File photo of a totally unrealistic lady marine, NOT the ex-marine in question (Maksim Shmeljov / shutterstock)

Does it matter what gender is on your birth certificate? Apparently only sometimes. A 29-year-old ex-Marine is suing the city because since 2003 it has refused to acknowledge that he is not a she, no matter what his birth certificate says.

The problem, the Post reports, started at Lenox Hill Hospital (where Blue Ivy Carter popped out) when David Hassan was born. Though nobody noticed it at the time, the hospital marked his sex as female. It really didn't matter until 2003, when Hassan came home on leave and lost his ID. When he applied for a new one, a clerk wouldn't give it to him because, well, Hassan was a man.

The only way to get an ID for Hassan would be to have Lenox Hill acknowledge their mistake. But it won't do that "for liability reasons" (though it acknowledges the gender on the certificate should be changed). And without Lenox Hill saying it done wrong, Hassan can't get a new birth certificate. "I am caught between two self-serving bureaucracies and need the intervention of this court to tell one, the other or both to do the right thing," Hassan's court filing says.

It wouldn't really be a problem except that Hassan now needs to get a driver's license in New Jersey for a grad program at Rutgers...and can't get one without a birth certificate. The man just wants to drive a car!

Sadly, these things happen (and have been happening) for ages. We knew a woman whose alma mater still, almost fifty years after she graduated, believes she is a he—though she lived in a women's dorm when she attended and was most certainly not a he (let's just say she was our mother).