DoubleTakePeople can change sex, but that should not mean erasing who they once were, writes Ann Marie Hourihane
Last week, a middle-aged woman tried to change her past. Not the first middle-aged woman to try it - my friends have been hiding their wedding photos, and a whole lot of other things, for years - but one of the few in this country to have succeeded.
This woman - we do not know her name, her age or whether she is currently living in Ireland - was born male. It was as a male that she sat her Intermediate, Group and Leaving Cert examinations. Time passed, and she became one of what the World Health Organisation (Who) calls "people with gender identity disorders".
In other words, the boy wanted to become a woman. To this end, he changed his name by deed poll and underwent treatment to change his sex.
However, daily life continues and livings must be earned by both sexes. In her search for a job, this woman had to present her qualifications, which had been issued to a male student who, for all practical purposes, had ceased to exist. The embarrassment caused to the poor job-seeker can be imagined. It is tough enough looking for a job at the best of times, and nothing brightens a dull day in the office more effectively than a quick snigger over somebody else's application form.
So, in due course, the woman brought a case against the State Examinations Commission and the Department of Education and Science. No surprise there. The surprising thing is that she won. In this, the European Year of Equal Opportunity for All (no, I didn't know either), the State Examinations Commission and the Department of Education and Science agreed to issue the relevant examination certificates in her new name.
On the one hand, we must all be delighted. For those of us who have always existed within the blurred boundaries of normality, it is difficult to imagine the scorching humiliation of submitting documentation that is regarded as a bit peculiar.
There are many people living today who can still remember bringing their birth certificates into school, prior to making their First Holy Communion, and being shocked to discover that their birth certificates looked radically different to those presented by the other children.
These were the children who had been adopted shortly after birth. Their birth certificates did not contain any of the usual information about their birth parents, and so were much smaller than the usual ones. You didn't have to be a particularly observant six-year-old to see that their birth certificates were a different size and colour to everyone else's. You don't have to be a particularly sensitive adult, either, to remember the deep discomfort, even shame, this discrepancy caused.
And so the birth certificates of adopted children were changed and a minor but needlessly painful childhood experience was thus avoided. No argument there. But with this woman, and her altered examination certificates, there is an argument. Everyone is entitled to re-make themselves as they see fit, but history is not purely a personal matter. It's the retrospective aspect of this case that is unsettling. The woman that she is now did not sit her Inter and her Leaving Cert all those years ago - in one sense, at the time of the examinations, that woman was waiting to be born. And the boy who sat the examinations did exist - he had a name and a family and a home town and it is wrong to wipe him from official memory.
Five years ago, Dr Lydia Foy tried to have her birth certificate altered to accurately represent her new gender. There were strong objections to this, not least from the two children of Dr Foy's marriage, entered into when she was living as a male. Last month in the High Court, Mr Justice Liam McKechnie reserved judgment on her subsequent bid to be given a new birth certificate describing her as female, rather than altering her original birth certificate.
There are many people who would like to re-make their past, often for reasons a lot more terrible than having been born in the wrong body. And most people would like to re-draw some lesser aspect of their personal history, whether it is their choice of wedding dress or, indeed, their choice of marriage partner. But there is a communal aspect to history, and to officialdom too.
Niall Crowley, CEO of the Equality Authority, has said that the decision in this case to re-issue the examination certificates is "not wiping out the past, it's achieving a coherence with the past". But this coherence is something that everyone achieves, every day. It is the continued existence of the person, across the strangest sets of circumstances, that gives the past coherence with the present.
It is right that people with gender identity disorders - an ugly phrase, but the one favoured above all others by the WHO - should be helped to move forward in their lives, and to negotiate the obstacles they face in creating a new future for themselves. But no one is born straight into adulthood, and there are limits to what a healthy society is willing to conceal.
In this country, we have had enough children wiped from the history books without starting to erase them now, through modern embarrassment.