Opinion: Rodney Croome: Will promoting hate achieve a win-win?

This opinion piece was written by Isla MacGregor in response to Rodney Croome’s article. It was rejected by the new editor of The Tasmanian Times


I read Rodney Croome’s article ‘Turf War: What’s really Behind Recent Attacks on Trans Tasmanians’ with considerable interest, most notably for the conspiratorial tone of his article and the lack of any evidence provided for his assertions.

https://tasmanihantimes.com/2023/03/turf-war-whats-really-behind-recent-attacks-on-trans-tasmanians/

In keeping with Rodney’s previous writing on this topic, he fails to understand why women want a more rigorous public debate on the conflict over women’s rights vs trans rights since the Tasmanian gender self ID laws were passed in September 2019. Instead, what we have from Rodney is more slurs, slogans, and a lengthy convoluted diatribe, elaborating on totally unrelated issues.

Contrary to Rodney’s claims, there has been widespread community opposition on the grounds of child safeguarding against drag queen story time, both at Cambridge Early Learning Centre in Hobart and at the Launceston Library. And the majority of girls and women don’t want to share facilities with trans identified males, especially those facilities where girls and women undress or are in trauma respite centres like rape crisis refuges. 

Has Rodney forgotten that fundamental human rights concept – the right of freedom of association? The majority of lesbians in Tasmania do not consider that men can be lesbians (or female), but that lesbians should have the right to hold lesbian only events. 

Why would Rodney omit any reference to the change in trans inclusion policy by international sporting bodies who will no longer allow men to compete in women’s sports https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/will-swimmings-transgender-ruling-lead-wider-change-sports-2022-06-19/ , yet instead, target Senator Claire Chandler over her push in federal parliament to protect female only sports? Happy to throw in a furphy, Rodney then raises the issue of the vandalism of the trans flag at Hobart Town Hall in 2021 while the perpetrators of this act had still not been identified. Unsubstantiated claims in the Tasmanian Mercury newspaper 30 March 2023 state a local neo-Nazi group had committed this act.

Having attended the Free Speech Alliance Australia forum at Parliament House in November last year, I cannot understand how Rodney can suggest this was an anti-conversion law forum. The aim of the forum was to inform the public as to the international medical community’s change in approach from the ‘affirmative model’ of care to the cautious, watchful-waiting approach for minors struggling with gender dysphoria. Considering most children outgrow gender dysphoria, are autistic, and/or have other co-morbidities, this seems like a reasonable discussion to have, does it not?

From my observations, the anger over this debate is coming from the trans rights and queer community not from women speaking about their sex-based rights, although many women have every right to be angry. There are numerous documented attacks, including rape and death threats on J.K. Rowling, Professor Sheila Jeffreys, journalists Suzanne Moore and Julie Bindel, and many other women for speaking out to defend their rights. In Australia, the number of women who have been threatened, vilified, no platformed or sacked is rising steadily. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2487292944741394/permalink/2861530593984292

Rodney’s reference to ‘continental’ intruders in the debate here in Tasmania is as amusing as it is misleading. Demonstrating yet another way the trans rights movement co-opts tactics from civil rights movements to legitimise their position as one of “the most vulnerable cohorts in society”. This argument needs greater scrutiny.  Nevertheless, he targets Isla MacGregor and Jessica Hoyle as the main heretics opposing the roll out of gender identity ideology throughout Tasmanian institutions. As the state’s most eminent male gay rights activist who wants to continue his campaigning, this comes as no surprise. That many organisations are now collaborating on this debate across Australia is not because, as Rodney states, they are ‘anti trans’, but because they are pro-women’s rights. The question he then poses, “Given all this, it’s natural to ask why is Tasmania the target?”, presumes that Tasmania is in fact a ‘target’. In fact, the campaign in Tasmania is simply part of a rising national campaign to stop or repeal gender identity law reforms that adversely impact women’s rights. Rodney pits gender diverse people against women, all the while avoiding the elephant in the room.

