Binary Australia: We should never be compelled to deny reality
Michael Barnett OAM
We should never be compelled to deny reality
As the law stands, Australians are compelled to deny reality, or face severe penalities.
When Julia Gillard’s government removed sex based protections in the Sex Discrimination Act, she put us on a path of destruction that has enormous ramifications.
We now find ourselves in a dire situation where free speech, parental rights and women’s sex based rights are being erased and undermined. Children are put on irreversible pathways that cause catastrophic harm. And we risk great penalties if we oppose the lies that underpin the legislation.
The Australian has been increasingly exploring the ramifications and this article by Chris Uhlmann highlights some of the nonsense being conducted under the guise of law.
Not all change is progress. Some of it is decay. Bad ideas do damage and, to borrow from Orwell, we live in an age where restating the obvious has become a civic duty.
So here goes: there is such a thing as binary sex. It is etched in your chromosomes and biology, and you cannot change it. Human beings are male or female. A vanishingly small number are intersex. That is a biological anomaly. It is not a third sex. We also use the words man and woman. That is gender. You can legally change your gender. If you wish to do so, good luck to you. No one should discriminate against you. But your rights are not the only rights, and when identity collides with reality in a plural society, compromise is unavoidable. As a general rule, the vast majority should not be forced to make profound changes to customs, laws and language to accommodate a tiny minority.
The legal right to change gender should not compel others to deny the reality of sex, because it is the definition of tyranny that you demand I sign up to a fantasy. Conceding that gender can be changed with nothing more than a form and a fee is a big enough leap. Conceding that sex is fluid is an assault on reason.
But the obvious is now being obscured. The concession to change the law on gender now leads to a demand to deny science. The activist playbook never changes: assert, extend, sanctify, silence. Sentiment overrules reason, and those who insist on fidelity to the truth are traduced. Who could have imagined that the ordinary meaning of male and female would one day be put on trial, and that the very body created to defend women’s rights would argue that “female” is essentially meaningless?
But that is exactly where we are. The lies and deception of gender ideology means Sall Grover, Lyle Shelton, myself and others have to face years in court, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, to state the bleeding obvious – no one can change sex and it is cruel to enforce the lie they can.
Ridiculous laws have rendered the words ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ meaningless. This is dangerous and results in the erasure of hard fought and won protections for women and girls. The Sex Discrimination Commissioner cannot define her own portfolio. Anna Cody has no simple definition for “sex” or “woman.” How ludicrous that an Office for Women can exist that includes men.
In dissolving the boundary between sex and gender, the commissioner is engaging in institutional betrayal. The office created to defend women now seeks to erase them. If the word “female” can be colonised by biological males, the law cannot protect women as women and every protection won over generations collapses. Even the experience of pregnancy and childbirth will be claimed by those who can never endure it. In the end, women lose not only their rights but their recognition. They will be pushed into a legal limbo, where their very existence as a class is denied.
The most insidious part of the commissioner’s argument is that it acts to silence women who dare to dissent. Women’s organisations already face orchestrated pressure to change their language and practice to accommodate aggressive activists. If sex is stripped of its biological anchor in law, on what grounds could any male who declares himself female be denied entry to real or virtual single-sex spaces?
Does the commissioner truly believe that in a world where any man can change gender by nomination alone, predatory men will not exploit that licence to prey on women?
The reality is, there are already countless examples of males taking advantage of these laws to the detriment of us all. This mess needs cleaning up before even more catastrophic harm is done in the name of gender ideology.
Image source: The Australian. Veteran political editor Chris Uhlmann joins Sky News Australia.