By Rachael Wong
Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Anna Cody, has written what can only be described as a damage-control opinion piece after last week’s extraordinary Senate Estimates exchange with Senator Michaelia Cash.
The absurd exchange went viral because it exposed, in real time, just how far Australia’s laws – and the public officials enforcing them – have drifted from biological reality and common sense.
Australians and stunned onlookers from around the world watched the official charged with protecting women from sex discrimination double down on the idea that men who identify as women need the legal protections designed for women who are pregnant or could potentially be pregnant – because they may be perceived as "potentially pregnant".
This is not a serious interpretation of women’s rights. It is a parody of them.
Anti-discrimination laws were designed to ensure people are not unfairly denied jobs, housing, education or services because of who they are. There is a meaningful distinction between protecting people who identify as transgender from genuine mistreatment and redefining the legal category of “woman” in ways that strip biological females of sex-based protections.
These laws were never meant to be used as a Trojan horse to hand women’s rights to men. Yet that is exactly what happens when protections created for women – including pregnancy protections, female-only spaces and sex-based services – are reinterpreted as entitlements for men who claim to be women.
And if, as Cody argues, this is “how the law actually operates", then this is all the more reason why the law needs to be changed.
In her article, Cody insists the Sex Discrimination Act is about “fairness”, that there is “no evidence” trans-identifying males are harming women in toilets or change rooms, that human rights are “not a zero-sum exercise”, and that “gendered violence” is the real issue.
Aside from the fact that women and girls are harmed when they are forced to share intimate spaces like toilets and changerooms with biological males, Cody conveniently ignores the far more damning cases of women reportedly being subjected to violent and sexual assaults by trans-identifying males in Australian women’s prisons (like in South Australia and Victoria).
This omission is especially ironic given her emphasis on “gendered violence”, a pattern of violence against women that she cannot even bring herself to explicitly name because doing so would require acknowledging sex-based rights and biological reality. The “gendered violence” she speaks of is, of course, male violence against women.
Cody is right that we must urgently address male violence against women. But it is extraordinary to invoke male violence, while simultaneously ignoring such violence when it is perpetrated by men who identify as women, and refusing to recognise why women object to males accessing female-only spaces in the first place.
Women’s safety cannot be defended in the abstract while being dismantled in practice.
And I have no doubt that those female inmates terrorised by trans-identifying male offenders do feel as if the human rights of women and the demands of men claiming to be women have indeed become a zero-sum exercise – one in which women’s rights always come second.
And that is the point Cody refuses to confront. Her repeated answer is that the law protects everyone. But in practice, the so-called human rights of men claiming to be women are consistently being elevated above the actual rights of women and girls.
Whether it is women in prisons, women like Sall Grover, Kirralie Smith or Jasmine Sussex punished for recognising men as male, lesbians fighting for female-only events, female athletes forced to compete against biological males, or schoolgirls too scared to use the bathroom because of male students claiming to be girls, the pattern is the same: women and girls are expected to “be kind”, stay silent, move aside, absorb the risk and pretend it is “inclusion”.
The Sex Discrimination Act was intended to protect women from discrimination on the basis of sex. It was not intended to erase sex altogether. It was not intended to make “woman” a feeling, pregnancy protections a male entitlement, or female-only spaces a legal liability.
This is why the Act must be fixed.
As Cody says, it is important that the law ensures "everyone can live safely, participate fully, and be treated with dignity." But this is incompatible with the erasure of sex, the denial of reality, and the removal of women’s hard-won rights.
Australia needs clear biological definitions of woman and man in law. We need explicit protection for female-only spaces, services, sport and associations. We need parliamentarians willing to urgently work together across party lines to ensure that women and girls have rights and protections on the basis of biological sex. Not because they identify a certain way, but because they are female.
Anna Cody is asking Australians to believe that no rights are being traded away. Women know better. They have watched the trade happen in real time. And the currency has been their safety, dignity, privacy, fairness and freedom to speak the truth.
Rachael Wong is the CEO of Women’s Forum Australia
Sign Women's Forum Australia's petition to fix the Sex Discrimination Act NOW.
Women’s Forum Australia is an independent think tank that undertakes research, education and public policy advocacy on issues affecting women and girls, with a particular focus on addressing behaviours and practices that are harmful and abusive to them. We are a non-partisan, non-religious, tax-deductible charity. We do not receive any government funding and rely solely on donations to make an impact. Support our work today.
| I’ll stand with women ▷ |