Submission to the AHRC

In Support of Lesbian action group

legal@humanrights.gov.au

I write to express my support for the Lesbian Action Group (LAG) in relation to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s notice of preliminary view regarding the application from temporary exemption for LAG to hold a single sex gathering.

Introduction

My name is Edie Wyatt, I write political and cultural commentary in various publications. I have a specific interest in the way cultural control is engaged to manage women in populations, what we used to call gender.  I have an honours degree in political and cultural theory.

I am a direct descendent of a woman who was trafficked to this island by the British Government for her sexual and reproductive labour.  My 4 times great grandmother arrived in Australia in 1790 on the ship the Lady Juliana, that was called “the first exclusively female convict transport to Australia”. The Lady Juliana was not a exclusively female ship, because as well as the 226 women and six children on board, there were 50 male crew of whom every man took a “wife” for the journey from the convict women. On arriving in the colony most of the women who were taken as wives were either pregnant or had given birth on board.

Since settlement, colonial governments in Australia have continued to secure the sexual access of men to women through the promotion of various ideologies, some procedural, some religious and some academic.  Among these imperialist ideologies is “gender identity ideology”, which allows men to openly demand the right of access to women’s bodies and infrastructure, simply by declaring a gender identity of “woman”.

Background of my interest

A few years ago I wrote an article where I said that I wouldn’t have wanted my disabled lesbian cousin, who had rape related trauma, to have males attend to her intimate needs, even if the males had a special gender identity. For this very mainstream view I was labelled a TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist) even though that term is an inadequate description of my position. Because I have not backed down on my position to protect women and girls as a sex, I have been locked in an area of politics and research of gender politics. 

Nothing has been more shocking to me since starting my study of gender identity ideology, than the way lesbians are being coerced to accept males as sexual and romantic partners.  Shaming women’s sexual boundaries is rape culture, shaming lesbian’s sexual boundaries is homophobic rape culture.  If lesbians are refused the right to meet as a sex by government, what we have have systemic, homophobic rape culture.  I am, it would be obvious by now, against systemic, homophobic rape culture in Australia.

I was previously permanently banned from Twitter for saying that men identifying as lesbians is rape culture.  The eSaftey commissioner has recently been asking Twitter/X for lists of people who have been previously permanently banned from Twitter as examples of people who are unsuitable to be able to publish on social media platforms. 

I am a heterosexual married, Christian woman who has never sought to enter into a lesbian only space and nor do I ever, I have pulled into this issue of the rights of lesbians because I cannot look away.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/12/tasmania-where-womens-rights-never-arrived/

https://thecritic.co.uk/safety-in-genders/

My objection to the draft ruling.

The debate over the rights of women, as we well know is based in the definition of sex.

Recently in Sex Discrimination Commission of Australia wrote the following in a submission to the Roxanne Tickle V Giggle For Girls Pty Ltd

“In summary, the Commissioner submits that the word “sex” is not a biological concept referring to whether a person at birth had male or female physical traits. Nor is it a binary concept, limited to the “male” or “female” sex. The word “sex” takes its ordinary meaning, which is informed by how that term is used throughout Australia including in State and Territory legislation (discussed further below). “Sex” can refer to a person being male, female, or another non-binary status. It is also broad enough to encompass the idea that a person’s “sex” can be changed.”

The commissioner appeals to the change of the meaning of sex in “State and Territory legislation” to make the argument that that “gender identity” now overrides sex as a biological concept in “ordinary meaning.”  But the arguments mounted by counsel for Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd questions the very legitimacy of the legislation that the Sex Discrimination Commission relies on to make this fragile argument.  When we follow gender identity sovereignty, we get a circular, self-referencing and spiralling arguments that end in the loss of the meaningful legal categories that women need to protect themselves and their children.

For instance, the change in the meaning of sex that was enacted through the recent BDMRB Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 2003 (Qld) (BDMR Act), appeals to the non- existent authority of the Yogyakarta principles (an activist document that the UN have refused to ratify).  The Minister who introduced the legislation, Shannon Fentiman, said the government had consulted, yet she refused to consider the arguments that sex is biological and important, saying women like myself were cloaking our “transphobia in the guise of women’s safety”.

Fentiman and the gender ideologues that support the BDMR Act, requested of us who dissented, a raped women body count in countries where there is self ID was enacted, in order to justify our claim of the vulnerability of women.  We know that the degeneration of women’s rights may take a few more years to see the rise in aggregate rape statistics, although we are already seeing serious sexual violence in prisons and where women are vulnerable in shelters. The state prison statistics from the UK, the US and Canada, that showed that trans identity did not abate male pattern violence, was of no interest to our Queensland Attorney General, because they were not “peer reviewed.”

The circular and self-referencing logic of gender identity legislation has been tried in other western countries but is starting to fail.  On the 29^th of October 2023 the US Court of Appeals for the 11^th circuit ruled that “separating school bathrooms based on biological sex passes constitutional muster and comports with Title IX.” Meaning that Title IX, that has long been under attack from trans activists, is being interpreted as being based in biological sex, and specifically for those who are biologically female.

UK courts have similarly ruled that sex is a legitimate and necessary basis that on which women can discriminate to secure safety and dignity. 

Parliament is given the ability to make laws for the people who elect them, that is the only basis on which MP’s are permitted to make laws. Politicians and government funded consultancy firms, masquerading as charities, are changing the meaning of sex and sexuality by subterfuge and bullying. The BDMR Act was promoted to voters as something that would reduce unnecessary surgeries that medicalise “the recognition of a person’s lived identity.” This was completely untrue and based on political propaganda by the trans lobby.

The “ordinary” meaning of sex is still enacted every day when a person identifies the sex of a baby, when we pass each other on the street, when we decide on a sexual partner.  Sex is science, gender is social roles. The protection of women must be based in sex and not in gender. Lesbians are the first to experience the rape culture that lies in the laws that are removing our rights to the most basic instincts of sex recognition and attraction.

By denying the rights of lesbian women to assemble in single sex public events you are making all women who believe in human sex categories dissidents. This includes me.  We will fight this on every level, I promise you.

The preliminary decision by the Human Rights Commission to refuse permission to lesbians to public single sex assembly is an affront to all women. If the most vulnerable of women cannot use single sex protections, it is a stain on the reputation of the most privileged of women, and you women who are reading this are the most privileged of women.  All the women who hold power and support this decision are directly responsible, not just for the harm to lesbian women and girls, but for the rape culture that this decision enforces and the harm this brings to our entire society. 

As a heterosexual Christian woman I stand resolutely with the women of the Lesbian Action Group for their right to publicly assemble separate from men and separate from heterosexuals. 

I am ashamed that you have continued the Australian tradition of the colonisation of vulnerable women by expecting them to be sexually available to men. 

Yours sincerely,

Edie Wyatt

writer. feminist. dissident.