TW: Transphobia / Loss of Stealth Status / Deep Dysphoria & Identity Trauma / Intense Systemic Hopelessness / Surveillance Capitalism & Data Privacy Violations
Please, Do not read this if you are in a bad mental state, or don't want your day ruined.
In the spring of fifth grade, I finally came to terms that I had to transition, and with that, the hope I could be female. From that point onward, I woke up every day attempting to prevent what just happened to me.
I wanted to be legally, socially, and as much as I was able to, physically stealth, so that I could be like any other friend, coworker, family member, and be their equal as I sat beside them, joked around, and walked along the street. Not as a matter of pride or ego, but from the simple reality of severe dysphoria and a desire for dignity that I had never felt, that I was just like anybody else, after a lifetime of being severely bullied, by my peers, and by my family.
I wanted to leave no trace of my false existence that was forcibly foisted upon me at birth, which i detested, kicking and screaming for it to have never existed since I was cognizant enough to know the difference.
So every day I fought like hell to have no paper trail, to be perfectly equivalent and indistinguishable to a cis person, on a screen, and going forward in peoples memories. So I was so so careful and exacting.
At age 16 I was able to get on hormones on the black market (which was an effort in its self)
, intentionally left no social media history, never posted my name or face online in any capacity, never started any credit or employment history, never registered to vote, and when I finally had enough money,
moved to a completely new address in a completely new county (where i then also started attending university),
and filed for a name and sex change, changed my social security and passport just in time before the trump administration took power, and scrubbed any and all school records for both middle, high school, community college, and university. I then changed all of my insurance, health, auto, and renter insurance, working with my apartment complex to clear any mention of my previous legal identity.
I even contacted all of the hospitals I had visited since birth (minus the one I was born at in an extremely regressive state) to expunge details of prior names of mine in their system, which was largely successful, with my records not even being identified in their internal system as specifically "transgender", and just female for most (but not all). After that,
I had to go through 7 lawyers until I found one who would argue in court for my ability to fully seal my name and sex change, having to create my own legal argument to my lawyer off of precedent that had occurred only a few months prior, that took place elsewhere in my state of a transgender woman being harassed by new people in her life after finding out details of her deadname on people finder websites, paying him 3,500 dollars of my own money in the process (which had no guarantee of being granted). I then made sure that there was also no trace, on ancestry.com or other similar websites, no public records, scrubbing any mention of my deadname in my high school class's graduation (which was published online without anyone's consent), or anything anywhere in any public or private database. I then froze my credit, deleted all previous checking accounts, and put an indefinite security freeze on my LexusNexus consumer disclosure file. Almost two years have passed since i was able to acquire my change and seal of name change, thinking I was completely in the clear, still with no credit or employment history, with no paper trails whatsoever.
My deadname, childhood address, along with a fake employment history and phone number (which presents as tied to my dad and several other random people), shows up on nearly every people finder website, alongside and or connected to my present legal identity, and for two of the websites,
it shows my current address and phone number and email, with all websites connecting me directly do my immediate and distant family.
I fucking lost it.
I had done everything, perfectly, nearly since birth. I took every conceivable action in the exact correct order at the exact correct time, taking actions perfectly in time sandwiched in-between shifting federal and state legislation, to give myself the ultimate clean brake. The ultimate clean slate, so that I am just another face in the street, another normal friend, girlfriend, colleague, free of all dirt, which I never wanted in any form the exact moment i could conceive of the permanence of my decisions and self.
In my total state of dejection, I called a non-profit data privacy defense group, to sadly ask how this could have occurred.
In short, a data breach targeting either past (permanently held, because fuck you! why not!) health, dental, vision, or car insurance, the recent canvas breach (although less likely it was this), a tenant screening company that keeps logs of all past utility records, or a Data aggregating company using AI driven household clustering
(household clustering; a clustering algorithm that is programmed to run routine sweeps to find "lost" or shifting household members running a predictive proximity match that goes something like looking at the last names of a particular household, an age threshold, and background metadata of your true name's new profile that then matches those data points against the historical family tree cluster at Address A with the AI's statistical model calculating a near-100% mathematical probability that [True Name at Address B] and [Deadname from Address A] were the exact same human entity based on the "hole" left in the childhood cluster and the "new mass" appearing at the adult address with the machine guessing the link mathematically, merging the two files into a single "Frankenstein" cluster, and then selling that updated graph to the public people-finder sites),
being the utterly unavoidable travesty that outed me, that was always bound to happen, on any timescale. From the moment I was born inside the United States, any of us were born inside of the United States, we were all doomed. From the start. With no herculean effort amounting to anyone living with an equal amount of dignity or lack of constant overhanging humiliation of a name, a life, an alien person, that we never wanted, that was always destined to haunt us all forever, at all times.
If you transition at 5 or 50, at some point, you will be outed, in this form or in others.
California's new DROP data privacy law (which is only for
present California residents) which mandates registered websites to scrub your online facing data , will help, but its a small band aid, and doesn't go into effect until august. Everything will always re-appear. The moment that one law gets scrapped, or a loophole is formed in response, it is voided null. The moment I decide to ever move states (which i would have difficulty doing if my passport ever gets revoked as I cannot change my shithole state birth certificate), or move countries, my particular fucked up digital profile is no longer protected from continuous wiping.
To all future landlords, employers, a private detective, cops, government officials, lawyers, a prying acquaintance or friend, a future boyfriend, my future hypothetical children (this one particularly hurts), will all know. They will all know that name. As of present,
I will have to spend hours of my life, every month, playing perpetual whack amole, but the future probably sucks, and I have no hope it will become any easier (if anything impossible) to scrub everything through my individual efforts.
I was so so lucky, so so privileged, to be able to even attempt this, in any capacity. That has not lost me. The deepest depths of my heart goes out to my trans siblings who never even had the chance to try. To those who couldn't afford the $3,500 legal fees and the obligations of life while maintaining no official employment history, who didn't have the safety or means to navigate the black market as a teenager, or who are trapped in states that actively weaponize their very existence top to bottom from all angles. I am devastated for myself, but utmost of all, I am beyond devasted for all of us.
It feels as if there is no redemption, there is no ability to scrub clean and to be an equal, on a screen, in the blood vessels between my bones and flesh, in the memories of others. With perfect intentions to be legally, socially, physically the living being we all know to be, it seems that we are all utterly doomed from day zero, from birth. No secret start date that would've saved it all and made it all right, it never existed, for anyone. Legislatively I have no idea, nor hope, to save those that come after us, or for us who live now. Every effort and action, sisyphean. I am sorry.
A special go fuck yourself to:
- Spokeo
- Intelius
- FastPeopleSearch
- TruePeopleSearch
- Peoplefinders
- Peoplefinderapp
- USA People Search
- Truthfinder
- Beenverified
- USAA
- CollectiveHealth
- EyeMed
- Experian
- TransUnion
- Equifax
- LexisNexis Risk Solutions
- Oracle
- Acxiom
- Claritas
- SSA
- BlueCross
This above all.
