Season 2 Episode 4

Stassja Frei: Warning: this episode contains sexually explicit descriptions. It is not suitable for young children. Listener discretion is advised.

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Lesbians have been described as the canary in the coal mine when it comes to transgenderism. Because long before men were forcing themselves into women’s change rooms and women’s sport, they were calling themselves lesbians and forcing themselves upon the lesbian community. In Australia, this became a serious problem about 30 years go. After fundraising to buy a building that would be a cultural centre for Australian lesbians, the Lesbian Space Project, as it was called, fell apart. Incredibly, lesbian women were divided on whether men who call themselves lesbians should be welcome in the space.

Sand Hall: Cos it does feel like an invasion the disrespect that trans males and their supporters have for women and women’s space and- has felt like an invasion, it really has, a space invasion and certainly with the Lesbian Space Project it was a space invasion and, we went underground largely, the radical lesbian feminists who had supported the Lesbian Space Project and who were part of those national Lesfest gatherings, we went underground.

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Stassja Frei: Welcome back to Desexing Society. I’m your host Stassja Frei. Episode 4: Lesbians

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Sand Hall is a second wave feminist and a lesbian.

Sand Hall: I come from, originally from New Zealand and was involved with mainly cultural as well as political activism there in the 70s as part of the Women’s Liberation Movement. And in those days it was a lot issues around abortion, woman’s right to choose, pornography, not so much lesbian issues came to Australia in ’78, just sort of as a practice for going overseas really and found myself on the Women’s Lands in Northern New South Wales and that was it really, I was in love with that land and the whole sort of utopian vision.

Stassja Frei: If you haven’t heard of Women’s Lands, perhaps you’ve heard of Amazon Acres. It was a women only, off grid community set up in 1973. ABC Radio National produced a two-part audio documentary in 2019 which explored the history of Amazon Acres. Having published two books on the topic, Sand was featured in the series. Here’s a snippet:

ABC Presenter: For one group of rebels, their way to reinvent the world was to buy a mountaintop and build their own paradise. Women only. Eves, no Adams. 

Sand Hall: The idealism and the utopia – it’s as good as it gets. And especially a thousand acres and especially 10kms from the nearest neighbour. That sense of security and safety and free from the male gaze – it was incredibly liberating.

Stassja Frei: All this is to say that Sand knows a few things about the importance of women only spaces. 

Sand Hall: So I was living in Sydney and around the late ‘80s a few of us started talking about wanting to buy a building in Sydney and set it up as a lesbian cultural and community centre.

Stassja Frei: Settle in for a little bit of lesbian history that you’re not likely to hear on ABC Radio National. This was the 1990s – that sweet spot in history where lesbians were out and proud and there was a thriving lesbian cultural scene that didn’t include men. 

Sand Hall: National gatherings were happening around Australia annually pretty much, Lesfests or you know there’d be a conference or a festival or mainly a kind of get together for a week or so in different states and I put my hand up to do one in Sydney in ‘91, largely with the idea of gauging what the interest was amongst women in Sydney for supporting a lesbian space, a building, and all that kind of went with that, and it was a 10 day festival, really diverse, really well supported, it culminated- at the end of that there was a conference on the weekend so, I dunno, a couple of thousand women from around the country had that conference at UTS. 

Stassja Frei: UTS – that’s the University of Technology Sydney.

Sand Hall: And on the Sunday we had a sold out lesbian Sydney Opera House concert which was just amazing. Georgina Abrahams was organising- was one of the organisers for the conference and I was focusing on the festival and we both worked at bringing together the Opera House concert, which had its challenges, some women said what happens if we don’t fill it, we’ll lose money, and ra ra ra, let’s go to the Enmore Theatre and it’s like, no, it has to be the Opera House. 

Stassja Frei: Holding a lesbian event at Australia’s most iconic building was a statement. Something like, ‘we’re here, we’re lesbians, get over it.’ It would never happen today. Today it would be an LGBTQIA+ event with the spotlight firmly on men in drag. 

Sand Hall: And from that, there was definitely a sense that there was the interest, but there was also $20,000 left after all of that which was used as seed funding for the idea of getting a space together. Georgina and I – and we worked really well together, we had a really good friendship – came to me and said, let’s work together as co-convenors to raise the money to buy a building, and we talked about it and we came up with the notion of the Lesbian Space Project, LSP and the idea of 500 by 500 – we would aim for 500 cheques of $500 each, coming up with quarter of a million dollars that was at that time, the early 90s, that was enough to buy a building outright, that was our plan. We decided that we would do it all within a year, 1993, that if by the 10th of December 1993 – International Human Rights Day – when we booked the Sydney Town Hall for our big finale concert, if we hadn’t got the quarter of a million dollars by the end of that, we would just give it all back. So it was an amazing year, lots of women and people, supporters, gay men, straight people, were- and internationally a bit too, interstate – were contributing and the cheques, the $500 cheques started coming in from fundraisers or just personal contributions so on that 10th of December concert at the Sydney town hall, Virginia Bell, High Court judge now, and Julie McCrossin were the MCs that night 

Stassja Frei: Virginia Bell was the first lesbian to serve on Australia’s High Court. She retired in 2021. And Julie McCrossin is another high-profile Australian lesbian, having hosted various ABC radio programs and been team captain on the comedy quiz show Good News Week from ‘96 to 2000. The Lesbian Space Project had a lot of support.

