Story Archive

Mister Ma’am

David Hassan, 30, has spent five years in the U.S. Marines, and fought in Iraq. “There certainly wasn’t a question about my gender when I joined the Marines,” he said. But he is fighting to get his birth certificate corrected, because it lists him as female. The problem was identified when Hassan lost his wallet and had to apply for new ID. “My old birth certificate was pretty worn out, so I went to get a new one, but they wouldn’t give it to me because I’m a guy,” Hassan said. The city health department “told me I needed to get the hospital to say it was their fault that the gender was wrong.” The Lennox Hill Hospital in Bayonne, N.J., he says, will not admit the gender glitch “for liability reasons.” The city refused to issue the documents unless the hospital would admit the error, so he’s taken both of them to court. “Dave is caught between two bureaucracies,” says Hassan’s lawyer, Peter Madison. (MS/New York Daily News) ...That makes being between a rock and a hard place seem very comfortable.