For this Riverhead resident, New York’s passage of Gender Recognition Act is a beacon of hope

The enactment of New York’s Gender Recognition Act, signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo Thursday, marked another civil rights milestone for the LGBTQ community.

The new law — signed on the 10-year-anniversary of Cuomo signing the marriage equality act — allows New Yorkers to use “X” as a sex designation on their drivers licenses, eases the process for name changes by eliminating the requirement for newspaper publication and eases the process for amending birth certificates.

ID documents that reflect a gender assigned at birth create legal and social obstacles for trans and nonbinary individuals, who still face widespread discrimination in employment and housing and who remain unprotected in nearly one-quarter of the states in the U.S.

For most people, the issues are abstract and for many, controversial. For trans and nonbinary people, the issues are personal.

“I’m navigating a world where my gender is considered imaginary,” said Ari Reichel of Riverhead, who identifies as trans-masculine and nonbinary.

Reichel, 31, was assigned the female gender at birth, but identifies with masculinity. Nonbinary describes gender identities that are neither male nor female. Reichel, like most nonbinary people, uses the pronouns they/them.

The Gender Recognition Act, by allowing a neutral gender marker, validates nonbinary gender identities, Reichel said in an interview Thursday.

“By having it recognized in legal documentation, having that neutral marker validated as something that’s real, it’s a step in the right direction,” Reichel said. There’s still a long way to go, they said.

While “masculine presenting,” Reichel said they are “still nonconforming to the gender binary.”

The new law also makes it easier to seal one’s sex change and name change records. “Right now, if you’re going for a job, and they do a background check, and you’ve had a name change, and a gender marker change — that comes up in your criminal background check,” Reichel said. “That’s very personal information.” It makes it easier to discriminate against trans people in the hiring process, they said.

“I mean, there’s still plenty of progress to go,” Reichel said, citing public restroom accommodations as an example. “I still don’t know what bathroom to use in public, because I sort of look like a girl, but also, I’ve had gender-validating surgery that masculinizes my appearance,” they said. “If I walk into a women’s room, I get looks and people are uncomfortable. If I walk into a men’s room, I’m uncomfortable.I don’t feel safe.” Reichel hopes having neutral gender recognized legally will be a step towards having mutual accommodations in public spaces.

Reichel said they began questioning gender beginning about a decade ago.

“I was not really supported by the friend that I came out to, and kind of was too scared to say anything and convinced myself that my gender doesn’t matter and for a few years I tried to talk myself into the fact that I wasn’t trans,” Reichel said. “Then, about three years ago, I came to terms with the fact that this questioning of my gender isn’t going to go away. And that’s when I bought a chest binder.”

The chest binder gave Reichel a more masculine appearance and it felt good, they said.

“I liked the way clothes look better on me, I looked more like myself. It felt good to look in the mirror. I’d say, ‘Oh, that’s why I thought I didn’t like that shirt, because I just didn’t like the way it fit on me. Because it didn’t look right on me. But it wasn’t the shirt— it was me,” Reichel said.

After that, Reichel came out to family and friends and then started coming out more publicly.

“And then I started the process for surgery,” they said. After the surgery, Reichel came out at work.

Reichel is employed as a water treatment plant operator for the Riverhead Water District, where their colleagues are “middle-aged, white, semi-conservative men. And I’m the only not-exactly-woman.” Because of this, Reichel was nervous about how colleagues would react to them coming out.

But their colleagues have been “supportive and validating,” Reichel said. “Everyone’s been good about it.”

People have a hard time understanding what nonbinary is, Reichel said.

“The way I explain it is, the gender binary is male and female or masculine and feminine. Nonbinary means I don’t play by your rules at all, and I’m just going to be me,” Reichel said.

“Gender, sex and sexuality are three different things,” Reichel said.

Even the acronym LGBT Causes confusion, they said.

“LGB — lesbian, gay, and bi — are sexualities. But T, for trans, is included. So people have the conception that is a sex thing, or that transgender is related to sexuality,” Reichel said. “Sexuality is about your attraction and the way you relate to other people. Your gender is the way you relate to yourself, and the way you relate yourself to the world. And your sex is something physical, that a doctor picks when you’re born, and nothing more. And we’re assigned a gender based on a physical characteristic, based on our genitals,” Reichel said.

“We start enforcing these gender roles and gender norms at such a young age,” they said.

“I’m hoping that this bill will help normalize the idea of gender variance beyond the binary — beyond man or woman,” Reichel said.

“If nothing else, this definitely gives me hope. It’s progress. It’s moving in the right direction. And it gives me hope, especially in a time like now, where we have so many different anti-trans bills and anti-LGBT legislation that’s being questioned and pushed through and passed in so many states,” Reichel said.

The June 10 vote on the Gender Recognition Act in both chambers of the N.Y. State Legislature was mostly along party lines, with all Democrats in support, joined by seven Republicans in the Assembly and three Republicans in the Senate. Among the Republican legislators who broke with their party to support the bill were State Sen. Anthony Palumbo and Assemblywoman Jodi Giglio. South Fork Assemblyman Fred Thiele, an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, cosponsored the legislation.

Reichel, a Riverhead native and lifelong resident, said it was a difficult decision to grant an interview about such a personal topic, knowing it would likely subject them to criticism and potentially harassment.

“But it’s important to be open, important to be out,” Reichel said. “I think that by just saying, I’m here, I’m living my life, this is my partner, and we’re going to live here, we’re gonna be contributing members of this community, it makes a difference,” Reichel said.