It’s time for another edition of SE(N)O, an essay series on A+ for personal stories we wish we could tell on the accessible-to-our-employers-and-everyone-we’ve-ever-known mainsite, but can’t for personal and professional reasons.
feature image by Brooke A. AllenÂ
Last year I wrote about how I chose my name. I also wrote about how my birth name, which was my legal name at the time, still had a lot of power over me, even though I so desperately wanted to free myself from it. When I wrote that, I still had to put my birth name on all legal forms, I still had to show my legal name to bouncers and bartenders and TSA people and police officers.
In that last essay, I really struggled to write and publish my birth name. I thought a lot about whether or not I wanted to let my editors read that essay, and then I struggled some more about whether or not I should tell them not to publish it. It was hard for me to talk about my name like that with so many people. It was hard because I still had to deal with the fact that in a lot of people’s eyes, including the eyes of the government, Matthew was my real name. Now, it’s much, much easier. I definitely still don’t want very many people to know that name, and I absolutely don’t want anyone to think of that name when they think of me, but I also feel freed from it. It’s not my name any more, it’s not me anymore.
I also talked about how I wanted to change my name but keep my initials, MCR, and I was able to do that, at least enough to make me happy. Melinda Chavela Valdivia Rude is now my legal name. Melinda, the name my mother chose for me before the doctor mistakenly told her I was going to be a boy. Chavela, a variant of Isabelle, and the name of a singer I love and who has meant a lot to me both as a Latina and as a witch. Valdivia, my mother’s maiden name, a name I’m proud to now have on my legal forms. Rude, my father’s last name.
I know that the government doesn’t decide my real name, but it does feel good to have my identity affirmed by them. What’s more, is that if feels safe. I no longer have to stress and worry about being in a car that gets pulled over and having to hand the officer my ID while he looks at me like he doesn’t get why someone like me would exist, something that has happened before. I no longer have to nervously look around as a TSA agent looks at my ID and yells my birth name in confusion. I no longer have to deal with people at bars looking at my ID and having to hold back a laugh.
In November I was able to finally legally change my name. I was able to throw off my birth name and be free from it.
Changing my name wasn’t easy, and it definitely wasn’t cheap. To start with, there’s a $166 name change filing fee. Then there are all the fees for forms and certified copies. Then, there’s also the $200 it cost me to advertise in a local newspaper that I was changing my name. All together, I spent more than $400 trying to convince people to call me by my real name. For a trans woman like me who doesn’t make a lot of money and is also trying to save up for electrolysis and the ability to move to a different city, this is a huge obstacle. I’m blessed to have a boss, Riese, who gave me money and enabled me to take this step. I’m thankful to her every time I don’t have to sign my legal name or explain why my ID has a “man’s name” on it.
It also took a long time. Even after I turned in all the paperwork and payed all the fees, I had to wait two months for my court date. I had to advertise my name change for four consecutive weeks in the newspaper, and the first open court date was another three weeks after that. The reason I had to advertise in the paper, which I’ll remind you, cost $200, was in order to dissuade people from changing their name to escape debt or legal troubles.
Even as I was getting my name change signed by a judge and affirmed on my ID, people still managed to misgender me and remind me how they saw me. The clerk at the courthouse had me turn in my papers, and as she called me back to collect them, she said, “Sir, here are your papers,” followed by an “I’m sorry… ma’am,” after she took a second look at me. I was able to brush this off, she corrected herself, at least she tried to be polite and fix her mistake. When I went to the DMV it was a different story. I handed my judge-signed documents for my name change and my doctor-signed documents for my gender change over to the woman behind the counter and she started looking at me suspiciously right away.
She wasn’t sure if I was allowed to change my gender marker, she didn’t think I had the right paperwork (I did), and so she turned to her coworker and asked, “He wants to change his gender on his ID, can he do that?” The coworker said, “He needs a signed letter from his doctor,” which is what the woman was holding in her hand. “He gave me this,” she continued, “Does he have the right form?” She said all of this loud enough that other people at the DMV had turned and were now staring at me.
I was frozen, this person had power over me and I was afraid to speak up against her. I know that the law was on my side, but if she had decided to deny my gender change, that wouldn’t have been the first time a government worker denied a queer person their rights because they thought their own personal beliefs trumped the law. I was at her mercy and she had me terrified. I thought this was going to be one of my happiest days but it was quickly turning into a nightmare. She was misgendering me, loudly, telling the whole DMV that she saw me as a man. Again, I’m lucky, my mom was there with me, to celebrate this moment, and she spoke up for me, “Her. My daughter is a Her.” “Oh, I call everyone “he,’” was her weak excuse.
In the months leading up to this moment I had been practicing my new signature, the one I would use when signing legal documents, the one that would show up on all my cards. In some of the early issues of Bitch Planet, the brilliantly and boldly feminist comic book by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine DeLandro, there was a page in the back of the book where you could send in for items, a Non Compliant tattoo, a clear plastic mask to protect your face and look like a Bitch Planet guard, and one specific thing that caught my eye. For the low, low price of three dollars, you could send in for three new versions of your signature. They were supposed to be for the purposes of changing your personality into something that fit these new signatures, but for me it was a chance to get a helping hand as I took this step to become more like me.
When the worker at the DMV started misgendering me, I got so flustered that I forgot how to write this new signature and signed my name with just a squiggle.
Not everyone was like that, though. When I went to my bank to change my name on my account, the worker, named Nykole, was exceedingly nice, congratulating me and smiling as she told me that I was the first person she’s worked with to change their first name, not their last. She told me she was happy for me and never once misgendered me. When I went to the social security office, a woman named Casey sat across the counter from me and also congratulated me. She told me that it was ridiculous that the people at the DMV were so rude to me and as she handed me my receipt she smiled and said, “Welcome to the sisterhood.”
When I wrote that last essay, I was filled with embarrassment, dread, shame and sadness. I felt like I was trying to stay afloat in the middle of the ocean and my birth name was a giant whale circling around my feet. I honestly didn’t enjoy writing that essay. I’m glad that I did, it helped me work some things out and I want to be able to talk about my life, that’s something that’s important to me. Still though, talking about my birth name used to fill me with dread and make me feel heavy, like I was being dragged down by a history I wanted to shake off my back.
It physically hurt to write, and even hear, my birth name. Even when it was referring to Matthew Lewis or St. Matthew or Matt Fraction it would throw me off. So it’s strange to me how much better I feel about it now. I never thought that a signed form would lift so much weight off my shoulders. Again, I still don’t want anyone to think of my birth name when they think of me, but I no longer feel like that name is chained to me.
As I write about my name now, I feel strength, and contentment and comfort and home. I feel more like myself than I ever have before. I feel like a curse has been lifted, and in a lot of ways, that’s what my birth name was. I’m not saying my parents tried to curse me, I don’t blame them, but when they spoke the name Matthew Christopher over me, they cast a spell that would cause me to be misgendered and disrespected for years after I would come out.
I’m not Matthew Christopher, and I never was. I’m Melinda Chavela Valdivia Rude, the person I was always meant to be. I’ve grown, I’ve journeyed, I’ve fulfilled my destiny.
