Yeah, I don't have a puntastic title for this one

So, a 12 year old female-assigned Australian child got a court order to allow him to have male documents (birth certificate, Medicare card etc), and to take hormone blockers that prevent a female puberty. This is good news, and hopefully it'll make it easier for other young trans (proto-trans?) kids too. Not having to go through the wrong puberty, that's really good, because transition is as much as about removing the effects of that as it is giving you the right one. And changing documents is such a legal nightmare for trans people, this is no inconsiderable thing.

As it stands right now in Australia, generally, you need to have had genital surgery to change your legal sex, which is just ludicrous, leaving people who've been on hormones in a precarious state where their documents don't match their gender presentation--unlike in the UK, which has had the Gender Recognition Act for a couple years. So, if I'm putting on my optimistic hat for a second, I wonder if this might be the start of a sea-change towards recognising gender in Australia in ways other than genitality.

Of course, the coverage of this case has been about what you'd expect, though. From the Sunday Telegraph - "Girl, 12, cleared for sex change"

Medical ethicist Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini said the decision was astounding.
"I fail to see how it can be in the interests of a young girl to undergo treatment that will change her for the rest of her life,'' he said.
"Twelve is a time of great uncertainty.''

translation:

"O hai, I'm a medical ethicist. I don't know shit about trans people."

Your theories, they're rubbish. I fail to see how it can be in the interests of a gender variant child to be forced into having a puberty they don't want to have. Adolescence for gender variant children is just bloody horrible. The rates of suicide, attempted suicide, self-harm etc are just astronomical. You have no idea what it feels like to have to go through that, as well as the added pressure from family, friends and the rest of the world to conform, none. Realistically, it might be hard for him socially, because kids are especially awful about difference. But all trans adolescences are hard, and avoiding puberty induced gender dysphoria, that's pretty amazing and just about the best thing for his piece of mind.

And actually, he's actually not taking testosterone yet, you might notice. So all this does is suspend the onset of puberty, if he changes his mind then duh he can stop taking the hormone blockers and go through a female puberty later. But changing him for the rest of his life, by making him grow breasts, have a period and other potentially highly distressing things for a trans man, hey that's ok.

Also, while I'm on the subject, dear "the world": stop using the phrase "sex change." It's sensationalist and inaccurate and reduces the process of gender transition to one surgery you have years after you've started hormones (and generally stopped being perceived as being the wrong gender). If you even have it all--not all trans people want or can afford genital surgery. In this case, is his change legal status really what they mean by sex change? Is it bollocks. And fuck you, Sunday Telegraph, for the use of the phrase "taxpayer funded sex change"--because being able to get a $30 prescription on Medicare, that's really breaking the State's bank.

My ignorance, let me show you it

Oh look, it's that time again. Rad-fem transphobic idiocy.

It's remarkably useful, this "male head" theory, because it allows you to ignore the endemic violence (one in two trans people in the last year, Viviane Namaste found in Invisible Lives), discrimination (unemployment rates are astronomically higher for trans people), poor medical treatment, massive amounts of homelessness and general institutional illegibility (having the "wrong" gendered documents leaves you vulnerable as hell, open to charges of identity fraud and even targeted as a potential terror suspect...thank you very much post 9/11 legislation).

But hey, at least if you proceed from the assumption that trans women are male, and get all the attendent benefits thereof, you don't need to be influenced by that thing the rest of us tend to call "reality."

PHEW.

* Oh, and for the record, I really don't give a shit about feminist safe spaces personally--anywhere I'm not welcome is somewhere I don't want to be, it's your party and you can suck if you want to--but I do care about the fact that safe spaces are invoked to deny trans women important services like rape centres and shelters.

6) Blog Carnivals

Checkit: Ms Crip Chick is hosting the 37th Disability Blog Carnival.

It all looks good. I'm particularly interested in the posts Shiva and Trinity have written about passing, considering the intersection with transness. BUT FIRST, I demand you read this post.. =because my talented baby doesn't get nearly enough attention and that is just plain wrong.

Tired

It is bloody tiring only passing some of the time. I wish I didn't have to leave the house tomorrow.

Ok, so I'm back

America - despite some problems with the flight home - was amazing, especially New Orleans. I shall be back there as soon as possible, as I will literally shrivel and die without my girlfriend and cats. That's a scientific fact so solid the guy with the mustache and beret on Mythbusters could test it.

Sexual Ambiguities will return after these short messages

So I'm heading to the US in two days, and probably won't be posting for a bit. Have a lot to do in the meatime so, be good kittycats while I'm gone eh.

** Here is a song I shall probably listen to on the plane. Handily, minimal techno songs go on forever, so I'll only need to rip two Kompakt CDs and I'll be sorted for the thirty five hour trip to Baton Rouge.

Dear X,

I doubt you read this blog--perhaps if you did you might suddenly notice some trans issues in the media--but I'm going to have my say, anyway.

You're rubbish. And I know a lot of people try to ignore the rubbishness of "mainstream" white feminism, and get on and do their thing, but it makes impossible when people like you are always there, piggybacking your work off the amazingness of women of colour scholars. What more do those uppity women want, you've deigned to mention their issues... Credit? Bitches.

It must be devastating to be so stunningly mediocre, but I know you'll live with that disappointment, just as soon as you find someone else to help you "discover" an intellectual position or two.

In conclusion, fuck you, and while we're on the subject of patronising white gits, fuck Seal Press too.

no love,
Emily

**here are some links that make it crystal clear, if you're really bloody stupid.

the name

Someone is searching for my name

[what name?]

Em…Emily…Emmy…Emiliana… (male name)

---that other name you call it, but others are not so bashful, and it returns to me, unwanted, a ghost called into something between being and not-being---

My proper name? I was never properly named.
My name is improper, and so it has spilled over in still more names.

‘What’s your name?’ a girl asks me on New Year’s Eve as we line up for the toilet at my friend’s party.
‘Emily,’ I say.
‘No, your real name’ she slurs.
‘That is my real name’
She sneers at me.
‘Fine. I’m going to ask someone else’ she says, and she stumbles off in search of another name.

Pseudonym. Pseudo nym.

I am was not enough for her, not compared to an I was. It never is for some people.

[a name]

What is a name? What do we do when we name something, someone, ourselves? How do some names stick, and others do not?

[where?]

on your birth certificate, your passport, on your driver’s license, on the lips of the people around you, your co-workers, friends, family, lovers.

[when]

my name is a promise written upon my body, a gap between now and the past, a future opening before me.

‘There’s always a way, Emily’ my love writes to some other girl in a sundress with flowers in her hair, to me, to me.

There is always a way.