Why I think the Docklands Declaration is important
An article originally published in the Green Ideas Substack.
RICHARD SNOW
AUG 13, 2023
This article is a reply to ‘GGG’ and the Docklands Declaration by Eric Tienstra (6 August 2023).
Eric Tienstra is concerned that the Docklands Declaration indicates the emergence of a faction in the Greens. I knew nothing about the Docklands Declaration or who organised it until it appeared in an e-mail. I signed it. Why?
If everyone is a Nazi, no one is a Nazi
I have watched with dismay how authoritarian tendencies have grown within the American left, particularly on college campuses, and in social media, over the last ten years. This has occurred not merely among students, but between and among college staff. The use of denunciation, smear tactics and name calling are standard. Anyone who disagrees with someone else is a Nazi, a bigot, a racist, a transphobe, and engaged in hate speech. I have frequently said that I hope this American behaviour doesn’t become standard in Australia.
I was disturbed to see it emerging here, especially in the campaign against Linda Gale. An example is the tweet, by Sarah Alice:
When we talk about people like Linda Gale and their language being very much like what the Nazis were talking about before the holocaust? It’s not because it’s hyperbole or a group of sensitive people being dramatic … It’s because these people are the new Nazis.
Or another, by Emi Martin, now elected as a State Councillor:
I’d rather eat broken glass than enable TERFism and SWERFism.
By ‘Dr Nobody’:
And what transphobic hate event would be complete without promoting Linda Gale, whose main qualification to speak is her failure to introduce protections for transphobic hate speech in the Vic Greens.
By ‘Just Jay’:
Linda Gale is a piece of human garbage.
I’m left wondering if some people actually understand what a Nazi is. Have some people ever read a history book?
The words bigot, hateful, Nazi, transphobic, etc. are now used in the US to mean little more than ‘somebody said something I don’t like. Let’s go straight to nuclear war.’ Everybody must be made to apologise, everybody must be made to resign. A purpose of this American rhetoric seems to be to intimidate third parties from defending anyone accused of Hate Crime because of a fear that a social media mob will come after them.
Legitimate questions
There are areas of policy that are not settled, despite what some people say. And we have to be able to discuss them. Those areas of policy raise legitimate questions that will soon or later require resolution. To make my case for this, I am going to go right to the hardest topic in the Party today.
Legitimate question number 1: is it reasonable to put a twice-convicted rapist in a women’s prison amongst female prisoners? See the controversy about Isla Bryson in Scotland earlier this year, and the similar cases of Karen White in England, and Ramel Blount in Rikers Island prison in New York.
And, no, I haven’t said that all trans women are sexual predators. Of the trans and non-trans populations in the general public, only a small minority of people have convictions for crimes of violence. But, of those in prison, a substantial number do, that’s why they’re in prison. Figures from the British Ministry of Justice in 2019 (obtained under Freedom of Information) said that, of 129 male born trans prisoners, 76 (that’s 59 percent) had convictions for sexual offences, including 36 for rape and 10 for attempted rape. Do these people belong in a women’s prison, and if not how are they to be housed? Britain is opening up ‘third facilities’ for such prisoners.
Saying ‘trans women are women’, as if women are one homogenous group, doesn’t help us here. We don’t talk of Muslims, or migrants, or people with disabilities as one homogenous group. Why would we insist that differences can’t be pointed out (if they are relevant to a discussion) within members of any other group (such as women)?
Legitimate question number 2: can a child who has never had an orgasm give informed consent to go on drugs that may make them non-orgasmic for life?
In California cases have been lodged recently where the patient is suing her former doctor. See the cases of Chloe Cole and Kayla Lovdahl, who were 15 and 13 when they underwent double mastectomies. Lovdahl’s lawsuit claims that her mother, who has bipolar, repeatedly (but unsuccessfully) suggested to her doctors that her daughter was bipolar, but Lovdahl went undiagnosed and hence untreated at the time of the mastectomy. Also see Brian Wagoner.
Legitimate question number 3: can a child with several co-morbidities or ‘associated conditions’ (i.e. depression, anxiety, autism, ADHD, obsessive disorders, eating disorders, self harm, recent sexual assault, bipolar disorder, recent death of a parent, evidence of abuse with in the home) legitimately be sent to an endocrinologist after only three evaluation sessions, without extensive psychotherapy to get them into a fit state to understand the implications of their treatment?
If you think I’m exaggerating, get the book Time to Think by BBC journalist Hannah Barnes (see here and here) on the decision by the National Health Service in England to shut down the Tavistock Clinic’s Gender Identity Development Service. The Clinic’s staff stated that the overwhelming majority of youths presenting to the Clinic presented with multiple health problems. They 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). A few had been isolating and refusing to leave the house for months at a time. Some not only identified as the opposite sex to their birth sex, but also as being of another race; usually East Asian, particularly Japanese or Korean, when they clearly were not (p 159). Some girls had only started to identify as a boy after a recent sexual assault (p 158). The proportion of the children who had a father who was a registered sex offender was 10 times what would be expected in a random distribution (p 227). Under these circumstances, it was hard to establish if the children had gender dysphoria because of their complex other problems, or whether they had some of these other problems because of their gender issues (p 27). This creates problems for deciding whether any self-harm was due to gender dysphoria or to the other problems (p 27). Some biological girls on testosterone asked, ‘will I start producing sperm?’ (p 338). If their understanding of biology was this bad, how much did these children understand of what they were doing? The staff ‘never saw a simple case’. This is not what I’m saying. This is what the clinic’s own staff said when the clinic was subject to a major review, and later in recorded interviews with the author. These were highly disturbed children. A class action is being prepared in England against the NHS Trust that ran the Clinic. If any of them win substantial damages, it will affect the English-speaking world.
These prospective court cases are already affecting us here in Australia. One of the four main insurers of doctors in Australia has just withdrawn coverage of doctors treating trans youth, because they can’t ‘price the risk’. That is, they can’t determine how many cases there might be in Australia and the likely payouts, and in insurance, if you can’t ‘price the risk’, you don’t provide the coverage.
A political party that can’t do politics?
So, does asking these questions and considering their answers make me a Nazi, a bigot or a transphobe? If discussing these problems is deemed to be transphobic, or if the ‘no discussion’ line is upheld, we as a party will be in serious trouble, not only as a matter of principle, but also because, practically speaking, we will deal ourselves right out of any meaningful parliamentary response to important issues that are arising in society. And if Parliament doesn’t act, public policy will be nonetheless created for us, piecemeal, by the courts. I predict that this would not be a good outcome for trans and gender diverse people.
Trans people have a right to be safe. Women in prison have a right to be safe. Children with multiple mental health problems have a right to be safe. Simple slogans don’t solve complex problems. Look at American politics. Do we want to reproduce that here? I don’t know if the authors and makers of the Docklands Declaration constitute a faction. I’d call them ordinary party members worried about the way emerging authoritarianism and single issue obsessions may cripple the Party. To my mind, the Docklands Declaration is simply an honest, good faith effort to prevent the Greens going down an authoritarian pathway leaving us inwardly-focused, preoccupied with denouncing each other, throwing simple slogans around, and unable to influence public debate.