Human rights advocates are calling on the Ministry of Health to follow through on a promise to adjust gender identification policy and even the playing field for gender-variant British Columbians.

The ministry said in October that it planned to implement a new policy by January, making it easier for transgender people to alter the sex designation on their B.C. Services Cards. Currently, a person must have sex-reassignment surgery then present an updated birth certificate — a requirement many called a misunderstanding of gender identity.

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But last week, the ministry would not say why the policy was delayed, when it is expected to take effect or even if the policy will still involve surgery as a requirement. A spokesman said only that the ministry is still in the process of updating its policy.

“This kind of delay just further stresses people who are trying to live safe, healthy lives because their ID doesn’t match up with their gender identity,” said Dara Parker, executive director of queer resource centre Qmunity.

People who do not identify with the “male” or “female” assigned to them at birth face daily barriers, from presenting their driver’s licences to filling out forms for yoga class, Parker said.

“It may prohibit people from seeking necessary health care or being able to drive or [engaging in] a thousand other little interactions.”

Victoria’s Bobbi Charlton, 56, said that before she had surgery, even driving was stressful.

“I just prayed, prayed that I never got stopped by police,” she said.

She was once held at a border crossing for four hours because her passport called her male but she appeared female, she said. She missed her connection.

North Vancouver’s Kira Yee described the feeling of having ID that doesn’t match your identity: “It makes me feel like I’m not who I am. I sort of feel like I have to hide myself.”

A North Saanich trans woman, who asked not to be named, said trans people already face enough discrimination.

“One person I know had her teeth busted in,” she said.

Some offences are more subtle. At a Vancouver pharmacy, which she had already alerted to her female identity, a clerk loudly and repeatedly referred to her with male pronouns.

“In order to stop him from saying this in front of the other people in the queue, I had to say, ‘My driver’s licence says I’m female. Do I need to show you it?’ He said, ‘Sorry, sir. Sorry, sir,’ ” the woman, 68, said.

Showing ID before it was marked female was difficult.

“I had to be very brazen and very much in a humorous frame of mind to carry it off with people,” she said. “It put me into hiding a bit.”

Medical ethicist Eike-Henner Kluge said arguments against allowing individuals to determine their own identification stems from tradition.

“The traditional notion of a person is sex-oriented, which confuses what it is to be a person with what social gender role one plays within society,” Kluge said.

He called that a paternalistic and ethically questionable attitude. The proposed change would bring policy into the 21st century, where we understand a person not by their sex but by their “social embedding,” which may vary according to gender identity.

British transgender comedian Avery Edison made headlines last week when she tweeted about a “humiliating” detention at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport for a visa infraction. She said she was told a nurse would assess her to determine which holding cell she belonged in, before she was sent to a men’s prison. She was moved to a women’s prison following a public outcry.

asmart@timescolonist.com