Sand Hall: and money was pouring onto the stage, pledges, pretty much by the end of it we, we were confident we had the 250,000, there was a $50,000 pledge that came at the end that was later revoked so then we had only 200,000 because we’d said if we didn’t raise it in a year we’d give it all back. So we had just under 200 and we said to everybody, ‘ok, we haven’t got it, do you want your money back?’ and the overwhelming feeling was no, keep going. Two people wanted their $500 back, that was fine. So we did keep going. Georgina went overseas. I went to the, I think it was in July 1994, the Brisbane National Lesfest 

Stassja Frei: Lesfests were annual, volunteer run gatherings, which started in 1988. Each year a group of women would volunteer to run the next festival, so that each Lesfest took on the character of the women who organised them. 

They weren’t your usual festival with a stage in a paddock. They were far more intimate, organic and anarchic. For example, one Lesfest was held 100km west of Alice Springs. Local Aboriginal women performed a Welcome to Country and took the women out into to the desert where they ate kangaroo, had their bodies painted and were taught traditional women’s dance by the Aunties. Meanwhile back at camp they had a huge shade cloth tent area with a disco ball hanging in the middle.

Another year, Lesfest was held on a property in Daylesford, about an hour and a half outside of Melbourne. Here, women performed a playreading of a book, learned ballroom dancing and swam naked in the dam.

And of course, there was the 1991 Sydney Lesfest which Sand helped coordinate. This was more structured and was an extensive 10 days of culture and lifestyle. It included an art exhibition, a trade fair, music performances, plays, workshops, the conference at UTS and the grand finale – the Sydney Opera House concert.

Lesfest was a mix of business and pleasure and brought together women from all over Australia.

Sand Hall: I think it was in July 1994, the Brisbane National Lesfest and at that Lesfest, it wasn’t known to many of the participants but there was a transwoman – male saying he was a female – that was part of the organising committee of this National Lesfest in Brisbane and that caused a furore. And there were plenaries and discussions and like the radical lesbian feminist perspective was like, no, this is not ok. And then there was this sort of a coalition type input but we’d never seen them before really in our national gatherings that were saying, ‘if this man wanted to say he was a lesbian then that has to be ok.’ And it was very divisive but it also was kind of the beginning for us of ‘this is an issue’ and it impacted the Lesbian Space Project, when we got back to Sydney and Georgina got back from overseas, it became an issue. She and I had different perspectives around the trans agenda, she was in favour of Lesbian Space being inclusive of men who identified as lesbians, I was not really, like I’m a women born female sort of lesbian, I think that there is something intrinsically female about being lesbian that’s not negotiable. So that became a bit of an issue and divided the community essentially. Divided the organising process of fundraising and buying a building. 

Stassja Frei: To make matters worse, behind the scenes, Sand’s co-convenor, Georgina, had made promises to the Transgender Liberation Coalition.

Sand Hall: Unbeknownst to the rest of the Lesbian Space committee, during ‘93, Georgina had had quite a bit of contact with the Transgender Liberation Coalition chair, Aidy Griffin who, on the understanding that trans would be included, which the rest of us didn’t know about, had given a $500 cheque – so had given undertakings that were in conflict with some of the rest of us, so that added to the whole split really.

Stassja Frei: Remember that name – Aidy Griffin. We’ll come back to him in a minute.

Sand Hall: So at the end of ‘94 there was an AGM of the Lesbian Space Project and the committee changed, I mean some would probably describe it as a coup, but it was more that those who’d been involved, more radical lesbian feminists, just stepped up and were on the committee and we went ahead, I was probably the only previous committee member that went forward with the new structure and we did what we said we were going to do with this money, we found and bought a building in Bedford Street Newtown and it unfortunately had a mortgage which meant that we needed to get tenants in for some of the space downstairs and the upstairs was turned into the Lesbian Space. Unfortunately, because the whole trans agenda split the support base of the Lesbian Space Project, pretty much in half, it really decimated the good will that was needed to make the building viable financially and practically. The community was really divided. And after a while, the committee changed again and then those that were more pro trans were the organisers, the ones who were on the committee, they didn’t really have the will or desire in my opinion to continue as it was, because it was not what they wanted, they didn’t really want us to buy a building once the whole trans issue had become a problem, so after a while they decided to sell the building and did so, and I think there was about a $100,000 profit from the sale of that, but it was, it was sort of the end of bricks and mortar for lesbians in Sydney. 