Many in the Tasmanian community are very concerned at the complete lack of community consultation on the gender self ID laws that were passed in Tasmania in September 2019; especially the absence of any risk assessment of the laws or attention to child safeguarding issues. Women continue to contest the propaganda that Tasmanian’s anti-discrimination laws are ‘gold standard’, as since ‘sex’ was erased as a protected characteristic under these laws, females no longer have any protections under Tasmanian anti-discrimination law on the basis of sex at all. Only people who ‘identify’ as a ‘gender’ have protections. Most women I know do not identify as a ‘woman’ – they simply are one. 

The claim that people who object to these laws are filled with ‘hate’ is spurious. Charging opponents with ‘hate’ is a poor excuse for the inability to rebut arguments in an open forum or a public debate. But then, according to the queer lobby ‘there should be no debate’ because trans and gender diverse people will be ‘harmed’ if this issue is given any airtime. No consideration, apparently, is extended to the harm caused to Tasmanian women and children by the legislation of self ID. 

Rodney’s assertion that women ‘have begun to manufacture incidents that never happened.’ is not borne out by evidence from court proceedings and press coverage: 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1722756661380462

https://parliament.nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/597559/Submission-4a-Feminist-Legal-Clinic-Inc.-Attachment.pdf

https://www.tumblr.com/theysaythisneverhappens

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/this-never-happens

After the recent letter to The Launceston Examiner about a biological man who identifies as a woman entering the female change rooms of the Launceston aquatic centre, Adam Holmes from the ABC went to town, which was then followed up by ABC Media Watch presenting the same argument. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-11/examiner-newspaper-caught-out-trans-change-room-incident/102069682 https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/tas/102090324

Yet, there is another story to be published by the Examiner about an account of a man in the women’s changeroom at the Launceston aquatic centre. This was mentioned in an article by Mathew Denholm in The Australian on 15 March 2023, about the sacking of Examiner Editor Mark Westfield by Australian Community Media. This issue concerns two women who have come forward and stated that they have seen a man in the women’s change room at the Launceston aquatic centre, and that CCTV footage has confirmed that this has occurred.  Apparently, the Council are trying to downplay the incident. 

https://www.mediaweek.com.au/roundup-antony-greens-future-reddit-local-md-foxtel-ratings/ 

Premier Jeremy Rockcliff and Attorney General Elise Archer are both aware of the scandals at the UK Tavistock gender clinic and its subsequent closure, and the other countries including Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands, that have declared puberty blockers and medical transition for minors to be irreversible, harmful, and experimental.

https://genderreport.ca/the-swedish-u-turn-on-gender-transitioning/

https://www.city-journal.org/wpath-finally-acknowledges-europes-restrictions-on-gender-affirming-care

While the Tasmanian government is committed to bringing in ‘anti-conversion legislation’, it has no intention of supporting all the recommendations from the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute or changing the Mental Health Act. A notable omission from Rodney’s article is the failure to mention the Liberal Party state Council meeting in 2022 which unanimously supported a motion to review sex self ID laws. 

The Tasmanian Gender Service currently uses the very same model of care for youth struggling with gender dysphoria which has been, and continues to be abandoned, by numerous countries and an increasing number of states in America. Not a peep out of Rodney on these developments. Why? What is it about the controversy over the ‘affirmative model’ of care that Rodney does not want to address in any discussion on anti-conversion laws? Will Rodney respond to the claim that anti-conversion laws could become the new LGB to trans conversion laws?

