"In the Federal Court last week Justice O’Callaghan delivered vindication to all women, and men too, who have dared express mainstream concerns about gender identity ideology. In doing so he made an outsize contribution to normalising debate on radical social policies that (mainly) Labor governments have imposed by stealth on the public."
I am still amazed at the brutality and arrogance with which Pesutto, Andrews and the mainstream media treated Moira Deeming and the other women you have named. No thought as to the consequences at the time and ongoing denial of the harm.
Thanks for speaking up for the kids and their families again too.
A great analysis. The handing out of puberty blockers may prove to be the greatest medical scandal of our generation. Kids who aren't deemed mature enough to decide where they should spend their weekends are apparently fine to decide to change gender and with it a endure the repercussions of ongoing lifelong side effects.
If it wasn’t for the TRA’s insane hyperbole I mightn’t have woken up to the fact that this was a major issue. The failure of the media, especially left leaning media and the ABC to cover this issue adequately and fairly is what I find most insidious.
That’s why your coverage is so valuable. Thanks for standing up for women’s rights and sticking your neck out.
Thank you, Julie, for this great summary. I'm still angry Pesutto forced Deeming to go through the whole process of suing for defamation. It's bad enough to have to endure the attacks of transactivists, but your own boss not even bothering to give you the benefit of the doubt and listening to your side of the story - what a terrible way to treat someone! And he still doesn't sound genuinely sorry for what he put her through. He obviously thought he had a chance of winning, and with a different judge I suppose he could have (- I'm thinking of the judge who presided over Tickle v. Giggle).
So, good news for Deeming, but I wonder what it will take for our politicians to even entertain the idea that puberty blockers are not the life-saving drugs the transactivists claim they are. I try to tell myself it's only a matter of time, but with conversion practices bans in place and activists infiltrating schools, our children remain at risk.
Yes! Moira vindicated in the courts. What a relief. Yes! Puberty blockers banned in the UK. What relief. Are we seeing a turning of the tide towards sanity and the rights of women and children to the protection of invasion of female only spaces by men, and the ability to grow up without being pressured into irreversable genital and breast mutilations and medical sterilizations? The tide does not seem to have turned in Australia's political and intellectual class yet. Will the Vic Libs and the Vic ALP learn anything from Moira's vindication? Alas, such a way to go. I'm in the UK at present, and the impact of DEI on La Leche League (a nursing mothers' association) because of the "inclusive" banning of the words 'mother', 'woman', and 'breast' has prompted most of its leaders to resign as the organization is taken over by queer activism. Do we just go along with this determined queer revolt against the most basic 'motherhood' truth of them all. Who would have thought that all those moral progressive anti-Nazis are determined to destroy the integrity of nursing mothe's associations and trash the central role of mothers in the perpetuation of humanity itself, in the name of inclusion?
Julie, you deserve congratulations too - for your courageous journalistic pursuit of this story and for enduring the personal disuption it visited on you. Behind this wild and irrational moral panic of transgenderism is a calculated, destructive powerplay, and when I think of all those adolescents undergoing irrevocable bodily mutilations it is hard to not see it as something demonic.
Great piece Julie. And thanks for the reference that called up a delightful mental image for me of Dan Andrews, Adam Bandt and John Pesutto all clutching their pearls.
(But on KJK, even though definitely not a Nazi sympathiser, she has veered more and more to the hard right, probably was already there but has gone further that way. And yes, the evidence is overwhelming, not from Wikipedia but from her own tweets and vids. I was never a fan myself, but I know a number of women who once thought she was great and brave are now taking distance from her due to her ever more aggressive right wing and indeed antifeminist politics.)
Thank you Bronwyn! Yeah I loved my friend's pearl clutching image. On KJK: I don't like her MO as I've said many times. I'm not across her recent tweets and vids so can't assess whether she's hard right, assuming we can agree on how that's defined ...
Re defining hard vs far vs extreme right, yes that is quite a conversation, which has occupied several volumes already. I do distinguish KJK’s politics from extreme right though! Re her recent tweets and vids, well, her barracking for Trump and celebrating his election is a bit of a clue…
Browyn, we are in a moment when the goal posts, indeed our whole playing field is moving. I think JKR has stayed true to herself, it is feminism that has been pulled and pushed into this queer fourth wave mutation that maybe is no longer even feminism.
We have already been down this path and you have already erroneously labelled me “libfem”, not to mention engaging in quite some quite nasty vilification, in response to one of my own articles. I will not engage further with you so please do not waste your time.
I don't know you personally so was making satirical fun of your public persona as a leftist academic/feminist activist and the way you write from predictable ideological perspectives. Obviously I cannot compel you to defend assertions you make about conservatives now you've decided to dismiss me as a bully.
