Bills, Bills, Bills: The Oppressive Price of Being Trans

March 13, 2015 / Barry Deutsch

Originally published on Lefty Cartoons and cross-posted here with their permission.

Oppression plays out in a myriad of ways – including financially.

And the excitement of coming out as trans and being able to present as one’s authentic self can quickly be overwhelmed by the burden of how much it costs for a name change, updated birth certificate, and new passport – among other things.

This comic puts these financial obstacles into perspective.

With Love,
The Editors at Everyday Feminism

Click for the Transcript

This cartoon features two characters: a woman in a striped skirt and a black sleeveless shirt and a stereotypical businessman carrying a little briefcase.

Panel 1

WOMAN: I’m ready to be true to myself and transition… I’m a woman!

MAN: (handing her a small piece of paper) Okay! Here you are!

Panel 2

WOMAN: What’s this?

MAN: It’s a bill for changing your name and gender on your birth certificate.

WOMAN: That’s not so bad.

Panel 3

(The man isn’t shown in this panel, but from his direction, a flood of little bills shoots at the woman. The man’s dialog fills so much space in this panel that it looks like the woman is in danger of being buried under it.)

MAN: And a bill for surgery. And a bill for a legal name change. And a bill for hormone treatment. And a bill for a new passport. And an electrolysis bill. And the bill for updating your social security info. And a bill for yet another surgery, which you’ll need to take months off from work to recover from. And bills for a new wardrobe. And voice lessons. And…

WOMAN: Eep!

Panel 4

(The woman looks shellshocked as she holds a huge armload of bills. The man holds out yet another slip of paper to her.)

WOMAN: I didn’t realize my true self was so deeply in debt…

MAN: Oh, look a note from your boss! It turns out that firing people for being trans is still legal.

Tiny “kicker” panel inset in panel 4:

MAN: And did you know about the wage gap?

WOMAN: Please stop talking.

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Barry Deutsch is the Portland-based author and cartoonist of Ampersand, a political comic with a generally progressive sensibility. A new Ampersand comic appears in every issue of Dollars and Sense Magazine. Barry attended Oberlin College in Ohio in the late 1980s, the School of Visual Arts in New York City in the 1990s (where he took classes from comics legend Will Eisner), and graduated from Portland State University several years ago. While at PSU, his political cartoons won the Charles M. Schulz Award. His current comics project is my comic book Hereville, a fantasy adventure comic about an 11-year-old Jewish girl. Check out his blog and follow him on Twitter @barrydeutsch.