A friend of mine was a foundling (literally, left in a basket on the front door of a church). In spite of having no birth certificate, he did, in fact, exist.
Now I am curious. He never got anything like a Foundling Certificate, which in my state operates as a birth certificate? It seems in my life, a great many things have required a birth certificate to get.
Husband and I have put on the application that we’re open to adopting a child of any race, so we were required to take a course on ‘‘conspicuous families,’’ which emphasized specifically that trans-racial adoptions are so difficult in part because the child has zero control over who knows that they are adopted, and when. We were taught to anticipate a barrage of inappropriate questions and comments from strangers, even in front of the kid.
Ouch. She is the same race as her parents, but there was one nasty old bat in particular who would imply that she was not *really *part of the family, since she was adopted. I told her to say “I was chosen to come into the family. You’re the accidental relation we can’t get rid of.”
We were instructed to try to take the child out of the spotlight, for example, instead of ‘‘She’s adopted,’’ we’d say, ‘‘We’re an adoptive family.’’ Exactly how we choose to respond might depend on the context, whether we were likely to continue a relationship with that person in the future, whether they were a stranger off the street vs. a teacher, etc. We talked to several adoptive parents with children of another race before making this decision, one woman told me about being accosted by a stranger in the women’s restroom when her child was about five, demanding to know why she adopted internationally and not locally, telling her (in front of her kid!) it was selfish not to adopt local children in need. Going back to the point of this thread, it’s astonishing what people feel entitled to know about others’ personal lives. I tend to be pretty open, but I respect that other people have different boundaries.
He got a baptismal certificate, which worked for a while. Moved from Missouri to Iowa to Minnesota and back to Iowa; when he got there he found that the laws had changed and it no longer served as identification, so he couldn’t get a driver’s license. He ended up having to go back to Missouri to take his 85-year-old mom (think Clara Peller) in to the courthouse so she could yell at a judge, who gave him a birth certificate.
My sister had one last name on her birth certificate. My parents became citizens and Americanized their last name, so my sister issued an update BC. Fraud?
Her birth certificate needs to be accurate for today- so it matches her passport and drivers license. It is not a record of the past.
Speaking as a cisgender heterosexual who upon marriage did not adhere strictly to the traditional name change… that “regular societal expectation” is far from universal and over the past 30 years I’ve been subjected to people correcting my name to what THEY think is proper off and on for the past several decades.
I also had a male coworker with aspirations of being an opera singer who changed his name for professional reasons (to a Italian form) who was endless subjected to people referring to him by his old name, and telling people from new co-workers to complete strangers that the man’s name was “Larry” and not “Lorenzo” despite the legal name change.
I can only presume the transgender have it worse.
It’s still damn rude, whether the consequences are major or minor.
Right - the Birth Certificate document that is issued and accepted universally (unless the parties involved are the 44th POTUS and some of his more differentially abled opponents :rolleyes: ) is a document officializing that you, the person standing here and now, with the gender and parents you have here and now, who are requesting a good or service, or seeking to claim a right or entitlement, were born on a date certain and place certain: is is evidence of *your ***age **and citizenship. It is a different document from the Hospital Record of Birth the midwife/obstetrician filled out relating the incidents of the labor and delivery, that was later filed away and wound up in a microfiche in a storage vault never to be seen again.
Sometimes the SDMB feels like a Rick & Morty episode, and I’m Morty. This is one of those times.
I didn’t want to start a great debate on the meaning of violence or ask general questions about the legal status of birth certificates or pit anybody. I was just looking for some humble opinions on a social situation.
Dude, it’s the Dope, what did you expect? 
If, like you said, this was more of an act of ignorance rather than hostility, I hope your friend will apologize to Jane.
Silly bean.
Denying the past, madame, is the epitome of “Orwellian”. It might be possible in a highly formal business relationship between two people that interact rarely and only by using a very prescribed etiquette, but in the normal course of informal human social interaction, not going to happen. Our past interactions with people are part of the collective us that make up society. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take other people’s feelings into consideration. However, it’s ridiculous to expect someone to “blank out” entire segments of their past lives to accommodate someone else s neuroses.
On the other hand, it shouldn’t be seen as Orwellian when you say “I knew Jane back in high school” rather than “I knew Jane back in high school when Jane was still John.” There is no need to refer to the “deadname” in conversation unless it is directly pertinent to what is being discussed.