Stassja Frei: The Lesbian Space Project is a maddening tale. I would’ve thought that lesbians would be the last group of women to ever accept the idea that men can be women. I would’ve thought that having a lesbian cultural centre 20 minutes from the Sydney CBD would be far more important to lesbians than pandering to men. For me, it’s one of the most unfathomable parts of transgenderism’s success – its ability to convince lesbian women that some men are lesbians.

The Lesbian Space Project’s legacy lives on.

Sand Hall: And the notion of Lesbian Space changed, it changed from an address and bricks and mortar to money. There was money to do something with. And it turned into what’s now Lesbians Incorporated, Linc, which is a lesbian grants program. So from the sale of the building, a serviced apartment was bought in Surrey Hills and the income from that was used to disperse grants annually to lesbian projects around the country, and that’s lesbian projects that had that broader trans inclusive pretty much, I mean it was a variety, it went to all sorts, and it’s still going, even though they’ve just sold that serviced apartment in Surrey Hills and I’m not sure what the plan is, because it’s community money – that was that $250,000 that’s probably now about 750,000 and over those last 22 years or so since Linc formed more than 250,000 has been given away in grants, so, you know, I’m sad that we did lose the physical space side of things, but because we were so divided it wasn’t viable, there wasn’t the good will and therefore it wasn’t viable.

Stassja Frei: On the Lesbians Incorporated Grants website, it states, quote, “Lesbians Inc supports those who identify as women, wom*n, male to female transgender or trans*, or non-binary and all are welcome.” End quote.

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There’s only one type of trans identified male who calls himself a lesbian. And that’s the autogynephilic transsexual which we covered in season 1. These are not extremely feminine gay men. These are men who are sexually aroused by the idea of being a woman or by the image of themselves as women. They’re predominantly heterosexual men, so they tend to have some degree of outward attraction to women. And when they transition, it’s these men who call themselves lesbians or transbians.

From what I’ve seen and what I’ve been told, Aidy Griffin of the Transgender Liberation Coalition was an autogynephile. He passed away in 2021 and the Star Observer, which is Australia’s longest running LGBT publication, published an obituary celebrating his life. The photo they used for the article was of Aidy Griffin in a white polo shirt, looking very much like a middle-aged bald man. But the pronoun used throughout is ‘they’. 

I found this confusing. The pronoun ‘they’ implies that Aidy was non-binary. So what was this non-binary man doing acting as chair person of the Transgender Liberation Coalition if he wasn’t a transsexual? In a follow up call with Sand, I asked her, was Aidy Griffin gay? Was this a gay man acting on behalf of men who think they’re women? Sand was unsure of his sexual orientation, but at the time she was dealing with him, he was living with a woman. Ok still unclear.

I searched some more online and found a Crikey article titled Trans people have always been here. It includes a photo of Aidy Griffin from 1993. He’s cross dressed, wearing a boofy, very 80s style wig, dangling earrings, a flowery blouse and a neck scarf, presumably to hide his adam’s apple. It seems that Aidy Griffin was a part time cross dresser – a transvestite. And cross dressing is the most common manifestation of autogynephilia. 

Also pictured in the photo is Clover Moore. She’s been the Lord Mayor of Sydney for the last 20 years. But back then, in 1993 Clover Moore was an elected member of the NSW parliament. She was an independent MP. And it seems that she and Aidy Griffin had quite a friendly working relationship. As the Star Observer outlined in Aidy Griffin’s obituary, quote, “Aidy worked with others and then local state MP Clover Moore in the mid nineties to draft the first transgender recognition and anti-discrimination bill in the western world.” End quote. A version of that bill was eventually passed in 1996, known as the Transgender (Anti-Discrimination and Other Acts Amendment) Act of 1996, New South Wales.

As part of the justification for this Act, Aidy pointed to the Lesbian Space Project as an example of unjust discrimination against men who think they’re women.

Sand Hall: So I was also involved with the Anti Discrimination Board and a lot of the consultations they did with gay and lesbian – and that’s what it was then, gay and lesbian and bisexual communities. And Aidy Griffin was part of that from the Transgender Liberation Coalition, and Aidy was really quite nasty around what happened with Lesbian Space…

Stassja Frei: As an example of just how nasty Aidy Griffin was towards lesbians, Sand tells me he started calling the Lesbian Space Project, the Laughing Stock Project. 

