Back To the Main SiteOn Same-Sex Marriage
By Peter Hyndal
As a transman, I have some reservations about the time and energy that we, as a queer community are putting into the current marriage debate.
My primary reservation is that there are so many much more pressing law reform issues that affect the LGBTIQ community that are not being dealt with at all because priority has been given to the marriage issue. From a human rights perspective, I would argue that the top three most urgent issues facing the LGBTIQ community are the legislative requirement for sterilisation of trans people as a condition for gender recognition, the refusal of governments to adequately deal with issues of intersex surgery on infants and children, and the incredibly high rates of discrimination and victimisation of sex and gender diverse people in our community.
My secondary reservation stems from the fact that trans and intersex people are constantly called upon to actively support essentially gay and lesbian causes, while the gay and lesbian community has an awfully long history of refusing to acknowledge or supporting trans and intersex issues. It is this blindness to trans and intersex issues that I particularly want to address – because as I see it, this blindness is not only intensely frustrating for trans and intersex people – it is also potentially damaging for the marriage campaign itself.
To get right back to basics, what is at the heart of the marriage issue is that the commonwealth marriage act defines marriage as being between a “man” and a “woman”.
The entire marriage debate has, to date, been waged on the basis of who should and who should not have access to marriage. And when I say “the entire debate” I mean that both we, and those who oppose us, are engaged in dialogue ONLY about whether people in same sex relationships should be able to access marriage in the same way as people in heterosexual relationships.
In other words, we have ALL engaged with this debate on the basis that it is a debate that is ACTUALLY ABOUT sexuality.
Although I agree that there are very sound human rights based arguments about why same-sex relationships should be recognised by the state in exactly the same way as heterosexual relationships, I do not agree that this is the only, nor even the most powerful, debate to be engaged in.
When we frame the debate only in terms of sexuality, we don’t question whether its true that marriage currently only occurs between men and women. Nor do we question whether the definition of marriage or of men or of women is problematic. By not raising these issues, the ONLY sphere we allow our own debate to occur is in the context of us having to justify why a change should be made. We set the argument up so that those who oppose us don’t actually have to argue for anything – except the continuation of the status quo.
But if we frame the debate in terms of gender then there are legitimate and destabilising questions that we could be asking – questions that those who oppose us would actually need to respond to and questions that I think, they would find very difficult to answer.
My experience of marriage right now, in this country is that IT IS NOT something that only happens between a man and a woman – There are many trans women who remain legally married to their wives. And there are transmen who can legally marry other men. And there are many people who are unable to marry either a man or a woman because for a whole range of reasons it is unclear whether they themselves are men or women.
It is very clear to me that the marriage debate is one where it makes much more sense to engage with the debate on the basis on GENDER and NOT on the basis of sexuality.
What the marriage Act doesn’t define – and nor does any other legislative instrument in this country at a Commonwealth, State or Territory level – is what a man or a woman actually is.
And the reason that these terms are not defined in legislation is that there is so much variation in the natural biology and social context of the human experience that it is completely impossible to define categorically what a man or a woman actually is.
The biggest issue facing trans and intersex people in Australia at the moment is about identity recognition – the fact that there is NO CONSISTENCY in the way that governments recognise a persons sex – that the same person will be legally recognised as male by some government agencies while being legally recognised as female by other government agencies.
So I think the biggest question about marriage is quite simple: “How can a government on one hand maintain that marriage can only be between a man and a woman if that same government is unable to consistently articulate what a man or a woman even is?”
In the ACT there is also second important question: “How can the ACT Government maintain that it is serious about the importance of legal recognition – when although they seem desperate to legally recognise my relationships, they refuse to legally recognise the very essence of my individual identity as a man?”
So as activists, let’s start to scratch just a little below the surface. Let’s start to demand a little bit more of those people who claim to be our allies. Let’s REFUSE TO just accept THE MYTH that marriage is, or ever can be effectively restricted to unions between “a man and a woman”.
Let’s start shifting the discussion to HOW we want the legal definition of marriage to be changed, rather than WHETHER it should be changed at all. And let’s remember that all we need to do to achieve this shift is to engage with the marriage debate on the basis of gender rather than sexuality.
To do these things is to shift the marriage debate to an arena where we CAN win – because we shift the debate to an arena where our argument is evidenced not by us arguing on moral concepts like human rights and social justice and equity but where our argument is evidenced by the natural and undeniable diversity of sex and gender that always has and always will exist in our society.
