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.)

As life progresses there is a steady accumulation of official and semi-official documentation all of which attempts to define some aspect of our identities.

One of the most vexatious areas for the transgender is that of identity. We know who we are, usually from a very early age, yet society often refuses to acknowledge our self-definition until we have become legal adults and jumped through hoops and over hurdles to their satisfaction. Of course we all have multiple identities and the definition often depends on who is doing the questioning, and how much power they exert over us and our place in society.

Some aspects of identity do not require written documentation, but many do, and this issue of Polare contains a useful set of guidelines compiled by the Inner City Legal Help Centre, which outlines the steps necessary for a transgender in New South Wales to change, or obtain, documentation. Some of these guidelines fall short of the optimum (the issue of passports to preoperative transgenders, for instance) and some of our efforts should be expended in having a more rational and humane solution to the knee-jerk anti-terrorism policy currently in place which steps back from an earlier, more sensible, policy. Until recently transgenders could obtain a passport in the gender role they had adopted in order to travel overseas for gender affirmation treatment in New Zealand, Thailand, the U.S.A. or wherever they had chosen. Last year, under the idiotic pretext that terrorism would in some way be thwarted, this right was withdrawn and transgenders were told they must travel on passports showing the gender assigned at birth, or on a "document of identity" which omits gender. This is mindless and unacceptable harassment of the transgender traveller. Transgenders travelling overseas for surgical reassignment have, by definition, been living in the new gender role for at least a year, and have almost certainly undergone hormonal and possibly surgical intervention which will have changed their appearance in the direction of the gender they are affirming. Yet they are expected to travel on passports which assert their birth gender, and will be unnecessarily exposed to harassment, bullying and possible "security" sanctions as a result of their apparently inappropriate documentation. To travel on a document of identity is to draw unwanted attention to oneself and, as the Immigration Department itself advises, may result in body searches and other indignities.

For most of us, the first affirmation of identity comes at birth, with the cry of "It's a girl!" or "It's a boy!" based on external genitalia and followed soon after by a confirmatory birth certificate. There are cases of ambiguity and confusion involving birth sex but their recognition and subsequent treatment are part of a more specific problem and deserve detailed discussion in some future editorial.

As the first piece of official documentation, the birth certificate, which should be a simple record of one's arrival in the world, is loaded with a lot of peripheral information, much of which is often considered immutable (one's gender) or changeable only by legal processes. (one's name) and results in legal complications and social difficulties for those who fall outside the narrow parameters that define the "normal" child.

There is an underlying belief that officials cannot err in these classifications, yet some babies are born with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (C.A.I.S.) which means their bodies cannot take up testosterone, with the result that they look like females and it is often not until puberty that there is any indication that the child is other than female. In most cases they continue to live, quite legally, as female, despite having XY chromosomes, so that one of the primary touchstones of conventional gender identification must be recognised as having exceptions.

As life progresses there is a steady accumulation of official and semi-official documentation all of which attempts to define some aspect of our identities. Baptismal records, school reports, matriculation certificates, degrees, diplomas, military service records, marriage certificates, divorce decrees, drivers' licences, passports, mortgage documents, leases, credit cards ... the list is long.

In contrast to all this documentation is the right of every sentient human to a degree of self-determination. We all have a sense of self which is part of our consciousness virtually from first memories. In most cases this will be congruent with the perceptions held by family and society but in some cases it is at variance with external perceptions and there are those who think they can refuse us recognition in our new gender identities by virtue of their limited understanding of gender identity.

Some authorities will refuse to change official documents, once issued. Some universities, for instance, will not reissue degrees and other qualifications in a new name, although most will, on surrender of the original certificate and payment of a fee. Drivers' licences can be obtained with a new image and new name after an official name change, but I understand the former gender is retained in the R.T.A. records. Police files will record one's new name as an alias, and will report it as such to enquirers for record checks, which immediately creates suspicion in the mind of the enquirer.

I served my National Service in the Royal Australian Navy and then served for a number of years in the Naval reserve, yet when I claimed my National Service Medal, with a covering letter explaining my change of name and gender the medal was issued in the name of my predecessor-person.

When I tried to change the name on my Certificate of Australian Citizenship (Naturalisation) I was told that under no circumstances could this be done, as the name in which a naturalisation was recorded was immutable, regardless of people changing their names by Anglicisation or by marriage or for any other reason. Since this would have meant I would have been outing myself every time I showed my citizenship (a requirement for many academic positions) I worked my way through the ranks of the Immigration Department, layer by bureaucratic layer, until I reached the Minister who, after a period of reflection, agreed with my point of view and a procedure was set in place to allow transgenders to change the names on their naturalisation papers. I changed my legal name, not by Deed Poll but by reputation, and had little trouble with most of my documentation, although a number of official bodies demanded a fee for issuing a new certificate, and the return of the superseded one.

Bodies like Medicare and most of my credit card issuers changed my name in their records on production of my Statutory Declaration asserting my new gender identity. American Express were the exception, demanding a Deed Poll change, but even they saw reason when I held their card aloft and asked for a pair of scissors.

Where am I going with this? I am asserting that only the person most affected by gender role has the right to assert that he or she belongs in a specific role, and the forms of documentation which have been accumulated up to that point should all be changed when the transition from one gender to the other is made. If I have qualified to practise in a certain discipline it is of no importance what name I use in order to do so, as long as the name is registered and traceable. If I wish to live in a gender role other than the one I was assigned at birth I should be allowed to do so without legal impediment.

Those who assume this would open the door to all kinds of perverted or violently inappropriate behaviour are indulging in muddy thinking. The time to act on such matters is after an offence has been committed, not on the basis that it might be committed. If our actions were continually constrained by the misguided perception of those who think we might be up to no good, then not only transgenders but all humanity would suffer from universal social paranoia. If there are people in society who wish to behave anti-socially, and see a masquerade as a necessary part of their transgression, they are not likely to accept the long and bureaucratic constraints currently imposed in order to carry out their wickedness. On the contrary, they will acquire whatever skills they need to pass in society and then slip in and out of role as their schemes demand.

In the final analysis each person should be responsible for her or his identity, the element which is the most vital core of our being. It is who we are, and only we can truly know that truth and assert it in the face of the world.

This issue of Polare also includes several comments on the undesirability of Kenneth Zucker and Ray Blanchard having anything to do with the D.S.M. and its definitions of gender identity and gender dysphoria. Zucker believes in "reparative therapy" or changing a patient's personality. Accounts of the treatment he has accorded children with gender dysphoria are appalling. It verges on the barbarism of aversion therapy which in turn is a version of brainwashing which is simply torture of the mind.

It is important for transgenders to resist the inclusion of Zucker, Blanchard, Bailey and Lawrence and their ilk in the D.S.M.5 revision. The D.S.M. series is used worldwide and can influence our lives in many ways, not least in pathologising transgender.

There is a growing trend to legalise same-sex marriage in various influential parts of the world, recently including Canada and California. This is only of peripheral interest to the transgender world, as we can be heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual or asexual. It is, however, good to see growing acceptance of each person's right to self-define, and the supersession of outmoded social norms whose raison d'etre is neither rational nor acceptable in a free society, being based on the one hand on religion and on the other on tradition ("It's always been this way").

It hasn't and it shouldn't.

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.