A major leap forward in life chances
Last month the Australian Associated Press reported:
Trans, gender diverse and intersex Victorians will no longer need to have gender reassignment surgery in order to change the sex on their birth certificate, under proposed new laws.
The state Labor government will on Tuesday introduce a bill to parliament which, if passed, will allow applicants to self-nominate the sex listed on their birth registration as male, female or any other gender diverse or non-binary descriptor of their own choice.
I wonder how the “any other gender diverse or non-binary descriptor of their own choice” is evaluated. It’s their own choice but it has to be gender diverse or non-binary – so is there a master list of approved terms somewhere? Or can they just say it’s gender diverse or non-binary and that will be good enough?
Simona Castricum is happy but cautious:
As a transgender Victorian, our community have been here before: in 2016 a bill to reform legislation around gender identity on birth certificates was introduced by Labor but denied by the Liberal National Coalition.
“As a transgender Victorian, our community have been here before” – I do wish people would pick one subject (as opposed to object) and stick to it. That part of the sentence should read “As part of the Victorian transgender community, I have been here before” or “We in the Victorian transgender community have been here before” or some other similar variation, but it should not start with I and then lurch to our community while using the same verb for both. Does the Guardian not have editors?
Anyway.
If this new bill is passed, the proposed legislation presents a major leap forward in life chances for gender diverse Victorians…Changing the legislation presents a critical step in ensuring the life chances of trans and gender diverse people are realised to their full potential.
Why? How? Because all women will change their birth certificates to male and thus stop facing discrimination at every turn?
While trans and gender diverse people in the eastern mainland states wait for the democratic process to recognise their basic human right to self-identify, they are subjected to discrimination through existing birth certificates that indicate incorrect sex or gender. At the core of systemic transphobia is administrative violence. “The categorisation of people works as a key method on control,” writes Dean Spade in his 2015 book Normal Life, meaning sex or gender indicators on our birth certificates adversely affect basic rights to education, employment, social security, health insurance, public amenity, international travel and incarceration.
Basic rights to incarceration? But more to the point, their basic human right to self-identify? There is no such basic human right. That’s not a thing. I can’t identify as Donald Trump and transfer all his ill-gotten money to myself. Donald Trump can’t identify as a Nobel Prize winner and get respect and admiration. Ivanka Trump can’t identify as a head of state and get other heads of state to listen to her babble at the G20. That’s not how any of this works.
As the American writer and activist Julia Serano said in her 2013 book Excluded: “To shatter the glass ceiling, we must first learn to move beyond biology and give ourselves permission to become anything we want to be.”
We can give ourselves permission all we like, but that doesn’t mean we actually can become anything we want to be. Words are not magic, life is not a fairy tale, reality is not playdoh for us to shape any way we like. That’s not how any of this works.
Ultimately legislating for trans and gender diverse people to self-identify breeds self-esteem: a good start at best. Our gender – at birth or throughout life – is not for others to decide.
Assuming by “gender” he means “sex” it’s not for anyone to decide, it’s just a given. It just is what it is.
“…meaning sex or gender indicators on our birth certificates adversely affect basic rights to education, employment, social security, health insurance, public amenity, international travel and incarceration.”
All of these rights have nothing to do with your sex or gender, unless you are hopeing to take advantage of something e.g. sports competitions. I would list these as some of the most basic rights for every human on the planet. I’d kinda like to find out how well such identity “rights” being applied to international travel will fly in Saudi Arabia, for either identity.
I’m also thinking about emergency medical teams preparing for an incoming woman that turns out to be a man or some such because identity. Who sues when the team “misgenders” i.e. “correctly sexes” (I love that!) a patient?
Pray tell us how an obstetrician, midwife, or ultrasound technician can correctly identify the gender at birth of a trans person? Is the identification of babies as male or female a huge conspiracy to oppress the small percentage of people who will later on identify themselves as “trans?” This conspiracy began THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO to specifically ensnare this small demographic in order to….what exactly?
Also, fuck off with “administrative violence.”
Now this, with a little modification, I can work with:
What is “What’s been done to women since time immemorial for $100, Alex.”
I don’t need to see someone’s birth certificate to tell me that I’m looking at a guy in a dress, and no amount of liquid paper and retyping is going to tell me I’m not looking at a guy in a dress. If a guy wants to wear a dress, that’s fine, but don’t claim you’re a woman, because you’re not one and never will be. And that’s okay. Be who you are without demanding that you be recognized by everyone else as something you are not. It’s dishonest, manipulative and degrading.