Sand Hall: …proved the point really, as far as we could see, of that sense of an invasion. And sort of on the back of what happened with the Lesbian Space Project, Aidy and the Anti Discrimination Board, the laws changed in terms of notions of discrimination against transgender people, to the point where lesbians were being side lined more and more and we did, we had to go underground because, I was sort of done out of a job in a way in that I did used to organise social or cultural or political community entertainment events, concerts, gatherings or whatever and I could no longer do that without including men who said they were women or lesbians, like it became against the law for me to do that. We lost that freedom of association…I think that the United Nations Charter of Human Rights is a really good document or base to look at, what is fair, you know, like globally and certainly what’s safe for women and children, and in terms of what was happening with lesbian space, with the trans agenda, one human right is freedom of association and it’s like, we lost it.

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Stassja Frei: Another woman who was there for that brief moment in history when things were really good for lesbians is Carole Ann. Although lesbian events were effectively outlawed in New South Wales in 1996, the annual Lesfest continued in other less draconian Australian states. And in 2003 Carole Ann was on the organising committee for the next Lesfest.

Carole Ann: We were organising the Lesfest for 2004 and it was going to be in Victoria and we’d advertised as we had done up until then in, you know, lesbian magazines and what have you, saying it was for lesbians born female. And a trans person, Sally Goldner, put in a complaint.

Stassja Frei: Sally Goldner is a male who identifies as a woman and is the co-founder of the influential not for profit organisation, Transgender Victoria. In 2016 Goldner was inducted into the Victorian Government’s Honour Roll because according to the Victorian government website, quote “Sally has overseen Transgender Victoria’s growth and development over the past two decades and has played an integral part in building its capacity to participate in public debates and influence positive policy reforms in Victoria and at the federal level.” End quote. Goldner not only identifies as a woman, but also as pansexual, meaning he can be attracted to anyone regardless of their biological sex or gender identity. He hosts a radio program on Melbourne’s 3CR called Out of the Pan, where he explores pansexual, bisexual, transgender and polyamorous issues. In short, he’s a fairly influential transgender activist. And back in 2003 he wasn’t happy that lesbians didn’t want him at Lesfest. So he filed a discrimination complaint.

Carole Ann: So we were a bit thrown by that, the organising group. What do we do? So we rang up the EO Commission and said what do we do?

Stassja Frei: The EO Commission is the Equal Opportunity Commission. It’s since been renamed the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission.

Carole Ann: Someone there, a lawyer, said ‘well you’ll need to get an exemption to be able to run this.’ So we filled out the forms and applied for an exemption and went before the tribunal and- without a lawyer, not really knowing what we were doing – and the Member at that time granted us an exemption.

Stassja Frei: Under Victorian anti-discrimination law, an organisation can apply for an exemption in order to lawfully discriminate. Back in 2003 it was still obvious to judges or Members of tribunals, as they’re called, that men don’t belong at lesbian only events.

Carole Ann: Off we go, start organising again and another complaint came in so we had to go back to the tribunal and this complaint was from The Australian Women which was a Sydney based transgender group.

Stassja Frei: What a name!

Carole Ann: I don’t know whether they still exist but that’s who came, in his little skirt and handbag and high heels to put another complaint. So even though we got the exemption, that wasn’t enough. They still were going to complain. And so what happened then was, in the process of that, it came out that Sally Goldner had put in a complaint earlier and when we applied for our exemption we hadn’t noted that, we hadn’t said that in that application for exemption and apparently we were supposed to have said that, and we hadn’t cos no one had told us we had to. So it yeah, the Member then just said ‘well I can’t do anything else. I have to just rule it out on a technicality’ and that was it. So after that is when we decided that we would go underground. So we cancelled- publicly cancelled the Lesfest for 2004 but booked another venue under a different name and just went ahead with it anyway but didn’t advertise it. And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since. So anyone in the know gets to know about these events but if you’re not in the know, if you’re not in the network then you don’t.

Stassja Frei: But even as a secret underground network, lesbians were still being persecuted by angry men. In 2006, just two years after Lesfest went private, details were leaked of an upcoming event in South Australia, organised by the group Sappho’s Party. This time, it was trans identified male, Tracie O’Keefe who made the discrimination complaint. O’Keefe was a friend – or at least an acquaintance – of Aidy Griffin’s, the man who’d ridiculed the Lesbian Space Project and who was instrumental in making lesbian only events unlawful in New South Wales.

Carole Ann: Sappho’s Party was an incorporated body, so it was, you know it was private, it still didn’t stop them making a complaint and it still didn’t stop us having to go before a court to argue that it was a private event. So it seems like even getting an exemption doesn’t protect you from these litigious trans people.

