I who may well be...

Law of Australia

2011-09-17T23:14:00.000+10:00

Panorama: Neither man nor woman: in future third generation in Australian passports indicating possible - Baden-zeitung.de

2011-09-17T23:00:00.000+10:00

Panorama: Neither man nor woman: in future third generation in Australian passports indicating possible - Baden-zeitung.de

Neither M nor F: Australians can tick the X box - Monsters and Critics

2011-09-17T22:35:00.000+10:00

Neither M nor F: Australians can tick the X box - Monsters and Critics

New Oz passport gender options on SameSame.com.au

2011-09-17T22:27:00.000+10:00

New Oz passport gender options on SameSame.com.au

Gender X | gaelick

2011-09-17T22:17:00.000+10:00

Gender X | gaelick

Red: "Non-Binary" Person Rejects Male/Female Gender Duality : Indybay

2011-07-19T00:43:00.000+10:00

Red: "Non-Binary" Person Rejects Male/Female Gender Duality : Indybay

The Transformation of Norrie-May Welby Part 1

2011-07-18T14:49:00.000+10:00

Package Deal

2011-01-01T21:49:00.001+11:00

My mother just sent me some drawings I did when I was 7, on the ship that brought our family to Australia in 1969. She reminded me of the exhibition they held of the children's drawings, and she thought mine had not been included, until she discovered the special room that had been dedicated to my artworks. I took it for granted, other children seemed very dull to me, and wasn't surprised that the art teachers had been so impressed with my productivity and artistic skill that they dedicated a special room to my artworks. "That's when I knew I had a genius on my hands", she told me today, when we talked by phone. Well, you kept that a secret for forty years, I thought, and remembered the battles between my parents and me, with them insisting on my obeying them, and me not seeing any reason to, for most of what they wanted from me seemed extremely uninteresting. And if they knew I was artistically talented, why did they periodically destroy my comic book collections? If they appreciated my intellect or talent, why did they abuse me for wanting to stay in my room writing and reading and drawing? It seemed they did everything to steer me away from my sensitive artistic nature, for fear that I would otherwise be more effeminate or gay. My parents were so scared of having a homosexual child that they put real efforts into opposing my nature, depriving me of affection for fear i was too sooky, refusing to compliment my intellectual achievements for fear this would give me a "big head", leaving me to think that in their eyes I was unwanted and useless.

But it's a package deal isn't it. The same people that passed on their emotional deficiencies to me also passed on the genes that made me such a clever clogs. If only they had risen above their homophobia and been accepting and supportive of my nature when I was a very young vulnerable child... But then I may not have had such a raging fire in my belly against discrimination based on sex or sexuality or gender expression, and a raging fire against stupid and unjustifed authoritarianism, nor be in a position to challenge the legal sex binary. I may have just been a well adjusted queen with a loving husband and a florist shop. But, as Judge Judy says, "If I would have had different parents, I would be six foot tall." The world needs people of varying heights, and it was my turn to be me, with all the antisocial quirks that also make me socially influential ;)

Greens MP David Shoebridge at Wikileaks rally

2010-12-10T22:20:00.000+11:00

see norrie red. see norrie see red. see norrie run. rip, norrie, rip.

Message to Anonops AKA Operation Payback

2010-12-10T16:05:00.000+11:00

States to consider rights of genderless people

2010-12-09T00:49:00.000+11:00

http://www.smh.com.au/national/states-to-consider-rights-of-genderless-people-20101208-18pxg.html

States to consider rights of genderless people

Sean Nicholls

December 9, 2010

THE need for a national approach to legal recognition of ''genderless'' people - who identify as neither male nor female - will be raised by the NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, at a meeting of his state and territory counterparts in Canberra tomorrow.

The issue was highlighted in the Herald in March through the story of Norrie, a genderless Sydneysider who has battled the state bureaucracy for the right to be recorded as ''sex not specified'' on official documents.

Norrie, who was born in Scotland, became the first person in NSW to be neither man nor woman in the eyes of the state government after he was issued with a Recognised Details Certificate containing the notation.

It was issued after two doctors agreed that Norrie, who was born male but had gender reassignment surgery and now prefers not to identify as either sex, was physically and psychologically androgynous.

But the certificate - which may be provided by the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages to immigrants who have changed their sex and want it recorded - was later ruled invalid.

''The case of Norrie earlier this year highlighted that some people wish to identify as having an unspecified sex," Mr Hatzistergos said.

He noted that a report last year by the Australian Human Rights Commission recommended that an adult should be allowed to choose to have an unspecified sex recorded on official documents and records.

''This is a very complex area of social policy with very significant legal and practical implications on a national scale,'' he said.

A ''sex not specified'' classification could potentially raise difficulties for governments in areas such as marriage, which is defined in legislation as being between a man and a woman.

Other areas for discussion may include placement in aged care, hospital rooms, emergency refuges and prison, as well as the issue of security protocols such as body searches.

Norrie, who welcomed the move to raise the issue at the meeting, has lodged an appeal against the decision of the registry with the Administrative Decisions Tribunal and expects a decision within months.

Frank & Desdemona are beautiful

2010-12-06T16:09:00.000+11:00

Norrie and Annie - Still Fierce 2010 (Imagine)

2010-11-25T01:23:00.000+11:00

norrie plays guitar

Saints and Miracles

2010-10-18T13:28:00.002+11:00

Even if there is no God, there is an ethical imperative to treat all other people known and unknown as equally valuable as ourselves as created by our mutual creator, whether you give that a name or just see it as the unknown forces or principles creating and shaping our universe.

"God" for me is a easier word for "the unknown forces or principles creating and shaping our universe". It is not unreasonable to believe that as my thoughts shape my emotions and movements and other people's reactions to me, and other people's reactions to them, my prayers or thoughts may have effects beyond the rationally predictable (limited by our limited knowledge of reality).

As i understand it, Catholics don't actually pray to saints like they were gods or demigods, but to use them as a focussing aid, like imagining a good friend with you, or humming Ohm, to communicate with what you can of the principles behind your ongoing creation.

How can there be miracles, when bad things happen? This is quibbling about detail. I've never met anyone, no matter how clever, who has built a better universe than this one, with all it's earthquakes and cancers and wars and whatever. I don't understand the fine tuned balance of where we are in the quantum creation of time and space and matter and energy, so I see all of existence as miraculous.

Lovely moment in today's smh, next to the headline "Rudd: I believe in miracles", a photo of three political adversaries, Barnaby Joyce straightening Kevin Rudd's jacket, while Julie Bishop oversees this intimate adjustment.

Focussing on where the glass is half empty may give keener detail, but make you feel thirstier. Looking on it as half full gives greater happiness. As always, the choice is yours ;)

Fred Nile's Worst Nightmare

2010-09-28T22:52:00.001+10:00

Declassification

2010-09-21T01:21:00.000+10:00

Declassification

by norrie mAy-welby

Humans have done a lot of classifying of each other in order to exploit each other. It's hard to eat someone if they are classified the same as you, but the moment you class your own tribe as human and those of other tribes as not so human, you have a lot more food available.

Those of the ruling class, the inheritors of those who thieved the right to a free livelihood from your ancestors, benefited from the division of labour of those working in their factories and those rearing the next generation of employees.

But this classification is not respectful of human dignity.

I was four years old when I realised my mother was utterly absurd in claiming I could not play with my cousin's dolls. My cousin was classed as a girl, while I was classed a boy. The unseen physical difference between us seemed irrelevant to me, especially compared to the power gap between both of us and the monstrous adults. My mirror neurons told me there was nothing essentially different between me and my cousin. The adults I was physically dependent on made many ridiculous attempts to enforce a normative sex classification onto me, from smacking me for crying, to not allowing me to learn typing. Their slavish devotion to sex roles did not give me a high level of respect for their intelligence.

When I became interested in sex, I realised it was illegal for me, thanks to the classification system and the prohibition against same-sex sex. Many of those prohibitions have now been repealed, in many western countries at least, thanks to the tireless work of many people who actively believed in social justice. Marriage, however, remains forbidden for those classed as same sex, even in this supposedly relatively enlightened country, while homosexuality is actively prosecuted in many countries we trade with.

The enforcement of prohibitions based on sex classification creates a slave class of women in fundamental and sexist societies, victimises people classed as same sex attracted, and butchers babies who don't fit the standard sex classifications until they do fit, after years of invasive surgeries to their genitals as children, and the administration of animal or synthetic sex hormones often without the child's knowledge or consent.

The binary breaks down in so many places, but those in charge of the armed forces in society go to excessive measures to paper over the cracks in their delusion that everyone is of one of two classes of human. People are allowed to change gender, but only to transition neatly and unambiguously from one of the two main classification to the other. Transsexuals have their new sex paid for and recognised by the state in Iran, while homosexuals have a wall pushed on them, all to remove evidence of any space between or variation from masculine males and feminine females.

I bought the binary lie for a while, decades ago, when I was diagnosed as transsexual and prescribed synthetic and horse hormones, and had a sex change op, but of course, it did not change my reproductive sex from male to female, merely remove reproductive sex, and give me an androgynous physique, which, as it turns out, suits my androgynous psyche.

I am sick of the lies, and the crimes carried out to support the lies, that everyone is male or female. I petitioned the authority claiming to be the government of New South Wales to recognise that I exist as an adult without being specifically male or female. (I qualify their claim to be a government, as almost ever system I encounter is governed by forces and principles other than the humans who claim to be in charge of them. So-called "governments" do not govern either my breath or the sunrise, and their claimed authority is but vaingloriousness.)

This government initially recognised my sex classification to be unclassifiable in binary terms, "Non specific", as the medical authorities certified, "Not Specified" as the government issued certificate stated. When others discovered this case when I went public after a month, they thought about the consequences for their systems so dependent on an enforcement of the fictitious sex binary, and claimed the certification had been made in error, for even the people who changed their whole computer system to issue my certificate apparently now realise people can only ever be male or female, regardless of any conflicting evidence.

It's too late to stop the idea now. The genie is out of the bottle, and the sky didn't fall or society grind to a halt in the month I had my certificate and changed my sex to "Not Specified" with various other state and federal government agencies and my financial institution. It was not just the result of my own efforts either, for it was the result of years of education and activism by many against the tyrannies of imposing a compulsory sex binary on everybody. Other people and groups around the world are calling for similar freedom from an imposed lie.

No matter what or how much I have to do to proceed this legally, I will win my case again sooner or later. I have nothing to lose, save the stain on the soul from agreeing to a lie that makes many people miserable and turns infants into medical experiments. This is an idea whose time has come. Like abolishing slavery two hundred years ago, and ending the prohibition on women voting a hundred years ago, and ending the criminalisation of same sex sex thirty years ago, it is time to stop insisting that every human be classified male or female and given different privileges based on how they and their personal relationships fit a clearly opposing sex scheme, and well past time to stop butchering babies to fit into one of two approved roles.

Civilisation requires that we agree that every human has equal rights, and not impose with the state apparatus the various old power un-sharing schemes that may have been better than the even worse regimes they replaced, but are still an offense to human dignity.

confessions of an appellant

2010-08-28T17:38:00.000+10:00

When I was in court last week, i didn't need my reading glasses, even for the tiny print in the wads of previous legal judgements the Crown Solicitor sprang on me without warning. I was like an owl looking for a mouse in a field at night, when its chicks will starve if it can't find the mouse, that mouse was toast :)

My favourite challenge was to a judge's statement that the "assumption" of the law is to establish whether people are male or female, an assumption the Respondent had to admit had no other basis in law other than it being said by a judge, and the judgment that 'Most people are male or female", which strongly implies and certainly allows that not all are.

Anyway, for a fleeting moment I wondered if I could be a lawyer, but I really only have these amazing skills when the matter animates my whole being, when it's so crucial and important to everything I believe in and am connected to and am part of...

I don't know which side the Crown Solicitor is really on, as their case studies support my case, revealing for example a person found to be not male, but not established as female, thus proving a non-specified sex to be a legal fact, not an inconceivable possibility, and their argument seems to be that the law acknowledges there are "people of indeterminate sex", and "surgery to correct or eliminate ambiguity", but that changing or registering sex is only ever to establish a person as having a legal status of male or female, with no other options allowed in law, although apparently recognisable by the law in reality, but not in any actual individual's legal documention, for fear of the consequences for a society with so much legislated sexism.

Yes, it's out there, they were the first to talk consequences, so I admitted there could be challenges, but insisted it was the job of the law in this case to establish the truth, no matter if that makes life more interesting or not for some parties.

By my side was Tracie O'Keefe, also picking up pertinent points and challenging a fictional binary that medical science has destroyed. Tracie actually is English, but I picked up the accent in elocution lessons when I was a child, and there were moment when I thought we sounded like a pair of court scene Quentin Crisps.

Anyway, the troops are rallying, one of the architects of the Transgender and Other Amendments Act of 1996 turned up as we came out of court, and they are now researching the Hansard to show the inclusive intention of parliament when it passed the relevant laws, and we have an appointment with a barrister who had been caught up as a candidate in the election that's finally over on Saturday, won't that be good?

There may not be another court date, it all depends on what the Tribunal makes of the written legal submissions each side now makes with regard to the intent of the meaning of sex in the legislation, does it only mean male or female, is non-specific an acceptable status of sex, can there be no other status of sex than "male" or "female" (on a planet where most sexually reproducing lifeforms are hermaphrodites), and when is a neuter not a neuter?

Laters ;)

submission to Administrative Decision Tribunal 18 August 2010, Norrie V Registrar Births Deaths and Marriages

2010-08-28T17:35:00.000+10:00

These are the notes I made for an oral submission to the court, but somehow that's not how the Tribunal does things, and they silently read my notes instead. (the matter has been held over for further written submissions from each party, due in six weeks)

----------------------------------------

How I come to be here is a little confusing, as the Respondent has already complied with my wishes, and extensively documented how they made those changes, and I am left with no real understanding of why they have been persuaded to insist their every move before the case went public was not just a mistake but indeed a series of consecutive failures to properly administer the law by not one but at least three senior people working in the department of law and justice (ie the Births Deaths and Marriages Registrar, the Manager of Amendments Section of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and the Policy Advisor from the Attorney General's department.) I thank the Respondent for making the right decision in the first place, and for the evidence they have provided for my case in their submissions.
The Respondent's first submission dated 29 April, tab 16, shows the proper steps taken to issue my certificate. STEP THRU THE PROCESS DOCUMENTED BY THE RESPONDENT
As the Respondent points out, sex according to the Oxford English Dictionary is not just male or female but may also be a third option, or third sex, consisting of (a) eunuchs and transsexuals, to quote the pertinent clause. There is an attempt in the submission made on behalf of the Respondent (2 July 2010, paragraph 40) to present this as a straw man argument, in claiming that the source is a historical dictionary, however, "transsexual" is a current term, coined in 1947, hardly Shakespearean but modern times, and indeed in modern use, as is the concept of "third sex", or a third alternative to the more common two categories of sexes, still part of modern language and understanding, as it was when the Transgender laws of 1996 were passed.
The Act talks about intersex people, directly and unambiguously implying an understanding that people can be, and can be legally recognised to be, other than strictly male or female.
Further, the Act talks about "correcting or eliminating ambiguities", directly and unambiguously implying that there is a space between correcting and eliminating ambiguities, allowing for a person to be other than 100% male or 100% female. And indeed, this is the part of the Act that applies to me, for I had surgery to correct or eliminate any ambiguity about my sex being, in the framework of male or female, non specific, that is, in the terms agreed to by the Australian Human Rights Commission, and by the Respondent, prior to the change of opinion generated by the Crown Solicitor's Office now representing them, sex not specified.
The legislation in section 32A confirms that a sex affirmation procedure includes not only changing a persons sex from one gender to another, but importantly also correcting or eliminating ambiguities relating to the sex of the person. This second element of the definition of sex affirmation procedure is relevant to my case in that the statutory declarations of Doctors Kearley and Schultheiss evidence that as a result of my sex affirmation procedure I am unambiguously not male or female, but rather have a sex status that has been affirmatively described as "non specific."
The form issued by the Respondent for medical certification in this matter has the phrase "male" stroke "female" in brackets as a guide for completing doctors, but of course this is not proscriptive, in giving the usual options, and the form does not ask the doctor to cross out or circle one of only two possible options, but gives open space for the doctor to certify what sex the subject is, perhaps with reference to the normal sex categories, and in accordance with the form and the Act and the regulations, my doctors certified the truth of my sex in this part of the form as "Non-Specific", which is, in terms of male or female, what I am. It is absurd to insist, as the Respondent does in their submission, that because a form gives a suggestion, this suggestion is proscriptive. The Respondent took a much more reasonable view of this in the time before the Crown Solicitor's Office suddenly decided it had all been a horrible mistake after it hit the front page.
It is a plain and straightforward matter: I have been neutered, I am neuter. This is not Spanish, this is not a new post-modern language or some ancient historical curiosity, this is the plain English reality of my sex. Neuter, not one or the other, to use the root meaning of the word, in Middle German, "ne itter" that is, Not Other, or Not Either. Non-Specific, to use the phrase used by the doctors in certifying the sex I am as a result of the surgery that, in neutering me, eliminated any ambiguity about my sex being neuter. "Not Specified", to use the phrase agreed to by the Respondent before they arranged to change their entire computer system to accommodate the acknowledged reality of a third sex option. The Respondent's entire case at this point seems to be the insistence by repetition that the only acceptable answers to the question of what sex a person can be are "male", or "female", and no other answers are permissible, although they sang an entirely different song before they issued the certification. Against this is the simple fact of my sex being non-specific, as you may plainly see, and as certified by the doctors, and indeed, after much consideration and consultation, by the Respondent, prior to their change of heart after what the Attorney General described to parliament as "media ventilation".
Three sex categories have been recognised by the International Civil Aviation Organization since 1947, M for Male, F for Female, and < for Unspecified
It is an accepted principle of law, as i understand it, that that which is not prohibited is permissible. There is no prohibition against ambiguity of sex in the Act, and indeed it explicitly recognises the possibilities of there being ambiguities, and of having those ambiguities corrected or eliminated. That the form produced under the regulations of the act has a suggested framework of firstly indicating that a person has had surgery to correct or eliminate ambiguity, and then separately stating what the new sex is, allows for a variety of results. In my case, I had surgery to correct or eliminate any ambiguity about me being androgynous, and as a result, my actual sex is not specific, that is, in the framework of male or female, it is not specifically either. Before the surgery the reality was that I was intersex, but perceived as biologically male, and to correct this, I had my testes removed, and I am now, therefor, by definition, and by self identification, and by how I am seen in my community, a eunuch. Neuter, androgynous, eunuch, third sex, non specific sex, there are indeed, contrary to the Respondent's submission, many ways in modern current English to conceive of people who are not strictly male or female. The phrase recommended by the Australian Human Rights Commission in the Sex Files Report (previously tendered in evidence) is “Sex not specified”, and the Respondent initially dealt with my request in line with the recommendations of this report. I note the Respondent was represented at the launch of the Sex Files Report, as noted in the Australian Human Rights Commission Annual Report previously tendered in evidence. They clearly took the recommendations made in that report as to how to accommodate people like me that are "sex not specified" in accepting my request, correcting their computer system, and issuing my certification.
The case was dealt with in a plain and straightforward manner to start with, and proceeded in a plain accountable way through the verification of my details with the doctors, the consultation with the Policy Advisor verifying that my application complied with the Act, the approval of my application by both the Manager of Amendments and the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registrar, and the department wide change to the computer system to accommodate this third sex status. There is no lawful cause preventing the recognition of my sex as "Not Specified", and every reason to uphold the original decisions to issue my certification as requested, and to reject the Respondent's post-publicity assertion that, in a Act that deals with changes of sex and with intersex people and with "correcting or eliminating ambiguities", my sex cannot possibly be other than male or female. Well it is, doctors have certified such, the Respondent has recognised such, and, it is the reality.
By not acknowledging my status as ‘Sex Not Specified’, as attested by the doctors, the Respondent is soliciting me to act in a fraudulent manner in my everyday dealings by encouraging me to mislead people about my sex status. The Respondent cannot reject the medical evidence. They say they do not know what sex I am but they have the medical evidence which they accepted. To paraphrase the judgment handed down in the case of In Re Kevin ( documented at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/family_ct/2003/94.htmls) , a federal case that illustrates how legal identification of sex is done where one's adult sex may be at variance with what's documented at birth,

12. (a) I have always perceived myself to be of non specific sex;

(b) I have long been perceived by those who knew me to be of non specific sex;

(c) I have had a full process of sex re-assignment, involving removal of sex-hormone producing organs and irreversible surgery, conducted by qualified medical practitioners;

(d) In appearance, characteristics and behaviour, I am perceived as androgynous, that is, as a person of non-specific sex, by my family, friends and work colleagues;

(e) I have been accepted as a person of non-specific sex for a variety of social and legal purposes, including my drivers license, issued by the state authority, my bank, St George, and Centrelink, a federal department.

This is the reality of my ordinary everyday life.

14) This case is not about the right to choose. It is about a medical reality and the right to have documents that reflect that medical reality.

15) The law allows for the recognition of my legal identity with my sex status stated as "Not Specified", as the Respondent initially, and after careful consideration and much process, agreed in the certification they issued, and I urge you to uphold that recognition and certification. Thank you.