How many of these people have misgendered their houeshold pets? How do they know they haven’t?
Oh, dangling participles. What would grammar Nazis do without you?
It’s almost impossible to list an incorrect sex on a birth certificate. Gender doesn’t matter, and is not a significant criterion for birth certificate information.
And I’d repeat something that Josh Slocum pointed out elsewhere: a birth certificate is not the property of the person described. It is a vital government document. The government ment is duty bound to produce accurate records.
I’d also like to know what “major leap forward in life chances” means for men who say they are women.
Really? You have less of that because you are not listed as women? Seriously? I’m calling bullshit on that.
There is a group of people that have historically been denied rights based on gender. I’ll let you in on a secret: it is not people who are born men but believe themselves to be women. It is people who are born women. We have fought long and hard for what we have gotten, and have made substantial gains, though still not equality.
What they mean is that they are denied the right to help themselves to the goodies that women – women have fought hard to gain. They want full access to all women’s spaces, the right to be on women’s short lists, and the right to run women’s groups. Not to mention access to vulnerable women in the most vulnerable of women’s spaces.
I might self-identify as a mongoose, but that does not mean that I am one.
“we must first learn to move beyond biology and give ourselves permission to become anything we want to be”
That’s it. We live in la-la land now.
Women’s gold medals, scholarships, endorsement contracts, ball waxing…
YNnB#1 wrote
I recently asked a number of transsexuals and their advocates (Pharyngula) a question: if there were no longer any stereotypes regarding gender — “ masculine” and “ feminine” were meaningless terms, people were free to dress and behave however they wanted — would “ transsexualism” still be a thing? That is, would guys who want to wear dresses all be comfortable identifying as guys who want to wear dresses, with none of them believing they were really a woman?
My recollection is that they resented the question and were reluctant to answer it. That’s NOT the world we live in, I’m insinuating it is, it’s a veiled insult, etc. etc. Brut eventually several of the more expert ( or verbose) commenters agreed that yes, that was the ideal situation: eliminate all gender stereotypes (which effectively eliminates gender) — a hypothetical and unlikely possibility. So unlikely, they were suspicious of my point.
But I think it’s an interesting answer. If it reflects their genuine position ( and if I remember/ interpret them correctly), then the whole “ trans women are women” mantra is superficial, and they’re not really that far off from being “TERFs.” The dispute comes down to what’s practical, and not metaphysical essences or whatever they believe in.
(Of course, it’s also possible that atheists and supernaturalists will differ on this Large groups are rarely monolithic blocks.)
(Apologies for any mistakes in grammar. Or, now that I think of it, if I’ve already brought this up here.)
And they are making it more unlikely, because the whole concept of trans depends on the gender binary. They are reinforcing it, not doing their part to break or destroy it. And who loses when they do that? Not trans. Women. Always women. We always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop, and when we actually get to have a little share of the lollipop, here come men “identifying as” women to reclaim what they perceive as rightly theirs.
A meme I saw recently went something like:
Feminist: Wear what you want! Gender is fake! Nothing matters!
Trans person: I like gender.
Feminist: Destroy gender stereotypes, but respect gender identity!
I don’t understand the “nothing matters” bit, but isn’t this an interesting window. Yes, the trans person likes gender. Yes, that’s a problem for those who wish simultaneously to eliminate gender and pledge fealty to transgender ideology.
Feminist #1: Male/ Man and Female/Woman are biological sex categories. “Masculine” and “Feminine” are culturally- based gender categories. Gender and the stereotypes regarding how Men think, feel, or behave in different ways than Women ought to be minimized or eliminated.
Feminist #2: Male and Female are biological sex categories that are also culturally- based. Male and Female are gender categories. Men think, feel, and behave in different ways than women. The stereotypes of “ masculine” and “ feminine” ought to be minimized or eliminated.
Feminist #1: Trans Women are men who believe they think, feel, and behave like a woman.
Feminist #2: Trans Women are women who think, feel, and behave as women do — which may not be “feminine” at all.
Okay, this seems to be problematic.
Correction: Feminist #2 should be saying “‘Men’ and ‘Women’ are gender categories.” I think.
No. Categorization by itself implies nothing about control or methods of control.
How we treat others reflects our values, not our categorizations.
Pretty sure this is the heart of Judith Butler’s theory: “We can’t eliminate the gender (sex?) heirarchy so let’s just queer it.”
I say, “You’re full of shit. I’m a woman and proud of it; now stop interfering with or denying women’s “‘basic rights to education, employment, social security, health insurance, public amenity, international travel and incarceration.'”