MANZ Submission to Proposals on Gender Self-Identification
By: MANZ
2 October 2021
The Multigendered Alliance of NZ (MANZ) congratulate the New Zealand Government for its acknowledgement of the social importance of gender fluidity, and the ability of some people to possess multiple and shifting gender identities.
However, we believe that gender self-identification by statutory declaration (GSSD) does not go far enough, and what is being proposed is a cumbersome and intrusive process which infringes the human rights of the Multigendered, who are the most oppressed of all in the transgender family because each one of our multiple gender identities constitutes a discrete axis of oppression.
The Multigendered are the living embodiment of the oppression intersection, and governments have the responsibility to ensure that we, the Multigendered, are able to manage the flow of traffic through our complex and shifting gender intersections.
We deplore the cowardice implicit in the Government’s failures: to have already enshrined gender identity rights in legislation; to clearly privilege Gender Identity; and, to firmly declare that any and all opposition to GSSD is transphobic hate speech.
Although acknowledging how gender identity can change over time (in the case of our small but growing membership, it can oscillate monthly or daily, sometimes even hourly), the Government is persisting in the use of “sex” as the privileged marker on the birth certificate, the state’s foundational identity document.
This enshrines “sex” and marginalises the internal, and eternal truth of the individual gender identity which, science has proven, transcends the discriminatory and discredited notion of a reproductive sex binary.
We abhor the assumption of bad faith implicit in the proposal to require Multigendered folx to prove that multiple statutory declarations are genuine. We are already harmed by the stress of living in a binary, sologender world, and the intrusion of repeated demands to prove the validity of our need to change identity documents multiple times will prove catastrophic to the wellbeing of our already vulnerable community. Instead of demonstrating a commitment to the most disadvantaged of the disadvantaged, the plan is to make this a matter for regulations which can be easily overturned, and are subject to bureaucratic interpretation.
We implore the Government to take the Gender Identity reforms – widely acknowledged as the pre-eminent human rights issue of our era – to their logical conclusion and allow the hyper-vulnerable Multigendered community to possess multiple birth certificates and other official documents – a set for each of our gender identities – which we have the right to use whenever we choose.
Instead of the labour-intensive processes of multiple changes of gender identity and “sex markers” on official documentation – and to ensure that we, the Multigendered, are not driven to suicide in even greater numbers by the stress of constant invasions of our private lives occasioned by repeated statutory declarations (PLUS the, as yet unspecified, additional evidential requirements) – the simple expedient of the issuance of multiple sets of identity documents to the Multigendered would both save lives and tax-payers’ money.
It would be a gender identity win-win.
Yours, in multigendered solidarity
MANZ
Admin note: For the hard of humour, we point out that this is a satirical piece
LMAO