Well, tonight you remind me of Doris Lessing " humanity is moon mad, lunatic"! Also Camille Paglia, "this sort of gender confusion is usually associated with civilisational collapse". I was in Afghanistan once, and saw a woman with her nose "removed", hideous , brutal misogyny. You write with great insight and moral clarity Julie, keep it up if you can. X
You write with great clarity and moral force Julie and need to understand you have many supporters and admirers. I have given up on the Melbourne Bien Pensants, they think the same about everthing. Find some new collaborators ( Doug Kirsner is an excellent and informed conversationalist, you could start with him ) If you are looking for a read,and have not yet read Mr Sammlers Planet and More Die of Heartache, I commend them. Both relevant in their way to current circumstances. They will comfort you (St Kilda are now top of the league ladder, so there is still hope) X
We had an episode in Brisbane a couple of years ago when the young staffers in our (then) Queensland Health Minister's electorate office got wind of the fact that some women were standing on a footpath along a main road in the electorate holding up a placard that read "Woman = adult human female". The immediate response of these young activists - all, like their boss, from the left wing of the Labor Party - was to sool the Queensland cops onto the women. When the cops arrived and saw what was happening, they laughed and assured the women that they were doing nothing wrong and they could continue with their action.
However, I don't think it's such a bad idea to have a census question that will allow policymakers - and the public - to know how many transgender identifying and intersex people there are, and where they are. Indeed, having such information might help us achieve a clearer picture than accepting activists' assertions about such matters.
Good on the cops. But I'm less optimistic than you about the census question because we're in a social contagion so the numbers will be inflated either way. And what are we measuring anyway? What does "genderfluid" etc actually mean?
Agree - Hope the 2026 census question backfires on the "Rainbow Movement' as it did in Scotland rather than every 2nd person being identifying as a Trans "woman" NO it was only a meagre 0.04% of the population. And should the same statistical outcome prevail here in Aust - then one must ask with with such a small % of the population with gender ID "needs' do we need to have children as young as 5 being asked for their preferred pronoun when they go to a Victorian public Library? Neither do we need every Local Govt to have a "trans" Councilor elected, let alone 'Gawd' help us into our Parliaments State and Federal. So a warning now more than ever be careful who you vote for !
It can cut the other way too, though, as TRAs have a stock argument about how men simply aren't going to take over women's sports etc because there are so few Ts (stupid argument of course, but it would be a shame to shore up the factual basis for it)
Thanks Julie, the census shenanigans were ultimately a silver lined cloud in my mind as Labor clearly knows forcing everyone to declare a gender identity will be very unpopular and divisive.
You are spot on about the prevalence of trans identifying teens and young adults in “progressive” circles I have given up counting friends and family with pronoun kids. Quite a few have now reverted to their original sex.
Thanks Julie for your comprehensive report on this case. The lack of reporting across the mainstream media is just astounding and I have been looking for it, interested in their take. But no or little mention and certainly no analysis of the many consequences that will follow. Extraordinary and mind boggling!
Thanks for these quiet but healthily sardonic observations about gender politics and ideology.
I've had to stand back because it has become quite concerning to observe the reach of the ideology into almost every aspect of community life. The capture of the Australian Human Rights Commissions is a perfect example, and the sheer irrationality of some calls for public policy change around 'gender' matters is disturbing. I hope more people speak up and believe this is happening, but how to wind back some of the madness?
For those interested in keeping up with these discussions in an informed way the Feminist Legal Clinic is worth following. Their commitment is deeply impressive. You can get a link to their site from this post.
I hope not but I think that many Australians don't yet realise how insidious and wide-reaching gender driven ideology is. I am finding it hard to forgive Labor and the Greens.
Thanks Julie. Yes, what I found most astonishing in Justice Bromwich's summary was the statement that in its "ordinry meaning" sex is changeable. Is this an elite ideology bubble complex? Because reality deny-ideologues 'linguistically perform' the subordination of factual reality (sex) to a subjective ideological construct (gender-identity) are we all meant to now believe that you can really, in actual reality, change your sex by a bit of legal paper work, and that there is no meaningful difference between a male claiming to be female and a female simp,ly being female? The sense that the Justice is entirely out of touch with reality is very disturbing.
Yes, I found it astounding that a judge would say the 'ordinary' understanding of sex is that it is changeable! Does he live in another world from me? In no way is that 'ordinary'.