UK might follow Aussies to recognise non-specific gender - PinkPaper.com

2010-07-20T02:20:00.000+10:00

UK might follow Aussies to recognise non-specific gender - PinkPaper.com

Norrie performs at QC Wolongong

2010-07-13T18:18:00.000+10:00

The happy eunuch, story from Sun Herald by Steve Dow

2010-06-29T14:56:00.001+10:00

The happy eunuch
Posted 27 June 2010
http://www.stevedow.com.au/default.aspx?id=511
On a Sydney hospital operating table on April 3, 1989, between the hours of 2pm and 4pm, Scotland-born, Perth-raised Norrie, then aged 27, ceased to have a penis when the appendage was inverted to a vagina.

Back then, Norrie identified as “transsexual” – a woman born inside a man’s body – but these days the 49-year-old is a self-described “happy eunuch” and, yes, still has nerve endings below.

“My youngest sister was clearest about me,” recalls Norrie, sitting in a busy, cluttered lounge at home in Redfern, having fled Perth for Sydney in 1988 to escape persecution.

“She would say, ‘Some people are girls, and some people are boys. Norrie’s a mix; if you can understand ‘girl’ and ‘boy’, you can understand Norrie’.”

Living as a boy, Norrie had changed his middle sister’s nappies in the family’s Perth home when she was a baby; the experience “taught me unconditional love”.

In turn, for most of their lives now, siblings Heather and Moira have seen Norrie, who had been on female hormones since age 23, in 1985, as their eldest sister.

While their mother Marion accepted Norrie’s fluid identity, Norrie’s late father, a plumber by trade, “said he accepted me as his child but still had some funny judgements”.

Dressed today in a cool, multicoloured tie-dye outfit, hair piled high and pushed to the side, Norrie deliberately confuses notions of fixed gender identity.

The hormones ceased years ago – evidenced by Norrie’s flat chest – while the higgledy-piggledy adopted surname, mAy-welby, is both a pun and a clever evasive retort to questions of: What are you?

The mostly lower-case surname letters are the form their owner has used since creating a chat handle in the early days of the internet, a place where, from the beginning, you could be whoever you wanted to be; the capital “A” might well stand for anarchy.

“Well, it’s to rearrange capital,” Norrie offers with a subversive smile, “put it in the middle for a fairer distribution”.

Gender ambiguity might threaten some people, but it opens some doors: “Although I may use the ladies’ loos for convenience,” says Norrie, “I use the men’s change rooms at the pool if I am with gay male friends”.

No account of Norrie’s story can get too far without making some grammatical decisions. While some people fighting Norrie’s cause to be legally recognised as neither male nor female employ gender-neutral pronouns such as “hir” or “zhe”, Norrie, to make communication easier, is personally comfortable being referred to as “her” and “she”.

That’s a curiously conciliatory gesture, given Norrie has taken the NSW Government to the federal Human Rights Commission for allegedly breaching the United Nations Charter on Human Rights after the Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, told State Parliament that a recognised details certificate declaring Norrie’s “sex not specified” had been “issued in error”.

Katrina Fox, editor-in-chief of www.thescavenger.net/, the online magazine that broke the news the certificate had been issued – and who favours gender-neutral pronouns – has known Norrie nearly a decade, describing “hir” as “an articulate, colourful, intelligent and passionate person willing to put hir neck on the line and speak out about being different”.

Norrie is the first Australian to have been issued with a non gender-specific identification document in replacement of an existing birth certificate, albeit briefly. In 2003, another androgynous person, Alex MacFarlane, was issued an Australian passport identifying the holder as neither male nor female but as X.

Such instances are rare anywhere in the world. A couple of countries, notably India, have in recent years begun offering a non-gender specific option on passport applications, while Nepal has reportedly issued at least one non gender-specific identity card to a citizen.

But Hatzistergos told the NSW Parliament in March that after the news of Norrie’s certificate being issued was “ventilated” in the media, his department’s director-general had discussed the matter with the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriage.

Legal advice then obtained from the Crown Solicitor stated “that the registrar may only issue a recognised detail certificate or a new birth certificate following a change of sex in either male or female gender”.

In other words, Norrie would be forced to choose an identity, and couldn’t occupy the middle ground.

The Attorney-General added he was “advised that the registrar could request a return of the certificate … [given] it was issued in error, but has determined in the circumstances that he does not propose to take this action, although he has advised Norrie that the certificate is invalid”.

What does Norrie’s case mean for society as a whole? “Well, the sky didn’t fall in during the days Norrie had the ‘sex not specified’ document,” says Katrina Fox. “Hir fight will mean that the growing numbers of people who do not conform to binary sex or gender models will no longer be afraid to speak out about who they are.

“Hopefully, this will lead to a broader understanding of sex and gender identity and concepts of man and woman and masculinity and femininity, and evolve us as a species.”

Norrie could not have foreseen becoming the poster person for gender fluidity. Born in the rough town of Paisley on May 23, 1961, Norrie’s family fled “classist” Scotland for a better life in a place said to be more egalitarian, Australia.

Arriving in Perth aged seven, in 1968, it was a lonely childhood at times. “I used to tie long ribbons from my hair and pretend I had girly features, girly hair. When no one was looking, I’d skip and jump…

“I was fairly isolated from other kids, often had my head in a book. But you get that,” Norrie laughs. “If you’re at a certain end of the distribution curve in terms of intelligence, there might not be that many people you want to talk to.”

On arriving in Sydney, Norrie stayed in a refuge for transsexual people, finding camaraderie and acceptance, but Norrie wrote in autobiographical notes published on the web that wider society could still be dangerous: “In the ‘straight world’, I was treated as a liar if I did not reveal my transsexuality, and a pariah if I did.

“I was abused by men, sometimes for being a transsexual, often for just being female. I was taken from a nightclub by five guys who, unaware of my transsexual status, raped me. All this happened within the first year of changing sex. I stopped going to straight nightclubs. I no longer wanted to live as a normal heterosexual woman.”

An epiphany would come when staring into a campfire in 1992 at the Confest hippie festival at Tocumwal, wondering what identity to adopt in the world. Norrie came up with the term “spansexual”; the term is intended to bridge divisions between gender, gender identity, sexual preference or orientation.

And Norrie’s own sexuality? “I’d be the perfect androgyne if I was completely omnisexual, but I’m only monosexual. Just think of me as a big queen girl.”

That doesn’t narrow matters down too much: seven years ago, Norrie had intended getting married to a man, which all sounds quite conventional – had the law accepted Norrie as female, of course, which would have been contestable given others had known Norrie as androgynous for so long, and had the relationship not petered out.

“We had a commitment ceremony, and I viewed that as an engagement, but the relationship fell apart very quickly after that, so I’m glad I didn’t take measures to legalise it. It wasn’t the time. Dodged the bullet!”

For some years, Norrie worked as a prostitute along William Street. What did those experiences glean about human identity and sexuality? “That it’s very broad and flexible and adjustable. People adjust to what they find when they’re horny and wanting some human companionship.”

In her 1994 book Gender Outlaw: on Men, Women and the Rest of Us, US author Kate Bornstein, who also underwent gender reassignment surgery from male to female, suggests eliminating gender as a system given it limits people’s sexuality as well as their identities.

Bornstein adds this idea frightens people because, if they are sexually attracted to someone whose gender is ambiguous, what does that attraction make them?

Does Norrie think Bornstein’s idea is a good one? “I think it’s a good idea to eliminate it as a system, as a trap, [but] I don’t think you can eliminate gender [all together] because everyone’s got gender and expresses it between each other and it varies from time.

“Sometimes I might feel girly, like throwing on makeup, or doing feminine things. Other times I might feel like doing masculine things.

“If you meet someone that relates to you in a feminine or masculine way, you may adjust how you relate to them. Your gender shifts; there is gender – there’s just a quality that shifts, like yin and yang; it’s not something that should be nailed to us like jam jars, that that’s how we’re labeled.”

Will we really “evolve” as a less rigidly defined species, as Fox suggests? “I think it’s inevitable,” says Norrie. “Society does change. A couple of hundred years ago, a lot of us thought slavery was OK. One hundred years ago, a lot of us thought women not having the vote was OK. Times change.

“Race used to be part of our legal documentation, our religious denomination used to be part of our identity; that’s shifted. You didn’t used to be allowed to be openly gay. It’s illegal to discriminate against someone who is transgender. Now I hope the UN will uphold my complaint and find it’s illegal to discriminate against someone who has no specified sex.”

Facebook | Your Videos: Norrie on German TV April 2010

2010-04-16T00:09:00.000+10:00

Facebook | Your Videos: Norrie on German TV April 2010

Thursday, Mar. 18, 2010 - Quotes of the Day - TIME.com

2010-03-31T00:05:00.000+11:00

Thursday, Mar. 18, 2010 - Quotes of the Day - TIME.com

The concepts of man or woman don't fit me.

NORRIE MAY-WELBY,
who became the first person in the world to be classified as genderless after officials in New South Wales, Australia, altered May-Welby's birth certificate to specify the neutral gender

the most famous androgynous freak in the world

2010-03-30T06:00:00.001+11:00

My God, I may be the most famous androgynous freak in the world, and not just for now, but for a long time, with scholars and such, at least, in Gender Studies as a footnote, and I can do talk shows if I have a book to do a book tour with, and i have a huge back catalog of stuff but really if I'm not too appallingly lazy I can kick out a 500 word article once a week, and my goodness there will actually be an audience for my ravings on ethics, interconnectedness, happiness and storytelling, language and feeling, comic books and cosmic narcissism, scotch and diet coke thanks.

Not only that, but I will be so famous with students of gender studies and social change and all that, that there actually WILL be someone willing to sort out the huge pile of newspaper and magazine cuttings I've been too bone lazy to even paste into a scrapbook in the last (cough cough) ten years.... OTOH it's a good thing I've been prolific, for those keen on such things, and geez, I hope some of it gets more attention than the more depressive dribblings on one of my blogs (which is where I confess to being a founding member of the Manic Depressive Society at uni, but that's cos we figured all uni students were by nature of exams and partying with uni students, alternatively very stressed/unhappy or very gruntled/happy. I mean, here is where I confess thar, not there, in that blog, which i was momentarily tempted to take down or censor, but that would be bad karma, i reckon,so whatever, I write/draw/sing/whatever, you choose whatever tickles your fancy or sticks in your brain).

I am an underachieving egomaniac's dream come true! I actually just got lucky! No, honestly, there are heaps of people in Sydney, and in Australia, and all around the world, working to remove gender barriers for the differently gendered or sexed or inclined, and many of them are like me in some way physically in between, or both, or neither, or whatever, yeah, in many different and beautiful ways, many sexy sexy ways ; )

I just got lucky in being in the right place at the right time with the right background and the right zeigeist and the right people to know... my goodness, little old me, 3 steps from the PM (via my mate Georgina Beyer former NZ MP, well, we shared a cigarette cough cough at a conference once, but she knows Helen (Clarke, former NZ PM), and Helen knows Kev...), and bless Greens Leader Lee Rhiannon, who knew me from the front lines at demos, and who not only turned up for my demo at the Human Rights Commission, but who actually asked a question about my case in parliament that very day! and bless the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, for asking serous questions of the AG, and I don't actually know Gordon Moyes, the reverand MP from Family First, who also supports my sex not specified status, but may the Goddess bless him too ; ) and forgive me for losing the plot to that sentence, but it is all a bit gasp overwhelming too

And of course it's not just a local phenomena, support and interest is worldwide, and it's a buzz to be able to serve such an important cause, and have such a boost to one's sense of meaningfulness and my god fulfilment except of course, the day I dream of will never come true, for my dream is totally equal and fair and loving treatment of everyone everywhere, from the housepets to the cartoonists, from sea to shining sea, and it is an ideal to focus on and move towards, not a target to despair of never reaching. Where there is progress, there is only a relatively small number who can see where we're going, or where we ought go, compared to those still obsessed by whatever rut they're in. So, blessed are the freaks, and me specifically, obviously : D

Ooh it's better than an E

Not an 80s E, maybe, but better than they are nowadays

Omigod I'm that old I just said that

Ha ha, that brings me down to earth lol

But jeez if this happened twenty years ago it'd be buried in a few weeks, instead of lasting forever on the internet, and I can publish anything without needing an audience of any size, unlike the old media so dependent on the economics of mass production, and it is easy to transmit virally, as indeed the ideas and memes I pass on are ideas and memes passed to me by friends who read Foucault (and I'm still too lazy to), or Quentin Crisp (who I read, and shared a docudrama with ; ) [sexing the label], and Asimov, oh, Isaac, and many great comic book writers and others.

Alright, time for my manic insomnia to wear off, and for me to dream of being Fallom making love with Daneel...

Goodnight and Jah bless, y'all

Commentary: Census doesn't fairly count transgender persons | McClatchy

2010-03-28T14:29:00.000+11:00

Commentary: Census doesn't fairly count transgender persons | McClatchy

By Kalil Cohen | The Progressive Media Project

All the advertising I have seen for the 2010 census has a unified message: We must all participate so we can count. However, some of us will be participating in this census, but will not be accurately counted.

On the 2010 census home page is "Portraits of America," a collection of short videos from an array of racially diverse Americans, including many immigrants. The tagline to the video states: "Make sure your story is captured as we make a new portrait of the nation."

While I support the inclusion of communities of color in census data collection, I am dismayed to see that similar efforts are not being made to include gender-variant communities, meaning people who are not only "male" or "female." The 2010 census form collects information on age, sex, race, ethnicity and living arrangements. In 2000, the census form was finally altered to allow participants to identify with all their racial and ethnic groups rather than being forced to choose only one. This gave the government much more complex and accurate data regarding U.S. residents.

Similarly, there needs to be a way to self identify one's sex beyond "male" or "female" on the census forms.

Sex, like race, is a complex category.

A person's sex includes hormones, chromosomes, and physical features, which may not neatly align as either male or female. As we saw last fall with world-class runner Caster Semenya, athletic boards have difficulty sometimes classifying people as male or female.

The reality is that there are not only two sexes, but these are still the only two options on the 2010 census form. This leaves people who fall outside the categories of "male" or "female" unable to identify themselves on the census. This prevents transsexual, transgender, intersex and other gender-variant individuals from accurately being counted by the 2010 census.

It is important for these communities to be counted accurately by the census not only to give us a true picture of our nation but also to allow gender-variant individuals to access the programs they need. Those programs depend on federal funding, and that funding level depends on how many people are counted.

For instance, in Los Angeles there are medical and educational services for transgender individuals that should receive federal funding based on the number of gender-variant county residents, a number that will not be collected by the 2010 census. Without the ability to mark our sex accurately on the census form, we are rendered invisible. We do not, in fact, count.

This has got to change by the 2020 census.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Kalil Cohen is a writer for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine. Readers may write to the author at: Progressive Media Project, 409 East Main Street, Madison, Wis. 53703; e-mail: pmproj@progressive.org; Web site: www.progressive.org. For information on PMP's funding, please visit http://www.progressive.org/pmpabout.html#anchorsupport.

This article was prepared for The Progressive Media Project and is available to MCT subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.

Norrie ready to battle with the govt

2010-03-23T23:18:00.000+11:00

Norrie ready to battle with the govt

Author:: Andrew M Potts
Posted:: Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) after NSW Births, Deaths and Marriages cancelled the “sex not specified” certificate it provided in February. Norrie received the certificate the day before the Mardi Gras parade and the story was picked up by news services around the globe when norrie went public last week.
But norrie received a phone call from Registrar Greg Curry on Tuesday last week, saying the certificate would be cancelled.
Norrie claims Curry said the backflip was a result of the Registry being pressured by the NSW Attorney General’s office.
However, Curry denies this, saying, “At no time did the registrar state or imply that the Attorney General or anyone else had pressured him to cancel the certificate”.
A Births, Deaths and Marriages spokeswoman told Sydney Star Observer that media interest in the case had not affected its decision.
Births, Deaths and Marriages would not confirm if it had received legal advice prior to issuing the certificate, but said subsequent advice determined it was unable to provide documents with anything other than “male” or “female” on them.
Norrie lodged the AHRC complaint last Thursday at its Sydney headquarters, accompanied by supporters and NSW Greens leader Lee Rhiannon.
Rhiannon later questioned Attorney General John Hatzistergos in Parliament — calling on him to release any legal advice given and to change the law in line with the Commission’s 2009 recommendation that a person over 18 years of age be able to choose an unspecified sex for legal purposes.
“This issue was ventilated in the media and a number of inquiries were made with my office,” Hatzistergos said in response.
“The Director General of my department discussed the matter with the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages and a decision was reached for legal advice to be obtained.
“I did not speak to the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. At no time did I or … anyone in my office make any direction to the registrar in relation to the decision that he took.”
Sex And Gender Education’s Dr Tracie O’Keefe said they would continue to support norrie’s obtaining a “sex not specified” legal identity through the courts.
The Registry has stopped short of demanding norrie return the certificate and recently issued norrie a change of name certificate with “sex not stated” on it.
Certificates marked “sex not stated” are provided to transsexuals who are undertaking a change of sex process — which norrie is not.
As a result, norrie has been left in limbo as to what norrie’s legal sex status is.
In the meantime, norrie’s case has drawn support from a surprising quarter. Family First NSW’s Dr Gordon Moyes MLC, told Sydney Star Observer, “A person like norrie who has undergone sexual alignment surgery should, as an adult, be allowed the choice of no gender.”

Norrie ready to battle with the govt - starobserver.com.au

2010-03-23T23:07:00.000+11:00

Norrie ready to battle with the govt - starobserver.com.au

SX cover story: Born identity

2010-03-22T14:49:00.000+11:00

Born identity

Written by Reg Domingo | 19 March 2010

Norrie made history by becoming the first person in NSW to be recognised as neither male nor female. But, in a surprise twist, the government has reversed its decision. Inside one person’s quest to be free of labels.
It’s mid-morning on a weekday in Sydney’s CBD, the lobby of the building that houses the Australian Human Rights Commission is calm, and Norrie, the person who, until recently, was the first in the New South Wales to be officially recognised as being neither male nor female, is sitting on the plush leather seat. Flanked by a small group of supporters, Norrie is relaxed and composed. But not for long. For in a few moments, Norrie is about to front the media to bring attention to a discrimination claim with the Human Rights Commission against the NSW Attorney-General’s office. The reason? The NSW Government’s back flip which, according the Norrie, was tantamount to being “socially assassinated”.
Norrie, 48, made headlines earlier this month when the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages issued a certificate recognising Norrie as being neither a man nor a woman. The document, a Recognised Details Certificate, indicated ‘not specified’ in the ‘sex’ field, making Norrie the first person in the state to be recognised as being sex/genderless.
Upon being granted the status, Norrie was elated. “I was surprised to get the certificate,” Norrie tells SX. “I was surprised to get the call from the registry office saying, ‘We’re going to give you what you want’.” Shortly afterwards, Norrie began approaching other government agencies to have their records revised.
But that all changed on Tuesday last week when Norrie was notified by the Births, Deaths and Marriages registrar, Greg Curry, that, following legal advice, the document was now deemed invalid. Norrie believes that the decision came as a result of “pressure from the top”.
“At the time, when I was notified, I felt absolutely devastated. I felt like they’ve killed me, like I’ve been socially assassinated. Suddenly, I’ve gone from the world’s first person with a ‘sex: not specified’ status to a fraud or an error they’ve just decided.”
“I don’t know what pressure the registrar is under,” Norrie, who prefers the pronoun zie, adds. “Maybe he’s got kids to feed, maybe he can’t stand up to the people ordering him around – I can’t judge. I just know that what he’s attempting to do is wrong and whoever is trying to make him do it is wrong, and my identity is what I say it is. The world knows who I am now.”

***

Norrie was born as a male in Scotland in 1961. Growing up in the town of Paisley, Norrie recalls a childhood that was “rough as guts”.
“The kids were murdering each other on the basis of who was Protestant and who was Catholic. There was a lot of violence. I didn’t hang around a lot of the kids at all.”
It was during this early stage that Norrie began identifying as androgynous. “As a child, I didn’t really identify much as a boy or a girl. In my head, I had fantasies. Sometimes, I was Supergirl, other times I was a Superboy. I didn’t stop and think I can’t pretend I’m Supergirl because I’m not a girl, in the same way I couldn’t stop and pretend I’m not Supergirl because I’m not from Krypton. And so, in my head, I was comfortable with characters of various genders and gender roles.” In the late 60s, Norrie’s family moved to Australia.
At university, a sense of freedom allowed Norrie to embrace being androgynous. But things took a sharp turn after university, when Norrie began working in the public sector. Discriminated against for being androgynous, Norrie suffered a nervous breakdown. While doing drag shows at a local gay hotel in Perth provided a welcome distraction, Norrie decided to take the next step. “I thought, maybe I’m happier as a woman. I certainly wasn’t happy being a man.”
In 1985, at the age of 23, Norrie began the road to transition and started to take hormones. Four years later, Norrie had surgery to become a woman. But two years later, Norrie decided to stop taking hormones, in an effort to experience a more natural state of being. “I started reading about feminism and started moving away from gender stereotypes. I liked climbing trees so why on earth should my identity be something I buy in the shops in a bottle? Why shouldn’t I just be who I am? I wanted to find that out without the pills from the shop. I just wanted to be me.”
Today, Norrie identifies as neuter, that is, one who belongs to neither sex. “You should be able to have a legal identity without having to say what your sex or sexuality is. Why should your rights be limited to what sex you have or what sex your partners have? It shouldn’t matter.”

