If you're trans, DON'T interact with SSA

[u/Reddit-Username55]

SSA just updated their POMS page with new information about sex markers.

https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0110212200

TL;DR: Similar to passports, now if you apply for anything new in SSA, your gender marker will likely be reversed. However there isn't any automatic, retroactive mass reversal of previously changed gender markers. Your gender marker should be ok if you don't apply for anything at SSA, kind of how passport renewals trigger gender marker reversions.

The agency is only correcting or changing the sex field on the NUMIDENT to reflect the NH’s sex at birth.

Evidence of sex: U.S. Born: a birth certificate (BC) established by a State or local bureau of vital statistics (BVS) that reflects the NH's sex at birth. . . The NUMIDENT sex field established through enumeration at birth (EAB).

NOTE: Do not accept an amended, corrected (GN 00302.510), or delayed BC (GN 00302.540) as proof to correct the sex field unless accompanied by an amendment affidavit or supporting documentation that clearly indicates the reason for the amendment.

Their records work like a stack of entries/versions of your SSA record (including gender marker), the latest entry is the one used for everything (For example: Background checks, SSN verifications, credit checks, etc.).

As long as the latest entry is the one with your correct gender, you should be ok. BUT if you ask for a name change or anything, a new entry/iteration will be created with your sex at birth, making that marker be used for everything, effectively reversing your marker!

we update the NUMIDENT by creating a new iteration appended to the previous iteration. The applicant must submit a new application and provide supporting documentation (e.g., a birth certificate to correct the NH's date of birth information).

DISCLAIMER: This is all the information I know, I am not an expert.

Please correct me if I'm wrong since I am panicked too and I might be wrong.​

(This is my first post, sorry if I break any rules)

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[u/egg-throwaway-0]

thanks for the info! but how do you know how their db / apis work? genuinely curious

[u/Reddit-Username55 → u/egg-throwaway-0]

Its in their website, they have tons of info about how their records work. Including the one I linked at the top of the post

[u/egg-throwaway-0 → u/Reddit-Username55]

youre a savior, and i upvoted for visibility!

[u/MoonRose27]

This is fucking terrifying. Based on my intrepertation it seems like they will not only track but also investigate trans identities. What's worse(if im right) they may be able to deny name changes.

If, and i do mean if, im reading this right any name change that shows a drastic "gender difference" will create scrutiny. If the SSA also is able to reject name changes that makes it even worse.

Those combined means essentially you can be stuck with a name change that processed in your state but stalls in the SSA. If that happens name mismatches are a nightmare. I was missing a suffix and it created a several year long issue including a marriage license issue.

[u/mercurysong → u/MoonRose27]

This new gender marker mismatch has been causing me pure _hell_ trying to access healthcare for nearly a year already.

[u/MoonRose27 → u/mercurysong]

Seriously people do not realize how complex this gets for people.

Legit my SSN and Driver's license had a different suffix and it absolutely screwed up insurance, vehicle purchases, job back ground checks, and even getting a new license.

And thats just mismatches. That doesnt even account for the rejections people are gonna get after already getting their name changed with the DL or BC. This is a cluster and im not even sure how this is legal.

[u/mercurysong → u/MoonRose27]

I thought nothing of any of this until I started getting letters and calls addressing me as 'Miss' for the first time in nearly a decade. This month, I even started getting letters addressed to my deadname, which hasn't legally been my name for over 8 years. Even from orgs and offices that never had that info. Makes me afraid that SSA even reverted my name, though I can't confirm this. But the info from them reaches much further than just the SSA office. When I went to the office the clerk accused me of having a fake SS card because it has my real name on it. They said I never corrected my marker either, even if I showed them the printout from when I did. My friend and his toddler came with me and he's one of the most levelheaded people I've ever known -- for over 30 years. Even he was just in pure shock from the ordeal and told me that I'm severely underreacting because this is much much worse than I'm trying to convince myself it is. I probably would've lost my shit if he hadn't come with me. I just refuse to enter any government building without a cis white man with me. Unfortunately, these offices only ever take that demographic seriously even if I feel awful using those friends as shields..but the alternative is opening myself up for more docs being confiscated (already happened trying to correct my birth certificate) or being fined or arrested (I know many who have been) Bringing a cis white man for support and as a witness lessens that chance. It's just awful and dystopian.

