Allowing a person’s sex to be changed on a birth certificate might seem insignificant.
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The truth is it has huge implications for everyone.
Language Distorted
Allowing people to choose their sex based on how they feel about themselves – and reinforcing it in law, immediately puts constraints on language.
Transport for London has banned the use of “ladies and gentlemen” on their public announcements. The British Medical Association is suggesting health professionals use the term “expectant person” rather than “expectant woman” so as not to offend transgendered people.
A popular US health site now uses in its LGBTQIA sex guide the term “front hole” rather than vagina because “the notion that a penis is exclusively a male body part and a vulva is exclusively a female body part is inaccurate”.
The necessity to use preferred pronouns – like hir or zhe has been legislated in California with fines for willful and repeated non-compliance (and jail time for serious infringements).
Parental Authority Usurped
If as a society we support the notion of gender fluidity, then denying someone (even our own children) the right to be “who they really are” is deemed abuse.
The Australian Labor Party has already agreed with this logic and have incorporated it as part of their national platform. Attempts at helping (“converting”) a confused five-year-old to be comfortable in their biological sex are likely to be deemed “serious psychological abuse” and “when suffered within the family, as domestic violence against the child.” (Labor National Platform 2015, P193).
Almost 38,000 people have already signed our petition opposing this controversial notion: www.acl.org.au/parental_rights.
The reality is many people resolve their gender dysphoria. Walt Heyer who, after being fully sex-reassigned from male to female, eventually came to accept his biological sex and now helps others contemplating transition or seeking “detransition” at SexChangeRegret.com
Safe Spaces Compromised
There are privacy and safety issues around women-only spaces when a male can legally become a female at the stroke of a pen.
Recently in Canada, staff at a women’s shelter purportedly forced a woman to share a small double room with a non-surgically-reassigned transgender woman. If a transgender woman is legally a female (thanks to an amended birth certificate) then they have every right to share such spaces – and even to be employed in them.
Sport – competitive inequalities
There has been significant debate around transgender females competing in sports – particularly combat sport.
In one famous MMA bout, transgender fighter Fallon Fox sent Tamikka Brents to hospital with concussion, a broken orbital bone and needing stiches. Brents’ response sums up the obvious disadvantage she faced “I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life, and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right.”
Confused and irreversibly damaged children
Gender fluidity is perplexing to most adults (see the confusing ‘Genderbread Person’ infographic), let alone impressionable children. Legal endorsement via birth certificates will only compound this confusion. Since gender fluidity ideology started being taught in schools via programs like Safe Schools, there has been a huge escalation in children presenting with gender dysphoria (feeling like they have been born in the wrong body).
Puberty-blocking hormones are a common treatment – the long-term effects of which are still unclear. Wiki suggests: “adverse effects on bone mineralisation, compromised fertility, and unknown effects on brain development.”
Dr John Whitehall, Professor of Pediatrics at Western Sydney University, has written extensively on what he describes as an ‘infectious trend’. His research indicates irreversible damage is caused by medical interventions. He goes as far as labelling it “child abuse” given that between 50 to 97.8 per cent of children (depending on the study) cease their confusion prior to the onset of puberty when a watch and wait approach is adopted. The irony of his abuse claim given the ALP’s platform cannot go unnoticed.
Professor Whitehall believes there is no scientific evidence linking gender dysphoria with suicide per se – a key argument for hormonal/surgical intervention. He points instead to other commonly associated mental conditions. He wants an age limit of at least 18 before such intervention is permitted due to the difficulty of ever coming back once this trajectory is chosen.
Those with gender dysphoria must be treated with compassion and respect and have access to professional evidence-based psychological help.
Rights claims, like the right to change one’s biological sex on a birth certificate based solely on feelings, must be weighed-up carefully.
A birth certificate is a legal document that captures truths surrounding one’s birth. It should not be tampered with, given the serious consequences of doing so.
- Mark Brown is the Tasmanian director for the Australian Christian Lobby