Prove you’re a woman with a Pap smear

The Vital Records Service in Clayton County, Georgia, has taken officiousness to a new offensive level.

A staff member reportedly asked a 37-year-old US woman who was looking to have driver’s licence renewed to prove she was really a woman.

Nakia Grimes had gone to the Vital Records Service to correct an error on her birth certificate that listed her sex as male.

But the records worker wouldn’t correct the certificate, which Grimes needed to renew her licence, without medical proof.

“She said I needed to go have a Pap exam, have a doctor write a note verifying you’re a woman, and bring it back – notarised,” Grimes told Fox news in Atlanta.

“Shocked and horrified” by the request, Ms Grimes took her story to a local TV news station. This prompted staff at Vital Records Service to fix the error double quick.

Bizarrely, staff still had to follow official protocols; they said they looked up the birth certificate of Grimes’s son to verify she had given birth and was in fact a woman.

-stuff.co.nz