Category: Transgenderism

Drew Hutton had assumed he would live out his life a card-carrying Green. The 78-year-old retiree turned up to local branch meetings, staked party corflutes into the lawn of his home on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast and handed out how-to-vote cards long after stepping down from active duty in the party.

Given Hutton had been awarded life membership and his friend – and the Green’s first national leader – Bob Brown had lauded him a “towering figure in Australian environmental and social politics” who, “more than anybody” (including Brown himself) was “responsible for the formation of the Australian Greens”, it must have seemed a safe bet.

But, on 20 July, Hutton will stand before the Queensland Greens state council and plead his case that they reverse a decision by its Constitution and Arbitration Committee (CAC) to expel him.

The former lecturer of politics and history will draw on symbolically powerful support. Both Brown and the party’s second national leader, Christine Milne, oppose Hutton’s expulsion and have written to advocate that his membership be restored.

“The important thing isn’t me,” Hutton tell Guardian Australia. “The important thing is the Greens.

“Are they going to be a dogmatic, authoritarian party that exerts all this top-down control over members? Or is it going to be the sort of party that people like Bob Brown and myself originally created with a historic mission to try to push the world to a more sustainable footing?”

The official story of the termination of Hutton’s membership begins on 21 June 2022 at exactly 3:50pm. It was a month to the day after a federal election which would prove a high-water mark for the Greens in Queensland.

Then Victorian parliamentary leader, Samantha Ratnam, had just removed Linda Gale from her recently elected position as state convenor because of an internal discussion paper Gale co-authored three years earlier. The paper aimed to prevent what it deemed was a move to “shut down any debate” on a “critical issue in feminism and women’s rights today”: the definition of a woman. Ratnam labelled the paper “transphobic”.

In New South Wales, feminist lawyer Anna Kerr had her party membership terminated for disrupting Greens actions and discussion groups with what was deemed transphobic views, including being quoted in the media as being “extremely disturbed” by a NSW Greens push to amend legislation to use the term “pregnant person” instead of “pregnant woman”.

On his personal Facebook page, Hutton labelled these moves “authoritarian and antidemocratic”.

“I believe in full human rights for trans people at the same time as supporting the right of women to be safe from patriarchal oppression,” he wrote.

“I am also prepared to say these things publicly. Unfortunately, in the Greens at present that would seem to make me a ‘transphobe’ … .”

Two days later, Hutton wrote what he said would be a “final statement” on the post before which he would close comments raging in the thread below, some of which he acknowledged had been “hurtful and disrespectful”.

A year later, after a complaint lodged against him, the CAC suspended Hutton’s membership until such time as he deleted a post criticising the Greens and removed comments made by others which it deemed transphobic.

The committee rejected the allegation Hutton himself had demeaned trans women, but found he had provided a platform for others to do so.

Hutton refused to comply, citing free speech – an issue for which he had once chained himself to a tree in Queens Street Mall and for which he had been thrown into jail by Bjelke-Petersen’s corrupt police force many times as part of a broader civil disobedience campaign which was, eventually, successful in the form of the landmark 1992 Peaceful Assembly Act.

A near two-year standoff ensued in which Hutton abided by the CAC’s directive he remain silent.

But the deadlock broke open on 15 March 2025 when the Saturday Paper ran the Hutton saga.

Hutton says his is not an isolated case, and claims he knows of more than 40 people who have been expelled or “forced out” of the Greens after voicing their position on gender.

Most of those women don’t want to be identified, Hutton says, for fear of backlash. One who does though, and who fits all the aforementioned categories, is Cheryl Hercus.

In 2016, Hercus ran for the Greens in the federal seat of Goldstein in Melbourne. The retired feminist lecturer and author let her party membership lapse in 2019 after having to defend herself against a complaint that alleged she had “proven intransigent” and that her “promoting harmful transphobic views, articles and beliefs” online reflected her “deeply held beliefs”.

“I could probably add another half a dozen to that that Drew doesn’t know about,” Hercus says. “Women who were involved in the Greens a very long time who’ve just resigned in disgust or disappeared”.

By taking to the soapbox, Hutton succeeded in forcing the hand of CAC which “terminated” his membership “effective immediately” on 24 June. This opened the door for Hutton’s long-sought appeal, denied him while his membership languished indefinitely suspended.

Source: Drew Hutton helped found the Australian Greens. So why has the troubled party booted him from its ranks? | Australian Greens | The Guardian

It’s a mad, mad world. The Australian Club lawfully excludes women because men have stuff they like to do on their own. Religious schools, in some states, can impose faith-based exemptions from discrimination law for certain staff.

All within the law, apparently.

Sall Grover set up an online app for women called Giggle for Girls. It was a space where women could talk candidly among themselves about issues that concern women – a cheaper and more cheerful online Australian Club for women only, if blokes want to understand it on their terms.

Next month, Giggle is appealing Federal Court judge Robert Bromwich’s decision last year where he found that by blocking Tickle, the female-only app had illegally – though indirectly – discriminated against the trans woman based on gender identity.

The Bromwich judgment is a mess probably because the Sex Discrimination Act is a bugger’s muddle too. In 2013, the Gillard government amended the SDA to include gender identity as a basis for discrimination. By removing the definition “woman means a member of the female sex”, Labor left it to judges to work out. Bromwich decided that “in its contemporary ordinary meaning, sex is changeable”.

That will be news to many people who believe that sex is determined by our biology. Indeed, Grover’s lawyers say for the SDA to make sense, woman means biological woman. Also, that’s what a woman is – a biological female.

Grover’s appeal, to be heard over four days in early August, comes down to a simple question: in the clash between women’s rights and trans rights, why should biological women come off second best?

This problem has already been identified and solved in Britain. Even accepting that there are differences in the law between Britain and here, the recent landmark ruling of the UK High Court (sic), that woman means biological woman, should be a powerful precedent in this country. The court made clear that its decision does not mean the end of trans rights; it simply means that biological women are entitled to their own spaces.

Why are Australian women having to fight for these rights in the 21st century?

(Ed: Landmark ruling was by the UK Supreme Court which is their highest level court)

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Female-only spaces for biological women must be protected by law because lesbians face unwanted pressure to have sex with trans women, says group supporting Giggle app founder Sall Grover.

In a rare move, the court has granted the Melbourne-based Lesbian Action Group “intervener” status in Ms Grover’s appeal against the ruling last year that she unlawfully discriminated against transgender woman Roxanne Tickle by rejecting her from the networking app because she was a biological man.

The Lesbian Action Group ­ argues that biological women have a right under the Sex Discrimination Act to their own safe spaces, stating in a submission obtained by The Australian that “it is now commonplace for lesbians to be pressured into having sex with transwomen, and to face risk of social isolation if they do not agree with that very concept.”

The intervention pits the long-established lesbian group not just against Tickle but against Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody who has also been granted amicus curiae (friend of the court) status in the case.

The commissioner says she is simply “seeking to assist the court by providing submissions about the meaning, scope and validity of relevant provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act and that she “has not made submissions about whether Ms Tickle was in fact discriminated against”.

However, the commissioner’s position largely mirrored Ms Tickle’s submissions in the case last year that sex is “changeable” and non-binary, and Dr Cody publicly welcomed judge Robert Bromwich’s decision in favour of Ms Tickle.

The Australian Human Rights Commission estimates it will have spent about $35,000 briefing barristers to represent the Sex Discrimination Commissioner by the end of the current appeal.

The Lesbian Action Group was granted amicus status because it has an interest in the outcome of the case after seeking an exemption from the Sex Discrimination Act in 2023 to hold regular “lesbians born female only” social events.

There are “dangers in a male capable, or giving the appearance of being capable, of procreation being classified by the law as a female, despite the best intentions of gender ideology”, says the submission, prepared by Melbourne barristers Leigh Howard and Megan Blake.

“It is the lived experience of lesbians to be confronted by autogynephilic men (those who become sexually aroused by the idea of themselves as women) seeking lesbian attention, as a means of generating sexual gratification for themselves.

“It is now commonplace for lesbians to be pressured into having sex with transwomen, and to face risk of social isolation if they do not agree with that very concept. This is unacceptable.

“The appeal must proceed on the basis that the Giggle app is intended to be used by women (members of the female sex) to the exclusion of Ms Tickle (a member of the male sex).

The conclusion that a biological man who identifies as a woman is a “woman” under the act has “innumerable unintended consequences”, the group’s submission claims.

Among them: that biological boys must be admitted into all-girl schools; that biological men must be admitted into domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centres; that intimate body searches of women can be performed by biological men; and that biological boys are to reside in the girls’ dormitory at school.

Source: Subscribe to The Australian | Newspaper home delivery, website, iPad, iPhone & Android apps

Transgender woman Roxanne Tickle wants Giggle app founder Sall Grover to pay her at least $40,000 because the female-only platform creator laughed in court when shown a caricature of Tickle during cross-examination in a sex discrimination hearing last year.

Grover and her Giggle platform are appealing a Federal Court ruling last year that they indirectly discriminated against Ms Tickle when they rejected her (sic) from the app because she did not appear to be female.

Tickle is also appealing parts of that decision, arguing judge Robert Bromwich should have found she (sic) was the victim of direct, rather than indirect, discrimination.

Tickle claims she (sic) should have been awarded aggravated damages because Grover “engaged in a sustained attack on Ms Tickle’s integrity and gender identity, infused with innuendo that Ms Tickle, and indeed transgender women more generally, pose a threat or danger to cisgender women”.

Tickle also complains about “the constant and continual misgendering of Ms Tickle by Ms Grover and Giggle throughout the earlier proceedings” as well as Grover’s “campaign” based on gender identity.

Grover’s appeal team will claim that Justice Bromwich failed to consider the broader context of the Sex Discrimination Act, arguing that the app’s female-only ­policy was a special measure intended to address the unique disadvan­tages faced by women in digital spaces, and thus should not be considered discriminatory.

But Tickle argues in her (sic) submission that there was no ­evidence presented that women experienced “persistent sex-based disadvantage in digital environments … The evidence sought to be relied upon rises no higher than a collection of self–serving affi­davits of some women who gave evidence in vague and overly generalised terms of their varied online experiences”.

The appeal and cross-appeal will be heard over four days from August 4 in the Full Court of the Federal Court, before judges Melissa Perry, Geoffrey Kennett and Wendy Abraham.

Source: Subscribe to The Australian | Newspaper home delivery, website, iPad, iPhone & Android apps

Source: Sex differences in age-associated neurological diseases—A roadmap for reliable and high-yield research | Science Advances