Anthony Haneveer’s editorial ‘Let kids be kept safe from ignorance’ (Examiner 14 June 2023) is a continuum of his attack on anyone who does not conform to the narrative being promoted by a small section of the queer community in Tasmania. His attack on LGB Tasmania exposes his very personal interest in this issue. Far from a balanced Editorial, his diatribe fails to address any of the substantive issues that are being raised by numerous children’s and women’s rights groups in Tasmania over the last five years.
That LGB Tasmania is a group which advocates for same sex attracted people and the need to protect their hard fought for rights, seems to be conveniently lost on Anthony. Also lost on Anthony, is that gender identity law reforms have adversely impacted on same sex attaracted people as they also have on girls and women especially.
LGB Tasmania understands that gender ideology is being rolled out in schools via workshops to Teachers, Parents and Friends groups and also via social media on every child’s mobile phone or computer.
Many researchers and psychiatrists working with children with gender dysphoria have highlighted the role of social contagion, both through social media and peer groups, and the alarming increase in children presenting to gender clinics with gender dysphoria especially girls. The vast majority of these children, many of whom have autism, desist from gender dysphoria and resolve to be LGB.
Yet Anthony seems determined to prevent the more complex debate that we actually need to have if we really want to support gender diverse, LGB and all children in our education system.
Instead, Anthony repeatedly impugnes LGB Tasmania, without ever having spoken to LGB Tasmania spokeswoman Jessica Hoyle and Silver Moon. It has been suggested by numerous people who have read Anthony’s Editorial, that it is in fact he who is promoting ‘hate bred from ignorance’ towards LGB Tasmania, Jessica Hoyle and any other group that wants a full and open discussion on these issues.
The glaringly obvious omission in the Editorial, is that LGB rights are not the same as those of gender diverse people. LGB rights concern sexual orientation whereas gender diverse rights concern fluid notions of identity and feelings. Additionally, sex is about biology, gender is a social construct. Yet these definitions were omitted from gender law reforms.
If Anthony had done any homework on this issue, he would have found alarming and mounting evidence from medical reviews in several countries, that social transitioning, especially in school settings, is the first step towards later experimental and harmful medical and surgical transitioning.
Children with gender dysphoria have a right to know, as their parents do, that the complexity of this debate may involve public discussion about research and facts that will be uncomfortable for some to deal with.
But, to be fully informed of the implications of the roll out of gender ideology in schools including in curriculum, everyone in our community should expect our media to cover these issues ‘ in the public interest’.
For any Tasmanian media to refuse to inform our community that puberty blockers have now been banned, in Norway, Sweden, UK, Finland and 16 states in America ( except in clinical reaserch), because these drugs are irreversible, experimental and cause long term health problems, is a derogation of the role of the 4th Estate.
It is perverse indeed, for Haneveer to continually ignore the elephant in the room. The natural progression of affirmative care and social transitioning leads to medical and surgical transition, controversy over this is now being described as the world’s worst medical scandal.
LGB Tasmania understand the need for all children in our schools to be supported. LGB Tasmania also understand that children do not benefit from a mandated ideology being incoporated into their school curriculum, espeically an ideology at odds with the ‘best interests of the child’ and science. Clearly Anthony does not understand that LGB people and gender diverse people have different needs.
The common excuse from media editors that in covering these issues they may ’cause harm to trans people’ is spurious to say the least.
In not covering the complexity of these issues, media are capitulating to pressure from political lobby groups that have their own agendas that increasingly appear to be at odds with protecting children and that guiding medical principle ‘first do no harm’.
It is unconscionable that The Examiner, like other Tasmanian media continue to publish or report from the same scripted articles time and time again with no fact checking.
by Isla MacGregor
Op-ed to The Advocate
Here is the full transcript of the editorial piece which appeared in The Examiner on 14 June 2023
OPINION: Let kids be kept safe from ignorance
A BILLBOARD bearing the words “Let Kids Be Kids” would seem to be fairly innocuous.
The underlying message though is anything but support for children; it is about promoting hate bred from ignorance.
Fringe anti-trans group LGB Tasmania is responsible for the billboards, which so far have appeared in the state’s South, and says it wants to draw attention to Tasmanian schools. Spokeswoman Jessica Hoyle claims our schools are taking an active role in “socially transitioning” children with gender dysphoria.
“By encouraging the changing of names, pronouns, uniform and allowing them to enter single sex spaces and sports of the opposite sex,” she said.
What is objectionable here is two-fold.
The obvious is the idea that there is something wrong with supporting – and that is the right word, supporting, not encouraging – children who are gender diverse.
It is perverse to give the impression that one cares about kids while arguing that those students should not be accepted and instead have their identity denied.
This is only made worse when you consider that it is coming from someone who claims to be representing gay, lesbian and bisexual Tasmanians.
That is, those who – if they were “out” in school – would almost certainly have been exposed to the same prejudice that she is promoting with her attacks on gender diverse people.
Even today, in 2023, it would be wishful thinking to believe that our schools would be entirely safe for gay students, or those perceived to be gay. This leads us to the other glaring issue with criticising schools for supporting gender diverse students – they arguably have a long way to go.
The Department of Education, Children and Young People has a Supporting Sexuality, Sex, and Gender Diversity in Schools Policy, but the support is limited.
Working It Out – Tasmania’s sexuality, gender and intersex status support and education service – has only two school inclusion officers for the entire state.
Importantly, their work is about being more supportive of diversity in not only gender but also sexuality, so a supposed lesbian, gay and bisexual group should really rethink its criticism.
More broadly, it should consider the harm that its words – including its wolf in sheep’s clothing billboards – can have on some of our most vulnerable young people.
