7 Comments

Another great article. Tickle v Giggile is such an important case. I have donated to the campaign. A campaign is also needed to fund Sall Grover to run against Shannon Fentiman for the Brisbane seat of Waterford in next year's Qld election.

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Thanks for this Edie, it’s a tremendously important case for Australian women. Donation done!

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I am convinced Western society is in the midst of a mass hysteria episode, or a culture bound syndrome. A group of bad actors have seized the opportunity to infiltrate a progressive movement and coopted the left, feminism and gay rights to advance the autogynephiles practicing paraphilias as a human right.

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Superb piece. Many submissions to Minister Fentiman's 'men can be women if they say so' Bill pointed out CEDAW was signed and ratified by the Australian Govt among others whereas the Yogyakarta Principles have no legal standing. Women's Declaration International (WDI) developed a very good campaigning tool - the Declaration on Women's Sex Based Rights - based on CEDAW. It was launched in London and the US in 2019 and in Sydney and Brisbane in 2020. It's been signed by more than 30,000 people globally.

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To answer your question, you might consider a generally very good essay over at Barbara Wegener's Substack, this section in particular:

"Gender is nothing but personality repackaged."

https://dramaofitall.substack.com/p/there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go?utm_medium=reader2

Big part of the problem -- if not the rotten heart of it -- is the fact most people are clueless about the profound difference between sex and gender/gender-identity. Which too many on the Right contribute to with their dogmatic insistence that sex and gender are synonymous.

The risible and gobsmackingly idiotic consequence of which is that transwomen with feminine personality traits -- a gender -- are being allowed into spaces most reasonably segregated for people of the female sex, nominally speaking at least.

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Yes indeed if the performance is genetic then the performance is legitimate. It is hard to argue that some propensities in likes are not genetic but we can just as easily call them sex traits. It is more a conservative problem then generally a right wing problem. Conservatives can change on this and I think they are starting to, more rational conservative elements will have to insist they do. They have to particularly get their misogynists and homophobes under control if we are to create a sensible centre. I think there is hope for broad-scale solidarity on some of these issues.

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A "sensible centre" is certainly something to hope for. Though it seems that it is the Conservatives, those on the Right who are doing the most in pushing back on "gender ideology"; see:

"... an increasingly powerful U.S. movement that seeks to expand parent oversight of how gender and race are taught in public schools"

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/parental-rights-movement-us-canada-1.6796070

However, people like Matt Walsh are part of the problem. Despite his welcome documentary, he still seems unable or unwilling to accept definitions by which sex and gender are entirely different kettles of fish -- the latter being, at best, just a synonym for personalities and personality types.

But, related thereto, maybe a minor quibble or clarification about your use of "sex traits": those traits are not any part of the biological definitions for the sexes which are narrowly circumscribed and refer only to functional gonads of either of two types.

Things like heights -- men are, on average, some 4 inches taller than women -- or agreeableness -- women are, on average (see below), some 10% more agreeable than men -- might reasonably be called sex traits since there is some degree of CORRELATION between the trait and the sex.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joint_probability_distribution_by_sex_and_agreeablenes.jpg

However, those traits are NOT any part of the definitions for the sexes -- one can be a woman taller than the average for men, or one can be a man more agreeable than average for a woman. A distinction that many people seem to be unaware of which tends to muddy the waters extensively; though part of reason is that a full appreciation of the difference requires at least a rudimentary understanding of statistics which seems rather thin on the ground.

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