for info on how to do it, because for the aforementioned reasons the last thing I want to do is call.
My one snag with this was that I couldn’t find information, on the AAA SoCal site or even on Google, on how to do this. There was no easy link or form, and what info I did find for other US locations said you had to call. But again, that’s the last resort.
So I logged into the AAA website and sent a message, just one sentence that said my name/gender have been legally changed and I would like to reflect this change on my AAA account.
This wasn’t a dedicated place for changing this info in their system or anything like that. It was just a general query to their customer support. I had zero hopes it would get me anywhere good, but it was worth a shot.
Here’s the email I got back two days later:
Hello Tilly,
Thank you for contacting AAA.
If you are able to scan the court document with the name change information into your reply I can update your information for you.
Thank you.
Karen W.
Online Member Services
Uh… WHAT? Could it… actually be that easy? Four hours later I replied with a copy of the court order showing my legal name/gender change, said thanks, and off it went. And TWENTY MINUTES LATER another reply came in:
Hello Tilly,
Thank you for your reply and for the attachments!
I have updated your information, ordered you a new card and attached a temporary card to this email for you to use right now. I also cleared and reset your online profile so you can re-register and have the correct name populate. Please let me know if I can further assist you today and
thank you for your membership with AAA!
Karen W.
Online Member Services
WHAT WHAT WHAT. Twenty minutes from when I sent them legal proof of my change of name/gender, it was done. DONE done. Not just changed in their system, but oh then my old name is still in the online account and then I have to figure out how to get a replacement card.
They just TOOK CARE OF EVERYTHING THEY KNEW I’D NEED, and again somehow did it in the span of twenty minutes. I was flabbergasted. This never happened before.
Why it’s almost like THEY KNOW TRANS PEOPLE EXIST and HAVE PROCEDURES IN PLACE TO MAKE UPDATES TO THEIR ACCOUNTS.
This is as quick and easy as it should be! And all it takes is being aware that trans people not only exist, but we’re also your neighbors, your constituents, your fellow citizens, and your customers.
If everything were that easy and painless I could have updated everything across the board in the span of a week, rather than still slowly be working through everything nine months after everything was actually legally changed.
So thank you, Karen W. and @AAASoCal, for the tremendous customer service and for making everything so quick and smooth. It matters. And it helps. So few places make it easy on trans people.
And if you could please add a notice that one email to customer service is all it takes, so your other trans customers would know it’s that easy, you’d take an experience like this from great to PERFECT.
Thanks again, @AAASoCal. It’s appreciated.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com