In August, the Missouri Department of Revenue updated the process for gender marker changes on a state ID – now requiring proof of gender affirming surgery or a court order.
Amariah Hardwick is a trans women who lives in St. Louis and is a leader with Transformations, an organization founded and led by trans women of color.
She spoke about the impacts of this change and how the process of transitioning looks different for every person.
Missouri Health Talks gathers Missourians’ stories of access to healthcare in their own words.
Amariah Hardwick: Someone is again trying to come into our lives and tell us how we should transition. Something that's easy to their eyes, something that makes sense to them.
Because if they're requiring that we need to verify that we've had sexual reassignment surgery performed – we're not doing anything but perpetuating the stigma that the only women that exist are the women's with vaginas. That's not entirely true.
"You're saying that we need this documentation to verify that we've had these procedures signed to have our IDs updated, to have an “F” on there, but you guys don't even allocate the resources, health care or benefits to allow these services to be performed."Amariah Hardwick
Sex and gender are two completely different things, and we have to stop combining those together. We have to.
Not every trans woman wants to have sexual reassignment surgery. We shouldn't feel subjected to that because that's what society makes us feel like.
We never said that we were cis women. We said that we're trans women, and with being a trans woman comes with having anatomy that's different than what a cis woman has, which is why we don't identify as cis woman. We identify as trans women.
So let us live within that.
And then also – the thing that makes this tricky is that you're saying that we need this documentation to verify that we've had these procedures signed to, you know, have our IDs updated, to have an “F” on there, but you guys don't even allocate the resources, health care or benefits to allow these services to be performed.
So, here we are, once again, reaping the consequences of ignorant minds.
Cis counterparts need to understand that there is no such thing as fully transitioning. There are phases of transition, and some of those are voluntary, all of those are voluntary.
If someone says, “These are my pronouns.” Those are their pronouns – we honor those.
Just how when someone says in the neighborhood, “Yeah, my name is Brandon, but I like to go by Bran,” we respect that.
If someone doesn't choose to legally transition or medically transition or socially transition – we don't host a power in our vessels to validate someone's livelihood and also their identities. We don't. At all.
That's something that even can be said in our community, in the trans community, because there's, you know, generations before us think like, “Oh, well, you haven't had this, you haven't had that, you're not a trans woman.”
Well, who are you to tell me what I am?
We don't know what background they come from. We don't we don't know what their names mean to them.
So, we can’t tell someone that's just because you don't conform to what the vast majority of society, what social constructions has instilled in all of us – just because I practice that and you don't, I'm going to invalidate you. We don't host that power at all.
