NYC GENDER MARKER CORRECTIONS
NYC GENDER MARKER CORRECTIONS
From bitch to bxtch in no time flat
“X gon’ give it to ya”
—DMX ‘X Gon’ Give It To Ya’
Hello nonconforming, intersex, & trans beauties I’m here to help you correct the gender marker on your NYC birth certificates. I personally went from bitch to bxtch in the eyes of the city legal system a few months ago and am very happy about it. But you can now go to whatever you want (as long as that’s M, F, or X) a lot more easily. Obviously the most up to date instructions can be found on the NYC Gov Site but they’re incredibly confusing so i’m here to simplify since I went through the process. So disclaimer: we’re focusing on just changing the gender marker so if you need to do other things on there as well, please go reference the site—the process varies greatly depending on what you’re looking to correct. All I can offer is how I did mine, cross-referenced with the instructions on the official site for specifically gender marker changes.
Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions/if you need support! And without further ado, let’s dive right in.
January 1st, 2019 Legal Changes
You can now change your gender marker in New York City without a doctor’s signature! Plus, the “X” option now exists for us non-binary folks! Yes, this also means at birth parents can now just throw an X on their kids’ certificates and let them figure it out for themselves later, which is also very dope! Lots of excitement abound.
Did I need to do this to feel affirmed, not necessarily no, but hear me out: They enacted this as a law and if even those of us privileged enough to do so don’t make the change, it makes it much harder for the city to try and convince the state to do the same with statistics. So I signed on for sure and if you can, I’d recommend it! It’s pretty sweet to see an X on a legal document of yours for the first time, and I personally found it a lot more validating than I expected.
Now that being said this is indeed very limited—we’re talking about just New York City, not New York State, so your drivers license won’t show it (although your NYC ID will, I believe, and if you don’t have one they get you into a lot of free stuff, so get one). However, many states in the US like Vermont and California allow X’s on licenses, and a handful of countries like Canada & Argentina allow it on federal passports. International airlines officially recognize X’s on their ticket bookings, and a case of an X passport was actually just allowed in the U.S. recently in federal court—it’s only a matter of time here for New York State and the US. That all being said remember, changing your birth certificate gender can complicate getting drivers licenses in other states that don’t have this. Please keep this in mind if you’re about to move or apply for a passport.
So there’s two ways to do this:
In person
You can do this in person by showing up with your birth certificate, a photo ID, and $55 by going to the following address during business hours:
125 Worth Street, Room 144
New York, NY 10013
Use the Centre Street entrance to access the Corrections Lobby.
Monday – Friday, except holidays, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
But if you work during those hours like most humans or don’t live in NYC anymore like me, you can apply by mail instead.
Via Mail
Which is how I changed mine. Here’s what’s required:
55 bucks (40 for process, 15 for the new copy), 1 or 2 stamps, and an envelope
A signed government-issued photo-ID
Access to a printer and scanner/smartphone w/ camera
Access to a notary (before you’re like where the fuck am I gonna find that—many banks can provide one totally for free if you have an account with them; for example Chase has a bunch that just take walk-ins. If you can’t access this, you’ll have to google for one in your area—a lot of UPS locations even have notaries. Depending on your state this could be as cheap as $2 or as expensive as $20. Why? I have absolutely no idea, laws are dumb.)
That being said if you don’t have money for this and you don’t have a bank account you can get a notary with, this is process certainly not very accessible, which is easily the biggest problem with the current system. I’m not sure if the city has ways to apply for fee reductions, they might, but otherwise you’ll have to fundraise for it, I for one would happily do my best to help you, just let me know.
Alright so first off print, fill out, and sign the 2 forms from here
Take a pic/scan of your ID (front and back) and print it out
Get said form & copy of ID notarized (at the bank for free hopefully)
Sign a check for 55 bucks and make it out to “NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene”
Throw this all in an envelope, stick a stamp or two on it, and mail it away to the following address
NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Corrections Unit
125 Worth St., CN-4, Rm 144
New York, NY 10013
And then you wait a long time. I thought they lost mine but it just took them months. When it arrived in the mail, I was way more excited than I thought I’d be because it meant for the first time a government that represents me (and has represented me for my entire life) actually acknowledged that I truly existed.
By the way, a reassuring note is that I actually got mine sent back to me halfway through the process for being incomplete—I was missing the main form, as I used one that was released as a temporary as the law had just changed. I say reassuring because they didn’t just reject it, they sent me a receipt for the payment, all my copies, and a new form and told me to send it back in. So they likely won’t just leave you hanging if you miss something, you’ll get things mailed back to you. If you have questions you can email tgnyc@health.nyc.gov and they will indeed answer, however they could take a really long time, I think my question got answered more than a month after I emailed, so try to get this all right in one shot.
That’s it! It’s not the easiest thing in the world, and it’s certainly not the most accessible, but it could be a whole lot worse. Again, if you need help on any aspect of this from logistics to cash please reach out to me. Best of luck and I hope you feel the same excitement as I did when you pop that letter open and find out you’re going to Hogwarts you legally exist in the same way that you personally identify!