Daily Femail: TERF Group Plainly Admits That They Want to Discriminate Against Trans Women
An Australian TERF group explicitly states their desire to discriminate against trans women.
by Mira Lazine
Daily Femail is Assigned Media’s newest column, offering real opinions delivered with a satirical tone to address last week’s biggest news stories. Written by Mira Lazine, the column aims to humorously mock right-wing tabloids while also providing quality reporting every Tuesday.
Last week, the Australian Human Rights Commission competed with the Victoria-based trans-exclusionary radical feminist Lesbian Action Group to convince the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal to rule in their respective favors based on whether it’s legal to exclude trans women from lesbian-based events. At this event, the TERF group plainly admitted to wanting to discriminate against trans people.
This case started in September of last year when LAG submitted a request to the AHRC to impose a five year exemption to the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984, a legal statute that criminalizes any attempt to discriminate on the basis of sex and related personal attributes. This was expanded in 2013 following a legislative act to amend the statute to include gender identity, intersex status, and sexual orientation. Their goal was to host events exclusive to cisgender lesbians, implicitly admitting that they’re seeking to discriminate against trans and intersex women as per the SDA.
The AHRC did not rule in their favor, concluding, “The Commission notes that the grant of this exemption may lead to the further exclusion of and discrimination against same-sex attracted transgender women. Transgender women are a group who have and continue to experience discrimination, harassment and social exclusion… The Commission does not consider it reasonable to grant a five-year exemption in such broad terms.”
The group then tried to appeal the ruling to the AHRC in October of last year. The outcome was predictably similar. TERFs really never learn anything.
The Commission is not persuaded it is appropriate and reasonable to make distinctions between women based on their biological sex at birth or transgender experience, and to exclude transgender lesbians, from a community event of this kind.
The Commission notes that if this exemption had been granted, it may have led to the further exclusion of and discrimination against transgender women who are lesbian.
Daily Femail will be the first to report the shocking revelation that TERFs aren’t the smartest bunch. The AHRC proudly advertised their support for transgender people across their website, including in profiles from individual employees.
They’ve also received scarcely any support from the public - the infamous organization that is desperate for relevancy, LGB Alliance, put out a public call for individual submissions of support on their website. What they got were 15 anonymous submissions, each comprising at most a paragraph’s worth of text. There was a separate batch of 123 submissions over on the AHRC website, but this was almost matched by those in opposition to the exemption, and dozens of LGBTQ+ organizations came out against the group as well. Worth an honorable mention is the separate incident of when Posie Parker, one of the more forgettable TERFs, was booed out of Perth while hosting an event. It’s clear that their positions are unpopular with the Australian public, and that they are just another set of tiny fringe groups.
Supporters of LAG have previously claimed that the positions adopted by the AHRC are devoid of prior context in Australian law. And yet, a case from just this year regarding a TERF social app that excluded trans women set strong legal precedent - namely, that trans women are legally women and it is unlawful to discriminate against them, especially in the context of systemic disenfranchisement. According to a set of live Tweets that TERFs made during this year’s ruling, they don’t seem to understand what the point of this ruling is.
The one thing that they do understand is their desires - stated in the Tribunal battle was their express intent, according to The Guardian. “We are seeking to discriminate,” said their lawyer on their behalf. “We’re female, and we’d like some rights, please.” At long last, they’re finally mask off - they just don’t like trans people.
Other claims made during the Tribunal mirror this. One of their expert witnesses, Sheila Jeffreys, said, “When men claim to be women, a clash of rights exists because women have existing human rights as women.” The group also said it was a “statement of fact” that they do “not believe humans can change sex”.
LAG is a group with only seven members, all of whom call back to decades past where they seem to imply trans women were barred from inclusion. They claim their views represent the entire lesbian community in Victoria - with no evidence given for this, and a quick Google search contradicting them. Even on Twitter, they acknowledge that most Gen Z lesbians are supportive of trans people - while still trying to claim many support them. The only groups they have support from are TERFs, which some would call other losers.
Of course, we can’t forget some very wise decisions from the group - namely, tweeting throughout the entire event every bit of detail with no regard for truth. Surely, this will have no repercussions for them legally if this continues. One tweet claims that the AHRC said they’re Nazis and irrelevant old women, with no evidence given for this, while another makes claims about the AHRC’s arguments, with again no evidence given. They claimed that the AHRC was adopting their rhetoric, and lamented over the TERF taglines they didn’t say. They even provided detailed live tweets of the whole event. We will remain to see if any defamation charges come from this.
We don’t know how the Tribunal will rule, as they’re not a courtroom but rather an appeals group to handle complaints with government organizations, in this case the Human Rights Commission. It’s expected that we’ll hear a decision from them by December. It is likely that regardless of their ruling, this case will escalate to the federal courts, where it’ll be decided once and for all. The battle’s not over yet, and it remains to be seen if TERFs will ever know when to quit. History, however, tends to side with the marginalized and not the bigots.
Mira Lazine is a freelance journalist covering transgender issues, politics, and science. She can be found on Twitter, Mastodon, and BlueSky, @MiraLazine