One Small Step For Transkind

I came across a problem that no doubt countless other trans folk have fought with last week while I was finishing off changing my name with the various companies and official documents that still bear my old name and I came to my phone contract with O2. I walked into their shop in Brighton and presented the assistant with my Deed Poll and she gave me the address to send it to which I duly did. Just as I was about to leave my flat for the weekend I checked my mailbox and saw this letter from them.

O2 seemed confused… A simple name change being made into such a kerfuffle! At one point in the letter they talk about a gender change, which, by the way was never mentioned when I asked for my name to be changed, and later in the letter they tell me when I provided them with the “certificate showing gender change” they asked for, they’ll update the name on their records….?? And what is that bit about “the copy of the Deed Poll that you’ve produced need the signature and stamp of the authority”? (sic) The Deed Poll I have was good enough for my bank, good enough for my national insurance number and good enough for everyone else I’ve had to use it with.

When I called the number to try and explain that I could only get a Gender Recognition Certificate after at least two years of living as female and, at the moment, all I wanted to do was to change my name with them!

So I decided to ask the Twitterverse as I’m connected there to lots of other trans folk who I hoped would be able to help me out with this problem. A few people mentioned they had problems with O2 in the past but I also received a Tweet from someone who happened to work for them who, as luck would have it, was at that same time was working on a project for customer services to make it easier for customers to change their name! I love Twitter!

The next day after confirming some details with O2 I received a phone call from the lovely man who contacted me to tell me that the Deed Poll I sent them was enough and not to worry, he would sort everything out. Wonderful!

Here’s the mail I received from O2 about it:

Hi Sarah,

Just to confirm what we discussed on the call earlier. I have updated your account to reflect your proper name and gender. I am really sorry that you encountered so many problems in trying to do this. Going forward, we are going to improve our internal processes so that other trans-people do not have to face the same issues.

Thanks

D**** J******* and the Systems Thinking Project Team

O2 Customer Services.

So hopefully from now on any trans person wishing to change their name with O2 will have an easy time of it!

That’s a good result in my book J

The Thing About Gender Is...

 

It’s been a while since my last blog (again) as I’ve been concentrating on writing my book and general boring life stuffs. Next month is going to be a pretty cool one though, I’ve been asked to go to a few support groups and charities to give talks to about my experiences as an early transitioner and give my views on lots of different things. One thing that has got me thinking though is the people at Schools Out have asked me to come give my input in a discussion panel.

It got me thinking about how gender stereotypes are reinforced from a very young age in schools, whether it be about uniform, queuing up after lunch break, playing with toys or the whole netball is for girls and football is for boys rubbish. There is so much being ingrained in these young children that I fear that societies acceptance of non-gender binary expression may never improve.

The sooner people figure out that teaching children the fact that it’s ok to express their gender however they feel, the better. Instead of reinforcing the differences between children we should be encouraging their freedom of expression. Teachers should be teaching children the fact that gender is a spectrum and not everyone falls into either the stereotypical male or female role. If we want children to grow up into well rounded, open minded adults then they need to learn how to question everything about their thought processes and the greater world around them and make informed decisions about how they react to things.

Another thing I’ve been doing since my last blog is giving up smoking. I’m at 9 days now, using one of those inhalator things… I never thought I’d have ever even tried to give up but last week I just decided to stop and went to the doctor and all of a sudden I’m a non smoker! Well, when I was out for a drink with a friend on Friday I confess to smoking a couple but they just tasted like shit which I think is the right reaction…

I broke my cars gearbox somehow too over the last couple of weeks so am confined to my flat and only going out on the bus every couple of days but at least it’s concentrating me on writing my book. You didn’t know I was writing a book? Well I am. It’s about my experiences this summer coming out to different people and the journey I went on from day one of living fulltime as female. I’m looking for a publisher if you know anyone who can help? Ideally I’m looking for a publishing house to handle printing as well as promotions as I have no experience in it at all… Contact me on Facebook or Twitter if you think you can help!!