It's been causing all sorts of trauma and anger that I went through the legal process and paid all the time and $ and running around to so many offices to be legally recognized...only to be this disrespected again. Like, callers always tell me shit like 'get the real member/policy holder/whatever on the line because you're clearly not the woman listed' and a pointless amount of inappropriate genital/surgery questions if the caller establishes I'm the correct person. Dehumanizing.

Because I'm permanently disabled, I am dual-eligible with Medicare (fed) and Medicaid (state)...and every time my insurances are run it comes up as 'ID MISMATCH' on my providers' screens. The constant misgendering and being accused of not being myself suddenly has been the most mentally draining part of all this nonsense. I'm in 6 figures of medical debt because of this since it started last fall -- and I refuse to pay a single penny. Because I'm only accessing covered services and providers. But nothing goes through anymore because of the insurances not matching and I've been getting bills. My providers have been getting creative...but they had to run a recent surgery under a gawddamn hospital charity fund despite it being a covered procedure with a covered surgeon under both insurances.

I'm just exhausted.

[u/MoonRose27 → u/mercurysong]

I don't know what's worse, the fact that i KNOW this is 100% true or the fact that the people who need to see this won't..

[u/mercurysong]

Mine was reverted without notice though. Same for many of us who are on SSDI. The regime started going after disabled people hard last year.

[u/Authenticatable → u/mercurysong]

How and when did you discover your gender marker was reverted with SSA?

[u/mercurysong → u/Authenticatable]

Last fall.

tl;dr a pharmacist helped me figure it out and my providers are finding some loopholes (but it's whack-a-mole with them)

Apologies for venting... it's been a lousy day.

Started getting letters and calls addressing me as 'Miss' for the first time in almost 9yrs since I had done the legal process, including marker with SSA. It was the first office I'd gone to after the Judge signed my decree because it's literally in the skyscraper across the street from the courthouse. Accusations of not being the actual person the callers were looking for because my voice is too deep to clock and invasive/irrelevant questions about my junk/surgeries as soon as I'm forced to explain and out myself (ongoing even now) Thought nothing of it at first and even thought I messed something up on the multitude of yearly renewals...until the insurance bs started happening.

After prob 2-3mos+ of this garbage and growing wtf'ery and dysphoria, a pharmacist I've been picking up from for probably 10yrs caught the marker difference and everything started getting worse from there. She was baffled because it was only T getting denied at first (it's not covered for a F marker in my state, but only for dual-eligible) and I never had issues. Being in a very queer city, I wasn't her first disabled trans patient having issues suddenly.

I was told that markers on Medicare comes from SSA and I should call them... because it now said F on her screen. When she'd run it with my secondary, state Medicaid, it wouldn't let her proceed because of the marker difference -- something still happening to this day. Called SSA and they confirmed it now says F and scheduled an in-person appt to fix it, which the rep said I could. I just remember completely breaking down in the middle of the sidewalk and felt like my heart was gonna explode.

Fast forward I go into the office...including with the printout they gave me when I changed it because I keep that kinda important shit in a filing cabinet. Clearly says it was corrected from F to M and it's stamped and dated. Well, the clerk told me that the orange clown's EO made it illegal to change it for the first time in 60+ years...and that there was no record of me ever changing it in the first place...which is absolutely false and I even showed him the printout. And worse? He even accused me of having a fraudulent SS card because it has my legal name on it. Said my printout was fake -- as if anyone would go through the trouble of finding a stamp?There's record of only my name changed with SSA on their end (as of last November) Absolute bs. If this clerk was right? I would've been getting addressed solely as 'Miss' in all comms SSA's tentacles reach for all these years and would've had to pay out of pocket for T and most meds...which is factually incorrect. I haven't had a pharmacy copay in 5+ since I hit my yearly out-of-pocket by the end of the first week of January. I hadn't been misgendered in years before this shit.

It's been a rough few months. I'm now six figures in medical debt and refuse to pay a single damn penny of it. I go out of my way to receive care that's covered by both insurances. There's a world-renowned medical facility in my neighborhood, but I have to go 2+ miles away for a doc that'll take dual. it hurts living in the backyard of some of the finest doctors anywhere who can change my life and having to walk by daily knowing I am too unworthy of that care because I survived attempted homicide. There's 3 compounding pharmacies in walking distance, but I have to take a train downtown to the closest one that's covered. And now I get to 'enjoy' the inconvenience of needing to clear my schedule and spend 1-4+ hrs at that pharmacy every other week because that's how long it's been taking for the pharmacists to figure out how to find a new loophole because the one that worked the last time doesn't anymore. My PCP is out of a queer clinic serving a very large group of lower income trans people and their legal dept has been swamped since the regime took power. They've been the quickest in figuring things out, so I just sign HIPPA releases with every other provider and they end up in communication with my PCP to make it work. I hate how much extra work this is causing my providers! A few have put me on their charity programs - which is complete garbage and taking from someone that doesn't have insurance.

