Michelle Telfer In Her Own Words

TRANSCRIPT

Good evening, everybody on behalf of the opportunity commission, I would like to welcome every man, woman, gender by gender, gender, queer, gender fluid, and non-binary individual through tonight to be an active listener, to the stories, to for inclusion, acknowledging all of our young people on today. My name is Alyce.

My pronouns are she her and I am a woman with a transgender diverse experience. Before we get into the conversation a bit further in this. Um, do we have questions that have been pre-submitted by audience members, um, and curated by equal opportunity commission? I would like to welcome Ingrid, come in into the microphone.

Ingrid is a quad cloud on we’re gonna get that right. That one enough, our word from Freeman. West of Australia and recognize young leader within the first nations community Ingrid as the founder and principal consultant of cut PM in getting practice on that consultancy representing first nations business globally.

For over 10 years, she has presented a various forums and conferences around the world in relation to engagement, equality, sorry, equity diversity matters, including as a delegate to the UN women. Women’s leaders conference in Israel in 2013 and Ted expert in 2014, a very strong ally of L BT I Q first nations, youth, and diverse groups, stakeholders and organizations, please.

Welcome Ingrid. Welcome.

TRANSCRIPT

Let’s get into some Q and a in this space and start asking some questions for some real outcomes. And we’ll start with you, Michelle. First, if we can, could you tell us, had you came to work as director of the Royal children’s hospital general service? Thanks Alice.

Yes. Uh, in 2012, I took up a role, um, as at the clinical lead of adolescent medicine at the Royal children’s hospital. And. At this time, there was a P uh, pediatric endocrinologist who was retiring from practice. His name was professor Gary Warren and professor Warren had, um, for many years prior, nine years prior to me coming to the Royal children’s in this role had looked after trans young people. um, and had been, um, assisting them with, uh, affirming their gender through hormone treatment when appropriate and supporting, um, others who were, um, not necessarily wanting, um, medical intervention and with his retirement, there was a gap left and a real reluctance from anyone in particular to step forward into this.

and I think the reluctance was partly cause, uh, trans medicine isn’t something that any of us were taught in medical school and was not something that we encountered regularly within our practice in a tertiary hospital setting. And doctors really don’t like, uh, to be in a position where, um, they, they don’t feel confident and, and know everything that they’re doing.

So it’s quite a confronting situation to be in. To know, less than the people you are here in the room. And in my role, I thought, you know, maybe this is something that adolescent medicine should take on. Um, where pediatricians, who, um, very much look after young people where there’s an overlap between medicine and physical medicine and mental.

and this is a perfect field, uh, where those two aspects are, um, very firmly integrated. So I put my hand up and at that time, that year we had 18 new referrals. So it was quite a small, um, aspect of the work that I was doing. But with social change and the increase in acceptance and visibility of trans young people and an awareness that the Royal children’s hospital is a safe space to come to seek assistance.

We saw our numbers increasing steadily very rapidly over the, uh, the volunteer years to now. And last year at the Royal children’s, we had 821 new referrals. Um, so in the time that I started in 2012, putting my hand up admittedly, um, ha needing to do at that time, a lot of reading and searching the literature.

Speaking to trans young people to help me understand exactly what, um, they’re experiencing. Um, we have seen, um, now or receive referrals from more than 3000 young people. Uh, so that’s my story of how I got to here. Thank you. Um, follow on from that, we’ve got question from the audience has come from Raven Jackson.

She, their last, what safeguarding measures are being put in place, trans identifying children. Is this something you can problem?

Yeah. That’s a really good question. What, what we know with trans young people from, um, our, our own experiences, but also through research is that the, um, most important factor for, um, excellent mental health in young trans people is a supportive family.

So there’s a direct correlation with supportive families and young people thriving. and we spend a lot of time helping parents to understand the experiences of their children and, and their young people. And unfortunately, there are many parents who, who, who, who struggle, um, with acceptance. And I think at the Royal children’s hospital, we see a bias population cause to actually come to us you need to be fairly well resourced and, um, able to advocate as a family. So for example, we need, you need to go to a GP, need to be able to express how you’re feeling and what you need. And then the GP needs to refer in. And there’s obviously some parental involvement in all of those processes. So we, we see the young people who tend to have supportive families and we know, uh, again from the research.

