In the aftermath of last week’s UK Supreme Court ruling that the legal definition of “woman” is based on biological sex, I stumbled on a new word: gleefreshing, the state of being happy to refresh social media, the opposite of doomscrolling.
I can’t help being bemused by aspects of the meltdown following the UK Supreme Court decision.
Imagine being bizarre enough to believe that lifting your dress and peeing on a wall in a mass trans women pee-in would convince anyone that you were a woman. (At a rally with very obvious messages of hatred of women on so many of the placards.) Such “womanly” behaviour. 😉
Or thinking an intimidating line of men who think they’re women standing outside a women’s toilet holding placards bemoaning that the UK Supreme Court was stopping them from peeing “safely” would be a convincing argument they should be allowed use “women only” facilities. (Of course we have no concerns about our safety in the face of such toxic bullying. 😬)
The failure to read and understand the decision, the unwillingness to accept that the rights of women are just as important as anyone else’s, the outrageous male entitlement, and the disregard for the law all make it abundantly clear that our law makers should have had the courage to make sure these people heard the word “No” long before now.
Great piece Julie, but you may be just a wee bit optimistic when you suggest the ideology is on its knees. As we saw from the demos in the UK and as we have seen here in Oz, there is extremely aggressive pushback and the Australian political class esp the left seem to remain content to let transactivists piss all over women’s rights (to use part of the TA street actions in the UK as a metaphor for their behaviour towards women more generally).
I note that UK PM Keir Starmer has done a backflip, suddenly realising that women are in fact female people and that these female people have rights, when not so long ago he was emphatically stating the TWAW mantra.
I think if we are waiting for our Attorney General, who ushered in the genderist changes to the Sex Discrimination Act 12 years ago, to do a similar backflip (assuming the Labor govt is reelected and he remains AG), we could be waiting quite a long time. Because unlike the UK Equality Act which stood up to the legal test, the SDA no longer has that robustness and lack of ambiguity in protecting women as a sex class. Dreyfus saw to that, with the support of Gillard, as you note. Such a massive betrayal. Leaving so many of us on the left having to hold our noses as we vote in this Federal election.
All very grim and true Bronwyn. As I said to Paul, I may indeed be letting my elation cloud my judgment. But the world never stands still: stuff happens, the unexpected happens. And I believe we're one court ruling, one scandal, one prominent detransitioner away from the whole edifice crumbling and fast. For an atheist I have great faith!
This time last week we were celebrating the fresh unanimous decision of the highest court in our land - finally the adults had returned to the room and told the kids to stop being stupid idiots and that the emperor is very naked!
It's been a funny old week. There have been the performative meltdowns (never private, always public to max up the manipulation factor) of men whining that their lives are now destroyed because they can't take their piss in the womens. The disgusting display of trans degeneracy in the mass-pissing in Westminster on Saturday and the violent placards (hopefully there will be some arrests). There have been the politicians red rage furious that their bubble has been burst and just won't admit the game's up (hence use of final resort desperate language like "nazis"). Hand-wringing interviews with pro-women activists about "what will trans women do now?", "but what accommodations will be made for trans women?", like it's our flippin' problem. I don't recall being asked what accommodations will be made for women having to hand over our spaces, services, groups etc to men. Or even being asked! I have zero sympathy.
Anyway, despite the frustrations it has been an excellent week and a huge corner turned for respecting women, reality and making the world a little bit less about how it suits men!
The "I don't recall ever being asked..." experience is now the standard one unfortunately in many policy areas. Public policy is today made by a technocratic clique according to their own values/worldview rather than by politicians following popular will - why else do you think whoever is in office results is pretty much following the same policies?
Wesley Yang has coined the term "non-electoral politics of institutional capture" to describe this process. Politics is now about managing public compliance with pre-determined outcomes not about different groups fighting it out over competing interests in parliament.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood dim tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
The UK Supreme Court’s decision was an incredible victory- even though what it did was state what most of the population believe. Along with the Cass review and the Strum judgment in Australia there are strong signs that trans ideology is on its knees.
