A transgender man says he was humiliated when state employees forced him to remove makeup he was using to look like a woman.
“Just being a member of the trans community, I’m used to being discriminated against on a daily basis unfortunately,” said Jaydee Dolinar, a University of Utah doctoral student and geology instructor.
When Dolinar went to replace his drivers license Wednesday he had his picture taken,
but a supervisor told him he would have to take the makeup off “because my appearance didn’t match my gender, it wouldn’t be able to be picked up by face recognition software,” Dolinar said.
When he asked what to do, the supervisor “said, ‘Well, we have hand sanitizer you can use.’ Alright, so I used the hand sanitizer and paper towels and scrubbed it all off,” Dolinar said.
He scrubbed it off in the middle of the driver’s license office, as everyone watched, Dolinar said, something he found humiliating.
“That made me feel like I shouldn’t be a part of this community,” he said.
The Utah Driver License Division said there was a miscommunication with the supervisor over policy and that the incident shouldn’t have happened.
“We would definitely never support disrespecting any individual in our offices,” said department Director Chris Caras, adding that they’ll implement additional training across the board.
“We obviously would not want one of these things to happen in our offices ever again,” he said.
“Policy misinterpretation? No, it was discriminatory, you know, completely discriminatory,” Dolinar said.
He has her temporary license with a picture of lipstick smeared across his face.
“It hurts a lot,” Dolinar said, a reminder of something he’d rather not look at or have others deal with.
“I don’t anybody to have to experience this. It’s terrible. It’s like, just have some humanity,” she said.
The Driver License Division said they worked with the organization Transgender Education Advocates of Utah to make a sensitivity training video a few years ago, but are now planning on additional training.
