States are trying to make sex binary. Transgender people see their existence denied [Video]

Topeka, Kansas –

Mack Allen, an 18-year-old high school senior from Kansas, braces for sideways glances, questioning looks and snide comments whenever he has to hand over his driver’s license, which still identifies him as female.

They’ve come from a police officer responding to a car accident. They’ve come from an urgent care employee loudly using the wrong name and pronouns. They’ve come from the people in the waiting room who overheard.

“It just feels gross because I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am now in my transition, and obviously I don’t look like a woman and I don’t sound like a woman,” said Allen, who has been on testosterone for two years.

Kansas enacted a law last year that ended legal recognition of transgender identities. The measure says there are only two sexes, male and female, that are based on a person’s “biological reproductive system” at birth.

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