Once again brilliant Julie! You say so perfectly what I feel and think about this madness. I cannot believe how progressivism has become so hell bent on eroding women’s’ boundaries, that progressivism practically celebrates treatments that can cause permanent harm to a child’s ability to experience sexual awakening, puberty and even endanger their fertility prospects (not to mention what stopping puberty does to the development of the brain. And mostly I cannot believe it is progressive to embrace the concept of gender identity whose whole framing of gender seems stuck in 1950s stereotypes of male and female
I do hope you are right, dear Julie, but at present I remain in despair. There is no way I can vote Labor or Green in this election (though I have manned booths for both in the past), and as much as the LNP is genuinely better than ALP/Greens on Hammas, it really hurts to vote for nuclear. If Dutton would at least stand up for women I could overlook the idiocy of AUKUS and craziness of ‘nuclear greenism’ for this election, but he just won’t do it, leaving the amazing Moira Deeming out on a limb still. The idea that anything Trump supports is by definition ‘Far Right’ and just won’t fly here in Australia is still doggedly held onto by our supposedly conservative centre right. The ‘Far Centre’ (Green/ALP/Teal/LNP) still refuses to accept that the most basic literal motherhood truths about protecting women and children from sexual danger and not mandating a genital mutilation cult, are just common sense mainstream winners, so the only place I can find to put my vote is outside of the Far Centre if these very basic issues matter to me. What is wrong with ‘centrist’ politics in this country? When did common sense and natural feeling die as politically viable?
Don't despair Paul though I hear your frustration. I hope the UK Supreme Court at least gave you some fleeting joy. Maybe the elation has clouded my judgment on our situation down here, but I'm still confident this will pass. I can't tell you when only that it will. Re the election.. as the Jewish joke goes, you think you've got problems (to be said in a Brooklyn accent)! Try visiting the madhouse of Macnamara! On a serious note, I'm interested to hear where you'll land-- but that's for a private conversation. x
Thanks Julie. Yes indeed. The Supreme Court did very much give me hope that there really are a few adults still in the judiciary in the UK. And as Horace said, you can drive nature out with a pitch fork, but she keeps coming back. The denial of reproductive, familial, and sexual safety reality indeed must pass (natural sellection will ensure that disbeleivers in biological reality do not reproduce). I think - or at least, I very much hope - you are right to see the turning of the tide here. And wow, Macnamara... a circus indeed! On voting, I am thinking very hard about going doing the donkey this year and really giving some poor ellectoral commissioner a piece of my mind about the impossible 'choices' I have for political 'representation'.
Although I detest The Project and never watch it, Aly makes the essential point that voters need to take note of - this is a question of statutory interpretation, not the statement of a general principle. In Australia, a lot of trans issues are out of the courts' hands because the underlying legislation strongly favours the gender ideologues. This is what hamstrung Bromwich J in Tickle v Giggle, whatever his private views may be. This war will not be won unless or until gender self-ID laws are repealed and birth certificates become once more unalterable. This is the central issue that politicians must answer to, not whatever one or more judges decide in the cases that come before them. This is a parliamentary problem, less so a judicial one.
Perhaps this is simply a quibble. Perhaps it's important. The defaced statue you reference is of suffragette Millicent Fawcett. She is holding a banner which reads "COURAGE CALLS TO COURAGE EVERYWHERE". The graffiti scrawled on the banner says "FAG Rights" with a heart underneath.
If only we could move the public debate (such as it is) away from toilets and on to changing rooms, sports and prisons. Toilets might be a more quotidian experience, but the issues are more complex because what we seek to protect there is something more subtle. Other contexts bring the issues out in a clearer way that makes them harder to dismiss with a 'Just close the door' or a 'Who's actually been attacked?'
There are initiatives dedicated to opening the public up to exactly how much abuses actually take place. There are a couple of them I am aware of, but can only find one link atm: https://www.theredtentcollective.org/transgender-crime-map
There is also a project dedicated to tracking medals lost by women to cheats... but these things are really hard to find on google since searching is now so strongly moderated.
Great article. David’s comment is quite right: “In Australia, a lot of trans issues are out of the courts' hands because the underlying legislation strongly favours the gender ideologues.”
It’s well worth following the link in Julie’s article to the Family Court case Re: Devin that was decided by Judge Andrew Strum on 3 April. That case effectively forbade a 12 year old boy’s mother to proceed in her campaign to get a Children’s Hospital gender clinic to proscribe puberty blockers so as to begin the boy's transition to being a girl.
We don’t know which children’s hospital that might have been, but we do note that the mother’s expert witness quoted a piece of state legislation to reinforce her case. The legislation is the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021 (Vic).
I recall that the original debate about this legislation concerned situations where perhaps a fundamentalist Christian preacher was trying to convince a homosexual young man that he should renounce these evil impulses and go straight. However, the current legislation is fixated on the transgender question.
