GENEVA – The United States Supreme Court’s decision affirming that Title IX permits schools to maintain female sports categories on the basis of biological sex represents an important recognition of the rights of women and girls to equality, fairness and safety in sport, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, Reem Alsalem, said today.
Source: US Supreme Court ruling safeguards women’s and girls’ sports, says UN expert | OHCHR
The Northern Territory’s Children’s Commissioner has resigned in a bombshell announcement, citing concerns about the Territory Government’s approach to governance, transparency and child protection reform.
Shahleena Musk — a Larrakia woman and former crown prosecutor — has been outspoken in her criticism of multiple Northern Territory governments’ policies on child protection and youth incarceration, citing the impact policies have on some of the most vulnerable children in the country.
On Thursday afternoon, she said the decision to resign had not been made lightly. Instead, she argued that it reflected a growing concern about the “current environment for independent oversight, evidence-based policy development and transparent decision-making in the Northern Territory”.
“In particular, I have been unable to support the Northern Territory Government’s approach to substantial and wide-reaching changes to child protection laws,” she said.
“In my view, reforms of this significance must be grounded in evidence, informed by those with frontline experience, and developed through genuine consultation with experts, independent institutions and frontline organisations established to protect children and promote accountability.
“I have been concerned by the effective sidelining of myself as the Children’s Commissioner in the development of these reforms. In taking on this role I swore an oath to fulfil the mandate, including all functions and responsibilities set out in the Children’s Commissioner Act 2013.
Source: Breaking: NT Children’s Commissioner walks away, ci… | National Indigenous Times
Petition Reason
“The Sex Discrimination Act must clearly define ‘male’ and ‘female’ as biological sexes in order to provide legal certainty, consistency, and fairness in the application of sex-based rights, protections, data collection, sport, health care, privacy, and safeguarding laws. Clear definitions help ensure that legislation intended to protect women and men from discrimination can be applied consistently by courts, employers, schools, service providers, and government agencies, while reducing confusion, legal ambiguity, and conflict between competing rights and interests.”Petition Request
We therefore ask the House to introduce legislation to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) to define ‘male’ and ‘female’ according to biological sex, and to ensure that sex-based rights, protections, and provisions are applied consistently across Commonwealth law.”
One of the bigger scandals surrounding gender treatment concerns the long term effects of both hormone use and surgery. A particular aspect of it was brought home this week at the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender (CAN-SG) conference by Elaine Miller – a self-described “fanny physio”.
Miller has a nice sideline in pelvic floor-based stand-up comedy and is also the woman who famously flashed her merkin at Nicola Sturgeon in the Scottish parliament’s debating chamber in 2022. Her account of the stunt and the planning which went into it is my favourite chapter in The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht.
There is a serious side to Miller, as befits a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists . She has just finished an academic paper with Professor Ruth Parry from Loughborough University called the “Unwanted Effects of Transgender Related Hormones and Gender Surgery on Urinary and Sexual Functioning”. Miller presented this for the first time at the CAN-SG conference.
Miller’s initial interest in the subject was piqued by a spike in referrals in young female people presenting with incontinence at her clinic. They had symptoms which would have been “familiar with menopausal women” but they were happening “thirty years earlier”. All the young women were on cross-sex hormones, specifically testosterone.
Miller reminded the conference that continence problems can be devastating. “If you worry that you are going to wet yourself in public, it affects everything that you do, and everything that you think”.
People who suffer from incontinence tend to “stop exercising, stop being intimate with their partners and become very worried about odour control. They change what they wear… and their sense of self is impacted.”
After vaginoplasty (an operation not for the faint-hearted), up to 15% of males reported incontinence with a further 5% reporting urinary problems (eg desperately needing a wee and having to drop everything to do so). 75% reported sexual dysfunction.
“That’s not a good outcome of surgery”, said Miller. “These are things which reduce somebody’s quality of life”.
For males who had not undergone surgery, 55% on prolonged oestrogen use reported “urinary leakage”.
For females, the outcomes are worse. Up to 50% of women who undergo phalloplasty (an even more gruesome process than vaginoplasty) are left with urinary incontinence. 54% reported sexual dysfunction. “This data is shocking”, said Miller. “But they’re carrying on. Chelsea and Westminster [NHS Hospital Trust] are training up new surgeons.”
25% of females who elect for metoidioplasty (in which clitoral tissue is detached from the labia and ligaments around it are cut so it protrudes forward) along with urethroplasty (in which the urethra is rerouted through the clitoris to allow urinating whilst standing) report difficulty urinating. Some require help from “continence nurses” and end up “self-cathetising” because the surgery has caused strictures in the urethra, which means the bladder can’t be emptied efficiently.
