Tasmania’s gender-free push shows the Apple Isle is rotten to the core, by The Mocker.

A report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for 2011-12 revealed that half of Tasmanians aged between 15 to 74 are functionally illiterate. More than half are functionally innumerate. The state is disproportionately dependent on GST allocation. A third of the population receive some form of welfare benefit, and the higher education rates are the lowest in the country. …

[This week] the lower house voted 13-12 to, among other things, remove gender from birth certificates; extend so-called hate speech legislation to cover “gender expression”; and allow people as young as 16 to change gender simply by completing a statutory declaration. There will no longer be a requirement for realignment surgery to effect recognition. …

So much for Hickey’s assurance “I have researched this topic widely, I have read widely and this Bill will not affect 95 per cent of Tasmanians.” Does she really believe a movement which would prevent all parents from listing their children’s gender on birth certificates has no plans for a gender cultural revolution? …

If we are to yield to the insistence by activists and academics that gender is but a construct, then perhaps we should scrutinise birth certificates to discard all previously required information of that nature. Let’s begin with place names, for example, Hobart. Construct alert! Out they go. So too do birth names, which are merely labels that an individual can change when he, she or xe reaches adulthood. Parental names? Ditto. As for the Gregorian calendar we use, it was issued at the decree of a long-dead white male. Out go the dates (in any event we should dispense with our bias in favour of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system). That leaves us with a bit of paper containing pretty much bugger all. Remind me: what is the purpose of a birth certificate?

hat-tip Stephen Neil