Debate over the inclusion of trans women in female-only spaces has continued to spark across Australia this year. Jewel Topsfield and Karl Quinn report.
It’s a debate that has pitted trans rights activists against “gender-critical” (or, as their opponents would have it, “trans-exclusionary radical”) feminists, split the LGBTQ community, and seen Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling accused of transphobia for siding with those who insist trans women are men and thus have no right to be admitted to women-only spaces.
Research from the University of Melbourne has found about 18 per cent of trans women surveyed had undergone genital reconfiguration surgery – colloquially known as “bottom surgery” – and about 2 per cent of trans men had.
Controversy erupted in Sydney in January when McIver’s Ladies Baths – a women- and children-only pool – decreed that only transgender women who had undergone gender confirmation surgery would be allowed entry (the venue’s website now states transgender women are welcome).
In May, Jessica Hoyle applied for an exemption to exclude “biological men” from lesbian-only events in Launceston, with the exception of a male DJ.
“It’s important we keep our single-sex spaces,” Hoyle, a spokesperson for LGB Tasmania, told this masthead. “If you are born a male, you are not a lesbian. I’m wanting to meet Cinderella, I’m wanting to meet Ms Right.”
Hoyle is appealing against a decision by Tasmania’s anti-discrimination commissioner, Sarah Bolt, to refuse the exemption.
In July, a “gender-critical” feminist legal service that refused to remove from its website material that was deemed offensive to trans people had its tenancy grant terminated by the City of Sydney. The Feminist Legal Clinic’s principal solicitor, Anna Kerr, said she believed the conflict was representative of broader efforts to undermine women’s sex-based rights.
Source: Why single-sex spaces are a battleground for transgender rights