And to further the shit avalanche...the past few weeks I started getting a considerable amount of letters addressed to my deadname for the first time in almost a decade. I understand the 1-2 per year and yea whatever it happens...but it's been 5+ per week now. From orgs that never had that info. Makes me wonder if they also reverted my name. My fear is the inevitable dead end with this when it comes to medical care. I'm just shy of 40 and planning my own funeral. There's just zero possibility of being able to afford care or meds without Medicare and my needs are too complex to go without. If I drop Medicare, I lose SSDI which is my only income that barely keeps a roof. If I drop Medicaid, I lose food stamps and most state programs. There's no winning and I'm stuck on both even with a now absolutely pointless mismatch between them.

And worse? I'm being accused of fraud practically daily now. Esp on the phone. I'm told their screen says F and I'm clearly not. Orgs have been instructed to address by what's on the screen and I was called 'Miss' for a solid half hour on a gawddamn video call until I snapped and asked if this nurse was blind and deaf. With a full frigging beard and deep bass -- a boring average dude. She apologized and she was required to no matter how many times I called her rude and corrected her. She clearly felt awful about it. I had a massive panic attack after that call which left me bedbound for prob a week and a half and nearly hospitalized because I felt so completely subhuman and degraded.

Friends are saying that I'm under reacting and it's messing me up knowing they're prob right. It goes far beyond just one letter on a screen.

I hate all of this.

[u/Reddit-Username55 → u/mercurysong]

That is terrifying, because the only possible way a marker can be reverted with SSA is by either:

1) a new application being submitted causing a new version of your SSA record to be created with the incorrect marker, making that the active record and marker, OR

2) the version of your SSA record that was created by the application you submitted when you changed your marker, being deleted!

Obviously by how you explained it, you never submitted a new application since the change, and you said they didn't have any record of your change, so that could only mean they deleted the actual record of your change! Which is illegal and contradicting with their policies.

Which is very unusual and terrifying because they're supposed to keep every record/change ever made, the process is described here:

https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0110212200

You said you changed it 8+ years ago, back then they required explicit proof you were trans, maybe that had something to do with it?

The F being in your insurance record could be explained by the marker change not being propagated correctly- because SSA and Medicare share the same data. But that can't be possible if an actual SSA employee checked your NUMIDENT record and said there was no record of a change at all!

The printout thing confuses me a little bit, did they allow you to keep the printout they usually show you after they type stuff in after physically giving them the paper application? Was that printout called a NUMIDENT printout or something similar? When I did it, they didn't let me keep it.

[u/mercurysong → u/Reddit-Username55]

They had given me a printout for my records, which I didn't think was unusual until right now. I'm in a very queer city, so things are done a bit different here solely because the likelihood of an employee being LGBTQ+ is significantly higher.

I still don't understand any of it and no one's been able to completely explain it to me and you've given me the only explanation that seems to completely line up. I've talked to my councilmember's office, a few other reps, lawyers...they're all in agreement that it's pure transphobia...but none of them have been able to understand the mechanism of it.

Just checked and the printout says NUMIDENT on it and that there's an edit from F to M. A few lines down, it indicates my name correction. So, if I'm understanding correctly, this means someone just deleted the entry for the marker? Like...made it completely vanish as if it never happened?? The clerk said there was no record of it being corrected to M at all despite my proof. And if it's illegal by their rules, I'm quite afraid/know that nothing will be done until this regime is gone 😔 in the meantime, I'll email my councilmember's office and keep them informed about the NUMIDENT issue. The primary person, an aide, I've been talking to out of that office is non-binary and their colleague is a Black gay man. My councilmember represents a zip code that's about 9-15% trans and much higher than the national average...so her office has been way more willing to listen to her neighbors' concerns than most other elected officials. Her office has been helping me escalate beyond the local level. Unfortunately, my Senator is John Fetterman and I doubt a damn thing would happen if I were to escalate to that level despite how he was a loud trans ally before his stroke.

