Author's posts
Jun 21 2014
Disguise and Deception
Chase Culpepper is a 16-year-old resident of South Carolina. Like 16-year-olds all over the country, Chase applied for his drivers’ license this past March. Unlike most 16-year-olds. DMV officials forced Chase to change his appearance before they would take his license picture.
Chase prefers male pronouns at this point, but wears girl’s clothing and make-up. DMV workers accused him of not looking the way “a boy should.” They refused to take his picture as long as he was “in disguise.”
CNN’s video is not embeddable
The government should not be in the business of telling men and women how we are supposed to look as men and women.
–Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF)
Jun 14 2014
Meanwhile in Europe
Alessandra Bernaroli has been battling with the Italian government for the past five years to keep her legal marriage in tact.
When I was small I liked to play with little girls, I was looking to understand their femininity. I dreamed of becoming a woman but I had no idea what trans-sexuality was.
The 43-year-old bank employee from Bologna was living as a male when she met her wife in the mid-1990s. The couple wed in 2005. It was only after the marriage that Alessandra exposed her transgender feelings to her spouse.
I hid my inner torment from my wife but I felt trapped in a prison, in a body that had become an enemy to me. I suffocated my true identity.
–Bernaroli
After Bernaroli came out to her wife, her wife agreed to stand by her throughout the process. Alessandra underwent a series of operations in Thailand in 2009.
When they returned to Italy and sought to update their national identity cards, they were informed that they would no longer be classified as married.
