Quadrant Online 3 October 2019

Family First Comment: The Human Rights Commission in Australia 🇦🇺 is as messed up as New Zealand’s 🇳🇿 …

“By including natal males transgendered to females they will remove protection of the “safe space” of female sport through participation of people whose nature-endowed strengths will belie any psychological claim for parity—even in children. By including natal males in dressing rooms of their choice, they will threaten the “safe space” of female privacy.”

The ideology of gender fluidity, in which the binary reality of male and female is not fixed, may secure its greatest victory thus far by the release of Guidelines for the Inclusion of Transgender and Gender Diverse People in Sport by the Australian Human Rights Commission in partnership with the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports (COMPPS) and Sport Australia[1]. COMPPS comprises the Australian Football League, Cricket Australia, Football Federation Australia, National Rugby League, Netball Australia, Rugby Australia and Tennis Australia, in which it declares more than “9 million people participate … through 16,000 clubs”[2]. The victory will lie in the imposition of the ideology and some of the practices of gender fluidity on almost a third of the Australian population.

Euphemistically, in its letter of endorsement, COMPPS proclaims the Guidelines “provide a significant opportunity for all of those involved in Australian sports … from grassroots participants and clubs to governing bodies … to reflect on how they can facilitate diversity and inclusion”. But, from the very introduction to the Guidelines, it is clear the “opportunity for reflection” really means “time to prepare for obedience” to the dictates of the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act which, though intended in 1984 to protect biological females, was amended in 2013 to include the gender-diverse. In sport, the amendments will discriminate against the sex they were meant to protect.

The so-called Safe Schools Programs proclaimed the ideology of gender fluidity to children in schools under the camouflage of anti-bullying. Under the banner of anti-discrimination, its beliefs and doctrines will be imposed by legal force on all the mums and dads, and their children, and all the teachers, officials, volunteers and workers responsible for the running of sporting competitions across the nation. By including natal males transgendered to females they will remove protection of the “safe space” of female sport through participation of people whose nature-endowed strengths will belie any psychological claim for parity—even in children. By including natal males in dressing rooms of their choice, they will threaten the “safe space” of female privacy.

As we know it, women’s sport is a recent phenomenon. It was only in 1900 that a few women participated in the Olympic Games[3]. In the 1928 Games, their number had increased to 2.2 per cent of participants and, by 2016, to 45 per cent. This emancipation from male-dominated culture has been rightly welcomed and it is hard to comprehend that society could, one way or another, submit to the return of male domination, if not by boys and men in trousers, by natal males in leotards.

Dr John Whitehall is Professor of Paediatrics at a Sydney university. He has written several articles for Quadrant on childhood gender dysphoria.

READ MORE: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/09/guidelines-for-the-destruction-of-female-sport/

