Editorial

by Katherine Cummings

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

The times become more and more interesting, almost daily. On the positive scale we had the double win of Re: Kevin in the Family Court, affirmed by the Full Bench of the Family Court. And now we have the Family Court again breaking ground for Australia with the recognition that Alex, a thirteen-year-old F.T.M., should be allowed to postpone puberty until he can make a legal decision on the questions of irreversible hormonal and surgical intervention. For those of us born in Great Britain there has also been the probable revision of British law to allow post-operative transgenders at least to attain all the legal rights of their reassigned gender.

Of course there is always a down side. The successes we have had have been resisted by the Forces of Darkness who would like to hold us in limbo, or worse, mandate that we must be treated through psychotherapy (and who knows what else ... shock treatment, aversion therapy, judicial torture?) until we recant and admit that we have been deluded all our lives and we are really just like everyone else, only madder. Oh, and we will also have to admit that our memories of childhood dreams of transition were invented to give ourselves credibility.

The Forces of Darkness have recently gone on the offensive, with disgruntled changelings who have thought better of their transition, and religious ethicists who are pursuing the grand Church traditions encountered by Galileo, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno to wind back, or at least hold in stasis, the forward march of scientific understanding. Which leads me to wonder how Mendel got away with being a priest and advancing the science of genetics. The answer? His major work was not discovered until thirty-four years after he died. Too late to burn clever old Mendel!

Not only have the decisions of the Family Court been attacked savagely by the Forces of Darkness, who have recruited elements of the press to be their accomplices (the usual suspects), but they are moving to have the Monash Gender Clinic investigated, with a view to having it closed down. Leaders in this movement include a group with a virtually illiterate, as well as bigoted, website called Gender Menders and the lovely Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filipini, the implacable medical ethicist. Even politicians are being recruited and Senator Lyn Allison seems to be blowing hot and cold on the matter, if the letter received by Elizabeth, quoted in her column, is set against one received by Patricia Church (see page 20). I find this odd, since the Australian Democrats have welcomed sexual and gender variation, and in the 1996 Federal election there were no fewer than three declared transgenders standing for election on behalf of the Australian Democrats.

In the height of the Alex publicity Tonti-Filipini sent one of his usual pieces of ethical ratbaggery to The Australian, including the following:

"In adults, the evidence concerning hormonal and surgical sexual reassignment is equivocal. It appears' that those who have the sexual reassignment still suffer similarly high suicide, low employment and high levels of social dislocation."

[Katherine: Nothing I have read, and none of my first-hand experience, supports this statement. On the contrary, what evidence there is (mostly anecdotal) suggests that suicide rates go down drastically, there is much more likelihood of employment (given amended documentation and legal protection against discrimination), and if there are high levels of social dislocation these are usually the fault of society and apply to other social, ethnic and religious minority groups.]

"Sex reassignment is not evidence-based medicine. There have been no controlled clinical trials to assess its benefits."

[Katherine: This is gobbledegook. There is ample empirical evidence that hormones and gender reassignment surgery have the desired effect (breasts grow and penises go, or conversely, breasts go and penises grow) and as for benefits, there are numerous, easily found, follow-up studies on post-operative transgenders which show an overwhelming satisfaction rate, usually around eighty-five per cent. And why a person who is fanatically religious concerns himself with the need for empirical evidence is beyond me. Surely faith should be enough!

[Katherine: Tonti-Filipini also attacks the use of gender experts who provided their support for the Family Court decision.

"... it is not unexpected to find experts clubbing together. What is unexpected is that mainstream medical opinion appears not to have been asked to provide more balanced evidence."

[Katherine: Good thinking! Call in the people who are not practising in this area, because the experts are bound to be unbalanced!

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.