Hi boogers,
I don’t see this topic can here yet so I just wanted to start a little thread where we could talk about issues we may be having, troubleshoot together etc.
My story:
I’ve never had a passport and wanted to be proactive to apply for one before the Trump inauguration, so I made an appointment. Several people, including my therapist, suggested I change everything back to my gender marker at birth, just to be safe. I was pretty irritated by the suggestion at the time, to be honest.
I did not want to comply ahead of time.
As inauguration got closer, and my passport appointment got closer to be quite honest I panicked, and in a rush, I changed everything back to my assigned gender at birth and applied for my passport under my assigned gender at birth.
It felt icky as hell and I just noted my drivers license as “lost” so that I could still keep my old one because I feel sentimental about it.
Anyway, my passport appointment was about four weeks ago and I haven’t received anything yet so I’m hoping I didn’t get flagged or something. The whole process was discouraging, but not as bad as some stories im hearing out of red states (I’m in a blue state that I’m, to be honest, always surprised is blue).
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Anyone having any passport or identification issues or feelings or thought?
The State Dept website says routine processing time is 4-6 weeks, and that doesn’t include the shipping (mail) time. Hopefully you’re just falling in the outer limits of that range. Processing Times for U.S. Passports
I’ve also never had a passport and am uncertain about getting one in the near future.
I’m the kind of genderqueer that isn’t dysphoric about my assigned gender at birth so I’m not concerned about that for myself, but the fees and needing to source a fresh copy of my birth certificate (my original is very delicate now and probably wouldn’t survive mailing plus I don’t want to be without one based on general political situation) are the main issues for me. I think my wife’s is still valid; she’s traveled internationally in the past.
I am really mad that we could have a straightforward X marker situation potentially ruined so quickly. There are so many practical reasons having a nonbinary option is helpful in a system that requires a lot of form bureaucracy (not even counting personal reasons!) and I hate this for us.
I’m in Kansas so the state legislature is very queer-unfriendly in general; gender marker change on state issued documents is currently suspended since July 2023. We also never had an option besides the binary on state issued documents.
Four weeks is normal. I need to get mine renewed and expect to not have it in hand for 4-6 weeks.
Also right now they’re having extra chaos because of all the passport applications that they don’t know what to do with, I’m sure that’s not helping things at all either.
I’m not sure if this is helpful, but when I finally had to get a new copy of my birth certificate (the original was MIA for years), it was fairly straightforward. Cost isnt usually too bad ($20-30) and the process itself wasn’t too bad. Most states have an online portal these days, or a PDF you can print and mail in. Administrative bullshit is always a pain, but I was blocked on getting the replacement for ages and then found out it wasn’t that bad.
Yah. I can’t remember what I did but I know getting my new copy wasn’t bad either.
Maybe I did it when I changed my name one of the times (lol I’ve changed my name more times than seems reasonable)… something like that - but I know it was in an office when I was there to do something else simultaneously, and it was quick and cheap ($15 I think?).
I got two in addition to my original and then also made several copies in case they’d accept a copy.
She looked at my fragile OG one to make sure it matched one of the formal copies and took the formal one.
I went in there with like three copies of everything because I had no idea what I was doing.
Thank you for bringing this up because I’ve been fully aware of this and probably thought about it once a day every day just in general, yet somehow didn’t realize that this also applies to me because I have changed my name (a few times throughout my life actually).
My head had really gotten stuck on pre-marriage names, not name changes by choice, etc.
– this would be bad for anyone who has changed their name as a result of domestic violence to protect themselves, people who have gotten married and changed their names, trans people, and of course, also people who just wanted to change their name and have done so.
I am not confident it would become law, but at this point pigs are flying so who knows.