Moreover, in section 5(1) it carefully distinguishes between an attempt to ‘suppress’ a person’s gender identity (which is illegal) from any conduct which is supportive of or confirms a person’s gender identity, including a person who is ‘considering undergoing a gender transition’. This supportive conduct is not illegal.
If (hypothetically) this Victorian legislation were to be invoked in situation similar to Re: Devin, it is clear that the father and any therapist helping the boy remain a boy might be acting illegally, but the mother and her team at a children’s gender clinic could be confident of the support of the law in its majesty. The court would merely need to agree that the child’s true gender was a trans girl—or rather that the child was ‘considering undergoing a gender transition’.
Worse still, the Devin case demonstrated what a chilling impact this Victorian legislation has already had on therapeutic professionals. The Family Court noted (at para 21) that:
“The father gave evidence that, in his endeavour to garner evidence in support of his case and in opposition to that of the mother, he had contacted very many (in fact, he said, 'hundreds' of) therapists who were not interested in treating children with gender issues, because of the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act.”
Not interested in treating children with gender issues!
Luckily, the father found an interstate therapist who was willing to act as an expert witness. That doctor agreed with the father’s conclusion about the state of fear among practitioners: “Anecdotally, I have heard practitioners express concern that if they do not automatically affirm a child’s declared gender identity they would find themselves accused of 'conversion therapy' as per the legislation.”
Bang on Justin. Again, the focus should not be on judges who are stuck with bad legislation to interpret and apply. Constituents should be writing to their local members at state and federal levels demanding that these laws be repealed or substantially amended. While they remain on the statute books, we will continue to see litigation like Re: Devin, which is horrific for all concerned and especially the subject child.
Great article and great speech at the rally last week Julie. I was walking on air for days after the SC ruling and then depressed that Australia is so bonkers - but you're right - the ruling helps break the spell and once broken, cannot be easily recast.
Yet another great article, Julie!
I can’t help being bemused by aspects of the meltdown following the UK Supreme Court decision.
Imagine being bizarre enough to believe that lifting your dress and peeing on a wall in a mass trans women pee-in would convince anyone that you were a woman. (At a rally with very obvious messages of hatred of women on so many of the placards.) Such “womanly” behaviour. 😉
Or thinking an intimidating line of men who think they’re women standing outside a women’s toilet holding placards bemoaning that the UK Supreme Court was stopping them from peeing “safely” would be a convincing argument they should be allowed use “women only” facilities. (Of course we have no concerns about our safety in the face of such toxic bullying. 😬)
The failure to read and understand the decision, the unwillingness to accept that the rights of women are just as important as anyone else’s, the outrageous male entitlement, and the disregard for the law all make it abundantly clear that our law makers should have had the courage to make sure these people heard the word “No” long before now.
That's right Liz, one almost gets the feeling these men are taking the piss ....
Which just brings us back to the eternal question: when they identify as women, what are they identifying *as*?
Great piece Julie, but you may be just a wee bit optimistic when you suggest the ideology is on its knees. As we saw from the demos in the UK and as we have seen here in Oz, there is extremely aggressive pushback and the Australian political class esp the left seem to remain content to let transactivists piss all over women’s rights (to use part of the TA street actions in the UK as a metaphor for their behaviour towards women more generally).
I note that UK PM Keir Starmer has done a backflip, suddenly realising that women are in fact female people and that these female people have rights, when not so long ago he was emphatically stating the TWAW mantra.
I think if we are waiting for our Attorney General, who ushered in the genderist changes to the Sex Discrimination Act 12 years ago, to do a similar backflip (assuming the Labor govt is reelected and he remains AG), we could be waiting quite a long time. Because unlike the UK Equality Act which stood up to the legal test, the SDA no longer has that robustness and lack of ambiguity in protecting women as a sex class. Dreyfus saw to that, with the support of Gillard, as you note. Such a massive betrayal. Leaving so many of us on the left having to hold our noses as we vote in this Federal election.
All very grim and true Bronwyn. As I said to Paul, I may indeed be letting my elation cloud my judgment. But the world never stands still: stuff happens, the unexpected happens. And I believe we're one court ruling, one scandal, one prominent detransitioner away from the whole edifice crumbling and fast. For an atheist I have great faith!
Hi Julie, from Terf Island!
This time last week we were celebrating the fresh unanimous decision of the highest court in our land - finally the adults had returned to the room and told the kids to stop being stupid idiots and that the emperor is very naked!
