The tide is turning on trans activists

There is a growing acknowledgment that this fringe movement is dangerous, particularly when it comes to impressionable kids.

The Victorian Liberals would do well to lean into contentious 80-20 issues like the trans agenda, where roughly 80 per cent of the population is on one side, while the media, activist and political class are on the other.

John Pesutto blew up his political career misreading public opinion on this issue as well as misreading defamation laws and the rules of basic decency.

If only he’d read this column’s sage advice back in 2023 he may still be leader instead of facing a multimillion-dollar judgement that could see him exit state parliament under a bankruptcy cloud.

Alas, the former Liberal leader sided with the Left, including the gaslighting media, instead of his own MP who was taking a stand for women’s rights.

John Pesutto blew up his political career. Picture: David Crosling

Thankfully, the tide is turning on trans activists and the manner in which they exercise disproportionate power.

From the UK to the US there is a growing acknowledgment that this fringe movement is dangerous, particularly when it comes to impressionable kids.

The Cass Review in the UK exposed how the so-called gender affirming model is built on the flimsiest of foundations relying on “remarkably weak evidence”.

Puberty blockers are now all but banned in the UK for under 18s.

The tide is turning on trans activists and the manner in which they exercise disproportionate power. Picture: Getty

And, it was the Cass Review that was partly relied on for a Family Court judgement that saw a mother who wanted to give her 12-year-old child puberty blocking drugs stripped of custody.

The child, whose father objected to the medical interventions, has been under the care of a taxpayer funded gender clinic from the age of six. Judge Andrew Strum was scathing of the gender-affirming model and found one of Australia’s leading gender medicine experts misled the court.

“It is concerning that an oddly binary approach is adopted in relation to children, especially of the age of the child the subject of these proceedings; that is, to affirm unreservedly those who present with concerns regarding their gender, brooking no questioning thereof,” Justice Strum said.

The notion that a six year old who thinks they are the opposite gender should be unquestionably affirmed in that belief is utterly absurd.

These children should be offered counselling rather than powerful drugs and irreversible treatments that can leave them with lifelong medical issues including infertility.

Originally published as The tide is turning on trans activists