Last Saturday Women Speak Tasmania held a media conference at Salamanca (outside the market precinct) to launch our flyer outlining our views on proposed transgender law reforms and their effects on women’s human rights. The flyers were also distributed at Salamanca Market that day.
Our flyers received both positive and not so positive responses but many Tasmanians we spoke with said they knew nothing about the proposed reforms.
We were nevertheless astonished to find on the following day that Salamanca Market posted the following on their facebook page:
Salamanca Market
The City of Hobart have been made aware of a group that were distributing anti-transgender materials yesterday at the Salamanca Market.
From what we can gather this group set up just outside the market boundary, but it is possible they were assisted by a stallholder of the Market. We will be investigating further to see whether this was the case and establish how this occurred.
Market staff undertake regular patrols through the course of the day and this group was not picked up, leading us to believe that it may have only occurred for a short period of time, however it is important to make clear that we do not condone this activity and that it was undertaken without any knowledge or involvement of the Market.
We apologise to all those offended by the material that this group distributed. The City of Hobart is an inclusive community that appreciates and supports all identities.
A selection of interesting comments about Salamanca Market’s posting followed:
Cindy Renate Markets now have political group think? What about stallholders who vote differently to the organising committee or who have differing religious ideologies – should we boot them also?
The outrage at women sharing flyers that question the phenomenon of our children thinking their bodies are wrong is highly illustrative of just how much conversation we ought to be having about the topic.
James Ross Free speech is important. I don’t want to live in a place where local city councils or market committees decide who can and can’t have an opinion and express it. This is Australia, not Soviet Russia. Part of living in a democracy is being uncomfortable or even offended by what other people say and still upholding their right to say it.
Fernella Ricardo Did Salamanca Market contact this group to discuss with them concerns they received? Have you provided them with due process in this situation – I think not? Please give a public explanation on this thread as to what in the said pamphlet was ‘anti- transgender’ – that is the least the public can rightly expect.
Once again Tasmanians are seeing the trans lobby’s anti-women, anti-free speech campaign ramping up.
It appears the more the public are being informed about this debate the more the trans lobby are trying to silence women’s views.
Women Speak Tasmania are calling on all Tasmanians to support our freedom of speech and let Salamanca Market know that you do.
BRITISH HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST MIRANDA YARDLEY HAS OFFERED SUPPORT TO WOMEN SPEAK TASMANIA …
British human rights activist Miranda Yardley has offered support to Women Speak Tasmania, following criticism of WST’s presence at Salamanca Market on Saturday 9 February 2018.
“It is hardly surprising that the Hobart municipality has waded in with with comments that indicate such inflated sense of purpose and authoritarian overreach: we all have the right to disagree with others’ beliefs, however sincerely these are held, and nobody has the right not to be offended.
https://tasmaniantimes.com/2019/02/salamanca-markets-attack-on-womens-freedom-of-speech/
It seems hypocritical for the market to claim to be ‘inclusive of all identities’ while ignoring the political right of women to publicly demonstrate, especially while these women are finding their experience of material reality ignored in favour of metaphysical identities that lack concrete basis. Women’s rights to freedom of speech and association are under attach, in the UK we have seen women arrested and imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of speech and conscience, and it should concern the people of Australia this literally fascist ideology is taking hold in Australia, which threatens the freedoms and rights of women and girls and anyone who disagrees.”
More Here:
The pamphlets handed out at Salamanca …
Isla MacGregor is a women’s human rights and free speech advocate
Bronwyn Williams is a retired lawyer and social worker
Women Speak Tasmania is a network of women and their supporters based in Tasmania. We operate as a secular group. We are not aligned with any political party or ideology. We share research and information on a broad range of women’s rights issues. These include – female only spaces, services, groups and facilities; the sexualisation of girls and women; pornography/prostitution and the harms of the global sex trade; surrogacy as a violation of women’s human rights; and ending male violence against girls and women. We understand that sex-based oppression affects all women, and underlies all abuses of female rights. We support the right of women to speak freely about the inequities and discrimination they experience. We aim to give a voice to girls and women in the pursuit of justice, peace and security. We support full autonomy and personal freedom for all women.