Stassja Frei: O’Keefe’s complaint failed. But as the saying goes, the process is the punishment. It’s stressful and can be costly to have to go before a tribunal just to explain why men who think they’re lesbians aren’t actually lesbians.

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Twenty years after Lesfest was publicly cancelled and driven underground, something shocking happened in Melbourne that brought Carole and other lesbians out of the shadows. You might have heard of it: Let Women Speak. Or maybe you know it as that anti trans rally that the neo nazis gate crashed. I’ll be covering Let Women Speak in depth in a future episode but for now, let me set the scene. In March 2023, about two or three hundred, mostly women, congregated out the front of Parliament House in Melbourne for an open mic event hosted by British woman, Kellie-Jay Keen. Women could get up and say their piece on how transgender laws and policies were affecting their lives. Across the street from us a vicious mob of transgender activists, trade unionists, socialists and other far left agitators gathered to try and prevent us from speaking. I was there and so was Carole. 

Carole Ann: I mean I’d been following all this stuff on social media but to actually be there in the midst of it was just unbelievable. Like where was all this hatred coming from? We were just a bunch of women talking about our rights. It was incredible. 

Stassja Frei: And then another group of protesters appeared. Dressed all in black and carrying a sign that read ‘destroy paedo freaks,’ they took up position on Parliament steps, some distance away from us women. And at some point they performed a nazi salute.

Carole Ann: And then the aftermath of it, you know fairly soon afterwards, hearing us all called nazis and bigots and transphobes, not just by that mob that was there but by every political leader – the Premier, the Deputy Premier, the leader of the Greens, all of them coming out saying the same stuff, we were nazis, we were bigots we were transphobes, we were horrible people, it was just surreal. It was traumatic not just for the being there at the moment and the knowing that you know if they broke through we could be in danger, but it was the trauma afterwards of being slandered and slurred and called things that- I mean my own granddaughter had heard the news about it and said that I was- must be a neo nazi, I mean that’s my granddaughter! And so it wasn’t just me it was all of us I think, we’re just in shock. In shock and traumatised by it and some still are I think. I came out fighting so that was why the Lesbian Action Group was set up was because I thought ‘damn this I’m not going to sit down and be bullied like that, we’ve got to do something. This is serious.’

Stassja Frei: After two decades of lesbians meeting in secret, Lesbian Action Group burst onto the scene with a challenge to the transgender movement that had erased them from public life.

Carole Ann: And the first thing that we decided we would do would be to put in for an application for an exemption to be able to hold lesbian only events and publicly advertise them. And that’s the whole issue is about publicly advertising and two of us had been part of the exemption application back in 2003 which we won and then we lost. So we decided that we would try again and that to add icing to the cake that we’d actually do it around International Lesbian Day and that we would book a room at the Victorian Pride Centre to do that, to have a celebration for lesbians on International Lesbian Day at the Victorian Pride Centre.

Stassja Frei: A celebration for lesbians on International Lesbian Day makes perfect sense, right? And you might think the Victorian Pride Centre would probably be the most welcoming of venues for lesbians. Right? Think again.

Carole Ann: We made a booking, they accepted our booking and then we notified them of what we were doing – applying for an exemption – and that’s when they cancelled and said ‘no, we’re totally inclusive here. It’s part of our policy and so we can’t have an exclusive event here.’ So they said no. 

Stassja Frei: Lesbians not welcome at the Victorian Pride Centre. It’s truly a bizarre situation. The Pride Centre describes itself as, quote “Australia’s first purpose-built centre for Australia’s LGBTIQ+ communities.” End quote. It’s as though they’ve taken the idea for the Lesbian Space Project and then purposefully and punitively excluded lesbians from the space. 

Carole Ann: Now we went into that knowing that the Victorian Pride Centre, if we publicly advertised, would not allow us a booking. We knew that. And we also knew that it was unlikely that we would get an exemption. But we decided to do it anyway as a- raising awareness of what was going to happen and what’s been happening to lesbians. Yeah we put in our exemption application to the Human Rights Commission. It was an exemption application for 5 years. If we had been granted that we would then be allowed to publicly advertise lesbian events as for female born lesbians only, for 5 years and you know, do other events as well. 

Stassja Frei: In their August 2023 application, Lesbian Action Group outlined that the exemption would exclude anyone who was not a lesbian born female. That meant heterosexual, bisexual and gay males; heterosexual and bisexual females; transgender people and queer plus people would all be excluded. In their submission opposing the application, Q+Law, a free legal service for LGBTIQA+SB people, claimed that, quote, “it is impossible to tell who is ‘born female’ and who is not without intrusion on an individual’s privacy, bodily integrity, and dignity.” End quote. Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t invoke the gross specter of ‘genital inspections’ because this is a favourite go to for transgender activists. The argument goes: ‘how can you possibly tell who is male or female without performing a genital inspection?’ 

