Gender question for those who aren't UK-based

[GeordieTerf]

Obviously this board and wider site is UK-based. I'm interested in hearing from GC feminists about the self-Id situation in other countries.

At one of the WPUK meetings I went to, someone said that the UK is leading the fight on this issue, and that many countries are looking to see whether we can successfully push it back or not.

I remember hearing a few months back that Italy was banning puberty blockers?

Obviously places like Canada are a thread of their own...

Australia is in an interesting position.

We have a Pentacostal PM on the one hand, who is making sure religions are free from discrimination law, and as part of that, is very anti gender ideology in schools. And look, to give these people their due, during the very antagonistic marriage equality debate we had here a few years back, one of the most raised issues with me - a Yes voter - was slippery slope issues re gender. Yes, we could do that (marraige) but here's what we worry is down the line. Well, they were right to be worried about the down the line business, not about the marriage stuff though.

I think that laws vary by state. Minors used to have to go to court to have treatment; that's been abolished, I think. My state is reasonably restrictive (under a conservative government for the last few years), other states are way more liberal (under labour governments).

I really don't know much about specifics. I do know that we have onerous anti-discrimination laws, which involve laws against offence. There's supposedly a second part to that law that protects genuine need for free speech but the exceptions are very limited.
People at all stages of transition are protected under our anti-discrimination laws due to their gender identity.

In my state, you can't change your legal gender without having gone through gender affirmation surgery.

Other states have removed this requirement, meaning it's self declared gender identity in those states.

Short answer - in AU it varies by state from very liberal laws (self ID) to rather restrictive (surgical requirements) - but all transgender people are protected from all forms of discrimination in public places, including online, on the basis of their gender IDENTITY.

Other Aussies, come and fix my mistakes here if I'm wrong. I am currently thankful we live in a more restrictive (conservative) state, even though I'm a Labor member and voter.

I think our offence laws are unacceptable, but not just on this issue, and not on any live issue at all really. I think they are the kind of restriction that looks grand when it's your enemy being restricted, and terrible when your enemy turns those laws on you. So that worries me about AU.

I think my state laws will be overturned the minute a Labor government gets back in, and will become self ID. Unless the tide has turned decisively in the UK and other similar countries.

I lived for decades in the US. They have fundies pulling for strict gender delimitations based on biology, so the trans movement hasn't gotten very far legally in much of the country.

Politically though, outside the fever swamps, everybody is so woke their brains have fallen out. For a place that in the 1970s, and even into the 1980s, was developing a pretty good understanding of women's rights, they have lost the plot.

The situation is complicated by the Dump pandering to anti-trans fundies, so the entire centre and left has to stampede into woke disagreement with him.

I remember hearing a few months back that Italy was banning puberty blockers?
No I don't think this is correct. This year a puberty blocker has been approved for use on the NHS - before you had to pay for it unless it was prescribed for cancer treatment. I have read that they expect it to be prescribed for fewer than 100 kids a year though.

I'm a Brit so can't help that much with this conversation, but I thought I'd post this critical Swedish documentary about ROGD and detransitioners (has English subtitles). It shows something of what is going on in Sweden - mostly it looks very similar to here, although the documentary talks of a proposed bill to allow 15 year olds to have sex reassignment surgery.

This is the second part - the first part was posted on this board previously and featured a woman called Sameti.

www.svtplay.se/video/24853942/uppdrag-granskning/uppdrag-granskning-sasong-20-the-trans-train-part-2

I'm a Brit living in Thailand and obviously the situation is very different here... it's actually a very conservative place (no same-sex marriage, no freedom of press, lots of focus on status and class) but with a huge 'industry' (for want of a better word) of ladyboys and a significant gay and lesbian culture (in Bangkok, not so much elsewhere).

I work in an international school and when the issue of sexuality and sexual identity came up recently in a meeting, I found myself having to lobby pretty hard for these to be considered two entirely separate issues. I also pushed firmly that any PSHE-type resources we might use, which normally we take from the UK, need to be carefully vetted. The instinct among staff here to 'affirm' the 'gender' of a teenage boy who presents as very feminine, when he has never mentioned pronouns or identity or any such thing, was pretty alarming for me.

Anyway, I watch the UK with interest and am relieved that my own children will not be indoctrinated or confused by the likes of Mermaids at school.

I also find the 'safe space' conversations interesting as it is totally normal here for ladyboys or transwomen to use female facilities and, weirdly, I have never questioned this or felt uncomfortable. And yet I have strong feelings on self-ID in the UK being a very worrying path, with safe spaces a chief concern. Is it perhaps because there's no political agenda attached to this issue here? I don't know. But it's interesting how my gut reaction to the whole issue is different here from the UK.

Canada here. There seems to be no institutional pushback around this at all. At this point it's about waiting to see what the fallout of C-16 is going to be as cases come before the courts. No political party is opposing any of it actively and three (of 4) are pushing it.

In Canada too. The only thing that is slightly better here v the UK is the state of police attitudes to this issue. They're not into policing thought crime here (yet!) On one of Meghan Murphy's podcasts she talked about having many complaints of hate speech against her, and the police actually reassuring her that nothing she has said/written on this issue can be considered as such. I'm sure that if MM lived in the UK she would have been investigated multiple times by now.

In Australia hete. It varies from state to state, but in the Australian Capital Territory where I live it's Woke Central. You can find out more about the law at the Human Rights Commission website: www.hrc.act.gov.au. (I just learned that it's illegal to wear clothing with writing disparaging people's "gender identities". Does that mean that I'd be hauled up in front of a judge if I wore one of Posie's "Woman=Adult Human Female" t-shirts?)

I think you've got that covered @JanesKettle. Transpeople are protected under anti-discrimination laws. NSW is the only state, I believe that does not have self i.d.

@Goosefoot Are the many cases coming to court?

Are the many cases coming to court?

So far, no. I expect it will take a number of years for the fallout to become clear, as it depends on the right kinds of situations to come up and someone to decide to push them through the courts.

People are surprisingly unaware of how these kinds of laws can fairly quickly create rulings that seem crazy now, it's the same with the new euthanasia laws. The assumption is they will play out as intended.

The only thing that is slightly better here v the UK is the state of police attitudes to this issue. They're not into policing thought crime here (yet!)

Yeah, that's interesting, I hadn't really thought of that element. The police and RCMP seem to be much more level headed than the political types.

I'm in one of the most liberal Middle East countries. Not surprisingly, there is none of the gender identity nonsense here. Loos/changing rooms are strictly segregated by sex. I can choose to go to mixed classes at my gym or women-only ones. It is illegal to impersonate a woman and men will face jail if they do.
Homosexuality is officially illegal but widely accepted/tolerated as long as people don't behave really outrageously in public (this is the same with hetero couples though - public displays of affection are not the done thing, except at hotels/resorts). Because of the relatively tolerant attitude to homosexuality, there's no pressure for gay males to 'transition'