Legal Advisor

Transgender Docket:
Legal Gender Changes

By Carolyn Woodward
Got a legal question? Having some problems with the law? TG Attorney Carolyn Woodward will try and answer your questions. Contact her by messaging publisher Cindy Martin and we'll make sure she gets your question.



The question posed to me for this month comes from outside our community. This is delightful for two reasons. It shows that TG Forum is not just "preaching to the choir," but reaching others, and it provides an opportunity to provide some much needed educational information to the "outside world."

Here it is:

"Hi there...
I was surfing the net and came across your site. At the risk of offending, which I don't mean to do, I have a question. Once a sex change operation is complete, is that person considered legally to be of the new gender? Can that person then legally marry what would have been before the operation the same sex partner?

As I said, I don't want to offend anyone, but your site prompted discussion and I started to think and wondered.
Thanks for your help."

Thank you for your interest, and don't worry because you won't offend anyone with a legitimate question. The brief answer is yes, at least in the United States. Some countries, including England the last I heard, will not recognize the new status following SRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery). In this country, however, it has become the rule that a person who has had SRS will be recognized to be of the sex intended by the surgery. Further, in most states that I know of, the person can have their birth certificate changed by court order, with an affidavit or declaration of surgery having been performed. Because of this recognition and change of status a person who was, for example, born physically male, can marry a man after the surgery.

On an interesting note, persons who are diagnosed as gender dysphoric (having a gender, which is a mental state, differing from their sex, which is the physical) can be recognized as being of their true gender even without surgery for some purposes. For example, a California Driver's License with the proper gender can be obtained with a doctor's certificate even though there has been no surgery (ie, a biological male can have a DL saying Female, even without surgery).

These are good signs that some parts of the world are starting to recognize that sex and gender are not the same and don't always match. Further, gender is not a matter of absolute polarity - all male or all female. There is a lot of turf in the middle, and most people would be surprised to find they are not firmly tied to one end, but wander toward the middle, or even over to the other side. Those of us who consider ourselves transgendered to various degrees have recognized this. We are trying here, and in many other venues, to help the rest of society come to this realization.

Thanks again for your interest, and feel free to ask questions at any time.


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