How to understand the “trans wars” in the Victorian Greens.
A misogynist, religious witch hunt.
Religions usually have several things in common. First, a fervent belief in the existence of things for which there is no evidence. This might be a God, a devil, witchcraft, or the belief (in Catholicism) that the bread and wine in the mass become the actual body and blood of Christ. Second, attempts to define things into existence. Third, a belief that anyone who criticizes the beliefs of the group is evil, going to hell, and needs to be denounced and expelled. In the religious wars of the 1500 and 1600s, Protestants and Catholics both believed that the others were leading people to hell, so must punished, made to recant their beliefs, or be killed. Western countries had regular witch hunts, including the famous one at Salem, Massachusetts in 1692-93. Witch hunts disproportionately target women. Fourth, religions use ritual expressions and stock phrases that identify the users as belonging to a tribe, and excuse the members from thinking. Fifth, attempts by the leaders of the religion to withhold information from the members so as to control what they think.
Belief in things that don’t exist.
In December 2022, the AGV (the Victorian Greens) formed a panel to enquire into the existence of transphobia in the party. That committee received five submissions claiming that there was transphobia in the party and 32 saying there was no evidence of transphobia, that trans activists were bullying people, and that the party was spending too much time on trans issues. Their report contained a long list of complaints made to the previous Misconduct Panel, those complaints either having been dismissed, or resulting in no sanction. It produced no evidence of any actual act of discrimination or abuse against any specific trans person. In short, there was little to no evidence of transphobia in the party. Our party hierarchy released a redacted version to the membership. The full report was eventually leaked and is available on the internet. Yet some in the party passionately believe that transphobia is rampant in the Greens.
On climate change, we often urge people to look at the evidence and believe the evidence. Why do we not do the same on the existence of transphobia in the party?
What’s the evidence?
The idea that the Victorian Greens is rife with transphobia is a claim. If evidence for such a claim were to exist, what would the evidence look like? I suggest the following would be evidence:
· There would be widespread examples of non-trans members insulting, disparaging or abusing trans people simply because they are trans;
· There would be people urging others to not vote for trans people for various office bearer positions, simply because the candidate was trans; and
· There would be few, if any, trans people in elected positions.
None of this evidence exists. Trans members have held prominent office bearer or governing body positions for many years now. If the claims of widespread transphobia in the Greens were any further detached from reality, they would float off into the stratosphere like a helium balloon.
Defining things into existence
Religions often try to define things into existence. One of the classic arguments for the existence of God is the ‘argument from first cause.’ Everything we can see has a cause, and that cause had a cause before it, and a cause before that. But you can’t have an infinite chain of causes, so there must have been a first cause. Whatever the first cause is, that’s God. (This argument was developed before scientists knew about the Big Bang. Nobody would want that as a ‘God’). Evangelical Christians in the US sometimes say that ‘everybody has something that’s the most important thing in their life, and whatever that is, that’s their God.’ This is an attempt to redefine the word God to define a God into existence.
The Victorian Greens have adopted a definition of transphobia which includes, among other things, “promoting the unnecessary prioritization of sex characteristics above gender,” and “asking leading questions that cover for … the above”. Under this definition, saying that a twice convicted rapist like Isla Bryson in Scotland, who still had a penis, should not have been placed in a women’s prison in early 2022 because they are a danger to women, might be transphobic. Agreeing with FINA (the international swimming body) that people who went through puberty as males should not compete in women’s swimming events might be transphobic. Describing men in biological terms like ‘men have XY chromosomes’ might be transphobic. In short, the definition seeks to define transphobia into existence by making the meaning of the word so broad that allegations can’t be argued with.
Add to this the mantra that some profess, that only trans people can define transphobia, and the ability for any objective definition is well and truly gone. Claims of transphobia have become unfalsifiable. If someone is accused, they must be guilty. This is absurd.
Getting rid of dissenters
Those who believe, on the basis of no evidence, that transphobia is rampant in the party view anyone who doesn’t agree as needing to be expelled. In 2023 over 370 members signed the Docklands Declaration. These signatories have many and varied views about the meanings of sex and gender, and the Declaration itself makes no mention of trans concepts. Yet the Queer Greens have declared the Docklands Declaration to be a proxy for transphobia, and signatories – including those who were here from the founding of our party as well as gay, lesbian, non-binary and queer members – have all been declared transphobic.
Here’s what the Docklands Declaration actually said, among other things:
“Abuse, manipulation and half-truths are not the way we win support or deal with each other.”
“The Party must practice privately what it preaches publicly.”
“Members… resolve their differences by working together, not by abusing party processes or publicly denouncing dissenters.”