Fact checking is vital in this debate. Contrary to what Rodney suggests, Feminist Legal Clinic is not currently working with Jessica Hoyle on an appeal to the High Court over her failed application to run a lesbian-only event in Launceston. Why on earth, in this day, any lesbian must make a submission such as this is beyond me. Rather, the case of Tickle vs Giggle (Giggle app case), is the matter going to the High Court. 

https://www.feministcurrent.com/2022/11/06/sall-grover-wanted-to-create-a-female-only-app-she-didnt-know-that-would-make-her-a-target

Why, though, miss out on further attempts to demonise Jessica Hoyle when you know that you can get away with saying anything unchallenged by Tasmanian media? That terrible ‘unstoppable’ lesbian who knows what ‘same sex attraction’ actually means? The notion that same sex attraction is now ‘same gender attraction’ surely sends our laws back to the dark days of rampant homophobia and bigotry that so many LGB people, including Rodney, campaigned to be rid of.

It’s a bit rich for Rodney to presume to speak on behalf of women in Tasmania by suggesting that the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act has helped make Tasmania a better place for women, when clearly what women are saying is that no it hasn’t, and that the Self ID amendment of 2019 made it worse, much worse.

Rodney’s lengthy dive back into ‘Convictism’ and the ‘decolonising project’, citing historical cross-dressing laws in Tasmania, presents a narrative intended to further justify his latest claims. But is this really relevant to the substance of women’s opposition to laws that enable any man to identify as a woman? 

Before Kellie-Jay Keen’s recent visit to Hobart in mid-March 2023 for the Hobart event on her Australian and New Zealand Let Women Speak tour, Rodney tried to drum up Tasmanians to send letters to MPs to suggest that they have had enough of colonialism without needing more of it from the likes of Kellie-Jay Keen. The mind boggles at the conflation. Yet, even as we saw the mass outpouring of hatred, vilification, bullying and intimidation towards a group of women and allies at the Let Women Speak event on Hobart Parliament House lawns, neither Rodney nor any of his allies have denounced such extremism. 

Rodney seems to have conveniently turned a blind eye to the behaviour from the frenzied and uncontrolled trans rights crowd on Tuesday 21 March, which many have suggested amounts to hate crime, and is certainly, at the very least a mass breach of anti-discrimination law. It is the very same kind of hatred he refers to when writing about his peers in the gay law reform campaign when they “overcame intense hatred and cruelty towards LGBTIQA+ people in the 1980s and 90s”. Why does he fail to call out this same hate enacted against lesbians and women defending their rights today. Further, using the current LGBTIQA+ acronym is misleadingly anachronistic since the forced teaming of lesbian and gay rights with TIQA+ was not employed as a tactic until the mid-2010s.

The apparent strategy of fighting misleadingly labelled hate with hate is not the best tactic, especially when that hate targets lesbians and other women. This was in full view of politicians and filmed by all Tasmanian media at the Let Women Speak event outside Parliament on Tuesday 21 March.  It is notable that the media, ABC in particular, did not accurately present the behaviour of the trans rights mob, choosing instead to mute audio so the intensity of their verbal harassment of women was removed from the record. Print reports also omitted mention of the deafening verbal assaults. This is in keeping with the usual dishonest “love wins” trans washing of women’s rights events discussing gender identity. It is a day that will certainly go down in Tasmanian history as a dark one for women’s rights, peaceful, unhindered lawful assembly and democracy. 

It appears that with this latest narrative, Rodney has not progressed from his previous activist role for gay rights. It is a scripted piece that has adapted the same rhetoric from the then gay rights campaign to that of a campaign of demands from ill-defined queer lobbyists who have no qualms in trampling on lesbians’ and women’s rights. He is but another man loudly defending the right of men to define what a woman is.

There is a win/win position waiting around the corner: where freedom of association, real diversity, and inclusion can accommodate both women’s rights, cultural inclusivity, and the rights of gender diverse people. To get there we need a robust public debate and a willingness to engage in that debate. What we don’t need is for Rodney and trans identified males to continue their campaign of demonisation and vilification of lesbians and women who simply want to regain their rights and safeguard our children.

Yes, Tasmania can become a ‘beacon’ to the rest of the world by being brave enough to review laws that adversely impact on the welfare, privacy, and dignity of girls and women. Laws which were developed by the deliberate exclusion of women’s voices.