So over the past little while, I’ve been collating some real world stories of the bizarre and ridiculous social and beaurocratic situations I’ve found myself in as I was transitioning. This is the first in a line of personal stories I’ll title “Transtories”.

Enjoy!

“We live in your world” – not!

Walking into the bank, my change of name certificate and passport in hand, I take a ticket for “general account maintenance” and take a seat. My number is eventually called and I make my way over to a desk, produce my documents and request for my account to be changed to my new name, and to have the salutation of Ms removed from my accounts.

“Sure… I just need to take a copy of that certificate…”

Bank teller disappears, copies are presumably taken, and the …andra from Alexandra deleted off my account record.

“And did you remove the middle name?”

“Er, no. Did you want me to do that too?”

“Yes please, my new name is Alex Jay. Thank you… Can I take a peek? It still has a salutation of Ms. Can we please remove that?”

“Erm… well, you have to choose a salutation”

“Okay, then just make it Mr.”

“Well… we can’t choose Mr because your records say you’re female.”

“Okay, then, can you change me to male?”

“Erm… Computer says no… well… we could… but you’d have to close down all your accounts and re-open them under the new gender. Did you want to do that?”

“Would that mean I then have new account numbers for everything?”

“Yes.”

“Hm, that’s a problem… Okay, well what salutation CAN I choose?”

“Well… we could make you a Lieutenant or a Doctor?”

“Okay, fine, I’ll be a Lieutenant. You seriously can’t just remove the salutation?”

“Nope. Computer says no…”

Looking over the bank teller’s shoulder at a poster of a young, white, hetero normative family, beaming at the camera in front of their newly purchased home, with the bank’s slogan “We live in your world” floating above their heads, the irony does not escape Lieutenant Alex Jay…