QWAA brings to you ‘Local Action’ a monthly report on the brave feminist actions by women across Australia. Local Action this week is with Mel Day. Mel Day is a teacher who also works in the fields of sociology and counselling. In 2018-2020 she underwent treatment for aggressive stage 3 breast cancer. Mel discovered that this medical treatment is very similar to the treatment that women identifying as trans experience. When Mel was treated for stage three invasive breast cancer, she lost both of her breasts and was given a radical hysterectomy and hormone blockers. The consequences of this life saving cancer treatment has left her with irreversible physical damage and constant pain. We talk to Mel about her life and journey over the last few years and why she is now so passionate about educating teenage girls and women about the dangers of transgenderism and the pervasive nature of the trans ideology in schools.
Are you a feminist? Have you always fought for women’s rights?
I consider myself a feminist and a humanist. I was raised in the church, but I didn’t like how many churches seem to advocate that men are the head of the household and that women aren’t treated equally. I was always asking questions and wasn’t someone who was satisfied with believing things just because I was told to and so in my late teens and early 20s, I moved away from being involved in churches.
As such, I have always been someone who has questioned the values of communities that I see around me and I was drawn to feminism. When I went to university, initially, I studied feminism and sociology, the history of feminism and modern feminism.
While studying sociology I began to constantly look at the context and the constructs of things. Then I met a man who said all the right things and sounded like the perfect man for a feminist to marry, but once we were married all equality was lost. To my utter dismay I found that I was married to a man that didn’t help me around the house, like he promised he would, and I was left to do all the cooking and cleaning and taking care of the children; while he played computer games as soon as he came home from work and all weekend. I remember feeling so angry, just so angry, this was not the life I signed up for or how I wanted to live! Here I was — a feminist stuck in this situation.
How long have you been teaching for?
I have been a teacher for ten years. After I did my first degree in sociology and psychology, I completed a grad dip in teaching as I really felt that teaching was my calling. But there is a lot going on in education now that I completely disagree with. I try to be my authentic self and support children to value themselves, yet I find I’m increasingly working within an institution that makes young people feel that they aren’t enough, that there is something wrong with their body and that they should try to be someone else.
Do you instil any feminism in your students when you teach?
Absolutely. Recently, I asked my class what they wanted to watch, as we’d finished our assessments, and I was letting my class have a chilled kind of lesson. One of the boys said, “Pornhub!”
I said, “Excuse me! That is so disrespectful,” and I explained to him and all the students how it hurts women and girls to hear boys talk like that and how that industry objectifies women, and the boy who had called that out apologised. I am always trying to make them think more about the consequences of their actions, comments, etc.
Women who are gender critical have come together from a range of background to face this issue head on. How would you describe yourself?
I am, or was, a left-wing Greenie. In fact, I was a candidate for the Greens a few years ago. But now I honestly feel quite politically homeless. There are things about feminism that I still absolutely agree with, but I really feel that some branches of feminism have not been the best. At times, I think that now I would call myself more of a humanist rather than a feminist. I have always been a first wave feminist, I think second wave feminism has at times, not been as liberating as we were led to believe. And I don’t like how third wave feminism embraces queer theory, such as transgenderism as it is not kind, not actually a branch of feminism or humanism and not at all respectful. I think it is the worst thing and a complete step backwards from all the hard work that first wave feminists were standing for.
Second wave feminism encourages women to be more sexually promiscuous, which was great at the time but now women are more objectified and ‘sex work is work’ …
Yes! There are many men who are lovely, kind, and respectful and are good role models to the next generation. And yet there is also still a culture of disrespect and objectification of women. Men who are using porn and seeing prostituted women, such men see women as a commodity to be bought and sold. They can’t be good men, or good male role models. How normalised such behaviour still unfortunately still plays out classrooms. Obviously, because of what students can watch at home and on the internet. For example, I often hear male students mimic the sounds people make during sex, while I am in classroom teaching. It is beyond disrespectful to myself as the teacher and to their female peers, and yet they seem completely unaware of, or take accountability for this disrespect when I reprimand them on their behaviour. I can’t help but worry about, how accessible pornography is out there and the dangers to their young minds having unlimited access to smart phones and the internet.
They do say children these days have their first experience with pornography at the age of 8. That wasn’t the case in previous generations, was it?
I remember looking up words like ‘sex’ in the dictionary at that age! But children, when at that age when they are curious about what ‘sex’ means, might type that word into their computer and would now see the most intimate and confronting images instantly online.
What do you think went wrong with feminism?
In second wave feminism we fought for equality with men in the work force and reproductive freedom, but so much of this reproductive freedom and equality in the work force didn’t improve women’s positions. Women still often find themselves doing most of the housework and taking on reproductive precautions that no doubt impacted their physical and emotional wellbeing. Women have the most complicated endocrine system and yet are so often forced to take either synthetic hormones or have invasive surgeries as forms of contraception.
