Last week Alexandra Glover went to get a driver’s license in Louisiana and was told she cannot get one as a transsexual woman because she is really a man.

Yes, Glover was born a man, and that is what it says on her birth certificate, but she identifies and dresses as a woman. Glover remarked about being turned down for the license:

“It’s such discrimination that you just feel powerless.”

Glover said when she went to the Office of Motor Vehicles in Baton Rouge to update her license, a clerk ordered her to change her clothing before she could be photographed. Specifically, the clerk told her:

“If you have makeup on or anything like that, you’re supposed to take all that off, because you are actually man.”

Stephen Campbell, the state’s commissioner of motor vehicles, said the clerk did the right thing by refusing to take a photo of Glover dressed like a woman:

“This is all based on the law enforcement need to identify someone if they’re stopped as a result of a traffic infraction, if they’re involved in a serious crash. If someone has taken a picture and altered it to look like a female, and (law enforcement and EMS) got a deceased person there with a document in their back pocket that say they’re male or female and they appear to be the other, that’s terribly confusing and can lead to a whole host of things.”

Ever heard of dental records, fingerprints, or having the family identify the deceased, Commissioner Campbell?

Glover argues that she looked the way she does every day, and added that she would have looked different if she removed her makeup for the ID card. But Campbell disagreed and said:

“In this case, the individual was clearly was appearing to be female and was making himself up to be female in spite of the fact that his driver’s license was (issued) to a male.”

And what exactly is a man supposed to look like? What is a woman supposed to look like? Whose standard do we use for that? To that question, Campbell replied:

“It is subjective. It clearly is subjective.”

Louisiana, surprisingly, does allow gender changes for driver’s licenses, but only with proof from a physician that the applicant in question has undergone gender transition.

This article was originally published by the same author at LiberalAmerica.org.