About a Girl by Rebekah Robertson

Author:Rebekah Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143785163
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

The day of the trial dawned hot. Greg had flown back from his current play in Sydney. Harry and Georgie were now in Year 6. Georgie had been made school vice-captain; her leadership qualities had been noticed and nurtured, and she was highly engaged with the role. Harry had been unsuccessful in his application to become the library monitor, which had hurt. At first, no library monitor was named at all; then the position was awarded to someone who hadn’t asked to do it. Harry was cross about that. Sometimes grown-ups have no idea what they’re doing.

Almost a full year after our scramble to access treatment for Georgie, we were challenging the law in its entirety. I was incredibly nervous. For families like mine, in some instances the outcome would literally determine whether their child would receive treatment or not. Several people I knew personally had made the excruciating decision to abandon the option of treatment rather than tackle the enormous barrier the court process presented. People in regional and rural areas were most disadvantaged. I knew there were also kids whose parents didn’t support them or who didn’t have the means. That could have been us, if not for the kindness and sense of civic duty of our lawyers. Justice wasn’t available to all. A family I’d become close with had remortgaged their home to pay the approximately $30,000 in court fees. We knew some families who had taken matters into their own hands, accessing hormones illegally.

I was conscious that the outcome of this appeal had profound consequences not just for my family but for so many who had become dear to me – and to even more whom I would never know. The Family Court had practically no concept of the tsunami of young people heading their way. Georgie was the tip of the iceberg, as we’d seen at the RCH. The Gender Service was experiencing an exponential growth in referrals and that pattern was repeated across the country.

The courtroom was in one of the upper levels of the Family Court building. Greg and I entered to find an unremarkable scene as the various parties milled around chatting. Captain Jack and Pirate #3 were having a conspiratorial laugh together. I envied the fact that this was impersonal to them. Tonight they’d go home, satisfied with a job well done, free to cast a forensic eye over the minutiae of our case and the cases that intersected with it at their leisure.

The court clerk entered and bade the room to rise for Their Honours: Chief Justice Bryant, Justice Strickland and Justice Finn were presiding. We all shuffled to attention. Such was the preparation and planning of an appeal of this nature that very little of what was said in court that day was a surprise to us. Our argument was clear: that treatment for gender dysphoria was not a special medical procedure requiring court oversight as it followed the internationally agreed guidelines of all medical bodies experienced in gender

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.