this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026

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Lesbian group seeks legal exemption to exclude trans women from events (www.abc.net.au)

submitted 4 days ago by DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This is so stupid. How would they even enforce it? Are they going to check everyone's chromosomes at each meeting?

Lots of trans women pass, and lots of cis lesbians can look a bit manly, so I can't imagine any practical way to enforce it. And a rule without enforcement is pointless.

top 34 comments

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[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 20 points 3 days ago

LAG are a bunch of terf arseholes and considering the transgender panic has been explicitly dropped and fanned as a distraction from Epstein Activities, I will consider anyone pushing this shit to be a goddamn pedo mouthpiece.

Get. Fucked.

[–] 18107@aussie.zone 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Will they accept a ftm trans person into their group?

I doubt it. Once you start excluding some people, you start looking for ways to exclude everyone. Choose love, not hatred.

[+] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au -10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Yes, if they are attracted to people of the same sex.

Lesbian is a term based on biological sex. “Gender identity” has nothing to do with it. Males cannot ever be lesbians., by definition.

Edit: would love for any of the downvoters who disagree to point out to me where same sex attraction suddenly became about “gender identity” instead lol

[–] DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Trans lesbian is a common term. Sex and Gender are linked concepts and in LGBTQIA+ spaces gender takes precedence in self identification. A gay trans man likes men, a lesbian trans woman likes women. You are either ignorant of this or being deliberately obtuse because if you spent time in spaces where these terms are used by people describing what their sexual preferences are these concepts would be second nature.

Lesbians are women (a gender) who like women (still a gender). You would not be required to find everyone of the opposite sex attractive as a straight person and lesbians are not on the hook to be attracted to all women. Being in a relationship with another person uses language that can cause the same psychological harm to trans people as deadnaming and misgendering. If you call a Cis Woman and a Trans man in a relationship "Lesbians" you are implying they are both women. This is an invalidation of the trans half of the relationship and you will cause the trans person to experience heightened stress.

I suspect you simply discovered a dictionary and have decided your definition for yourself and are now attempting to apply it. The reason you are being downvoted is because your narrative is not reflective of how language is being used.

[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

“Trans lesbian” is different to “lesbian”. This is a lesbian group, using the long established and understood definition of same sex attracted women. Gender doesn’t even come into the equation.

Lesbians are women (a gender) who like women (still a gender)

No, Lesbians are same-sex attracted women. They’re homosexual. Again, gender or “gender identity” doesn’t even come into it. Trans women are male in terms of sex.

Sexual attraction is not based on gender, especially since genders can change at will these days. You (a man) don’t suddenly become gay if your wife decides she’s now a man, nor does your wife.

You know what also causes people heightened stress? Males invading lesbian spaces. Males using female bathrooms. Males suing females for excluding them from female only apps/clubs.

Sex exclusive things exist for a reason, and it’s not just to upset trans people.

[–] DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You know what being misgendered actually does to trans people? I will give you a hint. It's mental AND physical. It subtly poisons every relationship they have with other people. It destroys their ability to find meaningful social connections. It causes gut, skin and inflammation problems. It literally makes them feel more pain and be less resilient to unrelated stressors. Over time this means endemic health problems or suicides.

What being excluded from "cis women only" spaces does to trans people is institutional. If a trans women uses a male restroom they risk assault. It's very common for trans women to be stalked to secondary locations once they leave a male bathroom. They still face prejudice and retaliation in female bathrooms but they are dramatically safer and there has been virtually no incidents of assaults by trans people using bathrooms on cis women. They might feel like they are in danger but that isn't founded on any real world data. They might share a bathroom space with a trans woman a few times over their lifetime but for a trans person having a safe place to use the bathroom is an every single day problem. When trans women are forced out of women's support spaces they become increased targets of rape and exploitation.

I guarantee you there aren't trans women knocking down the door to these transphobic lesbian spaces. This is a fucking nothingburger. Trans women face incredible safety problems in dating and I can tell you from experience they don't stay where they aren't made to feel welcome because it's not fucking safe for them to do so. The REASON trans advocates stop these clubs from making this exclusion law is not because they want to force themselves into spaces they on the whole don't really want to be - it's because it opens the door to use cases to destroy their ability to exist in public. It makes them unable to support themselves which forces more trans sisters in illegal activities and sex work.

Quite frankly these women can suck it up and be catty fucking bitches to trans women like they've always been in the past and deal with the inherent drama of that instead of trying to change laws that will bite them in their own asses one day when they are expelled from bathroom spaces or have the cops called because someone can't tell the difference between butch and trans.

[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me”

Sorry but words are not violence, and words do not cause physical harm. You can be offended by words, but that doesn’t mean the words are offensive.

There are so many cases of trans women litigating and carrying on relentlessly about not being welcomed in to women-only places, that you suggesting it doesn’t happen is crazy. I’m sure you know about the tickle vs giggle case that’s been going through the courts for almost 4 years now, don’t you?

Also do you not see the hypocrisy of saying women need to suck it up and be scared/uncomfortable because of having males in female-only spaces, while also screaming about how scared and uncomfortable and fragile trans people are and how that means they should be able to use opposite sex spaces? I’m sure you don’t tbh.

“Men are so dangerous and violent, trans women aren’t safe in men’s spaces”

Your solution: allow males in females spaces lol

Leopards don’t change their spots. Gender isn’t what makes a man infinitely more dangerous than a woman, sex is.

Do I need to remind you about the percentage of trans women in prison who are there for sexual assault offences? Or how seemingly every time a trans woman is put in a women’s jail they end up raping someone?

[–] DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The reality of the situation is this doesn't affect anybody who you count as friend or family so you just don't care. You project what you think is the norm but you don't know because it's not your monkey not your circus isn't it? You don't care where this leads because nobody you care about will die from it and when the trans people disappear from the world around you you'll be unaware or worse celebrate.

