New Policy on Gender Change in Passports Announced
The U.S. Department of State is pleased to use the occasion of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month to announce its new policy guidelines regarding gender change in passports and Consular Reports of Birth Abroad.
Beginning June 10, when a passport applicant presents a certification from an attending medical physician that the applicant has undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition, the passport will reflect the new gender. The guidelines include detailed information about what information the certification must include. It is also possible to obtain a limited-validity passport if the physician’s statement shows the applicant is in the process of gender transition. No additional medical records are required. Sexual reassignment surgery is no longer a prerequisite for passport issuance. A Consular Report of Birth Abroad can also be amended with the new gender.
As with all passport applicants, passport issuing officers at embassies and consulates abroad and domestic passport agencies and centers will only ask appropriate questions to obtain information necessary to determine citizenship and identity.
The new policy and procedures are based on standards and recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), recognized by the American Medical Association as the authority in this field. [from US Dept. Of State]
WHAT’S NEW WITH ENDA
[what's ENDA?... see wikipedia]
First, here’s an excerpt from a recent article on The Advocate
“There continues to be concerns on the part of many members about the transgender issue, particularly about the question of places where people are without their clothes — showers, bathrooms, locker rooms, etc.,” said Frank. “We still have this issue about what happens when people who present themselves as one sex but have the physical characteristics of the other sex, what rules govern what happens in locker rooms, showers, etc.”
Although language about locker rooms and showers are already included in the bill, Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said she did not believe it was necessary to address bathroom situations in the legislation. “But if members say we need bathroom language, we are prepared to talk about how you do that in ways that are fair and reasonable,” she said.
Also, here’s a generic bit from the newswire that everyone is carrying:
Last October, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) would likely get a House committee vote in September and a floor vote that fall.
And last December, when Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) told a gathering of gay leaders that ENDA would pass the House in January, they weren’t making a promise. They were making an educated guess.
What has been happening, of course, has been a contentious partisan fight over a major effort to ensure that most Americans have health care, and an urgent push to pass a bill to preserve and create jobs for the country’s growing number of unemployed. Add to that, two major earthquakes requiring U.S. assistance, one major Democratic loss of a critical Senate seat, and a persistent pushback or roadblock by Republicans on everything from judicial nominees to unemployment checks.
The Senate Tuesday March 2 was able to finally vote on an emergency measure to simply extend unemployment benefits and several other programs for 30 days until Congress can approve a more permanent measure. The temporary bill was delayed for five days by the refusal of one Republican senator to allow a routine vote of unanimous consent.
With this as a backdrop, Rep. Frank’s prediction this week is that ENDA will have its vote in the House Committee this month. And he said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has assured him it will go swiftly to the floor.
Baldwin gave the same assessment of Pelosi’s commitment to ENDA when she spoke to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund’s Leadership Institute last December in San Francisco. Pelosi’s commitment on ENDA, she said, “is unflinching.” She said Pelosi “wants to have very quick movement of the bill from committee to floor, hopefully within a week” of the bill’s passage in Committee.
Mara Kiesling, head of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said Wednesday March 3 she is “extremely optimistic” ENDA will get its vote in the House Education and Labor Committee this month.
Kiesling said delays last fall could be attributed to a need to make some “language tweaks” and that she is not entirely sure right now what the language will be concerning the so-called “bathroom issue.” Opponents of ENDA have often argued that the measure would enable men to use women’s bathrooms.
Frank said Tuesday that there has been a general agreement reached to resolve certain language changes, including on the use of bathrooms. Kiesling said she doesn’t know what that language is and that “it might be harmless or it might be horrible.”
“We’ve been strenuously arguing that we don’t need clarification,” said Kiesling. “But legislation is too often about compromise.”
Kiesling noted that other compromises have included an exemption for military service and a stipulation that the bill does not require an employer to “treat an unmarried couple in the same manner as…a married couple for purposes of employee benefits.”
Kiesling said Rep. Frank has been “working very hard” on the bill, “and we’ve been working closely with his office.”
“I want to be clear, Congressman Frank’s not saying he wants bathroom language,” said Kiesling. “He’s saying they really think we need it to pass.”
“They,” she said, are the variety of Democratic leaders working on passing the bill. And the conclusion is that the clarifications are “not helpful substantively or legally,” she said, “but they say they are helpful politically.”