However, I will waste another minute of my time to state that your claim Keen is antifeminist is patently absurd. I believe it is you who is out of touch with real world feminism and the concerns of working class women. The fact that you thrive in academia is evidence of your far leftist mindset.
You are comfortable to bag Keen for her style of activism but deeply huffy and sensitive when it comes to your own.
I am grateful for your work Bronwyn but would prefer we didn’t waste time and resources critiquing feminists who feminist differently.
I don’t believe for a second Kellie Jay Keen is “hard right.” Fundamentalist Muslims are arch misogynists and saying so doesn’t make you racist or hard right.
Sure, her instincts and packaging is populist and tabloid but so was Dan Andrews and Peter Beattie.
Yes, her sometimes antagonistic approach complicates the work of others, but we must remember that feminism should be the broadest of churches and despite her ladylike protesting she is obviously a feminist.
Refusing to be constrained by particular English definitions of feminism (which prevent her from developing new recruits) isn’t an unforgivable sin.
It may help to think of it in this feminist HQ way - She’s the marketing team - you’re research and development. 💜💜
Actually I do not think KJK and I are on the same team at all, and I do not base my opinion solely on her comments on ‘Muslim rapists’ (a rapist is a rapist, it’s not culturally specific). She has made multiple antifeminist, sex-role deterministic, antifeminist and heterosexist statement. I don’t know if you’ve watched her latest vids but they are worse and worse, nor seen her numerous tweets spruiking for trump (and rejoicing when he was elected, as if he were remotely interested in doing anything at all for women’s rights or those of homosexuals). So no, Jazz, KJK is not the marketing team for any movement with which I wish to associate myself.
I am glad Moira Deeming has been vindicated, as well she should be. Anyone with a working brain could see the arrival of the "cosplaying ninnies" (love it) was an unrelated and rather pathetic sideshow rather than evidence of some fascist association with the female protesters.
However, I despair for the state of politics in Victoria. A pox on both the major party houses and the Greens are no better. This is a state in desperate need of sensible leadership, and it's had precious little of that for a decade or more. It risks becoming a serious outlier, as I sense the wider Australian electorate will continue to rebel against the progressive diktats that have been foisted upon us by the activist lobby.
I'm not sure you have encountered Wesley Yang and some of his ideas. One of them is "non electoral politics of institutional capture" where activists attain policy change through infiltrating technocratic process instead of getting public consent through the ballot box (because they would not have gotten it of course).
Thank you for expressing so accurately the extraordinary experience of women railing against the pernicious “ gender ideology nonsense”. I start to relax as I read my reality.
Thank you Julie for another brilliant article. Like you and others who have commented below, what I find gobsmacking is the bad judgment Pesutto displayed in allowing this to get to Court. My theory is that having just won back his seat in Hawthorn he was terrified of losing it again to a Teal type candidate at the next state election so lost all perspective. He was prepared to throw Moira Deeming to the wolves to save himself. Thanks to Justice O’Callaghan he didn’t get away with it.
Pesutto just doesn't have the bearing of a leader and has wussed out. Remember Kennett? He came across as an absolute bastard but people voted for him because he was perceived as effective (even if you didn't like what he was doing). M Guy had the same issue - although he was a nice guy, actually too nice... Ironically I think that Moira herself would actually be a better bet as LOO, but doesn't have the Lib aristocratic connections.
We are at an incredible time - massive emergencies like housing costs, wage stagnation and social de-cohesion. This is exactly the time to shine for a genuine leader who could put out a historic policy package like a new deal. Albo could have made history by coming with something bold such as a massive home building programme but all he does is throws crumbs to the public.
Thanks Julie - a great overview of what has happened since March 2023.... I'm sure that the Libs in Victoria have missed an opportunity to be different from the ALP and Greens ... even when Pescutto spoke the day after the Court's outcome - his stated reason for staying in as Leader was 'the need to look after and protect all Victorians ..'. well he's certainly not protecting the women of Victoria! Even Kos Samaris of Redbridge political commentry fame stated that the Trans V women's safe spaces was not ever mentioned when they conduct their surveys ... Wait until I get a call !
A thoughtful and quietly passionate analysis.
This part had a particular impact for me -
"In the Federal Court last week Justice O’Callaghan delivered vindication to all women, and men too, who have dared express mainstream concerns about gender identity ideology. In doing so he made an outsize contribution to normalising debate on radical social policies that (mainly) Labor governments have imposed by stealth on the public."
I am still amazed at the brutality and arrogance with which Pesutto, Andrews and the mainstream media treated Moira Deeming and the other women you have named. No thought as to the consequences at the time and ongoing denial of the harm.
Thanks for speaking up for the kids and their families again too.
Thank you so much Kate for this thoughtful response. And I agree: it's shocking that these leaders can act so recklessly without consequences.