It's been a funny old week. There have been the performative meltdowns (never private, always public to max up the manipulation factor) of men whining that their lives are now destroyed because they can't take their piss in the womens. The disgusting display of trans degeneracy in the mass-pissing in Westminster on Saturday and the violent placards (hopefully there will be some arrests). There have been the politicians red rage furious that their bubble has been burst and just won't admit the game's up (hence use of final resort desperate language like "nazis"). Hand-wringing interviews with pro-women activists about "what will trans women do now?", "but what accommodations will be made for trans women?", like it's our flippin' problem. I don't recall being asked what accommodations will be made for women having to hand over our spaces, services, groups etc to men. Or even being asked! I have zero sympathy.
Anyway, despite the frustrations it has been an excellent week and a huge corner turned for respecting women, reality and making the world a little bit less about how it suits men!
Allison x
So good to hear from you Allison. From where we're sitting we can only look on in admiration and more than a little envy.
The "I don't recall ever being asked..." experience is now the standard one unfortunately in many policy areas. Public policy is today made by a technocratic clique according to their own values/worldview rather than by politicians following popular will - why else do you think whoever is in office results is pretty much following the same policies?
Wesley Yang has coined the term "non-electoral politics of institutional capture" to describe this process. Politics is now about managing public compliance with pre-determined outcomes not about different groups fighting it out over competing interests in parliament.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood dim tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Thank you Julie, excellent article 👏
Wow! Perfect. The Second Coming.
Yeats could ostensibly have been referring to trans and 'Palestinian' activism and its impact on contemporary society
The UK Supreme Court’s decision was an incredible victory- even though what it did was state what most of the population believe. Along with the Cass review and the Strum judgment in Australia there are strong signs that trans ideology is on its knees.
Once again brilliant Julie! You say so perfectly what I feel and think about this madness. I cannot believe how progressivism has become so hell bent on eroding women’s’ boundaries, that progressivism practically celebrates treatments that can cause permanent harm to a child’s ability to experience sexual awakening, puberty and even endanger their fertility prospects (not to mention what stopping puberty does to the development of the brain. And mostly I cannot believe it is progressive to embrace the concept of gender identity whose whole framing of gender seems stuck in 1950s stereotypes of male and female
Thanks so much Sharonne. I know: this caper never loses its power to shock.
I do hope you are right, dear Julie, but at present I remain in despair. There is no way I can vote Labor or Green in this election (though I have manned booths for both in the past), and as much as the LNP is genuinely better than ALP/Greens on Hammas, it really hurts to vote for nuclear. If Dutton would at least stand up for women I could overlook the idiocy of AUKUS and craziness of ‘nuclear greenism’ for this election, but he just won’t do it, leaving the amazing Moira Deeming out on a limb still. The idea that anything Trump supports is by definition ‘Far Right’ and just won’t fly here in Australia is still doggedly held onto by our supposedly conservative centre right. The ‘Far Centre’ (Green/ALP/Teal/LNP) still refuses to accept that the most basic literal motherhood truths about protecting women and children from sexual danger and not mandating a genital mutilation cult, are just common sense mainstream winners, so the only place I can find to put my vote is outside of the Far Centre if these very basic issues matter to me. What is wrong with ‘centrist’ politics in this country? When did common sense and natural feeling die as politically viable?
Don't despair Paul though I hear your frustration. I hope the UK Supreme Court at least gave you some fleeting joy. Maybe the elation has clouded my judgment on our situation down here, but I'm still confident this will pass. I can't tell you when only that it will. Re the election.. as the Jewish joke goes, you think you've got problems (to be said in a Brooklyn accent)! Try visiting the madhouse of Macnamara! On a serious note, I'm interested to hear where you'll land-- but that's for a private conversation. x
Thanks Julie. Yes indeed. The Supreme Court did very much give me hope that there really are a few adults still in the judiciary in the UK. And as Horace said, you can drive nature out with a pitch fork, but she keeps coming back. The denial of reproductive, familial, and sexual safety reality indeed must pass (natural sellection will ensure that disbeleivers in biological reality do not reproduce). I think - or at least, I very much hope - you are right to see the turning of the tide here. And wow, Macnamara... a circus indeed! On voting, I am thinking very hard about going doing the donkey this year and really giving some poor ellectoral commissioner a piece of my mind about the impossible 'choices' I have for political 'representation'.
Thanks for great, and often bemused and amused commentary, Julie.
