Transgender people – and some of the issues they face – have achieved an unprecedented level of media visibility in the last year, from trans celebrities Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, to Chelsea Manning and CeCe McDonald, to gender non-conforming students Grayson Bruce and Sunnie Kahle. But the public acknowledgment of trans people in no way begins to confront the difficulties they face in attempting to have their lived realities accepted by governments and the law.

A new global report released Thursday by the Open Society Foundations, License to Be Yourself, outlines the issues policy-makers need to consider in giving trans people legal gender recognition, and includes best practices from around the world. The report's authors admit that these solutions are not "one size fits all" – especially because some countries, like the US, are lagging behind.

Argentina is considered the leader in progressive gender marker policies, having passed a law in 2012 that allows individuals to update their gender markers on government-issued documents without any medical or mental health diagnosis.

"Before, I'd have had to undergo psychiatric diagnoses, hormonal treatment, surgeries and sterilization just to be recognized as a guy," Mauro Cabral, co-director of Argentina's Global Action for Trans Equality, told me this week. "I'd even even have to lie to a judge, and declare myself a straight guy – which I am not."

In America, the ID and documentation system creates "a ripple effect of problems," explained Arli Christian, policy counsel at the National Center for Transgender Equality. "It hinders employment, instigates suspicion or harassment from public officials, and makes it difficult to enroll in school, secure housing or public benefits, travel, drive or vote."

A country where a person can't drive or vote because of gender is a country that needs to get its act together.

Current laws for updating government-issued IDs with accurate name and gender markers are a patchwork at best – across the US and the globe, on federal, state and local levels.



"For a driver's license in New York, you just need a letter from your doctor," Kate Barnhart, the executive director of New York City's New Alternatives for Homeless LGBT Youth, told me. "But an NYC birth certificate requires sex-reassignment surgery, which many people don't want and many others can't afford." At least 14 states require surgery, a court order and/or a birth certificate for gender updates, Christian added.

This discrepancy between agency rules means that it's common for transgender people to have different IDs that say different things, which isn't just stupid – it's a bureaucratic nightmare.

Masen Davis, the executive director of the Transgender Law Center, has one name on a Social Security card and a different one on a US passport and California driver's license. Davis was born in Missouri but legally changed genders in California in the 90s. But because that home-state, red-state birth certificate still says "female", Davis told me, "I'm forced to come out whenever I apply for a job or enter an academic program."

Being "out" – by choice or necessity – takes its toll. A 2011 report on transgender discrimination, the largest survey of the US to date, notes that 41% of respondents had attempted suicide – 26 times the national average. Respondents were four to five times more likely than the general population to live in extreme poverty, regardless of educational level, and twice as likely to be unemployed.

Right now, the bureaucratic headache for transgender people looks alarming even across much of Europe. Julia Ehrt, the executive director of Transgender Europe, told me that there is no one standard for legal name and gender changes across Europe. While 13 of the 47 nations have no standards at all, forcing trans people to seek individual court rulings to obtain legal recognition of their genders, the rest all require a medical "diagnosis of gender dysphoria or equivalent" psychiatric disorder. Worse, she said that trans people in 21 countries must be sterilized to obtain legal gender recognition – and 20 countries require that trans people legally divorce their spouses.

With any luck, this new report will bring more attention to the legal strictures that fracture transgender people's lives and expose them to danger and discrimination. At a time when much of the west has seen progress around issues like marriage equality, transgender people are still fighting for basic rights and visibility. They shouldn't be wasting their time fighting with the DMV instead of being able to live their lives as partners, friends, co-workers and taxpayers.