I agree Paul, a surreal and troubling judgment. For me even more troubling than his statement about sex being changeable is his adoption of all the ticks of gender ideology. Or maybe that's the point: you can't say "in its ordinary meaning sex is changeable" without signing up to the activist view in its entirety. Otherwise the dissonance is too great.
Yes, it is the manner in which the ruling uncritically assumes the entire transgender ideological shebang that is so distrubing. No Australian legislation that I know of (as yet) uses the term 'cisgender', but Justice Bromwich uses this term as if it is an uncontroversial and universally acknowledged truth that a biological female (like Sall Grover) who understands herself to be woman is expressing a gender-identity that is only accidentally - as it were - related to her sex, rather than that she simply is a woman, in virtue of her sex. Ideology in, factual reality out. Very shocking comming from a judge.
Great article Julie. It seems the only rational solution is legislative change. Julia Gillard copped a lot of flak on X with comments indicating she was personally responsible for the 2013 amendments and how they have played out. I think the amendments have had unforeseen consequences, as has the flawed NDIS legislation.
Please accept my sincere condolences on the passing of your father. I read the obituary in The Age.
"But each time I dipped into Justice Robert Bromwich’s published reasons, I experienced a sensation of being dangled upside down — admittedly this may have been a symptom of the peri-menopausal chaos in my body, which I’m having great trouble identifying out of. "
It is a pity that Albo has managed to mess this up so thoroughly. We really do worry about his political judgement. First the Voice referendum, where many of us predicted the 60 percent No vote right from the start. The very high failure rate of Australian referendums was conventional wisdom back in 1965 when I was doing Matric Social Studies. Nothing has changed since.
And now the embarrassing back-flip on the Census question. As someone who has taken a keen professional interest in Census questions, my sympathies are with the ABS. It will be very difficult to design and test a question or questions that will produce reliable data on this issue.
The proof of that conundrum is in Britain, as mentioned in Julie’s article. A similar Census question recently produced entirely counter-intuitive results showing that a statistically high proportion of ‘trans’ people came from non-English speaking communities, rather than being from fashionable Islington or Brighton.
The reason was undoubtedly the wording. Lots of people whose first language was not English must have interpreted a question about whether you ‘identify’ with the opposite sex as meaning ‘Are you attracted to people of the opposite sex?’ Thus men said Yes, meaning ‘Yes, I’m a heterosexual male, and I’m attracted to women.‘ Hilarious, really.
Re Census, "there’s no way of knowing they’re telling the truth", and the secret thought of having to verify my answer to the collector, by dropping the dacks. Then, at least, my status re circumcision will be on the public record, hopefully to be passed on to the IBM card-punchers.
How many fright-fests can be jammed into one week?
"An early plan to give private investors access to parts of Victoria’s births, deaths and marriages registry has been abandoned by the state government after backlash from a key union and grassroots Labor members."
Any "investor" (say, IBM, who run the Australian Immunisation Register) would have taken one look at the proposition and replied along the lines of "No way, not until all States have ported their BDM etc to a government database that controls identity management."
As it is, essential bits of my identity are broken off and are under control of numerous & separate corporations & agencies. I guess most citizens are quite possessive of their anatomical genders and don't care to disclose sexual behaviours.
The acceptance of "transwomen's rights" was based around two assumptions. 1: it was going to be a legal fiction, which would cease the moment women's serious prerogatives were butted up against - ie jail cells, medical settings, lesbian spaces etc. 2: it was going to benefit a tiny minority of true sufferers of something (dysphoria/etc) acting in good faith. Both these have been completely demolished by the gender war.
First, they clearly intend (and looks like have succeeded) at properly replacing biological sex with "gender" as a legal category, and second the vast majority of beneficiaries are AGP transvestites practicing their sex fetish.
Through such judgments the public is finding out the above is the case. What is really mystifying is why the conservatives haven't taken this issue and run to the bank with it.
I think the conservatives still believe the issue is fringe. Also: I don't think a fetish and gender dysphoria are mutually exclusive. But I take your point that the public has a fairytale view of "trans".
