The “reinventing government” initiative that Al Gore launched in 1993 has begun to reward all sorts of reinvention. His National Performance Review Board has just recognized Richard Green of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, who wrote a computer program to streamline OSHA compliance. Last Friday the programmer accepted the award — as Jewelia Margueritta Cameroon, the woman into whom the former Mr. Green is reinventing himself.
He/she sent a letter to the Washington Post to inform them that by the time they read it, he’d be someone else. “I am in the process of changing my legal name to Jewelia Margueritta Cameroon and my legal gender to female.” So, although Green/Cameroon wrote the program as a man, he/she would accept the award as a “transgendered female,” on behalf of “me, other transpeople, and America.” A similar letter went to Vice President Gore, imploring the veep to attend, since the award ceremony would be “greatly enhanced if either of you would congratulate me personally and shake my hand.” Green/Cameroon a onetime Navy submarine crewman, didn’t want to overplay his/her hand. “I understand,” he/she wrote, “how your staff might be wary of allowing America to see an image of you or Ms. Gore touching me.”