***

For Norrie, what matters now is human rights.
The complaint lodged on Thursday at the Australian Human Rights Commission alleges that, in revoking the document, the NSW Attorney-General breached the Sex Discrimination Act and the United Nations Charter of Human Rights.
“Frankly, I can’t see how it’s even legally possible,” Norrie says. “I think the Attorney General’s department has broken the law.” (The NSW Attorney-General’s Department did not return repeated calls from SX).
“The NSW government has legally issued the documents,” said Tracie O’Keefe of the lobby and advocacy group, Sex and Gender Education. “They have no business to now change Norrie’s sex status without Norrie’s consent. No government has the right to change the sex status of any person without that person’s permission. We will fight them through the courts.”
Only time will tell what will happen. But Norrie is determined to see it through to the end.
“This idea has gone out there and the world has not ended,” Norrie adds. “Some people like the idea, some are threatened by it. Someone said I had a caused an earthquake, adding: ‘Do you realise what you’ve caused society?’ Well, yes I do! I’m trying to remove unfair discrimination. I’m trying to give everyone a space to be themselves and live their life without being tied down by a label that’s unnecessary.”

Norrie photographed for SX by John McRae.

Victory for intersex rights attacked

2010-03-21T20:09:00.000+11:00

Victory for intersex rights attacked

Rachel Evans, Sydney

20 March 2010

Two weeks ago, Norrie won the right to have “non gender specific” written on zie's (non-gendered pronoun) birth certificate.

A seasoned queer and refugee rights activist, Norrie spent two months going through the process with the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, and received the welcome news the night before Mardi Gras.

At 23, Norrie undertook hormone treatments and surgery to construct a vagina, receiving a gender recognition certificate as female. Norrie later came to feel that female was not right either, so ceased taking hormones and identified as neuter.

Norrie had confirmation from two doctors that zie could not be categorised as female or male; and zie filed the doctors’ assessments with the registry. The initial positive ruling of “non gender specific” was a huge win for the intersex (historically referred to as hermaphrodite) community who identify as neither men nor women.

On March 18, Norrie said: “One in 100 people display differences to male/female binary. That's a lot of intersex people. The decision meant I can travel without a sex on my documents: I am not a man or a woman but I have aspects of both.”

The registry’s decision may have been a world first. Norrie's victory was on the front cover of the Sydney Morning Herald, and featured in media in Russia, China, and Norrie’s birthplace of Scotland. Support was overwhelming, Norrie said.

“Thousands of people have contacted me world-wide to show their support: they support it because, just as race and religion used to be part of your legal identity, so too should sex be a thing of the legal identity past”, Norrie said.

However, the conservative Labor state government stepped in, and on March 16, Norrie received a telephone call from the registry telling zie it was going to try to rescind its decision, because of pressure from higher up in the government.

“A harassing call told me that there had been a ‘legal error’, and that the former decision was invalid and the certificate would be made invalid”, Norrie said. “I was devastated by the news.”

“The decision is a breach of human rights. It's a hideously humiliating position to find myself in and makes a mockery of my human rights. I feel violated by the attorney-general's office."

Sex and Gender Education (SAGE) campaigns for sex/gender-diverse people’s rights. SAGE believes the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2009 Sex Files Report influenced the registry’s original, progressive, decision. The report recommended: “Person[s] over the age of 18 years should be able to choose to have an unspecified sex noted on documents and records.”

Debate in the intersex community has erupted. In a March 17 Sydney Star Observer article, Gina Wilson from OII Australia (part of the international intersex organisation) wrote: “We think having ‘not specified’ on a child’s birth certificate will add to their burden.

“If this were a non-prejudiced society, it would be fair enough — but it’s not. Children struggle enough with a non-conforming body and the issues around that without having to struggle with a document that declares that to anybody who sees it.”

Wilson argued “it was adequate for parents to give intersex children unisex names and a temporary gender designation for documents as male or female until they are old enough to decide for themselves.”

In response to the registry’s back flip, Norrie, joined by SAGE, NSW Greens leader Lee Rhiannon, Community Action Against Homophobia, the Socialist Alliance and 15 other activists lodged a complaint on March 18 at the Human Rights Commission.

On March 18, ABC Online said attorney-general John Hatzistergos had denied he was behind the registry’s decision, when questioned by Rhiannon in parliament. But his director-general had discussed the matter with the registrar, and they’d decided to obtain legal advice.

Hatzistergos said: “Advice from the Crown solicitor is that the registrar may only issue a recognised details certificate or new birth certificate following a change of sex in either male or female gender.”

Norrie and supporters pledged to continue the fight for the “non gender specific” status.

Andalusia Gender Identity, Kim Perez, considers it necessary to establish a neutral sexual gender

2010-03-21T13:01:00.000+11:00

Andalusia Gender Identity, Kim Perez, considers it necessary to establish a neutral sexual gender

She has stated that this case notes that there are men, women and intersexed people, "but the laws have attempted to deny it," so now different partnerships aim to eliminate the sex of personal documents, such as in Spain where there is no difference in rights between different sexes.

The Association of Andalusia Gender Identity, Kim Perez, considers it necessary to establish a neutral sexual gender in Spain

This would include "about 10 percent of the population", for those who do not feel "comfortable "as male or female.

Perez noted in an interview with Efe that the British case of Norrie May-Welby, whom Australian authorities have granted the neutral gender, is "a recognition of a reality that is in all nations and all times".

She has stated that this case notes that there are men, women and intersexed people, "but the laws have attempted to deny it," so now different partnerships aim to eliminate the sex of personal documents, such as in Spain where there is no difference in rights between different sexes.

It considers that the Government should withdraw this aspect of the documents because there can be no "coding that forces people to be men or women". "Society is not used to acknowledging that we exist" added Perez, who hopes that eventually "there will be recognition of the fact that you can not hide", even if you have to accept "mockery, surprise or indignation".

She explained that for a long time "there has been censorship and inquisition" that has forced these people to hide, so that now "society will react with a huge surprise."

Perez said that it is nature "that makes people transgender or intersexual, which is normally discovered during the first insertion at school, where they see that they are not happy neither with one nor the other," so little by little you'll discover yourself, because nobody speaks of the intersexed.

Kim Perez has told EFE that the evolution in Spain in recent years "has been enormous and is a vanguard" which is moving towards a free society, and made reference to the important movement of associations, such as grenadine "fuzzy sets", which argues that there is "a very wide and natural range," where there are men, women, transgender and intersexual.

Australian government withdraws non-specified gender status

2010-03-20T02:57:00.000+11:00

Australian government withdraws non-specified gender status

By Jane Fae • March 19, 2010 - 14:32

Norrie mAy-welby was devastated at losing hir no-gender certificate

1 Comment on Australian government withdraws non-specified gender status

The Australian government has changed its mind about awarding a gender activist a status of "gender not specified".
Three weeks ago, Scottish-born Norrie mAy-welby achived a world first when zie was granted a Recognised Details Certificate giving hir gender as “not specified”.
Although recognised as male at birth, and later recognised, following gender reassignment, as a woman, Norrie did not feel comfortable living solely as a female.
Doctors declared zie could not be categorised as a male or female and the New South Wales registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages agreed in late February to grant the new certificate.
Neither Norrie nor the registrar were prepared for the worldwide interest which followed. On Tuesday, the registrar was back on the phone to Norrie to explain that they had made a mistake and that the certificate they had already issued was legally invalid.
This was confirmed in the NSW parliament yesterday, as NSW attorney-general John Hatzistergos announced that his office had made some inquiries about the certificate after the issue was "ventilated" in the media.
Mr Hatzistergos said: "The registrar may only issue a recognised detail certificate or a new birth certificate following a change of sex in either male or female gender".
Confusion still surrounds this decision, as Green MP Lee Rhiannon told PinkNews.co.uk today that the attorney general’s position is that NSW laws require that a person in this situation must have their sex stated as either male or female.
If this is the case, the registrar’s new certificate, which describes Norrie’s gender as “sex not stated” would also be illegal.
Norrie told AAP yesterday: "When I got the call on Tuesday I was absolutely devastated. I felt like I had been killed.
"My identity has gone all over the world … [now the] attorney-general's taking back what they sold to me."
Legal misunderstanding – or political back-covering? The NSW registrar, Greg Curry claims that Births, Deaths and Marriages were not forced to revoke the certificate.
In a statement issued this week, he said: "At no time did the registrar state or imply that the attorney-general or anyone else had 'pressured' him to cancel the certificate".
There are in fact two key issues at stake here. The first is the right of an individual not to be defined in state or other documentation by a gender they do not identify with. The second, more radical step, is to recognise a third way – a gender that is neither male nor female.
Speaking to PinkNews.co.uk, Norrie was clear that zie was campaigning for the first of these rights. Zie said: “I am not seeking to be recognised as without gender. Rather, I am looking for the state to recognise that who I am cannot be contained within the simple gender labels of either male or female.
"Depending on how one looks at it, biologically or behaviourally, I am either neither gender or a bit of both.”
Essentially, this argument as about what should be entered on legal documents. The NSW government appears to believe that it is not permitted in law to state anything other than male or female.
Lee Rhiannon, a Green MP in the NSW Upper House said: "The NSW government should act to implement a key recommendation of a 2009 Human Rights Commission report that a person over 18 should be able to choose to have an unspecified sex noted on documents and records."
This references a report – The Sex Files – issued last year by the Australian Human Rights Commission, which addressed the legal recognition of sex in documents and government records.
Ms Rhiannon continued: "If there is a problem with the law that stops the Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages from issuing such a certificate, the compassionate thing is for the NSW government to change the law to support Norrie and others in a similar situation.”
Jane Fae also writes at janefae.wordpress.com

NSW Parliament questions about Norrie

2010-03-19T09:09:00.002+11:00

from Hansard Thursday 18 march 2010

BIRTH CERTIFICATE SEX CLASSIFICATION

Ms LEE RHIANNON: I direct my question without notice to the Attorney General. Considering Norrie, an individual who doctors agree cannot be categorised as male or female, was given a certificate from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages that listed Norrie's sex as "not specified" and considering that Norrie has since received a letter on 16 March from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages stating that it did not have the power to issue certificates showing "not specified" in the sex field, will the Attorney publicly release the legal advice upon which this decision was made? What was the date of the legal advice? Was this legal advice sought before or after extensive media coverage of Norrie's case and if there is a problem with New South Wales laws that preclude Norrie being specified as "sex not specified", will the Attorney act to reform these laws, thereby implementing recommendation 5 of the March 2009 Human Rights Commission Report entitled "The Sex Files" that recommends a person over the age of 18 years should be able to choose to have an unspecified sex noted on documents and records?

The Hon. JOHN HATZISTERGOS: I am very proud of the fact that I sponsored and introduced into this House the Courts and Crimes Legislation Amendment Bill, which amended the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act to enable people who were resident in New South Wales but were born overseas and had a sex affirmation procedure to obtain legal recognition of their change of sex. That was legislation that I sponsored into this Parliament and which was passed. It has enabled people who were born overseas to have a sex affirmation procedure, to have it registered and to have a relevant identification document. They can then use that document when applying for passports, having medical treatment, and dealing with police, emergency care workers and hospital staff, seeking emergency accommodation or Centrelink benefits and representations to financial institutions and insurance companies.

This issue was ventilated in the media and a number of inquiries were made with my office. I can advise that my office sought further information in relation to the matter the member has raised. Following those inquiries being made, the director general of my department discussed the matter with the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages and a decision was reached for legal advice to be obtained in relation to the matter. My office was advised of that legal advice, as I understand it, on Monday. The registrar then rang Norrie and advised him of the decision which the member has referred to. I did not speak to the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. At no time did I or, I am advised, anyone in my office make any direction to the registrar in relation to the decision that he took. This was made clear in advice from the registry, which states:

Advice received from the Crown Solicitor is that the registrar may only issue a recognised detail certificate or a new birth certificate following a change of sex in either male or female gender. The registrar accepts this advice and has directed that any applications for recognised detail certificates or changes of sex comply with this advice.

In relation to the certificate already issued to Norrie, I am advised that the registrar could request a return of the certificate under section 59 (3) (d) of the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act since it was issued in error, but has determined in the circumstances that he does not propose to take this action, although he has advised Norrie that the certificate is invalid. I am not aware of any jurisdiction in Australia that, at the moment, captures the specific issue the member has raised. I would need to obtain further advice as to the policy issues and the impact of any change of policy. Ultimately any decision to enact a change to the legislation to facilitate that to occur would require the concurrence of the Parliament.

Gendered world

2010-03-19T08:58:00.000+11:00

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2010/2850199.htm

Gendered world

listen now | download audio

We live in a world defined by gender, so identifying yourself as non gender specific is one-hell of a journey. But that is the journey Norrie May Welby has embarked upon. Norrie was the first person to be officially recognised in New South Wales as neither man nor woman. This month Norrie was granted a 'sex not specified' certificate by the Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages but this week the certificate was cancelled leading to considerable confusion and anger.

Gender Bender laps up zer attention!

2010-03-19T02:27:00.000+11:00

http://www.paisleydailyexpress.co.uk/renfrewshire-news/2010/03/18/gender-bender-laps-up-zer-attention-87085-26054126/

Gender Bender laps up zer attention!

Mar 18 2010 by Andy Newport, Paisley Daily Express

THE gender-bender Buddie who has become the first person ever to be officially recognised as neither male nor female has revealed they LOVE the Paisley Daily Express!
Paisley-born Norrie May-Welby, 48, hit the headlines after she or he – Norrie prefers the term zie – was granted the classification “Person of No Specific Gender” by Australian officials.
The story quickly spread round the world and Norrie – who had a sex change op at 28 but decided zie didn’t want to live as a woman – has been lapping up the attention.
Now living in Sydney, Norrie’s Facebook site has been bombarded with messages of congratulation from supporters.
Zie even used the site to express delight after every Buddies’ favourite paper picked on zer – another gender-neutral pronoun zie likes to use – bizzare tale.
Posting a link to our story, which carried the headline ‘Gender-bender Buddie gets what zie wants’, Norrie said: “I’ll never live this down!
“‘Buddie’ is the term for a Paisley local or apparently anyone born there. Beats the ‘Scot Ex-Pat’ label. And I’m LOVING the gender-neutral pronoun in the headline!”
Norrie – who emigrated to Australia at the age of seven – entered the world as a man but had a sex change operation in 1990. However, after becoming unhappy living as a woman, Norrie decided to become a ‘neuter’.
The former prostitute is now officially recognised as a person of no specific gender.

AG backtracks on gender ruling

2010-03-19T01:09:00.000+11:00

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/ag-backtracks-on-gender-ruling-20100318-qifp.html?autostart=1

AG backtracks on gender ruling

JOEL GIBSON

March 19, 2010

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Norrie, NSW first official neuter

Norrie has become the first person in NSW to be listed as 'Sex not specified'.

THE case of the state's first genderless citizen has forced the equivalent of a bureaucratic sex change on the government.
It has revoked an official document issued last month to an androgynous Sydneysider called Norrie whose sex was listed as genderless.
Sydney's most famous gender-ender made the news from London to Beijing last week when the Herald revealed that the government had for the first time issued a registered details certificate and a change of name certificate saying ''sex: not specified''.

Androgynous . . . Norrie is the first person in NSW to be officially recognised as neither man nor woman by the state. Photo: Wolter Peeters

But Norrie received a phone call on Tuesday from the Births, Deaths and Marriages registrar Greg Curry, who said he had legal advice the document was invalid.
In Parliament yesterday, the Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, said the media coverage had prompted many inquiries. Mr Curry and the director-general of the Attorney-General's Department, Laurie Glanfield, sought advice from the Solicitor-General.
The registry refused to release the full advice, but said it concluded the registrar did not have the power to issue certificates with the sex recorded as anything other than male or female.
The 48-year-old from Redfern has since received a replacement change of name certificate that says ''sex: not stated'' - which a spokeswoman said was standard for such documents - and offering a fee refund of about $100.
Norrie, who recently jettisoned the surname ''May-Welby'', felt ''violated'' by the bureaucratic reassignment and filed a discrimination claim yesterday with the Human Rights Commission.
''I think it's really funny that these bean-counters think there's a difference between 'not specified' and 'not stated'. We are beyond Monty Python now,'' Norrie said yesterday.
The issue came to a head because the government, which recently amended the Births, Deaths and Marriages Act to allow for sex changes in foreign-born citizens, did not consider that anyone might want their sex to be unrecorded.
Norrie was registered as male at birth, began hormone treatment at 23 and had surgery to become a woman - but has since ceased taking hormones and identifies as neither sex.
The Greens are now calling for reforms to allow sexless documentation for adults, which was a recommendation in a Human Rights Commission report last year.

Norrie backflip ‘a breach of rights’

2010-03-19T00:57:00.000+11:00

http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/2010/03/18/norrie-backflip-a-breach-of-rights/22950

Norrie backflip ‘a breach of rights’

Category:: News
Author:: Andrew M Potts
Posted:: Thursday, 18 March 2010

Activist norrie mAy-welby has lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) after the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages backflipped on issuing norrie with a recognised details certificate with “sex not specified” written on it.

Norrie and the Sex And Gender Education (SAGE) lobby group believe the backflip is a breach of norrie’s rights under both the Australian Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and the United Nations Charter of Human Rights which protects a person’s right to self-determine their own social identity.
Norrie received the certificate, signed by the NSW Registrar, the day before the Mardi Gras parade. In the week after norrie went public, the story received both national and international attention, being picked up by news services as far away as Russia, China, and norrie’s birthplace of Scotland.
Norrie received a phone call from a representative of NSW Births, Deaths and Marriages on Tuesday, telling norrie the certificate would be cancelled.
Norrie claims this person revealed the backflip had come as a result of NSW Births, Deaths and Marriages being pressured by the NSW Attorney General’s Office.
Norrie then received a letter on Wednesday confirming the Registry would move to cancel the certificate.
Norrie lodged the complaint this morning at the Human Rights Commission’s Sydney headquarters, accompanied by a band of supporters and SAGE’s Dr. Tracie O’Keefe.
Also present was NSW Greens leader Lee Rhiannon who pledged to question the NSW Government in Parliament later today.
“I am devastated by the news. It is a hideous, humiliating position to find myself in and makes a mockery of my human rights,” norrie told waiting news media.
“I feel I have been completely violated by the Attorney General’s Office … I have no doubt [this] is politically motivated.”
SAGE’s Dr. Tracie O’Keefe said her organisation would continue to support Norrie in obtaining a “sex not specified” legal identity through the courts.

Norrie's 'ungendered' status withdrawn

2010-03-18T21:42:00.000+11:00

Norrie's 'ungendered' status withdrawn

By Chi Tranter, AAP March 18, 2010, 5:48 pm

Norrie, who famously became the first person in the world deemed neither male nor female, has now had the certificate confirming the gender-neutral status withdrawn.
NSW's Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages deemed invalid the certificate it issued on February 25 which established the 48-year-old's sex as "non specified".
It says it cancelled Norrie's "recognised details certificate" after receiving legal advice it was invalid.
"When I got the call on Tuesday I was absolutely devastated. I felt like I had been killed," Norrie told AAP on Thursday.
"My identity has gone all over the world ... (now the) attorney-general's taking back what they sold to me.
"If I sell you something by mistake ... I can't say: `Oh no, I have re-thought that. I didn't mean to do that.' I can't take it back off you."
Norrie, who only uses one name, wants to know why the registry didn't seek legal advice before issuing the certificate.
"Three weeks after they issued it and I go public ... somehow they get legal advice telling them they didn't have the right to issue it in the first place," Norrie said.
NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos told parliament on Thursday his office made some inquiries about the certificate after the issue was "ventilated" in the media.
He said legal advice provided to the registry said "the registrar may only issue a recognised detail certificate or a new birth certificate following a change of sex in either male or female gender".
Norrie was registered as male at birth, began hormone treatment at 23 and had surgery to become a woman, but then stopped taking hormones, preferring to live as neither male nor female.
After receiving the ungendered certificate, Norrie visited the bank, Centrelink and the Roads and Traffic Authority to update their details.
"They all said they didn't know how to put it (gender unspecified) into their computers, but they all agreed to do it and to have a word to their computer programmers," Norrie said.
"It is the job of the system to fit the people it serves, not the job of the people to fit the system.
"I would like to see the Attorney-General's Department apologise for harassing me."
NSW Greens MP Lee Rhiannon has called on Mr Hatzistergos to reform the laws.
"If NSW laws prohibit Norrie and other gender-diverse people having their status recognised, the NSW government should act to change these laws," she said in a statement.
Ms Rhiannon said a 2009 Human Rights Commission report recommended people over 18 should be able to choose to have an unspecified sex, and NSW's laws should reflect the recommendation.
NSW Registrar Greg Curry denies Mr Hatzistergos forced Births, Deaths and Marriages to revoke the certificate.
"At no time did the registrar state or imply that the attorney-general or anyone else had `pressured' him to cancel the certificate," he said in a statement.