Miranda Yardley is a British human rights activist. About Miranda Yardley: https://mirandayardley.com/en/ . https://mirandayardley.com/en/transwomen-are-not-women/
Christopher Eastman-Nagle
February 11, 2019 at 22:04
There is a sinister quality of thinking that turns ordinary criticism into ‘hatespeech’, ‘vilification’ and ‘phobia’ that goes back further than Orwellian ‘Doublethink’. It reflects the same kind of intolerant and bigoted paranoia that characterized the worst periods of the Reformation, and the witchcraft trials and heresy burnings that followed in its wake.
This turbid atmosphere transforms even the suggestion of a whisper that something is ‘not quite right’ into a monstrous threat, and suddenly alarmed ‘authorities’, armed with flimsy or non existent evidence descend to suppress it….to silence and destroy it
The word of ‘witch hunters’ become sacrosanct and unquestionable. And fear becomes the master of reason.
This doesn’t happen suddenly overnight. There are many small steps before this scenario becomes the fact. Discourse warps into oracular, simplistic and often pseudoscientific declamation, slogans, stereotypes, marketing keywords. baseless smears and accusations, rancid moral conceit, relentless repetition of banal pseudotruths and the corrosive rub of publicrelationsthink.
Rank opportunists, ideological cuckoos, pimps and panderers who would never normally get a sniff of respectability are suddenly able to garb themselves in it, because they sense that all the ordinary critical defenses against ideological colonization have been taken down and everyone has become too frightened and intimidated to say anything.
And then once ordinary decent people turn into monsters, carried on waves of the very ‘hate’, ‘vilification’ and ‘phobia’ they accuse others of. It is a circle made in hell that reveals the darkest side of ourselves. And a quiet and provincial little cul de sac like little Tassie with its almost late eighteenth century minor port market place, is the perfect dramatic backdrop.
But there is an elegant modern addition to this very traditional ideological theatre. It is that the language these dark shadows of a an earlier period of religious upheaval now trade in, is the language of liberation and human rights.
rainsinger
February 12, 2019 at 09:57
May the Tassie Times Live Long and Prosper.
Isla MacGregor
February 13, 2019 at 18:12
Onya!!!!!
Anywhere Girl
March 2, 2019 at 12:51
Extraordinarily elegant!
Lola Moth
February 12, 2019 at 07:51
I find it quite scary that so many usually rational and thoughtful people are ok with shutting down debate on this subject. If you don’t explore all sides of an issue you can’t come to an informed opinion on the matter. Is it because it is about a minority, and we are now so used to giving minorities what they want that anyone questioning their automatic right to get their way is silenced?
That leaflet is in no way anti-transgender. It is pro-debate. Why is the transgender community scared of debate? The only reason I can see for it is that their agenda doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and their arguments will collapse under the weight of the lightest of questions.
The time for debate is now, not after these laws have been pushed through by thoughtless people who think that blindly following a minorities agenda must be good for society without first seeing if it harms others. Women and girls make up half of the population, and they will be the losers if this issue is not debated thoroughly.
Susan Nunes (@tonysam2)
February 12, 2019 at 10:27
The trans movement is a movement of lies. Women and children’s lives are literally at risk thanks to this nonsense. I hope this “gender identity” proposal is shelved for good.
Melissa
February 12, 2019 at 11:26
Well done, you brave women (of the Adult Human Female variety).
Once the average person on the street finds out what these proposals will mean, hopefully this nonsense will be kicked soundly into the long grass, never to be spoken of again.
Sharon Anná Key
February 12, 2019 at 12:32
Surely history has proven – women will not shut up and be oppressed.
Jane Bridgestone
February 12, 2019 at 12:56
Hobart City Council has promulgated fake news, and the Mercury has willingly spread it.
Of interest is that there’s no mention in today’s paper of a response from Women Speak Tasmania – Mercury bias at its worst.
