Why some transgender voters have an even bigger challenge to casting their ballotsI had a minor problem once by a poll worker. He asked me if I was Diana, now my voter registration was Diana, my driver license was Diana and had my photo of me as Diana. I said yes and he stared at me and I stared at him and finally handed my driver license back to me.
CNN
By Scottie Andrew
October 13, 2020
Koby Ozias might have been kept from voting if he hadn't known his rights.
Ozias, a transgender man from Corpus Christi, Texas, couldn't afford to legally change his name or update his ID before he went to vote in state elections in November 2013.
He brought his old ID -- with a name he no longer used and a photo that no longer resembled him -- to the polls that year.
Poll workers grilled him on his identity. They attempted to stop him from voting, he told CNN. He insisted he was the person in his picture.
Voter ID requirements, purportedly put in place to prevent voter fraud, typically end up keeping Black, indigenous and transgender voters from voting at all if they don't have the proper identification, critics say.
Then our name change can cause us grief…
Transgender Woman Says Illinois Is Denying Her Unemployment Benefits Because Of Name ChangeFor my name change, the day that I got laid off (The new owners didn’t want us so they closed down our shop) I transitioned and I changed all my paperwork for work just before I got the pink slip.
CBS Chicago
By Tara Molina
October 12, 2020
A transgender veteran is fighting a battle to get unemployment benefits, saying her transition is keeping her from getting any money.
On Monday night, CBS 2’s Tara Molina asked the State of Illinois what is going on here, and what is being done to fix it.
Myra Lebron’s name change was delayed by the pandemic. When it was finally official, she said she wanted to celebrate it.
But then, the issues with the state started it.
The name Myra Lebron appears on her Social Security card and her driver’s license, and it is her name now. But she said the Illinois Department of Employment Security refuses to recognize it.
“To finally get the name change process finish and continue to with my transition, something I hoped for so many years, just to get smacked with all of this,” Lebron said. “It eats away at you, to a heavy degree.”
Everything was fine until COBRA ran out and I went on my retirement health insurance but the stubs had my old name on them. After weeks of trying to straighten it out I called the former HR director (She got laid off also) and she used her contacts at corporate to straighten it out. She said that they had the old me as retired and Diana as working, I asked “Does that mean that I will get a pay check as well as my retirement checks?” No such luck.
I know some trans people who this was a problem but others had no problem…
Transgender Man Told to Identify as Female at Birth on Blood Donation Paperwork
NBC Washington
By Jackie Bensen
October 8, 2020
A transgender man says his sex at birth was required on his intake form when he was trying to donate blood in Virginia.
The man, who asked not to be identified because he’s still working through the demoralizing experience, said he went to an Inova Health System in Sterling facility Sept. 22 for his scheduled appointment.
He said a front desk staffer wrote down "gender at birth is female" and underlined it after repeatedly telling him, out loud in the busy clinic, that he must be listed by his birth gender on the paperwork.
"When you try to fight back, sometimes it just doesn’t work," he said. "They’re too big or too powerful, and in this case it happened, and I said, ‘I’m tired, I’m tired.'"
[…]
"I was angry," he said. "I kept thinking about the next trans person walking in there that does not deserve that."
I know one trans woman who filled out all the paperwork and was getting connected up to donate blood when the supervisor came marching out of her office saying in a loud voice “We don’t allow transsexuals to donate blood!” Can you say “HIPAA” violation!
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