Sydneysider fights to retain ungendered status

2010-03-18T21:36:00.000+11:00

Sydneysider fights to retain ungendered status

By David Lewis and Bridget Brennan

Updated 7 hours 6 minutes ago

Intersex Sydneysider Norrie (centre) with supporters including Greens MP Lee Rhiannon. (User submitted: Alison Orme)

The first person in Australia to be officially recognised as neither man nor woman has lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission, after the decision was revoked

Norrie, who was born in Scotland, became the first person in Australia to have their gender listed as 'sex not specific' on a details certificate earlier this month.
However on Tuesday the 48-year-old received a phone call from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages saying the certificate would be cancelled due to pressure from higher levels of government.
Norrie says the decision is a breach of human rights.
"I was devastated by the news," Norrie said.
"I felt killed. It's a hideously humiliating position to find myself in and makes a mockery of my human rights. I feel completely violated by the [NSW] Attorney-General's office."
New South Wales Greens MP Lee Rhiannon questioned the Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, in parliament today.
Mr Hatzistergos denied he was behind the decision.
"At no time did I - well I didn't speak to the registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages but I'm advised also in relation to my office - make any direction to the registrar in relation to the decision that he took," he said.
However, Mr Hatzistergos said the Director-General of his department discussed the matter with the registrar and a decision was reached to obtain legal advice.
"My office was advised of that legal advice on Monday," he said.
"Advice from the Crown solicitor is that the registrar may only issue a recognised details certificate or new birth certificate following a change of sex in either male or female gender.
"The registrar has accepted this advice and has directed that any application for recognised details certificates or changes to sex comply with this advice."
The support group SAGE (Sex and Gender Education) says in issuing Norrie with the document, New South Wales was complying with 2009 recommendations made by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
The Greens are now calling for the Attorney-General to change the law so that Norrie's gender status can be recognised without a sex change.

Sydneysider fights to retain ungendered status

2010-03-18T21:26:00.000+11:00

Sydneysider fights to retain ungendered status

David Lewis and Bridget Brennan, ABC March 18, 2010, 2:28 pm

from http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/australian-news/6949193/sydneysider-fights-to-retain-ungendered-status/

The first person in Australia to be officially recognised as neither man nor woman has lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission, after the decision was revoked
Norrie, who was born in Scotland, became the first person in Australia to have their gender listed as 'sex not specific' on a details certificate earlier this month.
However on Tuesday the 48-year-old received a phone call from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages saying the certificate would be cancelled due to pressure from higher levels of government.
Norrie says the decision is a breach of human rights.
"I was devastated by the news," Norrie said.
"I felt killed. It's a hideously humiliating position to find myself in and makes a mockery of my human rights. I feel completely violated by the [NSW] Attorney-General's office."
New South Wales Greens MP Lee Rhiannon questioned the Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, in parliament today.
Mr Hatzistergos denied he was behind the decision.
"At no time did I - well I didn't speak to the registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages but I'm advised also in relation to my office - make any direction to the registrar in relation to the decision that he took," he said.
However, Mr Hatzistergos said the Director-General of his department discussed the matter with the registrar and a decision was reached to obtain legal advice.
"My office was advised of that legal advice on Monday," he said.
"Advice from the Crown solicitor is that the registrar may only issue a recognised details certificate or new birth certificate following a change of sex in either male or female gender.
"The registrar has accepted this advice and has directed that any application for recognised details certificates or changes to sex comply with this advice."
The support group SAGE (Sex and Gender Education) says in issuing Norrie with the document, New South Wales was complying with 2009 recommendations made by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
The Greens are now calling for the Attorney-General to change the law so that Norrie's gender status can be recognised without a sex change.

My journey to getting a 'sex not specified' legal document

2010-03-09T00:21:00.000+11:00

http://www.thescavenger.net/glbsgdq/my-journey-to-getting-a-sex-not-specified-document-86598.html

Norrie was once ‘may well be’, but is now definitely ‘not specified’. Norrie tells The Scavenger hir story of androgyny and journey to being issued what is believed to be the world's first 'sex not specified' legal document equivalent to a birth certificate by the NSW government.
Once upon a time, our religion and race was recorded in our legal identification, but society has moved on. Once upon a time, a woman's courtesy title had to show whether she was the property of her father or her husband, but society has moved on.
We tend to see the social rules we inherit as unchangeable, but they do change, as society comes to value each person equally without prejudice based on race or marital status or sexuality or sex .
There is no reason for still insisting that our legal identity must include a public statement about a very private matter, our sex.
Having gender markers as part of our legal identity is a problem for everyone facing gender discrimination, and anyone who does not fit the standard options of male or female.
Not everyone does, you know, with one in a thousand people being born with an intersex condition, and other people of sex or gender diversity, such as transsexuals in transition, or bigendered people who may identify as either male or female or both, according to the situation or time of day.
While many transsexuals may prefer to identify as whichever of the two standard sex options they see as appropriate, many other people of sex or gender diversity, and also many non-transgendered women, would prefer to not have sex listed as part of their legal identity.
It may be problematic or embarrassing or simply allow for sex based discrimination, which we've had enough of.
Whether I am seen as a man or as a woman or both or neither is different for many people. I don't see myself as absolutely one or the other; although I may use the ladies loos for convenience, I use the men's change rooms at the pool if I am with gay male friends.
I was once a boy, before being first chemically then physically castrated, and had my penis fashioned into vagina over twenty years ago. But I haven't taken hormones for about 20 years, preferring my body and brain to be as they are naturally without being dependent on externally supplied hormones or plastic implants, happy to be androgynous and to be seen as such. I bond with female friends as a female, I bond with gay friends as a fellow queen.
Guys hung up on gender difference don't have much to do with me, and guys who are less hung up may occasionally hook up with me!
For many people, one of the benefits of growing old is becoming more comfortable with yourself and not suffering so much from a relentless comparison with some usually gendered standard of beauty or strength or whatever.
For me, that has meant accepting myself as I am, and rejecting the idea of fitting other people's gender stereotypes, or even the idea that I have to identify as a man or as a woman.
Those concepts, man or woman, just don't fit me, they are not my actual reality, and, if applied to me, they are fiction. At 48 years of age, I'm less inclined to just humour other people's delusions about gender and try and conform to one of their expected options.
If I need to show identity documents, I certainly don't want details that are false, for this will only cause trouble when officials realise I don't match my documents.
If my passport, for example, states that I am female, I may be detained when travelling if the local jurisdiction classes me based on the gender assigned at birth, or if my physically noticeable masculine aspects (for example, my Adam's apple, or my broad chest) are noticed.
If the passport states male, again there is a dissonance with my physical form, castration having had a feminising effect, and I am usually moving and talking in a feminine manner.
Stating my sex as male or as female makes the statement false, which is not acceptable for legal identity documentation, and puts me in danger of detention and assault.
The simplest solution is simply to not have any sex identification on my legal documentation, and so I asked the NSW Register of Births Deaths and Marriages to issue me with a Recognition of Details certificate that didn't state my sex as male or female.
After supplying them with appropriate medical documentation of my reproductive sex being neuter and my anatomy being not specifically male or female, and after they first told me it couldn't possibly be done and then took some time to consider the matter and consult their authorities, they issued me with a certificate stating my sex as “Not Specified”.
I've never felt completely male or female, except for a brief period in early transition, when I first identified as a transsexual because I thought there were only two gender options and male was wrong and female felt better.
Apart from those few brief years where I shared the delusions of transsexual medicine, in which so many doctors are convinced everyone has a core identity either male or female, I have always been androgynous.
When I was a little boy, which wasn't very often... no, really, I didn't think of myself often as a boy, instead having fantasies about being a jungle girl, or a good witch or a female genie like in the TV shows then screening in my early formative years in the 1960s, making up adventures in my head as I walked to and from primary school.
Many of the things denied me were permitted to girls, and I wanted to play with dolls, skip and dance, and wear ribbons in my hair.
It did not occur to me I shouldn't have fantasies about being a girl because I was actually a boy, just as it didn't occur to me I shouldn't have fantasies about being Supergirl because I was not actually Kryptonese. I wrapped my school tie around my head in private and pretended I had long hair.
But not all of my play characters were female. Out of six favourites, one was a boy, who could fly with the aid of a superhero costume. When I went through puberty I tried to adopt a story that was more acceptable to the gender-divided adult world, and my female characters were distilled into one character, who was actually the boy hero who had been changed by a witch, and after she defeated the witch, she was a he again.
That didn't last long, and soon the two characters, male and female, coexisted in my head, and had adventures together.
At university freedom of expression was encouraged, so I became more flamboyant, mixing frilly girl's blouses with tight boys jeans, and having a very androgynous presentation.
When I joined the public service after uni, I faced serious discrimination for being androgynous, and had a nervous breakdown.
At this time, I was also doing drag shows in a gay hotel, receiving adulation for my femininity, rather than the disapprobation this received by those in the public service who sought to sack me for sissiness, and resolved to resolve my gender ambiguity by taking transsexual medicine and surgery.
Two years after swapping my penis for a vagina, I decided to go off hormones, so that I could experience my “natural” self, my body and mind without externally supplied hormones.
I also wanted to get in touch with those aspects of myself that had been labelled unladylike, such as the desire to climb trees. I devoured feminist therapeutic texts, liberated myself from sexist stereotypes, and discovered my uncensored unafraid self to be thoroughly androgynous.
I began writing and critiquing the sexist assumptions inherent in transsexual medicine, and identified as psychologically hermaphrodite.
That was nearly two decades ago, and I have become very comfortable being androgynous rather than female or male, and less tolerant of pretending to have a normative gender so as not to disturb others' preconceptions.
When I censor my being to please others, this causes violence to my soul. I have cut my penis and balls off; The cutting stops there; I don't want to cut another part of myself off to avoid conflict.
Allowing the cutting to continue, putting a normative gender on every form that only gives two options, is death by a thousand cuts to my soul.
Speaking out as an androgynous human, I have found much support, both from those who value diversity and humanity, and from those who also like to express themselves in androgynous or gender-bending ways.
There is a growing social scene (at least in the inner city of big cities) accepting and supporting of people of sex or gender diversity.
Queer conferences starting with Queer Collaborations in the early nineties encouraged me to run workshops breaking down polarised gender and embracing sex and gender diversity. Being on the board of the Gender Centre and working for the Sex Workers Outreach Project's Transgender Project made me aware that I wasn't the only person diagnosed transsexual who was happier blurring the gender lines rather than always conforming to only one gender.
There seemed no sense in having such a changeable and transient quality as gender nailed down as a permanent mark on identity documents.
SAGE (Sex and Gender Education) Australia, a group lobbying against all discrimination against people for being sex or gender diverse, has been supportive of my being androgynous and seeking to have my reality recognised or at least not contradicted by the legal structures of society. It is part of the international movement of people seeking to remove unfair discrimination from social structures.
There may be many who have never thought of there being possibilities other than being male or female, there may be many who think their rules for gender and sexuality come from some tribal god whose traditions must be defended with violence, but there are also many who support the right of each human to express themselves honestly, who would allow children to be who they are, without disciplining them to conform to gender stereotypes, and who can deal with me as an adult without having to be sure what form my genitals are or what history they have or what I do with them in private.
I am grateful that at least the state of New South Wales is able to deal with me on such an adult basis, without needing to specify my sex as male or female, and to issue me with legal identification with sex not specified.
It surprised me to be told I am the first to get such documentation, but I know I won't be the last.
Norrie (who is known under the artistic signature: norrie mAy-welby) is a sex and gender diverse activist based in Sydney, Australia. Visit Norrie’s website here.
READ THE NEWS STORY ABOUT NORRIE BEING ISSUED WITH A 'SEX NOT SPECIFIED' DOCUMENT HERE.
Photo: Sambath Lim

Sex not specified: Australia leads the way with legal document

2010-03-09T00:18:00.001+11:00

http://www.thescavenger.net/glbsgdq/sex-not-specified-australia-leads-the-way-in-legal-document-756345.html

EXCLUSIVE: 8 March 2010: The NSW government in Australia has issued what is believed to be the world’s first ‘Sex Not Specified’ Recognised Details Certificate in place of a birth certificate, writes Katrina Fox.
Norrie, a member of Sex and Gender Education (SAGE), a lobby group campaigning for the rights of all sex and gender diverse people has been issued with what is understood to be the world’s first ‘Sex Not Specified’ Recognised Details Certificate in place of a birth certificate.
This means that Norrie (also known as norrie mAy-Welby) – a resident of Sydney, NSW – is legally recognised as neither male nor female according to the Australian government.
Originally Norrie, 48, was born in Scotland and registered as male at birth. At age 23 Norrie commenced sex and gender conversion to female through hormone and construction of a vagina and was then issued with a gender recognition certificate as female in Australia.
But this did not work out for Norrie as zie (gender-neutral pronoun) did not feel comfortable living solely as a female so zie ceased lifelong hormone treatment and took up a neuter identity which is neither male nor female, resisting any further female or male normalisation.
In January 2010 doctors declared that they were unable to determine Norrie as either male or female as zie has no gonads, the hormonal system was atypically male or female, and Norrie’s psychological identity was neuter.
NSW Births Deaths and Marriages then issued the ‘Sex Not Specified’ Details Recognition Certificate in accordance with recommendations made by the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2009 report on the legal rights of sex and gender diverse people proposing a greater scope of legal recognition be used beyond male and female for certain individuals.
“This decision now has fundamental ramifications for neuter and intersex identified individuals in that they no longer have to be forced to live as male or female,” said Tracie O’Keefe, spokesperson for SAGE.
“Furthermore it is an enormous legal breakthrough for the rights of intersex children whose doctors and parents are confused about their sex at births and that they could be registered as ‘Sex Not Specified’ until they decide what sex would be right for them,” O’Keefe continued.
“Many intersex children have been forced into male and female identities, when not medically necessary, which they later felt were incorrect, including unnecessary brutal surgery to give them stereotypical looking genitalia, often leaving them without sensation or function.”
READ NORRIE’S ARTICLE ON BEING ANDROGYNOUS EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE SCAVENGER HERE

the corporate-sponsored monster rolls on cosmetics...

2010-02-25T16:49:00.000+11:00

abbotart

2010-02-25T16:19:00.000+11:00

we all get a turn on each end of the megaphone

2009-11-23T03:34:00.002+11:00

Sniffer Snuffed

2009-10-27T13:26:00.001+11:00

Rozelle Metro going nowhere

2009-08-28T15:43:00.001+10:00

Star Drek

2009-07-01T09:54:00.000+10:00

Called Star Trek, but mostly different actors and mostly different characters and totally different continuity (and totally different laws of physics) but with familiar names and accents and catch lines, a technically competent but soulless impersonation.

There's a difference between science fiction and pop fiction, and it's the difference between Gene Rodenberry's artistic vision and this corporate brand bland product : /

For the love of science, for example, at what point in time does Scottie invent a technique he first hears of from his future self via future Spock?

For the love of logic, how can Spock assert to his younger self that his is not their father? This is an illogical assertion, given that elder Spock now knows he can travel through time and easily interact with key figures in his history, including himself.

And for the love of us, why tell us we could live in a Universe so scary that at any moment our entire galaxy may be consumed by supernovae? Fear mongers! Yes, supernovae happen, and at worst never affect further than 50 light years, which is a long way, but it's a VERY big galaxy.

Nor we need fear an assault of crazed megalomaniacs from the future with advanced technology. The universe is far more lovingly constructed than that. OK, that's an emotional opinion, but you know what I mean, and it's up to you to make your own truth by telling yourself your own story : )

I love the inclusive pluralist and intellectual values of Roddenberry's Star Trek, and reject the fear mongering and insults to intelligence marketed by the megacorporation milking its inherited property.

Love well and prosper ; )

Parliament frozen in time

2009-06-26T13:33:00.004+10:00

four pigmen of the apoclaypse

2009-05-26T21:32:00.001+10:00

working the front page

2009-05-26T21:31:00.000+10:00

dog bites ass

2009-03-28T18:19:00.006+11:00

Vale Paris

2009-03-20T11:05:00.000+11:00

Paris, an Aboriginal transgender friend of mine, was found hanging dead in her prison cell on Monday.
I'm glad she lived as long as she did, given the forces arrayed against her. And I am glad it looks more likely she was not kiiled simply by the prison system, as so many tranys were, but by the sort of thing almost inevitable given the number of people with serious grudges against the poor girl. But I am having a little bit of a crying day for her. She never done me wrong, and I knew her about twenty years from when she was but a teenage queen at the Courthouse hotel early opener, before she became a scene stealer on William Street, a black Barbie doll with attitude. She even featured in my comic book An Hour on the Life of a Spansexual Sex Worker, which records my view of the incident when she was first banned from one of the safe houses (which is now closed). Vale, Paris.

Rebel Rabbi

2009-03-20T10:51:00.001+11:00

"Rebel priest" Father Peter Kennedy, who ignores the Pope's insistence on misogyny and homophobia, was likened by Tony Abbott on Q and A to a backbencher challenging the PM. However, there is a more apt and religious analogy, for he is more like the Rabbi Jeshua (Jesus) opposing the snobbery and authoritarianism of the Pharisees. The Roman Empire got him too, but his message of love and inclusion of all lives on, and empires come and go.

Tick a box: male, female, unspecified

2009-03-18T12:32:00.001+11:00

There's a quote from me in this article on the op ed page of today's SMH

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/tick-a-box-male-female-unspecified-20090317-90x4.html?page=-1#

Tick a box: male, female, unspecified

* Katrina Fox
* March 18, 2009

Are you male or female? For most of us, answering that question is no problem, although whether we want to is another matter. But for some people, these categories simply don't fit. They consider themselves neither male nor female - essentially, genderless.

Take Norrie May-Welby, an activist and performer in Sydney, who says: "Some of us have found it better to identify in non-gender-specific ways; it's not our life and those roles don't fit us."

May-Welby uses pronouns such as "zie" in place of "he" or "she", and "hir" in place of "him" and "her", and says: "Some people get angry with the idea that I'm not a man or woman. It's fair to say there's sexual anxiety underneath it: they're thinking, 'If I'm attracted to this person who is neither male nor female, they've shattered my idea of myself as straight or gay.' "

Rejecting such deeply entrenched cultural norms has its challenges. Aside from being branded a freak and suffering the occasional physical attack, genderless people claim they are forced to lie every time they fill out a form. Whether it's a job application or government document, they, like the rest of us, are required to tick the "M" or "F" box, with no other options.

But this will change if the Australian Human Rights Commission has its way. In its report Sex Files: The Legal Recognition Of Sex In Documents And Government Records, launched yesterday, the commission recommends that anyone over the age of 18 should be able to choose to have an "unspecified" sex noted on documents and records, and where possible sex or gender questions should be removed from government forms and documents.

For May-Welby, such a move will be "freeing" and enable May-Welby to "just be another human like everyone else". But what does it mean for the rest of society? Is it, as the Australian Family Association spokesman, John Morrissey, puts it, "a crazy ideological agenda behind getting rid of gender", or the start of an egalitarian utopia in which no one is discriminated against because of their biological sex or gender presentation?

There are times when not being asked to specify your sex or gender can work to your advantage - in job applications, for example. We'll never know how many times we've missed out on an interview because our application was rejected at the sifting stage because of gender or sex bias. And what the person selling us a packet of cashews or removing our appendix has between their legs is hardly relevant to the task at hand.

There is a difference between sex and gender: sex refers to our physical make-up and biological structures, while gender is about how we perform, whether we do "masculinity" or "femininity". But the terms are often used interchangeably on legal and government documents.

If the thought of a gender other than male or female sends you into meltdown, bear in mind that it is the natural order of any society to progress. Australia looks very different today from 100, 50 and 20 years ago. Gay and lesbian couples are set to benefit from new equality law reforms starting in July, so it's not such a great leap to embrace the concept of sex and gender diversity.

We've already come a long way in this area. The 1990s saw the birth of the "trans" liberation movement. Identities including transsexual, transgender and transsexed became part of the lexicon. Since then, television networks have fallen over themselves to include trans characters in their shows (Ugly Betty, Dirty Sexy Money) and Hollywood has considered them worthy subjects of films (Transamerica, Boys Don't Cry).

Now it's time to get our heads around even more fluid sex or gender identities and the possibility of relating to some people as genderless - even if that challenges our assumptions of our sexuality.

We may be far from a perfect world in which no one is judged negatively solely on the basis of their biological sex, gender performance or sexuality, but the commission's recommendation for an extra category of "unspecified" sex and gender markers on legal and government documents is a good start.

It is not the end of gender, and it doesn't mean the end of male and female identities. It is simply an acknowledgment of a diversity that needs to be recognised. If the Federal Government adopts the recommendations, it will put Australia at the forefront of pioneering human rights legislation, and that's surely something to be celebrated.

Katrina Fox is a freelance writer and the co-editor of Trans People in Love.

Wrestling in the Park

2009-03-12T20:25:00.016+11:00

It's been an amazing Mardi Gras season for this queer old duck, from stealing the show at Quick and Dirty, to jelly wrestling with my best friend in bizarre fan-inflated jump suits at THE alternative post parade party.

This year marks the fourth anniversary since my social world expanded with Queeruptions, an international queer anarchist gathering I helped organise, and the Quueruptions Sex Party, where I met my best friend Sam, and we should just encourage speculation by leaving it at that.

Outside of work and political colleagues, I'd been pretty much a loner before Sam initiated our friendship, and he has proved to me that angels are sent from heaven. We are both irreverent, intellectually curious, adventurous, hedonist, and committed to a broader communal wellbeing. And he does pull a gaggle of very easy on the eye guys with him ; )

It gave me great pleasure to give him my comp to the show I was in at Carriageworks for the Mardi Gras festival, Quick and Dirty. The show was all very avant garde, and I felt a bit pedestrian just singing a song and swanning about a bit when others were doing spectacular costume changes while juggling, gargling tomato sauce, fellating a blow up doll, and critiquing Proust. But the dress rehearsal went so well I was asked to do an additional two nights (I had initially only been booked for one), and massively enjoyed performing a localised version of Walk on the Wild Side as a love song to all of us freaks.

