Tag: Tasmania
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The Reluctance of Tasmanian Authorities …
Consultation Session with Michel Forst, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders – Civil Society Activists, Saturday 8 October 2016 Representatives of the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) Southern Tasmania, Nordic Model Australia Coalition (NorMAC) and Whistleblowers Tasmania attended the civil society activists consultation session in Hobart. M. Forst is visiting Australia as part of…
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Women, Men who Identify as Women, Feminists and Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner
Do you know anyone who is either male or female? I mean, unambiguously male or female? You know – of the male sex, or the female sex? I’m not talking about people with personality traits that are wholly ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’, because no-one is a walking sex stereotype. I’m talking about physical sex. There are…
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Whistleblowers Tasmania Backs Call for Parliamentary Inquiry …
Whistleblowers Tasmania has backed the call by Tessa Anne from the Women’s Liberation Front for a Parliamentary Inquiry into the conduct of the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Robin Banks and Equal Opportunity Tasmania Policy Advisor Leica Wagner. The allegations made by Tessa Anne and reported in The Australian on Saturday 1st October are significant and need to…
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Feminists decry sex change proposals on men who identify as women
Robin Banks, Equal Opportunity Commissioner for Tasmania, has recommended to the state government that it change the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act. A feminist group is taking on Tasmania’s anti-discrimination commissioner, accusing her of undermining women’s rights by advocating that men who self-identify as women can legally register their sex as female. Commissioner Robin…
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Prostitution – The Global Humanitarian Disaster of the 21C
At a public event held at Parliament House in Hobart, Tasmanian advocate Isla MacGregor delivered a lecture examining Amnesty International’s 2016 policy supporting the full decriminalisation of the sex trade. Speaking alongside survivor advocate Simone Watson of the Nordic Model Australia Coalition, MacGregor questioned whether Amnesty’s approach prioritised the rights of those selling sex or…
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Opinion: A Reality Check on Sex Work
Recent articles have argued for and against decriminalization of prostitution. It’s an emotive subject, likely to raise strong commentary, so let’s try and see this argument against some indisputable facts. One: the entire weight of mankind’s experience in all civilised societies round the world has always centred on a stable family (or tribe) unit in which…
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Sex Offender’s Sentence Must be Appealed
On 23 December we read in the Mercury that Darren John Fenton, 48, received a suspended sentence after being found guilty of the indecent assault of two 13-year old girls on the East Coast last year. The manifestly inadequate sentence, delivered by Justice Helen Wood, is a sorry indictment of the Tasmanian judicial system –…
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UTAS Women’s Collective: A New Meaning for Inclusive?
In six decades of life as a woman, I’ve seen countless expressions of patriarchy. From the family favouritism shown to my brothers, to the societal and workplace inequities of single parenthood, and now the creeping social oblivion of female middle age. I’ve studied and worked in the male dominated professions of accounting and law, and…