I really feel that our men need to be held far more accountable for their actions. This could be achieved through shifts in science and health education in schools’ curriculum and improving the tokenistic sex education that is provided in schools. Both sexes understanding how truly special their bodies are, and the cycle and system of how their bodies reproduce. We need improvements on a grassroots level and as a community we need to teach our boys to truly value not just their own bodies but everyone else’s. Supporting greater communication around boundaries and couples communicating and tracking fertility. And men understanding that sex is a gift given with great trust, not a given or a right when you like someone or want release. Men too must always be taught to anticipate the consequences and implications for sex and take responsibility for their behaviours. In terms of science, I’m surprised that there aren’t male contraceptive pills or reversable vasectomies given to men as an option for contraception. It seems so unfair to me that women carry the burden of reproduction when many men don’t even think about their actions, yet they are the ones who are fertile all the time and at times seem so callous and dismissive of the pregnancies they’ve created.
I think that if it became more common place for men to take that responsibility and greater ownership of the part that they play in fertility; women’s bodies wouldn’t be seen so often as commodities. While ever products are sold using scantily clad women, women will be objectified, fetishised, raped and undervalued.
As I mentioned women still carry the burden of the house and the children. At least this has been my experience in the marriage I escaped. To me it just isn’t fair. It is not fair that women do not have co-operation. I’ve seen in my friends’ marriages and in the broader society, that so many men are not stepping up. Instead of changing how men see and value women, second wave feminism seemed to push women to compete with and be more like men, yet men aren’t seeing or appreciating all that women are doing and the need for their equal contribution. That is what I think has gone wrong.
It’s unfair when a man comes home from work and taps out, and pops his feet up, because they have worked all day and they do not participate in the home mealtime preparation or children’s sleep time routine. They then lose their connection with their children and the once special relationship with their partner. The best partnerships I have seen are when couples get home from work and work together to run the household and care for their kids — one cooking, while the other does bath time and settles their kids and after the kids are asleep then together they can tap out and chill. Then you are building the relationship rather than pulling away from each other. Having a family is hard work and it needs to be a team.
It’s as if men can always find a loophole to take advantage of women in any situation.
Yes. Women have worked so hard towards equality. Instead of applauding that hard won equality, some insecure men feel the need to compete with women. Be better than women. Finally, we have women’s sports like soccer, cricket and football being televised and instead of this being celebrated, these men are seeing such equality gains as a threat. They are squashing this threat by pretending to be women, to show that a man who dresses as a woman is better than a real woman at sports, jobs, or raising a family and should, while in a costume, be able to access women’s valued safe spaces like toilets, prisons, and change rooms. How insane!
And even more insane I see women, who call themselves feminists collaborating with such queer theory. These third wave feminists are inadvertently supporting the loss of all the advances feminists have made in the past. So of course, I am concerned for young women, for how they view their bodies, for how impacted women spaces are and women’s sport. I am concerned at how women now view themselves and their place in this point in history. I was talking to a young woman the other day, who refers to herself as ‘he/him’, she calls her breasts ‘trans masc nubes’ and she was talking about how she should be able to walk around in public without a shirt on and said that she should be allowed to be bare-chested because she is a man. Changing the language to support such public nudity is pure insanity. The fact that girls like this girl, want to not just compete with guys but be guys shows me that we all still have a long way to go in helping women know they are valued and building real equality between the sexes.
If we women were truly admired for the wonderful, magical and special creatures that we are in these truly miraculous bodies which can nurture life; we would not deny our sex. We should see our bodies as a temple. The ability for women’s bodies to hold life within us is truly, truly incredible. We are amazing. Yet still womanhood is not respected. It is seen as a fetish, sexualised, I can see why women, in this day and age, want to opt out: “I don’t want to be part of this culture.” What a shame that they’ve internalised these external social roles and todays ‘norms’ and expectations and messages about womanhood to such as extent that they deny their own bodies.
Do you think the medical establishment has something to answer for?
I absolutely do. As someone who has had breast cancer and is now sterile and has had terrible medical problems with the loss of my endocrine system, of my oestrogen. Not having breasts or a uterus; the complications I experience constantly are huge. But that is the path that so many trans identifying women are taking. They have no idea of the damage they are doing to their bodies. They think that this will make them happy. Abandoning being a woman by doing such invasive things to themselves. We have failed women if they don’t want to be women anymore. We have failed their futures and the family they will never have, the children they will never have, the grandkids they will never have. We are stealing their birth right, their future ancestors.
What did you go through medically?
I was always healthy and was careful what I put into my body. In 2018 I found a lump in my right breast, and it was hard and about 4 cm big. I have/had small breasts so it’s a surprise that I didn’t notice this big lump. I knew it was serious and I expected to lose that breast. I had it checked immediately and within three weeks I started chemotherapy because they had found it was an invasive and aggressive form of cancer and it had moved beyond my breast into the surrounding tissue.
While on chemotherapy I quickly lost my hair; I lost my eyebrows and lashes. I remember the first day of chemo because I had always been so careful and healthy and cared deeply about what goes into my body, yet there I was having poison pumped into my veins and this poison was supposed to make me better? I cried and cried during that appointment I was so upset that I had to go through poisoning my body just to get better.
