Professor Paula Gerber, one of Australia’s leading legal experts, has published a new book that gives a concise breakdown and rebuttal of the arguments against transgender rights.
Sex, Gender & Identity: Trans Rights in Australia, is a concise and easy read from Monash University Publishing. It is part of their ‘In The National Interest’ series that provides insight into the major issues that Australians are talking about.
At less than a 100 pages it’s a book you could easily read over a cup of coffee, but packed into it’s pages is some intelligent insight and persuasive arguments.
The legal scholar has published many books in the past, but she notes these are mainly academic texts, putting together this book was a different experience.
“Its almost a bit embarrassing calling it a book. It’s really just sort of an essay.” Professor Gerber says when we catch up to talk about her newest work.
Professor Gerber takes on many different roles in advocacy for the LGBTIQA+ communities. She’s the chair of Kaleidoscope Human Rights Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that advocates for better protection of the rights of LGBTQIA+ people in the Asia-Pacific region.
She’s also a prolific writer and commentator on LGBTIQA+ rights on a global scale, maintaining a website that keeps track of anti-LGBTIQA+ laws around the world, a leading academic in her field, and an advocate for human rights for many different parts of society.
When putting together this latest effort Professor Gerber shares she reached out to lots of friends who are transgender or gender diverse to ensure she wasn’t misrepresenting the issue, but she really wanted to dive into what was driving the relentless news stories, and public discussion about people who are transgender, especially transgender women.
“I think it is probably a bit of a reaction that as trans people have become more visible and have started claiming their rights, that there’s been this backlash.” Professor Gerber shared, noting that the rise of campaigns against people who are transgender grew as soon as marriage equality was achieved in many countries.
While acceptance of gay, lesbian and bisexual people has grown as more people were open about their sexuality and relationships, Professor Gerber agrees that many Australians have limited experience of meeting people who are transgender.
“It’s that idea of proximity, and when there’s less than one per cent of the Australian population that is trans. It means that the vast majority of people have never met a trans person or someone who’s non-binary. So that makes it easier to vilify and demonise them, and make them out as predators.”
In researching the book Professor Gerber looked back at the history of transgender people and how they’ve been recorded as being part of society for hundreds of years, and how the law has been applied at different times.
While there’s been major legal decisions in the United Kingdom about gender, and high profile cases working their way through the Australian court system, Professor Gerber says the situation is Australia is distinctly different to other countries.
“The UK enacted the Equality Act in 2010 and they’ve updated a little bit over the over the years, but really it is out of date and not fit for purpose. So once it got challenged in court, it it was fairly predictable that it was going to be interpreted in this way.
“Really the responsibility, I think, lies on the government to now fix that act, to make it more like the Australian Sex Discrimination Act, where we in 2013 removed the all the binary terminology, and we added in sexual orientation, we added in gender identity and and sex characteristics, and we modernised our legislation.” Professor Gerber said.
While Australia’s legislation is currently being tested in the courts via the Giggle v Tickle case, and may progress to the High Court, Professor Gerber considers our legislation to be very fit-for-purpose.
One of the the intriguing elements of Gerber’s book is it casts a wide net in looking at how human rights of transgender people are being addressed. While we often hear of the legal processes in the UK and the USA, the book also shares intriguing approaches taken in places like Pakistan and Ecuador.
Ensuring the next generation of Australia’s lawyers is up to speed with all forms of discrimination law is an issue on the academic’s agenda. Next year she’ll begin teaching an elective unit on Queer Law for students who want to develop some specific knowledge.
“Certainly I never learned anything about this at when I did law back in the dark ages. But we do now have subjects on discrimination law, but that’s all forms of discretion, discrimination, disability, race, age and hopefully sexual orientation, gender identity in there as well.
“But I think we really could go a lot further in making sure that the legal profession is educated about about this area of the law.” Professor Gerber said.
Ultimately she hopes the book will get people talking about the issue and diving deeper into the facts surrounding the topic, and that includes people in the LGBTIQA+ communities, especially those who rally against transgender inclusion.
“I would like gay men and lesbians to also read this, and get a greater understanding of the trans and gender diverse community.” Professor Gerber said.
Sex, Gender & Identity: Trans Rights in Australia is available in book shops now.
