Bureaucrats paint women out of the picture

‘The militant trans lobby is denying the uniqueness of women and asserting that anyone claiming to be a woman is, in fact, a woman regardless of biology, gender reassignment surgery or hormone treatment.’

You need to know the extent to which the things you’ve always taken for granted are being undermined. Like our biological reality, under challenge from institutions that have surrendered to political correctness, from parties on the right that say they uphold society’s fundamental values, and from parties on the left that lead the assault on what they defended only a couple of decades back.

Whether it’s the insistence on biological males competing in female Olympic events, the official acceptance of biological men in female facilities (change rooms or prisons), the redesignating of mothers as “people who have given birth” or of women as “people who menstruate”, or the Australian Academy of Science’s declaration that “personal gender identity does not correspond with sex assigned at birth”, the militant trans lobby is denying the uniqueness of women and asserting that anyone claiming to be a woman is, in fact, a woman regardless of biology, gender reassignment surgery or hormone treatment.

During the past few decades, the Monty Python skit where John Cleese’s character pokes fun at Eric Idle’s character Stan for wanting then and there to be recognised as Carlotta has gone from satire to standard practice.

The census last month gave everyone the “option of a ‘non-binary sex’ response category”. Picture: Istock

Take the census. From 1911, every census asked respondents to identify as male or female. That changed in 2016 when the online form allowed people to identify as “other”. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the 2016 census counted 1260 “gender diverse people in Australia” although, based on a separate pilot test, the ABS said this was “expected to have been substantially underreported”.

What the ABS said it was trying to do was “make it possible for all Australians to report their sex in a way not limited to ‘male’ or ‘female’ ”, hence the census last month gave everyone the “option of a ‘non-binary sex’ response category”. This, it said, was the result of “peak groups representing people whose sex is not accurately described by ‘male’ or ‘female’ ” working with the ABS in developing methods for the census.

In 2013 the Labor government changed federal human rights law to allow complaints on the basis of “gender identity”, something people can choose regardless of biological sex, which had always been determined at birth. Subsequently, without any real public debate, this flowed through into public service guidelines and beyond, so that, almost without anyone noticing the change, “gender identity” now counts over biological sex in most institutions, including universities, schools, sports organisations and big corporations.

Indeed, from May last year, Victorians have been able to change their official birth sex once a year, should they wish, simply by paying a fee and filling in an online declaration.

At one level, what box people tick to identify themselves, what words they nominate, might be considered no big deal. But at another level, words matter very much indeed. Words help to shape thought, which helps to drive actions – which is why radical activists take words so seriously and why, when a new flank is opened up in the culture wars, language is invariably the opening salvo.

Take this new guide for Covid-19 vaccinations in pregnancy from the federal Department of Health. The original version referred to “women who are pregnant”. Last month’s revised version refers to “people who are pregnant”; indeed, the republished version of the eight-page guide reportedly eliminated 50 references to women in favour of “pregnant people” or “people who are pregnant”.

Who would have thought that after the long struggle against sex discrimination we would end up cancelling women?

And who would have thought this would be happening right under the noses of ministers in a supposedly conservative government in Canberra?

Again, at one level, what’s the fuss? But at another level, look at the furore over terms deemed to be offensive on the grounds of race. Think how indignant people of colour would be if their race was not taken seriously. By that same standard, turning “pregnant women” into “pregnant people” erases women; it cancels half the population. Under the standard enshrined in these guidelines, women lose their identity; we’re being banished from a society where there are men and there are people, while women can be written out – all to avoid offending the militant trans lobby.

Earlier this year the British House of Lords debated a maternity leave bill that referred to pregnant people rather than pregnant women. One MP declared this was “yet another precedent on the statute book for the elimination of women”. Another said: “Do we really want to see demeaning terms such as … ‘individuals with a cervix’, ‘birthing bodies’ or even ‘chest-feeders’?”

Well, actually, chest feeders is just the term used in a recent pamphlet from the Australian Breastfeeding Association, put out in conjunction with the trans lobby.

Another member of the House of Lords declared: “I am not a uterus holder or a person with a vagina … These are linguistic abominations, but they’re not harmless. Ultimately these body part descriptions demean women and are an assault on the notion that biological sex exists at all.”

After initially refusing to amend the bill, Boris Johnson’s government relented and has reverted to standard language.

But you can see where this is going, can’t you? It’s another neo-Marxist attempt to make common sense a thoughtcrime. It’s akin to the “whiteness” campaign of the critical race theorists, who have taken Martin Luther King’s noble dream that people should be judged on the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin, and twisted it into a form of reverse racism, only this time subjugating a different group.

In my experience, the “pregnant people” document would most likely have been issued by the bureaucracy without the approval of Health Minister Greg Hunt and probably was not seen by his office (or if it was, not read properly by staff who should now hand in their notice).

But the fact that it has happened, and so far hasn’t been reversed, is an indictment on a government that generally fails to engage in the culture wars and too often dismays its supporters by conniving or acquiescing in measures that should never have happened in the first place; and should have brought a swift rebuke and immediate remedy if they did.

Another example is Australia signing up on the Morrison government’s watch to a statement from the UN Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination on the Basis of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity claiming “gender identity is a social construct” rather than a biological fact. Again, it’s unlikely that ministers would have been consulted – and if they’d asked, they would have been assured that it was routine and there was “nothing to see here”.

But it’s precisely this pressure from unelected bureaucrats, a product of the left’s long march through the institutions, that is driving social change without any reference to the quiet Australians who get their say only every three years at the ballot box and are otherwise ignored – even by the Morrison government.

If anyone in the Coalition thinks the next election will be merely a referendum on pandemic management, think again, because failing to stand up for principles that matter is akin to having none.

Peta Credlin is host of Credlin on Sky News, 6pm weeknights.