Rita Panahi: Victoria’s birth certificate gender plan is lunacy dressed up as tolerance

Think about the number of times you needed your birth certificate recently, and the minuscule number of gender-diverse individuals. It just goes to show that Victoria’s gender law reform is lunacy dressed up as tolerance, writes Rita Panahi.

It’s deja vu all over again with the Andrews Government introducing legislation that would allow Victorians to change their gender on their birth certificates without undergoing any sex-change treatment.

The law reform would see individuals not only allowed to select a gender different from their anatomy but nominate other options beyond male and female, including “any other gender diverse or non-binary descriptor of their own choice”, according to the Labor press release.

The government will compel the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages to record any descriptor that is not “obscene or offensive, or if it is not reasonably established as a sex descriptor”.

So “love dragon” may be refused but pangender (identify as more than one gender), trigender (identify as male, female and third genders) or neutrois (a non-binary gender identity considered to be null gender) are all acceptable.

Far-Left ideology is masquerading as tolerance in the gender debate. Picture: Drew Angerer

It remains to be seen whether one can identify as a pixie.

This is far-Left ideology masquerading as tolerance.

Even children can alter the sex recorded on their birth certificate as long as a parent and a doctor, psychologist or any “prescribed person” believes that the change “is in the best interests of the child”.

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Professor of paediatrics John Whitehall believes the changes have the potential to damage children’s lives and will feed the “delusion that gender is fluid”.

“This is ratifying the concept that gender is fluid and not binary,” he said on 3AW.

“It’s a propaganda victory … there is no proof whatsoever that these children will be happier.”

Of course, the activist class, along with their many media cheerleaders, celebrated this week’s announcement.

Anyone who objects to the activist class is smeared as a bigot or transphobe.

Anyone who objects is smeared as bigoted, transphobic or a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist).

The legislation is said to be near identical to the 2016 reforms Labor failed to pass after the Liberals and cross-benches voted against it.

Back then, there was resistance from some women’s rights campaigners who see trans activism as having an impact on women and women’s-only spaces such as shelters, change rooms and prisons.

“Males who self-identify their sex as ‘female’, but are nonetheless entirely physically male, would be ­legally indistinguishable from actual ­females, giving them legally sanctioned access to all spaces, services and positions reserved for women and girls,” said the Women’s Liberation Front in 2016.

There are deepening battle lines in the US and the UK within the feminist movement between those who unconditionally back “transgender rights” and those who see a conflict between the interests of natural-born women and the ever-increasing demands of those who identify as women but who have male genitalia.

Infamous transgender prisoner, sex offender Karen White.

White was placed in a women’s prison, where she sexually assaulted two female inmates.

One infamous case involves a transgender sex offender, “Karen White”, who is biologically male with a functioning penis but who was put in a women’s prison. It didn’t take long for White to sexually assault a number of female prisoners.

He/she was sentenced to life in prison last year with a 9½-year minimum term and will serve the time in a male prison.

The focus on transgender rights and inclusion is out of whack with the number of individuals who identify as diverse sex/gender identity.

There are only 1260 people in Australia who identify as transgender, intersex, non-binary, a third gender or something else (not further defined), according to the latest census. It’s staggering that so much energy, media coverage and legislation has been driven by such a minuscule group.

Think about how many times you’ve needed your birth certificate in the past decade.

Will this change really have an impact on the lives of transgender and gender-diverse individuals or is it merely another step in normalising the concept that gender is fluid and non-binary?

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Personally, I couldn’t give a stuff if you want to identify as man, woman or armchair, but I don’t want to see harebrained legislation pushed through to satisfy ideological warriors.

This legislation is just another facet of the social engineering we’ve seen under the Andrews Government. These initiatives are not produced out of thin air. There is significant activism behind every Bill or program. Safe Schools, which under the guise of an anti-bullying program pushes radical gender theory on Victorian schoolchildren, had a hard-line Marxist among its architects.

For the Coalition, this issue should be a godsend, a free kick, but this week it has run dead.

It appears the Victorian Liberals have learnt little from Scott Morrison’s famous victory.

They are all but invisible and behaving like the small “l” Liberals of the Malcolm Turnbull era who don’t know who they are and what they believe in.

They have offered no opposition as the Andrews Government again ignores the silent majority, including many Labor voters, while delivering radical reforms for the transgender lobby.

** The 1260 people counted in the 2016 Census were those considered to have provided a valid and intentional sex/gender diverse response consistent with the ABS's special procedures.  However, the ABS does not consider this to be an accurate count.  

— Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist

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