In 2003, the first Australian passport with an ‘X’ sex marker was issued to Alex MacFarlane, on the basis that Alex’s birth certificate, issued by the State of Victoria, showed no sex marker. Access was limited to people in the same circumstance, and only Victoria issues such certificates to intersex adults on request.
In 2011, the Australian government greatly improved access to ‘X’ passports. This enabled any intersex citizen, and any person with a non-binary identity, to obtain an X passport.
Now the government is rolling out the same standards across federal institutions, in the “Australian Government Guidelines on the Recognition of Sex and Gender”.
We warmly welcome the publication and implementation of these guidelines, and also the consultation process that has led to publication. Such wide consultation is necessary to prevent adverse consequences for any of the communities affected by the guidelines.
The impact of the guidelines is broad, and every aspect of the commonwealth government is affected. The agreement of these guidelines across government departments and agencies, along with evidence of strong input from affected communities, is a very significant achievement. The Attorney General’s Department must be commended for it.
They acknowledge that intersex is not a gender identity and that we may have any gender identity. The guidelines do not oblige intersex people to identify with a specific gender:
People who are intersex may identify their gender as male, female or X.
In full, the guidelines recognise that an intersex person might choose to identify as male, female, or unspecified or indeterminate.
State and territory legislation has often, erroneously in our view, referred to intersex as “intermediate sex”. We regard this as a somewhat euphemistic term. While “indeterminate sex or gender” has been retained in these guidelines, it has now been disassociated from intersex status. Intersex is innate; indeterminate sex is not necessarily so. Read more via IHRA
Joint submission on recognition of non-binary gender in federal sex/gender guidelines
OII Australia recently joined with the National LGBTI Health Alliance, A Gender Agenda, Transformative and Transgender Victoria to agree a joint submission to the federal Attorney General’s Department on non-binary recognition in the federal sex and gender recognition guidelines.
The submission relates to the definition of “X” in those guidelines and it demonstrates consensus that the definition of “X” should be “non-binary” and not “Indeterminate/intersex/unspecified”.
The word “non-binary” simplifies the third classification, while being respectful both to people with non-binary gender identities, and to intersex people who are men or women. We commend this approach to institutions and organisations.