Back To the Main SiteSex 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.
2009 Sydney Mardi Gras
Our Entry in Mardi Gras was a raging success. We had 22 people show up on the day to march with us. We wore fantastic green t-shirts, had awesome placards, and made waves with the crowd, the other floats, and the commentators alike!
It was my first ever Mardi Gras, and the feeling of marching with 21 other trans people, genderqueers, and our friends and families while being cheered on by the crowd, was an incredibly empowering experience. We handed out hundreds of stickers that said “Gender Rights are Human Rights” and lollipops with “Trannies are Sweet” written on them. Trans people and their supporters in the crowd screamed “I love trannies too!” at us from the sidelines, and we had post op FTM’s flash their scars at us.
I was thrilled to see the level of support for our community from other LGBT organisations, and from the wider community. Some people were obviously confused by our marching group, and our placards gave more than a few cause to pause and think about their preconceived notions of what a trans person looks like, and what they experience.
So, maybe next year YOU will be marching with us too! :)
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.
Transmen and Transwomen Unite!
Trans Women and Trans Men can be Friends Too! The art is from Sleazo Sketch Town's talented writer/artist.
There seems to be a massive cultural and political divide between trans men and trans women. Trying to get us all to work together can be like herding cats at times! There are naturally vastly different perspectives on what is important, and what needs time and attention. There are different ways of communicating, and different ways of organising. All of these differences need to be acknowledged and compromised on.
I know that on the trans-masculine side of the divide, there are a lot of boys who have significant passing privilege, and want to just fade into society. On the trans-feminine side there’s a lot of girls that just wanna have fun! And when we are all thrown together, we can throw one hell of a party, but getting political work done is more of a challenge.
A Gender Agenda has always had a mix of trans men and trans women, but somehow we still developed a reputation for being an organisation by and for trans men. Recently we’ve been making an effort to dispel that myth. We are for all trans people, and not just those physically transitioning.
We think its very important for people questioning their gender identity to be able to contact us and speak to someone who they can identify with. Our organisation has a variety of people actively working with us, and with people that contact us looking for advice, and support.
Peter Hyndal is available for gender-questioning people, and trans men to speak to. He’s been working with the trans community, and in trans politics for years now, and was a founding member of A Gender Agenda.
AbbeyJane is our new contact for Trans Women. She’s the founding member of NewCTN, and over the past few years NewCTN has grown into a flourishing social organisation for trans people and crossdressers. We are very pleased to have AbbeyJane on board with us.
Robyn Grafkin is the person I jokingly call our ‘Pride Officer’. Robyn’s job is to collaborate with other queer and pride organisations such as Tranny Panic (who we are attending Mardi Gras with), and the SpringOut Committee, who organise Canberra’s local Pride Festival.
I publish the website and research political actions and events that are happening around the place, to keep us all informed. I’m the person to contact if you want to get involved in organising stuff with us, want to write for the website, or have a gender-related event you want to promote.
Obviously, in our society where gender related hate is so commonplace, not all of our members are comfortable being openly associated with us. We are extremely accepting and facilitating of this. We have people that attend our events, and help out with other projects but who’s names will never be mentioned on this website. If you think that you would like to get involved, but want to remain stealth… don’t let the few of us that choose to be openly mentioned on the website intimidate you!
We hope to see many more talented individuals get involved with us in the near future, so don’t be shy. Drop by one of our events and say hello, or shoot us an email. :)
Connecting Generations: The importance of History
Jason Tseng of the Bilerico Project recently wrote an article called Reinventing the Wheel: Cultural Reproductive Labor and its cost on Queer youth
In it he discusses how queer youth are faced with the problem of finding and then reproducing queer culture often without the benefit of mentorship by the previous generations of queer people.