To be expected!
Christopher Eastman-Nagle
February 12, 2019 at 14:05
Now that we have all got our irritation with the ‘trannsgaggers’ out of our systems, the time has come to recognise that the dolts have offered the perfect opportunity to call their bluff.
However, it needs more than the resources that Women Speak Tasmania have got in order to mobilise a response to this miserable backdoor tactic of ‘going to the teacher’ and ‘telling on WST’ with the magic words of condemnation that ‘the principal’ will (and did) jump to like a well trained seal.
The word needs to go out across the feminist (and sympathisers) networks for a free speech demo against ‘transgagging’ that will snake its way up and down the Salamanca Market until the police are called, whereupon there will be a sit down, and cameras .. roll .. action.
Make sure the press have been primed for a confrontation. They will all be there. Don’t forget to bring the portable loudspeakers and a list of demands for the Market managing committee …
A bracing day will be had by all that will take us back to circa 1970. I can’t be there, but I will put my hand up to contribute to the bail pool …
Geoff Holloway
February 12, 2019 at 18:50
Yes, I like that idea Christopher. The United Tasmania Group (UTG) supports free speech, and supports the actions of Women Speak Tasmania against changes proposed so far to the birth certificate legislation (which is a total mess so I have been told) on many grounds.
I would make one very important point .. it is a distinct minority of trans people, the so-called trans* lobby, which is trying to gag debate.
Geoff – Secretary, UTG.
Christopher Eastman-Nagle
February 12, 2019 at 21:44
Well if that is the case Geoff, the ‘other’ transgender people won’t mind dissociating themselves from this bunch of ideological rogues and support our dear feminist sisters, who have so put themselves out on a limb to protect the cause of women. I look forward to some keen transgender ‘community’ participation in any ‘actions’ planned for the Salamanca Market.
If WST and their allies are going to be able to brand the proposed changes to birth registration the work of ‘unrepresentative swill’…and make it stick, then there have to be enough people prepared to put their hand up and their feet on the street, to show that that is what they are.
This is a fight women cannot afford to lose. And victory in this is potentially an opportunity to re-assert a feminist agenda back into a mainstream from which it has been notably absent, as the deregulation of the social system and the sexual commodification of women was rolled out throughout the later half of the twentieth century.
Without that commodification of women and sex and its conversion into a consumer product, the transgen lobby’s outrageous attempts at colonization of the means of social reproduction would never have got a sniff, and we wouldn’t be having to dig them out now.
bindioz
February 12, 2019 at 17:30
Well done, Women Speak Tasmania!
Keeping spreading the truth. Women will not be silenced by anti-science, flat earthers.
Biological men ARE men.
rainsinger
February 13, 2019 at 17:46
Yes, good piece. This was never meant to go as far as ‘Self-ID’ and changing birth certificates and so on without any official medical and legal “gatekeeping”, especially in health, education, welfare etc or other main govt services we all use, including the criminal justice system. In the UK, they instituted their Gender Recognition Act (GRA) in 2004 to help approximately 5,000 transsexuals (NOT Transgender people – ie Post-Op individuals) — a very small number. Under the GRA it can take up to 2 years, and a significant amount of medical documentation to be eligible for a ‘gender recognition certificate’ and have the ‘sex’ on their ID papers officially changed. Even then, most transsexuals do not consider themselves as of the other sex, it just makes their lives easier to have documentation and they dont mind the sensible and legitimate gatekeeping on the long administrative process.
In the UK, women are already being detained in police stations for hours and being questioned under caution – police harrassment, because they called a transwoman a man on Twitter. Hundreds of women have been banned from Twitter, and to a lesser extent on Facebook (which prefers temporary bans)
For some inexplicable reason, over the last few years in many western countries, transgender activism has exploded exponentially with senseless nonsense about being able to “identify” as whatever-the-0&%* without so much as seeing a doctor/psychiatrist, and writing up huge legal loopholes that a 36-wheeler truck can drive through very comfortably in allowing fully intact biological males (including those with criminal records of serious sexual offences, such as pedophilia) to legally harrass, stalk, make frivolous lawsuits, victimise and even sexually assault women and children. And all with no public consultation?