There are thousands and thousands of young people in the community who, uh, lack sufficient support even to come in and to talk to us and seek our care. Um, I think the most common situation we have with, with parents who are, um, struggling to the point that, um, they are, um, sadly rejecting of, uh, their children’s experience, um, completely other situations where.

Um, there has been a separation of the family and, um, sometimes estrangement, um, parents for other reasons. And there has been a disconnect with that parent actually seeing and, um, being involved in, uh, their child growing up. And when we reach out to those parents, because we need to, in terms of consent for any treatment, um, there can be a high degree of distress as, um, as, as that parent comes in and, and, um, yeah, struggles to, to find a place where they can connect, uh, at that level, um,

• In 2012, the RCH Gender Clinic had 18 new referrals, “last year at the Royal children’s, we had 821 new referrals”.

TRANSCRIPT

Um, moving on to humor for a question in this space as a board member of your last school, have you had any experience with students identifying as male or boys who have come through the girls school system? Um, not so much as a board member. Um, we don’t, um, each school will deal with that on

Um, not so much in my role as a board member for the lines of girls schools. Although we do talk about. this and other, other topics that affect our girls’ schools. Um, but more so with all of the, um, the organizations that I belong to as a principal of an independent school, um, we, our job is to care for every single student and their family.

And every single student has a brother had mentioned. We try to deal with on an individual basis to make sure we’re providing the appropriate support and care that they need and that their family. So, uh, it’s, it’s something that all principals in independent, all private, um, state schools, um, have as their focus, it’s about advocating for all of our young people and making sure that every family is supported to the best of our ability.

Awesome. Thank you. And have you considered how it handled NLC directly to reach you? School? Oh, absolutely. So, um, we, um, we do have policy at our school and our, we are a church, a school of the uniting church and the uniting church, um, vision and mission and values, underpin, everything that we do. And the uniting church stands for, um, inclusivity and support of diversity.

So it’s about, um, everybody’s making the image of God and we love and respect everybody. According. So, um, my job as a principal of the uniting church school is to make sure that that happens at every level in the school part journey, the students on. Yes. Thank you. Um, in your role as board member of the Alliance and school girls, to what extent do you see the impact of religion on transgender youth accessing and within their schools?

Um, oh, it’s. and Brad was talking about the thin edge of the wind. I always say, no matter what decision I make about anything could be something that’s quite, um, frivolous. Somebody’s gonna love it. Somebody’s gonna hate it. And there’ll be everybody in between. And we, we see the same for, um, all topics. And this is quite a important and significant topic.

So you can understand that the level of that extreme, um, Would be greater and, and to a higher level. So we talk about those sorts of all sorts of issues that impact on, um, girls or, um, young people who identify as girls in our schools. And we do a lot of research and a lot of sharing of information to try and help all of the schools in our Alliance and parents as well, cuz lots of, um, resources on our website and around the range of issues and um, supports for families.

So please do go and. Wasn’t and that’s great to think that there’s planning in place there’s support mechanism. Cause it’s an educational piece for the teachers, as well as what its for the parents and for the administration in that space. Um, we’ve got a question from when they come and pop them. Um, they’ve asked what independent and Catholic religious schools regarding supporting LGBTQ for students, particularly trans students to flourish and develop.

They actually started. You’ve already mentioned that some policies and things in there is that being carried across the greater realm of independent school schools from where you sit on the board. Um, my experience is yes. So, um, I can talk from my own experience in, in this, um, in this situation. So when, um, I arrived at the, the school that I’m at at the moment, we did have a policy and this space has changed and developed and grown so much as Michelle had had outlined earlier.

And I. What we had in place was okay. It said all the right things, but I thought it needed to be developed, um, more fully so that we could support all of our young people to the best of our ability. So, um, I reached out to all the heads of independent schools around Australia and asked what, what doing and to try and find out what best practices.

And there was a huge response. People were wanting to get involved and support the young people in their schools. And so I ended up with. 200, 2 50 different documents of things that were happening around the country. And I worked with my team to look at what was best practice for our context. And then, um, I have shared that with widely, with our uniting church group and all of the, um, principles in Australia who are interested in looking at that.

So I think it’s really helped us to work together, support young people, regardless of what school or what system we, we. And the support that I received as principal was fantastic. And it’s my job to pay that forward. And I have shared all the resources that I have, and I’m always wanting to support other principles who are in the same position, taking the leadership role in that space.