Thanks Julie. The ALP is constantly haunted by the ghost of do-gooding beckoning it toward the light on the hill, which can only reached by working for the betterment of mankind (apologies for Chifley's term). But politics is the art of the possible, reconciling competing interests and being pragmatic, including doing nothing. The 1980's was a decade when the winds of pragmatism were blowing and the Hawke-Keating governments were pretty good at sailing with them.
But fate has landed the Albanese ALP in power in times which seem haunted by the ghost of the New Left and caught in a recurrence of the 1960's/70's where do-gooding began paving all sorts of roads to future hells. One of those roads has eventually brought Giggle up to Justice Bromwich. Now my wife insists that I not speak ill of feminism in our home and I make an effort to do that. But I think that road is called feminism.
Somewhere along the feminist road the sameness feminists shunted the difference feminists (such as Paglia) off onto a side road. On the Sameness Feminism highway men and women were to be seen as essentially the same and interchangeable and we have now reached the point where a man can be transformed into a woman and vice versa. A man can be a wife and women can be a husband. Just when Albanese can boast a record number of "women" in his cabinet - no wonder, as you point out, they have stopped caring.
What the previous generation of radicals failed to achieve on the streets in 1968, the current one achieved by worming their way into the system and coopting bureaucracy. They joined the managerial/technocratic class and made the tail is wag the dog from the inside. The long march through the institutions paid off it seems.
The ALP has no one left in it with any whiff of the working class. That's where their old time pragmatism came from. A party of landlords at a time of a housing crisis...
Spot on about the ALP. You're probably also right about a certain kind of feminism paving the way to gender ideology though the question, I know, is hotly debated.
Well, tonight you remind me of Doris Lessing " humanity is moon mad, lunatic"! Also Camille Paglia, "this sort of gender confusion is usually associated with civilisational collapse". I was in Afghanistan once, and saw a woman with her nose "removed", hideous , brutal misogyny. You write with great insight and moral clarity Julie, keep it up if you can. X
Paul, thank you. You flatter me but I'll take the comparisons! That is hideous about the Afghan woman. Sickening.
You write with great clarity and moral force Julie and need to understand you have many supporters and admirers. I have given up on the Melbourne Bien Pensants, they think the same about everthing. Find some new collaborators ( Doug Kirsner is an excellent and informed conversationalist, you could start with him ) If you are looking for a read,and have not yet read Mr Sammlers Planet and More Die of Heartache, I commend them. Both relevant in their way to current circumstances. They will comfort you (St Kilda are now top of the league ladder, so there is still hope) X
Thank you Julie. It is so refreshing to read sane reporting when I am surrounded by the nonsense of my usual media.
We had an episode in Brisbane a couple of years ago when the young staffers in our (then) Queensland Health Minister's electorate office got wind of the fact that some women were standing on a footpath along a main road in the electorate holding up a placard that read "Woman = adult human female". The immediate response of these young activists - all, like their boss, from the left wing of the Labor Party - was to sool the Queensland cops onto the women. When the cops arrived and saw what was happening, they laughed and assured the women that they were doing nothing wrong and they could continue with their action.
However, I don't think it's such a bad idea to have a census question that will allow policymakers - and the public - to know how many transgender identifying and intersex people there are, and where they are. Indeed, having such information might help us achieve a clearer picture than accepting activists' assertions about such matters.
Good on the cops. But I'm less optimistic than you about the census question because we're in a social contagion so the numbers will be inflated either way. And what are we measuring anyway? What does "genderfluid" etc actually mean?
Agree - Hope the 2026 census question backfires on the "Rainbow Movement' as it did in Scotland rather than every 2nd person being identifying as a Trans "woman" NO it was only a meagre 0.04% of the population. And should the same statistical outcome prevail here in Aust - then one must ask with with such a small % of the population with gender ID "needs' do we need to have children as young as 5 being asked for their preferred pronoun when they go to a Victorian public Library? Neither do we need every Local Govt to have a "trans" Councilor elected, let alone 'Gawd' help us into our Parliaments State and Federal. So a warning now more than ever be careful who you vote for !
Interesting. I didn't know about the Scotland result. But then the activists will say, "we are such an oppressed minority" etc. Not sure we can win!
It can cut the other way too, though, as TRAs have a stock argument about how men simply aren't going to take over women's sports etc because there are so few Ts (stupid argument of course, but it would be a shame to shore up the factual basis for it)
Ah just saw this comment-- I agree.