“Those who hold public office… must not conceal the truth from members, use their influence to silence dissent, or incite attacks on other members.”
It’s a pity that these points ever needed to made. People who signed the Docklands Declaration have been told that they should resign from office bearer positions or from the party. A concerted campaign seems to be going on going to bully people who signed that declaration out of the party. A call for transparency, honesty and decency in the party is now regarded as offensive. How did we get to such a state?
Most of the twenty-somethings currently joining the party have never been in any other party, and haven’t seen the party when it was functioning in a more mentally healthy way, say five years ago. They probably think that what’s going on in the party now is normal, because they’ve never seen anything else.
One of the most efficient means of purging dissenters is, of course, to obtain control of the organization’s disciplinary and dispute bodies. In our party, these include the Misconduct Panel, the Administrative Review Panel (which only considers misconduct-related appeals) and the Grievance and Constitution Panel. Appointments to these bodies is controlled by the State Council – the same State Council that thought it wise to establish the special panel of inquiry to re-prosecute misconduct matters that had already been dismissed.
And State Council still hasn’t acted on the ‘Misconduct Rules Review’ panel’s recommendations. We are stuck with the old misconduct rules that everyone agrees are broken, including the ban on defendants from being able to say aloud that they have already been found not-guilty of misconduct and so must endure identical allegations again and again and again from vexatious litigants.
The misconduct panel, the GPC, and State Council should be staffed by people with a deep knowledge of the party, gained over several years. It is absurd to think that a person who has never been involved in 2 or 3 election campaigns, who has never served on a couple of party bodies, and who really doesn’t understand how the party works, should attempt to administer the party. For the GPC and misconduct panel, several people with qualifications in law would also be useful.
Some people who signed the Docklands declaration – mostly women – have been approached and told that if they want preselection for anything, they should remove their names from the declaration, or their campaigns might be disrupted by accusations of transphobia. This sounds like something from the mafia, from The Sopranos: “Nice preselection you got there; pity if anything should happen to it.” Is this culture of bullying and intimidation what we want in the Greens? Because if its not, we have to speak out.
Stock phrases and extremist language.
Religions give their followers stock phrases that simplify thinking. Donald Trump’s followers in the US dismiss anything they don’t like as coming from the ‘mainstream media’, as if saying that proves that the opponent’s point doesn’t need to be answered. In the case of the Greens some of the tribal stock phrases include “we don’t debate people’s right to exist”. And claims that others are “denying the humanity of trans people” It’s as if some people think we are literally destroying people: shovelling them into gas ovens. I previously wrote a paper entitled ‘The Greens are Teaching Themselves Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Reverse’, published on the Green Ideas Substack. This discusses the nature of the cognitive distortions common in the party. That Substack was only available to greens members. A public version of that document is now available below (see below [i]). To claim that we are “debating people’s right to exist” or “questioning their humanity” is simply rubbish.
Those who signed the Docklands Declaration – the democratic part of the party - aren’t actually concerned with criticising trans people. They aren’t going around saying “let’s get rid of trans people”. If they were, we’d notice. They actually want to get on with what the party is here for: the environment, renewable energy, and social justice issues like income inequality and the current housing crisis.
Some people criticise the declaration on the basis of alleged “perceptions”. One such rebuttal circulated in my own branch claimed that the number of members of Banyule branch who signed the declaration brought the branch into disrepute, and created the “perception” of “providing cover” for transphobia or racism. The words perception and perceived were used ten times in the document. But strongly held perceptions not based on reality or evidence are merely delusions. People in Salem had “perceptions” of witches, but their perceptions were unhinged from reality.
Collective delusions
Every so often, societies get gripped by a collective delusion. Donald Trump followers in the US think that Trump actually won the 2020 election, against all the evidence. [ii] During the Covid epidemic, many people in the US became convinced that Covid wasn’t real, that hospitals were actually empty, or that Bill Gates had put microchips in the vaccines. In past centuries, we saw it in witch-hunts, and a few decades ago in the ‘Satanic Ritual Child Abuse’ scare in the US [iii]. The witch hunts of the 1600s were a form of collective delusion, in which thousands of people believed that there were witches all around them. Unfortunately, it’s possible for a political party to suffer a collective delusion.
