The newly-formed Lesbian Action Group wants to hold a Lesbians Born Female event on October 15 at the publicly-funded Victorian Pride Centre, an architecturally-striking $50 million LGBTIQ+ community hub at Melbourne’s beachside suburb of St Kilda.
Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act (1984) gives the Commission the power to grant temporary five-year exemptions, and the body has devised its own broad criteria for doing so.
In this instance, the group argues that lesbian events have been driven underground because of a “repressive” environment in which women fear the consequences of being labelled trans-exclusionary.
For while lesbians hold prime position in the LGBTIQAA++ acronym, in the hierarchy that governs “the community” they always come last, persistently devalued, humiliated and disenfranchised.
A fact that, naturally, has nothing to do with lesbians being the community’s only exclusively female group.
Nope. That’s just a bizarre coincidence.
This picture of a defaced wall with the words “NO TERFS AT VPC” (“TERF” being the slur that stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist) was posted on Twitter in the aftermath of The Age story:
And yet in June the Centre hosted a three-night trans cabaret called “T4T”, whose advertising flyer read: “It’s the coolest show in the country, and you can’t come (unless you’re trans.)”
The Centre did not respond to my question about this apparent discrepancy. Had it responded, it might have pointed to the disclaimer at the bottom of the “T4T” flyer, stating: “(Cis people are allowed, but not encouraged).” This may be enough to dispel an accusation that non-trans people weren’t allowed to attend, but it’s hardly a gesture of love, diversity and inclusion.
We might also consider the example of Melbourne’s Peel Hotel, a gay male venue. In 2005 Victoria’s Civil and Administrative Tribunal made an order allowing the Peel to refuse or restrict entry to women or straight men if their presence would affect “the safety or comfort” of the homosexual male patrons or “the nature of that venue as a venue primarily for homosexual male patrons.” In other words: if you flood a gay club with women and straight men, the club is no longer gay.
The tribunal remarked that had the Peel applied for the right to screen prospective patrons by interrogating their sexuality, the request would have been denied as “a very serious interference” with the right to privacy.
This observation was cited in a 2021 decision by Tasmanian anti-discrimination commissioner Sarah Bolt in which she rejected an application from Jessica Hoyle, a lesbian and member of advocacy group the LGB Alliance, to ban “biological men” from “drag king” events. According to Bolt, Hoyle’s proposed exemption would go “further” than asking about sexual orientation; it would require people to divulge “intimate information” about their body. So asking about a person’s sex is deemed more intrusive than asking who they have sex with.
The struggle for female-only lesbian spaces is long and fraught, not least because lesbians have themselves been divided over trans inclusion.
Source: LGBTQ is really QTBGL – by Julie Szego – Szego Unplugged