Miller said their research found that gender clinics were largely “ignoring” the continence problems reported by their patients or weren’t accurately recording them. Miller felt there were parallels with the NHS mesh scandal where patients reporting pain were ignored by their doctors.
After dealing with pelvic matters, Miller touched briefly on other rehabilitative failures after gender surgery. She noted that most women who received bilateral mastectomies due to cancer were routinely offered physiotherapy to prevent “post-operative shoulder dysfunction” – eg a frozen shoulder. There is, however, no NHS physio provision for women having their breasts removed for gender-related reasons. In fact, the surgical protocols say the arms should not be lifted above 90˚ for “anything between six weeks and six months” after surgery. Miller said this was because the protocols were written by plastic surgeons who are basically just interested in the scar – “they’re concerned that if [patients] move an arm too much, the scar will widen and be less aesthetically pleasing”.
Miller said a disproportionate number of trans-identifying people seem to have persistent pain and chronic fatigue, but we don’t know why. A feature of any trans gathering is multiple mobility aids. Miller said “from a physio point of view, if you give somebody a mobility aid, you should have an exit strategy”.
And they should fit. “You don’t give them a wheelchair that you’ve bought off Argos that they’re all slumped in, that doesn’t fit their leg length.”
Miller said there were wider problem with gender patients in possession of physio referrals. Clinics can and do often refuse to take patients on the basis that – and Miller says she was told this directly – “we don’t treat gender here”. This, according to Miller, is because health professionals are “nervous” about taking on gender patients. “They don’t understand them, they’re worried about using the wrong words, and upsetting the person or being accused of a micro-aggression or worse.” This, said Miller, was not good enough. “If we wouldn’t reject a referral for a woman [with] pelvic floor disorder who’s been de-oestrogenised because she’s menopausal, we should not be rejecting young people who are de-oestrogenised because they’re on cross-sex hormones.”
Having regard to: the applications against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (“the UK”) lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by the applicants listed in the appended table (“the applicants”), on the date indicated therein; the decision not to have the applicants’ names disclosed;
Having deliberated, decides as follows
The issue in the present case is whether the requirement under English
law to register a transgender man who has given birth as the “mother” of the child on the child’s birth certificate (“the registration requirement”) breached the applicants’ rights under Article 8 of the Convention and/or Article 14 of the Convention read with Article 8.
. . .
As part of its judgment the Court of Appeal had regard to Article 3.1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, which provides that, in all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration. The court found that Parliament, in enacting a carefully crafted set of provisions balancing the rights of transgender people and others, including their children, took into account the best interests of children as a primary consideration. Parliament had taken the view that every child should have a mother and should be able to discover who their mother was, because that was in the child’s best interests.
. . .
The Court considers, in the circumstances, that the domestic authorities struck a fair balance between the competing interests of the individual and the community in the present case. The applicants’ complaints under Article 8 of the Convention are therefore manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected as inadmissible pursuant to Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.
Source: Feminist Legal Clinic – Advancing the Human Rights of Women & Girls
The survey, run by the Australian National University’s Social Research Centre, looks at the job outcomes and starting salaries of fresh graduates four to six months after finishing their studies.
Results showed newly minted female undergraduates are starting their professional careers on a median full-time annual salary of $75,300, compared with their male colleagues on $79,000.
That’s a 4.7% gap, even before the impacts of family formation and caregiving have kicked in.
On top of this, women even start on lower salaries than their male counterparts in some female-concentrated industries such as nursing and teaching.
The gender pay gap among new university graduates is narrower than Australia’s workforce-wide gender pay gap of 11.5%. However, the workforce-wide gap has generally been shrinking over the past ten years. In contrast, the gender gap in graduates’ starting salaries shows no overall improvement, averaging 3.9% over the past decade.
This disparity can’t be blamed on women working part-time, as these comparisons are based on full-time salaries.
So can it be explained by gender differences in subject choices, with women choosing fields of study that lead to lower-paying professions?
It’s a fair question, given 2021 research shows hourly wage rates in female-concentrated occupations are 9.9% lower than in male-concentrated ones.
But the data suggest that, no, subject choice can’t completely explain the gap either.
Some within-field gaps reach as high as 8.6%, such as architecture and built environment. Law and paralegal studies recorded a gap of 7.2%, followed by science and mathematics with 6.8%.
The fields where women start on a higher financial footing than their male peers are generally lower-paid to begin with, such as communications and creative arts.
Psychology is the exception where women begin their careers on a median salary that exceeds men’s and is not among the lowest-paid.
All employers in Australia with 100 or more staff are legally required to report their gender pay gaps to WGEA. The agency encourages organisations to conduct a like-for-like analysis to look for differentials between staff at comparative levels.
This can include a comparison of the pay and project opportunities of men and women starting out at graduate level. This would help ensure newly graduated women step into the workforce on an equal footing to their male peers.
