The endless cycle of bigots bashing minorities

Engineers in my home state will shortly have to be registered (my application is in – after many attempts on a system that was, frankly, incompetently assembled . . . as quite a few such state and federal government systems seem to be, in the last few years [a “review” of MyGov is underway, but a radio interview gave little confidence that it will be well handled]).

As I’ve written previously, there are some major problems with the scheme:

• it is contributing to the fragmentation of engineering registration: instead of a single strong national system – which could have been built on what the Institution of Engineers Australia (aka “Engineers Australia”) had already built (which includes audited CPD requirements and just needed a stronger ID check) – each state and territory is going for its own scheme – each set of bureaucrats/politicians are protecting their preserve, even if it doesn’t actually help the community.
  Mind you, something clearly was necessary (a fatal building collapse in an earthquake may have been due to the design being performed by someone who wasn’t an engineer, and had just stolen and engineer’s identity instead), but this has more of the “be seen to be doing something” vibe than “doing something good and effective”;
• the ID check includes a full police check – whereas the trans and gender diverse (TGD) community had been told (lied to?) that it would be “just a probity check” (in private industry, probity check and police DO mean different things). Any forced deadnaming is a risk to wellbeing and, in fact, life of TGD people, and this aspect was utterly contrary to the generally good LGBTIQA+ policies of my home state’s government.
  Some communication suggested that those in government have been given “sensitivity” training, but it is difficult to reconcile that with including full police checks – especially my home state police force’s appalling behaviour towards LGBTIQA+ people in some recent key events (although it turns out the police checks are NOT done by police now, but a national criminal intelligence set up - so past measures at a state level designed to give some measure of protection for TGD people has been lost));
• the fundamental basis of this, other than the genuine concerns about safety, seems to me to be the desire of engineers to fan their ego – to feel superior to those who don’t have degrees. Well, in my engineering career, several of the best engineering people had diplomas, not degrees, and many people without degrees are extremely observant, intelligent, and able to make excellent, incisive and wise comments.

The extent of problems with the digital system were unexpected: of all the engineers I know, only two had no problems, and others had many – one engineer had to try to take his photo ten  times, and I had to get younger engineers to help me when doing the application in an open plan office (home lighting does not appear to be adequate for the system) because of a slight tremor I have (does that constitute ageism? Or does the impossibility of using the system perhaps venture into bullying? Hmm . . . ) – which made privacy a major problem (so much for the sensitivity training of people on the other side of the system).

The system also insisted on using a very limited choice of browsers – some not the best from a security point of view. In this day and age, surely we can hire people who have competency to allow for all forms of UI (user interface) and not just their favourite, familiar old systems that they like to fumble around with?

As a result of all this, I’ve decided to bring forward my retirement plans: I’m not going to go through another set of CPD audits – two (FIEAust and NER) every three years was bad enough, three – each with their own set of fees and presentation requirements - is utterly beyond the pale.

And having to interact with that incompetent “digital” nightmare again would drive me off the deep end (and the imbalance in power makes every such situation a little bit like trying to deal with the mindless inhumanity of Robodebt).

On that “being driven off the deep end”, something I’ve noticed in the last quarter century and a bit is that every few years some fool comes up with what they think might be a good idea that involves transphobic elements.

In some cases, that is because of the arrogance and bullheadedness of bureaucrats - for instance, in the early 90s, trans people who transitioned could either change their driving licence or their passport: each department insisted on having the original birth certificate, and neither would accept the other’s documentation with regard to gender. The department in charge of driving licences wouldn’t accept the corrected binary (yes, education back then had a long way to go) gender designation on a passport as evidence of gender, and the licence had nothing to indicate gender so was utterly useless to the relevant other department.

I have to wonder how people be so inhumane. Utter bureaucratic blindness? Are they transphobic? Or utterly inept at being human beings?

Some of the comments I’ve seen over the years for these various schemes (usually explained beginning with “well, if I was trans, what I’d do . . .”) are clearly attempts to justify or cover up their transphobia, or allow the transphobe concerned to impose their transphobic bigotry on TGD people (i.e., allow the bigots a sense of control over a part of the world their personal inadequacies result in them being uncomfortable with).

In some cases it is genuinely lack of awareness, but that doesn’t apply to my home state’s engineering registration scheme, as I know it received good education.

That means this engineering registration scheme is just one more in the never-ending sequence of trans bashing ideas . . ., and there’ll be another in three to five years (probably the format of questions on the census). It never ends – TGD people keep getting retraumatised over and over and over and over and over again.