Carole Ann: We had said we’re actually not going to police it. How can we? We’re putting in for an exemption so that legally we can advertise publicly for an event for lesbians who are born female. And seeing that, we would hope that that would be respected. If people chose to come along to our events and disrespect our wishes there’s very little we could do about it. We weren’t going to police it. We weren’t going to have security on the door. We weren’t going to question people in depth. We would just hope that they would respect our request. It was the opposition, it was that lot that kept talking about genital inspections and how do you tell the difference and whatever, not us. We didn’t even bring that up. So it was a non issue as far as we were concerned. 

Stassja Frei: The Australian Human Rights Commission denied the exemption. In their 26 page decision they said, quote, “It appears that restricting access to a public event to celebrate International Lesbian Day in the manner now proposed by the Lesbian Action Group would amount to unlawful discrimination under the Sex Discrimination Act on the ground of at least gender identity.” End quote. 

Once again, we have the Labor Party to thank. The 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act have essentially turned it into the Gender Identity Discrimination Act. To date, whenever there’s been a clash between women’s sex based rights and men’s gender identity rights, courts and tribunals have consistently ruled in favour of gender identity.

Their decision against Lesbian Action Group included the outlandish statement that, quote “‘sex’ may change over the course of a person’s lifetime.” End quote. Now, I’m not a biologist but I’m pretty sure that humans can’t literally change sex. So the Human Rights Commission is basing their decision on a legal fiction. That is, something that is not true, but is treated as though it’s true for the purposes of the law. And so we end up with the deeply lesbophobic legal concept of a male lesbian. And his rights take precedence over actual lesbian rights.

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After Lesbian Action Group’s exemption was denied, the women fell into a bit of a funk. They weren’t intending to appeal the decision.

Carole Ann: It was too much work, too much angst that you know, we’d done what we set out to do and we’d leave it at that. So come a couple of days before the appeal application was meant to go in, I had a change of heart and I thought ‘oh no we’ve come this far, you know, surely we can push it a bit further. Surely we can make more awareness raising out of this. Surely we can do the appeal.’ So I put it to the rest of them and they said – cos initially I’d said ‘if we go for an appeal I’m warn out, I can’t do it.’ Nobody else was going to stand up and do it. So this time I had a bit of a rest and I said ‘ok, if I push this, will you all back me?’ and they said yes.

Stassja Frei: In the first round, they’d represented themselves. But this time they weren’t just guessing their way through the process. This time, they had a legal team backing them.

Carole Ann: So we managed to get a pro bono barrister. We managed to get Anna Kerr as our pro bono solicitor. We managed to get Megan Blake as our researcher extraordinaire and we put in our application for the appeal and that was sort of the end of November I think and off we went. 

Stassja Frei: The case went before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal – an independent body that reviews decisions made by Australian Government agencies.

Carole Ann: Well I was on the stand for 3 hours and so I think I’ve blotted a lot of it out, because it was quite overwhelming, it was over 2 days. The Member, Member, oh what was his name?

Stassja Frei: Dr Stewart Fenwick, Senior Member of the tribunal.

Carole Ann: I think he was not biased either way. I think it was quite new to him, all the arguments, so he was curious and asked some good questions. But the first thing he said to me when I got on the stand was ‘I’ve always wanted to ask this, ‘what are your pronouns?’ and I said to him ‘oh I think they’re rad/fem’ and he just laughed.  That was a good beginning to it. 

Stassja Frei: Rad/fem is short for radical feminist.

Carole Ann: And he kept asking for clarification. So I was able to say to him, ‘look, language matters in this. When we’re talking about transwomen, we’re really talking about men. And when we’re talking about transmen we’re really talking about women.’ And he took that on board and I don’t think he had really realised that before. And he said to me, ‘so you don’t think that transwomen are women?’ and I said ‘no because people can’t change sex. I’ve never heard any scientific proof to say that they can so no I don’t’ and he said ‘so do you think that’s transphobic?’ and I said ‘no not at all. People can’t change sex.’ So in a court of law I was able to say that and it just felt so freeing and it was just so liberating to be so- and to be listened to. I think it made a difference that this,  this Member of the tribunal was actually listening to what I had to say.

Stassja Frei: The expert witness put forth by the Australian Human Rights Commission was Dr Elena Jeffreys. She’s the Policy and Advocacy Manager for the Scarlet Alliance which is Australia’s peak body for pimps and women in the sex trade. I looked her up on the Scarlet Alliance website. She has blue hair, blue eyebrows and a septum ring. Her bio says she’s been a sex worker since the 1990s. From what I can tell, her expertise is in prostitution, however she’s also a lesbian.