My neighbour Craig was also in the show, as the central aerialist of CircXs, and my old drinking mate Cindy Pastel wrestled the last tear from Ruby Red Dress in a foyer show, and several other friends from the anarchist/freak/arty scene were in the show, and I realised that I have run away and joined the circus, and I am overjoyed to be accepted by carnies, despite my nerdish background.

Icing on the cake was getting the scoop on some Mardi Gras Parade concerns re corporate interference, which made for a timely cartoon in the South Sydney Herald on one of my favourite topics, individual freedom versus obvious or subtle corporate control.

Although I guess one of the highlights of my Gay Mardi Gras season was going out after doing my show to the Carnival of Electric Illusions held in the Spanish quarter, where some of the venue regulars joined the partying queers, but the regulars weren't all straight, and this luscious lad who fancied me as a drag queen but who was happy to adapt to what his groping discovered, took me for a hot roll in Hyde Park, and finally came back to my boudoir so I could stop worrying about the police arresting us for public bonking. He looked just like Dev Patel.

I do alright for an old duck ; )

Corporate Sanitised Sexuality Parade

2009-03-11T19:16:00.007+11:00

“Surely if Foxtel wants to film our parade (and make us pay to watch it) then surely we can tell what sequence it is in, not vice versa” ~ Maxi Shields writing in Sydney Star Obverver 11 March.

Others complained about being unable to videophone their friends because Foxtel was protecting its exclusive live telecast rights.

And others suspected corporate pressure in what amounted to admittedly mild censorhip of youthful expression, but to fair the Amnesty International organisers agreed with the suggestion from Mardi Gras that a noose shouldn’t be used. The noose was proposed to represent the death penalty (in 7 countries, for being gay), but organisers decided it was too suggestive of suicide, which was counter-productive.

I used the Amnesty float change as one element of a cartoon depicting some questionable aspects of the parade. It is in no way meant as a slur against the commited and caring people who put this entry together, just a light hearted asking of a question.

There's also a suggestion in the cartoon of the couple in the Love Underwear float being not at all gay, as they are a male and female model. After the cartoon was published, I met a couple of heterosexually-identifying people who revealed they had been paid to model on a commercial float. I am personally very fond of heterosexuals (it's a transsexual thing that some gays don't quite get), and am always glad to see the divisions of gay/straight/male/female subverted to make room for us messy humans. Yet this shows how corporate interests may dilute the point of this parade. I say let freedom ring, and not make way for people flogging ringtones!

The Mardi Gras Parade does a lot of good, but concerns about corporate interference should be taken seriously, or it will be irrelevant to more and more young people disenchanted with corporate control.

The most good the parade does is in the visibility of human diversity, and it would achieve this better if if were broadcast free to air on ABC, as once happened before the commercial interests were contracted with. Now it makes Foxtel a tidy $25 per pay-per-viewer, it may be missing the isolated young genderfluid person in Wagga for whom it could have been a lifeline.

What can’t Mardi Gras just be a demonstration of diversity, a celebration of human sexuality, love, sassiness, and creative expression? Let the companies and governments donate money, but let’s reject all corporate control of the parade. It’s not for the corporations, it’s for the people.

Sanitising the demo

2009-03-03T19:56:00.000+11:00

SWOP abandons sex workers' lobby

2009-02-13T00:54:00.002+11:00

My former employer, ACON/SWOP (Sex Workers Outreach Project), has apparently decided that membership of the national sex workers group is not worth it. ACON, formerly the AIDS Council of NSW, which has controlled SWOP since being asked to temporarily auspice it when it was set up in the early 90s, has made this decision. ACON is controlled by its Board, which has no sex worker representation at all. If supporting sex worker advocacy by supporting the national advocacy body is not part of ACON's core work, then how can it claim any authority to speak to sex workers about their work?

With disgust at the hypocrisy of institutions claiming to be community organisations and then displaying no commitment or more than purely token responsiveness to that community, here is the email from the national sex workers group advising of SWOP's determination to be irrelevant to sex workers. ~norrie mAy-welby, employed at SWOP (NSW) 1997-2007, Outreach Worker, Outreach Coordinator, and Acting Manager.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is with great regret that I inform you that after almost 20 years, as of the 1st of July 2009, SWOP will no longer be a member of Scarlet Alliance.

The ACON Board made this decision on the basis of SWOP being unable to pay for their membership from their Health Departments funds, and that fundraising to pay for the membership fee would deter from SWOP's core work.

Elena Jeffreys
President
Scarlet Alliance, Australian Sex Workers Association

Freedom and the mainstream

2009-02-11T19:57:00.001+11:00

When I was a young adult, homosexuality was illegal. That taught me the proper respect to have for the law: Absolutely none. Of course, I didn’t even consider obeying the law when an opportunity arose (so to speak) to kiss (act of indecency between males, 3 years in prison), fondle (act of gross indecency, punishable by seven years with hard labour), or fuck (carnal knowledge against the order of nature, punishable by fourteen years in prison with hard labour, with or without whipping).

I’m glad to have lived so long and at a time when history is speeding up, so that I can actually see society change from its inherited prejudices and tribal superstitions.

Feminism had shattered at least the myths of gender stereotypes in the Seventies, but these persisted in the treatment of transsexuals when I was diagnosed as such in 1985. Meeting the doctor’s expectations of ladylike behaviour, and apparently not barking mad, I sailed through the transsexual medical industrial complex, having a sex change in 1989, after four year on hormones.

A couple of years after the genital realignment, I went off hormones. Examining the whole notion of gender from a post-modern perspective, and learning of the existence of intersex conditions, I didn’t want to keep supporting the fiction that every human is either essentially male or female. If I was really female, why would I need to take pills to assert that?

I did an internet quiz last year, with a score of 57 percent feminine, and 43 percent male, and maybe this explains why I am most happy with my body being androgynous. At the time, when I went off hormones, I just wanted to be myself, whatever that was without props or makeup or policing the gender of my behaviour or clothes, without any shame about whether some aspects of my being, behaviour and body were male or female or both or neither.

I’ve lived the last eighteen years freeing myself from the preconceptions of others and the limits of the mainstream. Just because most people may think everyone should be Arthur or Martha doesn’t mean they are right. Much as I love all humans, the fact is that the majority of them often get things wrong. Take, for example, re-electing Bush, or supporting the anti-gay laws, or even just assuming that police and other authorities are always in the right.

To individual freedom! Cheers!

~norrie mAy-welby, 8 February 2009

One Joy, One Sorrow: So many mountain tops...

2009-01-28T14:43:00.000+11:00

One Joy, One Sorrow: So many mountain tops...

Creative Dissent

2008-08-31T13:23:00.000+10:00

Creative Dissent

A monthly gathering of all-sorts of trouble-makers daring to share art and music outside of the pre-packaged meal deal. Lately it’s either been at the Hutch or the Abercrombie, on the last Wednesday of the month, featuring everything from poetry about police and forest blockades to cutting edge hilarious pop-satire with the groin-propelled electric guitars and all.

The performers are the people often seen on the front lines a demos, passionate creative people who celebrate life beyond the pre-fabricated box, students fresh from Newtown Drama High School with more to say than Britney’s spheres, death metal rockers with a political bent, electro-rap magicians with a deep groove to share.

Last month I was just blissed out for an hour while my friend Vicki played sax with an ambient jazz ensemble and I let my body dance to the transporting music. Ah! Bliss for brain and body!

And as a special bonus, another friend offered to massage me, so of course I accepted, and enjoyed another half-hour of bliss while the ambient jazz came and went and the bands changed and I was happy in this space so totally accepting of humanity, whether dressed in black and sitting quietly or dressed in rainbow and red and dancing exotic.

A gold coin donation is all that’s asked, and no one is turned away for lack of coin. Free food is provided from reclaimed resources. Happy smiling faces welcome you. Free people are loving people.

The Revolution is here, and I’m dancing to it!

Chanel ? and the Fun Police

2008-08-31T12:50:00.001+10:00

My Saturday night: Actually a lot less rowdy than the below report indicates. I had a fun few wild dances, rocking my spine out to electro thrash, hugged a few friends, flirted with a flirty friend ; ) and choose to go home when they left about 1am, and so missed the confrontation with the fun police. I mean, really, no one's getting their homes broken into on a Saturday night, so the police can afford to use these overwhelming numbers to stop a bunch of kids doing.. what.. partying.. dancing without authority...

You can't stop us partying, copper, you only look stupid, while your pay packet drains Mr and Mrs Average for you to harass their children. Our happy celebration of our humanity is stronger than your dour fun-policing! We hug who we want, we dance where we want, we share whatever fun things we choose, and we laugh in your general direction!

Now, over to your Fox Network approved news source:

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24270198-5006009,00.html
Riot police break up Facebook party
Article from: The Sunday Telegraph
.. ..

By Chelsea White

August 31, 2008 12:00am
.. ..

RIOT police, the Dog Squad and a helicopter were called in to break up a wild dance party in Sydney's inner west last night.

About 1,500 people crammed into an empty Camperdown warehouse for the event, publicised through online forums such as Facebook, and complete with lasers, video installations and DJs over three floors.

Nearly 1km of Parramatta Rd was closed just after 1am as police tried to clear the warehouse amid serious fire and safety concerns.

Around 50 officers were joined by a huge back-up force, including the Public Order and Riot Squad, the Dog Squad, Polair and Police Rescue, when a group of partygoers refused to leave and threw bottles from the upper floors.

It took until 2.30am to clear the building. Parramatta Rd was reopened at 3am.

There were no arrests at the party but a man was later arrested after allegedly lashing out at police as they moved people on.

Newtown duty officer Paul Giovenali described the event as a "fairly disturbing scene''.

However, a number of partygoers accused police of overacting, saying the event was just good fun.

One attendee, who only identified himself as Daniel, said the event had been going since 10pm.

"Going against the grain, of course its fun,'' he said.

Another partygoer, Jess Cook, said the police were overacting to a creative event.

"The reason why our community does this is because there is no space for us,'' Ms Cook said.

Religion and Reality

2008-07-21T02:25:00.000+10:00

Two thousand years ago, a man insisted on doing good for people even if this was against the way the religious authorities thought was proper. The priests complained to the armed gang of the Roman Emperor, and the Emperor's gang duly nailed this guy up, in order to continue the Empire's exploitation of the common people.

One of the things this guy protested against was hypocrisy, particularly the hypocrisy of the religious authorities. Human nature doesn't change very fast, for two thousand years later, this hypocrisy persists, and the authoritarians following the tradition of the priests and the emperors are now call themselves Holy Roman Emperors, and claim to follow the very spirit of Uncompromising Love that they continue to crucify with their crusades against equality for women and their utter hatred of same-sex love. What loving person would say that an abortion (an event which often occurs naturally) is worse than sexually molesting children (an event which can only happen with very sick humans)? Yet this is the precise position of the current "Holy" Roman Emperor.

Humanity is something we are all part of. At least the great majority of us cannot be healthy or happy without our connection to our species. How we treat each other creates patterns that affect how we ourselves are treated. This is not magic; it is the simple law of cause and effect. We are not separate to the rest of the Universe. We are intrinsically involved with everything, from the photons of the furthest star we can see, to the breath and body odour of those humans close to us which interact with our brains and thus our being.

Jesus had two suggestions for an existence happier than that afforded by living in fear of the armed "authorities", or of an obsessive pursuit of having more stuff than other people, and safe-guarding that stuff, or even the endless obsessive pursuit of fleeting physical satisfaction. Those two suggestions are to love our Creator with our whole heart and mind and being, and to love our fellow human beings as we love ourselves.

Actually, that second part is actually two suggestions, for many of us do not yet (or often) love ourselves. How can we, when there are vast resources dependent on their very survival on convincing us we are not yet lovable or complete until we buy their product, and keep on buying them?

The idea of there being a Creator to love has become difficult to swallow, for the authoritarians try to justify their armed theft of the world's resources by claiming that the Creator is a person just like them, currently mostly white, and male. Many people are too smart to believe in an old man with a white beard in the sky making the Universe, and so reject the idea of there being a Creator, but this only distances them from having a good relation with the Universe they are part of. "God" is not a particular person, or even a being separate from you or me (as we are all part of an interconnected Universe), but simply a name given to the principles that create the Universe, and that bind all of Humanity.

Let us assume there is such a thing as the Universe. Given that it exists, and that it changes at a quantum level from moment to moment (for sub-atomic matter is constantly exiting and entering existence), there are apparently principles that bring the Universe into being. If that's what God is, the principle of our ongoing creation, then there is a God. Given that we are part of the Universe, it follows that we would get better results from having a good (or loving) relationship with God (or, if you prefer, the principles that create this Universe that we are all part of).

Jesus was not an authority figure. He was a human being who said stuff that we are free to agree or disagree with, according to our intelligence, and how far we can go from the delusions our exploiters have been selling us. His ideas (which, to be fair, did not originate with him, but arise of any considered intelligent view of the Universe and Humanity that we are all inseparably a part of, and can be seen in the teachings of such figures as Buddha , and the writers of the Mahabharata, Taoists, and the I Ching, to name but a few).

We don't have to believe in a zombie Jesus who physically arises from death to appreciate that his ideas transcended his death. Indeed it seems foolish to take literally stories about a story-teller who communicates in metaphor, but this literal interpretation serves the interests of those who seek to continue exploiting us and our existential angst.

Our existential angst arises out of the otherwise useful illusion that our consciousness is a continual unbroken stream, and we fear it ending. Modern science agrees with ancient teachings that in fact our consciousness is a fleeting awareness of the present moment. It is a series of separate moments, like the frames in a movie reel, that seem to be a continuous flow, but are in fact entering and leaving awareness with each passing moment.

We are not our stream of consciousness, for that is an illusion. We are not our thoughts, for we are the thinkers of those thoughts. We are not separate beings, for we are all a part of this interconnected and interdependent Humanity, and this interconnected and interdependent Universe.

Jesus was not an obedient unquestioning follower of religion. He didn't obey the priests or church or even his parents. On the contrary, he challenged them, out of an uncompromising love for humanity. He rejected the views of those who said we have to follow unquestioningly the dictates of our ancestors.

Unquestioningly following the ideas of our parents even after we can think for ourselves means that we are following the ideas of their parents, and their parents' parents, and so on, back to our pre-human ancestors. Following our ancestors without question means we are but children raised by children raised by apes.

We can do better. We have evolved beyond the need to kill or harm our fellow human beings to survive. Our oppressors are dependant on our continued collusion with our oppression. When we are not afraid of change, when we are not afraid of temporary inconvenience, we can achieve more lasting happiness. When we choose to love without compromise all of humanity, we experience a more meaningful, interconnected sense of existence, or, as Jesus put it, Life in Abundance.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you are, I love you, forever and always. As does the whole fucking Universe you are an intrinsic part of. Even if my animal ancestry leads me to hurt others out of a sense of separation or a fear of lack or existential angst. These are but passing moments, and the eternal unchanging truth is Oneness, Universal Wholeness, and Unconditional Love.

Anything less is just some Wally trying to get rich or less insecure at your expense.

Love Love Love.

X

norrie mAy-welby

Redfern, 21 July 2008

myspace.com/spansexual

spansexual1@gmail.com

Box vox

2008-03-03T23:47:00.001+11:00

The notorious gender outlaw norrie mAy-welby waxes sagacious with regard to sexuality and identity in human reality beyond labels.

video by Luke Carr

THIS Queen’s Christmas Message

2007-12-25T22:48:00.000+11:00

Once upon a time, there were a group of apes who had developed a kind of tyranny, with the resources of the group being controlled by a few who had lied and cheated more than others to gain and expand their advantage.

One day one of the animals noticed that the bossy apes ruled by fear alone, for they were actually well outnumbered by the masses they controlled. This animal suggested to their fellow apes that they could end this oppression by simply sharing fairly and refusing to be influenced by violence. This challenged the status quo so much that the boss apes moved quickly to get their gorilla assassins to kill the peacemaker immediately.

Despite this, however, word of the peacemaker's ideas got around, and gained favour with others tired of tyranny and fear, and some of them resolved to live without fear, and few of them got killed for that, but not all, and eventually the idea spread and seemed so strong in spite of the rulers killing them and persecuting them that some began to say the spirit of this idea was immortal, it rose from the dead, and it lives on in all who think freedom and love are what life is about, not fear and control.

One day perhaps the peace makers will forever outnumber the warring controllers.

In the meantime, don't think too harsh of our species, for we are all, after all, just children raised by children, raised by children, raised by apes.

But what we aspire to be can make the difference...

Merry Christmas, my fellow angels ; )

My resignation as reported in Sydney Star Observer

2007-10-05T11:50:00.000+10:00

from the Sydney Star Observer this week:

COMMUNITY ACTIVIST LOOKS FOR NEW ROLE by Cara Davis

norrie mAy-welby blows bubbles at the APEC protests earlier this year.

Community identity norrie mAy-welby has resigned from the Sex Workers Outreach Project after 10 years of service. Or in mAy-welby’s own words, “Like a bird, I’ve outgrown this lovely nest, and I have gotten tired of banging my wings on the sides, it’s time to fuck off and fly.”

The queer activist, who identifies as male and female, will spend more time on creative endeavours including working as a cartoonist and performance artist.

“That involves taking off your clothes and dancing around to ‘walk on the wild side’ in front of 100 strange uni students,” mAy-welby said.

“The alternative free party scene that is happening in Sydney is very much where my future is.”

The community will not be without mAy-welby, however, who is adamant about staying active in the wider social justice movement.

mAy-welby started working for SWOP, which is auspiced by ACON, in 1997, after a brief stint at the Gender Centre.

Earlier in the 90s mAy-welby had been on the management committee of the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, but was expelled in 1993 after allegedly speaking out “against the interests of the association”.

“We were discussing whether we would include bisexuals and transgendered people and they decided no, they were going to stay focused on gay and lesbian rights,” mAy-welby said.

The mAy-welby career has also included part-time sex work along William Street. “And that’s something I might be doing a bit more of now,” mAy-welby said. “I need to eat and I have grown too old for a boss.”

mAy-welby has also presented to Parliament in an effort to defend the rights of prison inmates, identifying to the Parliamentary Standing Committee as a “completely infertile human who is occasionally accosted by law-enforcement employees”.

“I feel connected to all of humanity and I need to speak out if something wrong has been done to any human,” mAy-welby said.

“There is no difference between me and someone else and I have learnt that from not being a man or a woman, I can’t separate myself by gender from anyone.”

So just which box does mAy-welby tick in this label-obsessed world – is it male or female?

“Whatever will be the most subversive,” mAy-welby said.

“Sometimes I write them an essay.”

The dollar is going to hell

2007-09-21T11:35:00.000+10:00

As seemed mathematically inevitable, the enormously wasteful pouring of US Dollars into the wholesale destruction of a whole country for the benefit of a few Halliburton shareholders has devalued that dollar, now rather predictably on the verge of collapse. And there actually seems to be a fair and growing number (if still tiny proportion) of folk becoming aware of and angry about this and willing to change the system that has brought us to this foreign murder and domestic despair.

And we can change this.

We can change why we do what we do. Yes, worker strikes, yes, solder strikes, but also take some time to do what we want to do as humans. Be nice to each other. Be nice to strangers. Be loving humans. Turn your back on consumerism and disasterous warmongers. Open your heart to what really matters to your humanity. The dollar is going to hell, but we don't have to follow it. In fact, we can head in the opposite direction...

Radical Uncompromising Unconditional Love.

Whatevah, good luck to us all!

Quit me dayjob

2007-09-21T11:28:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Quit me dayjob today!
Current mood: jubilant
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

I woke up this morning knowing that the time for change had come, crystallising the feelings I've contemplated much of late, and so I have resigned from ACON/ SWOP, effective as of Close of Business today.

'Tis done!

And, 'tis done!

It's been a great ten years, and I'm not going away. and I'm very much part of the queer and sex-positive and liberationist and libertine communities in Sydney, so you haven't gotten rid of me, my pretties, but I am FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Like a bird, I've outgrown this nest, and I have gotten tired of banging my wings on the sides. Its time to fuck off and fly!

Thank you to all the the wonderful and gifted and dedicated people I have worked with over the last ten years with SWOP/ACON.

But it's like a relationship, it's over now, and time for me to pack my bags and redirect my mail and kiss you goodbye while I am able to, rather than hang around until we're throwing things at each other! Love you! See You! Bye!

Don't ask me what I'm doing next. I don't know. I think I'd like time to think about that. And.. the sky's the limit!

And I couldn't hold back from leaving my job just because I didn't know what was next. What sort of trust in the universe would that show?

Bon Chance!

Winning the War Of Terror

2007-09-14T09:28:00.000+10:00

The Generation That Bought More Shoes

2007-09-12T19:15:00.000+10:00

I got this piece of offensive generational propaganda by mass email today, and my response is under it..---------------------------------------------------

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright
colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks some of us took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a Ute on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops,
McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Red Rooster.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner
store and buy Fruit Tingles and some fire crackers to blow up frogs and lizards with.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!! [sorry, have to interject here.. by "playing" they mean "KILLING, horrificly", blowing up small animals with fireworks]

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and cubby houses and played in creek beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape or DVD movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross buns at Easter
time.......no really!

We were given BB guns and sling shots for our 10th birthdays,

We drank milk laced with Strontium 90 from cows that had eaten grass covered in nuclear fallout from the atomic testing at Maralinga in 1956. [Got cancer?]

