The Suitcase You Cannot Pack: On Identity and the Public Sphere
Why human rights law protects what we must carry with us
Imagine, for a whimsical moment, that you could pack yourself into a suitcase each morning. Your race in the blue compartment, your age in the side pocket, your disability status folded neatly with the winter scarves. "Just travelling light today," you'd tell the world, leaving your gender identity on the hallstand like an umbrella you don't need.
Absurd, isn't it? And yet this is precisely the fantasy that discrimination law exists to shatter — the illusion that we can subdivide ourselves for public consumption, offering only the palatable parts.
The Architecture of Section 21
New Zealand's Human Rights Act Section 21 reads like a catalogue of the unsheathable self. These prohibited grounds of discrimination — sex, race, age, disability, sexual orientation — aren't random characteristics plucked from a cosmic lottery. They're the fundamental aspects of human identity that follow us through every door we open. And since the Crown Law 2006 opinion, the Human Rights Commission have said that gender identity is also included in section 21.
Think of it this way: when you leave your house to seek medical care, you bring your whole body. When you enter the workplace to earn your bread, you bring your whole mind. When you step into a shop, a bus, a courtroom, you arrive complete — not as some edited version of yourself, but as the full symphony of your being.
The law recognises this beautiful impossibility of self-editing. It says: these are the things that travel with you because they are you.
The Geography of Gender
Here's where the trans experience illuminates something profound about human rights philosophy. Being transgender isn't a coat you can check at the door. It's not a private hobby to be indulged after hours. It's the lens through which you navigate every moment, every interaction, every reflection in every window you pass.
When a trans person seeks healthcare, applies for a job, or simply exists in public space, they cannot — and should not have to — perform an impossible magic trick of self-erasure. Gender identity flows through every gesture, every greeting, every form that demands an M or F or (increasingly, thankfully) an X.
To suggest otherwise — to imply that trans identity could be somehow "left at home" — is to fundamentally misunderstand both human consciousness and human rights. It's like asking someone to leave their height at home, or their memories, or their need to breathe.
The Democracy of Being
The genius of anti-discrimination law lies in its recognition that democracy isn't just about voting — it's about the right to appear in public as yourself. Not as a censored version, not as a performance of acceptability, but as the complicated, magnificent, irreducible human you are.
When we protect gender identity from discrimination, we're not creating a "special right." We're acknowledging a basic truth: that the public sphere belongs to all of us, wholly and completely. That the price of participation in society cannot be the amputation of self.
The stars don't dim themselves to make others comfortable. Neither should we.
Because human rights begin where the front door opens.