The Consequences of Misgendering After Death

Orion Rummler writing for The 19th documents the harms that trans people face when misgendered after death. 

Without updated identity documents, such as a driver’s license or other government-issued I.D., trans people are likely to be misgendered and have the wrong name on their death certificates — in spite of their lived experience, gender expression or physical transition. That acute loss of self weighs heavily on the minds of many trans people, especially those with unsupportive families or those without resources to change their documentation.

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The paperwork, policies and software used to record death vary from state to state. Without state or federal requirements to gather LGBTQ+ data after death, crucial choices on the remembrance of deceased transgender people are left in the hands of individual funeral directors, medical examiners and death investigators working within a convoluted and underfunded system. 

The article profiles a recent study out of Portland concluding: 

Of the 47 trans and nonbinary people who died from 2011 to 2021 that researchers could find, more than half had their genders marked incorrectly on their death certificates. That number was small — 29 trans people over that 10-year period were misgendered on their death certificates.But the time-consuming manner that researchers had to use to prove even that sliver of information underlines the key problem: For Oregon and most other states, there is no formal record of someone’s gender identity after death at all. 

The article recommends legal changes to avoid what the Portland study co-authors described powerfully as the "nonconsensual detransitioning after death.” "Lawmakers should create policy to ensure transgender people can be recognized as their true selves after death if they lack updated identity documents, * * * especially since the process of obtaining those documents can be difficult in some states."  

 

Read the full article here.