Thread by @MOOMANiBE

So.. sometime in the last two days, the US government page on changing gender designation on a passport was alterted, replacing all language referring to "Gender Designation" with "Sex Designation" & adding text explicitly specifying "sex change to male or female" across the page

For some reason, links to WPATH and the AMA were also removed from a paragraph talking about them

Beyond this, a small paragraph was added specifying that people "still in the process of sex transition" must continually reapply for limited validity passports w/ accompanying doctors' letters each time their 2-year passports expire.

If you'd like to check this out for yourself, you can see the old page as it was on the 10th of this month here:
web.archive.org/web/2018091013…

and the current page here: travel.state.gov/content/travel…

Small change in the FAQs: doctors writing letters for this must also state that they have a doctor/patient relationship with you

Small FAQ change listing a wide variety of medical practicitioners whose letters they won't accept

Ah, here's the part explaining the language change across the entire page. New text is highlighted.

MAJOR change, enough that I'm posting the full comparison: If your ID does not match your current name and it's been at least one year since your name change, they won't issue you a passport

Last, minor change, I believe I've gone over the entire page now:

Small section added to specify that they will also not accept foreign court orders or IDs in place of a doctor's letter

Note, for the record, that language earlier on the page implies they will still accept foreign doctor's letters, as long as they use the correct language.

Don't hold me to that tho I'm not a lawyer

Also, a general remnder since i've seen some ppl panicking: While the language has been changed, the actual requirements are still the same: Your doctor has to tell them you've "completed appropriate treatment". Surgery is not a requirement at the moment.

The vast majority of this change seems to be targeted specifically at giving nonbinary people a hard time

Errata:

* While the paragraph in tweet #3 is new, the real substance of it is that people applying to renew limited passports for another limited passport must use form DS-11 instead of form DS-5504. You may only use DS-5504 if applying for a non-limited passport.

Errata 2: In tweet #5, I got the line about doctor/patient relationships backwards: that line was REMOVED from the most recent version

PSA if you're reading this thread you should go check out this one which offers a lot more official deets on the subject

https://twitter.com/TransEquality/status/1040275696793395208?s=19

Also if you're here looking for docs on what you're supposed to do, note that after this thread was posted they changed the url of the page AGAIN and it is now here: travel.state.gov/content/travel…

(A number of further changes were made to this version of the page, reverting a few of the old language changes, etc. I won't get into detail here because @TransEquality and other far more qualified peeps are on the case)