The legal system and structures in place to uphold gender are pretty intense if you really take a minute to think about it. Pieces of paper say what you are and if you don’t get enough people with licenses and titles to certify you are you, you don’t get to correct the system. More complicated than that is that this letter is to update my birth certificate and gender to something I don’t identify as... as in, it is highly unlikely Louisiana will ever be a place to have birth certificates with a nonbinary sex or gender option. This doesn’t help validate me and who I am, it meets the need of the system to maybe have one less bump in the road later on. This is also assuming Louisiana even accepts this language... So, for now, to have a better alignment of my documents, I have this letter from my awesome surgeon Dr. Berli, to help me get through the next hoops. Shoutout to him for also noticing my scar was needing some extra healing support so I could come in and get steroid injections. Also, thank goodness for less feeling in the incision so I only felt one needle instead of 10. You’re the real MVP. 😂💉🦄🌈#testosterone #unicorn #nonbinary #trans #drberli #queer #selfmade #ohsu @drberli (at OHSU Center for Health & Healing)