A great analysis. The handing out of puberty blockers may prove to be the greatest medical scandal of our generation. Kids who aren't deemed mature enough to decide where they should spend their weekends are apparently fine to decide to change gender and with it a endure the repercussions of ongoing lifelong side effects.
Yep.. I doubt this experiment will end well...
Agreed .
If it wasn’t for the TRA’s insane hyperbole I mightn’t have woken up to the fact that this was a major issue. The failure of the media, especially left leaning media and the ABC to cover this issue adequately and fairly is what I find most insidious.
That’s why your coverage is so valuable. Thanks for standing up for women’s rights and sticking your neck out.
Thank you so much for the moral support.
Thank you, Julie, for this great summary. I'm still angry Pesutto forced Deeming to go through the whole process of suing for defamation. It's bad enough to have to endure the attacks of transactivists, but your own boss not even bothering to give you the benefit of the doubt and listening to your side of the story - what a terrible way to treat someone! And he still doesn't sound genuinely sorry for what he put her through. He obviously thought he had a chance of winning, and with a different judge I suppose he could have (- I'm thinking of the judge who presided over Tickle v. Giggle).
So, good news for Deeming, but I wonder what it will take for our politicians to even entertain the idea that puberty blockers are not the life-saving drugs the transactivists claim they are. I try to tell myself it's only a matter of time, but with conversion practices bans in place and activists infiltrating schools, our children remain at risk.
I agree he thought he had a chance of winning. Thank God there are still propaganda resistant judges out there!
Yes! Moira vindicated in the courts. What a relief. Yes! Puberty blockers banned in the UK. What relief. Are we seeing a turning of the tide towards sanity and the rights of women and children to the protection of invasion of female only spaces by men, and the ability to grow up without being pressured into irreversable genital and breast mutilations and medical sterilizations? The tide does not seem to have turned in Australia's political and intellectual class yet. Will the Vic Libs and the Vic ALP learn anything from Moira's vindication? Alas, such a way to go. I'm in the UK at present, and the impact of DEI on La Leche League (a nursing mothers' association) because of the "inclusive" banning of the words 'mother', 'woman', and 'breast' has prompted most of its leaders to resign as the organization is taken over by queer activism. Do we just go along with this determined queer revolt against the most basic 'motherhood' truth of them all. Who would have thought that all those moral progressive anti-Nazis are determined to destroy the integrity of nursing mothe's associations and trash the central role of mothers in the perpetuation of humanity itself, in the name of inclusion?
Yes Paul it never ceases to be mind-boggling. Very excited to hear about your travels on your return!
Julie, you deserve congratulations too - for your courageous journalistic pursuit of this story and for enduring the personal disuption it visited on you. Behind this wild and irrational moral panic of transgenderism is a calculated, destructive powerplay, and when I think of all those adolescents undergoing irrevocable bodily mutilations it is hard to not see it as something demonic.
Thank you so much David-- your reference to "calculated, destructive powerplay" gave me shivers! Very accurate.
Just terrific writing. Powerful. Clear. Fearless.
Michael, I'm so thrilled. I just am. 🙏
What he said!
Great piece Julie. And thanks for the reference that called up a delightful mental image for me of Dan Andrews, Adam Bandt and John Pesutto all clutching their pearls.
(But on KJK, even though definitely not a Nazi sympathiser, she has veered more and more to the hard right, probably was already there but has gone further that way. And yes, the evidence is overwhelming, not from Wikipedia but from her own tweets and vids. I was never a fan myself, but I know a number of women who once thought she was great and brave are now taking distance from her due to her ever more aggressive right wing and indeed antifeminist politics.)
And congrats on the 3K subscribers!
Thank you Bronwyn! Yeah I loved my friend's pearl clutching image. On KJK: I don't like her MO as I've said many times. I'm not across her recent tweets and vids so can't assess whether she's hard right, assuming we can agree on how that's defined ...
Re defining hard vs far vs extreme right, yes that is quite a conversation, which has occupied several volumes already. I do distinguish KJK’s politics from extreme right though! Re her recent tweets and vids, well, her barracking for Trump and celebrating his election is a bit of a clue…
Yes I guess it is. Although she’s not alone there- people who were lefties just yesterday seem to be suffering from the same affliction..
Browyn, we are in a moment when the goal posts, indeed our whole playing field is moving. I think JKR has stayed true to herself, it is feminism that has been pulled and pushed into this queer fourth wave mutation that maybe is no longer even feminism.
I was not talking about JK Rowling, for whom I have great admiration: she is smart and funny and brave. I was talking about Kellie Jay Keen.
what is your definition of the "hard right" ?
What views does Keen espouse that cause you to feel confident she doesn't represent mainstream views of the politically middle of the road public?
