Pirate Congress 2016/Motions/Policy and Platform/Transgender and Intersex Issues

Draft Policy This is a draft policy which may still be under development and is not approved or endorsed by the party. Until such time as it is endorsed by the party, it does not represent the views or intentions of the party.

Amendments to existing policies

Bill of Rights policy

Insert 'sex,' after 'including gender, age,' in the policy point 'Guarantees freedom from discrimination by government, based on any arbitrary or generalised condition, including gender, age, sexual orientation, race, religion (or lack thereof), social sub-cultural and political affiliation'.

Asylum Seekers and Refugees policy

Insert the following points under a new heading titled 'Change immigration and asylum seeker processes regarding claims of gender, sex and orientation based oppression':

• Implement Kaleidoscope Australia's Guide to Best Practice in Determining Applications for Refugee Status Based on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Grounds:
  • Provide training for immigration on gender, sex and orientation variations context, including privacy needs and processes.
  • Inform asylum seekers of the need to state the basis of their claim early, even if that does not mean they are required to substantiate it at that time.
  • Assign advocates that speak the asylum seekers' languages.
  • Implement protocols and processes for managing privacy, including not making it obvious that additional privacy measures are being taken in specific cases.
  • Only use medical professionals to establish the truth of claimed personal conditions. Regular customs officers are not qualified for this.

Prison Reform policy

Insert the following points under a new heading titled 'Transgender prisoners':

• Ensure transgender prisoners are placed in the correct prisons according to their preferred gender, based on assessment and certification by trained medical and psychiatric professionals.
• Ensure transgender prisoners who were undergoing hormone replacement therapy prior to imprisonment are able to continue their treatment while detained.

Health policy

Insert the following points under a new heading titled 'Improve treatment of transgender and intersex persons':

• Adopt United Kingdom National Health Service recommendations as a starting point for treatment approach to transgender persons, and specifically WPATH with practice guidelines sourced from the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
• Extend Medicare to the long-term coverage of hormone replacement therapy, and sexual reassignment surgery where recommended by medical and psychiatric professionals.
• Prohibit normalising surgery for intersex infants and children unless medically necessary (as determined by the Family Court), pending informed individual consent as an adult.

Education policy

Insert the following points under the heading 'Foster well-funded, dynamic and secular public schools':

• Endorse the right of schools to access the Safe Schools education programmes.
• Extend the Safe Schools programme by bringing in Safe Schools representatives to engage with recurring bullying problems and the individual students involved.

Civil Liberties policy

Insert the following point under the heading 'Enshrine freedom over the body in law':

• Adopt the current conventions used in New Zealand for gender identify change, under which a non-binary gender option is available for passports and can be changed with a simple application.

Position Statement

The issues affecting transgender and intersex persons, cut a narrow swath across a large number of Pirate Party Australia policy areas. These issues are frequent sources of public enquiry. This policy statement outlines the concerns, followed by a cross reference to related inclusions in other policy statements.

The diversity of and within gender is still little understood and accepted in wider society, which can cause all sorts of problems. Social, bureaucratic and possible medical challenges of transitioning from the gender one is assigned to at birth to the gender one identifies with are exacerbated by prejudice and discrimination in most levels of society, even family and close friends. As a consequence, the issues transgender people face are much like those that gay population were and are still facing: being beaten, thrown out of home, losing work and many other issues. The prevalence of male to female transsexualism is estimated to be in the range of 1:250 to 1:200, in the general population

Being transgender isn't just a case of feeling attracted to what society deems the wrong gender, it is people assuming from your birth that you are something other than you, some people feel for a long time "Something isn't right, but I don't know what" and some people go along the lines of "I wish I was a girl/boy/different gender" then finding out either sooner or later it is possible. Trying to differ from what society has deemed your gender at birth to be, causes momentous challenges for people in such situations.

One of the first question asked when a baby is born is whether it's a boy or girl. One of two answers is usually given, based on physical appearance; male or female. The newborn is assigned a sex, which is consequently formalised in the official identity documents of the newborn. This predominant culture of categorising newborns into one of two sexes, with their associated genders, can cause several issues in a person's life.

Gender Divergence

Some people realise sooner or later that they don't identify with the gender associated with the sex assigned to them at birth, i.e. if their gender 'diverges' from their assigned sex. These transgender (or transsexual, non-binary, agender,...) people suffer from being put into a metaphorical box they don't belong in by society, which can cause psychological issues from an early age. When they decide to transition to another gender to show their true or newly found identity, they often face discrimination and violence even by those closest to them.

While it would by far not solve all issues for intersexed and transgender people, removing the requirement for an assigned sex would benefit many people in society. The shift needs to be more than just a formality though. There needs to be a shift in how gender is understood: differentiated in people's understanding from a person's sex. At the same time, understanding of both sex and gender needs to be expanded from a strict binary, both medically and in wider society. People need to be able to have their legally-recognised gender changed without sexual-reassignment-surgery as a mandatory prerequisite once it is decided that you are suffering gender dysphoria, surgeries are no longer elective (ie, will be covered by Medicare).

Intersex Conditions

Some people are born intersexed. This often means that they have primary sex characteristics from both the male and female sexes or other sex traits which may appear to stem from either end of the sex spectrum. Some intersex conditions are discovered soon after birth, while others might take years to discover. In either case, 'corrective' surgery may be proposed and secrecy of the condition is frequently recommended. It is our view that medical interventions of conditions which do not harm a person's health should be outlawed until the person with the condition is of an age where they can consent to the procedure. People born intersexed should not be made to feel ashamed of their condition.

References to Policy Text covering Transgender and Intersex issues

• Support constitutional recognition of the equality of gender- and sex-diverse people.
• Abolish patents on pharmaceutical drugs, which will dramatically reduce the cost of perpetually overpriced drugs that may be a lifelong requirement for transgender people."
• Implement fair and respectful processing of asylum seekers fleeing oppression for their gender, sex or orientation.
• Reform the prison system to include diverse gender-appropriate prison assignment and hormone replacement therapy continuation.
• Remove legal definitions of "marriage" and recognise the civil union of any two persons.
• Improve the treatment of transgender persons in the public health system.
• Endorse and extend the Safe Schools programme.
• Simplify the process of changing gender in official identification documents.