Women lose out in conflict with transgender rights

Warringah Liberal candidate Katherine Deves. Picture: Richard Dobson

Katherine Deves has finally achieved what no woman before her was able to. She has forced Australian media to report – albeit rather biasedly – on the conflict between women’s rights and transgender rights. She has inspired Olympic athletes to speak out against the inclusion of biological males in women’s sport, and polling shows most Australians agree with her.

However, the conflict between women’s rights and transgender demands goes far beyond the sports issue.

The definition of trans woman is no longer transsexual. If you were thinking of males who have undergone sex reassignment surgery, trans activists would probably call you transphobic and your views outdated. In Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT, men who identify as women now can change their legal sex without the need for hormones, surgeries or a doctor’s assessment. Known as “self-ID” laws, the result is that legal protections for women now appear secondary to gender identity.

Beyond sport, girls and women are being forced against their will to accept biological males in a vast range of uncomfortable circumstances. Changing rooms are an obvious example.

Is it transphobia to be uncomfortable with a naked biological male in the women’s changing rooms at the gym? Of course not. It’s a basic evolutionary response – males can pose a danger to women because they’re bigger and stronger, thus the presence of a male in an intimate space puts women on edge.

British women have been successful in resisting self-ID laws. Backed by media that will actually investigate the issues, sex-based legal protections, for the most part, have not been compromised by gender identity laws. Women’s prisons would be the notable exception. Biological males are being housed in women’s prisons with predictable results, but at least British media has reported on the sexual assaults that have occurred. In Australia I’m aware of only one woman investigating the prison situation.

The excesses of British LGBTQI+ charity Stonewall have also swayed public opinion on the trans issue. Through its Diversity Champions scheme, Stonewall successfully infiltrated various government departments as well as the taxpayer-funded BBC, pushing workplace policies that were in breach of the UK Equality Act. It took a year’s worth of digging by BBC journalist Stephen Nolan to expose the true scale of Stonewall’s influence on government policy and the public broadcaster. It’s remarkable the BBC allowed his investigation to air.

In Australia, the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON) has imported Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme and rebranded it the Australian Workplace Equality Index.

Employers – including government departments, universities and public broadcasters ABC and SBS – pay about $6000 annually to receive ACON’s Pride in Diversity workplace training and consulting, where they are instructed on how to make their workplace LGBTQIA+ friendly. Employers then make lengthy submissions to AWEI and receive points for things such as allowing biological males to use the women’s toilets, recruitment targets for LGBTQIA+ employees and, in the case of the ABC, offering 10 days of extra paid leave for “gender affirmation”. Gender affirmation leave is not defined, so it remains unclear whether it covers medical appointments only or other gender-affirming approaches.

SBS is equally as entangled with ACON, having partnered with its Pride in Sport franchise to promote the idea that it’s fair and reasonable for biological males to compete in women’s sport. Last year SBS won “gold employer” status while the ABC excelled, winning “most improved employer”, best “external media campaign” for its ABCQueer department and “gold employer” status.

To put it bluntly, our public broadcasters have become akin to propaganda arms for ACON and seem unable to report fairly on the many issues caused by transgender laws and policies. A glaring example was their uncritical promotion of the trans inclusion sporting guidelines without much said about the impact on fairness and safety. Another was the ABC’s decision to feature a biological male in its You Can’t Ask That episode on lesbians. The lesbians I know consider this “woke homophobia” and the appropriation of lesbian sexuality by males.

We are about three years behind Britain when it comes to these issues, but we can look to British developments to see how this will play out. Numerous government departments and the BBC have withdrawn from Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme. This month Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission reaffirmed that it is legal to provide “separate or single-sex services in certain circumstances”. And last year Sport England updated its trans inclusion guidelines, concluding “transgender inclusion, fairness and safety” cannot be balanced.

Stassja Frei is founder of the Coalition for Biological Reality and organiser of the Respect My Sex If You Want My Vote campaign, which seeks to pressure federal election candidates to answer a series of questions on women’s sex-based rights and child safeguarding.