Vikki Campion: Standing up to be brave for all women

Just as the trans community deserves safety and protection of their rights, so do women, writes Vikki Campion.

We have created a nation where the women and mothers who had to fight for equal pay, a bank account in their name, the right to own a home on their own, to vote, and to have access to contraception are being reduced to “chest-feeders with front holes”.

This week has shown, once more, that we have to fight for rights we thought we won decades ago, when there were formidable punishments for demanding change and refusing to stay in the trap of narcissistic abusers and bad marriages.

Instead, the mere recognition of the needs of women’s health, that your life with XX chromosomes will be markedly different to your journey with XY, is apparently offensive and refused debate in the homes of our political leadership because of the “harm” it will do.

Women spent centuries silenced through shame; to speak out was to be feral – now, to speak out is to be a bigot or a fascist. We have come a long way from being gagged and shut down, and we damn well are not having it reassigned back.

It’s the same playbook, pages old and torn, dog-eared by misogynists of bygone eras who wanted to keep women barefoot and pregnant, chained to the stove.

Women have a right to have spaces where there are only other biological women – yet in two places this week, our nation’s parliament and Federal Court, it was evident we legally don’t.

In the Senate this week, an elected woman who put up a bill to recognise biological sex was shut down on the chance a debate about recognising the rights of more than 50 per cent of the population could cause “harm”. To whom?

Moira Deeming arrives at the Melbourne Federal Court with her barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC. Picture: NewsWire / Aaron Francis

In the Federal Court, a mother of four came under fire for her views; why didn’t she think it was “provocative and controversial” for rally organisers to tell a Let Women Speak Rally that “women don’t have penises, men don’t have vaginas”.

We remember when Sylvia Plath was rejoicing about her new Bendix washing machine because it saved a trip to the public laundry, when she wrote in her diary “being born a woman is my awful tragedy” and “I envy the man his physical freedom to lead a double life”. Her diaries told the story of so many women.

But, the women who dare remember it are shut down in their respective parliaments. This is not a parochial Coalition versus Labor thing; no, this is bipartisan – they are on a unity ticket.

In the Senate, Labor and the Greens refused to allow a private member’s bill to examine biological sex to go to inquiry. The precedent bills to have endured this same fate is incredibly short. Other bills that were denied the first reading were still referred to inquiry.

Afterwards, Labor senators trilled about how “women were getting better pay”. How can you use the term women, when you refuse to allow it to be defined?

In an explosive secret recording played in the Federal Court, Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto’s colleague, newbie MP Moira Deeming, was torn to shreds for attending a rally that attracted thousands of biological women but was also gatecrashed by an unwelcome and uninvited section.

While any Nazi presence must be condemned, the original message about women cannot be ignored.

In the hour-plus recording, colleagues tried to create the absurd assertion that a women’s rally was somehow a wanting interloper of fascism. There was no concern for women’s welfare when women speaking on women’s rights were knocked unconscious by violent counter-protesters, where video showed counter-protesters storming the stage to grab the microphone, the irony of which the men in the Victorian Coalition seemed incapable of comprehending.

In the recording, Deeming is attacked by her colleagues for how it would look to the LGBT community, – with no recognition of the “L” women in that acronym who do not want to be labelled a bigot.

Gender reassignment treatment or surgery does not lead to a uterus, one reason why women have been historically the weaker sex, home-bound with babies and children.

Ancient feminine statues did not feature high heels but swollen bellies; as far back as you can go, ancient rituals for women marked menstruation, stillbirth, miscarriage.

In life now, the biological difference is diminished – frustrating frontline workers who work to help the physical health of women and trans women; in a world where finally menopause and endometriosis are being acknowledged, and yet frontline workers are being told to keep language inclusive.

Biologically born women of chromosome XX have had this fundamental right of definition removed, and its removal endorsed by the state, to the point where the Senate is too gutless to discuss it and the Victorian Liberals will expel you for it.

Even recognising the difference in women’s health, where you can unexpectedly fall pregnant or repeatedly miscarry or suffer incredible pain until a hysterectomy, is apparently offensive.

Parliament is there to deal with complex issues, but instead, they refused because they said it would cause harm.

There should be a self-reflection on whether they have created harmony.

If you don’t have the strength to debate this, do not say you have the strength to run a country. You do not have the strength to run a tuck shop.

You pose strength and crave popularity and will have neither as you confuse populism and leadership.

Two XX women, Pauline Hanson and Moira Deeming, proved themselves to be the bravest political leaders of either sex in any party.

Just as the trans community deserves safety and protection of their rights, so do women.