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!

Footy had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

Our teachers used to belt us with big sticks and leather straps and bully's always ruled the playground at school. [Obviously this stopped you learning the difference between the plural and the possessive form of words. The plural of "bully" is "bullies".]

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Our parents got married before they had children and didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade'.....

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 70 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

norrie mAy-welby (born 1961) replies:
We are the generation that bought more shoes, and we'll get what we deserve.

We are the generation that re-elected the government that supported the slaughter of over half a million people in Iraq. We are the generation that supports overpolicing and armies and our actions are sending our children, our children, to be killed in battle.

We are the generation that banned gay marriage, because we think so poorly of love.

We are the generation that has mid-life crises, because we lived most of our lives unconsiously or to please other people, and not in accordance with our inner truths. Few of us have been honest with ourselves and our close partners for all our lives, and there are consequences of that fundamental cringing dishonesty that will not be healed overnight.

I am happy that humans are so well made that I survived the hateful, sexist, and violent environment my parents saw fit to inflict on me as a young child, and more that I was so blessed that I survived the homophobia, sexist, sex-phobia, pleasure-phobia, anglo-centrism and delusions of cultural superiority that killed all of my peers. I am the last person standing from the queer/intellectual/sensitive crowd I knew as a young adult. You, the generation born in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's, killed them all, ALL, every single one but me.

Don't ask me to bond with you generationally. The vast majority of people my age and older are no better than hairless apes who think using violence is acceptable. You beat me as a child, you bullied me as a schoolkid, you bashed me as a young adult. After years of cultural revolution, you may finally agree that homophobia is bad. Why were you so complacent and unempathetic that you once thought it was okay to hit someone or allow them to be hit?

And you are no doubt finding out, or will very soon, the health effects of all those things inflicted on you before the young people, and the ahead of our time people, pointed out how dangerous these things are.

You lioinise the defects of our history. I hope for this you just get your children laughing at you, rather than being taunted by a desolate lifeless future when the last dollar has been made from the last death.

The future of our species needs fearless honesty, not nostalgic delusions.

PS: I have your children. You can't get them back until you stop being selfish and play nice, you fat fucks.

Chaser Wins War on Terror!

2007-09-11T19:08:00.000+10:00

With their transparently fake cavalcade’s easy entry in to the “high security” zone for APEC, aided by the blustering Police Commissions Pythonesque rendition of “That’s not funny! That’s not funny at ALL!”, the Chaser team have definitively won the war on terror. Laughter beats fearmongering, ridicule beats stupidity. Thus was the War OF Terror waged by our brutal militarist governments punctured by a bit of larrikin smartarsery.

This is what democracy looks like.

The Chaser’s irreverent stunts. Bums Not Bombs, the browneye salute to Bush. Ghost Dance, the high camp dance of death for dollars. The winning response to the ridiculous water cannon: the Bubble Cannon, sending streams of bobbing happiness through the rallies and marches. My favourite response to overpolicing and heterosexist morality: The Tranny Cops, tiny girls with huge handlebar moustaches and Cop This Sweet written on their blue overalls.

I think these things helped keep the huge Saturday demo more about our human connection (which is what brings us out to protest the killing of over half a million of our fellow humans in Iraq, amongst other atrocities committed for corporate interests) than expressing anger in ways that may have escalated violence.

Yes, there was one troubled soul who attacked a police officer, but this is inevitable when the police treat so many people badly. One such incident of excessive police violence happened at the rally was caught by the seething ravenous media throng, an unprovoked attack on a respectable bespectacled middle aged accountant, married father of three, and now even the right wing commentators are complaining the police have gone too far!

According to police, there were 3000 demonstrators, 3500 cops, and 1500 army troops.

This is what hypocrisy looks like.

3000 is about the number of Americans killed in 911, which is now exceeded by the number of Americans killed by Bush by sending them to Iraq.

The local newsagency was held up while the armed forces of the state were keeping old people with full bladders blockaded in Hyde Park. A few hundred metres from the Police Station, it took one and half hours for police to respond to this armed robbery. This is what hypocrisy looks like.

But Happiness beats Fear, Campness beats Pomposity, Love beats Terror, Ridicule beats Stupidity. I believe we win the War on Terror, which is mostly caused by the State, when we bring our full humanity, our joy, our bubbles, our bums, our vulnerability, our laughter, and our love, to the fight!

Boo to Bombs, Poo to Police, and Hooray for Humour and Humanity!

Bums not Bombs

2007-09-11T12:11:00.001+10:00

I'm in the red stockings, and my Best Friend is next to me

Sydney APEC peace demonstrations

2007-09-09T21:24:00.000+10:00

The homily in church this morning was so apt for a social justice acitivist serving radical compassion that I had to ask the minister for permission to post it here. He said yes, God bless him ; ) and so without further theist twaddle, and a note for atheists to just substitute "Uncompromising Radical Love" for "Jesus", here's the homily...

by Andrew Collis

Homily
Sunday Ordinary 23 C
South Sydney Uniting Church
Luke 14:25–33

'Skirmishes don't help – discipline is what we need'

"US Gov't says Yes to Torture"

"No: Black List, Yes: Civil Liberty"

"Howard's End"

"Our Right to March"

"Bush-Howard: Axis of Evil"

"Justice Not Destruction"

"We Are Allied with Torturers – How Sad"

"Peaceful Protest, Violent World Leaders"

"We Can Stop the War"

"Solar & Wind, Not Coal or Nuclear"

"Reject Bush on Character Grounds" ...

I noticed these banners while marching toward Hyde Park with ten to fifteen thousand others, all kinds of people, ordinary people – in spite of the rain, and in spite of threats from governments, police and some media representatives over the past month or more – intimidations de-legitimating peaceful assembly, demonizing people who protest what they regard to be injustice as criminals, as violent "ferals."

The march was one of the best organized I have attended. Marshals repeatedly called for non-violence. A spirit of constructive co-operation prevailed. Marshals and First Aid officers were conspicuous.

The speakers at the Town Hall were quite inspiring. Matt Howard, a former US Marine who'd fought in Iraq in 2003–4, is now a member of a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War. He made the simple point that citizens resist violent military powers that invade their country. "We are the ones causing violence in Iraq," he said, citing 600,000 deaths in Iraq since 2003. He went on to cite the example of people protesting and bringing to an end the war in Vietnam. Soldiers actually put down their weapons, and pilots dropped bombs into the ocean rather than upon the Vietnamise with whom they'd come to identify. He confessed that, in 2003, he'd followed orders to bury humanitarian aid rather than help distribute it!

Greens senator Kerry Nettle made the connections between concerns about imperial violence, and concerns for Indigenous rights, workers' rights (in the context of free-trade agreements which drive down working conditions across the Pacific), and climate change (in the context of APEC's undermining international efforts toward specific targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions). Nettle expressed concern over so-called nuclear "solutions" to global warming, warming instead to prospects of renewable technology like wind and solar power.

All the speakers expressed outrage at the barriers erected and the excessive security in the city, wondering at the message such symbols send – world leaders afraid of ordinary people; world leaders ashamed to meet face-to-face with Sydney-siders; world leaders haunted by ghosts in Iraq and Afghanistan; world leaders indifferent toward ordinary people; capitalism in a cage?

A marshal stressed again the virtues of non-violence and discipline – long-term alternatives to violence and greed. "Don't be provoked by those who want our demonstration to fail," she said, referring to some neo-Nazi and other potentially aggressive groups present. "Skirmishes don't help. Discipline is what we need."

I don't readily like crowds. They make me nervous. And yet there was something undeniably positive going on. The police presence was scary – giant cameras, microphones, guns, helicopters trained upon the crowd – and that made the courage and care of the protestors all the more striking. I was walking with people I didn't know, but singing along ("Show us what democracy looks like/This is what democracy looks like"), actually feeling safe in a vulnerable presence of courage and care.

And so, at about 12 o'clock when the marchers were settling in for speeches and music at Hyde Park, and I was walking back along Park Street toward Town Hall Station, it was frightening to witness the police riot squad with water cannon making its way toward Hyde Park, pushing us out of the way. Dorothy, Trevor and I stood stunned. What need was there for this? It made me think what it must be like for those who regularly feel intimidated by authorities; who feel unsafe in their own country; who refuse to play along with the game of the mainstream, be it nationalism or privatization, nuclear physics or nuclear families. That tension creates an expectation of violence.

In today's Gospel Jesus addresses a large crowd. What he says amounts to a harsh wisdom, a gritty realism in the face of expectations of violence. "If any of you come to me without turning your back on your mother and your father, your loved ones, your sisters and brothers, indeed your very self, you can't be my follower. Anyone who doesn't take up the cross and follow me can't be my disciple."

In other words, real love involves discipline, and real risks. "Real love always lies beyond our comfort zones [including the comfort zones of family, nation, generation].

"And [yet] a new community founded on risky, socially controversial, deep love is worth whatever discomfort and disrepute it takes. Jesus has gone that way before us, and as we gather around this table we are reminded that he was broken for it.

"… we are also reminded that on the other side of the deep waters of disrepute, scandal and death lies the 'promised land' where the new wine of mercy and peace is poured. And with the bread and wine of scandalous love, we are nourished for the unpopular journey into the ultimate love" (Nathan Nettleton).

What I felt yesterday had to do with people committing to something positive in the face of violence and derision. We often talk in the church about bearing crosses, and I suspect we often are not so clear on what we mean by that. Crosses can become merely the inconveniences of life, merely difficulties. But the cross of Jesus, if it is anything, is firstly an instrument of torture, a state-sponsored terror. It stands, firstly, for the attempt, on the part of political powers, to frighten and silence the one whose courage was/is born of love divine. I sensed something of that courage yesterday. People saying, "I choose to be courageous and to love, whatever the consequences." Amen.

--------------------------------

South Sydney Uniting Church every Sunday 10am 56a Raglan St Waterloo, we're obviously very queer anarchist friendly, and we give good service! ~ N

Snipers targetting Sydney schoolkids

2007-09-06T15:07:00.000+10:00

Here we are with "our" government colluding with armed foreign troops to put our schoolchildren in their targetting sights. Of course things will look uglier and uglier as the old order festers and bursts. But take hope! We have the technology and numbers to expose their atrocities and widen public support for peace and rejection of militarisation. Chant with me now: The people, well networked, will never be defeated! The people, well networked, will never be defeated! The people...

Spread these photos far and wide. This is what the New World Order wants to look like, with weapons pointed at the populace to stop us protesting and keep us in line with the economic interests of the obscenely wealthy. This is what we're fighting, and why we're fighting it. All those extra troops and weapons only increase the likelihood of an innocent being shot.

Is cheap Iraqi oil for your SUV worth a gun pointed at our kids?

9:55 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

APEC on the cheek can be quite Condaleeza

2007-09-06T13:30:00.000+10:00

But fawning is a soul's worst end...

Here in SydAPECLOCKDOWNney, I realise that the revolution has started, with the people rising against the government that is sending their children to war, and against the police fencing off their city in a foolish attempt to silence their protest (but which only focuses mass dissent and resistance).

At the Student Strike rally, a prominent activist thanks me for the Christmas card I made last year, and says it still inspires her. I can thank the "Christian" Right Wing for making me look again at the Jesus stories to check my recollection that they are about absolute unconditional love, social justice, and radical compassion, not about interfering with people's love, or using public resources to secure private property, or waging war and killing over half a million innocent people in Iraq.

I see bubbles streaming across the marching crowd from the side furthest from me, and then I realise it's my Best Friend carrying the bubble machine, which he has retagged the Bubble Cannon. These are our tools, love, human connection, and ruthless ridicule. An intelligent human with a killing weapon is a sad joke against their own intelligence, and the sooner they realise that, put down their tools of violence, and join humanity with humanity, the happier we can all be.

I see my young friends shining in their roles leading the Love Revolution, and I realise I have been ideally placed to help nurture this astounding change in human society, from being about having stuff and supremacist views and defending that stuff and those views, to living freely as loving and compassionate and intelligent and creative and autonomous humans.

I realise I can upload my political songs onto the web, no longer held back by lack of resources or corporate approval, for anyone can publish now, and it will find its audience.

I LOVE the future! (As my innerchild sees the present times.)

I see the people's surveillance photos of snipers trained at the civilian population. Here we are with "our" government colluding with armed foreign troops to put our schooldchildren in their targetting sights. Of course things will look uglier and uglier as the old order festers and bursts. But take hope! We have the technology and numbers to expose their atrocities and widen public support for peace and rejection of militarisation. Chant with me now: The people, well networked, will never be defeated! The people, well networked, will never be defeated! The people...

Cheers

From an old but reborn and regenerating and rejuvenated hippy!

&=^D

Have Your Say on the APEC Fences

2007-09-04T12:40:00.001+10:00

A lovely bit of agitprop from SaintFletcher, a seditiously inspirational Guru

China: Cops hassle lovers, public hassle cops, love wins

2007-09-03T13:39:00.000+10:00

In this great story, we see what happens when ordinary people question the bullies who police our love lives in the name of authority. Authority does not come from the state. Authority over human society comes from human society, that is, from you and me and all our other fellow humans.

Briefly, the cops (in laughable theory the servants of society, but actually the servants of those who profit by the way the state is now, and thus poised to oppose any change the people want), ahem, BRIEFLY, the cops hassled folk for being affectionate, and then people who heard about this protested, and then the cops got disicplined, and perhaps now less state resources will be used to punish human happiness in the future!

Here's the story from

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSHER15330720070831?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews

Police punished after lovers fined for a hug
Fri Aug 31, 2007 12:47PM EDT(9)

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has punished three policemen for detaining and fining two young lovers 5,000 yuan ($660) for hugging in public on the Chinese version of Valentine's Day.

The couple paused to embrace while taking a stroll along a river in Jinshi in the central province of Hunan, the Shanghai Daily said.

"As we hugged each other, three policemen came and separated us so they could ask questions. They brought us to the police station and didn't free us until we paid a 5,000 yuan fine," the paper quoted female detainee, Xiao Hong, as saying in an Internet posting on a local news portal.

The police were in plain clothes and many other couples were out strolling on the evening of "Qi Xi" -- a local festival often dubbed Chinese Valentine's Day, the Beijing News said in a separate report.

Internet users poured derision on the police, which "forced officials to look into the case," the paper said.

"The three policemen have been punished. We have never dealt with such a case before," the paper quoted a clerk at the police station as saying.

Police had refunded the money to Xiao Hong's boyfriend and apologized, the paper said.

Police in China have previously taken a dim view of public displays of affection. Last October, volunteers offering "free hugs" in a shopping street in Beijing were hauled away for questioning.

Generation War

2007-09-03T09:20:00.000+10:00

Here in Sydney we ready for the APEC demos. The cops claim the huge barricade and foreign soldiers with guns are necessary because they found a booklet from a student "Mutiny" group about how to wear a gas mask.

Sometimes I think this is a war between the generations.

All the old people have to lose is their stuff and values and faculties, and those are doomed anyway, as their stuff gets superceded, different, more intelligent values evolve,and win favour from all but the old and entrenched, and their closed minds close their senses to the world.

All the young people have at stake is their life and the life of their offspring, trying to save the planet before the rich idiot's destroy the biosphere to mine a dollar.

My money is on the young.

I know what sex I am!

2007-08-27T19:57:00.000+10:00

A while ago, I was moaning that straight men thought I was a man, and gay men thought I was a woman. Of course, this may even have been true and manifest for me, however, this is almost completely because I had this belief, shaped by my own personal history and social history.

Now things have changed, and straight guys see me as a woman, or woman enough, and gay guys see me as pretty much the same as them.

I know what sex I am now.

I'm whatever sex you fancy ; )

Which is better than my previous operating belief, that others saw me as whatever sex they don't fancy!

I know there are people whose sexuality is more about what they don't want than what they want, you know, those who would rather be repelled by the penis on a drag queen rather than act on their attraction to the rest of her, and they may well be vast majority of the humans in Western society, but for me, they just don't count. They aint sexy, and so it don't even matter that they can't see how sexy I am.

I am not sexy for the masses.

I am sexy for the sexy.

; )

Australian Trans people Denied Passports by Minister for Foreign Affairs

2007-08-10T16:02:00.001+10:00

Australian Trans people Denied Passports by Minister for Foreign Affairs

The Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer in May 2007 signed an order to stop many of the Australia’s trans community from obtaining a passport in the gender in which they live, unless they have had genital surgery.

This means that transsexual people in transition would have to travel aboard with a passport of the opposite gender to which they are presenting or with a Document of Identity which states their name but does not disclose any sex or gender identity. This even applies to someone travelling overseas for the express purpose of completing their transsexual surgery (Breast surgery is common in Australiabut genital surgery is often carried out outside Australia). Some intersex, transsexual or transsexed people cannot have any surgery for medical reasons including heart condition, liver and kidney problems, cancer or AIDS or simply not being able to afford treatment.

Transgender people who do not want to have genital surgery will also now have to travel on a passport which will read the opposite sex and gender to which they present or with a DOI which will make them stand out ie by not having a passport. These people will now not be able to travel outside Australiasafely and anonymously, making them susceptible to abuse, violence, and discrimination abroad. This change in the law was brought about by the Howard government without any community, medical, healthcare or public consultation. It is an act of violence against the transgender community by the Howard government to please the arch conservative right-wing voters in the run up to election. It is a hate crime.

Sign SAGE’s petition to campaign for a passport review at www.petitiononline.com/sagepass/petition.html

international signatories very welcome)

Contact your MP

Send a letter to the Australian Minster for Foreign Affairs, Canberra

Send this email to a friend and any networks you are on.

Thank you!

Sex And Gender Education (SAGE)

Campaigning for the rights of all sex and gender diverse people in Australia

www.sageaustralia.org

See related article:

http://evolutionpublishing.com.au/sxnews/features/danger-zone.aspx

SX News, 9 August 2007

Danger Zone
An amendment to the passport legislation to plug a loophole allowing same-sex marriage compromises trans people's safety. Katrina Fox reports.

Two weeks ago, a pre-operative trans woman, Stefanie Imbruglia (singer Natalie's cousin), went to the Australian Passport Office in Sydney to obtain a temporary passport showing her sex as female, which would allow her to travel to Thailand for genital realignment surgery. She didn't anticipate any problems, since hundreds of trans people before her had successfully applied for and received such interim passports as a matter of course. However, in what she describes as a "twilight zone moment", things went awry: she was subjected to a passport officer insisting on calling her 'Sir' when she was presenting as obviously female, and denied a passport that reflects her gender identity.

"I handed my documentation across to him [and] almost immediately, he referred to me as 'Sir', but the first two times, I thought I was just hearing things," Imbruglia recalls. "He then told me that I could not get a passport with the letter 'F. I asked to see where I couldn't in writing and he went away for about five minutes or so."

Upon his return, the passport officer, still referring to Imbruglia as 'Sir', handed her a copy of the July 2007 issue of Passport News, an internal newsletter for staff, with a story titled 'Transgender Passport Applicants: New Policy'.

The story, seen by SX, states that the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, signed an amendment to the passport legislation in May this year that disallows trans people to obtain a passport in their "intended sex". Applicants may obtain a passport stating the sex on their birth certificate or be issued with a Document of Identity (DOI), which states their new name and the fact they are an Australian citizen, but does not disclose their sex.

This piece of legislation was slipped through without any consultation with the trans community and has caused an uproar with trans advocacy groups and professionals who work with trans people. Sex and gender specialist psychotherapist, Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH, tried unsuccessfully for a week to get Downer's office to supply full documentation on the new amendment and lambasted him for putting trans people wishing to travel overseas in danger.

"This will put members of the trans community in danger when they are travelling because they will not have a passport that matches their gender presentation," O'Keefe told SX. "The psychological damage as well as the security risk to
these already vulnerable people will be enormous."

Information officer at the Gender Centre NSW, Katherine Cummings, agreed. "Our clientele are forced to carry documentation which doesn't include their innate gender, leaving them open to be harassed in customs areas."

Imbruglia's case has been taken on by lobby group Sex and Gender Education (SAGE) which is planning a campaign and online petition. Spokesperson Norrie May-Welby told SX: "You can't travel with breasts and 'male' on your passport and this is what Downer is making trannies do. A DOI creates fuss and bother and someone travelling overseas doesn't need that. They could be travelling through fundamentalist countries or just going through high-security post-9/11, where if there's something out of the ordinary, they can target someone. It's most unfair to single trans people out to travel with dodgy paperwork."

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the purpose of the amendment was to "strengthen the integrity and security of Australian passports", arguing that only the State and Territory Registrars of Births, Deaths and Marriages and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship have the legislated power to amend records when people have satisfied their requirements to record a change of gender.

"It would be inconsistent ... for the Department to continue to issue passports, albeit limited in validity, to persons in a sex other than that shown in the records held by the State or Territory BDM Registrar or the Department of Immigration and Citizenship," a spokesperson told SX.

Trans activists, however, have suggested that that the move was precipitated by the government wanting to plug a loophole which could open the door to same-sex marriage.

A post-operative trans woman has a case pending in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) in which she is suing the federal government for refusing to grant her a female passport because she is still legally married to a woman. The trans woman married her female partner using her male birth certificate. She is challenging the federal government on the grounds that it was out of its jurisdiction by taking any other information from the birth certificate apart from residency. If she wins the case, she and her partner will be the first legally recognised same-sex married couple in Australia. But this new amendment to the passport legislation now gives the government power to ask for more information for a passport, including sex and nationality.