Fabulous to here. See, um, based on what Maria’s just actually said to us from there, we’re gonna open this to both yourself and to, to Bradley in his space for this. Cause of course, you’ve got some practical experience in this one. Um, what do you suggest to young people who are transitioning and their parents who are experiencing discrimination in private schools, religious schools as well given, especially that the law wa does not provide production against discrimination on these grounds.

Do you have anything that you’d start on that? Well, it kind of does. So whilst, um, whilst it doesn’t in one regard, if your school, um, Uh, if your school supports publicly a certain view, which might not be really tightly aligned with whatever religion they come from, um, and somebody wanted to make a discrimination claim against you.

They would probably have a fair chance to do that. So if you’re not walking the talk to the letter of what your religious background is, there is wiggle room in there. Um, at the moment, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Um, the next sort of changes and someone come through, but for instance, in my school, we support diversity and inclusivity.

So if we decided to go against that, then we would have a difficult, legal fight, present challenges in that space for you Bradley I’ll throw that onto you as well, as much as you’re not within the west Australian legal school system and, and the connection in that. Cause you have had that practical experie.

Of somebody who has gone through the affirming agenda in that, do you see anything that we can put in place to support parents and support the education system for these journeys? Yes. I think that like our school as well, uh, that the mainstream schools would tend to be very supportive, would take very seriously their responsibility to cater for the world.

Care welfare and support from all the students. And there would only be a very small number of schools that certainly would not be in the mainstream that, um, that might wanna exercise some, a different sort of approach states where they have taken these, these strong minds. So I’d encourage student family to speak with the leaders in the school, uh, right from the out.

Get the communication happening and that would then help the school to, to prepare, to, to manage it, which would then, um, then would minimize any likelihood of discrimination being exercised against groups or families on that basis. And of course we inform the conversation for everyone going.

• Independent schools take an affirmation and “inclusion” approach to transgender identification, accepting a girl’s assertion that she is in fact a boy.

Xavier and Allie with us as well. We about bring you into the conversation. Thank you for your patience in waiting in this space. You both have lived experience with, um, gender diversity. Whoever wants to go person. This one. How important would you say a supportive school or home situation is to a person who is affirming their identity to young?

My just . Yes. Good. Awesome. Um, oh God, it’s so important. Um, as a member of the free O youth network, we have, uh, two members who are transgender. They go to the school in free mantle high school. And they have a rainbow room. That rainbow room is a target for bullying. It’s a hunting ground. Students target anyone who goes into that rainbow room and the school hasn’t backed off their actions.

They’ve said, here’s your rainbow room. That should be another. And when the students say we’ve been, they’ve had rock been called every SL smart steak train started day that got a. Uh, because the, uh, principal sided with the student throwing the rocks because they were in the majority and you can kind of see it’s taking a toll on their mental health.

They have supportive parents. They have, you know, and even I have my mom here. She’s super supportive. Even when supportive parents, it is such a tough journey. I have so many days where I can just have a breakdown. The idea of being transgender. Cause it, it is so hard. I have so much Victoria. And to see these people in, in my group who are scared to go to school, who don’t feel supported, who struggle because the teachers might turn on them.

It’s awful. And when there’s so much challenge in your life, it’s dire that the places you go to are supportive. And they don’t make a big scene about it because you don’t want to go to school and be reminded where the teachers go, Hey, have you been harassed today? You don’t want that to come up every single day.

Cause now you live with the harassment and the challenges outside of school. And there’s inside of school. You have too

more important than having that support to try and minimize it. Cause it’s challenging. Support support it’s anything you’d like add, add.

Okay. Um, emotional. Um, so I suppose for me, when I think about schools and home is being these like really important, safe spaces for young people. Like every child should be able to feel safe at school. And there should be to stay at home. And this should also be the case for transgender diversity of people.

Um, particularly, um, the importance of parents and supportive parents cannot be overstated. Um, so those, um, but they found that, um, the rates of suicide in gender diverse young people got 93% when they have one supportive parent.

And we’re thinking about that, that in Australia, um, almost 50% of gender diverse young people have attempted suicide. The importance of that support is allegedly life saving and at school that support’s really important as well. So, um, um, reading statistics. Bit of a dart and nerd, but, um, 90% of trans students here, transic comments, daily, 90%, um, and 78% have expressed feeling unsafe at school and 44% have skipped school because they feel unsafe.

So that lack of support at school is literally jeopardizing their education. And they’re not getting the same quality of education. Because of the lack of support. So it’s not enough for schools to just say, oh, you know, we accept trans people like my school did, but they literally said to me, when I came out, they don’t care.

