“A transsexual has won a written apology from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the distress she experienced as a result of having to travel on a passport that identified her as a man.…”
Transsexual wins apology over passport.
Ms Imbruglia said the department had agreed to restore the right of transsexuals travelling abroad for gender surgery to a passport in the appropriate gender. It has also agreed some people of diverse or indeterminate gender identity who may not be suitable for genital surgery should be able to get a suitable passport. Ms Imbruglia said she was delighted that common sense had prevailed.
Editorial Comment:
OII Australia is delighted that common sense has finally prevailed at the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade (DFAT) and in its passport office. Until Ms Imbruglia received her apology, common sense was not in evidence at the department in regard to intersex people either. It seems though, from the phrase in the quote above, that we have rendered in bold, that DFAT has yet to fully come to terms with the facts of intersex, but given the size of their turnabout now, we are hopeful.
“Indeterminate gender identity.”
Is DFAT they trying to speak about intersex people without actually saying the word ‘intersex?’ It would seem so, and they are botching it up somewhat. If they mean ‘intersex’ then they should say ‘intersex.’
“Indeterminate gender identity” means next to nothing, or it might be intended to mean that the person in question has no idea whether they are Arthur or Martha, man or woman, even if they know what sex they are because their brain tells them so. “Indeterminate gender identity” does not under any circumstances refer to intersex people, who also know what sex they are because their brain tells them so, whether female, male, both or neither.
The equally pussyfooting phrase “indeterminate sex” appears in the NSW anti-discrimination law in a bizarre and ill-conceived attempt to protect intersex people against discrimination. The law in NSW, however, fails miserably in protecting intersex people because it refuses to use the word intersex and because almost all intersex newborns’ sex has been determined for them without their consent by their attending birth physician, regardless of their real sex, the sex their brains tell them they are.
No intersex person is allowed to be of indeterminate sex in NSW and most other states and territories of Australia under state and territory law. Almost all Australian intersex people are put down as male or female on an arbitrary basis at birth, based on a mere passing glance at their external genitals. Almost no Australian intersex people have intersex or anything other than male or female down on their birth certificates. For a physician to do so would amount an admittance that human beings are born with variations in their sex.
If you are intersex and you have been discriminated against in NSW, try phoning the ADB and telling them that. They will then inform you that intersex people are not covered by the legislation and refuse to take on your case.
Australian intersex people have been mistreated by DFAT in almost the same way as Ms Imbruglia. A member of OII Australia travelled to Thailand for urogenital correction surgery a year before Ms Imbruglia, before the Howard federal government’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, instituted even more draconian policies in his department against anyone seen to be non-standard. Our member received a temporary one-year passport in her actual sex – female – so that she could avoid travelling to Thailand on a previous passport that proclaimed her sex as the sex her attending birth physician stated.
Former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer engaging in some transgender behaviour. Photographer unknown.
On her return our member applied for her temporary passport to be replaced with a permanent 10-year passport. She was refused. Between applying for her temporary passport and her return, Foreign Minister Downer had made the regulations even more restrictive. It was to be quite some time until our member finally received her permanent passport in her actual sex – female. No apology of the type that Ms Imbruglia received has been received by our member. On applying to the Australian Human Rights Commission for assistance in her case, she was told that intersex people have no protection of any kind and thus the Commission could do nothing to help her.
On the other hand, transsexual and transgender people do have certain protections against discrimination and vilification, though certainly not equality – neither intersex nor transsexual nor transgender people have that.
The irony of this whole sordid business for our member as above is that the members of DFAT quite deliberately treated her, and sometimes referred to her, as if she was transgender. Apparently, it was once explained to her by one of the friendlier DFAT staff members, Foreign Minister Downer had determined that intersex, transsexual and transgender people were to be referred to and treated as if they were all somehow transgender.
Since he found transgender behaviour unacceptable, and transgender people themselves to be unacceptable when travelling overseas on Australian passports and thus representing Australia itself, Foreign Minister Downer had ruled that all people he referred to as transgender were to be denied passports. That was a separate though somewhat overlapping issue to the one described in the story about Ms Imbruglia but with implications just as nasty for our member.
Our member’s protests that she was not transgender fell on deaf ears throughout the whole process. Regardless, neither intersex people, transsexual people nor transgender people should be treated the way our member, Ms Imbruglia and a number of other Australians in the same boat were treated by DFAT. There is no excuse for such blatant disregard for other human beings.
Let us now hope that things are about to change significantly, at DFAT’s passport office at least.
OII Australia wishes to thank Hon. Nicola Roxon, Minister for Health and Ageing, and Brendan Nelson, retiring member for the federal seat of Bradfield, for their advocacy to DFAT on behalf of our member, and we also wish to thank Senator Louise Pratt for her tireless work on behalf of all Australian LGBTI people.