Because of the highly lateral dispersion of queer people in our society, (being that there are few indicators showing that queer people are more likely to come from one part of our society than the other), from our entrance into the world, the queer nation is constantly a nation in diaspora. With each successive generation, the new queer generation is mustered together by a collective sense of “otheredness,” and introduced to a radically new culture to which we may choose to cleave to.
However this process is highly individualized and extremely informal, with very few opportunities for mentorship or leadership. What often occurs is learning through mimicry and trial and error. Queer youth learn to copy examples of queerness that they see in television, in film, the older queers they might see on misadventures into queer life. But most importantly, queer youth learn about being queer mostly from each other.
This process of recreating queer culture is not without its benefits. It means that we are a highly adaptive culture, and although there is a massive ‘generation gap’, I think that young queers are moving in the right direction, particularly when it comes to accepting gender variance and making cultural space for all kinds of trans people and new sexual orientations.
However, there are also problems. For example, we forget our history so quickly. The history of the LGBT movement is not taught in school. When I came out, I had no idea what ‘Stonewall’ was and was quite alarmed when I saw a documentary about the first Australian Mardi Gras. (Police brutality!? IN AUSTRALIA? What a shock!) Then on the trans side… who knew that the first medical transitions occurred only a few decades ago? Amazing!
Another notable issue for young people, is that even today, and particularly sex and gender diverse children and teens, we are still often rejected by our families, leaving us alone, and somewhat vulnerable. We create new queer families, and tribes, but we miss the mentorship from the older generation. Sometimes we wonder what on earth will become of us… we wonder if we’ll ever grow up, what we’ll look like when we are 40, 60, or 80. We wonder how other, older people coped with transition, with being genderqueer, whether they lost their family and friends too, or maybe they patched things up? If so, how? How hard is it to have kids? How do you go about having kids? What about negotiating the legal minefield surrounding marriage?
There are so many questions, and its often hard for young sex and gender diverse people to find older mentors who can help them with their unique gender journey.
There are ways to combat these problems. There are websites about our history that celebrate successful trans people. Organisations like AGA have members who range in age, providing a valuable source of mentorship. As individuals we can all do our bit, helping out young people, and people who are newly awakening in their identity as gender diverse.
Its very important that older people understand how important they are to the next generation of gender diverse people, and that young people have access to safe mentors and leaders.
AGA’s Plans for 2009
A Gender Agenda have plenty of plans for 2009, we hope that something coming up tickles your fancy.
Sex and Gender Diversity Community Survey
The survey closed early in January, and we’re currently in the process of analysing the data. Once we’ve looked at the info, and pulled out some interesting factoids we’ll publish our findings to the AGA Website. We hope that our data will be instrumental in convincing the ACT Government that people undergoing medical transition are of a significant enough number in the ACT to have services and funding provided to us.
T-Boy Get-Togethers
Most of the trans guys in Canberra have at some point thought that they are the only FTM in the area, but we actually have a pretty healthy population! We hold regular informal get togethers for FTM Spectrum folk (not everyone there identifies as a man… I for example, identify as a genderqueer), and so if you’ve been looking for a laid back and chillaxed group to hang out with, shoot me an email at webmaster@agenderagenda.org.au and I’ll add you to our email list. This year we hope to be able to hold bi-monthly events, a dinner or coffee night on a weekday evening after work, and a Saturday lunch event – picnics, and bbq’s etc.
TransAction! Day – Feb 27
A Gender Agenda are looking forward to the first ever TransAction! Day. TransAction! Day is eventually intended to be a day of education in schools, and as such has already stirred up some controversy in the USA. The Illinois Family Institute is calling it ‘Deviant Transgender Day‘ which I think is a very amusing, and catchy name for it.
We don’t have the resources to plan anything really spectacular for this year, but will probably hold a BBQ on the weekend following, and send out press releases in the weeks prior.
Mardi Gras Gaggle – March 7
A Gender Agenda are marching with Tranny Panic for Trans Rights in the Australian Mardi Gras Parade. We’ve got a group of about 16 takers so far, but the more the merrier! I hope you’ll consider coming along. For more information or to register your interest, contact our Mardi Gras organiser Robyn Grafkin at baglieg@gmail.com ASAP.