Queer Collaborations 2009
This year, Queer Collaborations was held at ANU, here in Canberra. Queer Collaborations is an annual student conference for students who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer, or Genderqueer. Robyn and myself went along on behalf of A Gender Agenda to present a keynote on being a Trans Ally on the first day, and attended the Trans/Genderqueer Caucuses. The Placards that were made for our Mardi Gras entry were displayed in the Queer Art Exhibition.The event was a lot of fun. Hugh Bartlett, from ANU’s Jellybabies, did a wonderful job of pulling the event together, and making sure it ran smoothly.
During our presentation on being a trans ally, there were lots of questions, and it was really obvious that the LGBT movement has a lot of work to do before cisgendered queers are really on top of the myriad of health, human rights, and political issues that face trans and genderqueer people. We didn’t even really speak about intersex rights, except for briefly mentioning Infant Genital Mutiliation. The thing I found most heartening was the number of medical students there, who approached me after the presentation to ask about how to do better than their predecessors.
QC is a bit of a self-reflective political event. No changes to the real world are ever actually made, and frequently attempted changes to QC don’t stick either. However its an important event for the networking opportunity it provides young activists. I’m very glad that I went, because I met a number of wonderful activists from other cities. We’ve already been able to provide each others organisations with support and assistance. These kinds of national alliances among queer organisations are invaluable.
Sex Files Launch
Yesterday the Australian Human Rights Commission launched their Sex Files Report at Parliament House. Peter Hyndal was asked to speak at the launch alongside Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes, and Western Australian Senator Louise Pratt.
This is a copy of the speech that Peter presented.
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My name is Peter.
I am 36 years old.
I am a man.
Unfortunately, the Government disagrees.
The Government maintains that I am a woman.
Although I am a man, I have not always been a man. My birth was registered as female. And I lived the first 25 years of my life as a woman.
When I was a woman, my personal identity as a woman was unquestionably mine to ‘own’ without interference from Government.
Now that I am a man, my personal identity as a man is consistently interfered with by all levels of Government.
This is not the case in other countries. The United Kingdom for example, has provided me with a document stating that I am legally a man for all purposes under all UK law. Many other countries in the world also legally recognise me as a man. Which is great, and just, and right… but I don’t live in any of those countries. I live in Australia, I have done all my life, and my government, the Australian government, refuses to recognise me as a man.
I have lived in the ACT for almost 20 years, but the ACT will not recognise me as a man because I was born in NSW. And NSW will not recognise me as a man until I provide evidence that I have been sterilised.
I believe that I have a right to have my own identity recognised by my own government. I find it morally unjustifiable for any government to make my rights contingent upon my surgical sterilisation.
And so I am, officially, in no-man’s land.
Unofficially, the situation is even more complicated.
Without a nationally consistent, sensible approach, different agencies struggle to know how to deal with reality.
The taxation office recognises me as a man. The Family Assistance Office says that I am a woman. Centrelink not only refuses to recognise me as a man, but also insists that my heterosexual female partner is a lesbian. Medicare says that I am male – most of the time, but every now and then, they “turn me into a woman” so they can process specific claims that relate to procedures that apparently only women can have. My Australian Passport shows my sex as “male”, but was issued along with a letter stating that the Australian government does not believe that I am really male, and that I would be committing fraud if I ever used the Passport to identify myself as a man.
Whenever I have to provide ID – to open a bank account, to cash a cheque, or even to collect a parcel from the Post Office, the official documents that I can provide state that I am female.
Sometimes my ID is not accepted at all. The bank teller looks at me, and says “but that can’t be your ID – it says you are a woman!”. Mostly my ID is accepted – but only because I am prepared to cause a scene, to declare to the bank teller, and their supervisor, and the manager on duty, and everyone else waiting in the queue behind me, that “I am transsexual”. “Oh!, so he’s really a woman! I guess we should let her cash the cheque..”
Today is a very significant day for me – this report is the light at the end of the tunnel. It is the first step towards law reform that is long overdue. Law reform however, will only be achieved when governments actually act on these recommendations.
The day that government actually acts on these recommendations will be of even greater significance to me – because it will signal for the first time my government’s acknowledgement that I exist.
My story is not isolated – tens of thousands of other people with similar personal histories share these experiences. And there are hundreds of thousands more people out there, who are sex and gender diverse but have very different personal histories, who currently experience equivalent levels of hardship and uncertainty.
When governments act on these recommendations, the practical every day lives of all of us will be dramatically improved – forever.
Mardi Gras – Final Update
Mardi Gras is coming up this weekend. Here at A Gender Agenda, we’re in a tizz of excitement over it. There’s been a little less activity on our website recently, as we’ve been busy in real life organising the Gender Diversity BBQ, and our Mardi Gras entry.
This year A Gender Agenda are marching with Tranny Panic Art Project. They are providing the art, we’re providing promotion and awesome awesome t-shirts. If you want to join us, there is still time. We’ve got a facebook event, and you can email us for more details.
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