How-To: Apply for "Sex-Unspecified" Canadian Passport in Protest

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Home! How lucky to
have one, how arduous
to make this scene
of beauty for
your family and
friends. Friends!
How we must have
sounded, gossiping at
the dinner table
last night. Why, that
dinner table is
this breakfast table:
“The boy in trousers
is not the same boy
in no trousers,” who
said? Discontinuity
in all we see and are:
the same, yet change,
change, change. “Inez,
it’s good to see you.”

- James Schuyler, from "June 30th, 1974" Talk to me on the internet!

February 17, 2012

martyrtotheswag:

livelaughawesome:

kiriamaya:

“Please share this around Canadian civil liberty, and LGBT groups.

I have chosen to apply to Passport Canada for a sex-unspecified passport. Here’s how you can too.

Any Canadian may join in this protest. You should not need to be trans-identified to request a sex-unspecified passport.

Sex-unspecified passports are recognized around the world (even in Canada). They are a part of the internationally accepted ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) standard, by which Canada claims to abide. In accordance with the no-sex option in this standard, some other countries including Australia, and New Zealand explicitly offer their citizens passports with no sex indicated (by coincidence, both countries also allow trans people to change their sex designations without requiring surgery).

Very recently, Transport Minister Denis Lebel made statements in the House of Commons that Canada is in compliance with the standards set by ICAO. Other representatives of Transport Canada have officially released similar statements. Despite this assertion, Passport Canada does not offer any standardized application option for a sex-free passport. But if Canada is in compliance with ICAO, as Minister Lebel claims, then Passport Canada should honour any request they receive for an ICAO-compliant passport with sex designation “X,” meaning “unspecified.”

And if they don’t honour such requests, it would be an excellent basis on which to form a human rights complaint.”

Reblogging for the Canadian folks who follow me <3

BRB. Doing this.

…ohhhhh i’m applying for a new passport in the spring. also have to consider, though, since i go to college in the us and therefore cross the canada/usa border a lot: do i want to get harrassed and pulled in for questioning every time i cross the border because the border guards don’t understand my passport? i use my passport as my official government id when i’m abroad: do i want to get questioned every time i show id to buy alcohol, or verify my bank account? am i comfortable outing myself as queer to every one of those people? i’m a student. my father will be peeking over my shoulder with every step of this process: even if isn’t literally there when i fill out the form (i have that much autonomy, thankfully), he often drives em across the border. am i willing to fight with my parents over this, to argue that the hassle at the border, wasting my time and his, to have my identity respected is worth it?

sigh

Reblogging this because it’s interesting and important, and because Izzy’s commentary illuminates how lived experience impacts activist work and like, to what extent we’re willing to politicize our lives in the service of our cause.

(via b1a4gy)

7:00pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZAAEXwGaRsst

(Notes: 167)