Merriam Webster (an American dictionary) defines ‘Groupthink’ as “a pattern of thought characterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics”. Benabou [iv] describes how if some members of an organisation (leaders, managers) have more influence on others (workers, ordinary members) people tend to adopt the beliefs of the leaders. (In the context of a political party, the parliamentary hierarchy and the state executive will have more influence on ordinary members (by way of threats of expulsion, public denunciations, or stripping from office) than ordinary members have on the hierarchy. Our hierarchy could get Linda Gale stripped of the position of State Convenor, but Linda Gale can’t get MPs kicked out of parliament. In those conditions, members will have a strong incentive to adopt the beliefs of the leaders, so as to be acceptable to the dominant tribe.
Most religions oppress women. Witch hunts tend to be overly directed at women. In the Salem witch trials of 1692, three quarters of those hanged were women [v]. In the 1600s, 80 percent of those accused of witchcraft were women [vi] Current day witch hunts in Papua New Guinea overwhelmingly target women [vii]. Linda Gale’s election as convenor was overturned because she wrote a paper defending women’s sex-based rights. Whether a witch hunt is misogynist isn’t determined by who makes the accusations: in the Salem witch hunts, the most prolific accusers were teenage girls. But three quarters of the people hanged were women.
My own interactions with trans people
Growing up, I had one family member who was gay and one who was bi-sexual. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, Melbourne had a very small number of - less than half a dozen - gay/ trans/ drag cabaret-type venues. (People wouldn’t have drawn a distinction between the three groups as clearly then as they would today.) My relatives were mixing in those social circles. So, in the early 80s, I went to some of those venues with my relatives and their friends. I also met them at bar-b-qs at my mother’s house.
The attitude of the Christian Churches towards gay and trans people was a major factor in me ceasing to be a Christian in February 1979.
Fast forward a bit. In the early 2000s, I did a diploma in writing and editing at NMIT. I made friends with a younger woman who was a dual national. In October 2006, she wrote to me (and others) from London, saying she was going to transition in London. She had, felt from the age of 5 or 6 that she was meant to be a boy. It was a very moving email. My main reaction at the time, was “If she’s going to do this, I hope to God it looks visually convincing at the end,” because I knew the problems that can arise if it wasn’t Fortunately, it was, and as (now) he recently said of FTM transitioners, “it’s easier for us, because we just look like short guys with beards.” Last time we met up in Northcote he was developing male pattern baldness.
I don’t spend my time asking myself “Is my friend really a male?” because I would have no use for the answer. There’s nothing that we do when we meet up that crucially depends on the definition of male, so where would be the benefit to me in spending mental energy on this? If he has achieved a happier life by transitioning, (which seems to be the case) I’m glad for him. Similarly, I have no view on the question “are transwomen really women?” because I have no use for the answer.
But I do think that a twice convicted rapist like Isla Bryson shouldn’t have been put in a women’s prison in Scotland in early 2023. That decision was stupid beyond belief. And I think that children (i.e. under 16s) who have gender dysphoria and half a dozen concurrent mental health conditions, such as, eating disorders, or ADHD, or compulsive disorders, or self-cutting, or who ‘identify’ as Japanese or Korean (when they clearly aren’t) or only developed gender dysphoria in the last year or two, often after a major trauma, (such as rape) shouldn’t be allowed to make life changing decisions when they are clearly mentally unwell. (If you are unfamiliar with this, see footnote [viii].) Adults can do what they like, and I support their right to live as they wish. But children with clear mental health issues should be given as much counselling as they need for as long as it takes to get them to a state where they can make informed, valid consent to procedures that may be irreversible. To suggest otherwise strikes me as absurd beyond belief. And yet, at the Tavistock Clinic in London, such children were regularly sent to the endocrinologist for puberty blockers and cross sex hormones after only three evaluation sessions. If criticizing this makes me a transphobe, then I’m a dancing six-legged banana.
Both gay and trans people have been subjected to terrible treatment in the past, and some of this persists. The treatment of gay and trans people in Africa is a nightmare. We’ve had the enquiry into gay bashings including by the police, in NSW, and their failure to investigate gay deaths properly. The Republicans in the US have gone out of their minds in the last two years, including now over drag artists (who may or may not be gay, or trans, but the average MAGA probably doesn’t know or care.) The closest equivalent of the MAGAs in Australia would be One Nation. That’s where you’d find the transphobes, not in the Greens. Nobody in the Greens is advocating shutting down drag shows, or banning trans surgery and passing ‘bathroom bills’ as is occurring in the US. It would be an utter delusion to suggest that anyone in the Victorian Greens bears any resemblance to the anti-trans activity in the US.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems to me that trans people are at about the same stage of political campaigning that gay people were at 30 years ago. We can, and should, fight for equality of trans people in employment and housing, insist on them being treated equally in their interactions with the medical system, and getting equal treatment by the police when they come with complaints. If a court case arises where, say, a trans person has been denied rental accommodation because of being trans, and a go-fund-me account is set up to pay for their legal costs, I’ll donate. These are legitimate social justice issues. Nobody in the Greens would say otherwise. But pursuing these issues requires the party to be outwardly focused, campaigning for social change. Not contemplating its own navel, looking for a new place to stab itself. Our attention is seriously mis-directed.
