Legal recognition of sex and gender diversity In February 2016, I released a discussion paper on options for amendment to Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1999 to provide for Tasmania’s legal recognition of sex and gender diversity. Concerns about the current arrangements for registering and amending official information collected about sex and gender identity include: the requirement to undertake gender re-assignment surgery for a change of sex to be recognised; the requirement that a person not be married to have a change of sex legally recognised; the age and approval requirements for young persons to have a change of sex or name registered; the restrictions associated with a person being recognised as a gender other than male or female; issues associated with unnecessary medical treatment to make intersex bodies conform to the sex assigned at birth. The effect of the current provisions of the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act is that a transgender person who has not had sexual surgery and/or who remains married is not able to obtain official recognition of their gender identity. Nor is a person with intersex variations able to be registered in a way that recognises they may have both male and female biological sex markers or other non-binary sex characteristics. Action to address the arrangements currently contained in laws governing the way in which the official sex or gender of Tasmanians is recorded occurs in the context of a greater recognition of the rights of people who are transgender or have biological characteristics outside the binary of male and female. As the diversity of our biology and gender identity becomes increasingly understood, it is important that all Tasmanians are able to be formally recognised in ways that respect their identity and bodies. The adoption of similar standards for all Commonwealth Government agencies and more recent moves by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to enable a person to identify as neither male nor female in the 2016 Census are indicative of a
Legal recognition of sex and gender diversity In February 2016, I released a discussion paper on options for amendment to Tasmania’s Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1999 to provide for legal recognition of sex and gender diversity. Concerns about the current arrangements for registering and amending official information collected about sex and gender identity include: the requirement to undertake gender re-assignment surgery for a change of sex to be recognised; the requirement that a person not be married to have a change of sex legally recognised; the age and approval requirements for young persons to have a change of sex or name registered; the restrictions associated with a person being recognised as a gender other than male or female; issues associated with unnecessary medical treatment to make intersex bodies conform to the sex assigned at birth. The effect of the current provisions of the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act is that a transgender person who has not had sexual surgery and/or who remains married is not able to obtain official recognition of their gender identity. Nor is a person with intersex variations able to be registered in a way that recognises they may have both male and female biological sex markers or other non-binary sex characteristics. Action to address the arrangements currently contained in laws governing the way in which the official sex or gender of Tasmanians is recorded occurs in the context of a greater recognition of the rights of people who are transgender or have biological characteristics outside the binary of male and female. As the diversity of our biology and gender identity becomes increasingly understood, it is important that all Tasmanians are able to be formally recognised in ways that respect their identity and bodies. The adoption of similar standards for all Commonwealth Government agencies and more recent moves by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to enable a person to identify as neither male nor female in the 2016 Census are indicative of a
EOT_Annual_Report_2015-16.DOCX