Gender Identity/expression
New Zealand does not have specific transgender anti-discrimination laws, although New Zealand's anti-discrimination laws are now thought to cover members of the transgender communities. The Human Rights Commission in New Zealand said in 2005 that it considered transgender people to fall within the definition of sex discrimination, and would accept complaints from transgender people. Transsexual Member of Parliament Georgina Beyer had the Human Rights (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill ready for debate in Parliament as a member's bill in 2004. However, on 16 August 2006, New Zealand's Solicitor-General issued an opinion (reference below) to the effect that transgender people were covered under the 'sex discrimination' provision of the Human Rights Act 1993. Georgina Beyer said when withdrawing her Bill "that's good enough for me".
In 2007/2008 the Human Rights Commission published "To Be Who I Am", a report that came from the Human Rights Transgender Inquiry. In this publication, the Human Rights Commission recommended the clarification of the Human Rights Act in terms of gender identity, by specifically including "gender identity" under the Sex category of the Human Rights Act.
In 1994, the New Zealand High Court ruled that post-operative transsexuals could marry as their new sex.
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In New Zealand
Famous quotes containing the words gender, identity and/or expression:
“Most women of [the WW II] generation have but one image of good motherhood—the one their mothers embodied. . . . Anything done “for the sake of the children” justified, even ennobled the mother’s role. Motherhood was tantamount to martyrdom during that unique era when children were gods. Those who appeared to put their own needs first were castigated and shunned—the ultimate damnation for a gender trained to be wholly dependent on the acceptance and praise of others.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Our minds can go no further. The human imagination is capable of no further expression of beauty than the carved owl of Athene, the archaic, marble serpent, the arrogant selfish head of the Acropolis Apollo.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)