I think I know when someone is a lost cause until something changes. Perhaps one day it will be someone you care about and then you'll have the insights you need. Until then.

[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

No, the reality is that it DOES affect plenty of people I count as friends and family. It affects my wife, my daughters, my mother, my cousins, nieces, friends, and so on. They are who is affected and put at risk by allowing trans women into women’s sex segregated spaces.

If all it takes to get access to women’s changing rooms is to say you’re a woman, that’s what perverts and creeps will do - and this is what we’ve seen ever since this issue arose.

You’re saying that the entire population of females’ safety matters less than the feelings of the fraction of a percent of males who identify as women. Trans women aren’t in danger in men’s spaces. Men rape other men at an infinitely smaller rate than they do women. Women, however, are in danger if mean are allowed in women’s spaces simply by saying they are women.

The number of people murdered every year because they’re trans is close to zero in the western world.

[–] DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca 0 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117016/documents/HMKP-118-JU00-20240321-SD011.pdf

https://www.lgbtiqhealth.org.au/transgender_day_of_remembrance_2020

https://tgeu.org/trans-murder-monitoring-2025-reveals-new-trend-in-anti-trans-violence-systematic-targeting-of-activists-and-movement-leaders/

[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

You missed a very important part of what I said - murdered because they were trans. You can’t just count every trans person that was murdered as being murdered because they were trans.

You’re also citing sources saying something like 50 trans people a year. That’s minuscule.

[–] DrivebyHaiku@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Funny how the goalpost moves. It was "zero" before. If you want the actual portion that got proven as a hate crime in court findings :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_killed_for_being_transgender

Be aware that transness is often a hidden statistic with a lot of reporting of deaths not valuing that information making it difficult to track. It's common inside the trans community for people to disappear with news of their passing being hampered because reporting in press and statistics typically only feature deadnames and lists them by identifiers that only few people inside their communities recognize. Families actively bury evidence of trans people after they pass so there is a concerted effort inside communities to actually mark and make notes when someone dies.

If you want the numbers on people assaulted or injured for being trans it's much, much higher.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10110792/

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/

The suicide attempt rate for young trans people sits around 72% of the population in places that pass bathroom bills compared to the baseline 40%.

For adults the rate of successful suicides of trans people is between 14 to 22 times that of the general population depending on factors of what variety of trans they are.

Add this to the fact all these "protections" for women aren't actually protections for all women. It is protections for only the most feminine presenting women. Cis women have been injured or traumatized by being run out of spaces supposedly for them. People have lost their sports careers or faced worklace discrimination because of this. It's basically leveraging people's discomfort with a minority they don't understand to roll back feminist wins of yesteryear. Certain parts of the fight are just bigots blinded to the fact they are shooting themselves in the foot but to a lot of the people pushing this narrative trans people may be how they are selling the poison but we are not the main prize to be won.

[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

The goalpost never moved. Read my original comment and you’ll see that I was very clear in what I said. I even said “close to zero”, not “zero” as you falsely claimed. Who is moving goal posts now?

Also your new Wikipedia (lol) source says something like less than 3 people per year are killed because they’re trans. That’s essentially zero in statistics.

The percentage of women who are assaulted for being women is significantly higher than those assaulted for being trans.

Suicide rates having nothing to do with this conversation.

[–] djdarren@piefed.social 34 points 4 days ago

TERFs in action, folks.

[–] mawmon@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Heads up, they lost…….again. This 15 member group failed to change a law that doesn’t need changing. Sometimes good things do happen.

[–] DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 11 points 3 days ago (2 children)

"The Victorian-based LAG says it subscribes to the philosophy of lesbian feminism and does not believe humans can change sex.".

Nobody's suggesting people can change their biological sex. But gender is a social construct, separate from sex. That's why it's literally called transgender.

[–] Funky_Beak@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Thats fun. Have they done any blood work themselves to confirm they arent actually intersex? Coz if we are gonna get into sex identity...

[–] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au -3 points 3 days ago

“Sex identity”?

Intersex people are still male or female. Intersex, now known as “Difference of Sex Disorders”, are conditions that affect males and females, but don’t mean you’re neither or both. There are male affecting DSDs, and female affecting DSDs. There’s not a single person in history who is/was anything other then male or female.

[–] shads@lemy.lol 10 points 3 days ago

Literally my first thought: s it going to be based on honesty policy or is one of them going to act as the official genital inspector? I mean I am a heterosexual cisgender man, but even I can see that they are going to struggle to attract new young members when the newbies have to demonstrate their fully functional reproductive system to a senior member before being invited to events.

I have heard some pretty rough stories of women transvestigating people and making it worse by pushing past the limits of verbal and psychological harassment into physical assault. Do they really feel that this will make their community safer?

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 23 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This is so stupid

Yes, so call it what it is, bigotry.

[–] DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 13 points 4 days ago

You use your words, I'll use mine. But I think we agree.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 7 points 4 days ago

When minorities forget that reactionaries hate all of them equally.

[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I mean if they're allowed to exclude men on the basis of sex then I don't see why not. What's to stop them from rebranding themselves from a lesbian group to a cis woman lesbian group.

[+] FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au -12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Lesbians are same sex attracted women by definition. Sex, not gender. Even if you consider trans women to be women, their sex is still male. This means that by definition they cannot ever be a lesbian.

Lots of trans women pass

A lot, lot less than you think. Close to zero.

Sex, not gender, based environments are absolutely necessary for society. Having them open to both sexes defeats the entire purpose of their existence.

[–] DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

How do you know if a trans woman is passing? You probably only notice the ones that don't.