No International Lesbian anything for you, Karens

The Sydney Morning Herald last month:

Hatred against trans people and a “radical precedent” in anti-discrimination law would flow from a lesbian group being allowed to invite only biological females to its events, Victoria’s peak union body has warned.

It’s not hatred for lesbians to have lesbian-only events. Women are the only people who can be lesbians; men can never be lesbians. Men who call themselves lesbians remain men. It’s not “hatred” to understand that men can’t be lesbians.

An application by the recently formed Lesbian Action Group to lawfully exclude trans women from a “Lesbians Born Female” event has caused a heated rift, with equality and inclusion advocates squaring off against women’s rights groups.

What about equality for women? What about inclusion of women? What about supporting equality and inclusion and rights for women?

The Lesbian Action Group, an organisation formed by veterans of the lesbian rights movement of the 1980s and 1990s, wants to stage its event at the government-funded Victorian Pride Centre in Melbourne next month to celebrate International Lesbian Day, and has applied for a five-year exemption from the Sex Discrimination Act.

So the Sex Discrimination Act requires everyone to pretend that men can be women?

The application triggered a flurry of submissions, published by the Australian Human Rights Commission, which echo arguments raging more broadly within political and feminist circles and women’s sporting and cultural institutions over how to balance gender inclusion and sex-based rights.

It can’t be done, not the way it’s being framed currently. It’s not possible to “balance” women’s rights with an imperative to pretend that some men are women. If men can invade and take every single thing women have just by saying “I’m a woman” then women have no rights.

In a joint submission, 15 community and legal groups – including Equality Australia, the Human Rights Law Centre, Transgender Victoria and Dykes on Bikes, which leads the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade – said while it was important for lesbians to gather to celebrate their culture, it was unnecessary to exclude trans women and other queer groups.

Well you can’t have both.

The kind of trans woman who feels entitled to go to a lesbian event is the kind of trans woman who will want to use up all the oxygen at the event. Men who want to destroy everything women have by invading it and taking it are not going to stay politely in the background at lesbian events, they’re going to dominate everything they can.

The day after this masthead first reported the details of the Lesbian Action Group’s application, Pride Centre management wrote a letter to the group setting out its reasons. “Your request to hold an event that excludes and seeks to legally discriminate against people on the bases of their sex, sexuality and gender is inconsistent with the Pride Centre’s purpose,” the group was told.

So what is the Pride Centre’s purpose? To be a centre for everyone? Then what does the “Pride” part mean? It used to mean lesbian and gay; is that all over now?

Victorian Trades Hall assistant secretary Wilhelmina Stracke said the name of the proposed event revealed it true purpose.

“The Lesbian Action Group seeks to exclude transgender people from their events because they refuse to accept that transgender women are women,” Stracke told the commission. “This application seeks to exclude and discriminate against the most marginalised and discriminated against group of people in Victoria for no reason other than that the applicants dislike transgender people.”

But transgender women are not women; that’s what the “transgender” modifier means. If they were women there would be no need for the word “transgender” in front.

And who says men who call themselves women are the most marginalised and discriminated against group of people in Victoria? Based on what?

And why does Stracke equate knowing that men are men with “dislike” of anyone?

The Victorian Women’s Guild denounced the Victorian Pride Centre’s refusal to stage the event, noting centre management had previously allowed its meeting rooms to be used for trans-only functions.

What’s up with that then? Why is trans-only ok but lesbian-only forbidden?

Anna Kerr, a Sydney lawyer whose Feminist Legal Clinic specialises in domestic violence cases, said an exemption should not be necessary to hold a lesbian-only event.

“This application clearly demonstrates how extreme trans activism has adversely impacted on [harmed] the rights of women and girls,” she submitted.

“If the protections for gender identity, whether at state or federal level, were interpreted in a manner that did not inappropriately conflate the concepts of sex and gender identity, these conflicts would not arise.”

But destroying women’s rights is the whole point.

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