[Keen News Service] [posted by Brielle]
For transgender women who are low income, the ability to ‘pass’ as a female can make the difference in being able to simply get a job, put food on the table or avoid the very real threat of violence. The stakes are higher for trans-women and some women will go to some pretty extreme measures to enhance their feminine appearance. In this episode’s final segment, In the Life explores this important health issue for the trans community.
[posted by Bree]
Australia is first to recognise ‘non-specified’ gender
By Jane Fae • March 11, 2010 – 17:29
Australia may have made gender history this week, as the New South Wales government lays claim to being the first in the world to recognise an individual’s sex as officially “not specified”.
This milestone in the evolution of gender queer came about with the issuing of a ‘Sex Not Specified’ Recognised Details Certificate in place of a birth certificate to Norrie (also known as norrie mAy-Welby) a resident of Sydney.
Zie (a gender-specific pronoun) is now legally recognised by the Australian government as neither male nor female, the Scavenger reports.It is the end of a long journey for Norrie, aged 48, who was born in Scotland and registered male at birth.When zie was 23, zie commenced the process of gender re-assignment through hormone treatment and surgery.
Zie was later issued with a gender recognition certificate as female in Australia.However, Norrie did not feel comfortable living solely as a female.Hir philosophy, developed through hir art and through hir work with Sex and Gender Education, a lobby group campaigning for the rights of all sex and gender diverse people, draws heavily on Eastern concepts of one-ness: of yin and yang being just two halves of a greater whole.
On hir site, zie writes: “The theorists who inform transsexual and intersexual medical intervention presume that everyone has one real gender identity at the core of their being, whether or not this is congruent with their anatomy. Even children biologically hermaphrodite are supposed to be’really’ of one gender, with the surgically discarded sex declared the ‘false’ one.
“Unsurprisingly, many intersexual children are traumatised by the obliteration of their sexual duality. Many as adults seek transsexual procedures to restore their discarded sex, but at the expense of thesurviving sex. This is just one tragic result of our society’s belief in mutually exclusive genders.
“Not all human societies see the genders as mutually exclusive. Transgender people are seen in India as “half half” , in the Philippines as “lady-boys” , and in indigenous American cultures as “two-spirited.”People seen by our society as having a gender opposite to the one sex they were born with are seen by other societies as simply having two genders. Bi-gendered. In this light, the permanent removal of the characteristics of one sex to allow the expression of the other seems a total waste.
“Zie goes on: “I wonder if we in Western culture would have more options for happiness if we too had permission not simply to be of one gender or the other, but also to be of both genders, if such was our nature. “Norrie ceased lifelong hormone treatment and took up a neuter identity –neither male nor female – resisting any further female or male normalisation.
In January 2010 doctors declared that they were unable to determine hir as either male or female as zie has no gonads, the hormonal system was not typically male or female, and Norrie’s psychological identity was neuter.
The rest is now history. The irony of this landmark decision will not be lost on other trans Australians, who discovered just three years ago that the Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, had secretly and without consultation reversed a policy whereby trans people could obtain a passport statingtheir “intended sex.”
Jane Fae also writes at janefae.wordpress.com
Shannon Lanaway is working very hard at trying to get the Nelson & Area School District to have a LGBTQ policy. It would be great if we all wrote letters supporting this policy. Read the .pdf for detailed info on telling personal stories.
How was it for YOU in school? ………. Here’s your chance to really speak to the powers to be.
Some of the arguments against a LGBTQ policy is that they already have a policy for anti-bullying. (we all know how good that is!) So please take a few minutes and write an letter in favor of a LGBTQ policy in School District #8.
Send your support letter or story to Shannon Lanaway – email: finagri@yahoo.ca
Shannon Lanaway Read this .pdf
From Lu’s Pharmacy Facebook Group Lobby: “Lu’s Pharmacy no longer maintains their women-born women only policy! They have to change their documentation & website, but we have first-hand proof that they now accept trans women.”
History:
Lu’s Pharmacy Women-Born-Women-Only Policy is Discriminatory & Oppressive
A serious gripe with Lu’s Pharmacy:
Vancouver’s new Lu’s: A Pharmacy for Women is run by the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective who have a “women-born-women-only” policy. This means that they will not provide services to women who were assigned male or intersexed at birth. Apparently baby genitals makes transsexual and intersexed women second-class citizens.
The fact that transsexual and intersexed women have to fight hard and daily to gain control over their own bodies, and to be recognized in their correct gender isn’t legitimate enough for Lu’s. The fact that transsexual and intersexed women have also experienced oppression from the patriarchy from birth doesn’t seem to count because of our initial genital configuration. Even though transsexual and intersexed women live and work 24/7 as women, they are barred access to this women-only space. Their mothers, sisters, co workers and spouses are allowed access, but we (their peers) are not?
