Power to the People: Texas Snitch Email Flooded with Pranks
A state email has started being spammed with prank emails from those unhappy with a ridiculous Texas Department of Public Safety measure that disallows people from changing the gender on their driver’s license and reports those who attempt to do so. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) issued a change to their protocol in late August that disallows anyone from changing the gender marker on their driver’s license for any reason, aside from a “clerical error.”
While this change is scary enough for trans Texans as it is, there’s an addendum to the protocol change that directs DPS employees to report anyone attempting to change their gender with a court order to the higher-ups via an internal email, including their name and ID number in the thread.
Previously, anyone could get the gender on their license changed with a court order. While not extremely easy to obtain, especially in a conservative state like Texas, there was still ultimately a pathway forward to affirm trans peoples’ gender on their legal identification. As one can imagine, presenting as one gender and having an entirely different gender marker on your license could lead to legal miscommunication, as well as discrimination, harassment, and potentially physically dangerous scenarios for individuals who identify as transgender. Additionally, having your name and ID number reported to a powerful and hidden government entity for trying to change your gender in a state where doing so is frowned upon is, more or less, something out of a dystopian novel.
Not to worry, though—As in all good dystopian novels (although this is unfortunately reality), the public has rebelled and come to the rescue of unsuspecting trans Texans. The internal “snitch” email was made public via an unknown act of vigilante justice, and those against this harmful policy acted accordingly.
Seven hundred pages of emails were sent to The Texas Newsroom to be published, and out of those, only one total page was reports of those attempting to change their gender. The rest was spam email threads and critique of the invasive and exclusionary policy—including, but certainly not limited to, a membership to PeTA and subscriptions to email blasts such as Krazy Coupon Lady, Lovehoney (an online sex toy shop), and QueerMeNow (a gay porn site). There was an email containing the entire Bee Movie (2007) script, one titled “All Cowboys Are Gay,” and, on a more serious note, barrages of emails comparing the new protocol to Nazi behavior and calling it “(the) gestapo list.”
Beneath the surface-level silliness of this act, there’s an important lesson to be learned here about the ability of the power of the people; while anti-queer, anti-trans, and anti-women rhetoric rages on in Texas (and the broader United States of America, unfortunately), there is an innate power in numbers to ultimately disallow ourselves to be treated this way.
