(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

A new Australian law leaves transitioning transgender women and men stuck with their birth sex on their passport, making them vulnerable to suspicion and harassment when they travel overseas, as well as being just plain humiliating. It's a bit of bureaucratic nonsense which serves no purpose other than to add hassles and misery to peoples' lives.

Comments

[thegameiam.livejournal.com]

Is the law set up so that the person who changes gender changes their ID only once they're post-op?

I could imagine that a transitioning person who had the new gender on the ID could be accused of falsifying their data if s/he were ever strip-searched in a foreign country, but that's got to be a rare occurance.

How many people would this law affect?

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I think that's it, yeah - you have to have had the op to change your passport. According to that news item, the woman was warned by the government she could be subject to "strip searches and harassment", so it sounds like a real and ugly possibility. :-(

I dunno how many Australians there may be transitioning at any given time - I'll see if I can find out.

[thegameiam.livejournal.com]

I suspect that whenever the ID shift is made, there's a jarring risk of humiliation - either in being exposed as having ID which does not match biology, or appearing to be cross-dressing.

TG stuff, to me, is pretty much heartbreaking from start to finish - the legal system in general isn't the most sympathetic, and lacks the ability to treat individuals as individuals.