The UK situation is further explained by this recent Open letter from UK Transsexuals:
https://sevenhex.com/why-we-transsexuals-are-leaving-the-stonewall-umbrella/
tassiematters
February 19, 2019 at 14:51
I’ve been avoiding entering this debate but i would like to put my voice out there. It seems that what we are experiencing is the foreseen blowback that started with any number of politically correct advocates. This gathering is in response to the proposed laws by Labor and the greens. There is a big flaw in one of the proposals concerning the registering of gender on Birth Certificates. It is the right for a baby to grow up defined by their registered gender. Let’s face it, children don’t consider that they are another gender until the idea is put in their head by an adult. Children of any age(even up to 18 years old.) do not have the maturity to define themself as another gender. The parents of so called transgender children should have their parenting rights taken away for introducing their child to these adult concepts. The concept of a child being heterosexual or homosexual is something that should NOT be in their sphere of understanding. If you allow a child to call themself homosexual and you stand by that then you must be giving assent to that child living as a homosexual. Unless the sexual act is committed, there is no label or definition. Children are being lumbered with an issue that should not be any of their concern.
Let me say this as a pre response to the hate speech i will no doubt attract- the adults(of any persuasion) should hang their heads in shame for even introducing these issues to children. A child does NOT have issues with who they are unless an adult introduces the idea to them. If we as a society think that it is acceptable to introduce children to adult, complicated subjects before the time that their maturity can handle it then we are fools and not fit to have children. I have no doubt that i will be shot down despite having the right to voice my opinion. Bring it on. If you want to wrestle in the filthy mud then bring it on.
Christopher Eastman-Nagle
February 19, 2019 at 21:37
My dear Tassiematters, I do recall in my youth during the later 1960s, when the so called sexual revolution was being rolled out, that voices like yours were the subject of some mockery and derision. And I am sorry to say that mine would have been one of those who ridiculed you. I have come to repent of this as it has began to dawn on me on what a public relations and marketing con it really was…and is.
As it turns out, not only was that roll out not nearly as benign, liberating or empowering as it was cracked up to be, it grotesquely inflated the importance of sex and sexuality and forced very immature young people into a complex and adult sexual politic in which they were and are completely out of their emotional depth and ability to make mature judgements.
Children are ridiculously easily misled generally and girls in particularly get mercilessly ripped off because they as well as the boys they are dealing with, haven’t a clue what is really involved in secret men and women’s business. It is difficult to navigate, even for the genuine adults still left in the wild after three generations of unpicking any disciplined social infrastructure capable of reproducing them.
It is not a good look when sexual delusionalism becomes sanctified as the reality and spread around into our libraries, schools and the architecture of public discourse; i.e., the fantasy of sexuality becomes the substance of sex whose real function as the means of genetic and social reproduction of the next generation is systematically residualized into lifestylism and consumable fantasy.
We are now living in a culture that is being so overwhelmed by its own baloney, it can no longer defend itself from any minor pathogen that happens to be drifting past. If ever there were a time to starting kicking some arse on this, it is now. We have far more to fear from letting the status quo run its course than from the risks we take putting spanners in its works.
Go Tassiematters! Your voice matters!
Melissa
February 21, 2019 at 07:54
I think what’s being lost in this conversation is that gender identity issues are a totally different concept to sexuality – to even be able to talk about same-sex attraction one must first accept that biological sex matters. Many of the new generation of female-appropriating men still maintain exclusive attraction to women and are therefore still heterosexual, they simply change their language and insist that they are now ‘lesbians’. This is an insult.
The LGB fought for their right to have intimate, consenting adult relationships with the partner of their choice. There was never any need to brainwash children or tell anyone that it was a good idea to mutilate their healthy bodies. Please stop conflating these two separate population groups.
