Today's post is by Claire Black
Cisgender people, those of us who identify with the gender we were assigned at birth, have a pretty poor track record when it comes to supporting the rights of trans people [1]. While marriage equality passed its four-year anniversary last weekend, there are still many pressing issues facing trans people in New Zealand today. A non-exhaustive list includes safety in prisons, safety in schools, homelessness, dehumanising or hateful media coverage, access to health services, and legal protections against discrimination.
Thanks to the hard work and advocacy of
trans activists in New Zealand, some of these issues have made it onto some
party policy agendas for the coming election. But it is important that we are
all more aware of the obstacles facing trans people in New Zealand, which
politicians are actually proposing solutions, and how to help hold them
accountable to these promises and push for more. There are two main policies on
the table this election: improving trans healthcare access and amending the
Human Rights Act to explicitly protect trans people.
Trans
Healthcare in New Zealand
Access to gender-affirming healthcare
access is hugely important, even life-saving, for many trans people. Yet in New
Zealand, trans people seeking such health care
face high costs, massive wait times, bureaucratic hoops, hard-to-find
information, and prejudice from health professionals.
Most notably, the waiting lists for
publicly funded gender reassignment surgeries are inhumanely long. Last year,
88 people were on the waiting lists. With the government funding only four
surgeries per two years, this means estimated wait times of 34 (for trans
masculine people) to 50 years (for trans feminine people). This is an
unimaginably long amount of time to wait for anything, let alone an essential
surgical procedure. These already huge
numbers do not account for people who would otherwise like to be on the list
but cannot afford the prerequisite steps or who have been discouraged by the
wait.
Other forms of gender-affirming healthcare
can also be hard to access. Nine
out of twenty District Health Boards provide no healthcare services for
trans people, and services and treatment pathways are inconsistent across the
remainder. Groups such as The Sex and Gender
Diverse Health and Outcomes Working Group have
been pushing for change at local levels, but there is a clear need for greater
political action and public funding in these areas.
Amending
the Human Rights Act
The New Zealand Human Rights Act (1993) is
intended to ensure that all people in New Zealand are treated fairly and
equally. It outlaws discrimination against people for a number of reasons, such
as on the grounds of sex, race, disability, and age, and gives the Human Rights
Commission the power to mediate disputes relating to instances of
discrimination.
While the Act prohibits discrimination on
the basis of both sex and sexual orientation, it does not include gender
identity or expression. This is where things get tricky for trans people. Many
people argue that in an actual instance of discrimination, a trans person would
legally be protected by the Act’s ‘sex’ category, but while ‘sex’ can be
interpreted to cover trans people, this is by no means guaranteed. Just last
month in the US, Republican representatives submitted a bill that would prevent
the federal government from interpreting sex (or gender) protections to include
gender identity, which would essentially ensure that trans people there are not covered by civil
rights protections. New Zealand is obviously not the United States, but
there have been instances of
New Zealand legislation that do differentiate between sex and gender
identity. Why should we leave the legal
protection of trans New Zealanders – a
marginalised group who often do face various forms of discrimination – up to
interpretation? Enshrining gender identity protection in the Human Rights Act
provides explicit recognition and protection of trans and gender diverse people
that does not leave wriggle room for
discrimination or depend on people interpreting the Act in particular ways.
The
Party Policies
The political party policies on trans
rights range from promising (but lacking in concrete details) through to
non-existent.
Labour has pledged
to “improve access to affordable health care for younger, trans and intersex
New Zealanders” by providing health professionals with necessary training,
reducing barriers to gender-affirming
healthcare, and ensuring ‘fair access’ to publically
funded surgical options for trans people. This is a significant improvement
from just two years ago when high-ranking MPs, including former leader Andrew
Little, said that transgender health needs were not a priority for the party. They
also state they will follow recommendations from a 2008 New Zealand
Human Rights Commission report, including
ensuring easier changes to official documentation and preventing misgendering in the justice system. Labour has also said that they will amend the Human Rights Act to include
gender identity as a protected category.
The Greens
do not currently have any relevant policy listed on their website, but in
email correspondence
they have agreed with recommendations made to
MPs earlier this year: to support development of training and resources around
trans healthcare, to ensure trans people’s access to gender-affirming healthcare, and provide ‘sufficient funding to
enable timely access’ to gender reassignment surgeries not available through
the public health system. They also have a long-standing
policy to include gender identity as a basis of non-discrimination.
As of Peter Dunne’s resignation
announcement, United Future doesn’t
look set to have much chance of implementing them, but they are nonetheless
another party that has announced a
set of LGBT+ policies. Among these, they pledge to ensure that health providers have appropriate plans and
practice standards for rainbow community health needs. A press
release states that they would ensure trans and gender diverse people have
access to gender-affirming health
services, and again, provide ‘sufficient funding to enable timely access’, when
this is not available in New Zealand, but this point is missing from their
website. United Future also states that they will amend the Human Rights Act to
include ‘gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics’ as prohibited
grounds for discrimination, a broader proposed addition.
The Mana
Party provides a list of ways in which they propose to support Takatāpui (a term for
Māori who identify with diverse genders and sexualities) [2], including “having
fair and equitable access to health care to address their particular needs”,
but they do not get into specifics.
None of National, NZ First, the Māori Party, TOP, or ACT currently
have any Rainbow policies at all readily available. Notably, National boasts of “better
healthcare” and “less waiting, more operations” under their
leadership, while not addressing the need for action on trans surgery waiting
lists, and as of last year, Health Minister Jonathan Coleman stood by the current funding policy.
Conclusion
While some parties are
clearly doing better than others, none of them have
detailed exactly what their proposed improved access to healthcare would look
like, especially when it comes to cutting surgery waitlists. Language such as
‘fair access’ and ‘timely access’ fail to give a clear indication of just how
much improvement trans people on currently or hoping to be on these waiting
lists can expect. To really sell these policies, supportive parties should
listen to calls by trans people for greater specificity.
In 2015, Labour MP
Stuart Nash justified voting against a policy to improve trans people’s access
to hormones and surgery, and justified this on the basis that he didn’t “think
it’s an issue that’s important to the people of New Zealand”. As trans activist
Jen Shields points out, the issue is one of human rights, not popularity. But that doesn’t
mean that we shouldn’t prove Nash wrong. All of us who support human rights
also need to be aware of these issues and support trans activists in pushing
political parties for accountability.
Further
reading and listening:
https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/ex95xm/transparent-trans-road-block-in-nz
Claire
Black is an eternal student, currently completing a
MA thesis in Social Anthropology about how young LGBTQ people in New Zealand
use digital technologies.
[1] I use trans as an umbrella term for people
whose gender identity differs from that assigned at birth.
[2] This is the term that Mana uses to “describe all those who are part of the
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual communities.”
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