Wednesday 30 December, 2009New Zealanders may be able to change their sex on passports

New Zealanders may soon be able to change their sex on their passports and birth certificates without having to have costly sex change surgery.

A two-year inquiry by the Human Rights Commission has found that transgender people, who identify as having a different gender than their physical bodies, are discriminated against at school, at work, in accessing health services and in the community.

"Forms of discrimination and harassment ranged from low-level (avoidance and insults) to very severe (violent physical and sexual assaults)," the commission says.

It recommends amending the Human Rights Act to make gender identity a specific ground of illegal discrimination, alongside sex, race and others.

It also recommends changing the criteria for altering a person's sex on birth certificates and other official documents from physical body structure to taking "decisive steps to live fully and permanently in the gender identity of the nominated sex".

This proposal would be even more liberal than in Britain, where the law was changed in 2004 to allow sex changes on birth certificates if people have lived in their new gender identity for at least two years.

The report says there has long been a small number of people in many societies whose gender identity differed from their physical bodies.

Wellington Hospital geneticist Dr Joanne Dixon said she saw at least six people a year who were either physically male and genetically female with two X chromosomes, or physically female and genetically male with an X and a Y chromosome.

Other patients had other genetic abnormalities such as XXY, XYY, XXYY, one X alone, or combinations of X, Y and non-sexual chromosomes.

"Those working in the medical field know that sex is an extremely fluid concept," she said.

"There is a long pathway between the chromosomes you get at conception and the sex you present at the end. Between chromosomes and functional signals are a lot of hormonal things.

"If the law was pedantic, it would recognise chromosomal sex, physical sex and psychological sex. It is quite possible to be male genotype, female phenotype and to function as either one or the other.