Like you, I'm beginning to feel optimistic too.
Powerful and challenging. Thank you Julie.
Great piece!! 👏👏
Although I detest The Project and never watch it, Aly makes the essential point that voters need to take note of - this is a question of statutory interpretation, not the statement of a general principle. In Australia, a lot of trans issues are out of the courts' hands because the underlying legislation strongly favours the gender ideologues. This is what hamstrung Bromwich J in Tickle v Giggle, whatever his private views may be. This war will not be won unless or until gender self-ID laws are repealed and birth certificates become once more unalterable. This is the central issue that politicians must answer to, not whatever one or more judges decide in the cases that come before them. This is a parliamentary problem, less so a judicial one.
See my comments above
Perhaps this is simply a quibble. Perhaps it's important. The defaced statue you reference is of suffragette Millicent Fawcett. She is holding a banner which reads "COURAGE CALLS TO COURAGE EVERYWHERE". The graffiti scrawled on the banner says "FAG Rights" with a heart underneath.
Ah i misunderstood. That’s Ginny; I’ll change that now.
If only we could move the public debate (such as it is) away from toilets and on to changing rooms, sports and prisons. Toilets might be a more quotidian experience, but the issues are more complex because what we seek to protect there is something more subtle. Other contexts bring the issues out in a clearer way that makes them harder to dismiss with a 'Just close the door' or a 'Who's actually been attacked?'
There are initiatives dedicated to opening the public up to exactly how much abuses actually take place. There are a couple of them I am aware of, but can only find one link atm: https://www.theredtentcollective.org/transgender-crime-map
There is also a project dedicated to tracking medals lost by women to cheats... but these things are really hard to find on google since searching is now so strongly moderated.
Great article. David’s comment is quite right: “In Australia, a lot of trans issues are out of the courts' hands because the underlying legislation strongly favours the gender ideologues.”
It’s well worth following the link in Julie’s article to the Family Court case Re: Devin that was decided by Judge Andrew Strum on 3 April. That case effectively forbade a 12 year old boy’s mother to proceed in her campaign to get a Children’s Hospital gender clinic to proscribe puberty blockers so as to begin the boy's transition to being a girl.
We don’t know which children’s hospital that might have been, but we do note that the mother’s expert witness quoted a piece of state legislation to reinforce her case. The legislation is the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021 (Vic).
I recall that the original debate about this legislation concerned situations where perhaps a fundamentalist Christian preacher was trying to convince a homosexual young man that he should renounce these evil impulses and go straight. However, the current legislation is fixated on the transgender question.
Moreover, in section 5(1) it carefully distinguishes between an attempt to ‘suppress’ a person’s gender identity (which is illegal) from any conduct which is supportive of or confirms a person’s gender identity, including a person who is ‘considering undergoing a gender transition’. This supportive conduct is not illegal.
If (hypothetically) this Victorian legislation were to be invoked in situation similar to Re: Devin, it is clear that the father and any therapist helping the boy remain a boy might be acting illegally, but the mother and her team at a children’s gender clinic could be confident of the support of the law in its majesty. The court would merely need to agree that the child’s true gender was a trans girl—or rather that the child was ‘considering undergoing a gender transition’.
Worse still, the Devin case demonstrated what a chilling impact this Victorian legislation has already had on therapeutic professionals. The Family Court noted (at para 21) that:
“The father gave evidence that, in his endeavour to garner evidence in support of his case and in opposition to that of the mother, he had contacted very many (in fact, he said, 'hundreds' of) therapists who were not interested in treating children with gender issues, because of the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act.”
Not interested in treating children with gender issues!
Luckily, the father found an interstate therapist who was willing to act as an expert witness. That doctor agreed with the father’s conclusion about the state of fear among practitioners: “Anecdotally, I have heard practitioners express concern that if they do not automatically affirm a child’s declared gender identity they would find themselves accused of 'conversion therapy' as per the legislation.”
Bang on Justin. Again, the focus should not be on judges who are stuck with bad legislation to interpret and apply. Constituents should be writing to their local members at state and federal levels demanding that these laws be repealed or substantially amended. While they remain on the statute books, we will continue to see litigation like Re: Devin, which is horrific for all concerned and especially the subject child.
Thanks for writing this.
Great article and great speech at the rally last week Julie. I was walking on air for days after the SC ruling and then depressed that Australia is so bonkers - but you're right - the ruling helps break the spell and once broken, cannot be easily recast.