Christopher Eastman-Nagle
February 21, 2019 at 13:57
Melissa, I do understand your discomfort with me. Twelve months ago, I was getting exactly the same kind of ideological flak that WST is now getting from the transgen lobby and you may have some memory of that.
But let us be clear about it. I am not even remotely conflating gender, sexuality and biological sex.
Biological sex is the life force.created by the joining of an egg and a fantastically lucky sperm. It is the foundational building block for the means of social reproduction. Gender is sexual politics and defines how sexual roles are ideologically constructed and socially administered. It is, if you like, the building we construct to house domestic life. Sexuality is the world of feeling and fantasy that we do not so much occupy as it occupies us. I like to call it ‘the beast in the basement’. Its tastes are the ones that define ‘the decor’ in that house.
For me, sexuality is the froth and bubble of life. It is not unimportant, but it is the least important part of sex and a very small beans player in the much larger processes of human character and its formation. And I would claim it has been grotesquely overstated as a primary identity marker by the sales and marketing arm of indulgence capitalism, whose only interest is to define our species as nothing more than the sum of of its desires and the need to satiate them at any price. For that apparatus, conflating desire, fantasy and identity is the ideal format for controlling populations more absolutely than the great dictatorships of the past could have ever dreamt of doing.
Melissa, I have a daughter who is lesbian and if you have doubts about my attitude to them, let me dispel them. I love her dearly and am very fond of her partner. I always look forward to their visits, I respect their choices. We spare each other what would inevitably be a painful discussion about same sex marriage.
If she wants to go down that road, I will support her as much as it saddens me to do so, which I will do privately. I would not burden her or our relationship with my grief and sense of loss in the face of a relentless collapse of social infrastructure and its governance that parallels that of our economy and what it is doing to our environment generally, and for exactly the same terrible reasons; i,e,, the operations of Indulgence Capitalism and the deregulatory and privatization agendas that roll it out on all fronts…smashing everything in their path..
I hope that clears up the matters that lie between us that give rise to your reservations about me.
Melissa
February 21, 2019 at 14:57
I’m sorry for any misunderstandings Christopher. My comment was a general one regarding the conflation of same-sex marriage and the trans agenda, and it was not directed to you personally. My apologies if you took it as such.
I understand that your general point of view is that they are symptoms of the same cultural illness (if you like), and if I am correct on that, then admittedly, I do not share your perspective.
Having said that, I get where you are coming from and it doesn’t make me feel any particular way about you as an individual. I take a live-and-let-live approach, as long as nobody forces me to participate in something that is actively against my own belief system.
tassiematters
February 20, 2019 at 13:47
I’ve just looked again at the proposed changes by the Greens and Labor. Among all the bullshit changes is the one where there will be no more single-sex sports events. Are they serious? Don’t take this the wrong way, but most of the time males are faster and stronger than females, and it would be totally unfair to pit both sexes against each other.
The proposed changes are ridiculous. If it is indeed true that the Greens and Labor would have these laws made, then they are opening a can of worms that will guarantee the Libs get in at the next election.
These hijackers deserve (and will get) cutting down. Hang your heads in shame Rebecca White and Cassy O’Connor.
Tony Stone
February 21, 2019 at 19:43
On this subject, the political correctness that has infected our society, and is destroying it, sure has done a good job. We have sunk the a new lowest level of dumb PC stupidity.
What makes me laugh is this: it’s very small minority groups that set, run and win the agenda they push.
This really shows the true intelligence of our politicians and senior bureaucrats, those who fervently support such sociological destructive idiocies as is this gender assassination, and are swayed by any small pack of fools.
Lola Moth
February 22, 2019 at 08:55
The Advocate has a poll today about the proposed changes to birth certificates.
I am unable to supply a link to it due to my computer inexperience, but I urge people to seek it out in order to have their opinions counted.
Geoff Holloway
February 22, 2019 at 10:27
https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/5915089/birth-certificate-gender-move-a-loser-with-voters-poll/?fbclid=IwAR0vVBeaVtggUGeI-EjH018QDx1mnku9m1A6Ch7A4EQ2OHvCRyRqX7SbolU