Many of you will have seen a story earlier this week about how the Australian government has changed the law to make it easier for various gender-variant persons to obtain passports that match their lifestyles. I’ve seen a few people ask whether Australian trans activists are actually happy with what has been done, and it seems that at least some of them are.

One of the changes is certainly overdue. That allows people who are living in their preferred gender, but have not yet had any gender reassignment surgery, to have their passports changed. The British Consulate in Melbourne changed my passport to say “female” without question when I told them I would be living full time as female. That was in 1997. Had I been an Australian citizen I could not have had that done. I would have had to have waited at least 2 years until I had had surgery. It has taken Australia until now to give their citizens similar rights.

The other change allows people to leave their gender unspecified — X rather than F or M. That has caused some confusion, and this morning I was pointed at this article on Global Comment that complains about how the story is being reported in the world’s media.

Well, yes and no. It all depends on who you talk to.

The problem that the article has is that it assumes there is a right way to use terminology about trans people, and sadly that’s far from the case. To start with there’s the question of what is an acceptable umbrella term for gender-variant people. Umbrella terms are hugely contentious. In many ways they are very useful, because they bring together many minority groups with different interests who all face discrimination from the same sources, for much the same reasons. Inevitably, however, there are those who say that they don’t want to be associated with certain others. You see that in the tensions between LGB and T people within the queer community, and you see it within the trans community.

The Global Comment article specifically complains about confusion between “transgender” people and “intersex” people, but these terms are not simple and clear-cut. In some communities “transgender” is used to mean all gender-variant people, including those the article describes as “intersex”. In others it is used only for people who reject the gender binary, have no wish to have surgery, and have no medically recognized intersex condition. It is also used in the way the article suggests. There are, inevitably, people who regard themselves as intersex who want nothing to do with trans people: “we have a recognized medical condition, whereas they are crazy and give us a bad name.” Equally there are transsexuals who want nothing to do with the transgender label: “we are genuinely trapped in the wrong body, whereas they are dilettantes and perverts who give us a bad name.” It is a mess, and wastes an awful lot of energy on internecine warfare.

Even if you accept the labels, however, the distinction doesn’t work. I have friends who don’t wish to be identified as male or female, but have no recognized intersex condition. I have friends who do have intersex conditions, but who are very happy with the place they have chosen within the gender binary (which may or may not be the place they were assigned at birth). I have even met transgender activists who insist that all trans people should identify as outside the binary (and should therefore adopt the X designation). On two separate occasions I have been informed that it is morally wrong for me to claim to be a woman, and that I should modify my appearance to make my trans nature clear. Personally I disagree with this, but the fact that such views exist show what a wide variety of opinions we need to take into account.

If you interpret the Australian law to mean that everyone who does not have a medically recognized intersex condition must register as M or F, while everyone who does have such a condition must register as X, then you will end up with a lot of unhappy people getting a designation forced upon them by (potentially hostile) medical people. Sadly I suspect that may happen, because people like tidy little boxes, and medical people like being in charge. But, if you allow people to choose M, F or X depending on how they identify, and how they live their lives, then they’ll be happy.

Alternatively, as Jane Fae suggested today in The Guardian, you could do away with gender markers altogether.

Simples (as those annoying ads encourage us to say).