As for Imbruglia, the change in law leaves her fearing for her safety. "I'm now unsure about my travel to Thailand," she told SX. "I have two options: go with M on my passport which I don't want or travel with a DOI with no sex written on it. So basically I'm forced not to have a passport, so my peace of mind has been shattered and I shouldn't be in that position."

To join SAGE's campaign and sign the online petition, visit www.sageaustralia.org

A Cat Passes Across My Path

2007-07-17T21:40:00.000+10:00

A couple of weeks ago we noticed the cat was knocking the chess pieces over, and put a box up to protect the chess game. A couple of days later, I realized she was maybe too weak to climb the stairs, and moved her things to one level, and began to fear the worst. A week ago, I was too distressed by her illness to go to work, so I took time off, and in the afternoon, was persuaded to take her to the vet. I didn’t want to, for in my experience, there’s only one outcome from that.

They took her in for tests and treatment, and I went in the next day to visit her. I knew it was more serious, for the doctor brought two other staff in with her to talk with me. She talked to me at length about her organs failing and cancer of this and that and strange growths and abnormalities and being realistic. They said “have to be realistic” a lot.

I already had a bill well over a thousand dollars just from the cost of keeping her alive and finding out what was wrong (everything, basically), but I was willing to spend more if it would help her. They said that even if they managed to save her this time, and get her strong enough to survive chemo-therapy, she wouldn’t last long, and would be in pain, and would never be well again.

I kept thinking that if she saw me, she’d get better.

They took me in to see her, in intensive care, with tubes and bandages around her.

She wanted me to let her go. I communed silently with her, and she wanted to go. The body she was in was dissolving. What we had was love, what we have is love, all we have is love.

“We’re ready,” I told the vet, and we moved on to the next stage immediately.

I looked at her with love while she died in my arms. All is one. There is no longer an apparently separate part of the Universe in called Virgin, but there is still the love we shared, and what she showed me of love, of silent communication, of being fully present with another, of the need for regular affection and attention.

There was a time when I didn’t appreciate those needs, or have enough people close in my life, so the Universe sent me Virge. Now I have learnt those lessons, and now I have humans in my life close enough to be affectionate with, and while my ego, my idea of myself, the illusion that is continuity of consciousness, wanted her to stay, I can glimpse the appropriateness of the timing. From a certain perspective, I can accept it.

I didn’t take any ashes. She is no more that lifeless body than she was what she pooed out the day before.

She is not a collection of atoms.

She is a part of the Universe that manifested separately as a cat for a time, to share love with me, so that I can share love better. (I’m British; it’s not like expressing love is something I grew up with).

I can feel what I felt with her when I lie on a bed with a friend for a cat nap, when I just enjoy tuning into our shared breathing and body heat.

I can feel what I felt with her when I look on my friends with love and lack of judgment, and receive the same from them. I can feel what I felt with her when we socially stroke each other, or just enjoy being in each other’s company.

I can feel even more than I felt with her when I hug my friends, for humans are built to hug humans.

And the conversation with humans is a little more stimulating too, but frankly, it took me this long to find enough humans with enough intellectual interest to be more stimulating than a cat. I’d rather a cat’s silence than the drone of corporate or thoughtless cruelty, of mind-numbing cliché or one-up-manship. Humans who act as if they are separate to the Universe, as if they are or can be better than others, are far more destructive to my peace of mind than the silent acceptance of a cat.

But I grow and change, nurtured by a loving Universe, and people, human and cat, come and go, as will the notionally separate part of the Universe that constitutes this writer.

The only reliable, permanent part of this reality is Love. I remember feeling Love with my cat, I remember feeling Love last night with my friends at the pub, and I dedicate myself to Love. Everything else is but dust and ashes.

I took Virgin to the vet on Wednesday, held her as she died on Thursday, and on Friday paid the enormous bill with a bank loan. Outside the vet, I looked at the bill, and saw the item for “Euth/ routine cremation Cat”, and it, the passing of my close personal companion, Virgin, was complete.

There’s still tears, but I can choose whether I follow tears with more tears, or choose something more kind.

Friday night, I saw a cat on the street as I was heading out. It did a cute show and posed upside down against a wall, and then looked at me with such disappointment when I walked past. I realized I had been called over, so I spent a little time sharing affection with it, before continuing on my way.

I danced the weekend away, and had a lovely quiet time with friends in the pub on Monday night.

I’ve had a few mildly sad moments of expecting to see or tend to the cat, when I remember she is gone, but I don’t make a drama of it, this is just a phenomena of repeated behaviour, and while the separate character of Virgin was in a play that has now ended, the Love behind that character is forever, and Love calls me to be present with life as it is now.

Miaow.

Position Vacant: Attentive sleeping companion

2007-07-12T21:55:00.000+10:00

After a slightly dramatic exit, where I actually thought a snowball's chance would be enough (as it usually is for me), my sleeping companion has departed this mortal coil. My cat died in my arms this afternoon, at the vet's, after we had established she had no hope of continuing life outside of a hospital, and had more organs failing than working.

Who will gaze into my eyes without looking away?

Who will just be glad to be close to me?

Who will be there for me?

Who will give me the present of their presence?

Who will I give my presence to?

Who will return my gaze?

Who will to drift off to sleep with me, breathing together?

Who will.

DEMO TODAY TUES LUNCHTIME PARLT AGAINST ANTI-SEX WORK LAW

2007-06-26T10:51:00.000+10:00

This law, passed by the lower house in NSW last Friday, makes it legal for a man to dob in his partner as a "whore", and she, single mother of four, could have her power and phone cut off on this one accusation, as she is guilty until proven innocent! Media release from Scarlet Alliance follows:

SARTOR BRINGS BACK THE PAPERBAG-MEN

WHAT: Sex workers protest against the "Brothels Legislation Amendment Bill 2007"

WHEN: Tuesday 26th June, 2007, 12.30pm

WHERE: Parliament House, Macquarie Street

WEARING: Red

CARRYING: Paper bags of $$$ to influence the Parliament

WHY: The new laws will be a return to the old "Paper Bag" days

Iemma and Sartor are reversing the decriminalisation of the sex industry in NSW by introducing harsh and discriminatory laws that will oversee eviction of private workers from their homes, power and electricity cut off from non-Council approved brothels, and the Land and Environment Court hearing applications aiming to render entire sections of neighbourhoods 'sex industry free.'

The Bill was introduced to parliament late on Wednesday night, was rammed through the Legislative Assembly on Friday and is expected to be rushed through the Legislative Council tomorrow.

Saunas, performance venues, burlesque... any venue that allows nudity could be subject to the new laws.

For Media Comment call:
Janelle Fawkes 0411 985 135
Manager
Scarlet Alliance
The Australian Sex Workers Association
http://www.scarletalliance.org.au

The proposed Bill includes –

- Removal of natural justice

- Council will have the power to have amenities like phone and power turned off and a fining regime implemented.

- A Court may determine a place was a brothel without any direct evidence and may accept circumstantial evidence, and without the sex worker in question being able defend themselves against the allegations.

- A new definition of "sex related uses" in the "Environmental Planning and Assessment Act" includes all premises where nudity and money are involved: clubs, performance venues, and art spaces will be effected.

- Instead of councils needed to receive "sufficient complaints about the brothel" prior to taking action, Councils can now take closure action after only one complaint.

- An owner of an apartment building where a private sex worker is working can be subject to these new laws. A defense for the owner is to evict the sex worker. This is without to the sex worker having a chance to challenge the order.

- As the definition of brothel still includes one person working as a sex worker in their own home, the increased Council power including acting on only 1 complaint and without the need to prove prostitution takes place.

Straight Traps, Gay Ghettos, Identity and Happiness

2007-06-21T18:37:00.000+10:00

Thinking about the Hijra and why they live a separate ghettoised life, I realised that I choose a broader community, rather than accept society's labelling of me as an outcast (by virtue of transgressing or transcending gender).

I don't want to hang around people with the same gender/sexuality label, as this cuts me off from a potential sexual partner if my desires are for someone more complimentary than mirroring. It also cuts me off from the human race, or internalises the judgement that I can't mix freely with the gregariously hard-wired species I am part of. And it puts up the destructive notion that the "normative" humans have some rarified perfection because of their gender normativity, when conforming to any unnatural standard causes stress and anxiety, and at the end of the day, if the categories of "man" and "woman" were natural, they would not need so much artificial reinforcement (in hair styles, for example, or body statements where one sex is hidden and powerful and the other revealed and pretty, or (for men) the denial of any childlike implulses, and (for women) the painting of the face to stimulate constant sexual arousal)... And so I see the common human condition of people having to choose how they react to the imposition of external or authoritarian ideas about how they should act.

Transgender and cisgender people are both trapped in suffering as long as they base their happiness on other people's judgments, or even on conforming to being exclusively transgender or cisgender. Long term happiness is only possible when we move beyond our ideas of what separates us from others, and identify our wellbeing with the collective wellbeing, that is, humans cannot be happy as long as they have to identify as individual separate beings not connected to others, and their happiness increases with the increase in sense of connection. Seeing beyond arbitrary divisions (like me, not like me, of my tribe, not of my class, of the gender exactly opposite me, not of appropriate gender behaviour, and so on) is essential to long term mental health and happiness.

Personally, I socialise with others who have freed themselves from authoritarianism, who allow themselves and others to express themselves freely without fear of being policed on what others deem appropriate for whatever they've judged my race/gender/class/age to be. I am no more comfortable with transgender people policing my gender, deeming me acceptable only if I do their idea of gender and deeming me not good enough if I am happy to be seen as gender ambiguous or incongruent, than I am with cis-gendered "heterosexuals" dismissing me as less than a woman and less than a man.

Arbitrary classifications of humans is an adaption to conditions that no longer exist, and now a maladaption that humanity is easing itself out of (ending slavery, recognising indigenous people as people, giving women the vote, ending discrimination based on marital status, race, age, religion, political affiliation, and even transgender status..), and I understand that MPs in the UK are drafting legislation to include recognition of people who don't want to list either (only) of "male" or "female: as part of their legal identity.

I am not free if only people in boxes A and B are OK, nor if only people in boxes A to Z are OK, for not all people belong in boxes, but all people belong to me, and me to all people, and if anyone is left out of fair and equal opportunity to participate in human community, then I am left out.

People drift to whatever situation is most familiar for them, and sometimes that is the most comfortable situation for a time, and so hiding with "kin" can be a way to survive and later progress, but it's a short term tactic, and if being judged by others is your pattern, this will happen for Hijra from other Hijra (who can be as judgmental or compassionate as any other human!) as it did from the families that rejected them.

Admittedly, mainstream society is often intolerant of the differently gendered, but I think it's a rod for their own back, and they are not better off that those they exlcude or who choose exclusion. Likewise, the gay/trans ghetto may give safe haven for a time, but ultimately is another prison if it does not allow growth and free movement and interaction. I have left my family of origin on the other side of the continent, not because of being differently gendered, as they are now quite accepting of this, but because they have narrow minds and believe the rubbish sold to them by their corporate masters and actually think it matters how much money I have in the bank, not how much enjoyment I have in life. Likewise I avoid the commercial gay and transgender scenes, for they are full of people who judge me by how well I fit their fantasy, and who can't even see the human connections and realities I value far more than their superficial judgments.

Having had a "sex change" where I sit, but eschewing hormone consumption and normative gender, I find community with accepting human beings, not circles where heterosexuality and gender normativity are privileged, nor circles where homosexuality or gender passing are privileged. One is not accepted if it is conditional, and this is all that "normative" society offers too.

As we continue to evolve from our brutal apish orgins into something worthy of the species name "humans who think", we will do better, and grow beyond jugmentalism and closer to divine acceptance.

Hey, our journey is very influenced by our choice of destination...

Cheers, bliss, peace and joy

norrie mAy-welby

The hazards of ads!

2007-06-14T18:42:00.000+10:00

Sheesh! I allowed AdSense on my site, and I get Anti-sense! The click on ad for http://www.godsolovestheworld.com/ ... "Oh we're so bad that God had to make Jesus to die for us..." These fools are trying to share thier delusion that the most important thing about Jesus was his death, not what people remembered of his LIFE! Don't buy the bullshit! Checkout Spong (Bishop John Shelby Spong, google him) if you'r not up on this debate (Yes! You can believe in your connection to Universal Love, and even like the stories and ethics of Jesus, without having to believe in pixies and zombies and an angry/shizo parent god who punishes and demands torture!

A middle age birthday

2007-06-14T18:10:00.000+10:00

My first birthday since being hit by a bus… The theme was Undead, celebrating life and unstoppableness in the face of the clumsy machinery of the state and corporations… Hosted at my Best Friend’s big suburban house and backyard, it was the mid-week party success story of the year! Sure, I was at least twenty years older than almost everyone there, but it’s not my fault most of my generation are conformists who are not only gender but age normative, giving up on dancing and all-night partying before they’re “old” and thirty. And fuck it, if you voted for Murder (ie the half-million people murdered by Australia’s illegal, immoral, deceitful and profit-driven invasion of Iraq), and most of you my age DID, I don’t want you at my party. And I and others have been trying to raise your environmental awareness for the last thirty years, but you think hoarding your precious dollars is more important than your great grandchildren having something to breath next century. “You are the generation that bought more shoes and you get what you deserve.”

Anyway, back to the middle-aged hippy queen and her Undead celebration: There were a few different groups of friends of mine that had not met each other previously, and it was nice to see this cross-fertilisation, aided by the Tequilla Dawns of the Undead I was serving (Tequilla Sunrise with messier Grenadine) from a bucket, and the fire in the brazier lent by my favourite Newtown household.

I thought it was winding up after midnight (this being a Wednesday), but I slowly realized that everyone was just enjoying each other’s company too much to leave, and we sat around the fire until 4AM, when some went home, and others crashed in the lounge, apart from the boy that Best Friend was taking to bed, God bless him!

And we then roused ariubd midday for pancakes! The mid-week party that would not stop!

The party was so good that I was invited by a guest to THEIR birthday party on Friday, so my birthday celebration extended a few days, and OOPS fell over dancing drunk on wet floor with smooth rubber soles, and copped a deep blow on the other side of my chest to where the bus had bit me. So, I’ve been feeling my heart beating for the last few weeks, but it’s just a rib injury, and like everything else, I’ll heal from it, and I’m still dancing uncontrollably!

Hey, if you don’t want to grow old, don’t act old.

On the radio today, a man talked about using his child’s microscope to investigate some photolithography, and I realized, people without children don’t have learning tools anymore. Stop learning like a child, and your brain will soon conform to the low expectations of senility.

I’m still in a society largely controlled by my complacently ignorant generation and their ancestors, but they have less and less power, cos they can’t move much (cos they haven’t moved much, not since they got the landrover), and the future belongs to the young and active and challenging and those committed to life and joy and creativity, not to those just committed to their own personal comfort or desire for approval.

A woman working in a bank tried to make me feel bad for having no financial assets when I was 27. Almost twenty years later, I still got no financial assets, but I have a body made for dancing and boomsen, and friends I can really count on, and a whole crowd of autonomous anarchists to enjoy great company and iconoclastic shennanigins with.

Life LIVES!

Gay allowed on Myspace, androgynous not

2007-05-08T11:22:00.000+10:00

We were assured the lack of "gay" as an option in Myspace was a bug that would soon be fixed, and that indeed seems to be the case. However, one still cannot register wihout listing oneself as either "male" or "female", which excludes some intersex folk, some transgender folk in transition, I guess all hermaphrodites, and androgynously identified humans like me. No that there are many like me, but there are other kinds of androgynously identified humans. And plenty more humans who find this kind of compulsory sexual categorisation and disclosure to be unwelcome.

Tell MySpace (and YouTube) to lift their game, and take the sex hurdle out of the registration process, and instead allow people to indicate if they so choose whether they have or like blonde or brunette straight or curls and so on, and likewise if they so choose allow people to keep private whether they have private parts of this or that shape or whatever.

Write to au-mscontact@myspace.com and editor@youtube.com and cc me nmay-wel@bigpond.net.au

Here's my letter to them sent today:

--------------------------------

Time for Gender Inclusion on the Internet

It is time that all people were allowed to participate in human society without sexual discrimination based on their gender, marital status, or breeding state. It is time that MYSPACE and YOUTUBE welcomed all people without sexual discrimination, instead of blocking from registration all those unwilling or unable to identify themselves as one and only one of "male" or "female". It's very simple; remove the category, or make it optional, or allow more choices, including self-nomination.

The current system is excluding a small but vital percentage of the human race. We all count, you know, not just the majority.

norrie mAy-welby

A private citizen representing nothing but what made sense to me at the time
---------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you to all those who have already written and forwarded this call for gender inclusion on myspace and youtube

Whether your interest extends as far as writing a post, or just as far as reading this post, thank you for your dedication to humanity.

Murdoch bans gay option on MySpace

2007-05-03T16:57:00.000+10:00

The following letter was recieved from a fellow social justice activist in response to my posts about MySpace being gender exclusive
--------------------------------------------

"Gay option banned on myspace"

It seems that the famously anti-gay ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch (he gave up his Australian citizenship to become an American) is attempting to push his own agenda on the social networking site Myspace that he bought a few years back.

Myspace no longer lets you select “gay” as a sexual preference on the site when you sign up, nor does it allow you to change your sexual preference to “gay”.

Don’t believe us? Try it out for yourself by clicking on “Edit Profile” and then “Background and Lifestyle” if you’re on Rupert’s site.

Murdoch is well known for his anti-gay stance. Speaking to the Independent in the UK last year about gay marriage, he said: “I believe it is wrong. I’m considered homophobic and crazy about these things and old fashioned. But I think that the family – father, mother, children – is fundamental to our civilisation.”

Is is a meaningless bug or a meaningful message? Either way, Rupert better get back to writing some code to fix it. You don’t want to be on the receiving end of a flotilla of fags, trust us.

Repost this.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gender exclusion on youtube

2007-05-01T18:16:00.000+10:00

This letter sent to editor@youtube.com
Feel free to send one too....
---------------------------

Please allow people to join without having to say they are either male or female. This is rude, and excludes many creative people. Did you know there are actually more people with genetic intersex conditions than there are transgendered folk?

Please do not treat this as frivolous. Excluding people who are not exclusively "male" or exclsuively "female" may not affect the majority, but a significant minority, around 1-5% of the human population. Yes, we are rare, but so too Norwegians are (globally speaking) rare, but that is no reason to exclude them (or us) from world affairs.

Please bring your site up to speed with the 21st Century, and move away from that industrialised crap where if you're not a ruler, the most important than about you is how you can breed the next generation of factory or cannon fodder.

I am fairly well networked with the communities of sex or gender diverse people and those who support them, and will be forwarding your response to them for their interest.

norrie mAy-welby
human being with no Ova or Sperm production or a single stereotypical gender role.

Dealing with others reactions to Sex Change

2007-04-30T14:54:00.000+10:00

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/
index.ssf?/base/news/117772717015230.xml&coll=7

Great article on how and why others cope with transgenderism. Not all the surgery and law change in the world will make as much difference as just choosing to be comfortable with yourself. ~ norrie

----------------------------------------

It's either (sex) change -- or die
Sunday, April 29, 2007

While Mike Penner has been a sportswriter at the Los Angeles Times for 23 years, his average story doesn't produce more than a half-million hits on the Times' Web site. Then again, his typical story doesn't alert readers that, after a brief vacation, he will return to the beat as Christine Daniels.

On the eve of that furlough, Penner is a transitioning transsexual. In a Thursday column, he confessed he has fought the conviction that his brain is "wired female" for most of his 49 years, at a severe toll to his happiness and mental health.

"When you reach the point when one gender causes heartache and unbearable discomfort, and the other brings more joy and fulfillment that you ever imagined possible," Penner writes, "it shouldn't take two tons of bricks to fall in order to know what to do. It didn't with me. With me, all it took was 1.99 tons."

Someone who has passed this way before has one last brick to throw his way: "I hope he's at peace with himself," Anne said. "Actually, it's quite a joyful process. The pain is in the reaction of other people, for whom it's a profoundly confusing thing.

"The most profound thing I can say is that you will always be a mirror for other people's insecurity."

I've known Anne for almost 20 years . . . which means I never knew the guy who played football, got married, fathered a son and began a career in journalism. I only know the accomplished, eloquent, generous woman he became.

We haven't talked about her change in years. "The whole topic bores me," Anne said. "Been there, done that. I have no idea what goes on now in the sex-change community. I wish the people well, but I never wanted to be known as anything other than the female I am."

She still doesn't; "Anne" is not her real name. But I called Friday to get a better sense of what's ahead for Christine Daniels. Anne said it depends. On Christine's strength. Her appearance. Her peace of mind.

Anne was considerably younger when she went to see Dr. Stanley Biber, who performed 4,500 sex-change operations between 1969 and 2003. Like Penner, she fought the inevitable for years, contemplated suicide, searched for the pill that would have "made me content with that male body. I would have saved money, aggravation, grief, pain. But it doesn't work that way.

"I didn't 'become.' I just changed my body to match my mind," Anne said. And for the vast majority of men and women, she concedes, that's a tough pill to swallow: "They don't question their gender identity. They don't understand what it's like to wake up every day and, from your earliest memory, know that you're in the wrong body.

"It's either change or die. You have no choice. If you don't have the problem, you can't comprehend the need for the solution. You can only accept it. It's a lot like faith."

