The Saturday Paper: Exclusive: Sex discrimination commissioner ‘inundated’ with threats of harm
Michael Barnett OAM
News
Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody describes a wave of hate and calls for her resignation fuelled by the Murdoch press in response to her advocacy for transgender rights. By Karen Barlow.
Exclusive: Sex discrimination commissioner ‘inundated’ with threats of harm
Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody.Anna Cody says she won’t be silenced in her advocacy for the trans community by a “one-sided” campaign conducted in the conservative media and online, which she insists harms all women.
In an interview with The Saturday Paper, the federal sex discrimination commissioner reveals a surge in online criticism and threats against her since she marked two years in the job with a late-September National Press Club speech on gender equality. That address, and her later evidence at Senate estimates, she says, has been cherrypicked by conservative TV, radio and print and spread on social media in a way that “weaponises” an anti-women agenda.
Since her two public addresses, Cody says the media and social media attention “has driven both direct emails – a large number of emails – as well as threats”.
While the commissioner says people have thanked her for her advocacy, “I have been inundated both with threats of harm as well as calls to resign”.
“There is a real harm for those who stand up and advocate in these issues, as well as the community itself. That is a real harm to our society if we can’t have these discussions in constructive ways and listen to each other.”
The anonymous threats have been referred to the Australian Federal Police and Cody has curbed her online presence, although she continues to post about LGBTQIA+ equality.
An AFP spokesperson has confirmed to The Saturday Paper that a report of a crime has been received, but no further comment will be made at this time.
Cody’s role at the Australian Human Rights Commission is as an advocate in the area of sex discrimination as well as LGBTQIA+ equality.
The commissioner declines to single out media organisations and individual groups, but in describing the “great diversity” among women that includes trans women and people who are non-binary, Cody refused to embrace the term “biological male” and became the focus of negative stories on Sky News and in the News Corp press. Short, often edited video clips have since spread on social media.
Many feature portions of Cody’s evidence to the legal and constitutional affairs hearings at Senate estimates on October 7. Questions came from conservative Liberal senator Claire Chandler – a campaigner in parliament for “sex-based” rights – and One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts on what it means to be a man or a woman.
When asked by Chandler, “did you mean biological males can be women?” Cody responds, “I think we have different language that perhaps you are using than I would use. So, I don’t understand the term biological men.”
Sky News ran a video interview on its website with the deputy executive director of the conservative think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, Daniel Wild, entitled, “ ‘We’re governed by morons’: Sex Discrimination Commissioner’s ‘radical gender ideology’ ”.
The Australian newspaper has run a series of op-eds targeting the Human Rights Commission and Cody for their roles in upholding “gender ideology”.
Cody’s evidence to parliament has also been portrayed in the tabloid publication Daily Mail Australia as her “defending” paedophiles. Chandler asked the commissioner about a Victorian case in which a paedophile was housed in a women’s prison. “For the purposes of the Sex Discrimination Act, do you consider that this man, who is a child sex offender, is a woman?”
The commissioner stuck to the Australian legal definition. “The Sex Discrimination Act includes trans women within it. The person I believe you’re referring to is a trans woman,” Cody said.
The commissioner tells The Saturday Paper, “The full quote of what I said has not been quoted in the traditional media that have covered it, nor in the social media clips.
“Ultimately the aim is to sell a paper, to sell a television show, to sell advertising on social media sites,” she says, and as a result, the coverage “simplifies the message”.
“I don’t think that that’s helpful in terms of the long-term connection and connectedness within society and ability for everyone to thrive and to have their human rights respected.”
The commissioner says she has been surprised by the vitriol and by the “lack of ability to really engage constructively or listen” to the issues. She has invited the public to watch her full appearances.
Those appearances coincided with a targeted campaign by Women’s Forum Australia against trans women being placed in women’s prisons. The group has been lobbying the prime minister and state and territory leaders. Last week, Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro signed on with a new rule that inmates would be housed in prison according to sex assigned at birth. No other jurisdiction has yet followed suit.
“There is a rise in that more conservative agenda, and it has used the anti-trans ideology to drive that. I am concerned, both for all women and also for the trans community.”The campaign and associated media coverage has highlighted isolated cases of prison assault here and overseas that Cody says leans into a “trope … that trans women are violent”.
“I haven’t seen any evidence to support that, and in fact the evidence I’ve seen is that they’re more likely to be victims of violence,” she says.
A 2024 study by UNSW Sydney on national experiences of sexual violence found that more than three quarters of LGBTIQA+SB respondents – that is, including First Nations sistergirls and brotherboys – reported experiencing sexual victimisation at some point in their lives. It also found more than half experienced both child sexual abuse and adult sexual assault.
