We live in a period of human history where the thoughtful and the intelligent must stay silent for fear of offending the fragile and the stupid.
This was written by an anonymous supporter of Sall Grover.
That name won’t be familiar to most New Zealanders because, most of the media here, like most in Australia, have not been reporting on last month’s court case:
The most radical restrictions on the rights of Australian women in more than a decade – and the most profound changes to the legal definition of ‘men’ and ‘women’ – have been proposed in the Federal Court this week.
It’s hardly surprising that the landmark Tickle v Giggle battle for female-only spaces has caught the attention of the rest of the world, including author and women’s rights crusader J.K. Rowling, who this week alerted her 14 million followers on social media.
But if you read the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age, or watch or listen to the ABC, you’d never know it.
Some of the case against Sall was so extraordinary that it would be funny if it were not so serious.
This week the full bench of the court hearing the appeal has been asked to rule not only that “sex” is non-binary, but that the distinction between men and women has all but disappeared. Lawyers for Equality Australia, which claims to represent gay and trans people, have proposed that sex is simply “a way of classifying people along a scale between a man at one end and a woman at the other”.
“As a matter of ordinary meaning, the statute is agnostic as to where persons are plotted along that scale,” barrister Ruth Higgins added unhelpfully. . .
How on earth can the law reinterpret, redefine and by doing so deny, biological reality?
No matter what your view of its merits, the idea that sex is a continuum between men and women is a radical interpretation even of the confused 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act. But the proposition was apparently supported – and certainly not challenged – by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, who also insisted to the court that sex was non-binary, and that a trans woman – a biological man – cannot be excluded from a female-only space. . .
What caught J.K. Rowling’s attention this week was a story in The Australian revealing that Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody had declared trans women should be able to access legal protections available to “pregnant or potentially pregnant women.” Unsurprisingly, she made no attempt to explain how this was biologically possible and by the hearing’s end we were still none the wiser.
A commissioner who declared that earth was flat, that the moon was made of cheese or that money grows on trees would be laughed out of his or her job.
But such absurdities as men can become women and then require the legal protections available to pregnant or potentially pregnant women, have become protected statements.
The reality that sex is binary; that no matter how people alter their appearance or dress; and that with or without medical and surgical manipulation it is immutable, is regarded as not just unkind but potentially unlawful.
The absurdity of many of the propositions put by the Tickle camp may eventually prove self-defeating. But not if they escape scrutiny by a vigilant media.
But too much of the media is not only not vigilant, it actively promotes radical trans ideology.
That includes repeating the nonsense that those standing up for biological reality and women’s rights are trying to erase trans people and endangering their lives.
People are free to reject gender norms in clothing, makeup, and hair; they can undergo surgery and take medication to change their appearance; but nothing they do can change their sex.
Stating that is not erasure, it’s not endangering, it’s not bigotry. It’s a biological fact.
Some people don’t accept that science and believe that sex is a spectrum, that it can be changed and that those who adopt social expressions of the opposite gender, change their sex.
They have a right to their beliefs, just as people have a right to different religious beliefs but they cannot force others to believe what they believe any more than we can be forced to accept someone else’s religious dogma.
That should not be contentious, but it the Law Commission’s recommendations in its submission to government IA Tangata are adopted it will not just be contentious, it will impose the radical trans activists’ beliefs on us all.
The report was presented to Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith last week. The government has 120 days to respond, if it doesn’t accept the recommendations.
All of us who stand up for biological reality, scientific fact and for women’s rights to dignity, fairness and safety must ensure the government does not accept them.
We must not stay silent for fear of offending the fragile, the stupid or those who want to impose their beliefs on others.
Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
2 comments:
Next, someone should convince the law commission that humans can fly, by flapping their arms, so we can self identify as birds. Then we should make the law commission climb to the highest cliff or rooftop and prove that premise. Gravity would provide the real answer in an instant.
Ele, great piece thanks. A lot of us are now no longer silent. We don't really care if the stupid get offended. We need more people to wake up to the lunatics and to treat them as such. They would disappear once they realise their stupidity.
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