hollipop

(Source: fuckyeahmath)

telescopics:

yeah, this post is long - but please read it. it’s important that you do. I also want to preface this with a little disclaimer. so:

I know that putting naked (or nearly naked) photos on the internet is stupid and can harm potential options of employment. thankfully for me, I want to be a photographer, so photos of me on the internet is probably a good thing.

also, I used to have an eating disorder. a bad one. even two years later, I’m still not content with my body. that, coupled with my regular old transsexual grade dysphoria, means that taking this and putting up here took a lot of courage.

so, if if was such a big fucking scary deal, why did I do it?

this is why.

Christian Porter, the Attorney General of Western Australia, feels that it’s the job of “the community” to decide who is and isn’t allowed to be a man. He appealed the decision made by the courts to let these guys be legally recognised as male. He did not do it on a basis of reproductive rights, on a basis of any medical fact, or on a basis of legal classification.

Do you know why he doesn’t think they should be allowed to be recognised as men?

Because their bodies do not comply with “community standards” of what a male looks like.

Apparently, my genitalia is now the community’s concern. Apparently, for me and any other trans man in WA to be recognised as who we truly are, we now need to cut out our internal organs and remodel our genitals to suit some “standard” set up by a “community”.

What community, you ask? If I knew, I’d tell you. Seems “the community” haven’t been asked what they think constitutes a man. They haven’t been given a survey with a medical explanation of transsexualism or a photograph of these guys in states of undress, with their masculine figures and flat chests and body hair. They haven’t been asked to tick a “man” or “not” box. They had no idea this was going on.

My friends were not surveyed. My parents were not surveyed. Nobody I work with was surveyed. I definitely don’t remember filling in a little piece of paper or telling someone over the phone that I didn’t think you could be a man unless you had a penis, because in my opinion, you can.

And yet Christian Porter, a man who has been appointed Attorney General not by the people, but by his own party, thinks he has a right to decide what “the community” does and does not believe.

Dear tumblr: This is a call to action.

Aram, one of the guys in question, has started a facebook group called Out Of The Box. Through this group, he’s asking people to write letters to Christian Porter, expressing that they are unhappy with his appeal and with the decision that the court has made, and making it clear that in their eyes - the eyes of the community - it should not be necessary for female to male transsexuals to undergo painful, expensive and unnecessary hysterectomies and penile construction surgery just so they can be legally recognised as male. Many trans guys don’t want or need to have penile construction surgery. It hurts, it has a long healing time, it costs a shitload, it often has substandard results, and it is not even performed in Australia. You can’t have a male passport to travel outside the country without getting surgery that you can only get by travelling outside the country. Because that’s totally fair.

This case is probably going to set a precedent for the standard surgeries required to be legally recognised as male in Western Australia. It is of utmost importance that we nip this revolting display of bigotry in the bud, so that generations of trans guys to come can have an easier, fairer path to transition.

Please join the facebook group. Please write a letter or an email. Please reblog this photo and description so other people can hear about what’s going on.

It doesn’t matter if you’re in a different city, a different state, a different country - the more we make ourselves heard, the better. It will speak absolute volumes if people who don’t even live in Perth are contributing their opinions on this case. You can help to better not only my life, but the life of every single trans guy in WA - including the two men who originally brought this case into the general public’s eye.

If you need some points to include, I’ve got a massive post here where I wrote about some - just some, not even all - of the reasons that it’s fucking ridiculous and immoral to force people to conform to these guidelines of what a man is and isn’t.

Seriously, if you guys even just flick him a quick email that’s only a few paragraphs long, it would mean the world to me and a lot of other people.

And now, I get off my soap box. Enjoy my weirdly contorted I-don’t-even-know-what’s-happening-I-look-badly-photoshopped topless tuesday >:3

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achildofearth:

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