And they were like, yeah, that is the best response we could have given then. And it’s like, no, I actually need you to care. It’s not for the after is equity a after if I’m gonna have an equal opportunity in educat. I actually need acting. I need additional support to get me to the safe place that,

yeah. So

with this, um, if you’ve got some things to share on that, what are some of the things that you’ve actually come across in situations where young people don’t feel supported in the school or environment? You don’t necessarily happy that you got to share this place? Oh, well that’s a hard one. I mean, I’ll go back to the two, both that I know both trans I am shocked when I hear them talk.

When they talk about. Rocks thrown at them being attacked off the school. It’s like, it’s unfathomable to me that that can go on. And yet I know that’s a reality. I mean, even when I go out in public, I get scared. I have moments where I go, okay, someone gonna jump me or someone gonna attack me another, the public place right now.

This is kinda scary. So I can’t imagine to go through that constantly. And they’re really great. I’m surprised they still go school. The fact that do is it just shows how.

I know people who come from rural locations all the way up, walked up to it, Kimberly, whatnot who have faced sexual abuse, sexual harassment, rape, and, ah, it’s just devastating. I, I mean, and you want to tell in a wall and cry, he just, he feels so upset hearing their stories and. At the same time I’ve been kind of desensitized, cuz it’s so common.

It’s something that my mind goes blank. Even now my mind’s blank, trying to think of how to help them. What can we do when it’s so common? Do anything?

Yes, I suppose I’ll add that. Um, so I think I’m probably, um, out of all the trans people that I know that I know, um, my experience of transitioning to the young person, the, that I’ve heard, and even then, um, it was, you know, right with, um, difficulty. Um, so I experience quite a bit of transphobia at school.

Um, I think I quite like my public speaking. So after I transitioned at school, I ran for the position of male student counselor, and I got a low cyber bullying and comments from people about that, um, which was really upsetting. And it did stop me from doing a lot of activist stuff that I. Cool. Um, but that’s nothing compared to what most trans people experience at school and at home.

I really lucky, um, one of which transitioned after I transitioned, which was quite, um, But yeah, every trans person has an experience of transphobia and every trans person has thousands of experiences of transphobia because of the world that we live in at the moment. Um, my closest friend through high school, um, we technically, weren’t supposed to be friends.

We had a secret friendship because his mom was so transphobic that as soon as she found out that I was. She forbade him from being friends with me. Um, and then he started to transition and it was really upsetting to watch that.

• The statistic is quoted that 50% of gender diverse young people attempt suicide. This is from the Telethon Kids Institute Trans Pathways study. This is an online self-selected survey conducted in 2016 with 859 participants, 75% of whom were natal females; 48.6% identified as non-binary.

TRANSCRIPT

Peter Abbots has asked, how can we, or how can we best help young people who are identifying as trans for some years then may decide to revert back to their environ, like everyone up. Didn’t it. Um, so the question of people who, uh, affirm their gender identity and then later decide, uh, to go. um, back to living in their, the gender, um, that they were assigned at birth or the sex that they were assigned at birth.

Um, well, there’s two points that I’d like to make about this. Uh, the first is that when we look at the research, um, when it comes to people, when I really dislike the word de transition, cuz it’s a really horrible word, but. When we look at the numbers, uh, the best study today comes from Amsterdam, uh, where they’ve been, um, they’ve held the, the largest trans health service for a very long time.

And they did a study that looked at all of the, the people that had, uh, utilized their service from, uh, 1972 to 2015, very long period of time. And they looked at the number of people who had regret. Following medical and surgical intervention. Cause there’s more than 6,000 people. And the number that had, um, regret was, um, approximately 0.5%.

So half a percent. And what we know from, uh, this group of people that even within that group, um, approximately half had regret, not because they have changed their gender identity. But because they had experienced so much hardship having affirmed their gender, um, for example, family rejection, they’d lost their job or had, um, uh, been unable to find employment in their affirmed gender.

That life had become too difficult and they have deep transition to the consequence of. And there’s another study by Jack turban. Who’s um, a researcher in the us who looked at reasons that people did transition and, uh, retransmission. And, um, similar story in terms of external factors or social factors that lead to people detransition and 87% of this population, knowing that they’re detransition and re transitioned did.

