Geez, I think you’re right. I guess homie better get used to using the women’s restroom from now on or else he could find himself getting beat up or prosecuted.

These laws were written to hurt trans people. They were written to make it very difficult for trans people to find loopholes to get around. That is the problem here.

Let’s say the errors on sex could be corrected with a doctor’s note. But what you’re really asking for is for a sex marker to be changed, simply citing an error in original sex assignment. You are going to plead that your real sex is unmatched to your documented marker. But what is sex? “Sex” is a very fuzzy thing. Is it genetics? Genitals? Chromosomes? Secondary sex characteristics? Conservatives like chromosomes because their inalterability serves the conservative worldview. But historically we used primary and secondary sex characteristics to define sex. We talked about “male” and “female” since the dawn of time, but we’ve known about chromosomes for less than a century. Historically, your sex was simply your observable physical form. If you alter that, in a very real sense you do change your biological sex. There are many interpretations of the word “sex” and the phrase “biological sex.” Some allow them to be changed, some not. And, wherever you fall on that question personally, you can find doctors who follow any of the possible definitions of the terms.

In fact, in states that allow you to change your sex on your birth certificate, traditionally this is how it was done. The state would require a letter from a physician saying your biological sex has been changed. Some states specifically required surgery. Some just left it up to the doctor’s interpretation. If you could convince a doctor that you had changed your sex, then your sex could be legally changed.

And this is the problem. You would think you could correct this error with a doctor’s note. But the Republicans already thought of that. This cis kid could use a doctor’s note to prove that he’s biologically male. A trans kid could use that exact same mechanism to get a doctor to say that their sex is now male. Just find a doctor that believes that sex is largely hormonal. A trans boy gets on T, and, in that doctor’s eyes, their sex has now literally been changed. And they could write a letter to that effect. And the doctor wouldn’t have to lie at all. It all comes down to your interpretation of “sex.”

These laws were written to hurt trans people. To do this, they needed sex to be legally defined in a very strict and unalterable way. They wanted to make the process so ironclad that no trans person could ever weasel their way past them. Thus, they only allow corrections of birth certificates in some very specific ways that no trans person could use. They don’t just leave it up to a licensed doctor. Licensed doctors are the ones providing medical care to trans people. The laws instead require things like chromosomal testing. Chromosomes are one thing that can’t be changed. If you require chromosomal testing to correct an error on an original birth certificate, then you can make it virtually impossible for a trans person to change theirs. But it does have the slight downside of making it very expensive to correct actual clerical errors.

And this will be true regardless of how you want to screen for original biological sex. The tall and strong gate will make it hard for your enemy to pass. But it will also make it difficult to let in a friend that gets accidentally trapped outside in the night.