Being Unemployed and Trans During a Pandemic Is a Nightmare

The inquisitive look, the graphic question, the smirks and stares — trans people know the drill of dealing with bureaucracies when gender-identifying documents are involved. The historic rise in unemployment since COVID-19 has made those encounters more frequent, more urgent, and more frustrating. In this first person account, Staley Munroe, an Ohio resident whose work in creative direction and advocacy vanished in March, describes the hassles and indignities they’ve faced while navigating unemployment since the pandemic began.

Back in early March, just before Ohio went into quarantine, I decided to renew my passport. My previous passport had expired and contained my dead name and gender. I gathered my driver’s license and birth certificate, filled out the application, and went to the post office.

A disgruntled woman looked terribly confused by my documents, then glanced up and down at me. “Why does it say male on your birth certificate but female on your driver’s license?”

I explained that I’m transgender and had a legal name and gender change several years ago. (Ohio, where I was born, and Tennessee are the only states left that don’t allow trans people to correct the gender on their birth certificates.)

“Oh,” she responded — loudly. “So you had the chop-chop down there?!” She gestured with her head toward my crotch.

I stood mortified at the sneers and snickers from those in line behind me. The clerk excused herself for 15 awkward minutes and came back looking as if I had just added stress to her day. In order to renew my passport, she told me, I would have to contact the court in Los Angeles where my name and gender change were filed and request official copies — not photocopies — to include in my application. Happy to leave, I thanked her and went home.

The next day, I called California and spoke with a court employee who, thankfully, clued me in that I should order two certified copies of the documents because the passport office likely would keep one. Of course the entire process had to be done by snail mail, and a check — who even has checks anymore? — had to be written out for the exact amount of the processing fees plus return postage or the whole package would be shredded and I’d be given no notification. It took two more phone calls to find out exactly what that cost would be.

Two weeks later, when the two certified copies arrived, I went to a different passport office and submitted the regular application, an additional new-name application, a copy of the court orders, my updated driver’s license info, my birth certificate with my deadname and gender, and my payment. Another clerk seemed equally confused and also excused herself to “talk to a manager.” She was, at least, far less hostile about the whole process and asked no extra questions about “down there.”

I left with my new passport, feeling grateful that I had money to pay the fees, that I had a car to get to the offices, that I had a job that let me out during business hours to avoid long lines, and after experiencing years of homelessness, that I even had a home address to write down on all the paperwork.

I was interrupted by a man who had been in line behind me, now cat-calling me and demanding my phone number. When I refused, he slurred some transphobic terms my way before storming off, but that’s an essay for a different time.

Fast forward to mid-April, and I’m staring at an error message on the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services website regarding my application for unemployment. Immediately, I know this has something to do with my name change.

Here's the thing about being transgender. It makes you such a unique “glitch” in outdated systems built on locked-in gender binaries that even if you’re patient and privileged enough to be able to update public records, all kinds of things pop up to complicate your efforts. Legal forms and documents that carry your name and/or gender — loans, titles, licenses, taxes, passports, all things DMV — have to be updated. If they even can be, that is.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown more hurdles in our way. Trans people were more than three times as likely to be unemployed in this country before coronavirus, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. If three times as many of us lost jobs in comparison to cisgender people since March, that would make about half of us vulnerable to those error messages on the unemployment websites of our state governments.

You’d think updating your name and gender with any government agency would be a simple process, or I certainly did. But most of the time, you don't even know there's a problem until there's a problem. An ambiguous error message appears, but doesn’t clarify precisely what the “problem with your application” actually is. So then you’re stuck with the issues resulting from those errors, like financial insecurity when your unemployment goes unapproved due to an error based on having two different names “in the system.” Sadly, administrative errors and computer-generated “no”s are all perfectly normal when you’re trans or nonbinary. We deal with these issues in every airport, every doctor’s office, every conversation with our student-loan collectors, and every time we confront a confused face behind a glass window at the DMV.

I’d like to hope whatever policy or process that is or is not in place to update any of these forms/payment profiles/identifications/user accounts/sign-ins doesn’t involve a clueless, culturally incompetent or flat-out transphobic jerk on the other end.

Equality Ohio, the statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy group in my state, has been in touch with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services about these issues. There’s now a person in the agency who has offered direct help to trans people when they encounter barriers because of legal name changes.

“We are now playing catch-up and patching systemic problems with minor fixes where we can,” said Maya Simek, Equality Ohio’s legal director. “Everybody involved that we have worked with on this issue has the right intentions, but the fact remains that we need to regard these experiences as canaries in a coal mine — and we must fix the problem before others have to experience it. Transgender people, like everybody else, are in critical need of unemployment insurance during this pandemic. Not only that, they deserve the inherent dignity of being referred to by their actual name and gender.”

Bret Crow, a spokesman for the state agency, said the computer system flags many people who have changed their names, even after marriage or divorce. If a name doesn’t match Social Security records, he said, people are asked for proof of identity.

“Transgender individuals [who were born in Ohio] would not have an updated birth certificate, but the court order changing their identity would suffice for proof of identity,” he said.

Trans folks are used to forms. We’re used to paperwork. We’re used to jumping through hoop after bureaucratic hoop. We’re used to being put on hold because someone “needs to speak with my manager.” We’re used to humiliating questions from strangers on the other side of a counter who can make a simple task even more difficult if we react with even half the rudeness they dish out.

We’re used to receiving triggering bills addressed to our dead names and not being able to update records.

It’s normal, often daily stuff.

But imagine dealing with all of it on top of the stress of looking for a job as a trans woman in an at-will state in Trump’s America during a global pandemic and imminent recession. Trans people do everything we possibly can, but we have not yet found a way to make an already flawed, anti-poor, anti-trans system work any more smoothly for ourselves.

The issue is not just building a more streamlined way to update name- and gender-change policies, but to do so with the urgency of knowing that these matters undermine trans folks’ sense of identity. When you’re constantly reminded that you’re different, a hassle, a frustration to the normal flow of business, it’s debilitating and depressing. You’re officially othered, not just by society’s general lack of acceptance but by the literal process of constantly validating that you are you to one system or stranger after another.

Good thing trans folks are also tenacious survivors. We’ve learned to celebrate small victories in each resolved form that comes in the mail, that M changing to F, a new name even on a bill or, lord willing, an unemployment check. They feel like massive triumphs.

Finally, my journey with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services came to a positive close, though it took quite a bit of persistence. After a series of emails to my state and local representatives, and with the help of a friend who worked close to the ODJFS, I miraculously was called back by someone who could help.

Once the issue was resolved, the state employee let me know I was “lucky.” He said I was No. 88,000 on the agency’s callback list.

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