For an introduction to these issues, see our page on identification documents
A number of erstwhile allies of intersex people have supposed that intersex people want the legislative creation of a third gender or a third sex. Sex – male and female in a sex binary system, and gender – man and woman under the gender binary system, are two very different though related things. The reality is that…
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Our submission on the proposed Commonwealth consolidation of Anti-Discrimination legislation.
ABC Radio National’s The Law Report broadcasted a program of direct relevance to intersex people in Australia and overseas this morning. In a feature entitled Better recognition for transgender people under the law on 8 November 2011 the program utilised pathologizing language and concepts. Damien Carrick presented; guests were Steven Penglis (Freehills Solicitors in Perth), Peter…
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AH and AB are “female to male transsexual persons” who sought to have their cardinal documents changed under the rules of the Western Australian Gender Reassignment Act 2000 (GRA). AB v Western Australia AH v Western Australia [2011] HCA 42 6 October 2011 P15/2011 & P16/2011 ORDER In each matter: 1. Appeal allowed. 2. Set…
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Dr Alice Dreger misapprehends much in the decision by the Australian government to allow people of unspecified sex the right to have X on their passport. Intersex, sex and gender Sex and gender are indeed conflated in this decision as they are in all of Australian legislation and much of British, European and American law….
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Intersex and gender diverse Australians can now easily apply for passports containing F, M or X in the sex field of their passports.
UPDATE: OII Australia and OII Aotearoa have released a submission on the DSM-5, which can be read here [PDF] in June 2012. This submission supersedes the following position statement. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is currently rewriting the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (DSM). This will be its fifth full revision, the DSM-V. See: http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/Default.aspx The…
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This is a response to an article by Tracie O’Keefe and Indi Edwards Roughsedge, What is intersex and how does it fit into ISGD?, published on 31 May 2011. That article is a response to an article by OII Australia, ‘ISGD’ and the appropriation of intersex published on 22 May 2011. Both are worth reading…
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“I’ve been waiting for years for you to show up. It’s clear that transsexuals are not going to get our rights until intersexuals do.” (quoted by Suzanne Kessler, 1998) “Intersex is not one but many sites of contested being, [with] temporally sutured biomedical, political and social imperatives… ‘Intersex’ is a sign constantly under erasure, whose…
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The new catch-all term being heavily promoted in Sydney, “Intersex, Sex and/or Gender Diverse”, comes across as yet another variation on what Alice Dreger and ISNA did with their attempt to erase intersex with DSD, standing for “Disorders of Sex Development”. A previous attempt at extending & replacing intersex DSD was sold to the medical…
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OII Australia supports trans people in their call for human rights, in the same way we support all LGBTI peoples and other marginalized minorities. Sometimes, however, rights called for by one minority group can disadvantage another unless close strategic alliances are maintained so that proposed changes to the law do not accidentally impinge on rights….
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On Friday 13 May 2011 a decision on the case of Norrie v Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages [2011] NSWADT 102 was handed down with the outcome being that people living in New South Wales cannot have a sex other than female or male recorded on their birth certificate or other official documentation. Uniquely…
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