Butch Auction Fundraiser
We hope to run a Fundraising party at the end of June. We’re aiming to coincide with New York Cities annual Trans Day of Action. The night should be loads of fun, with performances from local musicians and Drag Kings and Drag Queens. Tranny Panic will also be running an interactive performance to raise awareness about trans people and our constant battle over toilets.
If you are interested in performing at the Butch Auction, or you are some-kind-of-masculine identified man, woman or genderqueer and wish to be Auctioned off to raise money for A Gender Agenda’s work, please shoot me an email at webmaster@agenderagenda.org.au.
Workshops and Education
Later in the year, perhaps September and/or October (dates to be announced), we plan on holding a series of workshops about issues facing the sex and gender diverse community. We want to cover a variety of topics, from dating and sexuality, raising children outside of traditional gender roles, the intersection of trans and intersex needs, and how to deal with trans people within your organisation. The workshops will cost money, so that we can afford to fly presenters in from other cities, and so that we can book a nice venue and so on. We will be offering subsidies and free places to sex and gender diverse identified individuals who would like to attend, but cannot afford it.
Possible Film Festival
Pending news about sponsorship of the event, we may be holding a “Breaking the Binary” film festival, for talented young film makers who want to say something about being sex and gender diverse. More news about this will be published to the AGA website if we can get sponsorship.
Well! Its going to be a busy year! I hope that something there appeals to you!
Annual Report 2008
2008 was a great year for A Gender Agenda.
We had lots of new members join, including yours truly. We also made friends with the New Canberra Transgender Network, which means that we shall be more aware of trans women’s issues, and they shall be more aware of trans men. We held a combined Christmas party in December that saw record numbers of the Canberra sex and gender diverse community get together and socialise. We all had an awesome time, at a very pleasant restaurant. We even had visitors from Sydney and Wollongong come all the way down to hang out with us.
We made a submission to HREOC’s Sex and Gender Diversity project, and participated in their community consultation. Although we were disappointed in the decided focus of HREOC’s project, we look forward to seeing the recommendations that are made to the Federal government. We will be continuing to lobby the ACT Government to improve things in the ACT for the sex and gender diverse community.
A small delegation of our members attended a workshop in Sydney called “Gender Dysphoria to Gender Euphoria: Working Towards Gender Belonging”. (Leaflet can be downloaded from here). The workshop was held at the AIDS Council of New South Wales, and was conducted by Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad & Elsa Almas from Norway. The workshop was extremely inspiring, and we hope to hold something similar here in Canberra later this year.
In November we participated in SpringOut, the Canberra LGBTIQ Community Pride Festival. We had a stall next to NewCTN at the Fair Day, and held several events during the festival, including a film night, a Picnic/BBQ and a candle lit ceremony for Transgender Day of Remembrance. At the end of the festival, our Co-ordinator Peter Hyndal won an ACT Pride Award for his work with AGA, and contribution to forwarding trans rights and building a vibrant gender diverse community.
November also saw us launch a community survey in an attempt to learn more about the face of the ACT Sex and Gender Diverse community. We had 93 responses, which was far more than we expected, especially since we know that not all members of AGA or NewCTN actually filled in the survey. This has increased our estimate of the number of sex and gender diverse people in Canberra and the surrounding region to several hundred. It is clear that medical and other services are not nearly adequate, and we hope to be able to use the data we gathered to apply for a Health Pact grant to allow us investigate further how services in the ACT can be improved for the Sex and Gender Diverse community.
2009 looks to be an even bigger year, and I hope to see new faces at our events. If you would like to get involved in A Gender Agenda, or be notified of our events, don’t forget to subscribe to the Blogs RSS feed, or send an email to events-subscribe@agenderagenda.org.au to our join our email list.
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