Thanks Julie, the census shenanigans were ultimately a silver lined cloud in my mind as Labor clearly knows forcing everyone to declare a gender identity will be very unpopular and divisive.
You are spot on about the prevalence of trans identifying teens and young adults in “progressive” circles I have given up counting friends and family with pronoun kids. Quite a few have now reverted to their original sex.
Yes it's definitely divisive for Labor.
Thanks Julie for your comprehensive report on this case. The lack of reporting across the mainstream media is just astounding and I have been looking for it, interested in their take. But no or little mention and certainly no analysis of the many consequences that will follow. Extraordinary and mind boggling!
I agree Sam, the complete lack of any reporting on the merits (as opposed to the politics) of the issue has been especially stark on this ocassion.
Thanks for these quiet but healthily sardonic observations about gender politics and ideology.
I've had to stand back because it has become quite concerning to observe the reach of the ideology into almost every aspect of community life. The capture of the Australian Human Rights Commissions is a perfect example, and the sheer irrationality of some calls for public policy change around 'gender' matters is disturbing. I hope more people speak up and believe this is happening, but how to wind back some of the madness?
For those interested in keeping up with these discussions in an informed way the Feminist Legal Clinic is worth following. Their commitment is deeply impressive. You can get a link to their site from this post.
Transgender identity: How much has it increased? https://feministlegal.org/transgender-identity-how-much-has-it-increased/
I fear it's going to take a big scandal before we see a winding back in Australia.
I hope not but I think that many Australians don't yet realise how insidious and wide-reaching gender driven ideology is. I am finding it hard to forgive Labor and the Greens.
Thanks Julie. Yes, what I found most astonishing in Justice Bromwich's summary was the statement that in its "ordinry meaning" sex is changeable. Is this an elite ideology bubble complex? Because reality deny-ideologues 'linguistically perform' the subordination of factual reality (sex) to a subjective ideological construct (gender-identity) are we all meant to now believe that you can really, in actual reality, change your sex by a bit of legal paper work, and that there is no meaningful difference between a male claiming to be female and a female simp,ly being female? The sense that the Justice is entirely out of touch with reality is very disturbing.
Yes, I found it astounding that a judge would say the 'ordinary' understanding of sex is that it is changeable! Does he live in another world from me? In no way is that 'ordinary'.
I agree Paul, a surreal and troubling judgment. For me even more troubling than his statement about sex being changeable is his adoption of all the ticks of gender ideology. Or maybe that's the point: you can't say "in its ordinary meaning sex is changeable" without signing up to the activist view in its entirety. Otherwise the dissonance is too great.
Yes, it is the manner in which the ruling uncritically assumes the entire transgender ideological shebang that is so distrubing. No Australian legislation that I know of (as yet) uses the term 'cisgender', but Justice Bromwich uses this term as if it is an uncontroversial and universally acknowledged truth that a biological female (like Sall Grover) who understands herself to be woman is expressing a gender-identity that is only accidentally - as it were - related to her sex, rather than that she simply is a woman, in virtue of her sex. Ideology in, factual reality out. Very shocking comming from a judge.
Great article Julie. It seems the only rational solution is legislative change. Julia Gillard copped a lot of flak on X with comments indicating she was personally responsible for the 2013 amendments and how they have played out. I think the amendments have had unforeseen consequences, as has the flawed NDIS legislation.
Please accept my sincere condolences on the passing of your father. I read the obituary in The Age.
I agree Cheryl-- and thank you.
Very depressing. Enjoyed the light relief !
"But each time I dipped into Justice Robert Bromwich’s published reasons, I experienced a sensation of being dangled upside down — admittedly this may have been a symptom of the peri-menopausal chaos in my body, which I’m having great trouble identifying out of. "
Sadly that bit is true! :)
It is a pity that Albo has managed to mess this up so thoroughly. We really do worry about his political judgement. First the Voice referendum, where many of us predicted the 60 percent No vote right from the start. The very high failure rate of Australian referendums was conventional wisdom back in 1965 when I was doing Matric Social Studies. Nothing has changed since.
And now the embarrassing back-flip on the Census question. As someone who has taken a keen professional interest in Census questions, my sympathies are with the ABS. It will be very difficult to design and test a question or questions that will produce reliable data on this issue.