Source: Female graduates are earning less than their male peers. What might be causing the gap?
The Ninth Circuit has ruled in favor of two flight attendants who were fired for statements about the Equality Act, in the case Brown v. Alaska Airlines, Inc. This decision is an important victory for employees who speak up about sex-based safety and privacy. WoLF filed an amicus brief in support of the flight attendants.
Amicus briefs are an opportunity for groups or individuals who are not part of a case to weigh in with their arguments or provide additional context. Although the plaintiffs’ legal claims largely center on religious discrimination, WoLF’s brief adds an important feminist context to this case.
Just over a week ago, the BBC quietly acknowledged a profound failure of journalism in one of its online news reports. The apology ostensibly focused on a single crime story, but its detail and length appears to signify a cultural shift in an area which has been tearing the BBC apart for more than a decade.
The story concerned a 21-year-old man called Darren Rigby who had indicated he was preparing to act on his apparent murderous hatred of women and girls. Over the course of a week, in January this year, Rigby sent terrifying messages to three all-girls schools on Merseyside. Rigby told one: “I am on my way… with a revolver and a machete and I’m going to shoot and stab all of your girls. You terfs are going to learn to stop mocking, deadnaming and misgendering transwomen like me.” Terf stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”, a derogatory term for women who do not accept that biological males can be women.
In another email, Rigby said his intention was “to injure and kill as many girls as I can”. This month at Liverpool crown court Rigby was sentenced to two years and four months in prison after admitting three charges of sending communications threatening death or serious harm. The specific nature of Rigby’s threats was made public during sentencing and there was a BBC reporter present throughout. Despite the newsworthiness of the details revealed in court, the BBC’s write-up of Rigby’s crimes ignored Rigby’s self-declared trans status. His apparent motive, so-called terfs “misgendering” him, was not mentioned. The article didn’t even make clear that Rigby’s violent threats were aimed exclusively at women and girls in single-sex schools. The BBC report bore a striking resemblance to a press release published on the Merseyside police website, which also elided all mention of Rigby’s emails.
The omissions may have gone unnoticed were it not for another journalist sitting in court that day. Jamie Lopez, who writes for an online publication called The Southport Lead, published his piece on Rigby’s sentencing two days after the BBC. It contained all the details the BBC piece had left out. Lopez was mystified by the BBC’s take on the story. “It had gone up very quickly,” he told me, but the content was “bizarre”. The disparity between the articles was soon highlighted on social media and complaints were made.
Source: What the curious case of Darren Rigby says about BBC trans coverage
Julia Gillard’s attempt to backpedal on gender laws is wild.
For those who missed it, Julia Gillard’s Labor government was responsible for controversial changes to the Australian Sex Discrimination Act in 2013 that effectively erased biology and replaced it with gender identity.
According to fragments of speeches made by the Coalition to the Australian Sex Discrimination Act, the 2010 Federal Liberal team apparently took a version of gender identity inclusion to the election as policy. Although, it must have been a very quiet bit of background footnoting because it’s hard to find any trace of it online today.
The meat of the point is that both parties wanted credit for the changes to gender identity at the time. They genuinely thought they did a good job. Transgender rights were riding a cultural high after the victories of gay and lesbian acceptance. It was good politics…
Gillard may no longer be in government, but both major parties have had several chances to fix earlier mistakes and, just last week, chose not to do so.
Ignorance can no longer be used as an excuse for the problem of trans activism interfering with sex protections, but what about in 2012-13? Was Gillard right?
Not really.
Women were making complaints about privacy and potential risk while transgender activist groups were putting legal pressure on colleges and businesses to accommodate their wishes.
There were certainly enough articles in the news and legal conflicts popping up to alert politicians in Australia of a problem with their legislation.
And they did not even have to go looking for it, because there was an excellent submission made to the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill (2012) by a professor at the University of Melbourne which spelled at the problem extremely clearly.
There are only two questions that matter in this debate:
Can a human being change their sex? Do we believe sex-based division in sports and private areas is valid?
The answer to the first question is obviously no. Your sex is decided at conception and nothing can change it.
Do we, as a society, believe in women’s sports? Do we want women’s bathrooms? Women’s clubs? etc
If the public answer is yes, then it is the duty of Parliament to change the law to reflect the voice of the people. As it stands, they outright refuse to do so. They are saying, by their actions, that transgender rights matter more than biological rights.
[Ed: Yes it was very much a bipartisan effort and passed in the lower house with the support of the coalition led by Tony Abbott who furthered the cause by his very public support of Cate McGregor on ABC’s Australian Story soon afterwards.]
Source: Julia Gillard claims it was a ‘different time’ | The Spectator Australia
