A trans woman who has not yet undergone her gender reassignment surgery was denied access to a casino because her gender presentation did not match her ID, which identified her as male. (Dallas Voice):

Jody Pleasant, 31, of Dallas has been living as a woman for five years. On June 3, Pleasant, her male lover and two gay male friends went to Boomtown Casino & Hotel in Bossier City, La.

However, because Pleasant’s ID indicates that she’s male, the man working the door wouldn’t let her in, she said.

“He said if you’re a man, then you have to look like a man to come into our casino,” Pleasant said. “We were just dismissed, totally. It was a blatant display of discrimination to me.”

Pleasant, as a female impersonator whose stage name is Kandy, is unable to get her ID changed because she has not undergone transition surgery and Texas has no gender-marker law. However, she said on the day in question, she was not dressed “provocatively” and looked similar to the photo on her ID.

To add insult to injury, Pleasant said, the man working the door required her to stand in front of his podium where she was mocked by other entering guests. She said she waited there for 10 minutes for a manager, who confirmed she would not be allowed in.

That is sick. To allow a patron to be humiliated like this is demeaning and disgusting. Max Mills, the casino director of operations, put out this callous statement:

“I’m sure it was a very embarrassing situation, and I feel bad about that,” he said. “Hopefully our guys had tact and had a certain amount of good manners and appropriate language and so forth.”

Class act.