Carole Ann: And she actually called us nazi bigots in the court. Because she’d mentioned it in her witness statement, she’d said Let Women Speak women and all those who went to it and organised it were bigots. I mean she’d just obviously just read- she hadn’t been there, she’d just read what she’d- so our barrister challenged her on that and she said ‘yes they were and probably all those ones sitting behind you are too’

Stassja Frei: oh my god!

Carole Ann: So yeah, she was, in all seriousness in a court of law she was saying that and this is what the Australian Human Rights Commission were presenting as their expert witness as to why we can’t have lesbian events. Presumably because we’re all nazi bigots and we shouldn’t be allowed to [sigh]. This is the best the AHRC could come up with. It was insulting.

Stassja Frei: On January 20^th 2025, Dr Stewart Fenwick, Senior Member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, handed down his judgement. He found that Lesbian Action Group was seeking to actively discriminate against people with a gender identity. He wrote, quote “I have determined that endorsing overt acts of discrimination cannot be the intended effect of the s 44 exemption power in the Sex Discrimination Act.” End quote. Once again, in the clash of rights between gender identity and women’s rights, a male judge decided in favour of men who think they’re women.

To be clear, it’s currently unlawful for Australian lesbians to hold public events without the presence of heterosexual men who call themselves lesbians. Lesbian Action Group have announced they will appeal the decision, this time in Federal Court. 

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When the Australian Human Rights Commission initially denied Lesbian Action Group their exemption, the AHRC recommended that they form a members club.

Carole Ann: Under the Act if you are a members club, an incorporated body that runs events just for your members then you have a permanent exemption, so we really didn’t need a 5 year exemption according to them because we could just do this other thing. Which was not our aim. Our aim is to be able to be free and out there and run events publicly. But we thought well, another one of our aims is to start rebuilding lesbian culture in Australia. It’s been decimated you know- events and venues and groups, magazines and communication, everything, dating apps, it’s just been decimated. So one of our things is we want to start rebuilding that. And so we thought, well in the short term if we did set up a members only club, which is still a little bit like being underground but it’s not quite now because they’ve said we can have a permanent exemption, so if we did that then nobody presumably would be able to make a complaint against us, they wouldn’t be able to take us to court again. So a group of us decided that that’s what we would do, we’d set up The Lesbian Club. So we got incorporated, The Lesbian Club got incorporated and we started to- running events…for members and recruiting members. In doing that we were allowed to set criteria for our members, so who could be a member, so of course it’s lesbians who are born female, lesbians who do not believe that humans can change sex. So they’re the two underpinning criteria for membership, so if you’re a lesbian and you can tick both those boxes then you’re a member.

Stassja Frei: It’s really quite incredible that in Australia, after 50 years of the lesbian and gay rights movement, this is the only legal way for lesbians to hold events. 

Carole Ann: So we’ve had a really successful year actually, a really exhausting year of events and we are now up to just shy of 200 members, around Australia. We had a conference recently and we did advertise that on social media. We’ve had a games day, a 500 tournament, we’ve got a picnic at the end of the year, you know, really high powered things, but you know all with the aim of rebuilding the community across Australia.

Stassja Frei: One demographic of lesbians who are in desperate need of real community are younger lesbians.

Carole Ann: We have a young lesbian group, there’s 18 in that group at the moment and they have a monthly zoom and that’s 18-30 year olds. And at our conference we actually had a panel with 5 of the young lesbians, from the young lesbian group telling us what it’s like, what their life’s like and it is very hard. Three of them are desisters, so they went down the trans path.

Stassja Frei: Just to clarify, desisters are people who once identified as trans but no longer do. They haven’t undergone any medical interventions. Detransitioners, on the other hand, are people who did start on hormones and may have had surgeries before changing their mind.

Carole Ann: What they’re saying is it’s very isolating, they don’t know who to talk to because they can’t easily talk to friends about it because there’s a lot of pressure to transition or to be a trans ally, so if they came out and said no they don’t believe in that stuff anymore, they’d lose what little community they have. It’s difficult dating because you know well the dating apps are useless because they have men on them but again they have to be really careful about what they say and they have to sort of sneakily find out someone’s views, whether they’re a TERF or not. They spend a lot of time on social media and that’s how they do find like minds. And they haven’t got the role models so they’re having to discover this stuff themselves which is so sad. I mean I’ve put my life into lesbian community, to build it up so that younger lesbians didn’t have to go through what we had to go through and to see this generation of young lesbians having to redo the whole thing is just so disheartening. Yeah cos, they don’t, they don’t have role models, they don’t have events or venues that they can meet each other, that’s what they’re telling us and that the pressure to transition and also to medicalise is huge, it’s huge.