The proof of that conundrum is in Britain, as mentioned in Julie’s article. A similar Census question recently produced entirely counter-intuitive results showing that a statistically high proportion of ‘trans’ people came from non-English speaking communities, rather than being from fashionable Islington or Brighton.
The reason was undoubtedly the wording. Lots of people whose first language was not English must have interpreted a question about whether you ‘identify’ with the opposite sex as meaning ‘Are you attracted to people of the opposite sex?’ Thus men said Yes, meaning ‘Yes, I’m a heterosexual male, and I’m attracted to women.‘ Hilarious, really.
That's right Justin. But there was almost no discussion in the media on the downsides of the census question.
Legal maxim: the law is an ass
Re Census, "there’s no way of knowing they’re telling the truth", and the secret thought of having to verify my answer to the collector, by dropping the dacks. Then, at least, my status re circumcision will be on the public record, hopefully to be passed on to the IBM card-punchers.
How many fright-fests can be jammed into one week?
At https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/victoria-s-births-deaths-and-marriages-plan-hatched-then-dispatched-20240912-p5ka03.html
"An early plan to give private investors access to parts of Victoria’s births, deaths and marriages registry has been abandoned by the state government after backlash from a key union and grassroots Labor members."
Any "investor" (say, IBM, who run the Australian Immunisation Register) would have taken one look at the proposition and replied along the lines of "No way, not until all States have ported their BDM etc to a government database that controls identity management."
As it is, essential bits of my identity are broken off and are under control of numerous & separate corporations & agencies. I guess most citizens are quite possessive of their anatomical genders and don't care to disclose sexual behaviours.
At Services Australia -
"Our Centrelink personal records system allows us to record your gender as male, female or non-binary."
But, no "gender" line at https://my.gov.au/en/myaccount/profile/personal-details#/
😂
Brilliantly captures all my concerns - thank you
The acceptance of "transwomen's rights" was based around two assumptions. 1: it was going to be a legal fiction, which would cease the moment women's serious prerogatives were butted up against - ie jail cells, medical settings, lesbian spaces etc. 2: it was going to benefit a tiny minority of true sufferers of something (dysphoria/etc) acting in good faith. Both these have been completely demolished by the gender war.
First, they clearly intend (and looks like have succeeded) at properly replacing biological sex with "gender" as a legal category, and second the vast majority of beneficiaries are AGP transvestites practicing their sex fetish.
Through such judgments the public is finding out the above is the case. What is really mystifying is why the conservatives haven't taken this issue and run to the bank with it.
I think the conservatives still believe the issue is fringe. Also: I don't think a fetish and gender dysphoria are mutually exclusive. But I take your point that the public has a fairytale view of "trans".
I'd have no problem if they wanted to add gender identity ideology to the list of possible religions ...
Thanks Julie. The ALP is constantly haunted by the ghost of do-gooding beckoning it toward the light on the hill, which can only reached by working for the betterment of mankind (apologies for Chifley's term). But politics is the art of the possible, reconciling competing interests and being pragmatic, including doing nothing. The 1980's was a decade when the winds of pragmatism were blowing and the Hawke-Keating governments were pretty good at sailing with them.
But fate has landed the Albanese ALP in power in times which seem haunted by the ghost of the New Left and caught in a recurrence of the 1960's/70's where do-gooding began paving all sorts of roads to future hells. One of those roads has eventually brought Giggle up to Justice Bromwich. Now my wife insists that I not speak ill of feminism in our home and I make an effort to do that. But I think that road is called feminism.
Somewhere along the feminist road the sameness feminists shunted the difference feminists (such as Paglia) off onto a side road. On the Sameness Feminism highway men and women were to be seen as essentially the same and interchangeable and we have now reached the point where a man can be transformed into a woman and vice versa. A man can be a wife and women can be a husband. Just when Albanese can boast a record number of "women" in his cabinet - no wonder, as you point out, they have stopped caring.
What the previous generation of radicals failed to achieve on the streets in 1968, the current one achieved by worming their way into the system and coopting bureaucracy. They joined the managerial/technocratic class and made the tail is wag the dog from the inside. The long march through the institutions paid off it seems.
The ALP has no one left in it with any whiff of the working class. That's where their old time pragmatism came from. A party of landlords at a time of a housing crisis...
So true.
Spot on about the ALP. You're probably also right about a certain kind of feminism paving the way to gender ideology though the question, I know, is hotly debated.