The Intersection of a Transguy, A School Cross Walk, and a Policeman.

As a police officer walked towards the driver’s side of my car on that fall day in 2009, I shook with anxiety as I though of how I was going to explain myself.

Just fifteen minutes prior, I had stopped my Toyota Prius in front of the cross walk leading to Thomas Payne Elementary School. The maple trees of Maple Shade, New Jersey had already begun to shed their leaves: I remember the crossing guard stepping on particularly bright red specimen as she led a line of children in front of my car.

The sound of breaking glass and a powerful impact jolted me from my reverie as I was rear-ended by an Isuzu SUV seconds later. I remember gasping for breath and the initial shock after the impact. I looked up into my rearview mirror and saw the woman driver getting out of her car. She went over to the passenger side of her car, took her young son out of the passenger seat, and then walked him across the street to the school. I had rolled my window down prior to the accident to enjoy the fall air and I could hear her yelling, “WHY DID YOU STOP?” at me while she marched her son to the main entrance of the school.  If I had not been in shock, I surely would have laughed: yes, why indeed had I stopped for a cross walk full of youngsters in front of what was apparently her son’s school?

Relieved my car hadn’t been pushed into any of the cross walk’s former occupants, I turned left into the elementary school’s drive way and exhaled, resting my forehead on the steering wheel. As the breath went out, my mind began to kick into high anxiety mode: I realized I hadn’t yet updated the first name on my car’s registration to match my new first name.

I had officially changed my first name about a year prior as part of my transition, but because my vehicle was financed at the time, I couldn’t update the first name on the registration until I updated the name with the vehicle financing company. This was a surprisingly lengthy process which involved mailing various documents to the vehicle financing company, who then had to contact the state DMV where I bought the vehicle (CA) to have a title reprinted with the new first name on it, who then had to mail the title to the DMV of the state I lived in at the time (NJ), so the registration could be updated.

What this all boiled down to, though, was I was going to have to explain to the police officer, who was going to ask for my license and registration, why the name on my license didn’t match the name on my vehicle registration. I would tell them the truth, of course, but then what? How would the officer respond? Would it impact anything else with the whole accident situation?

I am not sure who called the police, but a patrol car was on the scene within minutes. I watched as the police officer got out of his car and quickly walked towards mine.

The first thing the officer said to me when he got to my rolled down car window was, “Are you hurt?”

In my anxious and shock-addled mind, what I heard the officer say was, “Are you her?”

To which I blurted out in response, loud enough in my nervousness that it was likely audible to many individuals in the school’s parking lot, “I’M A TRANSSEXUAL!”

The officer, to his credit, masked most of what was probably his considerable confusion and asked again, “Are you HURT?”

When I told this story to my therapist a week later, she laughed so hard she cried. And, for the most part, it is an okay story to laugh about: the officer was very kind and didn’t hassle me about being trans. The accident was ruled to be 100% the other person’s fault by our respective insurance companies. I managed to scrounge up enough money to pay the insurance deductible and get my car repaired. No one was hurt, especially no innocent bystanders.

But the other part of the story, the part that would force me to make the decision to yell “I am a transsexual!” at a police officer in an elementary school parking lot, is the uncertainty and anxiety which accompanies disclosing one’s transgender status, particularly to those in positions of authority. I had my various levels of privilege working for me (white guy, decent looking car, decent part of town, US citizen, valid driver’s license), which in turn helped my story turn out okay.

There are many trans folks who don’t have positive outcomes when they disclose to people like police officers or health care workers or their employers or even their families, for that matter. If you are not familiar with these issues, to get an idea of the outcomes trans folks are subject to when they disclose their trans status to healthcare workers and others, a great way to enhance your understanding is by reviewing the results of this 2015 US Transgender Survey, conducted by the Center of Transgender Equality. If you are not trans or genderqueer and know someone who is, you can take time to ask them about their personal experiences.

For me, the anxiety about disclosing my status has decreased somewhat with the passage of time, but still remains. And circumstances beyond one’s control, like car accidents, can lead trans folks into situations where they don’t get to choose whether or not they disclose. Instead, we have to hope that the police officer, the emergency room doctor, the nurse, and whomever else we have to rely on and disclose our trans status to is as understanding and kind as the police officer was to me in Maple Shade that day.