Senseless

The welfare of distressed children calls for thought, not thuggery

Alexandra*

Across the Western world, there is a debate between people who believe biological sex matters and those who think it is not significant. In [the Australian state of] Victoria, stating the former is dangerous, and I am a casualty of this.

I attended the [Melbourne] Let Women Speak event in March, and I left badly concussed after three trans rights activists stormed the stage. A brawl was sparked by this intrusion as they fought with security and attendees. I was not involved in this, but as a bystander, I was knocked to the ground, and my head struck the pavement.

I was unresponsive for ten minutes, drifted in and out of consciousness for half an hour, and I had to be carried from the scene. An ambulance was called, and I was later assessed at hospital. The impact of this injury has been profound. The pain and the effect on my cognition was horrible. Recovery took a matter of months.

In the weeks afterwards, I struggled to do many normal things, finding it difficult to form words and sentences at times, forgetting how to do and remember simple things. Concussions can be quite serious, and the trauma has been regrettable but preventable. I accept my injury was not likely intended by those activists.

However, had they simply let women speak, it would never have occurred. Our gathering was completely peaceful. Their muscling into our event is what made it a dangerous place to be, and they intentionally created a hostile, volatile situation in an enclosed space. Some activists protested our event peacefully, and those I have no problem with; they have their freedom of speech, and I should have mine too. Protesting non-violently is more than possible, and no one is entitled to use violence to get what they want.

These activists who caused me an easily preventable injury are not the representation most trans people deserve. However, the problem is not merely a few activists. In the days, weeks and months after the rally, as I slowly recovered from my injury, the media smeared us who attended as Nazi sympathisers [because a group of male gatecrashers had given a Nazi salute]. Politicians mindlessly followed suit. Those who looked after me were derided for “not leaving when the Nazis showed up” as if they should have left me unconscious. We were blamed for the actions of men who had nothing to do with us.

My frazzled, concussed mind could not make sense of my premier Daniel Andrews [of Victoria’s governing Labor Party] venerating those who caused my injury and calling me “ugly, hateful and evil” because I attended this rally. Talk about adding insult to injury. The Prime Minister [of Australia, Labor’s Anthony Albanese] asked, “Why would you even go to an anti-trans rally?”

I reject his characterisation of it, but I can only share my reason for going, which is that I am concerned about the medical transitioning of minors. Medical transition permanently alters the bodies of children in ways that roll the dice of regret and health complications. We do not allow children to be tattooed, yet we in Australia chemically block the puberty of children, administer opposite-sex hormones to teenagers and amputate the breasts of minors.

Can anyone honestly consider that concern to be bigoted? Wanting to give children the chance to reconcile themselves with their bodies and accept themselves as they are is not hateful. Permanently changing and operating on children who hate their bodies is, yet it is dangerous to say this.

The Victorian [Opposition] Liberal Party expelled Moira Deeming [a member of the state’s Legislative Council involved in the Let Women Speak event] because instead of demonstrating leadership, [the Liberals’] John Pesutto gave a masterclass in followship, eating up the media’s farcical logic of guilt by physical proximity. To expel a woman because she spoke to a woman who spoke to a man who spoke to a white supremacist is a deranged witch-hunt.

Not ten years ago was it completely uncontroversial to say that biological sex cannot be changed or rendered irrelevant, yet women are now expelled from parties for saying this. Politicians virtue signal about wanting more women but have contempt for women with their own minds. No politician like this is pro-women.

Because of this lazy, slanderous conflation of us with Nazis, I felt I couldn’t tell friends and family about my injury because I first had to explain that I’m not a Nazi. Nazism is one of the most evil ideologies the world has ever seen, and smearing us as something we are self-evidently not is a deliberate tactic to bully us into silence.

Instead of engaging in dialogue to change hearts and minds, it is thought that progress can be wrested from decrees of silence. For breaking that silence, I paid a heavy price, yet I was lucky. People can die or sustain horrific brain damage from injuries like that. Many older women were in attendance, and such a severe blow to the head could have wrought unspeakable damage.

I did not want to speak publicly about this ugly incident in my life, but I felt compelled to on the basis that it should not happen to anyone else of any political persuasion. I am imploring activists, politicians and the media to take the heat out of this debate, because our society is not free if serious injury is the consequence of political disagreement, and I refuse to believe that I am acceptable collateral damage in this war.

*This is the speech delivered earlier today by Alexandra, who for privacy used her first name only, at the Why Can’t Women Speak About Sex? forum hosted by Moira Deeming MP in Victoria’s Parliament House. Alexandra took part in the March 18 Let Women Speak event on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne. Victoria Police allowed a group of men to gatecrash the event and those men performed a Nazi salute. Victoria’s then Labor premier, Daniel Andrews, and the Opposition Liberal Leader, John Pesutto, deflected attention from the women’s cause—the defence of sex-based rights and protection of children—by insinuating they were somehow tainted by association with the uninvited neo-Nazis. The Labor government funds the gender clinic at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, which pioneered “gender-affirming” medicalisation of gender non-conforming minors in Australia.