Category: Transgenderism

A few years ago, I wrote a history of the struggle for gay and lesbian rights in a volume for the National Library of Australia. The tone was celebratory, reflecting the spirit of the times.

When the issue of trans rights emerged, slowly at first then exploding in the late 2010s, I saw it as a natural evolution of the gay and lesbian rights movement. It made sense to add the T to LGB to recognise another marginalised group that had found its voice. I had known a couple of older transwomen; of course they deserved respect and freedom from discrimination.

Like most, I was hazy about what transsexuality and transgender really meant and the way in which the idea of gender had been adopted from feminism and reinterpreted, in fact, turned upside down.

Even so, in the early 2020s I became disturbed by the growing intolerance of any non-conforming view. The brutal treatment by her peers of Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor at my alma mater, the University of Sussex, shocked me. But I kept the dispute at arm’s length. To be honest, I was afraid of doing something that might earn the wrath of the activists and make me a target.

I’m not usually afraid to go where left-wing angels fear to tread—I’d been the target of vicious zealotry in the past—but I was too uncertain of my ground. Developing a coherent position on the trans issue would require work, and there were other matters occupying me.

However, my irritation with transactivist bullying escalated as more and more cases emerged of reasonable people being vilified, threatened, cancelled and fired simply for taking an alternative view to that of the hard-liners. I was mystified by the vehemence of the attacks on J.K. Rowling simply for arguing that, while they deserve respect, transwomen are not women and single-sex spaces are sometimes justified. You may disagree with her, but what she was saying seemed perfectly defensible from a feminist standpoint.

The righteous burning of Harry Potter books, as if they had become contaminated, had historical parallels and signalled to me the cultural triumph of the evangelical left.

Source: My Trans Flip, or how I went from foggy brained to clear-eyed on gender ideology

Sydney has a new Deputy Lord Mayor! Councillor Olly Arkins is the first trans woman to be appointed to the second-highest position on the City of Sydney Council, marking a historic win for the Sydney LGBTIQA+ community. 

The Deputy Lord Mayor is elected annually by her peers on the city council. They serve as a second-in-command to the Lord Mayor (currently Clover Moore).

Councillor Arkins will assist with mayoral functions and may temporarily take over the office if the Lord Mayor is incapable. 

Since 2024, Cr. Arkins has also delivered a new LGBTIQA+ services hub in King’s Cross, and extended opening hours at libraries during exam times for students. 

Source: Olly Arkins is Sydney’s first trans Deputy Lord Mayor

A transgender man has won a $35,000 payout for being “dead-named”, in a landmark ruling that NSW Health unlawfully discriminated against him by requiring him to disclose any former names during an internal job application.

The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal found that the department’s standard recruitment practice of checking an ­applicant’s identity exposed the social worker, who was “assigned a female sex at birth”, to the risk of being “outed” to co-workers.

The employee, who was given typically female first names when born, lived as a woman until 2012 when he began transitioning to live as a man, the NCAT found.

The health district argued in its defence that the checks were essential because the role of Specialist Child Support Program involved GHY working with children and young people who were often the victims of sexual abuse and were vulnerable patients.

The district pointed out that he had been successful in getting the job and rejected his claim of embarrassment, distress, that “he may be treated unfavourably”, or that other staff “will tell his colleagues that he is transgender”, saying he had provided no objective evidence of this.

The health service said the identity check reasonably applies to all health care professionals who “accept that it is reasonable in the NSW Health system, because the protection of patients and children is paramount”.

The tribunal awarded $35,000 in damages, including aggravated damages of $10,000 because HGY’s mental health had been impacted by the “hostility” of the health district’s submission to the Tribunal, which he had “found to be deeply hurtful and at times insulting”.

Source: Transgender worker awarded $35,000 in landmark ‘dead-name’ NSW tribunal ruling | The Australian