What’s scarier than the Chinese Communist Party? More threatening to the national interest than an environmentally conscious tech billionaire? Why, a trans kid, of course.
Nothing energises Scott Morrison’s core constituency more than the deadly challenge to human existence presented by people whose gender is not what the Liberal Party and (almost) all churches insist God assigned to them. At least, that’s what the prime minister seems to think, given the alacrity with which he jumps on the subject.
Except when he’s promising his own backbench, in writing, that he would ensure kids are not discriminated against at school on the basis of sexuality or gender. He did that in December, before acting in February to ensure that trans kids would continue to be discriminated against. It’s hard to keep up with him.
Anyway, yesterday Morrison took a short break from demonstrating trade skills to elevate an obscure backbencher’s private member’s bill to national prominence, describing Liberal Senator Claire Chandler’s attempt to ban trans athletes from women’s sport as “terrific” and pledging his support.
The bill was tabled during the recent, brief parliamentary sittings. Like all other attempted legislation this year, it will not become law before the election, and will sink without trace afterwards. Why, then, the pantomime of prime ministerial emphasis for this urgent social reform?
According to Chandler, her bill addresses an urgent problem: the imminent demise of women’s sport. The reason is the Sex Discrimination Act, which she says needs a specific carve-out to make it clear that “sport and sporting activity can be carried out on the basis of sex and it will not be a breach of the act to do so”. That is, excluding trans athletes from sex-specific competition will be a specifically lawful form of discrimination.
Chandler told Parliament that “the default position under the current interpretation of the act is that it is unlawful to exclude males from women’s sport, with the onus placed on administrators to prove that an exemption applies each and every time a male seeks to compete in their women’s competition. Female players and athletes therefore have no certainty that despite having registered for a women’s competition, they will not be required to compete against males.”
That is, of course, nonsense, but it clarifies what we’re really talking about here. The clue is in the Senator’s use of “male” as a pejorative. The fact is that there is no epidemic of men forcing themselves on women’s sporting competitions. What is happening more and more frequently is the incidence of trans people wanting to play sport.
High-profile examples, such as AFL player Hannah Mouncey, abound. They’re not “male” unless you insist that every person’s gender is assigned, biologically, at birth; that it is unchangeable by a law of nature; that it is binary; that the person has no agency in the question.
It’s a simple position, exemplified by Morrison’s statement three years ago: “We do not need ‘gender whisperers’ in our schools. Let kids be kids.”
Kids being, by immutable definition, a boy or a girl.
Chandler’s bill would reinsert definitions of “man” and “woman” in the act (they were taken out in 2013), applying biological determinism to all of us once more. The law would reflect the Liberal Party’s preference: that gender is binary and fixed, not up for discussion.
There are two problems with this: it’s scientifically untrue (gender is not binary), and nobody has come up with a rational justification for insisting that a person’s gender is something in which they have no personal say. Both problems run parallel to the (bizarrely) continuing debate over the right of gay people to exist.
It is a fact that there are extremely challenging issues for sport in dealing with trans competitors, as I’ve discussed previously. At root, those challenges come from the embedded cultural assumption that the world is gender-binary, and our discomfort with moving away from that understanding. Sooner or later, we’ll just have to get over that and deal with the reality.
For most people, it’s an issue of extremely low order. For trans people, it’s about recognising the fact of their existence and the equality of their rights. For Chandler, her leader and a strange collective of people obsessed with what happens in bathrooms, it’s a thing of dread.
The only votes for Morrison in this issue are votes he already has. That’s what lets us know that it’s one he actually cares about.
This discussion would be a lot clearer if the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ were not used interchangeably. Sex is almost binary (save for a very small number of babies with both or neither sets of reproductive organs). Gender is a social and individual construction, or expression of sex, and occurs on a spectrum. Society either celebrates or punishes various expressions of gender on this spectrum.
Clearer, yes. But this is not to the writers advantage, since this would mean acknowledging the fact that sex has real impacts on the world. The writer needs to banish sex to a private sphere so it can’t be factored into public affairs (such as sport.)
This article has as much scientific misinformation as a press release by Angus Taylor about climate change.
A while ago a chap told me he used ultrasound scans of his pregnant ewes to determine the gender of the lambs they were carrying. I still wonder what those images could possibly have revealed that made this possible.
I find that hard to believe for several reasons – cost of ultrasound, too brief a gestation for intervention and for what reason?
A castrated male lamb is a quicker return than raising a breeding ewe as well as the simple fact of the interface between ewe/equipment – ever tried to get a skittish, pregnant ewe to hold still?
Hannah Mouncey’s sex is, of course, male. Ergo Hannah Mouncey is male. Of course Mouncey’s gender identity (which I assume is what this article means by “gender”) can be anything. The underlying conceit of this article is we must always ignore sex and only ever consider gender identity.
