It looks like transphobic Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) has found a new way to needle transgender people by reversing a practice that has allowed residents to use “X” instead of male or female on state-issued driver’s licenses or identification cards. Because Huckabee Sanders fully intends to send her state into a modern form of the Dark Ages, she’s doing everything she can to make it more difficult for transgender people to change the sex listed on their licenses and IDs.

These changes, announced by the Department of Finance and Administration reverse a practice that’s been in place since 2010, according to The Associated Press, thus removing the “X” option that nonbinary and intersex residents have been using. The agency has even gone so far as to ask a legislative panel to approve an emergency rule delineating the new process.

Huckabee Sanders, who last year signed an executive order banning gender-neutral terms from state documents, has called this new move “common sense.” Well, of course, it’s “common sense” to her since she hates the LGBTQ+ community as a whole, so she’s going to find as many ways to oppress people who aren’t hurting anyone because her so-called “common sense” seems to involve a fair share of hatred.

“As long as I’m governor, Arkansas state government will not endorse nonsense,” Huckabee Sanders said in a press release.

This is just another attempt by Republicans to couch sex in black-and-white terms because they wish to legally definite it as binary, and that, critics say, is essentially erasing transgender and nonbinary people’s existences and creating uncertainty for intersex people — folks born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions of male or female.

“This proposed policy seeks to erase the existence of non-binary and intersex Arkansans by denying them identity documents that reflect their true selves, forcing them into categories that do not represent their identities,” noted the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas in a statement.

At least 22 states plus the District of Columbia list “X” as an option on licenses and IDs. All previously issued Arkansas licenses and IDs with the “X” designation will be considered valid through their existing expiration dates, the department said. There are more than 2.6 million active driver’s licenses, with 342 of them bearing the “X” designation. There are roughly 503,000 IDs in the state, with 174 bearing the “X” designation.

This new change would definitely make it tougher for trans people to change the sex listed on their licenses and IDs because it requires an amended birth certificate be submitted. Currently a court order is required to change the sex listed on a birth certificate in the state. The rules being implemented by Huckabee Sanders demand that the sex listed on an Arkansas driver’s license or ID must match a person’s birth certificate, passport, or Homeland Security document. Passports allow “X” to be used as an option alongside male or female. If a person marks “X” as their gender on their passport, the person will have to choose male or female, said Finance and Administration spokesman Scott Hardin.

DFA Secretary Jim Hudson released a statement saying that the previous practice wasn’t supported by state law and hadn’t gone through the public comment process and legislative review required by law.

And Arkansas in recent years has seemed to be in a crusade that actively harms transgender people, including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors that a federal judge struck down as being unconstitutional. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will be hearing oral arguments next month in the state’s appeal of that legislation.

I do not know why Huckabee Sanders and others of her fellow Republicans are so concerned with the rights of transgender people or why they continue to target them. They are abnormally obsessed with who uses what bathroom and maybe this fulfills some sort of weird fantasy for them, especially since the number of Republican sex scandals keeps escalating. And I really don’t know why this is such a big deal for Huckabee Sanders, who seems more comfortable wearing a tablecloth or some flouncy dress that makes her look like an oversized, overstuffed Cabbage Patch doll.

Go figure.