Of the hundreds of people I’ve come to know in Toronto, I think about three of them actually own a car. We’d all like to say it’s because we’re trying to be environmentally conscious or that public transit is just a better option, but HA! Who are we kidding? Either we can’t afford it, or the roads are just too crazy to drive on.
But for the lucky few who have cars, there’s car insurance to deal with — the magical system where various pieces of personal information are thrown into a computer, then it tells you how much you have to pay every month so that you can legally drive. Considering that the final figure is a composite of statistics and weird personal information, getting a lower rate can be pretty goddamn difficult.
Unless, of course, you’re a trans woman.
According to blogger K Danielle, her car insurance rate dipped by $52.40 for six months after she legally changed her gender to female. As Danielle writes in an excerpt on The Huffington Post, “I was dumbfounded. I’d never expected this to happen, and I just started laughing and bragging to my parents about how I’d saved money by changing genders (something like “HA HA! Joke’s on you, CIS PEOPLE! Hahahaha!”). I guess you could say that this was the first of several new privileges associated with being a woman.“
That’s pretty cool, right? I still have no idea how exactly insurance policies work (witchcraft — it involves witchcraft), but hey, a sweet freebie is a sweet freebie.