Australian Polity, Volume 9 Number 3 - Digital Version

As legislators, we know that using language
precisely is critical. Using one word rather than
another in an act of parliament can dramatically
alter the interpretation of law. When a Bill is being drafted,
there is no more important task than properly defining
key terms. That’s why when our predecessors passed
the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act 1984, they
included in the Interpretation section a clarification (in
case there was any doubt) that “woman means a member
of the female sex”.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and the definition of
woman (and man) in the Sex Discrimination Act is no more.
‘Woman’ is now a word that means, as Humpty Dumpty
said in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, just
what you choose it to mean – neither more nor less. When
I asked the Office for Women how they define a ‘woman’
for the purposes of undertaking their role, a long pause
and request for clarification was eventually followed up
with a scramble for a briefing note which revealed that
the Office for Women’s definition of woman is…”anyone
who identifies as a woman”, a circular and functionally
useless classification which nevertheless has become
the expected answer for anyone wishing to move in
respectable left-wing circles.
Perhaps even more confounding was Australia’s Chief
Statistician insisting on the veracity of the Bureau of
Statistics’ newly-published claim that biological sex can
change over the course of a human being lifetime. This
staggering (and fundamentally false) pronouncement
was made after consultation not with biologists, but
with a range of activist groups and other bureaucrats.
(To the ABS’ credit, following my questioning on this
point they did belatedly consult with experts and have
partially corrected this claim in their sex and gender
data standard).
If these were the types of outcomes that the former
Labor Government intended when they deleted the
definition of woman from the Sex Discrimination Act in
2013, then they have been wildly successful in achieving
their goals. These are just two of dozens of examples
of our public service adopting radical gender theory, a
left-wing cultural movement imported from the US and
UK which has captured bureaucracies, academia and
22 Australian Polity
the corporate world so quickly that it’s hard for anyone
to keep up with the latest outrages which are occurring
all over the world – usually at the expense of women.
Radical Gender Theory
Consider this: the definition of woman (a member of the
female sex) which was in Australia’s Sex Discrimination
Act less than a decade ago is now regarded by influential
parts of western society as nothing less than hate speech.
This is no exaggeration: the point has been proven by
feminists who paid to have billboards erected simply
read “Woman = adult, human female”, only to have them
torn down after complaints of hate speech. Women
around the world have been sacked and subjected
to disciplinary action by their employers for holding
gender critical views. I myself was the subject of a
complaint late last year, accepted by Tasmania’s Anti-
Discrimination Commissioner, of incitement, offensive
conduct and discrimination for writing that women’s
sports, changerooms and facilities were designed for
people of the female sex and should remain that way.
One of the world’s most famous feminists, Harry Potter
author J.K. Rowling, has been subjected to torrents of
vile abuse, violent threats and defamatory falsehoods
because she took issue with an article titled “Creating
a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who
menstruate”. “People who menstruate. I’m sure there
used to be a word for those people,” mused Rowling.
“Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Wommud?”
The violence and vitriol with which trans rights activists
and their supporters responded to Rowling clearly
indicates how much their goals depend on the redefinition
of the word ‘woman’ – and how they can’t afford to have
prominent women insisting that the word is not up for
grabs. There’s also an obvious element of enjoyment
and excitement which these vicious trolls get from being
given the license to abuse and threaten women while
much of the political left turn a blind eye (and in many
cases actively egg them on).
As the case of Rowling (a long-time supporter of the
UK Labour Party prior to the Corbyn era) demonstrates,
concern about the appropriation of the word ‘woman’ is
hardly a right versus left issue. The proponents of gender