Punitive

That is the judge’s decision not to grant a name change.

Transgender woman faces legal dilemmas
Northern Virginia Daily
By Joe Beck
Friday, September 18, 2015

STRASBURG — Her friends and family know her as Kendra, but when her name is called during her many appearances in court, she is William Brill and that’s when the humiliation starts.
[…]
She’s been in and out of the corrections system for the last three years as a result of a string of charges for drunken driving and shoplifting. Her stay in the Indian Creek Correctional Center in Chesapeake, which began in 2012, marked a turning point in a long struggle with gender identity.

Indian Creek’s website describes it as one of the largest “prison-based” therapeutic communities in the United States specializing in treatment for substance abusers. Toward the end of her sentence, Brill took some tests, one to determine female orientation and another to determine male orientation.

The tests asked numerous questions about different subjects. Did the test taker prefer blue or pink? Did he or she like sports? The results produced two graphs for the man identified as William Brill in the prison records. The graph for male orientation showed peaks and valleys. The one for female was a straight line and came with a diagnosis from two prison doctors: gender dysphoria.

There is no test to determine gender dysphoria, period. No ifs ands or buts.

To me it sounds like a horrible stereotype test, boys love blue and sports and girls love pink and homemaking. It sounds like the prison doctors are all quacks and haven’t a clue about gender dysphoria.

To make matters even worst,

In October, the same month she was released from Indian Creek, she submitted a name change application to Shenandoah County Circuit Judge Dennis L. Hupp, asking that her name be changed from William Joseph Brill to Kendra Catherine Brill.

Hupp replied on Oct. 30: “I have denied your application for change of name. In view of your felony record, I want to avoid any confusion as to your identity in our computer databases, both the Central Criminal Records Exchange and the Virginia Criminal Information Network. If you undergo a sex change operation . . . you may file a new application.”

Talk about handicapping a person, the judge is going to make her life a living hell and make so much harder for her to find employment to earn an honest living.

The judge’s excuse is very weak because criminal databases usually have fields for aliases and I know of many trans people who have criminal records and have had their name changed. It seems to me that the judge might be baised.