“That being said, we know that there are people who commit offences, and particularly sex offences, which are of deep concern,” says Cody. “We’d need to make sure that everyone is kept safe in that environment, both the trans woman who has committed an offence as well as any other women with whom she’s in prison.”
Cody’s position on trans prisoners is that “generally, women would be housed in women’s prisons unless there are reasons why that shouldn’t happen”. She regards the corrective services department in each jurisdiction as best placed to understand the merits of individual cases, including the history of the person involved.
This is not the only issue affecting the lives of transgender Australians that is attracting debate.
In Queensland, the Liberal National Party government has banned new trans patients under the age of 18 from accessing hormone therapies known as puberty blockers in the state’s public health system.
The mother of a transgender teenager is challenging the action in the Supreme Court.
As commissioner, Cody also recently intervened in the long-running court case known as “Tickle versus Giggle”, where trans woman Roxanne Tickle is contesting her exclusion from the women-only Giggle for Girls app. Tickle won in August 2024 and the creator of the app, Sall Grover, is appealing the decision in the Federal Court.
Cody says she was “helping the court to understand the interpretation of the Sex Discrimination Act” as well as the application of the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Grover is among the critics calling for the commissioner to resign.
Cody says there has always been a pushback against women asserting their rights and freedom, but she says the re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has emboldened anti-women views and unleashed a concerted anti-trans movement. “There is a rise in that more conservative agenda, and it has used the anti-trans ideology to drive that,” Cody says.
“I am concerned, both for all women and also for the trans community.”
She sees a “weaponising” of anti-women sentiment in concert with an anti-trans agenda, rather than a recognition that all women and people in the trans community “are vulnerable to laws which restrict their bodily autonomy”.
Using the term “cis” for gender identity that corresponds to sex assigned at birth, Cody says: “For cis women, it’s around abortion, access to healthcare that enables them to have full reproductive freedom, and for trans, it is around access to gender-affirming care.”
Hateful rhetoric online, she says, has real-world consequences.
“It both harms cis women … who don’t fit some of those norms of how they believe cis women look,” the commissioner says. “It also harms trans people, and we know that they are already facing huge online hate.”
This is not the first time a commissioner or a president of the Human Rights Commission has become a political target. During her term from 2012-2017, then president Gillian Triggs was criticised by both the Labor and Coalition governments over her condemnation of Australia’s immigration detention system, particularly her advocacy for children in detention. Her independence was particularly undermined by the Coalition towards the end of her tenure, and she was mocked in newspapers.
Cody says she is just doing her job to advocate for people who have the least power or who have been excluded from decision-making. She also recognises the additional risk women often face in fulfilling this role.
“We know that women politicians often receive more online threats as well as criticism of their work, and when we think back to Julia Gillard or any person who has advocated, then we know that that is more likely to happen for women, and that’s a real problem for our society because we need those perspectives.”
Asked if she is concerned that she may further fuel the anti-women debate by speaking about it and the personal threats, Cody says her job is her priority.
“I’m hoping to contribute to a discussion around the complementarity of women’s rights and trans rights and understanding gender so that we can all create a society in which we can all be included and can participate fully and be respected and be safe.”
She says she is far from alone in her advocacy, with other leaders quietly supporting gender diversity.
“They’re doing it in their daily way of how they include trans women, for example, in women’s healthcare,” the commissioner says. “They are doing it in the way in which they shape policies for inclusion of women in education or in being able to ensure that people use the pronouns that they identify with.
“I think actually lots of people are doing it. That day-in, day-out inclusion of people does happen at schools, in workplaces, and most people aren’t fussed by it. They accept it.
“It’s 1 per cent of the population who are transgender, and yet many of us do have friends, family, colleagues who are either non-binary or who identify as trans.”
As part of her advocacy, Cody is reaching out to critics, and she already sees good support.
“We hope to have conversations with those who have different views to us,” she says. “In all of my advocacy, in all of the meetings, the consultations that I’ve spent the last year and a half doing, what I’ve heard over and over again is … the connection between women’s struggle, including trans women’s struggle … as well as the need to ensure all women’s safety,” the commissioner says.
“The women’s organisations are supportive of trans communities.”
As for media organisations and tech giants, she expresses a need to ensure all people are safe, no matter how well division rates with audiences.
“We’re seeing a very one-sided portrayal of issues that do not try to grapple with the depth or the complexity of issues but rather seek to polarise people’s views and not to further people’s understanding,” she says.
“With the huge power that they now have, they also have a responsibility. And they also have some legal responsibilities to ensure that they don’t inflame further divisions, as we can see, that are harmful to the overall fabric of our society.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 25, 2025 as "Exclusive: Sex discrimination commissioner ‘inundated’ with threats of harm".