Australia, Ahead of the curve again!

Comments

Australian

Yes I read that last night - All in transistion people are an "X" Gender NOW! Richard

Richard

Passports

ALISON

My friend Sarah is booked in for surgery in February 2012 in Thailand and will be issued with
a full 10 year Passport as female according to the Dept.of Foreign Affairs.I don't know where the
X came from,we haven't heard about it.Perhaps it is where you indicate female! All I know is that my friend is ecstatic,as I am.

ALISON

What do they need a third gender for?

Angharad's picture

most of us are happy with a dualistic form, going from one to the other. Surely a third form just identifies those who are different and makes it easier to discriminate.

Angharad

Angharad

Yeah... it reminds me of the

Yeah... it reminds me of the J in the passes for jews in Nazi-Germany. So everyone could tell if it was jewish filth that would try to pass the borders...

Now it's trangenders were you can do an extra anal search for drugs.

Yes, but...

Would you tolerate a form where you were forced to declare yourself as something you are not? Most of us still have to, even in this modern day and age.

I see this form as telling people: "My gender is none of your damn business", rather than flagging me up as a weirdo (their word, not mine).

I wonder how long it will take most other nations to fall into line.

Aside: doesn't there already exist something similar for Thais? I'm sure somebody here posted a link.

Penny

Well the smartest option

Well the smartest option would be to banish gender from the passports.
I mean what is the point anyway? If they can't tell it's their fucking problem. It's not like the gender of a person ought to be very important, ins't it?

It should be noted...

...that the X is _ONLY_ to indicate some degree of _biological_ intersex. It mean sex undetermined. For people in transition their passport will reflect the gender they are portraying which will be either M or f. The X specifically does not apply to transsexual.

This is actually both more and less than people are making it out to be. Caveat: I am Australian

I see more problems than benefits

Immigration officers rely on automated systems reading the passport information. Australia may have added "X" as a code, but will the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy ... have systems that recognise it? NO!

This may be a well-meaning idea from the Australians, but what it means is that every intersex or transgender Australian will have their passport automatically rejected at the immigration officers desk. The Australian may be able to explain this to the immigration officer, but the officer's systems *will* reject an unknown code and seems, in my personal opinion to make the situation worse, rather than better. Unfortunately, this seems to me to be no more than an alert system for any bigots on the immigration desk.

Furthermore, the Australian government has no power over foreign governments, so cannot oblige them to upgrade their systems to take Australia's change to their passports into account. In the current economic situation, I don't think that national passport agencies will spend any money to upgrade their passport recognition software to take the Australian "X" code into account. The problems are likely to persist for quite a time.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I am worried that this is another paving slab.

Actually you are standing on a slab yourself.

t might be wise ti inform yourself as to what the X is to be used for. It is not to be used for transsexuals or for those in transition. Their documents will be M or F depending on the state (and direction) of their transition. The X is to be used only with those who have intersex conditions, _biological_ intersex conditions. So many of tour worries either do not apply or apply to a small subset of the trans community.

The article Edeyn links to disagrees ...

... with your interpretation. It explicitly includes Transgender. To quote the second paragraph of the article;

"Transgender people and those of ambiguous sex will be able to list their gender as indeterminate, which will be shown on passports as an X."

Although the BBC is usually reliable, it may well be that the BBC article is wrong, and I did not make the effort to search Australian government websites, but the article does state "Transgender people AND .... as an X." If you (as an Australian) have an authoritative link to the new guidelines, I'd like to see it, but otherwise my reading of the situation appears in line with the evidence I have available.

Passports

ALISON

Thera has explained it correctly.If you can't understand or foolishly believe what a so called
journalist has written,that is your problem.As I stated in the first comment my friend has been issued with a passport as FEMALE.Her surgery is next February and I hope to go with her and will have no trouble getting a female passport as that is what I consider myself to be.These are 10 year passports,not interim.

ALISON

Always ahead

Of course we are always ahead and if we want can get one in our preferred gender