Transphobia or misogyny?
I previously wrote two articles on the Green Ideas Substack: ‘Why I think the Docklands Declaration is important’ and ‘The Greens are teaching themselves Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Reverse”. In those articles I criticized, among other things
i. the campaign of social media abuse against Linda Gale
ii. allowing mostly under-16 girls with multiple mental health conditions access to drugs which may leave them infertile and non-orgasmic for life, after only three sessions at the Tavistock clinic in London,
iii. a twice convicted rapist being placed in a women’s prison in Scotland,
iv. a group of students screaming that an evolutionary biology professor was a fascist because she said that men and women have physical differences,
v. a person with a penis being allowed into the changing room used by a group of 13- and 14-year-old girls on a volleyball team,
vi. calls for the law on sexual assault to be dropped from the law degree at Harvard, and other Universities, because it “triggers” people,
vii. a group of transwomen in London, one allegedly with a visible erection beneath a pair of Lycra pants, gatecrashing a lesbian speed dating night despite being told the lesbians didn’t want them, and then getting the lesbians barred from the pub they held their meetings in.
The 2018 paper to which Linda Gale replied in 2019 wanted to label as transphobic statements in the party such as:
· “Transwomen don’t get periods”,
· “Transwomen aren’t the same as cis women” and
· “I don’t want anything to do with penises.”
A period occurs when the body sheds the lining of the womb. If you don’t have a womb, you can’t have a period. Is there actually a need to debate or ban this statement? Transwomen were normally born with male genitals, and mostly socialized as males prior to transition. CIS women weren’t. So, transwomen aren’t the same as cis women. (If they were, we wouldn’t need a separate word for transwomen.) If a lesbian doesn’t want anything to do with penises, does she not have the right to say this? Are we seriously going to tell lesbians what genital configuration they are or are not allowed to be attracted or not attracted to? See the website LGBalliance.org.au for a description of the problems some lesbians have holding events without being gate crashed and sexually harassed by some trans activists. And a British article about lesbians pressured to have sex with transwomen because if they don’t, they will be accused of ‘transphobia’. [ix]
Gales’s 2019 paper, which pointed out that there can be a conflict between the rights or interests of transwomen and the rights or interests of women-born-women was denounced as transphobic. Should conflicts between the rights of people with penises, and the rights of people with vaginas always be decided against people with vaginas? Should the mere mention that such conflicts may exist be prohibited? It is not necessary to have a view on the question “are transwomen women” to have a view on this question. In the US about one half of one percent the total population are trans. Of transwomen, no more than one in seven have had genital surgery. [x] Thus, roughly 99.9 percent of people with vaginas are women-born-women. If a pattern of events, positions or claims consistently preferences the rights of a subset of people with penises over the rights of people with vaginas, (and hence disadvantages women) is that not misogynist? What does our party have? A problem with transphobia, or a problem with misogyny?
How to respond
The party lacks a basic commitment to truth and transparency. It needs to be a “fifth pillar”. As a result, accusations of transphobia can be made against individuals despite having no basis in fact, and be carried on by social media. The result is a one-sided process of smears and bullying which is not being adequately challenged or confronted. Therefore, the situation will not change until the democratic / pro-feminist part of the party decide to defend themselves with the same vigor that the authoritarian part use in attacking.
The democratic part of the party needs to reply to false accusations more bluntly: calling them whatever applies in the particular situation:
· nonsensical rubbish,
· anti-feminist bullying,
· cover for misogyny, and
· unhinged from reality.
Call bad behavior out whenever it arises, whether in a branch meeting, in party communications, on social media or elsewhere. Allegations made on social media should be replied to with greater bluntness than in the past. Linda Gale called the accusations against her “entirely unfair”. That’s really rather mild. If the abuse is not challenged more vigorously, the abuse will continue as anyone with a sense of decency, who wants the party to focus on what it’s really here for, will give up and continue to exit, leaving behind an inwardly focused, dysfunctional organization, focused on identity issues at the expense of the environment.
