Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: I Always Thought That Australia Was Progressive

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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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

I Always Thought That Australia Was Progressive

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