Today we have three letters on various changes regarding gender/sex markers and names. So without further ado, let’s get started.
A reader writes: “I’ve heard that you shouldn’t change your gender marker on your insurance if you haven’t had a hysterectomy yet. What I’m wondering is what to do if you have never been on insurance, but will be in the future (hopefully around August or so). I’m planning on getting a court order to legally change my name and gender marker in a week or two.
“What if I need a hysterectomy years down the road after being legally male for years? When I get on insurance, can I just avoid gender, since they can’t legally require you to disclose (along with race/ethnicity)? And waiting isn’t an option (until after I get a job and insurance). I’ve waited seven years for this. I’m finally in a position where I can, so I’m taking this chance while I have it.”
Insurance is such a slippery slope. Insurance companies pretty much do what they want to do. I no longer have insurance, but when I did, and my employer switched to a new plan, I tried not putting any gender down. They looked at my name and put one down for me in their records – male. So even if you have never had insurance before, if you put nothing down, they will likely decide for you.
I didn’t know that insurance companies could not require you to disclose. The problem that you might run into, even if you put down nothing and they don’t choose for you, is that, if they agree to pay for “male” things, like hormones (if your doctor codes it as “low testosterone” or something), then they won’t pay for “female” things, like a hysterectomy or pelvic exams. If they agree to pay for pelvic exams, then they won’t pay for testosterone replacement. At least they will try not to.
Even before my insurance company chose my gender for me (based on my name, I’m assuming), I had insurance with another company where I did list myself as male. Every year, they denied my PAP test and pelvic exam claim, and every year, I appealed and won. I worded my appeal like this (or something similar): “I understand that you cover this procedure for people who have a particular set of organs, and I have those organs.”
It always worked, and I recommended it to my friend, who had a different insurance carrier, and it worked for him as well. So I would suggest either leaving the gender part blank and letting them figure it out, or putting down “Male.” That way, if you are male at your job, you won’t have to out yourself if you don’t want to, and even if you are out to human resources, you won’t have to be out to anyone in the organization who has access to your file. Continue Reading »
Some Realities About Public Restrooms
April 1, 2013 by Matt Kailey
Colorado has some of the best laws in the country around the protection of trans rights, and our public accommodations law covers transgender and transsexual people, but we are still doing battle over bathrooms. Most recently, a six-year-old girl has been the target of discrimination when, despite our laws of protection, her school is not allowing her to use the girls’ restroom.
And now the state of Arizona, which brought us the most discriminatory racial-profiling bill in recent history, is back at it with SB 1045, which originally mandated discrimination against trans people and would pretty much force everyone, trans or not, to haul their birth certificates around with them in order to use public facilities.
Rep. John Kavanagh, a sponsor of the bill in the state legislature, has now “softened” it to allow, but not force, businesses and organizations to discriminate. He claims he did this in the face of public outcry. (Did he think there wouldn’t be any? He doesn’t know our Arizona trans community very well.)
So just as Colorado proves that a public accommodations law is not going to stop discrimination against trans people, Arizona is letting us know that it really doesn’t care.
And in the trans community, we know that laws such as the one making its way through the Arizona state legislature will negatively impact trans women the most. We also know that these laws are almost always based on an underlying premise of sexual predation.
In the face of all this, I would like to reiterate some of the points I make in Five Points for Non-Trans People About Public Restroom Use and add some additional points here:
> I lived as a girl and a woman for forty-two years. In that time, I used public women’s restrooms tens of thousands of times – at school, at work, in restaurants, in bars, in the mall, at concerts, and at every other possible public venue. In all of those years, not once – not once! – did I see the genitalia of anyone else in any of those restrooms. Over a period of forty-two years, I had no idea who was in the bathroom with me or what the other bodies in there looked like – nor did I care. (And I didn’t show anyone mine, either.) Continue Reading »
Posted in Commentary, News | Tagged discrimination, legal, restrooms, transition, transphobia | 16 Comments »