Or do you constantly refer to every married woman you meet as “Hillary Clinton who used to be Hillary Rodham”? Do you insist on calling everyone who uses the name “Bill” by the name “William” instead? Do you bring up the past medical history of people in conversations where it’s not relevant?
Unless you’re planning on an intimate/sexual relationship with a person their past medical history in regards to their gender is actually none of your damn business.
So in casual conversation, you always and without fail bring up every single past incident or accident which you feel driven to tell others, with no editing?
This is a matter of simple common courtesy. I interviewed a Korean woman on my show a few weeks ago whose grandmother was a “comfort woman” for the Japanese, and she wrote a book about it. OK, in context, and with her grandmother’s permission, that’s something she can share. But do you honestly think she refers to her grandmother to her friends like such: “I got this recipe for kimchee from my grandmother that she’s had since the 1940’s - during the time she was repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers for years.”
No, because only a complete sociopath would do something like that. That’s not “denying the past,” and posting on a message board that it’s “Orwellian” doesn’t make it true.
No, that isn’t what “Orwellian” means. To refer to someone by their legal, chosen identity and refrain from contradicting it by introducing information not generally known, when it is probable that such conduct would cause that someone embarrassment or harm, does not “deny the past,” and if it did, that still is not what “Orwellian” means. Neither is it Dickensian, Kafkaesque, Machiavellian, or any other adjective that might be essayed by someone who wants to redefine aggressively bad or oppressive behavior as a noble striving for “freedom.” Surely everyone can see where this ends up: with someone bravely rebelling against the thought police telling him he shouldn’t open his yap about Anne Frank (or, less bombastically, the escaped slave) being in the neighbor’s attic even though he knows she’s there!
Pretty sure it’s been explained that people like Jane risk social stigma, economic harm, and physical attack. We all manage the truth – even lie – to suit ourselves: it’s not too much to ask for discretion to avoid pain for others.
My perspective is that of a cis woman who has a lot of trans and non-binary friends. A lot of the trans friends either transitioned recently (so most everyone they interact with knows about it) or it’s visually obvious that there is something unusual about their gender. For instance, one young trans-man recently posted to Facebook a photo that very clearly shows that he’s had his breast removed. The non-binary people mostly have to be out about it pretty much 24-7, which some find very trying. But it sounds like none of those describe your friend. If it’s something she doesn’t want to share, it’s rude to share it.
Of course, people are carelessly rude all the time. And when people are carelessly rude without intending to offend, we usually just ignore it, or quietly take them aside and tell them they were rude so they can to better next time. But in this situation, a big question is whether this was also harmful.
I think you have to make your best guess as to whether Jane is now at risk. And I don’t just mean at risk of losing her job, or being beaten up. She’s probably also at risk of being ambushed by an awkward question from a curious acquaintance.
I’d guess she is, and so I would want to warn her of that risk. If you really think it won’t come back to her in a potentially traumatic way, though, I’d stay out of it.
One final thought…
“I knew Jane back in high school when Jane was still John.”
If this is actually relevant, and you want to say it, I think it would be better to say “I knew Jane back in high school when we called her John.” I think that is generally the more accurate statement, as it doesn’t imply that she used to be a boy, it just states the fact that her friends used to think she was a boy.
Who said anything about denying the past? We were talking about bringing up awkward bits of the past out of the blue, for no particular reason.
If you see a woman wearing an ugly dress, do you volunteer, “wow, you are wearing an ugly dress”? Or do you keep your mouth shut, or comment on the weather? Is that an Orwellian denial of the truth?
Most of our past interactions are not highly gender-bound. (well, maybe yours are moreso than some of the rest of us.) I have no trouble talking honestly about my interactions with Joe back when he was called Jane, without talking about his gender switch. In fact, I’ve more often had the opposite problem – where I am telling a mutual acquaintance something about Joe, and the MA looks at me puzzled, and asks if they know Joe, and I have to backtrack, and say, “oh, yeah, you know him, but he was called Jane last time you saw him. He’s Joe now.” Note that these are people Joe is friendly with and will likely see in the not-so-distant-future, so I’m not outing anything they aren’t going to learn in due time.
It’s “Orwellian” to ask someone to deny their previous history with someone. The nature of casual conversation is one in which plenty of irrelevant, sometimes personal information will spill out as people talk. Hint: that’s why it’s called casual. And how much editing I or any other person would do will depend on many factors.