Homophobia 2.0

How gender identity ideology denies the rights of Australian lesbians to meet and organise

In the 1980s, the city of Melbourne was a magnet for young lesbian women making their way from sleepy outback towns and quiet suburbs to the big smoke. Inner city Melbourne was the place to find lovers and friends, and it was a thriving community of musical, artistic, and curious women. At venues like Club 397 on Swanston St; the Burnley Tavern in Richmond; St Kilda Town Hall; the San Remo Ballroom, Daylesford Town Hall and Fitzroy Town Hall, women listened to female acapella groups, danced to the latest disco and dressed up for the gayest of gay balls. The Sydney Opera house even hosted a thousand lesbians who raised $500,000 to buy a permanent community space while Perth welcomed hundreds of lesbians for an annual camping event.

It all feels like a lost Golden Age now—because in 2025, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal declared women-only events illegal, overturning an earlier exemption request from the Lesbian Action Group to the Australian Human Rights Commission.

When Rights turn into Wrongs

The finding against the Lesbian Action Group’s appeal is proof of how successfully the LGBTQi+ behemoth has destroyed the rights of all women but in particular lesbians who have been denied their freedom of association to meet and celebrate with their own community. So how has this happened?

Under Julia Gillard’s Labor government, the SDA 2013 was amended to replace the word ‘sex’ with the concept of ‘gender identity’ which is defined in the Act as:

Gender identity means the gender-related identity, appearance or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of a person, whether by way of medical intervention or not with or without regard to the person’s designated sex at birth.

This is a definitional negation that defines the term by what it is not – like defining light as ‘not darkness’, or freedom as ‘not oppression’. By removing from the definition everything that it is ‘not’ it reads:

Gender identity means the gender-related identity, appearance or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of a person.

By including ‘gender identity’ in the legislation Australia has created the legal fiction that a man can simply self-declare himself to possess the gender identity of a ‘woman’ and be recognised as such.

Self ID – the end game

The changes to the Australian SDA opened the door self-ID laws which allow men to purchase an amended birth certificate and change the sex markers on their passport, driver’s licence and legal documents. This gives them all the rights and protection of women and allows them access to women’s sports, prisons and spaces.

Following amendments to the SDA, Australian lesbians experienced a persistent pattern of complaints and threats of legal action whenever and wherever they held women-only events. Trans rights activists, led by a few highly motivated individuals demanded inclusion. And over time the risks and costs of legal action forced the lesbian community back into the closet. A once-flourishing community of the 1980s had disappeared by the early 2000s.

Post from Twitter 2019

The aim of gender identity ideology is to abolish sex altogether by moving ‘biological sex’ under the umbrella of gender identity and separating women into ‘cis’ (biological) or ‘trans women’ (men claiming to be women). Sex reality is further undermined by a pick-n-mix cornucopia of identities that are invisible, subjective and may even change over time.

There are 76 gender identities listed on Wikipedia including demi-boy, demi-girl, non-binary, asexual, gender fluid, puppygender and the latest addition of ‘xenogender’ described as a non-binary identity that “cannot be contained by human understandings of gender”.

Denying homosexuality

Homosexuality is framed as a ‘genital fetish’ in gender ideology and lesbians denounced for practising ‘sexual apartheid’ if they refuse to have sex with men. Genderists deny same-sex attraction and use social exclusion and shame to silence anyone who protests.

Today in Melbourne there are regular ‘queer’ events run by the trans lobby that force-team the different groups in the LGBTQi community, a young lesbian I spoke to described her experience of the events like this:

Around half the attendees are ‘queer’ or people who identify as non-binary or polyamorous but really they’re just spicy heterosexuals. The other 25 percent are men who identify as women and are there primarily to hook up with the lesbians. We must be careful how we refuse them in case we’re accused of being ‘transphobic’. Some lesbians who are sex realists have lost their jobs, been outed on social media and been excluded at university.

The importance of same-sex spaces for homosexuals was summed up by the UK lawyer and founder of the Gay Men’s Network, Dennis Kavanagh in a recent post on X when he wrote:

Single sex spaces for homosexuals have a particularly high value. We are a minority. There are very few places we can go where everyone is like us. The first visit to a gay bar is an experience most lesbians and gays can tell you about because it mattered.

