So, there's a little backstory to this: I recently went to go visit my brother for a week and he's been super, super supportive. (For those of you that have read or remember my other threads where I talked about my family not accepting me, he's one that goes above and beyond to do so). Anyway, one night at dinner, his girlfriend had made him whip out his license to show me something. Turns out, he made a mistake and had marked his gender as female instead of male. And I was like, "They didn't catch that?" and he just shrugged and said no and that made me wonder something... I'm planning on changing my name soon. And from what I've read online, in order to change your gender marker, you actually have to have surgery first. But, I've been wondering if it would be at all possible to just declare myself as male on any future documentation or would that somehow, somewhere get me in trouble? Does anyone know?
I think it would depend on what documentation you put it on. Something small and not really of legal significance would be alright, I've done that a lot with no harm done. When it comes to government forms and the like it may be a bad idea. I've actually never heard of any instances of this happening but it may cause trouble as you can be seen as "falsifying information" on government forms, which would likely have legal ramifications. Which would arguably make life much worse than seeing the wrong gender on ID. Though you could argue that you aren't falsifying anything as you are male. With the way things are that may not fly though. It's really awful that lots of states force people to get surgery to change genders legally.
Getting your gender marker changed is a state by state basis. Some states will change your gender marker on your license/state ID and legal documents without proof of surgery (just a signature from your doctor/therapist), and some won't do it without proof of surgery or a court order.
The above post is correct.... mine says "F" on my license. All I had to do was hand over a letter written by my therapist. Makes me feel horrible everytime I have to say I'm not cis but it was worth it for this...makes everything so much more validating...
