Two powerful letters sent to the Australian Human Rights Commission in August 2023 demonstrate clear, grassroots support for the Lesbian Action Group’s right to female-only events. Both the Queensland Women’s Action Alliance (QWAA) and the Western Australian Women’s Action Alliance (WAWAA) wrote in strong, principled defence of lesbian women’s right to assemble as a group, free from the obligation to include males.
The QWAA letter leaves no doubt about the stakes:
Including males in lesbian groups effectively eliminates lesbian groups in Australia, a country that prides itself on fairness and non-discrimination.’ The letter emphasises not only the obvious need for lesbians to meet among their peers, but also the plain, dictionary definition of a lesbian as ‘a woman, an adult human female, who is exclusively attracted to other women’
WAWAA’s letter widens the lens: it highlights how lesbians, as women and as homosexuals, face ‘double discrimination’ and sit at the intersection of sexism and homophobia. For them, the right to single-sex lesbian organising is self-evident, and its denial a lingering symptom of a society where ‘female interests remain subordinated to male interests and that of broader society’. WAWAA points out the hypocrisy of governments that endorse ‘diversity and inclusion’ across countless communities yet continue to block female-only lesbian events.
Both groups call on the Human Rights Commission to provide the exemption necessary for female-only events and explicitly frame this as an issue of genuine diversity, inclusion, and female self-determination. As these letters remind us, safeguarding the right of lesbians to meet, organise, and build community—on their terms—is foundational to justice and equality for women.
Read both letters, below.
