Tuesday, February 23, 2016

I Always Thought That Australia Was Progressive

Toward trans people but I never knew they had to jump through so many hoops.
Fighting for Isabelle: The battle for transgender kids to get access to cross-sex hormones
news.com.au
By Ginger Gorman
February 23, 2016

TWO days ago Naomi, Andrew and their children Isabelle, 12, and Hattie, 9, piled into the family car to drive from their home in the small rural town of Taggerty, about 100km northeast of Melbourne, to Canberra.

This is no ordinary road trip. Along with numerous other children, parents, a legal expert and a doctor specialising in adolescent medicine, the Langley-McNamara family is coming to the nation’s capital on an urgent mission. This morning they are meeting with members of Parliament from across the political spectrum to tell their stories.

Naomi sees this as a way to keep her eldest daughter from suicide and self-harm.
Why are they traveling all the way to Canberra?
Like 44,000 other Australian children, Isabelle is transgender. Biologically, she was born as a male but identifies as a girl.

In order to stop Isabelle going through male puberty, she will require so-called stage two cross-sex hormone treatment within the next two to four years.

In countries where this stage-two treatment is available, Australia is believed to be the only nation in the world where transgender children are required to go through the Family Court to get access to it.
Transgender advocates claim that taking a case like this through the court system can cost up to $30,000 and take many months. They also cite the emotional distress this places on the child and their family.
I can’t believe that a country like Australia requires children to go to court to get cross sex hormones, I hope that they can at least do it anonymously and they will not have a court record of the child applying for CSH.



This afternoon and tomorrow afternoon, I will be teaching a graduate class on trans cultural to students in a Multicultural Education class.

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