Stassja Frei: These are dark times for young lesbians. Their sexual orientation is now considered transphobic by the so called LGBTQIA+ community. It’s a bizarre turn of events. But with the creation of The Lesbian Club, there’s finally a safe space free of men, where young lesbians can be themselves. 

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By now you might be wondering, what about gay men? Are they facing the same sort of homophobia that lesbians are experiencing? Sadly, the answer is yes.

Take for example the case of Wet on Wellington. They’re a sauna in Melbourne where gay men can go and have sex with other men. They also run events for lesbians, swingers couples and they have nights where anyone from the LGBT+ community can attend. But they’re mostly there for gay men.

In early 2021 they put out a simple, three question survey for their patrons. Question 1 asked, quote “Should a person who identifies as a trans man be allowed entry to Wet on Wellington during cis male only days? Yes or No.” End quote. Just a quick reminder, ‘cis’ spelt C-I-S is a term used by trans activists to describe the vast majority of us who are not transgender. 

The second question that Wet on Wellington asked was whether women who’d had sex change surgeries should be allowed into the venue on cis male only days. They divided the answer into two parts. Top surgery, meaning double mastectomy- yes or no? And bottom surgery, meaning phalloplasty – yes or no?

And finally, they asked, quote, “Would you continue to visit Wet on Wellington knowing there is the possibility of seeing a naked pre op trans man with female breasts? Yes or no. Or female genitalia? Yes or no.” End quote.

The reaction from women who think they’re men and their allies, was swift. Wet on Wellington was transphobic. They quickly capitulated, issued an apology and began what they called trans inclusive dialogue with the trans community.

A group called PASH.tm which stands for the Peer Advocacy Network for the Sexual Health of Trans Masculinities released a statement. They said, quote “The Wet on Wellington survey was transphobic and caused significant harm to our community. It was unethical and discriminatory and we do not accept that it was a reasonable mechanism to build an inclusive environment. We request that the survey results be destroyed.” End quote. 

They rejected Wet on Wellington’s apology. They also rejected the Trans and Gender Diverse Inclusion Reference Group they had convened in response to the controversy. According to PASH.tm the reference group needed to be led by trans people. Presumably they didn’t want cis gay men leading the group. This was a transgender coup. Women with breasts and female genitalia would be attending events for gay men whether they liked it or not.

Aside from their homophobic bullying of Wet on Wellington, the trans men from PASH.tm were also the brains behind a now retired website called Grunt. From 2016 to 2022 Grunt existed to advise trans men about, quote “hot, fun, informed sex between trans guys and cis guys.” End quote.

Grunt also had links to the AIDS Council of NSW – ACON. A trans identified female by the name of Teddy Cook was co-chair of PASH.tm at the same time she was Director of Community Health at ACON. And because of this link, we’re going to quickly check back in with our ACON expert, Kit Kowalski. She’s a blogger and researcher who we first met in episode 2. She also runs the website ACON Exposed. Here she describes the troubling advice that Grunt was giving to women who think they’re men.

Kit Kowalski: and there’s a lot of content on there that is talking about going to spas and beats and hooking up with gay men and how to hook up with gay men. So the point where I have a bit of problem with this content is that it actually advises trans men that they don’t need to disclose that they’re actually female to a man. Now in NSW law if you don’t disclose something that might cause someone to withdraw their consent to sex, then that’s actually sexual assault. So I think that’s putting young women in a really dangerous situation. This website actually says, if you’re giving someone a blow job, you don’t need to tell him that you’re trans. And you can imagine very well in a dark room maybe that doesn’t matter but when you go out into the light and your date finds out that you’re actually not a man and you’re quite obviously female, he might not take very kindly to this situation. I think it puts women in danger.

Stassja Frei: Just like within the lesbian community, gay men are divided on the issue. Some have no problem dating or having sex with women who say they’re men. Others are very much turned off by the idea. With the current state of the Sex Discrimination Act, gay men have no choice but to include such women in their events.

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Coming up in the next episode of Desexing Society, we’ll investigate what happens when male criminals are treated as women under the law.

Steph Hughes: Males have been placed in the female prison estate and we’re not adequately keeping track of it.

Janet Fraser: It didn’t go well for the women of Mulawa. So the first rape allegation was in 1999.

Rachael Wong: Like, everyone’s just absolutely bewildered and shocked that this is even happening, but the reality is not enough people know that it’s happening.

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Stassja Frei: Thanks for listening to Desexing Society. Written and produced by me, Stassja Frei. Thank you to my script editor, Ms Edie Wyatt, my sound technician Matthew Friend, and to Sand Hall, Carole Ann and Kit Kowalski for appearing in this episode. For more information, or to donate towards this project – which I paid for myself – please visit desexingsociety.com