LAG is a lobby group that argues “biological sex is real, binary and immutable”, and resists “the new lesbophobia” and erasure of lesbian-only culture and spaces.
The group also maintains that lesbians who believe in the reality of biological sex differences “are under attack from the LGBTQIA+ umbrella mob”.
Mowbray says her organisation has received “lots of anecdotal evidence” that young lesbians are being sexually harassed at mixed-sex queer events by men and by transwomen who identify as lesbians. “They’re telling us these horrendous stories of what’s going on in these mixed-sex events,” Mowbray tells The Australian.
In a court submission, LAG states: “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 court has granted LAG “intervener” status in the appeal against Justice Robert Bromwich’s ruling that Grover indirectly discriminated against transgender woman Roxanne Tickle by blocking her from her women-only networking app.
Grover had excluded Tickle from the app because she considered her a biological man, but Justice Bromwich found that she was “correctly described as a woman” and that sex is “changeable”.
Mowbray is co-creating a map of Lost Lesbian Spaces in inner Melbourne that existed in the 1980s and ’90s. This map shows that just three venues remain from the 40 or so that offered lesbian discos, balls, bars, art events and a lesbian tennis group that won gold medals at the Gay Games.
The Australian Human Rights Commission, which also has intervener status in the Grover appeal, tells Inquirer it had received no complaints from lesbians saying they have been harassed by transgender women. Echoing Gerber, a commission spokeswoman said: “Any form of pressure to engage in sexual activity without consent is a serious matter. Consent must be free, voluntary and informed.’’
Writer and producer of the recently released Australian podcast series Desexing Society, Stassja Frei, declares that “these are dark times for young lesbians’’. Her podcast explores the youth gender dysphoria “epidemic” along with “the transgender industry’s attacks on lesbian rights’’.
She tells Inquirer that tensions between the lesbian and transgender communities date back to the 1990s, when events exclusively for lesbians who were biological women were effectively outlawed in NSW.
Source: ‘Gender trumping sex’: fractured pride in the trans-lesbian rift