Its my impression the women you claim are now "distancing" themselves from her, such as yourself, were always far left libfems.
We have already been down this path and you have already erroneously labelled me “libfem”, not to mention engaging in quite some quite nasty vilification, in response to one of my own articles. I will not engage further with you so please do not waste your time.
I don't know you personally so was making satirical fun of your public persona as a leftist academic/feminist activist and the way you write from predictable ideological perspectives. Obviously I cannot compel you to defend assertions you make about conservatives now you've decided to dismiss me as a bully.
However, I will waste another minute of my time to state that your claim Keen is antifeminist is patently absurd. I believe it is you who is out of touch with real world feminism and the concerns of working class women. The fact that you thrive in academia is evidence of your far leftist mindset.
You are comfortable to bag Keen for her style of activism but deeply huffy and sensitive when it comes to your own.
I am grateful for your work Bronwyn but would prefer we didn’t waste time and resources critiquing feminists who feminist differently.
I don’t believe for a second Kellie Jay Keen is “hard right.” Fundamentalist Muslims are arch misogynists and saying so doesn’t make you racist or hard right.
Sure, her instincts and packaging is populist and tabloid but so was Dan Andrews and Peter Beattie.
Yes, her sometimes antagonistic approach complicates the work of others, but we must remember that feminism should be the broadest of churches and despite her ladylike protesting she is obviously a feminist.
Refusing to be constrained by particular English definitions of feminism (which prevent her from developing new recruits) isn’t an unforgivable sin.
It may help to think of it in this feminist HQ way - She’s the marketing team - you’re research and development. 💜💜
Actually I do not think KJK and I are on the same team at all, and I do not base my opinion solely on her comments on ‘Muslim rapists’ (a rapist is a rapist, it’s not culturally specific). She has made multiple antifeminist, sex-role deterministic, antifeminist and heterosexist statement. I don’t know if you’ve watched her latest vids but they are worse and worse, nor seen her numerous tweets spruiking for trump (and rejoicing when he was elected, as if he were remotely interested in doing anything at all for women’s rights or those of homosexuals). So no, Jazz, KJK is not the marketing team for any movement with which I wish to associate myself.
I am glad Moira Deeming has been vindicated, as well she should be. Anyone with a working brain could see the arrival of the "cosplaying ninnies" (love it) was an unrelated and rather pathetic sideshow rather than evidence of some fascist association with the female protesters.
However, I despair for the state of politics in Victoria. A pox on both the major party houses and the Greens are no better. This is a state in desperate need of sensible leadership, and it's had precious little of that for a decade or more. It risks becoming a serious outlier, as I sense the wider Australian electorate will continue to rebel against the progressive diktats that have been foisted upon us by the activist lobby.
I'm not sure you have encountered Wesley Yang and some of his ideas. One of them is "non electoral politics of institutional capture" where activists attain policy change through infiltrating technocratic process instead of getting public consent through the ballot box (because they would not have gotten it of course).
Interesting, thanks. In a different vein, have you read Jim Peden's substack on panocracy?
Thanks for the tip.
Thank you for expressing so accurately the extraordinary experience of women railing against the pernicious “ gender ideology nonsense”. I start to relax as I read my reality.
Thank you Julie for another brilliant article. Like you and others who have commented below, what I find gobsmacking is the bad judgment Pesutto displayed in allowing this to get to Court. My theory is that having just won back his seat in Hawthorn he was terrified of losing it again to a Teal type candidate at the next state election so lost all perspective. He was prepared to throw Moira Deeming to the wolves to save himself. Thanks to Justice O’Callaghan he didn’t get away with it.
Pesutto just doesn't have the bearing of a leader and has wussed out. Remember Kennett? He came across as an absolute bastard but people voted for him because he was perceived as effective (even if you didn't like what he was doing). M Guy had the same issue - although he was a nice guy, actually too nice... Ironically I think that Moira herself would actually be a better bet as LOO, but doesn't have the Lib aristocratic connections.
We are at an incredible time - massive emergencies like housing costs, wage stagnation and social de-cohesion. This is exactly the time to shine for a genuine leader who could put out a historic policy package like a new deal. Albo could have made history by coming with something bold such as a massive home building programme but all he does is throws crumbs to the public.
Thanks Julie - a great overview of what has happened since March 2023.... I'm sure that the Libs in Victoria have missed an opportunity to be different from the ALP and Greens ... even when Pescutto spoke the day after the Court's outcome - his stated reason for staying in as Leader was 'the need to look after and protect all Victorians ..'. well he's certainly not protecting the women of Victoria! Even Kos Samaris of Redbridge political commentry fame stated that the Trans V women's safe spaces was not ever mentioned when they conduct their surveys ... Wait until I get a call !
Sensational Julie! And congratulations on yet another milestone! Fantastic and so deserved.