Tag: Sex Self-ID
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McKim’s Conduct Unbecoming of a Senator – Letter to Greens Leader Larissa Waters
This letter was sent to Senator Larissa Waters, Leader of the Australian Greens, on 4 July 2026 in response to Senator Nick McKim’s heated Senate comments on 30 June 2026. In those remarks, McKim criticised One Nation’s approach to transgender issues and used strong language such as “toilet police” and “wannabe genital inspectors” to describe…
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Detailed Response to the TLRI Report on Legal Recognition of Sex and Gender 2020
In June 2020 the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute released its Final Report No. 31 on Legal Recognition of Sex and Gender. The report reviewed the 2019 changes to birth certificate laws that introduced self-identification of gender and concluded that it could identify no significant negative impacts from those changes. Women Speak Tasmania did not agree.…
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Analysis of The Yogyakarta Principles and Why They Conflict with Women’s Rights Under International Law
What are the Yogyakarta Principles? The Yogyakarta Principles (often called “YP”) are a set of 38 principles plus 111 extra state obligations created in 2006 and updated in 2017. They claim to show how existing international human rights law should apply to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics. They are not a…
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The Hidden Cost of Gender Ideology in Australian Prisons: Women’s Safety Sacrificed
Over the past months, a series of highly publicised cases across multiple Australian jurisdictions has raised grave concerns about prison placement policies that allow male prisoners to be housed in women’s correctional facilities on the basis of gender identity or legal sex change rather than biological sex. In several documented instances, these policies have coincided…
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Opinion: Culture of Fear, Surveillance and Social Breakdown
The most significant impacts of sex self-ID laws have become increasingly apparent with the breakdown in trust within families and of social cohesion in our communities. This corresponds to an increase in coercion for conformity to ‘group think’ and surveillance for ‘right think’ within our society at large on multiple issues. While many issues today…
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How Tasmania’s Sex Self-ID Laws Were Passed: A Timeline of Events, Key Players, and Missing Voices
Tasmania’s “sex self-identification” reforms – introduced between 2018 and 2019 – fundamentally reshaped how sex and gender are recognised in law. They also triggered one of the most significant debates on women’s rights, safeguarding, and democratic process that our state has ever seen. Women Speak Tasmania has been involved in this debate from the beginning.…
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Women Betrayed: How Sex Self-ID Laws Put a Child Rapist in a Women’s Prison”
The Victorian government has done the unthinkable: a male who raped his own five-year-old daughter is serving his sentence in a women’s prison. His “gender identity” was treated not only as justification for placing him among vulnerable women, but also as a mitigating factor that reduced his jail term. This is not just a shocking…
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Speaking Truth About the Impacts of Sex Self-ID: A Rebuttal to 2018 Claims
In 2018, several Tasmanian women’s organisations publicly criticised Women Speak Tasmania (WST) for warning that proposed amendments to the Justice and Related Legislation (Marriage Amendments) Bill 2018—which introduced sex self-identification into Tasmanian law—would erode women’s rights and compromise safeguarding. At the time, these organisations dismissed our concerns as “ideological” and “discriminatory,” insisting that recognising gender…
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I changed my mind on trans rights – and lost multiple friends
As a human rights lawyer, I never questioned the trans movement. But, after a lightbulb moment, I publicly changed my position I am a human rights lawyer and professor at King’s College London. Until 2018, I supported all the demands of the transgender-rights movement. But since then, I have changed my mind. Why? Because I finally…
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Forum: “Women’s Rights in the Modern World”
On 7 May 2025, members of Women Speak Tasmania held a private forum titled “Women’s Rights in the Modern World” at the Devonport RSL. This event marks a significant milestone for women’s rights advocacy in Australia, as the Devonport RSL, a veterans’ charity, became the first independent venue in the country to stand firm in…