News today of the appointment of a new human rights commissioner seems to have angered the right people, so I live in hope. Ms. Lorraine Finlay will begin her Commission on the 22nd of November. One would hope that a person who has worked as a human trafficking specialist would understand the value of sex-based protections.
I think we need to be very clear about what we expect from the incoming Commissioner. We need to work towards
Sex should be a protected attribute throughout Australia.
A recent decision in Tasmania has seen a woman denied permission to create single-sex spaces, one of the reasons cited was that “sex is not a protected attribute”.The other disturbing revelation from the Tasmanian decision was that the commission said it would be unlawful to discriminate against “types of bodies”. The basis for single-sex safeguarding is the discrimination against “types of bodies”. Public facilities that women fought for to keep them safe are built for “types of bodies” NOT “types of Identities. The incident in the WiSpa in California recently where a registered sex offender was able to wave his penis around in the face of women and girls was allowed because the facility was not able to discriminate against “types of bodies”. I don’t believe the incoming Commissioner will be able to protect women’s human rights unless she can establish in law, the ability of women to exist as a protected characteristic with her sex established as born and immutable (even if there is a different gender identity).
In order to fully protect both women and males who identify as women and men and women who identify as men, we need to have specific sex and gender identity markers in documentation. Where gender is preferred by a person over sex this needs to be clear. Any “right” to keep an individual’s “trans” status completely confidential obliterates women’s rights to create and maintain single-sex spaces, facilities, and services. The Tasmanian Commissioner found that the ability to create and maintain single-sex spaces requires the ability to determines someone’s sex, and since this is not displayed clearly on documentation in Tasmania it would involve “intrusive questioning and completely undermining a person’s right to privacy”. Therefore we can only conclude that to establish women’s human rights to the privacy, dignity, and safety that only single-sex safeguarding can provide, we have to have a national documentation system where biological sex is clear, even if someone has an opposite gender identity to their sex.
We must pressure the incoming commissioner also to make sure the terms woman, man, sex, gender, and gender identity are accurately defined.
I wish the commissioner all the best and want to let her know that we feminists intend to secure the safety, dignity, and privacy of women and girls now and in the future to resolve the current rights conflicts that are playing out between women and trans-identified males. We are Australian and we can find solutions that are world standard and not just follow regressive American gender-based ideology.
Cheers
Edie x