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Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Monday, August four, twenty twenty five. Hamas says it

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Speaker 1: won't surrender until an independent Palestinian state is established, and

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Speaker 1: its published footage of an emaciated Israeli hostage who says

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Speaker 1: he's digging his own grave. That's as Julian Assange and

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Speaker 1: former New Southwaless Premier Bob Carr led a pro gaz

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Speaker 1: of protest march across the Sydney Harbor Bridge after police

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Speaker 1: failed to stop it in court. The Australian subscribers get

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Speaker 1: detailed news and analysis of this complex issue from our

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Speaker 1: correspondence around the world at the Australian dot com dot au.

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Speaker 1: A federal court showdown today, pit's veteran queer community groups

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Speaker 1: against trans rights activists laying bare. A bit of fight

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Speaker 1: beneath the rainbow flag today why some lesbian groups believe

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Speaker 1: their identity is being destroyed by laws that say everyone

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Speaker 1: must be included. Before we begin, there's a bit of

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Speaker 1: swearing in this episode and also frank discussion about sexuality.

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Speaker 1: Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is a glorious, glitary

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Speaker 1: celebration of community and of difference. In a few minutes

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Speaker 1: off this year's parade came the Brisbane Gay Gardeners.

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Speaker 2: People with signs declaring transgender.

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Speaker 1: Defender, and the Association of Gay and Lesbian Doctors and Dentists,

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Speaker 1: all dancing to dual leapers physical.

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Speaker 3: I like the gays, I like the lgbt que community.

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Speaker 1: One of Australia's most globally famous exports, can median Jim

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Speaker 1: Jeffries sums up the difference like this.

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Speaker 2: I like the L, the B, the G, the T,

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Speaker 2: the Q.

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Speaker 3: I support them all equally as individual groups. I do

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Speaker 3: not support them as a collective group because they have

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Speaker 3: fucking nothing in common.

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Speaker 2: Under that rainbow flag.

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Speaker 1: There's a world of different opinions and beliefs, and one

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Speaker 1: of those differences comes bursting forward today when lesbians and

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Speaker 1: transactivists face off before.

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Speaker 2: The full bench of the Federal Court.

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Speaker 1: The case is colloquially known as Tickle versus Giggle, but

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Speaker 1: it's deadly serious. A trans woman, Roxan Tickle, took legal

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Speaker 1: action after being rejected for joining a women's only app,

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Speaker 1: Giggle for Girls. According to court documents, Tickle was male

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Speaker 1: at birth, but had gender reassignments surgery and now has

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Speaker 1: an updated Queensland birth certificate that says she is female.

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Speaker 4: The small group of people have taken it upon themselves

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Speaker 4: to declare that I am not who I know I am,

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Speaker 4: and they have said about making my life miserable.

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Speaker 1: Giggle's founder, Sal Grover, says she created the app for

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Speaker 1: women to discuss everything from work to parenting, but quickly

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Speaker 1: found herself overwhelmed by people she says were biological men

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Speaker 1: wishing to join. The federal court agreed with Tickle, ruling

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Speaker 1: she'd been the victim of indirect discrimination because Grover and

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Speaker 1: Giggle rejected her because she didn't look like a cisgender woman.

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Speaker 1: The court ordered Grover and Giggle to pay her ten

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars plus costs. Grover appealed, taking the case to

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Speaker 1: the full federal court. I don't acknowledge that this male person,

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Speaker 1: adult human male is a woman. And now powerful forces

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Speaker 1: have lined up on both sides. On the side of

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Speaker 1: Roxannetickle are the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner An A. Cody,

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Speaker 1: and protrans rights group Equality Australia, whose patron is the

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Speaker 1: Governor General Sam Mostyn. On the other side arguing for

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Speaker 1: the right of women to have their own spaces are

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Speaker 1: two long established lobby groups, the Lesbian Action Group and

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Speaker 1: the LGB Alliance Australia. In twenty thirteen, a bill introduced

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Speaker 1: by the Gillard government amended the Sex Discrimination Act nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty four to ban discrimination against anyone on the basis

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Speaker 1: of sexual orientation, intersex status or gender identity. Here's how

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Speaker 1: it defined gender identity.

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Speaker 5: Gender identity means the gender related identity, appearance or mannerisms,

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Speaker 5: or other gender related characteristics of a person, whether by

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Speaker 5: way of medical intervention or not, with or without regard

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Speaker 5: to the person's designated sex at birth.

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Speaker 1: By taking her appeal, Salgrover found her Giggle for Girls

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Speaker 1: is challenging this amendment, arguing it's unconstitutional. The case comes

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Speaker 1: after a ruling by the United Kingdom Supreme Court in April,

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Speaker 1: which found the word woman meant only someone who was

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Speaker 1: born biologically female. Here's the Lesbian Action Group's Nicole Mobray.

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Speaker 4: We had a thriving community prior to about two thousand

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Speaker 4: where lesbians could come together in single sex spaces and

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Speaker 4: it would be just lesbians because lesbians are female. Now

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Speaker 4: we've been had this forced upon us that we must

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Speaker 4: accept males in our spaces, no matter how they identify.

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Speaker 4: And so what was once a thriving community. We had balls, dances, clubs, pubs,

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Speaker 4: sporting teams. It's all gone and it's quite frankly decimated

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Speaker 4: our community. We can't be found now because we're underground.

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Speaker 1: I'm joined by Rosemary Neil, senior writer with The Australian.

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Speaker 1: Rosemary tell me zooming out the big picture here. What

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Speaker 1: is the difference of opinion about whether one biological sex

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Speaker 1: or another has a right to single sex spaces.

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Speaker 6: Well, the Sex Discrimination Act was changed in two thousand

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Speaker 6: and thirteen and it outlaws any kind of discrimination against

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Speaker 6: transgender people. So that means that trans women who identify

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Speaker 6: as lesbian must be allowed into lesbian spaces.

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Speaker 2: Let's just break that down.

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Speaker 1: So, by trans women, you mean people who were born

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Speaker 1: in a male body but who now wish to identify

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Speaker 1: as women, who now believe that they are women and

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Speaker 1: want to be acknowledged as such.

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Speaker 2: Yes.

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Speaker 6: I talked to one academic who cites a study that

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Speaker 6: found that about forty three percent of the trans women

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Speaker 6: surveyed identified as either lesbian or bisexual, and the law

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Speaker 6: says as well that they are entitled therefore to be

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Speaker 6: in lesbian only spaces, and that can include dating apps,

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Speaker 6: speed dating nights, things like that. There are lesbian groups,

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Speaker 6: The Lesbian Action Group is one who are not happy

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Speaker 6: about that situation. They say that under that broad queer

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Speaker 6: umbrella that people of many identities now attend lesbian events,

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Speaker 6: So they would like to see the law changed to

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Speaker 6: restore the right of lesbians to hold single sex events

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Speaker 6: for lesbians who were born female.

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Speaker 4: We're not wanting heterosexual males in our space. We're not

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Speaker 4: wanting gay men in our space. It doesn't mean we

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Speaker 4: hate them. It's exactly the same with trans people. We

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Speaker 4: don't hate trans people. We just want our boundaries to

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Speaker 4: be respected and to be able to meet as women

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Speaker 4: as lesbians.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So this is a slight evolution of an idea that

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Speaker 1: I think many of us are familiar with, And this

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Speaker 1: is the argument put forward by people like JK.

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Speaker 2: Rowling, the author that.

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Speaker 1: Biological sex is real, that it's binary, that you are

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Speaker 1: either male or female in every cell of your body,

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Speaker 1: and that doesn't change.

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Speaker 2: The Lesbian Action.

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Speaker 1: Group told you about something called the new lesbophobia.

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Speaker 2: What do they mean by that.

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Speaker 6: They feel that their culture and their meeting spaces have

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Speaker 6: been decimated over the last twenty thirty years, and that

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Speaker 6: part of that is related to transgender ideology, and part

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Speaker 6: of that is related to our anti discrimination laws which

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Speaker 6: say that anyone who identifies as female and as a

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Speaker 6: lesbian must be admitted into lesbian events, even if they

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Speaker 6: have a male body. Lesbian Action Group says it is

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Speaker 6: concerned that it is received anecdotal evidence that younger lesbians

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Speaker 6: are being sexually harassed by men and by trans women

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Speaker 6: at some events that are, you know, ostensibly for queer women.

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Speaker 2: Tell me about the case of Anna.

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Speaker 6: So I spoke to several young lesbians for this story,

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Speaker 6: and Anna told me about how, when she was nineteen,

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Speaker 6: she had recently come out as a lesbian, she struck

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Speaker 6: up an online friendship with a trans woman on an

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Speaker 6: anonymous chat site. Anna told me that the trans woman

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Speaker 6: pressured her to perform oral sex and that this trans

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Speaker 6: woman had a male body had a penis. Anna refused.

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Speaker 6: When she later told that story, she shared it to

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Speaker 6: her close female Universe City appeers. Rather than empathize with her,

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Speaker 6: some of them turned on her, told her she was

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Speaker 6: a terf and transphobic. She says she was also told

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Speaker 6: that lesbians actually can like the opposite sex. Anna was

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Speaker 6: very upset by this because she still had some PTSD,

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Speaker 6: having grown up in a home with domestic violence, and

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Speaker 6: unfortunately she was molested at the age of thirteen by

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Speaker 6: a man while she was walking home from school.

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Speaker 1: Yes, so this is not just a philosophical argument. It's

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Speaker 1: also about physical safety for some of the people who

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Speaker 1: you spoke to.

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Speaker 6: Yes, well, that is what the Lesbian Action Group is

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Speaker 6: partly arguing as it goes to court in this Tickle appeal,

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Speaker 6: which starts on Monday. In their court submission, they do

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Speaker 6: state at one point, this is a quote, it is

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Speaker 6: now commonplace for lesbians to be pressured into having sex

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Speaker 6: with trans women and to face risk of social isolation

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Speaker 6: if they do not agree with that very concept. I

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Speaker 6: should stress here that the young lesbians I spoke to

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Speaker 6: weren't all saying that that sort of pressure was coming

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Speaker 6: from transgender people themselves. Often it was coming from activists.

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Speaker 2: Often it was.

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Speaker 6: Coming from other women who just consider themselves allies with

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Speaker 6: transgender people. So I think it's important to point that out.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think one thing that everybody under the rainbow

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Speaker 1: flag or under the LGBTQIA plus acronym. Would share is

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Speaker 1: experience of being discriminated against and empathy with other people

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Speaker 1: who feel that they're discriminated against, And so I can

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Speaker 1: understand why they might feel that this is really difficult

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Speaker 1: territory to step into.

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Speaker 6: Yes, it is difficult territory to step into, and the

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Speaker 6: transgender community is a vulnerable community, and the changing of

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Speaker 6: the Sex Discrimination Act in twenty thirteen has you know,

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Speaker 6: afforded them important protections. But what we do have here

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Speaker 6: is a clash of rights between lesbians who are saying

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Speaker 6: they want one type of space and exclusive space for

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Speaker 6: lesbians who were born female and transgender people who want

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Speaker 6: the world to be more inclusive who have been terribly

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Speaker 6: discriminated against in the past. But the activists such as

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Speaker 6: the Lesbian Action Group, who do believe in sex based differences,

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Speaker 6: have fallen foul of in a way the queer establishment

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Speaker 6: and their demands have been called discriminatory and transphobic, which

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Speaker 6: is a criticism that they reject. They say they simply

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Speaker 6: want their own safe spaces and that we're appropriate they

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Speaker 6: could come together in mixed sex spaces, But you know,

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Speaker 6: they're saying that when a queer women's event is organized

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Speaker 6: these days, that can mean that you have bisexual women there,

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Speaker 6: trans men, trans women, and some people who they feel

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Speaker 6: may actually be heterosexual men turning up. Nicole Mowbray, who's

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Speaker 6: the spokeswoman for the Lesbian Action Group, does actually feel

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Speaker 6: that in a sense, the law is promoting a kind

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Speaker 6: of rape culture if a group of women are saying

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Speaker 6: we want to meet in this exclusively female way and

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Speaker 6: the law is saying no, we won't let you. