Looking at the paintings on the wall of the Italian courtroom was a welcome distraction from my nerves. They depicted bullfights, lending the room an air of machismo, which struck me as deeply ironic given I was there to request the rectification of my legal sex to female. I’d lain awake for months dreading all the things that could go wrong: Italian judges dealing with such requests can and often do ask invasive questions about your sex life, or arbitrarily reject your application. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried: the substitute judge, who hadn’t read my massive folder of medical evidence, didn’t even realize I was trans until my lawyer explained what the case was about. Another few agonizing minutes passed while he got his head round the concept, and then it was done. Although the paperwork would take several more months and battles with authorities to be processed, at that moment, it was, in principle, settled that I was officially a woman and that my legal name was the one I’d been using for the past three years. Not only did this feel like a great personal liberation, the successful court hearing released me from the predicament of four different countries having different ideas of what my name and gender were.
Up to that moment, I had been an international person of mystery. Even without my transition, ‘where are you from?’ was no longer a simple question after having lived half my life outside of the US, where I was born. I’d taken Italian citizenship by descent, moved to Britain at the age of 21, where I’d done a PhD, researched, taught and got married, and moved to Austria at 35 for a post-doc. I loved having an international life, one which had broken me out of the American Midwest’s sleepy, white suburbs, where I had grown up. But when I started transitioning at 36, my cosmopolitan existence became a serious obstacle, caught as I was between countries, all with wildly diverging laws on trans people. At first, legal gender recognition looked like it might be too complicated; later, the process resulted in my US passport being revoked by the State Department. But Italy, although it is far from the most progressive country for trans people, at least offered me a clear path to recognition. Talking to other trans people, I find that I’m far from unique in having had long legal struggles over my identity. Indeed, I’ve been luckier than most, particularly among other trans people caught between jurisdictions.
Pass the parcel
Most countries’ laws on gender recognition only extend to their own citizens. And so, no matter how progressive a country is on trans rights, immigrants are nearly always excluded. Their gender is the one indicated in their passport, and their home country may have gender recognition procedures that are impossible to access from abroad. Unfortunately, this Catch-22 is more common than one might think.
This is what happened to me: before Donald Trump, it was relatively easy to change your gender on a US passport, but nearly impossible to change your name if you did not live in the US – a considerable oversight, given that a change of gender generally also involves a change of name. US courts will not issue the requisite court order for a change of name to a non-resident, while Austria (and, indeed, most countries) will not issue one to a non-citizen. In my case, I lucked out: the US Consulate in Vienna appreciated this difficulty and changed my name for me anyway. But when the State Department got wind of this procedural irregularity, they ordered the revocation of my US passport. If I’d not had recourse to Italy, I’d have been trapped having to return to my old name. And, even worse, though my change of gender itself was still valid at that time, now that would have to be reverted as well, cancelling many years of legal struggle to be recognized as who I am – and if I had transitioned later than I did, I might have never had the chance to be recognized at all.
I am far from the only one. Anna, an American scientist in Germany, is caught in a similar trap: she was able to change her gender marker on her US passport to female a few years ago, but not her name (which, among other things, leads to her being misgendered regardless of the Frau that precedes it). The new German Selbstbestimmungsgesetz (Self-Determination Law), introduced in 2024, does cover resident foreigners. However, it can only be used to change name and gender together, and as Anna’s legal gender is already female, she would have to first revert it to male for a year with the authorities, her bank, health insurance, etc. – and thus have to, among other things, be placed on male wards in hospitals – before she could change it back to female and alter her name at the same time. This would give Anna a name-change document which she could use to update her US passport, but following Donald Trump’s ban on gender change, her new passport would be returned with an ‘M’ – which would in turn change her legal gender in Germany back to male. Anna’s only hope is to acquire German citizenship and thus gain access to the normal procedure for changing her name, without losing her gender at the same time.
Anti-trans campaigners frequently invoke the spectre of a world where people can wake up and change gender on a whim before changing it back. But the only whims and caprices are those that authorities wield against us. There is no question that Anna is anything but a woman. In the period where I had two different passports that proclaimed me two different people of two different genders, there was nothing cloak-and-dagger about my existence either: at that point in my transition, it would have been impossible to disguise myself as a man even if I had to.
I did once enter the UK on my female, US passport and return to the EU on my male, Italian passport (as it was important to show that I was an EU citizen), but I had to explain to the Belgian border guard why I had a male ID. I was lucky that the guard seemed completely bored by the situation – when showing an ID that doesn’t represent you, you can’t be sure how someone will react. They may have experience of trans people, but they probably won’t. And then you have no way of knowing what their preconceptions about you will be: whether they’ll be calm, confused, mocking, or hostile. The prospect is all the more unnerving when it involves crossing a border or dealing with the police.
This is what happened to Sara, a scientist from Italy who had to wait ages for her court date, and several more months afterwards for her documents to finally be updated. In the meantime, she had to travel to France on business during the COVID pandemic when border controls were still in operation. The gendarmes flatly refused to believe Sara was the person on her ID and demanded she get out of the car. They stared at her for ages, their faces a mix of incomprehension and disgust, before finally letting her through. Back in Italy, she was stopped by the carabinieri, one of whom broke out in laughter and shouted to his colleagues: ‘Hey guys, guess what! The cute little blonde is a man!’
Removing that element of uncertainty, humiliation and danger from interactions is why trans people need accurate ID from the moment we start presenting in public as who we really are. The time this happens is highly individual, and is often conditioned less directly by our medical situation than by our social and employment circumstances. But many countries withhold legal recognition until later in transition, requiring one to have already had genital surgery. And depending on the level of provision where you’re transitioning, this can take years, or may not be available at all unless you have enough savings for private treatment.
Trans-Europe Express (or not)
No EU standard exists for the consistent and fair treatment of trans people. While eleven countries offer a self-declaration procedure, Latvia, Romania and Slovakia require sterilization, and Hungary and Bulgaria do not recognize trans people at all. Adherence to an often arbitrary and cruel evaluation procedure, disguised as ‘diagnostic’, is intended to put people off transitioning in many states. Sterilization as a prerequisite to legal gender recognition, although a de facto effect of surgery, is an odd and sinister aspect to single out. And in Italy court costs are often preventative: lawyers’ fees amount to around €3,000. Many countries in Europe also require anyone changing gender to divorce their partner.
Self-declaration procedures, mainly offered in northern and western Europe, although simplified and without specific medical prerequisites, can still not be completely straightforward (they are nonetheless bureaucratic procedures and normally involve a waiting period) and can involve unintentional consequences for the trans people they’re designed for – as in Anna’s case in Germany, unable to change her name. And international trans people are often yet again de facto excluded. While Belgium offers a self-determination procedure, Melanie, a British trans woman living there, is unable to change her gender. The Belgian authorities want her to provide a British Gender Recognition Certificate, for which she requires documents that she cannot get either from the UK as a non-resident nor from Belgium as a non-citizen. Melanie will have to acquire Belgian citizenship before she can change her legal gender.
While a person’s legal gender is generally a matter for member states, last year the European Union Court of Justice ruled that a Romanian-British trans man with a British Gender Recognition Certificate should also have his identity recognized in Romania, establishing the precedent that gender recognition documents from other member states have to be honoured. An ongoing case of a Bulgarian trans woman in Italy takes aim at Bulgaria’s 2023 total ban on gender-change, with the European Commission arguing that the country’s refusal to issue adequate documents breaches both human rights and the requirement for freedom of movement. These are positive steps, but a common EU procedure for gender recognition, even establishing bare minimums, is a long way off.
The British Gender Recognition Certificate occupies an unusual place. As it is possible to change your name and gender on a UK passport without one, many British trans people do not bother getting a certificate; the gender recognition procedure is long and complicated, requiring, among other things, documentation that you have lived in your gender for at least two years. The GRC is nevertheless needed to update your birth and marriage certificates, ensure your correct name and gender appear on your death certificate, and certify that you are a full member of your gender for legal purposes. Since the UK Supreme Court’s recent Equality Act decision that only sex at birth counts, the GRC’s value has been brought into question, however. Although the full implications of this decision have yet to be seen, it opens the door to trans people being excluded at will from single-sex spaces. Trans people in the UK now have to live with their identities being treated as conditional in daily life –the rug has been pulled out from under their feet.
Bio illogical
The ruling attempts to reduce the idea of ‘biological sex’ to something immutable, set forever at birth. But trans people probably have a better understanding of biological sex than anyone else, given that we spend years of our lives painstakingly working to change ours. Chromosomes mean nothing when you change your body’s hormonal profile – undoing one’s first puberty and undergoing a second. Most people have no idea how many fundamental changes this brings on, not merely to one’s body shape but also to one’s skin texture, body odour, sense of taste, of smell and of sight, the entirety of one’s brain and body chemistry.
Trans people cannot live on acceptance alone. Hormones are a necessity of life for us. Many seem to believe we only need them for a short time to induce certain outward physical changes, but sex hormones are part of the normal makeup of our brain chemistry. Without them we can face dire consequences. Transitioning entails developing and maintaining a hormonal profile identical to that of cis people of your gender, and we need life-long access to hormones for this. Oestrogen was the only thing that lifted me out of the deep depression that began with the onset of male puberty. If my levels drop too low, I begin to despair, and I know for a fact that if I lost access to oestrogen I would not live long. Our surgeries also massively improve our quality of life by relieving the despair induced by dysphoria. If a country gives us acceptance but neglects to provide basic medical care, it is failing us – no matter how good its laws may look on paper.
Many of the differences in bureaucratic trans rights across Europe can be visualized through the Transgender Europe map. The non-profit’s regular study of the situation for trans people in Europe takes a number of factors into consideration, regarding both gender recognition and legal issues such as anti-discrimination policies, awarding countries an overall score. However, the factors identified only give a partial picture. The realities of receiving medical care, for example, are not considered – the only health factors counted are whether being trans is no longer classed as a mental illness and whether conversion practices are prohibited.
Many high-ranking countries, therefore, are not as good for trans people as they might seem. Norway, for example, has a good score because of its self-determination and anti-discrimination procedures, but trans people in Norway have difficulties getting access to hormones. All transgender care is funnelled through the Rikshospital, Oslo, which has long waiting lists and restrictive attitudes. Surgery is extremely difficult to come by.
Access to trans medical care becomes even more difficult once you cross borders. Sylvie’s transition, including genital surgery, was complete ten years before she moved to Vienna from abroad. Despite being legally recognized as a woman for all that time, she was told she would have to undergo psychological assessment before a doctor could prescribe her the hormones she was already taking – just to check she was really trans. Other countries are better at allowing continuity of care without insisting on beginning the ‘diagnostic’ process again, but even then the situation often involves a waiting list and losing access to hormones in the meantime. And if you are waiting to begin your transition, the last thing you want to do is move to another country and have to start again with another waiting-list. These can be very long as well: waiting-lists in the UK were over five years in 2024.
When approaching transition, you have to face the things you are potentially giving up: friends, family, partners, jobs, your safety in public. When you live an international life – as more of us do in a globalized world, whether by choice or not – you may also, ironically, end up losing access to the very structures you need to transition.
In films about trans characters, directors often present a decisive moment when the protagonist changes sex: a satisfied look in a mirror, waking up after surgery, walking out their front door for the first time transformed. Transition does have its moments, but no single instance is definite; it is a procedure. Asking how long transitioning takes is like asking ‘how long is a piece of rope’ – and like a piece of rope, it is made of several strands, personal, social, medical and legal. The legal side may not lend itself to filmic portrayals, but it is hardly short of drama and (mis)adventure. Even in the places where the law is simpler, transitioning is always a headache. Six years in, I have my passport and my birth certificate, enough to get on with my life in any country, but there is still paperwork left to do. Unless you’ve climbed the rope yourself, you don’t know how long it can be, and what it feels like when so many people are trying to cut it.
The names of all people in this article have been changed to maintain their anonymity. It was commissioned as a text for Come Together, a project leveraging existing wisdom from community media organization in six different countries to foster innovative approaches.