After 2 months of chemotherapy, they did a double mastectomy, and took all the lymph node in my right arm. After my surgery, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t dress myself or shower. I had three drains attached to my body and was in hospital for 10 days. I had the drains in for three weeks. I had to have a lot of physiotherapy to learn to use my arms again. The muscles in the chest around our breasts are essential for all movement, like sitting up and moving your arms, lifting, eating, I found that all those muscles are affected by a mastectomy.
I am now numb from my neck to my belly button. I am numb from my shoulders to my elbows on both arms. Even the arm that did not have lymph nodes removed is numb and has lost movement. Since losing my breasts, then being on estrogen blockers (as my breast cancer was an estrogen-fed cancer) I’ve lost my nurturing feelings, like feeling clucky when I see a baby, I used to be so clucky but now I am just numb. I was put on hormone blockers in the form of Tamoxifen and that caused early onset menopause. This has caused hot flushes, loss of sex drive, vaginal atrophy. Within 4 years of this treatment for breast cancer I now have stage 4 osteoporosis and I have fractured my spine. I suffer a lot of nerve pain, tummy pain, complete loss of interest in intimacy and painful sex. When I read detransitioners’ stories they are the same as mine. My heart breaks for these girls. Unlike them I didn’t go on testosterone, so my voice hasn’t changed, I haven’t gone bald. These poor girls. It devastates me. That is why I started my website.
When I tell people about my experience, they are always so supportive and sad. They show empathy but when I tell them what I went through is the same thing a woman goes through when they transition from woman to a man, they shut me down. I’m met with hostility. “No – that is not true” and “Girls don’t need estrogen.” I felt so harmed by the medical procedures I have endured I had to do something, to get the word out there about medicalising girls’ bodies and identities. I want to help girls to appreciate the wonder of their bodies as women.
What are you seeing happening in schools?
Trans ideology has placed itself in a position where it cannot be questioned. Just because we can make artificial sex characteristics by manipulating individuals hormones doesn’t mean we should. From my work in schools and from my research, into the policy of inclusion and diversity’ that schools are now using to justify trans ideology being part of the curriculum. I have determined that it is coming into schools via ACON, they have influence on the curriculum. ACON deny any responsibility in this. They advertise that they are supporting ‘all genders’ and are ‘leaders in creating an inclusive community’ and yet they have a disclaimer on their website saying, ‘nothing on this website is factual,’ yet we teach it in schools.
The material used in schools in subjects like ‘Respectful Relationships’, what it has done, which is very clever, is say we shouldn’t bully. We shouldn’t discriminate. Which is right. We shouldn’t. But it then changes the terminology, and it says you cannot bully someone for wanting to be the opposite sex. So, it is using students’ empathy against their natural protections. They teach that letting men in women’s private spaces, because they think they are women, is empathy. Then they teach that saying ‘no’ and having boundaries is bullying. You must accept what you are told by your teacher who is teaching such subjects like ‘Respectful Relationships’ as truth. Some teachers, wanting to be cool, are using this language. They will introduce themselves to their classes with their pronouns. They ask children ‘What are your pronouns?’ They are going out of their way to indoctrinate the children in the ideology.
How do students feel about this?
I find a lot of students believe what they are taught, they even correct me for my use of ‘pronouns’ while I am teaching. They are brain washed by the curriculum into believing that they can change sex and they must believe someone who says they are the opposite sex and not be offended when boys use the girl’s toilet. When I was speaking to a student the other day that confided in me that he didn’t believe people could change sex; he was so scared he shut the classroom door, when he was talking about his position on trans ideology, because he didn’t want other to hear him. Another male student has lovely long hair and other students are continually asking him if he is trans because of his long hair. When I saw this happen, I just had to intervene on his behalf because he was tired of having to tell people he is not trans, and he doesn’t want to be trans. I told the class to stop asking people if they are trans because that is personal and could offend someone. When I talked with this student, he told me that in PE he was taught about being pansexual and people can change sex, which he doesn’t believe it, yet he is too afraid to say that he doesn’t believe any of it as he knows he will get shamed by fellow students or the teacher.
I can understand his fear. I have noticed in my school that kids who stand up and say they don’t believe this are being publicly shamed by some of their teachers, they are even put on detention! So kids are too afraid to speak up. Some of these kids are saying, ‘No, this is not part of my culture’ and they are being told they are wrong, Muslim children, Catholic children being told to reject their religion and culture in favour of an ideology without parental consent.
Mel Day has a website ‘Staying You’ where she shares her lived experience as women and celebrates the awesomeness of being a girl, a biological female, a warrior, a witch, a queen, a mother, a daughter and the amazing things that being a woman allows us to achieve. ‘Staying You’ advocates for understanding and empowering girls and women struggling with their identity to accept themselves in the unique body they have. Visit Staying You, Mel’s website.
The views expressed by the women interviewed in Local Action are their own and do not necessarily represent or reflect the positions of AAWAA.