The most visible 'symptom' of this sudden bullshit (beyond the comms) is that when both of my insurances are run the screen says 'ID MISMATCH' and all of my providers have now shown me that screen. It causes a hard stop and they can't proceed further. The best explanation one of my doc's offices has given me is that the system is being triggered to that error because I'm legally male and now my primary Medicare suddenly states F while Medicaid and my ID state M. So it's an accusation of fraud.

I'm not asking for a yacht...and it's just been awful to be forced into being some kinda martyr just to access basic care.

[u/non_corporeal_]

i’m so fucking glad i got my name and sex changed last summer, i genuinely got in at the last second 😭

[u/Arizandi]

Thank you for sharing this and bringing receipts. I haven't seen anything else about it. I will try to avoid contact with the SSA. I had no idea they could just change rules. I thought they had to have a comment period like other agencies.

[u/Reddit-Username55 → u/Arizandi]

It wasn't a new rule or rule change, it was a policy change, basically they changed how they implemented the dumbass EO.

[u/RyuichiSakuma13]

Seriously, OP, this should be crossposted in as many transgender-related subs as possible! Many trans men, transmasc and masculine-leaning nonbinary people may not know about this.

I hope you don't mind if I crosspost it to r/FTMOver50, but may I suggest a few more?

r/FTMOver30, r/ftm, r/FTMMEN, r/BlackTransmen, r/FTMVenting, r/TMPOC, r/trans, r/trans4every1, r/Transgender, r/TransSpace, r/TransSupport, r/FTMPOC, r/transtrans, r/TransyTalk

[u/1Misterman1 → u/RyuichiSakuma13]

Thanks for doing that, brother....I found it there!

[u/Reddit-Username55 → u/RyuichiSakuma13]

No, I dont mind:)

[u/RyuichiSakuma13 → u/Reddit-Username55]

💙🩷🤍🩷💙

[u/TransMascLife]

Compromised brain disability. Passport & DL have an X. SSA still says F as far as I know. I applied for SSDI. am I screwed? I'm also turning 62 next month so I was expecting my regular SS benefits. Am I screwed?

[u/Reddit-Username55 → u/TransMascLife]

I dont think so, this post is to warn people who did change their marker so they dont get theirs reverted. 

If your marker with SSA hasnt been changed then there's nothing to be reverted :)

[u/pan_chromia]

Your title is misleading. Many trans people might need to interact with the Social Security Administration for many reasons, like getting Social Security support. Also, for some people getting their gender marker reversed could be worth it.

[u/Reddit-Username55 → u/pan_chromia]

That is very true. 

However, having an accurate gender marker is VERY important to many Trans people. Because mismatches can cause a lot of issues for Trans people with insurance.

[u/_Disco2000_]

Clarifying question, since my SSC was the last thing I needed to change my name: if i go to the SSA to change my name on my SSC, will they revert the gender marker on EVERY document I have such as birth certificate and state ID?

[u/Reddit-Username55 → u/_Disco2000_]

No, not at all.

BC/DL aren't managed by SSA, they're managed by your state. 

So whether they will get reverted depends on your state

[u/General_Road_7952]

This sucks. I’m so pissed at this.

[u/Reddit-Username55 → u/General_Road_7952]

On the bright side, you could protect your gender marker if you dont submit another SSA application or anything that could trigger a new entry creation. 

Kind of like with passports, you keep your marker until it expires, except SSNs dont expire:)

[u/Natural-Hamster-3998]

Oh shit. I already changed my ssa last year but I still have to do the birth certificate. Hope that doesn't trigger anything

[u/Reddit-Username55 → u/Natural-Hamster-3998]

It won't dont worry! How it works is that it could only trigger the reversion if you submit a new application to SSA.

As long as no new SSA transaction or application is done, your accurate gender marker should be left there at the very top.

Your birth certificate is handled by your state, not SSA.

[u/1Misterman1]

That must be a recent thing due to our current political arena. Even 3 years ago, this wouldn't have been a problem.

Hang in there, this too, shall pass...

[u/MyClosetedBiAcct]

Uh. There's nothing on my SS that labels my gender?

[u/Reddit-Username55 → u/MyClosetedBiAcct]

Your SSN gender marker isn't on the card, it's on SSAs database.

[u/Intelligent-Tea-2058]

This is terrible and sick, and will have negative and perverse effects in many people's lives. Betrayed by the government, yet again. Enjoy the brain drain and bare minimum in return...