So because of external social factors, like those, as I mentioned before and what we know that affirming one’s gender as, um, we’ve heard from Xavier and Ali, that it. it’s, it’s really, really hard and it comes with an enormous level of distress, um, and takes incredible courage, uh, to persevere when you experience, um, the transphobia and the, the other, um, yeah, negative, um, interactions that one has on a daily basis.

And, um, Uh, we spend a lot of time preparing young people when they. Wanting to affirm their gender, um, around the social aspects of what they might experience and just preparing them so that they’re, um, without being too negative, but helping them, um, really understand that the world will treat them differently.

And I find that really sad, but at the same time, the feedback we get is that being prepared is helpful. Um, and, uh, and so forth. The other point that I think is really important when it comes to talking about detransition and the fact that, um, it does happen in some people. And we accept that, um, there will be a small number of people who, who de transition, but we have to remember that the other 99.5%.

Who do trans this more firmly gender? Have a life that is better. And that, um, what we see in our, uh, clinic every single day is that affirming one’s gender and having the support around them leads to those young people, thriving and to deny 99.5% of this community to prevent a small number, um, is actually, um, I think unethical.

and if, you know, I’m a doctor, so I like to compare things to, you know, medical stuff. So apologies for this analogy because it’s, it’s, it’s really, um, just making a point really. But if we look at all medical interventions, there are risk, some benefits. We know that. Absolutely everything you read, the PA the patient information on paracetamol.

You’ll see that it’s not perfect either. Um, but we all take it occasionally. Then we, when we need to, um, if we look at something like hip replacements or example, um, a medical procedure, we know that about five to 10% of people will have a complication, but we don’t stop doing hip replacements. Um, there are 90, 95% of people who will benefit from having that procedure done.

We keep doing it on a risk benefit, um, uh, decision making, um, methodology. So the same comes here. We know there are risks, but we know there are benefits. And when you weigh it up with the individual in front of you to deny care is in my view. Knowingly doing harm and not, not only is that, um, unethical as a doctor to knowingly do harm.

Um, it’s actually sometimes exceptionally cruel. Thank you. And just to microphone, there is a follow up questions at Smith. Um, they’ve asked, is there any marriage for claims that hormonal interventions on children? Could have life altering side effects. Are these risks greater than the suicide breaks for transgender children that they face?

So there’s a lot of an increasing amount of evidence that gender affirming care provides benefit. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. So, if you look at, um, the consensus in terms of the medical evidence and the standards of care and treatment guidelines from major organizations, such as the endocrine society, which is an international society of endocrinologists.

If you look at the world professional association of the transgender health, the American academy of pediatrics and, and so forth, there are lots of major organizations have, who have reviewed all the literature. When it comes to weighing up these risks and benefits and overwhelmingly every single standard of care and treatment guideline recommends affirming care, affirming care is I know that a lot of people have, um, painted it as, um, As something that is potentially harmful, but affirming care is all about listening to how someone feels and supporting that person with what they need.

And that might just be listening to them using the, the correct chosen name, using their correct pronoun. And sometimes for some people to properly support them, they need medical or surgical affirmation. Again, it’s an individual decision. as we go along, the only alternative to gender affirming care is to suggest to someone that they don’t know who they are and to prevent them from being able to safely express who they are.

And if you get to that point, We know that there’s and you could, um, for, for much of the, um, the interaction that’s gone on in the past, we’ve denying trans people, their right to express themselves and to make it unsafe, you would call that conversion therapy. So on one side there’s gender affirming care.

The other side is conversion therapy and conversion therapy. Where I live in Victoria is actually illegal. So when people say you shouldn’t be doing gender affirming care, cuz there are risks say, well, what, what is it that we can do? If we can’t do gender affirming care, we have to deny people care completely.

And um, when we ask that question, if we’re not doing gender human care, what are we providing? Um, That there is no answer to that because there is no evidence that doing nothing or denying someone’s gender identity has any benefit at all. And actually there’s a lot of evidence that trying to deny someone, their identity and preventing access to care causes, harm, increases, depression, anxiety, self harm, risk, and increases suicide.

so it might seem a simple question. Are there risks and what, um, and how do you assess that? And are there benefits and how you assess that? And now there is overwhelming evidence from multiple organizations, as well as, um, our work at a local level showing. Yes, there are incredible benefit. For the work that we do and we need to, um, continue to do it, to allow the trans community to thrive.

