Transgender women in sport is a blatant distraction technique by Liberals

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is blatantly distracting from real women’s issues by crowing about an “issue” that really isn’t a problem for women.

OPINION

The topic of transgender women in sport is fast becoming a focus of the Liberal Party’s election campaign, whether they planned it that way or not.

In now deleted Twitter posts Warringah Liberal representative and supporter of the ‘Save Women’s Sports’ bill, Katherine Deves called transgender children “surgically mutilated and sterilised” and likened anti-trans activism to the holocaust.

She also claimed that male sex offenders would transition to women to “erase their sins of the past”.

In a statement, Ms Deves apologised for the “language” she used but said: “In my dedication to fighting for the rights of women and girls, my language has on occasion been unacceptable. It has hurt people and detracted from my arguments.”

I’m not sure how she can justify her tweets by saying she’s protecting women and girls. Nothing she said in those hateful tweets makes me feel protected in any way.

Liberal candidate Katherine Deves is so proud of her views that she scrubbed certain tweets from the internet. Picture: Nikki Short

Despite having pressure put on him by members of his own party (NSW Treasurer Matt Kean said what Ms Deves said was “outright bigotry” and she was “not fit for office”), Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to disendorse Ms Deves.

“I’m not going to allow her to be silenced, I’m not going to allow her to be pushed aside as the pile on comes in to try and silence her,’’ said Mr Morrison.

On Tuesday NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet weighed in saying, “The right thing to do is take the concerns of women and girls seriously, not shut them down.”

On one hand, it could be seen as a clever tactic by Mr Morrison who has repeatedly been told he has a women problem. In Katherine Deves he’s found both a female candidate and a “women’s issue” that many women could, in theory, get on board with.

Do women want to feel safe in sport? Yes, of course we do! Well, Ms Deves is going to protect us from all of those transgender women trying to take or medals and our glory. Hmmm.

The problem is, this is not an issue that is impacting everyday Aussie women on a day-to-day basis and the hot air the Liberal Party is giving this topic shows just how out of touch they are with the real issues that keep women awake at night.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has doubled down on candidate Katherine Deves. Picture: Jason Edwards

Statistics show that women in sport aren’t overwhelmingly concerned about the inclusion of transgender women and girls. A survey by Monash University surveyed women from six sports at 12 community sports clubs and found that only 24 per cent believed “trans women have an unfair advantage when they play on a female sport team” whereas nearly 46 per cent of men believed this to be the case.

It baffles me that men in power like Mr Morrison and Mr Perrottet seem so concerned about transgender women in sport when women in sport are seemingly not losing sleep over this issue. It makes them seem so out of touch.

I’m part of a women’s running group and we’ve had transgender women run with us many times. Has that been scary or dangerous for me? Absolutely not! Do I feel in danger from men when I run alone in the dark at night. Absolutely.

This distraction technique from the Liberal Party to detract away from the real issues affecting Aussie women is so blatant it’s almost laughable.

To put the topic of transgender women in sport into context, in the 2016 Australian census, 100 people described themselves as trans female. That is 0.0004 per cent of the population.

If Mr Morrison really wants to take on women’s issues then maybe he should start with domestic violence. On average, one women a week is killed by her current or former partner, 18 per cent of women have experienced sexual violence and 30 per cent of women have experienced physical violence.

While they’re at it, the Liberal government could also look into super disparity (currently, the average superannuation payout for women is a third of the payout for men) and the gender pay gap (in Australia, women working full-time today earn 16 per cent less than men).

Or if they want to tackle a transgender issue, how about starting with the devastatingly high rates of suicide among transgender young people?

The topic of transgender women in sport is a sensitive issue and someone like Ms Deves who bandies around the words “holocaust” and “mutilated” definitely isn’t the person to take on this task.

The Liberal Party has had almost 10 years to tackle violence against women and yet when it comes to their election campaign it’s transgender women in sport that they choose to crow about as a women’s issue.

Why oh why has Mr Morrison decided this is the hill he wants to die on?

Riah Matthews is the commissioning editor for news.com.au.