Zonder X wordt het niks

Reactie Vreerwerk op Wetsvoorstel Wijziging voorwaarden geslachtsregistratie Vreerwerk is enthousiast over enkele onderdelen van het voorstel en kritisch over een aantal andere. De kern van onze kritiek ligt in gebrek aan respect voor mensenrechten en autonomie van degenen om wie het gaat. Hun noden en wensen zijn niet genoeg gehoord. Ook zitten er enkele rare …

Revisiting the “Wildcat Strike in the Gender Factory”: Material Effects of Classification

ABSTRACT: Taking up a central metaphor of “the wildcat strike in the gender factory” from Dwight Billings and Thomas Urban’s formative 1982 article “The Sociomedical Construction of Transsexualism: An Interpretation and Critique,” I trace how trans lives are tied in with law and medicine, and how psycho-medical classifications affect material lives of trans people. I …

Useful and necessary?

Yesterday, June 18, 2015,  the Justice and Security Committee of the Dutch Second Chamber held a debate on the need for gender registration.A parliamentary majority last week voted to do away with the requirement of it “where possible”. The minister promised to work to reduce the level of registration. In an apparent global first, Dutch …

Are the Netherlands about to abolish gender registration?

One might be tempted to think so, following the recent developments. First they liberalise the gender change legislation for trans people. Then the Justice Ministry orders an investigation into the issues with binary gender registration. Now an expert meeting will take place and conservative government party VVD calls for abolition plans to presented next year …

New webinars in June 2015

Between 16 and 20 June 2015 Vreerwerk will again organise a series of webinars on transgender and intersex developments on the human rights level. We will hold three webinars of two hours on the following themes: Recent developments in the European trans* and intersex theatre. Where do they stand rights-wise? What can we learn from …

Sex and gender domino

April 2015 is for trans* and intersex human rights in Europe a rather fortunate month. On the legal level that is. It still rains trans murders and suicides, not to speak of other atrocities. Which – cynically maybe – show precisely what we need that legislation for. I want  your attention for two cities in …

World Health Day 2015

The United Nations have labelled April 7 World Health Day. A day to pay explicit attention to health issues. Since our focus is trans* and inter*, or differently (and more universally) put: gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics, this is what we will look into. Luxury For transgender persons, or trans* people, or gender …

Redress for lifelong trans discrimination

A Buenos Aires court yesterday recognized the lifelong institutional violence, stigma and discrimination of a 60 year old trans woman in Buenos Aires during all of her life. The judge called it “Existential discrimination”. The woman was granted lifelong living wage as a reparation for all the violence. This is a necessity, because there is …

Christelijk hoogleraar pleit voor wachten en conversietherapie

Afgelopen zaterdag14 februari 2015 verscheen er een opiniestuk in het Nederlands Dagblad, krant van conservatief christelijke signatuur, over transgenderkinderen. Dat staat bol van de misvattingen. Het stuk zelf is te vinden op nd.nl/opinie. Ik behandel de grootste problemen eruit. In zijn opinieartikel d.d. 14-2-2015 schrijft professor Boer over transgender en genderdysforie. Daar zitten een aantal …