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Apropos of the scary shit that’s going on for trans people around the world right now, the concept of “birth certificate laundering” seems to be becoming a thing.

It goes like this: you transition and go through gender recognition somewhere hostile, like the UK. You get a new birth certificate (for now?) but you are still “on the list”, and they know if they look hard enough; the original record is still there.

But then you naturalise or register as a citizen of another country (Ireland, for those able to via the grandparent route, for example, naturalisation through residence and assimilation in my case), and when you naturalise you give them the post gender recognition birth certificate.

That breaks the link. Your country of new citizenship registers your birth and, at as far as they are concerned, you are “legally cis”.

And if they start hunting us via gender recognition records, we can hopefully hide.

in reply to Sarah Brown

I wish anyone on such a journey well, but also can see how this will drive transphobes in to new and frenzied levels of violence. Because this strikes at the heart of their deepest fears. It implies once and for all that the supposedly fixed nature gender doesn’t matter. (because it doesn’t)
in reply to Sarah Brown

A near future story about two refugees, a little girl and her dad running from the the law. Her dad is a trans man trying to vanish.

“To keep you safe to keep both of us safe I knew I had to be honest about who I was. You thought I needed to be a man to be ‘stronger’ ? but that’s not it at all I’m a man because that’s who I am, how could I possibly keep you safe, teach you to live in this world (with the way that it is) if I couldn’t even do that?”

maybe?

This entry was edited (1 year ago)
in reply to Sarah Brown

I was born in Florida and did this with Italy, but never got a new birth certificate, just a citizenship certificate and passport, though Italy is a bit weird about what records they issue
I also have something like 5 apostilled long form US birth certificates
in reply to artemist

@artemist If Italy is anything like Slovenia, they don't rely on birth certificates for anything, but you should still be able to order one from the government.
in reply to Jernej Simončič �

@jernej__s I might try sometime but I'm registered in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and it's kind of annoying to deal with them.
in reply to artemist

@artemist No idea how this works in Italy, in Slovenia I can just go to eGovernment website, and order from there.
in reply to Sarah Brown

All fine and good, but in countries with centralized medical records it's not technically possible