Proof Needed?

So here’s a weird story: a/n (assumedly cis) woman found the wrong gender marker on her birth certficate and so went to have it changed because she needed to renew her license. She was required to get a copy of her birth record from Vital Record Services where she was told “she’d have to receive Pap exam and deliver to them proof of her reproductive organs”.

“She said I needed to go have a PAP exam, have a doctor write a note verifying you’re a woman, and bring it back-– notarized,” Grimes told FOX 5.

Considering the woman was a mother, she should have just brought in her children.

That said, there *are* women born women who don’t have cervices (that is, the thing a PAP is done on) or uteri. Maybe she was born with sealed labia or a large clitoris, or maybe the M was a clerical error.

The point is: this is stupidly invasive, and makes the bullshit trans people go through that much more apparent to those of us with cis privilege who – accept if we get pregnant in certain states – are rarely forced to show anyone our genitals in order to get the right paperwork signed.