The former deputy head of the Greens Party of England and Wales (GPEW) has been awarded £9,000 in damages after a court found that the party had changed its rules and processes to unfairly target him specifically. Court costs have not yet been determined, but the GPEW’s auditors have questioned their their solvency, and the party is raising membership fees by about 50 percent to cover the expected court costs. Several members of the GPEW’s “Green Seniors” group are planning follow up court cases. [xi]. Hopefully this isn’t necessary in Victoria, but the next time a member is threatened with expulsion on the basis of irrational, nonsensical accusations, the matter should be challenged in court, and a ‘Go fund me’ account set up to assist with legal costs. As I wrote last year, once a statement of claim (or an application, or a writ) is lodged in a court, that becomes a public document, and anyone including the media can have access. Matters cannot then be conducted in secret. If the party was forced to pay damages to its own members, that would be a powerful incentive to improve behaviour.
So long as the authoritarian adherents to the religious mantra of Greens Transphobia who currently control our State Council, Misconduct Panel, Administrative Review Panel and Grievance and Constitutional Panel, continue to conduct their witch hunts in secret and respond to calls for proper process (like the Docklands Declaration) with more totally unfounded accusations of transphobia, then members will despair of ever resolving matters inside the tent, and it is likely that such outrageous conduct will end up in court sooner or later. There are only two groups that can give the Victorian Greens the backbone injection that we need: the members and the courts. Let’s hope it’s the members.
[i] See rsnow.substack.com “Social Media is Teaching People to do Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in Reverse”
[ii] “When does a political party become a cult”, Salon magazine, https://www.salon.com/2022/10/18/when-does-a-political-movement-become-a-cult/
[iii] Satanic Ritual Child Abuse Delusion Satanic panic - Wikipedia
[iv] Benabou, R. 2013, ‘Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets’ Review of Economic Studies (2013) 8, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43551491.pdf
[v] Wikipedia, Salem Witch Trials, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
[vi] Wikipedia, Witch trials in the early modern period, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_modern_period
[vii] The Independent, ‘Rising numbers of women in Papua New Guinea attacked after being accused of ‘witchcraft’. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/women-witchcraft-papua-new-guinea-b1863343.html and Wikipedia, Witch hunts in Papua New Guinea, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunts_in_Papua_New_Guinea
[viii] The case of Isla Bryson is described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_Bryson_case Re children with multiple mental health conditions, see the book Time to Think by BBC journalist Hannah Barnes. One book review is here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/19/time-to-think-by-hannah-barnes-review-what-went-wrong-at-gids another here https://www.booktopia.com.au/time-to-think-hannah-barnes/book/9781800751118.html a review of a TV program on the Tavistock clinic in London https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jun/25/the-tavistock-the-clinic-review-an-admirably-unsensational-look-at-one-of-the-nhss-most-controversial-institutions
The following passage is from an article I previously published in the Green Ideas Substack, and quotes the book ‘Time to think’ by Hannah Barnes:
[Children coming to the Tavistock Clinic in London] “had various combinations of depression, anxiety, autism, eating disorders, ADHD, self-harm, obsessive compulsive disorder, sexual or physical abuse within the home, or the recent death of a parent (pp 98-99). 70 percent of the patients had five or more such comorbidities (p 17). Those aged over 12 on average had more still (p 17). Less than two percent of the British public have autism, but 30 percent of the children coming to the Clinic had autism (p. 156). A quarter had been in foster care (p 17).”
Many claims are made about the suicide risk of trans youth. As of March 2024, the latest study out of Finland of all people under the age of 23 over a 23 year period, shows that the suicide risk for trans people under 23 is predicted by their psychiatric co-morbidities, (i.e. having other mental health conditions) and the presence of gender dysphoria doesn’t add anything to the predicted rate of suicide. One of the co-authors helped set up Finland’s first gender identity clinic, and is chief psychiatrist at one of the two such clinics in Finland.
See “All-cause and suicide mortalities among adolescents and young adults who contacted specialised gender identity services in Finland in 1996-2019: a register study” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38367979/
[ix] LGB alliance is Lesbian Gay and Bisexual alliance, i.e., is based on sexual orientation, not gender identity. Their problems in organising lesbian-only events are described in these pages https://www.lgballiance.org.au/ourstories/reality-lesbian ,
https://www.lgballiance.org.au/ourstories/ahrc-individual-submissions
And a BBC article about lesbians pressured to have sex with transwomen. ‘The lesbians who feel pressured to have sex and relationships with trans women’ https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-57853385
[x] Nolan et al, “Demographic and temporal trends in transgender identities and gender confirming surgery” National Library of Medicine, (US) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6626314/
[xi] Guardian (UK), ‘Shahrar Ali wins 'gender critical' court battle against Green Party’ https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-68250071 “Green Party plans to increase membership fees amid legal woes” https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-66935750