AAWAA has supported an application by the Lesbian Action Group (LAG) to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) for an exemption under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 to conduct ‘Lesbians Born Female’-only events, including to celebrate International Lesbian Day.
We believe that an exemption is necessary to ensure the safety and security of this group given the hostility manifest in some quarters towards lesbians. Lesbians face intense psychological harassment on social media as well as threats to their physical safety. As the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women makes clear, violence and the threat of violence is an especially pernicious form of discrimination as it undermines women’s ability to enjoy our rights and freedoms on the basis of equality.
We further believe that the granting of an exemption allowing this group to hold lesbian-born-female-only events will have no practical effect on males who identify as LGBTQ as there already exists a plethora of other event and advocacy opportunities (many of which receive extensive public funding) for them.
Moreover, AAWAA is an interested party in this application. AAWAA is an affiliation of voluntary bodies of women brought together to advocate for women and girls on the basis of our shared conviction – informed by evidence-based science – that women (i.e., ‘female-born’, ‘biological’ women) must work together to address the causes (including those rooted in human biology) of women’s oppression. We have a keen interest therefore in seeing the rights of Australian women to freely associate and express their opinions upheld. This is especially important in light of claims – including on the part of some political parties – that even the mere assertion of the immutability of sex is ‘harmful’ and should be prohibited. Indeed, the denial of an exemption to LAG would also set back a fundamental aim of our organisations, that is, to support and advocate for young women and girls impacted by gender medicine.
AAWAA also holds that the Australian Parliament did not intend its 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act – which prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender identity – to lessen the pre-existing rights that women enjoyed to freedom of expression and association as well as to safety and dignity where we are vulnerable because of our sex. On the contrary, the exemptions that were carved out in the amended Act – for example in relation to fitting room attendants – privilege sex over gender identity “to preserve decency and privacy” in relation to sex.
AAWAA looks to the AHRC to review state- and territory-based laws to identify where these laws conflict with the obligations of the Commonwealth to prohibit discrimination against women, including to uphold our rights to freedom of expression and association and to ensure the dignity and safety of women and girls in establishments such as prisons, rape crisis centres, hospitals, and in other single-sex facilities.
Read our full submission, below.
