Becoming Alexis - Part Seven
The End Is Nigh
I haven’t updated folks on my name change since August. This is likely my last blog entry in this series! After the election in November, Identity Affirmation Workshop got absolutely slammed with new client requests. I’ve helped well over 75 new clients since early November and new ones are coming in frequently.
All of my most important documents match and have been updated, but I realized I’ve been sitting on several outstanding tasks still. As work is in a temporary lull right now, I took it upon myself to wrap up outstanding name-change-related tasks for myself.
The biggest outstanding issue is my German Passport. It took me nearly six months to get an appointment at the German Consulate. It’s actually a good thing the process got delayed, because Germany passed a new law in November that makes it significantly easier to change your first name and gender marker, and added X marker options for the first time. However, my case is still unique, for a few reasons. First, Germany generally doesn’t allow people to change their last name, which I also did. Second, I was told that I may be the very first application to update to both an X marker and change my last name in all of Germany, which is kind of cool. Third, these types of changes are universally handled in Germany by regional offices, based on the location you last lived in Germany. Well, I’ve never lived in Germany, neither did my parents, and my maternal grandparents were born there, but the region they both were born in is modernly in Poland. So the Federal office in Berlin is handling my application, despite not typically handling these applications. The Head of Legal and Consul Affairs at the Consulate General in San Francisco has been extremely helpful. The paperwork has all been submitted; now all I can do is wait.
I also called several other entities, including some doctors who I don’t see regularly, a few banks with secondary accounts and credit cards, my library card, and my museum memberships.
As I often tell my clients, things will keep popping up for quite some time, and the same is true for me. There are several lesser-used companies and services that have onerous update processes, and so I will still have to do those, eventually.
A final note: with gender marker self-selection on US Passports in imminent danger of being eliminated, I strongly recommend updating your gender marker on your passport now, while it is still an option. I can’t promise it will work, but it definitely won’t work once the State Department catches up with the Orange Menace’s many new policies. Please reach out if you need any help at alexis@identityaffirmation.org or (415) 212-9111.