It was the many conversations with young lesbians that motivated LAG to launch their appeal.

Human Rights and Human Wrongs

When LAG first approached the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) for an exemption to reinstate lesbian-only events, it could have supported the rights of the different cohorts under the ‘trans umbrella’. There is of course room for lesbian-only events alongside public events for the wider LGBTQi group - many lesbians would attend both.

By refusing lesbians and gay men the right to freedom of association the AHRC is little more than an enforcer for the LGBTQi lobby in rolling back the rights that were hard-won in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Genderists now dictate every aspect of how the gay community organises, socialises and mobilises. Pride marches that started as a celebration and a desire for inclusion into normal life have become public displays of nudity, sexual fetishism and BDSM now promoted as ‘gender identities’. Many gay people no longer see the LGBTQi+ as their community but anyone who objects is met with accusations of ‘transphobia’ and being ‘right-wing’ or ‘fascist. Gender-critical women are vilified, taken to court, shamed and run the risk of losing their jobs. The AHRC even threatens parents who do not ‘affirm’ their child’s gender identity with a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Pride march in Victoria

At the recent LAG appeal the AHRC invited Elena Jeffreys, the CEO of Scarlett Women a lobbying organisation for sex workers to be its representative. Elena made the following statement in her objection to LAG’s request for lesbian-only events:

“… excluding transwomen has a negative impact on ‘cisgender’ lesbians because it reinforces a gender binary and that in most human rights and trauma-informed thinking, public exclusion of oppressed minorities is fascist because it endorses discrimination…”

In other words, lesbians must not deny men access to their bodies, spaces and even language. Lesbians who assert their same-sex attraction or wish to reclaim their right to freedom of association are now the real enemies of ‘progress’. This is what homophobia 2.0 looks like.

Lesbian Resistance

LAG is a small voluntary organisation of lesbians fighting for the right of freedom of association for lesbians - this should not be too much to ask. In his summary judgement when refusing LAG’s appeal, Member Stewart Fenwick said:

… the Applicants identify as a discrete minority... identified by their sex and sexual orientation, characteristics that afford them the protection of the SDA. They seek to actively discriminate against another group ... identifiable by their gender identity, a characteristic also protected under the SDA.

Nicole Mowbray from LAG and LGB Alliance Australia said:

This is an extremely disappointing ruling by the AAT and gives men a loophole into lesbian spaces. We need our sexual boundaries to be respected, not denied in law. Lesbians are exclusively sexually and romantically attracted to other females, not to men who say they are female.

State and Corporate control

Gender identity ideology is not a grassroots, bottom-up movement but a state-sponsored movement funded largely by the deep pockets of the trans lobby and policed through the law. The Australian Labor Party is the architect of the changes to the SDA and is committed to pushing gender ideology legislation in every State.

Labor spent millions of dollars to promote the recent Voice referendum to inform and encourage Australians to vote ‘Yes’ in the referendum, and yet Labor pushed through changes to the Sex Discrimination Act that impacts the sex-based rights of women and the medicalisation of children under the cover of darkness. Every Australian should ask themselves why.

Word-shaped air

But gender identity is not a material reality or an incontrovertible truth - it’s a man-made concept designed to promote a dangerous lie.

The English novelist, George Orwell in the novel 1984 shows what happens when citizens believe the lies imposed by the State:

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it ... And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable…what then?

The Lie Exposed

On 21 January, the incoming US Administration published its Executive Order authored by May Mailman. The purpose of the EO is to expose the lie of gender identity ideology and restore biological truth and material reality to public policy and the law. You can read it in full

Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.

The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government

The fight goes on

The US administration has taken a significant step in supporting women to fight to reclaim their rights in law, language and policy. Australian media and politicians are largely framing this as ‘right-wing’ and ‘anti-Trump’ but more and more Australians realise that if the Australian government wishes to make you believe the lie that men can become women, they can make you believe anything.

The women at LAG are considering whether they will lodge another appeal. Please visit their website and send them a message of support.

X: @ActiveLesbians

Note of thanks:

The initial request to the AHRC and the appeal to the AAT were made possible by the Barrister Leigh Howard, the solicitor Anna Kerr and the researcher Megan Blake providing their services pro bono.