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VIPWhen a baby is born, the mother anxiously waits to hear the announcement from the nurse, it’s a boy or a girl. This is like a norm that is never questioned. To those whose gender doesn’t fit either group of male or female as traditions dictates, how should the announcement be made? Most activities require identifications like enrolling in a school, applying for welfare benefits, opening a bank account, voting, traveling across the borders, or finding a job. In absence of legal recognition, a transgender person will have challenges doing such common activities. Gender development should not be the basis of whether or not one should enjoy fundamental rights like health care, employment, or government legal recognition. To transgender people, it can be humiliating and sometimes violent. The process for legal recognition of a transgender person requires courage and willingness to crucify your personal life for public scrutiny and often, unfriendly courts and law-makers. It is much easier and friendlier to enroll in a trans-dating site where you meet trans people and people who love and care about transgender people and are ready to start a long and healthy relationship with you.
Legal recognition policies are important because they form the firm foundations of affirming the dignity and respect of a transgender person. It is also the gateway to other rights like the right to privacy, freedom of expression, free to arbitrary arrest, right to employment, education, health, justice, movement, housing, and right to marry. The process should no longer subject the applicant to humiliation and harmful treatment.
Legal challenges may be;
Civil status requirement: In some countries where same-sex marriage is prohibited, such unions are challenged and may be nullified. A transgender person should be allowed to express love and marry. Like any other normal person, they can find love on dating sites too. Unfortunately, in some countries, a parent who chose to undergo gender reassignment might lose custody of their child due to forced divorce.
Age: The procedure for legal gender recognition may involve age restriction or minimum age requirement. If the recognition requires a medical interview, these are often done to adults. Therefore, they are discriminated against based on age brackets.
Requirements met before legal recognition: There may be certain things to be met before being able to change their name and registered names like irreversible sterilization, hormonal treatment, preliminary surgical procedures, and sometimes proof of ability to live for a long time in the new gender.
Medical requirements: They involve psychiatric diagnosis, compulsory medical intervention like hormonal treatment, and surgery. Though it is under review, WHO statistics listed transsexuals as a ‘mental and behavior disorder’.
The fight for legal recognition in many countries brings moral fear but it is a worthy cause. If trans rights of privacy, free expression including expressing love on a trans dating site and dignity is to be upheld, the government has to understand that unjust restriction of people's right has to stop. The trans community has to understand that it is their responsibility to ensure that their rights are upheld authorities. That will only happen if they accept they are normal and nothing short of that. There is a great need to end abusive and discriminating procedures that hinder rights to recognition.
Some countries have enforced laws that prohibit transgender people from expressing themselves as ‘the opposite sex’ declaring them legally in existence. Elsewhere, trans are arrested under the law that sees the same sex as a criminal act. The fact is, trans are real and they are here to stay. They should live like any other person and associate normally. Transgender dating site has people who don’t need licensing to recognize you as who you are. However, without the legal documentation that recognizes transgender law and has rights and protection they associate with, they will continue to face potential violence and humiliation. Therefore, they hide themselves from the public.
Suicide cases among transgender people result from systematic marginalization and humiliation. They are killed brutally, raped, kidnapped, tortured, and mutilated. Some have been asked to explain how they do sex with their partners in public. A transgender person should not entertain verbal diarrhea from narrow-minded people or offer answers to such talks. In recent years, the trans community around the world has made efforts towards achieving legal recognition. Breakthroughs have been in areas of choosing the gender identity you want at 18yrs of age, choose whether to undergo gender reassignment, and change official documents information without prior medical or judicial approval. Children can do so with consent from a legal representative or a judicial proceeding. In some nations, transgender people can change their gender marker on documents simply by filling in the required forms. There is still a lot to be done since not all can be achieved by legal documentation. As a transgender person, go out there and claim your space. Don’t hide away or bribe your way out of injustice practices towards you. If you believe in yourself, they will believe in you too. In trans dating sites, you can be yourself freely and exercise rights to your feelings without fear of like-minded people.
In conclusion, legal gender recognition is about ensuring a gender person’s rights are respected, stopping discrimination, and maintaining dignity. A quick, accessible, and transparent legal procedure without abusive representation can do it. So will when a transgender person is given identity papers and other relevant official documents that match with a person’s identity. The documents should include a clear male or female gender marker. It can never be right if the legislative and the government don’t consult with the transgender community and NGOs that defend transgender human rights.
The Transgender community has to understand the process of legal recognition can be humiliating. There is a need for courage and willingness to go through the process before things get better. However, one must live their life to the fullest and that does not need licensing.
