I’m Just B.

In the late 90s, I was a teenager in middle school. One day I told my mom, I needed my social security card to register for a summer program.

When looking at the card (pictured above), I immediately wondered why the middle name on the card was different than the name I had spelled my entire life. I asked my mom, and she explained to me that the nurse, when I was born, decided that my mom must have been mistaken in the spelling of my middle name and wrote Michelle instead of the intended Michel. My mom then explained the hoops that she had to jump through to change my birth certificate but that she never got around to changing my social security card, because there was a cost associated to the change.

Many years later, I found out that this narrative is actually pervasive in the Black and Native American communities, where outside medical professionals often made a judgment call as to what they felt was best for the infant under their care.

Stories like this is actually why I feel compelled to share the fact that as another step in my journey as a trans nonbinary individual that I’ve decided to be called B. moving forward. This won’t be my legal name. I will continue to be legally to government and…