What is the definition of a woman? That's the question put to Dr Brendan Murphy, who runs Australia's Department of Health.
twitter.com/ellymelly/status/1511652474259914760?s=20&t=MDLJVNa48lcZ8b85vUP0oA
Maybe, follow the science?
"Anyone can be a woman, according to Australia's top science body."
theaustralian.com.au/nation/blokes-can-be-women-scientists/news-story/66daff26b5c7a886dbb9517051c1e868
Actually, it's irrelevant that Murphy is a doc. In 2013, our parliament inserted the nebulous concept of "gender identity" into the Sex Discrimination Act, destabilising the biological reality of binary sex. Little noticed at the time, this "Queering" of the law has consequences.
Murphy's health department won "bronze" in the 2021 Australian Workplace Equality Index, which is an enterprise of ACON's inspired by the "diversity champions" scheme of the UK's Stonewall, which is chiefly a trans activist lobby these days. And now it's on the nose.
But what a model it was while it lasted! Institutions joined the queue to enact Stonewall's woke ideology while paying this lobby for the privilege. Meanwhile, tech platforms like Twitter do Queer Theory language policing -- without charge.
unherd.com/thepost/stephen-nolans-stonewall-documentary-is-unmissable/
In a familiar story of shape-shifting, Australia's ACON used to be a lobby for same-sex rights, but now it's all Queer Theory-style self-declared "gender identity", so a biological male can "identify" not only as a woman but as a lesbian. And birth sex is just a stab in the dark.
If you're a lobby trying to reinvent language like this, it makes sense to recruit institutions as helpers. Until recently, Stonewall had the BBC in its corner. ACON still has inside running. Australia's public broadcaster, "Our ABC", was ACON's "most improved" employer in 2021.
But not every journalist works for the ABC, of course, so it's noteworthy that ACON has confidence in the Australian Press Council, which handles complaints against a range of media outlets. In the UK, however, media regulator Ofcom has joined the rush to exit Stonewall's scheme.
I have history with the press council. Before I knew of any complaint against me, I predicted that the council's 2019 transgender reporting guideline -- its "advisory" status is misleading -- would make normal journalistic scrutiny of children's hospital gender clinics harder.
In 2021, I copped a partially upheld complaint. What I didn't know back in 2019 was that ACON & its Victorian counterpart Thorne Harbour Health -- both promote the gender clinic medical model -- were allowed to shape the council's trans reporting guideline during consultations.
I didn't learn this from the press council, which invoked "privacy" when refusing to tell me which organisations were invited to lobby it during 12 months of "research and community consultation" leading up to the guideline's launch.
I still don't know if the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health, a hybrid professional society & trans activist lobby, was also given the privilege of helping to shape a reporting guideline directly relevant to the gender clinic controversy.
auspath.org.au/