The superficial -- her appearance -- will be a significant factor in Christine Daniels' future, Anne said: "The hormones take years to work. If you're walking around looking like a man in a dress, you're going to have a hard time winning acceptance. Life isn't fair sometimes. People react to what they see."

And they react poorly to things they don't understand. That's where the mirror comes in. "If a person is insecure about life or sexuality, they're unable to understand this terrible dilemma," Anne said.

"But that's their problem. I feel blessed I was able to make the transition. Everyone has crosses to bear; I just had something a little more unusual to conquer. I think he's going to find that if you're comfortable with yourself, other people will be comfortable with you. But that applies to any person."

Indeed.

Steve Duin: 503-221-8597; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 steveduin@news.oregonian.com http://blog.oregonlive.com/steveduin

Support Gender Diversity in MySpace!

2007-04-22T20:52:00.000+10:00

It's turning into an e-campaign! Come on, join the call to get norrie mAy-welby into myspace! I mean, to get my own myspace ; )

I am currently blocked from myspace.com because the sign-up page insists I list myself as either male or female, and neither is unambiguous for me, okay, I mean, you probably don't need my life story to support my call for equal participation of all humans regardless of breeding status, but by the way, I'm post-transsexual, born with a willie, identified as female, did the whole transsexual sex change thing, got into feminism and Foucault and other friendly F-words, gave up hormones, and am now quite comfortable with being myself however others see me. And comfortable with everyone being themselves as they are. Hallelujah!

E-Mails to au-mscontact@myspace.com and cc to me nmay-wel@bigpond.net.au please. We could be at the start of a documentable change from exclusion and reducing humans to categories, flowing on from one site changing its policy of excluding humans who aren't just exclusively male or female, to other sites, to all sites, to other bureaucratic media, to an acceptance of human diversity predominant in the collective human conciousness. love for humanity and for our experiential reality informing our emotional reality, peace love and perpetual bliss! Ohm!

Wishing all y'all Peace, Love and Joy

norrie mAy-welby

----- Original Message -----

Dear Myspace Administrator

I was upset to hear that Norrie mAy-welby was unable to use the myspace service. Shouldn't a web log site called "My space" allow for the space to be customised to the individual, including ones gender. This would surely allow the user to claim the space as theirs.

Please consider allowing all people to share your service.

Sam Choy

On 18/04/2007, at 4:21 PM, Rani Lukita wrote:

Dear My Space Administrator,

My name is Rani Lukita and I am a friend of norrie mAy-welby, who has expressed concerns about having to adhere to being either male or female in subscribing to your service.

Whilst such restrictions are in no way limited to your particular service, I would nonetheless urge you accommodate for gender diversity in order to maintain an even more progressive level of inclusiveness- a value that myspace is reputed for.

Until this matter has developed positively, I will be forwarding these emails through my networks, which include a diverse audience, I can assure you.

Thank you for your attention, we hope to hear from you soon.

Rani P Lukita

norrie mAy-welby a écrit :
I am still waiting to be able to sign up to myspace. I am still blocked by the compulsory choose-one-gender-only field. I want to sign up to be a "friend" of a gender queer peformance site. It's ironic that I am still blocked by your system's continued insistence on reducing every human being to a normative breeding status, and excluding all those unable or unwilling to be so reduced. It's 2007, and utterly anachronous to insist on everyone having a normative breeding status, male or female, no intersex, hermaphrodite or gender diverse humans can apply, in the computer age!

This matter having been brought to your attention well over two months now, with yet no sign of progress, this post and your reply will be going to e-mail lists for those interested in the progression of this matter.

norrie mAy-welby

----- Original Message -----
From: MySpace - AU - MSContact
To: nmay-wel@bigpond.net.au
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 12:02 AM
Subject: Re: Report - Content [#2217230]

Hi there,

Thank you for sharing your comments and suggestions. We consider them important and will take them under advisement.

MySpace.com

--Original Message--
From: nmay-wel@bigpond.net.au
Date: 2/8/2007 4:20:50 AM
To: au-mscontact@myspace.com
Subject: Report - Content

02/08/2007 04:20 AM CONTACT REQUEST FORM SUBMITTED
----
Subject: Report - Content
Body:

The sign up page is innappropriate for people who do not
wish to state their part in human reproduction, nor for those
who do not have any part in human reproduction. For
example, and case in point, I am biologically neuter, and
socially androgynous, and have no wish to hurt my soul by
falsely descriing myself as "male" or "female"

It's all 2 beautiful

2007-04-16T20:28:00.000+10:00

I've just enjoyed a lovely weekend at Regen, where the hills were truly alive with music. Vibrating, that is, around the clock, with the deadliest mother fucking bone-making sound systems. I had gr8 company (I love you all, SPS, Fuji Collective, Ca Ca, Configure8, Jollywood, big wet kisses and warm hugs y'all),some excessively high quality flirting, and bliss sleeping with my best friend. I'm not in love with him, but I do love him, and I'm not sexually attracted to him, but I do appreciate how utterly beautiful he is.

In between dreams, in the otherworldey light of the tent, I gazed with loving wonder at the "imperfections" on his skin, and felt overcome with gratitude for this experience, being able to appreciate the divine shining beauty inherent in this (and every) human being.

An utterly beautiful boy that said best friend and I flirted with on the weekend just sent me a lovely text, and I am so flattered that I am considerable flirtable by such an utterly angelic boy. And with that thought, I look at myself in the mirror, and thinking about such a lovely person who found me attractive, I can see that. That utter beauty, in the mirror.

Even in the imperfections.

And then, there are no imperfections.

Just divine beauty, the manifestation of divine love.

Yeah, hey, even the in wrinkles, and it's good I learnt to love them, because there will be many more, many, and deeper, and they all deserve and are worthy of love, of similar quality as the divine love that manifests our physical reality, "Within you," as the Beatles say, "and without you," (to complete the quote).

Who loves you, baby.

God, sex and fruit trees

2007-04-10T17:10:00.000+10:00

Intital article, "Extremist clerics demand Pakistan's female tourism minister be fired for hugging man" at http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/10/news/politics/12_02_094_9_07.txt

It is distressing that supposedly intelligent humans threaten violence to support their perverse view that our Divine Creator is obsessed with constricting our intelligent human behaviour according to what sort of breeding bits we have.

The evidence is that God is more compassionate and bounteous than mean clerics allow. Consider the fruit tree, which wastes almost all of its sexual energy displaying beautiful hermaphrodite genitals for the pleasure of other species (who appreciate those genitals as "flowers"), and has its fertilised seed devoured as delicious fruit. Only a tiny amount of this abundant and fecund sexuality ever results in another tree, but a lot of other beings enjoy the "fruitless" fruit.

God loves abundantly, joyously, and wastefully. God does not issue fatwas.

The Gay Animal Kingdom

2007-04-03T11:21:00.000+10:00

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/
the_gay_animal_kingdom.php?page=all&p=y

It's not actually very gay, well, it is and it isn't, but it radically critiques the narrow-minded Darwinian fixation on sex with breeding. Other animals use sex for fun, social bonding, and fun, and do not separate into gay and straight animals. They've all got pleasure neurons in their genitals, and their behaviour is not neurotically reproductive, much as the Papists (and other word-worshipping power-mongers) may be horrified at this wanton wastefulness in the wild. Non-breeders and non-breeding sexual behaviours are part of the social mix, too, and an essential part, contrary to the agrarian mindset resentful of having wasted food on a gay bull or whatever their problem is.

I like that the research was instituted by a transgender scientist, whose personal sitaation gave her a broader perspective that the standard binary fixation.

Anyway, have a read, broaden your mind, and grow beyond the seedy fixations of the anti-natural fun police.

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/
the_gay_animal_kingdom.php?page=all&p=y

page two today's Telegraph

2007-03-26T21:44:00.000+10:00

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21443635-5006009,00.html

(bold emphasis added by me, the trany in the purple and flame-red frock, urging the bloody photographer to hurry up : P )

Dad finally sees Hicks
March 26, 2007 12:00

DAVID Hicks will be allowed to shake his father Terry's hand and hug him when they are reunited for the first time in three years at Guantanamo Bay tomorrow.An arraignment hearing for the accused terrorist will begin at 3am AEST tomorrow and Terry Hicks has flown to Cuba to support his son.
Mr Hicks, from Adelaide, will meet his father before the hearing and again afterward to say goodbye, along with his half-sister Stephanie.
The emotional reunion is the first time Mr Hicks will have seen his son since a 30-minute visit in 2004.
"I think they will have an opportunity in a private, secure space to meet with one another, meet with the family," Guantanamo Bay public affairs director Commander Robert Durand said yesterday.
Cdr Durand said Hicks would be expected to appear before the tribunal neat and well groomed, but it was up to his legal team to ensure he came dressed in a suit.
"Within the camp we offer people to have the opportunity to have their hair cut and they can accept or decline," Cdr Durand said.
"I don't know what kind of condition he will be in as far as having a fresh haircut and a shave. He will certainly be provided that opportunity."
He said Hicks could be thrown out of court if he appeared dishevelled before the chief judge for military commissions, Colonel Ralph Kohlmann.
However, Hicks' US military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, said his hair was long and unkempt because he had been refused access to a comb for months.
As Hicks prepares to argue his case, the Uniting Church yesterday led calls to bring him back to Australia.
A prayer gathering at the Uniting Church in Pitt St took up a collection to go towards Hicks' legal team and family.
"Many of us – in the churches and the community – feel not simply angry, but deeply hurt," said Reverend Andrew Collis from South Sydney Uniting Church.
Hicks, 31, faces a maximum sentence of life in a US military prison if found guilty of providing material support for terrorism.
He is accused of training with al-Qaeda and fighting alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
Hicks' legal team flew to Guantanamo Bay from the US yesterday.
They were joined on a military transport plane by a 30-strong throng of media from the US and Australia to cover Hicks' court appearance.
A ban on film and photographs means an artist's sketch impressions will be the only image of Hicks shown to the outside world.

People from the Uniting Church protest in support of David Hicks. / The Daily Telegraph

Vote for who you want, not just who you'll settle for

2007-03-23T16:40:00.000+11:00

So many of my friends, who are all very intelligent people, do not understand the optional preferential voting system. I wonder if this is properly explained to kids in school, or if the major parties deliberately withhold government-sponsored education on this, to frighten people into supporting the Big Parties sponsored by Big Business? Regardless, let’s spell it out now, for never before have both major parties been so deserving of not getting a number one.

If you vote for all the alternative parties and independents first, second, third and so on, if they don’t get enough votes to win election, your vote is not wasted nor diminished. Whether your Big Party vote is for Labor or Liberal and you’ve numbered them, say, 12 or 13, then that vote will go to Labor or Liberal with as much force as it would if you have numbered them number 1.

Yes, you can vote for the little parties that really care about the environment or public transport (or whatever), and there is no danger at all that your vote is wasted. You still get to choose whether your vote is allocated, with 100% of its value, to the Poker Machine Party or the Really Big Business Party.

And one day enough of us will vote for the alternative parties, and we will have a government that actually works for the people, rather than a government beholden to the big companies that sponsored its glossy election campaign.

Vote for what you really want, not just what you may have to settle for!

Why are we so mean to refugees?

2007-02-25T22:30:00.000+11:00

Just what the hell do we get out of turning away desperate refugees? What do we get from locking them up on sinking islands or sending them back to countries they have already had to flee in terror of their lives? Just what do we get out of the dozens of sick people suffering indefinite immigration detention in our very own concentration camps?

There must be a lot of votes in it, as the opposition is hardly opposed to the proposed forceful and possibly fatal return of the Sri Lanka asylum seekers.

What do we votes get out of this then, when Australia easily (and necessarily) absorbs tens of thousands of immigrants every year? Why do we persecute the few who have overstayed a visa or worked one hour too many while on student visa? They are such a tiny proportion, less than one percent, of our annual immigration. What the hell do we get out of torturing a token few, wrecking the lives of them and their families, with the taxpayer paying about a hundred and fifty dollars a day per detainee to the private company with the rather Orwellian name, Global Security Limited?

Wouldn’t you want your children to believe in the values of hospitality and offering help to those who need it? Wouldn’t you want your children to believe in and value the mutual support and friendship of the whole family of humanity?

Next time you’re polled, or casting a vote, or giving your opinion to your MP, think about whether you want to be one of those who supported this horrible rejection of refuge to the wounded stranger, or one of those who demanded a humane society.

(Submitted to smh for the first word feature)

iqueer web tv show

2007-02-21T10:09:00.000+11:00

Hey, check out http://www.iqueer.com.au/iq/default.asp#

I'm on the panel again, discussing everything from the Anglican schism to Paris Hilton, yeah.

New Refugees Blog

2007-02-08T12:22:00.000+11:00

The conditions of immigration detention are dehumanizing, depriving people of their liberty and common human dignity, on the basis that some bureaucrat is not sure whether they’re allowed to breath our air or not. They are held prisoner behind razor wire for the profit of the private companies running the concentration camps, and to ensure MPs get votes from frightened white people.

These people are just people like you, trying to survive, but caught up in this brutal system that deports Australians and separates families and destroys lives.

Read their stories in their own words.

The real life stories from people in Villawood Immigration Detention Centre are being posted on a new blog, “Villawood Refugees”.

http://villawood-refugees.blogspot.com/

And if you’re of a mind to help, why not contact your local refugee action group? A few people travel out with me every fortnight; details on the right and on the refugees blog.

We are all part of humanity, all interconnected, and how we treat others and how we allow them to be treated has a direct impact on how we are treated. This is not just karma or religious twaddle, it’s Einstein’s Law of Cause and Effect.

There is no human that I am not related to. There is nothing human that is alien to me.

There is no justification for using violence on people just because of some outrageous vanity about which fleas own which part of the dog. And there is no excuse for my silence or complicity when people are being tortured in the name of us, the voting and taxpaying public.

http://villawood-refugees.blogspot.com/

-------------------------------------------------------
PS on an not unrelated topic, What would you do if you or your son or close friend or relative was held captive and tortured by a foreign power for five years, and you found out that your Prime Minister could have stopped it at any time?

Another refugee's detention horror

2007-01-24T18:12:00.000+11:00

11 January 2007

From: Jian Lin

DOB: 17/04/1980
VW1 6579
Stage 1,
Villawood Immigration Detention Centre
15 Birmingham Avenue Villawood NSW 2163

Tel: 02 9752 1500
Fax: 0296441184

To Whom It May Concern:

The following is a statement from Mr Jian Liu. It is his account of the events that took place recently at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre.

My case manager from DIMIA visited me Monday morning on 8th January 2007. She informed me that I was liable to be removed from Australia and that I would be deported back to my home country China on Wednesday, 10th January 2007. She had also brought with her forms that detailed my detention costs and other costs owed by me to the Commonwealth, and she also had documents regarding my removal from Australia.

I informed her that I currently had an ongoing matter before the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. She took a photocopy of my letter / application for Ministerial Intervention from me and left, taking all the documents she had brought with her.
At no point during our meeting was I asked by my DIMIA case manager to put my signature on my removal documents. She took them with her at the end of our meeting and returned to her office to contact the Ministerial Intervention Unit in Canberra in order to verify the status of my application to the Minister.

Later that afternoon my case manager returned and saw me again briefly. She said that she had been informed by the Minister’s office in Canberra that they had indeed received my request for Ministerial Intervention but that a decision was pending on the matter. She also said that regardless of this, my deportation to China would still proceed; meaning that I would be removed from Australia on Wednesday 10th January 2007 as she had oiginally stated earlier that day. She then gave me a copy of my removal document / form and left. Once again, even at this point she never asked me to sign my removal form.

I returned to my room and read the form. On it I saw her signature, and also comments made by her stating that I had refused to place my signature on the removal form. Again I state, at no point in time that day was I asked by her to sign the removal form.

All this time I had been under the impression that I had an ongoing matter before the Minister’s office. Hence, I thought that by law, the Department of Immigration would not be permitted to remove me from Australia while I had an ongoing matter. But once I had been informed of my pending deportation from Australia by my case manager on Monday, I was obviously very distressed as a result. For the rest of the day I was under tremendous stress and quickly sank into depression.

I did not sleep much that night. Tuesday morning (9th January 2007) I woke up after a short sleep and realised that once I would be returned to China, I would most certainly face either immediate imprisonment or more likely, death. I was in a stressed state of mind, to say the least. I felt extremely helpless and hopelessness took a firm grip on me. Driven by the most unfortunate of circumstances, I inflicted self-harm upon myself. I was seriously injured as a result and had to be rushed to hospital. I was immediately admitted to Liverpool Hospital where I received surgery and treatment at the emergency department. I stayed at Liverpool Hospital over night, where the doctors and nursing staff took very good care of me. The staff were deeply concerned for my health and well-being, and I received more than adequate medical attention and treatment.

Wednesday (10 January 2007) afternoon around 2 or 3 pm, security staff from the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre arrived at Liverpool Hospital. They informed me that I was to be transferred from hospital back to the detention centre at once and that they would be having me discharged from Liverpool hospital and taking me back to the centre. I informed them that I was feeling very sore and that I was in a lot of pain as a result of my injuries. I was in fear of leaving hospital too soon because I felt I required the care of professional medical staff and feared that my condition might worsen or become unstable if I were to return to the detention centre (where I could not possibly be under constant medical supervision).

I also had a toothbrush lodged somewhere along my digestive tract that I had swallowed when I had inflicted self-harm, which doctors had not been able to remove at that time. The security staff then warned me that if I did not comply and resisted returning to the detention centre, I would be taken by force. I was left with no choice other than to comply and leave from hospital.
But before we left Liverpool Hospital, I requested the security staff to allow me to have another x-ray taken in order for the doctors to precisely observe exactly where along my digestive tract the toothbrush was lodged. I felt that was essential because the toothbrush I had swallowed could have been lodged in a dangerous spot. I was refused this by the detention security staff and they said that I had to be returned to Villawood immediately. The security manager from the detention centre (Eddie Peseta) ordered one of his officers to start filming because they were about to use force to remove me from the hospital. The security officer started filming us using a portable video camera. I was under tremendous stress and also a lot of pain, and I quickly obtained a cup of detergent and drank it. They saw me drink the detergent and after I had finished Eddie (the Security Manager) stated that my actions did not make any difference and he grabbed me by my hand and dragged me to the escort van. I was in too poor a condition to possibly resist. While I was in the escort van on the way back, I was in extreme pain and I requested the security staff if I could lie down in order to be more comfortable. One officer named Amir refused my request.

I was brought back to the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre on Wednesday 10th January 2007 around 5 pm. I was first taken to the medical department at Stage 2 of the detention centre, where the nurse was very rude to me and did nothing in the form of a medical check-up except for simply checking my blood pressure. Neither was I seen by a doctor, nor was I psychologically assessed by a psychologist or a mental-health nurse. I had just been discharged from hospital, and in my opinion untimely discharged, and was still in a very poor condition and required medical care and attention.

I was then taken to Stage 1 (where I originally resided before this incident took place) immediately and was placed under 24-hour observation. This meant that at least 2 security personnel were close by at all times, never letting me out of their sight, and never being more than 3 to 5 meters away. Since I have returned to Stage 1, I have not been allowed to have contact with other detainees. I am constantly being kept in an observation cell, with 2 security officers at my door at all times. I am not permitted to leave the cell, neither is any detainee allowed to visit me in my cell.

The most contact I can have with other detainees is if they come to my cell and talk to me from outside my door. I am in a lot of pain and extremely uncomfortable. Since I have returned from hospital, the medical staff at the detention centre have not done much to tend to my injuries and have failed to give me medication. I believe I am being neglected badly by the medical staff. At Liverpool Hospital I was getting the care and treatment that I require under my present physical and psychological condition. Finally today (Thursday 11 January 2007) I was able to see the doctor at the detention centre. I informed him that I was in a lot of pain and felt that the toothbrush I had previously swallowed was making me extremely uncomfortable and painful. He stated that he would have an x-ray appointment arranged for me within three days from today.

The security staff saw me drink detergent in front of them at the hospital. They were aware that I had inflicted serious injuries to myself a day prior to that. They were aware of the seriousness and the extent of my injuries. In my opinion I believe that in light of the injuries I had sustained, I should not have been discharged from hospital so soon. Especially the fact that detention security personnel used force to remove me from hospital leads me to feel and believe that my rights as a human being have been violated; and negligence on part of the medical staff at the detention centre is a continuing violation of human rights.

I have been living in Australia since 1999. I have been in custody of the Department of Immigration and detained at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre for nearly a year and a half (17 months). I fled my home country China because I was the victim of ongoing extreme persecution for my practices of Falun Gong. If I were returned to China, I would most certainly face imprisonment, torture, and most likely death. I am in a desperate situation. I feel that I am lost; my future is extremely dark and bleak; and that there is no hope.

I plead to you to take my story into account and consideration and if possible, I urge you to please play a part in attaining justice for a fellow human being with no one or nowhere to turn to.
I take this opportunity to thank you for your time and consideration in relation to my matter.

Yours sincerely,

Jian Liu
Villawood Immigration Detention Centre

The above statement and photgraph were handing to me by Jian Liu when I was visiting people in Stage One, and he simply begged me to get his story out into the world, and this is the best I can do so far. I've added the following text to increase googlage: chinese falung gong refugee detention australian immigration torture villawood immigration detention centre chinese falung gong refugee detention australian immigration torture villawood immigration detention centrechinese falung gong refugee detention australian immigration torture villawood immigration detention centrechinese falung gong refugee detention australian immigration torture villawood immigration detention centre