I took a week off from work last month and went to my sister's house for the holidays. Family time: fraught with a mild tension relieved by occasional boredom as you try to find common ground with the in-laws you only see a few times a year. Desperate, I was discussing my job with my brother-in-law when, purely by chance, I got a text from a coworker:
"You remember that person I told you about for the schools yesterday? Well, you don't need to worry about them anymore.”
The text could have ended there, but we recruiters are nothing if not voracious gossips. It continues:
“Also, she used to go by he."
I dial up my coworker for more details: "How did you figure out that she used to go by he?"
[My brother-in-law, who had been politely pretending to do the dishes while I played with my phone, looks up.]
My co-worker fills in the gaps: This particular candidate applied to work as a cafeteria attendant for a school district, and a prerequisite to hiring meant that an initial background check was run as soon as the application was processed. Several (and I do mean several-with-a-capital-S) charges came up that made the candidate ineligible to work for any school district. Somewhere in the middle of the charges, the name on the background check transitions from a male to a female.
Being the observant person that I am, I offered the astute contribution of, "So, at some point this person transitioned from a male to a female?"
“Yeah. And this lady was extremely upset that she was ineligible for the schools.”
"So, she thought she would be eligible because she's no longer a he?"
[Mind you, my brother-in-law, still listening in to this one-sided conversation, has the most ridiculous look on his face as this unravels.]
Now, I'm not discriminating against people who have transitioned/plan on transitioning/are in the middle of transitioning, but allow me to enlighten you would-be criminal wanna-bes: The fact that (in this candidate's case) you are no longer a man and have a different name does NOT mean you have achieved a clean slate in the eyes of the law! Fun facts: You have the same date of birth and social security number, and that shit doesn't change if you transition from one sex to another.
Think of it this way: There are a whole lotta John Smiths in the country. Say what you want about government entities, but even they have figured out that one John Smith isn’t necessarily equal to the other. A background check has, at the very least, sufficient robustness that it isn’t going to classify every single John Smith in the country as a murderer just because one was convicted as such. In a similar vein, the government can figure out how to track you down even if you change your name. Much to the chagrin of every single person who tried to dodge their tax bill, ever, and was caught by the IRS while sipping mai tais on a beach.
Put all that together, and you should understand that transitioning sexes doesn't magically get you a Get Out of Jail Free card, literally or figuratively. This is intensely relevant given that Missouri achieved dubious fame recently by having executed an openly transgender person, and that person was convicted of a murder prior to her transition from male to female.
[Incidentally, identity theft will do that, but I’m not going to write a blog post on how to change your identify. Try google. And then let me know what the NSA says when they call you up for googling suspicious search phrases.]
Also, pro tip: if this lady thought she was a completely new person and those crimes shouldn’t count, maybe she shouldn’t have committed another serious (or any) crime under her new name. Perhaps she should’ve left her life of crime behind, but alas, it appears she could not.
I eventually ended the call after discussing how the person obviously isn't very bright if:
1.) She thought her transition would clean her criminal background slate, and
2.) Identity theft (not transitioning) would've been the way to go (again, not condoning identity theft) except,
3.) There's no way she could've pulled that off based on the list of other shit for which he’d already been caught.
[Upon hanging up, my brother-in-law looks at me and asks, "What kind of people do you work with??"]
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