• When asked about detransition rates, Michelle Telfer defers to studies conducted overseas.
• Telfer is Australia’s premier expert on transgender medicine, and does not follow up sufficiently to know how many of her patients regret treatment later in life.

Running towards end. We a couple other questions to come through from what we’ve got here. Um, I’m gonna ask for a volunteer to answer this one. How would you respond to people who feel that your, um, patients or your colleagues or your friends are caught up in a social contagion.

You would like having go on this one?

Thank you. It’s just so absurd. I mean, that’s how I would respond, but no, um, social. So that was the argument that’s being used. Gay people, bisexual people lesbian throughout, and it’s kind of a social contagion, too cold. These groups, social contagions, um, it’s like, there’s just some inbuilt factor that knows.

I was probably eight or nine. I have a memory of looking in the mirror and saying, I wish I was a girl. Somehow I missed that as a sign at the time, took me another 12 years. But aside from, I just knew it, it wasn’t, I didn’t have transgender friends. I didn’t know much about being transgender. Um, it was fairly taught at school.

Where could I have. Social contagion from if I wasn’t involved in any of it. Um, yeah, it’s just so absolutely absurd. And I’ve always struggled to explain to people you just know, like there’s just a feeling in me that knows. I just know that’s what I want. I’ve never been able to explain it and. I don’t try because anything I should come up with probably will end up being going a bit offensive, which is not what I intend, but I’ve just always known since I was a child, even before I knew I knew something did subconscious in me knew.

So yeah. I just say they’re absurd. It’s a social contagion to say I’m doing a social contagion. I, I would just add, um, like from, from, from my perspective as an educator and having been in education for over 30 years of working with children from babies, right through the year 12, it’s tough enough being a teenager, a young person, without any additional things to worry about and teenagers tend to want to be like each other.

They dress dress alike. Have similar hairstyles and so on because as they’re growing and developing, um, their sense of identity, it’s tough. And I think as adults, if we think back to when we were teenagers, it was tough. And it’s tougher now in the world of social media, where you’re supposed to be living a perfect life.

And everybody’s got something to say about you all the time. Um, likes and dislikes and so on. And I cannot think of one young person that I’ve worked with, um, and had the privilege of working with over 30 years, who would bring difficulty on themselves for no good reason because it’s popular or a fed or whatever.

And nobody wants rocks thrown at them. Nobody wants to be treated like that day in and day out. So, um, I, I agree. I think it’s observed to, to make that comment. It’s tough enough as it is. You’re not bringing extra difficulty on yourself for the, for the fun of it.

TRANSCRIPT

Hold the microphone. We’re gonna round up with the last questions here. Um, it’s something for everyone to go through and quite us an answer with. Um, so we’ll start. How has gender identity discrimination impacted each of you as we go through and why would it be important to have include in the wa Q?

Well, my, my vocation and I call it a vocation is an ed educator. And, um, I do what I do because I. To see young people thrive and do well and be their best self, whatever that looks like and whatever that means to them. And I think that at the moment, any type of discrimination is, is unacceptable. And I think as a society, we, we chip away in, um, some areas and some areas we’ve made great gains.

And then other areas like this, we haven’t, and I think everybody has the right to be respected. Uh, and to be valued for who they are, because we all have something to give to our society. And I think that when there’s hate our, um, you know, levels of distrust or whatever it is, it’s not a great place for any of us to be in our society.

So I think that’s really important that we can close that gap so that we are having these conversations in five years, 10 years, 20 years time.

Thanks. Thank you. Um, it’s important. Well, in terms of my experience of transphobia as a very privileged cisgender white tertiary educated person, I, um, I do see see things, uh, from a. And it still absolutely rocks me to the call. When I hear the stories that I hear about what young trans people experience and I will back what our said.

Um, no one would choose to put themselves in this situation as, as Marie also, um, talked about, and that sense of gender that a person has is deeply in age. We all in this room have a gender identity, every single one of us. And we all know how it feels, um, to, to be ourselves and everyone deserves to be safe in expressing that, um, in terms of the law, what I have experienced in Victorian, we’ve got a, um, an extraordinarily supportive, um, government where their, um, one of their sort of kept prize is, um, equality is not negotiable.

And having a supportive government who are putting in laws that increase, um, the rights of trans people makes a huge difference. And I can’t, um, emphasize enough the difference that it makes, whether it’s about identity documents, we’ve seen Victoria change identity documents so that children and young people can change their, their name and their, um, their sex on their birth certificate without having surgery.

