Gender bender as trio fights birth-certificate rule
Source: Agencies |
March 24, 2011, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
JOANN Prinzivalli has gone through a lot to be a woman, and she wants her birth certificate to show it.
Born Paul Prinzivalli Jr, she says she knew her true identity was female by the time she was 4 and broached the subject with a mental-health adviser as a teenager. But it was decades before she bucked family expectations and social pressures, changed her name and underwent electrolysis and hormone treatment to make a change that cost Prinzivalli her spouse, family, home and job.
About 10 years later, she's still a man in one important context: on her birth certificate. She's been unable to change the gender listed on the document because of city rules that she and some other transgender people call discriminatory, intrusive and out of step with recent moves by the federal government and some states in the US to make it easier for transgender people to change ID documents.
"Knowing that it was a mistake in the first place, and having that fixed, is pretty important to me," the 57-year-old title insurance lawyer said on Monday as she sued New York City. Two other transgender people have filed similar suits in recent days.
They are contesting a city Health Department practice of requiring people to undergo genital surgery and a post-surgery psychiatric evaluation before changing the gender on their birth certificates, the lawsuits state. Many transgender people can't have that surgery for medical or financial reasons, and having hormone or other treatment to change gender should be enough, the plaintiffs say.
City lawyers say officials are trying to make sure there are checks on changing an important identity document used for citizenship, Social Security and passport purposes.
The suits say the city discriminates against transgenders by requiring more of them than it does of others who wish to correct birth certificates.
At 30, Sam Berkley has had surgery - a double mastectomy - to become the man he has sensed himself to be since childhood. His New York driver's license says he's male, and he's getting a passport.
But the city has turned down his requests to change his birth certificate, saying he failed to provide proof of sex-change surgery, according to a lawsuit Berkley filed last Friday through the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Born Paul Prinzivalli Jr, she says she knew her true identity was female by the time she was 4 and broached the subject with a mental-health adviser as a teenager. But it was decades before she bucked family expectations and social pressures, changed her name and underwent electrolysis and hormone treatment to make a change that cost Prinzivalli her spouse, family, home and job.
About 10 years later, she's still a man in one important context: on her birth certificate. She's been unable to change the gender listed on the document because of city rules that she and some other transgender people call discriminatory, intrusive and out of step with recent moves by the federal government and some states in the US to make it easier for transgender people to change ID documents.
"Knowing that it was a mistake in the first place, and having that fixed, is pretty important to me," the 57-year-old title insurance lawyer said on Monday as she sued New York City. Two other transgender people have filed similar suits in recent days.
They are contesting a city Health Department practice of requiring people to undergo genital surgery and a post-surgery psychiatric evaluation before changing the gender on their birth certificates, the lawsuits state. Many transgender people can't have that surgery for medical or financial reasons, and having hormone or other treatment to change gender should be enough, the plaintiffs say.
City lawyers say officials are trying to make sure there are checks on changing an important identity document used for citizenship, Social Security and passport purposes.
The suits say the city discriminates against transgenders by requiring more of them than it does of others who wish to correct birth certificates.
At 30, Sam Berkley has had surgery - a double mastectomy - to become the man he has sensed himself to be since childhood. His New York driver's license says he's male, and he's getting a passport.
But the city has turned down his requests to change his birth certificate, saying he failed to provide proof of sex-change surgery, according to a lawsuit Berkley filed last Friday through the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund.
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