Emergency services that are safe and accessible for trans people are not common in Canberra, and this places us in a ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ situation with some service providers. There are some services that may be problematic for trans people who do not pass, for sex/gender diverse people who are bisexual, genderqueer and intersexed people who identify outside of the binary and so on. This is unfortunate, but A Gender Agenda’s dealings with other organisations, as we urge them to adopt more inclusive policies, will never prevent us from redirecting sex and gender diverse people in need to an organisation that may be able to help them.

All that said, if you do approach an organisation that is listed on our website, and have a negative experience with them, please let us know. This allows us to not only modify our listing, but to contact the organisation, and try to work with them to create a more accepting environment for sex and gender diverse people. I firmly believe that most issues arise out of ignorance on the service providers part, and education can do much to eliminate difficulties for sex and gender diverse people in community organisations. After all, people don’t work in community orgs for the money! They do it because they are good people, and want to help the world be a better place!

The directory of support services will expand as time goes on, we plan on adding sections for medical practices, counselling services, domestic violence and rape crisis centers, support services for people with disabilities, indigenous people, youth, and financially disadvantaged people. If you have suggestions for any of those sections, also let us know!

So we have two requests:

1. If you have a book (or multiple books) that you would like to donate to the library, what is it? (So we don’t buy it, and double up)

2. If there is a book (or multiple books) that you think that no self-respecting trans-positive book collection should be without, what is it?

These are the sorts of things that we are looking for:

- Non-fiction: Biographies, anthologies, self help, post-modern gender analysis, trans-positive medical information (medical stuff needs to be no older than 5-10 years), feminist classics, histories, political and activist writings, sociology, information for friends, partners, parents and children.

- Photography: Loren Cameron, Del La Grace Volcano, and other books of photographs of trans people, or by trans people

- Films: Documentaries, and movies starring trans people or transy characters. Can be either motion picture, or animations. (Including *trans-positive only* erotica) We are also looking for movies for children.

- Fiction: Stories that star trans people, stories by trans people, stories that have minor trans characters that are positively represented, (Including *trans-positive only* erotica). Also fantasy and science fiction books where an alternative gender system is represented.

- Childrens picture books: Everything from picture books about trans kids, or trans parents, to picture books with transy themes.

- Novels for kids and teens: Anything that has gender crossing as a major theme, regardless of whether an adult might think the character is ‘trans enough’. Only positive representations though – nothing where the transy character gets killed/raped/beaten/publicly humiliated for being transy.

If you can think of any authors or producers of trans media that might be willing to donate something to the library, please let me know so that I can contact them. :) We will be marking any media that is donated which is good advertising for writers and indie film makers.

If you wish to make a donation of a book or some cash to help us buy a book, keep in mind that A Gender Agenda is a Health Promotion Charity, so donations are tax deductable. We will value book donations at 50% of the RRP of a book in reasonable condition.

So if you wish to make a donation we need to know:
1. Whether and how you would like to be acknowledged in the book you donated
2. Whether and in what name you would like your tax deduction receipt to be provided.

Contact me on the email address webmaster@agenderagenda.org.au if you would like details as to where to send the donation, or would like to arrange a meeting to give it to me in person.

NOTE: Blatantly transphobic media of any kind will not be accepted, including but not limited to ‘The Transsexual Empire’ and other writing by Janice Raymond, Sheila Jeffreys, etc, medical/psychiatric information by Zucker, Bailey, Blanchard or John Money, films such as ‘Psycho’ or ‘Silence of the Lambs’ etc.

Books and papers critiquing the work of famous transphobes are welcome.

So then! What books and films do YOU think we should purchase?

This is a copy of the speech that Peter presented.

—-

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.

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! :)

I’m not asking for GLSEN to change the name of their event, but I think that Australian organisations could hold an event with a name that sounds a little less like a day when you do your banking. I think that “Trans Awareness Day” is an excellent title, and one that as far as I can tell isn’t taken. (Gendered Intelligence in the UK ran a single Trans Awareness Day back in 2007, but it hasn’t been held since). However, it is very trans-centric. Perhaps “Gender Diversity Day” would be a more inclusive and appropriate name?

A preliminary survey of my friends revealed a strong leaning towards Gender Diversity Day. What do other folk think? Suggestions for other names are also welcome!

This video is an advertisement for an Argentinian bank, and features a trans woman. I say, good on Banco Provincia! May they get throngs of new customers for this!

Transcript after the cut.

[Speaking to a customer] Trans woman: Its more natural…

[A car pulls up and an elderly man gets out and walks over.]

Trans woman: Mr Lopez, how strange to see you around here!

Mr. Lopez: I’d like to know… When a bank credit was granted to you to open the hairdresser, did they ask for your identity card?

Trans woman: Yes.

Mr Lopez: But the document shows that you are a man!

[The woman frowns and folds her arms]

Trans woman: Yes.

Mr Lopez: And did they grant it anyway?

[The woman nods]

Mr Lopez: This is the same bank that has granted me a credit to buy the car.

