Culture

Scott Morrison’s Chucking A Tantrum Because Tasmania Just Did A Great Thing For Trans People

Scott Morrison log off (and apologise to trans people)

by Sam Langford  21 November 2018
Scott Morrison just keeps tweeting rude things about transgender people.

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Well, Tasmania’s now on track to become Australia’s most trans-friendly state — last night, the lower house of the state’s parliament voted to make the inclusion of gender on birth certificates an opt-in process.

At this stage it’s just the lower house, so nothing’s set in stone yet, but it was a historic vote which saw Liberal MP and Speaker Sue Hickey cross the floor to support the amendments proposed by Labor and the Greens. The amendments include making the inclusion of gender on birth certificates an opt-in process, allowing anyone aged 16 or older to change or remove the gender on their birth certificate without undergoing surgery, and allowing children under 16 to do the same with the support of their parents.

In addition, the legislation will lower the age for name change applications from 18 to 16, remove the current requirement for transgender people to divorce their spouse before legally changing their gender, and make it illegal to discriminate against someone based on gender expression (i.e. their appearance, clothing, mannerisms, pronouns, and other ways they signal their gender identity to the world). You can read the full list of changes voted on here.

In short, though, the legislation has the potential to take a huge step forward for transgender and intersex Tasmanians. Naturally, Scott Morrison is having conniptions.

It’s disappointing, but not surprising at this point, that Scott Morrison’s response to the LGBTIQ community gaining some rights is to immediately take to Twitter to shit on them, but here we are. “Labor’s plan to remove gender from birth certificates in Tasmania is ridiculous,” he tweeted this morning. “Bill Shorten should step up and commit to put motion to ALP Federal Conference to outlaw it” (Bill, please don’t).

This is not the first time Scott Morrison has demonstrated that he really does not care about or understand the LGBTIQ community. Actually, it’s one of the only consistent parts of his policy platform these days. In the past few months, he’s supported the Religious Freedom review’s recommendations that faith-based schools be allowed to discriminate against LGBTIQ students and staff, shared some pretty cooked thoughts on conversion therapy, and tweeted dangerous crap about “gender whisperers” in schools that was so wrong he had to be corrected by a thirteen-year-old kid.

Unfortunately, Scott Morrison’s not the only one very publicly trashing legislation that will absolutely not affect him whatsoever. Honestly, I wouldn’t usually give these guys a platform, except that watching them panic should be a wake-up call about how “debates” about trans people in Australia have become wildly unchecked.

Tune out here if you don’t want to read a bunch of transphobic garbage first thing in the morning, but below you can behold a panel of dudes absolutely shitting themselves in fear over the optional removal of a single letter from a piece of paper. I mean, do these guys…need to check their birth certificates to remember they identify as men? Just make a note on your phone or something. Set a reminder.

Because seriously, their reactions to the changes Tasmania voted on last night are wildly, dangerously out of proportion with the actual changes we’re talking about here. In the video below, these guys are making some pretty serious accusations — that “our children are being victimised here, and the authorities are not protecting them”, and that “there will be a royal commission in 30 years’ time into what this generation has done to children, messing up their genders, their sexuality”. At one point, they say that “statistics prove” something, without giving us any of the actual statistics they’re relying on.

Again, to reiterate, we’re talking about a letter on a piece of paper — which they can still have, if they want it.

That video, and Scott Morrison’s tweets, should enrage you. At the end of the day, just half of Tasmania’s parliament has voted to take a step towards some pretty small changes that will hugely improve the lives of trans and intersex Australians, and barely affect anyone else. That’s nothing to be afraid of, and it’s a very poor excuse to keep demonising the LGBTIQ community.