Lu’s Pharmacy is a great idea, and a very real asset to the community. However we believe that the women-born-women-only policy is discriminatory, demeaning and oppressive. Spread the word. Twitter, Facebook, write your MP, complain to Qmunity & TAS. Make it known. Make it a PR issue.
Shannon Lanaway is working very hard at trying to get the Nelson & Area School District to have a LGBTQ policy. It would be great if we all wrote letters supporting this policy. Read the .pdf for detailed info on telling personal stories.
How was it for YOU in school? ………. Here’s your chance to really speak to the powers to be.
Some of the arguments against a LGBTQ policy is that they already have a policy for anti-bullying. (we all know how good that is!) So please take a few minutes and write an letter in favor of a LGBTQ policy in School District #8.
Send your support letter or story to Shannon Lanaway – email: finagri@yahoo.ca
Shannon Lanaway Read this .pdf
Save Frank’s life
I’ve just signed a petition calling on Ugandan government to withdraw a proposed anti-gay law that would punish gay people with prison — or even death. sign the petition.
Dear friends,
“I could be facing violence, prison and even death for who I am. Across Uganda people are bravely speaking out, but this law will put us in serious danger. Please, sign the Avaaz petition and tell others to stand with us — if there’s a gigantic global response, our government will see that Uganda will be internationally isolated by this proposed law, and strike it down. ”
PS:
Here’s a BBC article about this campaign:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8542341.stm
And here’s a story from Voice of America:
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/Petition-against-Anti-Gay-Bill-Delivered-to-Ugandan-Parliament-85817192.html
You can read the actual law here:
http://www.avaaz.org/death-law
You can read more about the proposed law here:
http://www.avaaz.org/uganda_article
If you haven’t signed it, you can join the petition against the law at this link:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/uganda_rights/?fr
Vancouver Trans Advocacy Group (VanTAG) – a non-profit team of activists advocating the fair recognition of medical needs and human rights of transgendered people in BC.
The Problem We’re Trying to Address:
The Vancouver General Hospital Gender Clinic was shut down in 2002. Responding to the vacuum in specialized medical services needed by the transgender community, Vancouver Coastal Health hosted a conversation with the community, which lead to the creation of the Transgender Health Program, and an ongoing information resource development program began.
Please go and read The VanTAG Manifesto for more information on action and advocacy.
On May 15, NDP MP Bill Siksay introduced Bill C-389, a private member’s bill that would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression. It was the third time he’d tabled such legislation.
NDP MP Bill Siksay tabled a motion in the House of Commons on June 3, which calls on the federal government to take action to ensure that sex reassignment surgery is covered by Canada’s health system.
“Sex Reassignment Surgery is a medically necessary procedure that must be available to members of the transgender and transsexual community,” Siksay, the MP for Burnaby-Douglas and his party’s critic for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues, stated in a press release today. “SRS is not a frill nor is it an elective process but rather it’s a necessity for the health, happiness and well-being of some Canadians. As a medically necessary procedure, it and its related therapies must be fully covered under the provisions of the Canada Health Act.”
Siksay’s motion reads: “That, in the opinion of the House, the de-listing of medicare coverage for medically necessary sex reassignment surgery (SRS), and related therapies, violates the accessibility and comprehensiveness criteria of the Canada Health Act, and the government should take immediate steps to ensure appropriate health care is accessible across Canada to transsexual and transgender persons.”
Lobby – PETITION TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON BILL C-389
Trans Alliance Society Petition – to Amend the British Columbia Human Rights Code so as to include and to specify “gender identity and gender expression” as a prohibited ground of discrimination for all purposes of that legislation in British Columbia.
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Fry addresses transgender issues
“Transgendered people are not being fully served under the Canada Health Act. I feel like it’s the last piece of discrimination under medicare,” said Dr. Hedy Fry, the Liberal MP for Vancouver-Centre.
Word is that Vancouver General Hospital’s board will not allow him privileges to do GRS. Anyone hear the contrary?
Sex-change tourists — Victoria is paying thousands of dollars in extra costs for B.C. patients to get sex-change surgery at a private clinic in Quebec — while a specially recruited Vancouver surgeon has been denied operating room time for more than two years. full story >>> The Vancouver Province March 31, 2008