Trans Woman: Mm.

Mr Lopez: That made me think. And so it encouraged me to come and apologize to you for treating you badly all this time. For not knowing how to treat you. Have this.

[Passes her a wood carving of a ballerina]

Trans woman: For me?

Mr Lopez: I’m sorry.

Trans woman: Thank you, Mr Lopez!

Mr Lopez: Bye!

[Mr Lopez's wife and the trans woman wave as one another as he gets back in the car.]

Caption: Your life changes when there is a bank disposed to change

Narrator: You have a life, you have a bank.

Banco Provincia.

Hat tip to Jacky for this one.

Text reads: If you drink like a man, you might end up looking like one

I find this poster extremely offensive. Not only is it sexist, and relying on the pressure on women to be conventionally attractive in order to control the behaviour of women, but its transphobic.

A trans woman in Warrington where this poster is most widely distributed has made an official complaint, and a request for it to be removed. NHS Warrington, the organisation behind the image, has claimed that they consulted with the “national lead for the transgender community”, and that they saw no problem with the image. I am slightly dubious about that claim, and would like to know what ‘national lead’ they spoke to. Perhaps the UK is much more organised than Australia, but it seems unlikely that there is one organisation or person who is the ‘national leader’ for trans people.

As was pointed out at the Sociological Images blog:

The ad is relying on the viewer being disgusted at the idea of a masculine face covered in make-up. That is part of what is supposed to create a negative reaction. But make-up and masculinity are not intrinsically or naturally at odds. We only believe this to be so.

Relying on people to be disgusted by a masculine face wearing make up? Thats transphobia, and that should not be acceptable.

Unfortunately most people who are part of the sex and gender diverse community know only too well what it feels like to have our names and identities be a very bad word, to have our identity thrown at us as if its a grave insult. I’ve had emails get caught up in my spam filter, I’ve had Google Mail step in and refuse to send an email because it was suspected of being offensive. Just because my identity is also a dirty, filthy, spam-trap-triggering keyword.

I think that this is one of the key reasons that identity labels are so hotly contested in the sex and gender diverse community.

The Gender Centre defines Transgender as:

Transgender means anyone who lives, has lived, or wants to live as a member of the opposite gender (sex) to their birth gender.
In the past, the common term for transgender has been transsexual. However, in general, people who are transgender prefer to use the term transgender as this is a more accurate reflection of their identity or behaviour – that is, that they want to live and behave as a member of the opposite gender to their birth gender, not the opposite sexuality, sexual preference or sexual orientation. A transgender, just like anyone else, may be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual.

However, under the Discrimination Act 1991, a “transsexual” is defined as meaning:

a person of one sex who—
(a) assumes the bodily characteristics of the other sex, whether by means of medical intervention or otherwise; or
(b) identifies himself or herself as a member of the other sex or lives, or seeks to live, as a member of that other sex.

That to me sounds like a very similar definition. Sometimes even when someone is asked what the difference is, its still not clear. FTM Australia says that the difference is quite easy to understand:

“A transgender individual takes hormones to appear as one gender or another; a transsexual person takes hormones and undergoes surgery as rehabilitation for a physical condition.”

I still don’t get it though.

Even the psychiatrists can’t decide who is transsexual, who is transgender, who is a transvestite, and who is just a filthy pervert with a fetish for ladies lingerie. The medical industry also draws lines between ‘primary’ transsexuals and ’secondary’ transsexuals. Harry Benjamin himself had a scale of transsexuals, TRUE transsexuals, and everyone else.

I find the idea of categorising someone elses identity extremely problematic, and it is often used as a way of privileging one identity over another. Doctors like to withhold treatment from those people they suspect aren’t ‘trans*whatever enough’ and because its thrown as us constantly by everyone else, sometimes we end up turning on each other and saying “So and so had surgery, but she’s really a ‘post-operative transvestite’ not a TRUE transsexual/real woman/whatever”. Its just not cool.

You wont see the words transsexual and transgender used as much as would probably be expected by A Gender Agenda. We prefer to cut off the end, and refer to people being ‘trans’ or someone being a ‘trans person’. It helps us stay clear of the debate, and be inclusive, without having to define terms that no one can agree on anyway.

What is most important, is how you define yourself. If you define as a woman, or woman of transsexual history, then you are a woman to us. If you define as third gendered, intersex, or genderqueer? No worries. We’ll respect that too. If you define as a ‘trans identified FTM’, we can respect that. Respect is important, and there is no place for being judgemental about other peoples identities within A Gender Agenda, or at any of our events. We want to be warm and welcoming, you need not worry about not passing, or not being ‘trans enough’ to join. We even welcome woman-identified women, and man-identified men, if they respect our cause, and want to work for change along side us. Its not only people that transgress gender boundaries as radically as those who transition that experience discrimination for expressing their gender differently.

Names are important, they help us communicate. In the end though, its the communication thats important, not the name itself. Labels are only useful when we are free to apply them without judgement, and express ourselves freely no matter what label we have claimed for ourselves.

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.

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!