This seems to indicate that the inclusion of the female sex into sport via the targetted exclusion of the male sex was an act of ignorance/bigotry more than an act of liberation.
Hannah Mouncey is, of course, a woman. Ergo Hannah Mouncey can play in the AFLW.
And yes, unless your interest is in actually having sex with a person, their sex is totally irrelevant and only their gender matters.
Your final paragraph is unreadable.
If Hannah Mouncey’s sex is not male, what is ‘trans’ about Hannah’s gender?
That is ridiculous: all the evidence points to sex differences accounting for the discrepancy between male and female 100m world records in swimming and running for example. This is why they are separated by sex. In sports where sex is irrelevant (equestrian events, etc) it makes sense to have mixed competition.
Saying someones biological sex is relevant to having sex with them is surely transphobic (only gender identity is relevant – right?)
The point in my last sentence can be fleshed out:
– inclusion of females in sport was achieved by creating biological female competitions which excluded biological males.
– this has been seen as a step forward, until recently when it is attacked as bigotted and regressive. The call is for biological males to be admitted into female competition.
No, the call is for trans women to be ACCEPTED into female competition. Birth gender is irrelevant.
Get your nose out of people’s genitals, please.
So this is the best response you can make to the above comment. You are a vacuum head. The point made above is perfectly valid and carries no sexual innuendo or vilification.
So either make a measured and informed response or stop wasting our time with your cave man rhetoric
Well I baulked at “Hannah Mouncey is male” based on the writer’s assumptions about Hannah’s junk. That’s why i wonder why Tressy is so obseessed.
Actually, it works the other way around. Because one knows Mouncey is male (how else can one be a trans woman but be a biological male?) one can assume the likelihood of a whole range of biological attributes. The interesting ones in this context relate to sporting performance, not genitalia (which you bought up, not me.)
Gender isn’t binary. There’s a continuum. Some babies are even indeterminate at birth and are often surgically altered (without their consent) to whatever the doctor chooses the baby’s gender to be.
Your argument is ludicrous. You seem to imply this is a problem when it isn’t. As the article writer explains… males aren’t clamoring to join women’s sport. Transgender people take feminizing or masculinizing hormones. Feminizing hormones soften muscles tendons and skeletal structure and reproportion body fat.
This isn’t a problem unless people like you wish to make it so.
Hormones do not come even close to removing the competitive advantage. Just look at Hannah Mouncey standing amongst their female competitors. Hannah still has the height, mass, bone density and hip-to-weight ratio of a man. Hannah was born male, went through puberty male, and physiologically remains male. The ‘people like us’ who have a problem with this simply put women’s right to fair competition ahead of Hannah’s debateable right to be humoured in their delusion.
And I say delusion because you’re forcing the issue. If all Hannah wanted was for everyone to pretend they’re female out of courtesy, then the overwhelming majority would humour them. But when they, and you, and the article writer insist in defiance of reality that Hannah is a woman, then our courtesy is exhausted and we rejoin that no, Hannah is a man.
Two questions:
Given testosterone suppression works so well to negate the physical advantages males gain during puberty, such that they may fairly compete with women (female humans), if an adult male suppressed his testosterone long enough, should he be allowed to compete in children’s sport too?
Are able-bodied people discriminated against by being excluded from the Paralympics?
If you want to be included as a able bodied competitor in the Paralympics then be my guest.
I don’t think Morrison and his Coalition colleagues (with a few exceptions) have ever come across a vulnerable group they didn’t want to punish and attack for being vulnerable. The trans community are another in a long list of victims.
We need to get rid of The Coalition for an extended period come the next and subsequent elections.
The exceptions you mention are of course instructive. Anyone with exceptional wealth potentially vulnerable to paying significant taxes is always assured of the Coalition’s best endeavours to protect them. The plight of coal-fired power stations vulnerable to being economically unviable thanks to renewables gives Coalition ministers sleepless nights. The Coalition goes to extraordinary lengths to find a sinecure or other cushy job at ministerial discretion on bodies like the AAT for party members who have otherwise failed and might be vulnerable to diminished affluence. (No Liberal Left Behind!) Even white farmers in South Africa vulnerable to not being very privileged any longer were a cause of great concern to various members of the government quite recently. And so on. Let’s give the Coalition its due.
Indeed, Rat. I well remember an interview where a well-spoken (and no doubt well-heeled) elderly gent from Melbourne said he ‘tossed and turned all night’ after watching the budget speech where the Turnbull government put a limit of $1.6 million on tax-free super. You have no idea of the suffering these precious petals have to endure!
No need for a male lawyer/writer to worry about people born with an xy chromosome competing in xx chromosome people’s sport. So it is easy to get on your high horse of self righteousness and call anyone who does care a religious bigot.
The fact we are even having the discussion is peak absurdity and an excellent wedge issue. Morrison is a wiley politician – no mistake.
“Morrison is a wily politician”
Now you’re just taking the piss.