In recent days I have signalled that I am stepping back from the gender war I declared on the government on 10 March this year. I’ve been campaigning for gender law reform for much longer than the last month and a bit, of course, but the aggressive posture I’d chosen to try to force the government’s hand and the lack of cut through made me decide to step back and consider whether I should take a new course. I will never give up the fight, but I’m always open to trying different strategies. Who knows, I may even consider joining the board of TransFolk of WA one day (see, I haven’t lost my sense of humour).
Today, however, things took a turn.
Around lunchtime I received a call from Jo Trilling, presenter of ABC Radio’s Drive program. Jo told me the government was just about to announce it was following through on gender law reform and repeal of the Gender Reassignment Act and asked if I’d like to speak about it on her program. How could I say, no?
During the afternoon, I received all sorts of messages from friends and supporters celebrating this breakthrough. I almost felt bad having to tell them that the government’s announcement was just a small victory, the war had not yet been won. The government had left the rest of its commitments to equity law reform off the table and the proposed new process for legally recognising people’s genders would still require medical intervention where none is necessary.
Still, I was optimistic, until I read the ABC News report of the media conference held to announce the proposed reforms, due to be tabled in parliament later this week. In this report, The Attorney General, John Quigley, was quoted as saying, “You don’t want someone who, for example, has been convicted of a nasty, aggravated sexual offence, then changing gender so they can access women-only areas.”
When 5.20 pm came around and I did the spot of ABC Drive, Jo Trilling asked me to respond to a question that she opened with the words, “Andrea, I say this with utmost respect,” — never a good sign — and continued as follows, “as does this person who sent through a text, so I hope you don’t mind me putting it to you, but I’ve got a number of texts asking the same question. This is the one most respectfully put…Daniel says, ‘What happens when you have biological males that choose to say they’re females and do access female facilities whenever they want?’ Respectfully, what’s your response to that?”
Jo, I thank you for choosing the ‘most respectfully put’ version of that question. I can only imagine where the other people texting through went with their questions. I’m well aware that such views are fairly widely held, but the premise of the question, that gender is a choice and somehow tied to a person’s biological sex, is mistaken or often deliberately inserted into the public domain to foment hate. I chose to take Daniel’s question as genuine and my answer, in short, was that people do not wake up one morning and choose to change gender, and certainly not so they can get access to, as Daniel put it, ‘female facilities’.
You can listen to the full interview here.
While Daniel’s question may have been genuine, the Attorney General’s comments linking transgender women to sex offenders and men who change gender so they can access ‘women-only areas’, can only be interpreted as designed to create fear and hatred of gender diverse people. I can see no other reason why Mr Quigley would have chosen to make such ill-judged comments while announcing the government’s intention to repeal the Gender Reassignment Act.
If Mr Quigley meant his outrageous and inflammatory lie to signal to the general public that the processes the government is proposing are designed to weed out gender-swapping sex criminals, he could have done so in a more reasoned and constructive way. Also, if that’s any part of the reason why the government will still require gender diverse people to undergo counselling before they can have their genders legally recognised, their approach is something akin to keeping the whole class in at lunchtime to pay for the imagined misdemeanours of a single miscreant. Although in the case of gender diversity, such miscreants do not exist in the way that Quigley wants the Daniels of this world to believe. If that’s the government’s motive, there has to be a better way.
So, Mr Quigley, I’d like to know why it is that you despise me so much that you would make public comments designed to incite hatred? Is it that you don’t want me to be able to use public toilets in safety, or walk the streets, go shopping, simply exist, without prejudice, suspicion and violence coming my way? Would you prefer that I were lynched by the Daniels of this world? Is that why you characterised me and other gender diverse women as being sex criminals who only ‘change gender’ so that we can get better access to our victims.
Mr Quigley, what you said today was beneath you and the public office you hold. It was egregious, inflammatory hate speech and I’d like you to consider walking it back and making some more tempered public comments. I’m available to meet if you’d like to discuss further and you don’t feel that I’d be too much of an affront to your obviously fragile manhood. Same goes for you, Daniel.