Um, and of course children, adolescents don’t have surgery. Um, so it has enabled many, many young people to have identity documents that reflect who they are. And, um, uh, we can all appreciate how important is and how much safer it makes the young person documents that reflect, uh, who they are. So I would encourage Western Australia, um, to.

Continue to push on and to help people feel safe. Cuz every layer of safety is absolutely, uh, important and model.

Um, I had very supportive friends. I was living with my roommates when they. Super supportive. They were walking on eggshells just to make sure they didn’t do anything wrong, which I adore super supportive family in the first six months

when I was aware I was slowly going more and more suicidal. That’s what it all support around me. I can’t imagine not having that support and how I would’ve ended up. And yeah, I found out stronger, but it took so much it’s incomprehensible how much support it took to help. And I’m a much happier, lovely person, more of a social butterfly that change needs to occur within the government.

The. Back and forth between governments and what was then telling me different information. It took me to an endo paying hundreds of dollars for her to go, oh, they’re all wrong. Well, great. The government doesn’t even know they’re own policy because it’s a confusing mess. And I’ve actually told the government that, and they’re all like taking notes.

Yep. We need to make sure our policy makes sense to everyone who actually works in that. We need to call Victor when they’re doing things to start is in a sense. We, I. When the majority government they’re dragging their Hills on me, not needing to go over to Sydney, pay 20, $30,000, get all this surgery, can’t afford that.

Then I’m gonna stay there for care, fly back, and then they’ll go. You can have a death on your form. I don’t even care about having that little air four by form at this stage. It’s just a principle thing. Yeah. But the fact the government won’t. Supporting me, they weren’t back me and I was struggling. I was suicidal because of these small little things and that’s been full support.

The government needs to step up and make that change. And it’s amazing. We have these talks, but until something’s done, it’s that talks been doing talks for the pubs here. It’s that talk so far nothing’s happened and they keep dragging.

Yes. I suppose when by talking about law before a law is passed, it’s debated and obviously gender identity. And whether we affirm gender identity or not is today’s like big co debate. Um, and some people like to say that it’s really controversial and like, you know, we should listen to both sides, but I definitely disagree with.

Um, some people in the room are actually there, so you guys are gonna hear it again. But, um, Jackie Turner from equality, Australia articulated it really well to me at a workshop , um, where she said that, um, these like anti trans, like people, um, are just a very, it’s a very small group. Um, but they’re very well funded.

Um, and it’s just kind of like, like one person with this massive micro. Um, and it’s actually not the big, um, threat that we think it is. Um, it’s not this big, like international grassroots movement. It’s actually just a few TERFs who are like, Hey, let’s use all this money and, uh, get rid of the trans rights.

So when we think about yeah, like legislation, um, inside of the debate is curse and the side of debate is trans people who just want to live. We just want to live . I just want to like walk around and feel safe. Yeah. I feel like I can dress how I wanna dress and do what I want to do. Just get on with my life.

And that’s all that the trans person really wants. So we just need the wall to recognize that. Yeah. And let us do that. Um, and yeah, they’re dragging their heels on quite a lot. Um, which I guess, cause like there’s a lot of stuff that the government needs to do. There’s a lot more wrong with the world than just trans.

Right. um, but I think this should really be a priority at the moment, especially when you think about all these statistics around suicide and self harm that come from like not five or six years ago. And nothing’s changed. Um, it’s like, I would’ve thought that if we saw a bunch of children dying, we think, oh, that’s not good.

but it’s only think of the children. when it’s from the turfs. Anyway. So, um, Yeah. And the last question,

Bradley. Any thoughts on this? As much as you are retired in Victoria, you, um, operated within the, the legal system of south Australia. Any thoughts on yourself for making sure legislation protections as you fall back into this space? So, thank you. Certainly care very much about these things. I think this is a case simply better.

This not be the first case legislation. Commitment the views and standards. This is about treating individuals with dignity and respect that and acknowledging their, the uniqueness of each individual and their particular circumstances. Uh, and, uh, I, uh, I hope that there will be some changes in this direction, uh, to, to simply make it, make us, make us better in that.

That pretty much add up with the.

• The panel completely disregard the global grassroots opposition to gender ideology

Thank you to the women who (after hearing that there is no global grassroots resistance to gender ideology) now wish to be known as “The Cashed Up Evil TERFs on a Jolly” who attended the event and recorded proceedings.