Category: Articles

  • Is Mainstream Media in Australia Afraid to Cover Women’s Views on the Transgender Rights Debate?

    And what about the Mercury? In the last few months Tasmanian Times has published several articles on the transgender rights debate written by women from Women Speak Tasmania. Most of these articles were also sent out nationally as Media Releases.  No mainstream media in Australia has contacted us to follow up on our views. This lack…

  • Silencing and Censorship in the Trans Rights debate. Part 3

    Part Three. “I am not a Woman” – Transsexuals and Transgender Women Speak Out Today, the dominant discourse in the transgender rights debate insists that transgender women are ‘women’. It is not uncommon to hear the argument that, because they are women, their biology is female and it is ‘transphobic’ to suggest they are biological…

  • Silencing and Censorship in the Trans Rights debate. Part 2

    Part Two. The transgender debate is increasingly characterised by no-platforming, withdrawal from participation, censorship, bullying, threats, intimidation, silencing, stonewalling and expulsion from groups for those who express dissent from the ‘popular’ transgender narrative. The following Tasmanian case studies outline examples of trans rights crusaders and their ideological supporters apparently acting in a manner inconsistent with…

  • Silencing and Censorship in the Trans Rights debate. Part 1

    Part One. Silencing and Censorship or Robust Debate? The recent launch of the group, Transforming Tasmania, which aims to lobby for law reforms that improve the lives of transgender and gender-diverse people, is an opportunity for the community to engage in robust, open and safe discussions on matters concerning gender identity. The media has an…

  • Outrage over Oxfam Investigations into Paedophiles, Sexual Misconduct …

    Yesterday’s news about NGO Oxfam’s 2011 internal investigation into allegations against some staff over sexual abuse, harassment and illegal use of prostitutes revealed a totally abhorrent culture within some elements of the world-renowned aid organisation. Several staff members who worked with Oxfam in Chad and Haiti between 2006 and 2010 have been dismissed or have…

  • Funding Cuts to Scarlet Alliance: Michael Keenan Gets it Right …

    I can only congratulate Justice Minister Michael Keenan for not allocating funding to the Scarlet Alliance in the 2017/18 round of funding to NGOs for combating sex trafficking and slavery in Australia. In February, March and April this year I was a co-signatory of a group of concerned womens’ human rights campaigners who wrote to…

  • Amnesty International’s Capitulation to Women’s Increasing Poverty and Subordination to Men

    “We need to eroticise equality. Prostitution is about buying a body, not mutual pleasure and free choice”, says Gloria Steinem … “The end of prostitution might be a distant ideal, but it is still far better than Amnesty’s grubby collusion with misogyny.” – Julie Bindel Simone Watson, a Survivor of prostitution recalls her experiences at…

  • It’s Bad News from New Zealand’s Survivors …

    Survivors from the sex trade in New Zealand are speaking out about the tragic failure of decriminalisation aimed at preventing harms to prostituted women and girls from sex buyers and pimps but here in Tasmania Young Labor and many in the Union movement don’t want to hear their voices. The Scarlet Alliance ramped up their…

  • Thomas Kent and the Sex Party Propaganda Machine …

    Thomas Kent, in recent comments on an article in Overland journal Sex work and silence by Celeste Elizabeth, member of the Women’s Legal Service Board and self proclaimed delinquent, has outed himself as the propagandist for the Sex Party in Australia he is. While Sex trade apologists Elizabeth and Kent continue to attack abolitionists, they…

  • Boycotts ramp up on The Body Shop and L’Oreal

    In the lead up to Christmas cosmetic retailer The Body Shop is coming under increasing pressure from women’s human rights groups with calls for consumers to boycott their products. The Body Shop is one many corporate offenders on the Collective Shout 2016 Crossed Off list an annual blacklist of corporate offenders who have sexualised girls…