Via the Sydney Morning Herald:
A lesbian community organisation will be forced to keep its events open to men, straight women and transgender women after the Australian Human Rights Commission refused to grant it an exemption from anti-discrimination laws.
The AHRC’s decision prohibits the group from staging a planned “Lesbians Born Female” event to commemorate International Lesbian Day. It also challenges traditional notions of sex as a biological concept as the commission concluded that sex is non-binary and changeable.
Ok Australian Human Rights Commission, let’s see all of you change your sexes. Go on, show us how it’s done.
“The commissioner submits that the word ‘sex’ is not a biological concept referring to whether a person at birth had male or female physical traits,” the AHRC said in its decision. “Nor is it a binary concept, limited to the ‘male’ or ‘female’ sex.”
But…it is. That is what it refers to.
It’s like on a farm. A cow (female sex) gives birth to a calf. The calf is either female or male. Same with horses, sheep, goats, donkeys, chickens, ducks – every farm animal you can think of. Same with animals you don’t see on farms – tigers, giraffes, elephants, kangaroos.
“‘Sex’ can refer to a person being male, female or another non-binary state. It is also broad enough to encompass the idea that a person’s ‘sex’ can be changed.”
No it isn’t. What are they smoking?
The verdict was welcomed by Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown, who said if the application had been successful, already marginalised and vulnerable trans people would have been further excluded.
Well hey guess what, they could set up their own god damn community organization. They could set it up and exclude lesbians because it’s for trans people. They could have their own commorg and lesbians could have theirs.
I wonder if gay men in Australia are being told they can’t exclude trans men.
Carole Ann, a spokeswoman for the Lesbian Action Group, which submitted the application, said the AHRC’s stance “obliterated” biological reality. “It wasn’t unexpected, but it is still disgraceful,” she said. “It basically puts us back in the closet if we want to have any events for lesbians who were born female.”
Ann is due to speak in state parliament on Tuesday alongside former Liberal MP Moira Deeming, University of Melbourne academic Holly Lawford-Smith, and other prominent women campaigning for sex-based rights.
The AHRC’s ruling is based on changes made to the Sex Discrimination Act 10 years ago. Under the changes, sexual orientation and gender identity were included as protected attributes, the definitions of a man and a woman were repealed from the legislation, and references to the “opposite sex” were replaced with “different sex”.
Sure that’s how all this works – you just repeal the definitions of a man and a woman, and then no one is either any more. Change the words and you change the thing. Magic!
The commission said the changes to the act made it clear that for the purposes of state and federal law, sex was no longer fixed or binary.
And therefore women just can’t have any rights. Boom; done.
Brown said the intention of the new law was clear. “The Sex Discrimination Act was amended in 2013 to protect LGBTIQ+ people and explicitly protects trans women and non-binary people from unfair treatment,” she said.
But the “treatment” is not “unfair.” It’s not unfair to know that men are not women. It’s not unfair for women to avoid men in some circumstances.
The AHRC, which received 236 submissions for and against the application, said it was swayed by a submission that argued it was not appropriate or necessary to exclude trans, bisexual or queer women to allow lesbians to celebrate their culture.
The commission warned that granting an exemption could lead to further exclusion of, and discrimination against, trans women who are lesbians.
No trans women are lesbians, because trans women are men.
Baby talk. We’re stuck in baby talk, apparently forever.
