Passport Control by Sam Elkin
Passport Control
It’s easy to change your passport from female to male, at least in theory. You get your treating practitioner to fill out a special declaration form to state that “you have had or are receiving appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition”, bundle that up with your change of name certificate, birth certificate, and in my case at least, citizenship certificate, and make an appointment with an Australia Post outlet. As I was a bit nervous about the whole thing, I chose the post office based on its proximity to a street whether the chemists cheerfully advertised the availability of PrEP, quite unlike my own western Suburbs neighbourhood.
I booked the appointment at 8.45am so that I could get to work approximately on time. I was the first one through the door as a man unbolted the shop and walked back along the grey and red carpet. He greeted me warmly as I approached him at the counter. “What can I help you with?” he asked. “I need a new passport” I said, pushing the application form towards him. He scrutinized it, and his demeanour got chillier, as he apparently came to appreciate the reason for my request. His forehead knotted, and he was clearly not having a good day anymore.
He said “stay here” and went to the back room to make a call. I stood at the counter feeling awkward, while other customers filed in to complete their less problematic postal business. He was gone so long that the other staff member, a middle-aged woman, came over, smiled and asked what I needed help with. I showed her my paperwork. and she too frowned, and joined her colleague out back for a few moments. He eventually came back out, and failed to look at me at all, keeping his eyes on my paperwork and his computer. I saw him looking over my birth certificate. I was starting to feel quite defensive, and I said, perhaps a bit pissily, “so will you be taking my passport photos soon?”
“I’ll take them when I am good and ready to!” he snapped back. The line of customers all turned to watch us at this point, and I regretted choosing a post office so close to my work.
I was scared of him now, and I reverted back into my shell in an effort to deescalate the situation. I took out my phone and got onto the post office website and scrolled down to “Make A Complaint”. A silent act of defiance. He eventually looked up from his screen and told me gruffly to move to the right so that he could take my passport photograph. He told me to take off my glasses. He didn’t need to tell me not to smile.
I sent off my complaint and got an automatic reply, thanking me for my feedback, and letting me know that I might be able to find an answer to my issue on their Help & Support page. I didn’t take them up on that offer.
When I picked up my passport from the Docklands office a few weeks later, I flicked to the photo page and saw a depressed looking guy with bad hair and a bit of acne. Then I looked up at the M where the F had previously been. It was quite surreal, but the whole experience had taken the shine off of any joy I might have otherwise felt at having come to a resolution of this rather private administrative issue.
It was this passport that accompanied me on my most recent trip to South America. The first time I had travelled overseas as an M, post chest surgery, sporting a sporadic yet gender-confirming amount of facial hair.
There were so many opportunities to declare my new status. While booking my flights with Air New Zealand, I used their dropdown box to confirm that I was an M. The Australian government needed me to affirm that I was an M on their little tick box immigration departure card at Melbourne airport, and the Argentinian government also felt it necessary for me to confirm my M status upon arrival at the Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires. What had started out feeling like a daring act of transgression was become more and more hum drum by the minute.
We had booked to spend our first night in an Airbnb in the suburb of Retiro, which turned out to be the Bourke Street of Buenos Aires. Before booking, I’d scrolled through my Airbnb reviews to confirm that I was still considered to be a good guest. I noticed that the old reviews had “she” and “her” in it, and so I contacted Airbnb to update my gender information, as I thought it might be confusing for my host when my new masculine form showed up to take the keys. They emailed me back to let me know they’d changed me to an M, but that their policies specifically prevented them from changing my prior hosts use of pronouns to refer to their guests in my reviews. They’d come up with a nifty workaround, however, which was that they could change my pronoun to [GUEST]. So, my updated review from Maria in Eaglehawk Neck, for example now states that “Sam is a wonderful guest and we were happy to have [GUEST’S] partner arrive for [GUEST’S] second night (by arrangement).” Linda from Hobart was equally effusive. “Sam was a pleasure to host. [GUEST] was respectful of the rules and left it clean and tidy. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend [GUEST] to other hosts.” My new host Matteo didn’t seem to care that my pronoun was [GUEST], and confirmed in moments that he was happy to take my money.
After a couple of nights in Buenos Aires, we decided to travel down to Ushuaia, billed as the ‘southernmost city in the world’; a city backed by the snow-capped Andes, with Antarctica sitting invisibly at its doorstep. When we checked into the no doubt once glamorous but slightly falling down Ushuaia Hotel, they also wanted me to formally declare that I was an M on their check-in form. I was surprised to note that they also required my marital status. Since we thought that it possible that we might be allocated single beds if we disclosed that we were living in sin, we elected for “married.”
Our new status as fake married people allowed me to lean in to my new life as a boring straight person, which I have to say has made life a whole lot smoother when out in public. Gemma and I never get scowled at by strangers anymore, and my tattoos, which seemed to signify to many that I was a particularly unruly woman, now barely even seem to be noticed. As I am a fairly diminutive M, both men and women seem to find me unthreatening, and I find I now have to do less than ever to find a friendly face before me. The main down-side is the loss of status in club queer. During dinner in a trendy restaurant in Buenos Aires, I noticed a couple of similarly tattooed butch-looking women chatting and laughing. I smiled, so pleased to have finally found the crowd that I still think of as my people. One of them noticed me looking, and dismissed me in a glance. “What is that boring straight couple doing here?” I imagine her thinking, if she noticed us at all.
To the eyes of outsiders, my gender non-conformity is now reduced to my willingness to let my female partner use her bank card to pay for things. Due to the economic instability in Argentina, it’s almost impossible to get out more than a couple of thousand pesos a day, which won’t get you far, so we opted to use our cards whenever we could. Because Gemma’s with a big evil multinational bank that has the significant perk of charging no international fees, we decided to pool our funds and use her card. For reasons that are unclear to me, using your bank card in Argentina is also a whole rigmarole, and you’re required you to show your identification documents every time you swipe your bank card. The upshot of which is that Gemma always paid our bills. Time after time, I’d get the distinct impression that the wait staff presiding over the transaction were looking me over to determine exactly which variation of deadbeat I was for not footing the bill.
On my way back home while passing through Auckland airport, I pre-emptively took off my belt and cheap little armadillo necklace that I picked up at a tourist market in Buenos Aires, in an effort to not set off the metal security scanner. I could see they’d just installed the full body scanners to the side of the main scanner and I was desperate not to be picked out as the one to go through it. I don’t know exactly what happens if you don’t look anatomically correct in the body scanner, but I am sure it involves me talking to a small group of customs officials about my genitals. Mercifully, I wasn’t picked out for this bureaucratic humiliation this time around, but I’m sure I’ll get my chance yet.
Executive Producers
Daniel Henson
Sue White
