On ABC TV, the public broadcaster with a $1 billion-plus budget and nationwide reach, presenter Joe O’Brien interviewed journalist Patricia Karvelas, a rising star of the network. “Facts” was the word she hammered, again and again.
“Before you’re 18, Joe, there’s no surgery at all, for anyone under 18, there’s nothing like that,” Ms Karvelas said. “I feel like we’ve lost the facts in this conversation, we are having a very toxic conversation which is incredibly hurtful to a tiny minority of [trans young] people who are going through something incredibly difficult.
“And we are also getting basic facts wrong, if you’re under 18, you don’t have surgery, people should get across the facts here. I am across these facts, it’s a community [of trans people] I have quite a lot to do with…”
In fact, all three stages of the so-called Dutch protocol of gender medicalisation have been (and still are) available for minors in Australia—puberty blockers, synthetic cross-sex hormones and surgery. Family Court cases making it easier to get these medical interventions have been reported as good news by the ABC and celebrated by human rights lobbies.
Ms Karvelas and her political journalist tribe got it wrong. It didn’t stop her being chosen to present an ABC TV Four Corners investigation into the only major children’s hospital in Australia cautious about gender medicalisation. The July 2023 TV program amplified the dogma that any approach other than the “gender-affirming” treatment model is likely to do harm.
. . .
The headline in Guardian Australia was, “Morrison stands by Katherine Deves and wrongly claims ‘young adolescents’ can have gender-confirmation surgery.” The article cited Healthdirect.
[L]et’s list some of the procedures that are lawfully available to minors in Australia—
“Double mastectomy; phalloplasty (creation of a pseudo-penis); hysterectomy; bilateral salpingectomy (removal of the fallopian tubes); and vaginoplasty (creation of a pseudo-vagina).”
This is not an exhaustive list4. It comes from the 2018 re Matthew case, in which a single judge, Judith Rees, made the momentous decision to cut back the Family Court’s supervision of surgery for minors with gender dysphoria. Until that ruling is challenged and set aside, it is no longer necessary to make an application to the court before this surgery, unless there is disagreement between parents or doctors about, for example, the capacity of the child to give informed consent.
So, Ms Deves and Mr Morrison were right, and the political journos were wrong.
At the time of writing, the Healthdirect webpage states that to get gender-affirming surgery, you must “be over the age of 16 for top surgery, or 18 for bottom surgery.” The source of this claim is not given; there is no reference to Australia’s family law, which makes no such age distinction.
In two short sentences, it makes two starkly pseudoscientific claims—“Gender-confirmation surgery (formerly called gender-reassignment surgery) transfers people with gender dysphoria to their desired biological sex. It is also possible to change one’s sex by taking hormones [Emphasis added].”
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Urgently required is a verified and verifiable list of what is and is not ‘available’ and precisely where these ‘treatments’ are and are not available – that is, listing all hospital facilities where ‘treatment’ for persons in this category is provided – Referencing the Matthew case is not sufficient – the link is not sufficient. I have been in conversations with intelligent people who assert precisely as does/did Karvelas with an authority that is wondrous in its lack of the facts. To respond, however, one needs to have facts. This article is not enough.
On another aspect – what sexism is revealled if it is correct that mastectomies are provided for 16-year-olds but penectomies are restricted to for 18-year-olds. So a young woman or girl can be subjected to having her breasts removed at an age where they are not even fully developed, yet a boy or young man of 16 is not to have his penis removed, giving him 2 more full years to consider whether this is really a good idea of not – that is, to consider the consequences of radical surgery. Why isn’t that latitude at least extended to girls/young women whose breasts are at least as precious.