Excellent Letter by Katherine Deves to the Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins asking questions about how and why she failed to protect girls and women in sports.
Signed by all the men and women who stand for women’s rights!
25 May 2020
Dear Commissioner Jenkins,
We are writing in relation to your response to Senator Claire Chandler at the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee Australian Human Rights Commission, on date 4 March 2020.
We were deeply alarmed to see someone in the position of Sex Discrimination Commissioner fail to acknowledge sex as a protected characteristic under the Sex Discrimination Act (Cth) 1984, and fail to acknowledge the significant detriment to females due to the Guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport (2019).
By your own admission, referring to “binary gender” as “historic” demonstrates that the AHRC has taken the position that “gender identity” is to be privileged over the legislatively protected category of sex. No acknowledgement has been given to the fact that “gender identity” is a very recent and highly contentious concept that does not, in fact, enjoy widespread support within the broader community, particularly when it is conflated with, or replaces sex, with the result being an adverse material impact on females.
You claim you “heard the concerns of parents” to Senator Chandler, but the Guidelines themselves evince that the “consultation” ignored and failed to address those concerns, and in fact, gave rise to policy to the contrary. An FOI request put in by Fair Go for Queensland Women has revealed that, in an egregious example of exclusion, no women’s groups were consulted during the creation of these Guidelines, despite your assertion that there was a “broad consultation across the board”.
As a result of that exclusion, the Guidelines are unlawfully discriminatory towards females. By the answers given by you, and Robert Fulton, to the Commission it is clear that both the AHRC and Sports Australia have decided to take the position of prioritising one protected characteristic (“gender identity”) over the protected category of another (“sex”) without meaningful community consultation, public debate or media scrutiny, despite the wide-ranging impact of the policy.
The protection provisions for sex and “gender identity” in the Sex Discrimination Act (Cth) 1984 ss 5,5B are in direct conflict, and it is a failure of democratic process that the group most impacted were denied the opportunity to protect and defend their interests in such a crucial piece of policy.
In conclusion, we utterly refute your assertion that AHRC has “done a good job” because the interests of over half the population have not been considered whatsoever, and have been ignored in favour of a lobby group representing less than 1% of the population[6]. As the Sex Discrimination Commissioner this is an inexcusable dereliction of the duties you have been entrusted to uphold.
We look forward to your response.