How the Public is Kept Ignorant and Fearful in the Transgender Debate

FAILING to affirm a person’s chosen gender is now illegal in Victoria.

If you attempt to dissuade someone from changing gender you can face up to 10 years in jail and/or a $200,000 fine. Organisations can be fined up to $1m.

The laws are part of the Daniel Andrews Government’s Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021.

The Victoria government argued the Act was necessary to prevent barbaric and harmful practices used to try to help gay people go straight.

The argument relied on historical examples of abuses such as electric shock therapy, and wild stories about attempted exorcisms.

That there has not been a single case since - oh I don’t know - forever of anyone using electrodes to try to shock a gay person into heterosexuality was not considered relevant.

Neither was it considered relevant that anyone physically abusing a gay person in an attempt to change their sexual orientation could be easily dealt with under existing laws.

New legislation was required, the government argued. And the new legislation went much further than banning physically abusive practices.

The Change or Suppression Act bans people from any praying any prayer or offering any advice that might be seen as encouraging someone not to be homosexual. And it applies the same prohibitions on trying to talk someone out of changing their gender identity.

The new laws place health workers, pastors, teachers and caregivers at risk of breaking the law for giving advice that, five minutes ago, would have been considered normal.

A prayer asking God to help a person resist homosexual urges or to no longer feel like they are in the wrong body would be illegal, even if the person being prayed for requested the prayer.

Crazily, the new laws make it risky for parents not to affirm their child’s chosen gender identity.

“Look son, I’ve known you since you were born. And I love you more than anyone in the world. You’re not a girl. I think you’re just a bit confused right now. And that’s okay. Why don’t you just wait a few years and see how you’re feeling before you go taking puberty blockers and chopping off your dick.”

That conversation would now run the risk of being deemed a criminal offence.

The laws also make it illegal for parents to try to stop their children from taking puberty blockers - experimental hormone treatments that recent studies have revealed may cause a myriad of problems including infertility, organ failure, arrested cognitive development, and osteoporosis.

Earlier this month the Daily Mail reported that some psychologists and therapists had decided it was now too risky to treat minors for fear they might run afoul of the new laws.

This was devastating for parents and for children since many of the children struggling with gender dysphoria were also battling mental health co-morbidities that required professional help.

It is no coincidence that these laws - the harshest in the world when it comes to protecting gender identity - have been passed in Victoria.

Victoria is home to Australia’s largest children’s gender clinic – the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne Gender Service.

The hospital, overseen by Dr Michelle Telfer, asserts that “being transgender or gender diverse is part of the natural spectrum of human diversity”.

Sure. It’s so natural the hospital offers to pump your child full of drugs to suppress the natural development of secondary sex characteristics.

The hospital offers treatment even for children under the age of eight.

In 2021, Dr Telfer told the ABC’s Australian Story about one of the first children she treated for gender dysphoria, a girl.

“I can help this child have a boys’s body. And how many people can do that?” she said.

The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne Gender Service is similar to the now discredited Tavistock Clinic in the UK which was sensationally shut down after a review found the clinic was failing children.

The Cass review, performed by Dr. Hilary Cass, found that mental health concerns were being overshadowed and going untreated because the clinic followed a strict gender identity affirming treatment model.

In other words, the clinic is alleged to have pushed children into so-called gender identity affirming treatment. Which is to say the clinic pushed patients into taking puberty blocking drugs and hormone treatment, as well as having life altering surgery.

Dr Cass noted the lack of evidence supporting the use of puberty blocking drugs.

“We cannot be sure about the impact of stopping these hormone surges on psychosexual and gender maturation. To date, there has been very limited research on the short, medium or longer-term impact of puberty blockers on neurocognitive development.”

The review even suggested that there was research to suggest puberty blockers may affect brain development.

There are now 1000 British families preparing to sue the Tavistock clinic for alleged harm to their children.

If you haven’t heard about Tavistock, it’s because the ABC along with most of the mainstream media have kept it from you.

The ABC has been completely silent on the Tavistock revelations.

When asked about the news blackout of anything to do with Tavistock, a senior staff member at the ABC’s Radio National said …

“I don’t see why (we have) failed by not covering the news that a London clinic treating young people with gender dysphoria has closed down. I’d rather hear about what’s happening here, rather than a clinic on the other side of the world! I fail to see the newsworthiness for an Australian audience for this story.”

Really?

A a few months ago the ABC ran a story headlined: “What Russia’s invasion means for LGBTQI people in Ukraine.”

Just a few weeks ago the ABC ran a story headlined: “LGBTQ Ukrainian soldiers take to wearing unicorn patch on uniforms.”

So these ‘gays in Ukraine’ stories were newsworthy for an Australian audience but the Tavistock stories were not?

But the ABC’s silence is even stranger when you remember that the Melbourne gender clinic is, to some extent, modelled on Tavistock

The answer may have something to do with the ABC having signed up to the ACON Pride Inclusion program.

ACON, established in 1985, promotes inclusion for “diverse sexualities and genders” by challenging government departments, corporations, banks, law firms, universities and media organisations to become allies.

Modelled on Stonewall’s Diversity Champions Workplace Equality index, organisations are benchmarked against other organisations by earning points on ACON’s Australian Workplace Equality Index.

They agree to promote and report favourably on trans and gender identity issues, but are penalised with loss of points for reporting critically. 

SBS is also signed up to the ACON Pride in Diversity Scheme.

The result is the Australian public is largely prevented from hearing through mainstream media about the growing scandal surrounding gender identity treatment. This leaves Australian parents ignorant of what is happening around the world and ill equipped to help their confused children.

This is not a question of news judgement on the part of the ABC. It’s a question of ideological bent.

Shame on the national broadcaster for behaving as activists rather than as reporters, and for censoring the news in order to safeguard their preferred narrative, caring little their obligation to inform Australians and much less for the cost to children and families.

And now, thanks to the Victorian Labor Government and an enfeebled Liberal opposition, parents are also living in fear of criminal penalties if they refuse to agree to their child being pharmaceutically “affirmed”.