Bi-Gender and Identity Discrimination plus 2 Petitions

Wow the identity documents really have become a big isue lately.

The Sex Files Report lead SAGE (the gender one, there seems a couple GLBTI orgs by that name) and Bi-Gender activist norrie mAy Welby to strive to get NSW to give norrie sex-not-specified documentation.

They did. It then went public hitting headlines worldwide from International papers to the Colbert Report.

So of course the NSW Attorney General looked into it and declared that the department responsible couldn't actually provide a document not listing male or female and it's been cancelled.

Well I'll be writing to the Attorney General soon on these matters...

After all what are the effects of sex documentation markers? These are the things that have come up in conversation with people on this matter:

1.) Gathering statistics on the number of women in Australia. Which the Census does too.

2.) Telling Admin workers what honorific to use on letterheads if a name is potentially androgynous. Yep, no joke. Is it really worth harming Bi-Gender peoples human rights in order to put a sex-specific sexist title in front of peoples names?

3.) Daily enforcing gender expression on Sex and Gender Diverse people where if their gender expression doesn't match an officials assumptions of what a member of that sex should look like they suffer interferance of their human rights by:

A. Undue additional process to prove their identity

B. Denial of essential services

C. Allowing legal discrimination as gender expression is not covered in many states and territories including NSW

D. limiting their freedom of expression coercively in order to avoid these issues

E. Often coercively forcing surgery and loss of reproductive rights in order to obtain documentation to avoid these discriminations

F. Violating their human right of self-determination

4.) Segregating prisoners in jail so that men and women won't mix. This ignores that Intersex people are also imprisoned, that Transgender, Bi-Gender, other Sex and Gender Diverse people and people of all sexualities are also all imprisoned each of which raises all the same sort of problems of power, sex, vulnerability etc that mixing men and women does. Not only does this require the issues of S&GD issues in prisons be addressed regardless but why should non-prison people have to suffer in order to make prisons easier to run when sex markers need only exist for and in prisons if need be. Thats still not a reason not to allow undpecified documentstion in the general population!

While I'm at it there's two petitions people might want to be aware of. First one to remove the sexist and nonsensical Transvestic Fetishism from the DSM http://dsm.ifge.org/petition/ discussion of it here http://www.bilerico.com/2010/03/the_international_federation_for_gender.php

And one to the IOC on Intersex Athletes http://oiiaustralia.com/oii-petition-international-olympic-committe-intersex-athletes/