Drew Hutton’s crash course in gender dysphoria began when psychologist Rachel Hannam reached out, after the Australian Greens elder defied the party he co-founded on trans rights.
Dr Hannam, a former Greens member and election candidate, has skin in this very fraught game: she not only counselled teenagers and young adults intent on changing sex, but had to contend with a member of her own family seeking to transition.
Over the past three years she and Mr Hutton have gone on a punishing journey together. Mr Hutton, 78, has been at loggerheads with the Queensland division of his party, fighting accusations of being transphobic, which he deeply resents and rejects. His expulsion was confirmed this week.
Dr Hannam struggled to cope with the pressure at home and at work in Brisbane, inundated by distraught parents pleading for help for a gender-dysphoric child before it was too late.
“Rachel really opened my eyes,” Mr Hutton said. “Before this thing started with the party, I really didn’t know much about the issues. My concern was basically freedom of speech, not the medicine and science around gender dysphoria.
“But through Rachel, I got to understand that there’s a lot going on here. We’re talking about a whole generation of kids who are really being experimented on in ways that are completely unacceptable.
Dr Hannam, 48, questions whether gender dysphoria – a genuine and confronting state of distress where a person denies their biological sex – can mask underlying psychosocial and psychiatric issues. In many cases she believes therapy, not medical intervention, is the answer.
Dr Hannam knows it is risky to speak out like this, such are the emotions and vitriol swirling around the transgender space. She has already had to defend a complaint to the Health Ombudsman that she was transphobic, an expensive and stressful undertaking. The Psychology Board of Australia cleared her.
They connected in 2022 and have been talking ever since. “I’m willing to go on the record and say I’m horrified by how Drew has been treated,” Dr Hannam said. “All he did was leave some comments on a post … I couldn’t understand why that was grounds for him to be kicked out when he’s given so much to the party over the years.”
His suspension and subsequent expulsion, ratified by the Queensland Greens’ state council last Sunday, brought to a head long-simmering tensions over the purge of members by a “transgender-queer cult” that, Mr Hutton alleges, has seized control of the party.
Mr Hutton set up the Australian Greens in 1992 with his friend, Bob Brown, who has called for his life membership to be reinstated.
Source: ‘Generation of kids being experimented on in ways that are completely unacceptable’