Zoe Brain talks about being intersex and how ignorance about intersexuality makes even the simplest tasks seemlingly impossible.
Most people have absolutely no concept of the difficulties faced by Intersexed or Transsexed people in our daily lives.
Here's a case in point:
I've just been contacted by phone by the Australian Passport Office to say that my application for an Australian Passport has been refused.
It was referred to the Policy Section, and the answer came down almost immediately.
I haven't provided sufficient documentation to prove my Identity and Citizenship.
I have provided them with the following:
- Citizenship certificate in my former name
- Name Change Document (showing a male gender as that was on my unchangeable UK Birth certificate) showing both former and current names
- Medicare Card in the name of Zoe Brain
- Drivers License in the name of Zoe Brain Photo
- Student ID in the name of Zoe Brain
- Last year's tax return in the name of Zoe Brain
- Medical letter stating Zoe Brain is undergoing hormone therapy
- Letter from the Federal Attorney-General about my marital status to Ms Zoe Brain
- Letter from my former place of work confirming my odd medical condition, and the radical changes that happened before any therapy commenced.
- Bank statements in the name of Zoe Brain
- Credit card Statement in the name of Zoe Brain
- Letter of Offer for my PhD in the name of Zoe Brain
- Expired Australian Passport showing a male gender and former name
- Current UK passport showing a female gender in the name of Zoe Brain
I mean, what the heck? How many hundred points of Identification data is this?
It's still not enough. I've also been asked to submit not one but two letters from registered medical practioners detailing the results of gynacological examinations, showing exactly what surgery I've had.
None, as yet.
When I do have the surgery, it won't be a normal sex change, as I'm Intersexed, so it's unlikely in the extreme to meet their requirements.
The application is being held open, as I still have to get some documentation from Medicare Australia, proving my verbal statements.
Documentation stating that I'm medically female, and have been specially authorised treatment under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme for "moderate to severe androgenisation of a non-pregnant female" - something that can only be done on application by a specialist endocrinologist. And, to state the obvious, something that can't be done unless the patient is biologically female.
It will then go up to Policy (ie the Minister) again. I have little hope of success. They already know this data, all this is is confirmatory evidence.
This is ridiculous. I've given them more than the website requires, far more. Yet it's never enough. All thoughts of common sense or rationality have gone overboard.
Quite seriously, common sense would dictate that if I have a Female UK passport, issued by the country I was born in, then on strictly "convenience" grounds I should have the same gender in an Australian passport.
The Australian Passports Act 2005 authorises the APO to determine my citizenship, and my identity. That's all. Not what I had for breakfast, not what surgery I have had, and not the exact configuration of my genitalia. How dare they question the health authorities decision? None of them pretend to any medical qualification.
Because of my medical condition, I'm going to require some surgery of a type only available overseas - unlike a normal sex reassignment.
Without an Australian passport or visa, I can leave any time I like, they just won't let me back in. And as I'm an Australian citizen, I can't get a visa.
I don't identify as GLB. I'm stuck with the GLBITTQ label because we do have one thing in common : we're all oppressed minorities, with sexual issues that Society is uncomfortable with. A strange conglomerate, with little in common.
I do support GLB activism, I just don't identify with it, any more than I identify with any other oppressed minority. To me it's just a general human rights issue. I support same-sex partnerships not because I can't get married to a same-sex partner (I already
am...now) but because it's a basic Human Right.
I would like to raise the profile of IT within the GLBITTQ framework though, as I've found just as much ignorance, and even more misinformation, about IS and TS amongst GLB people compared to society at large.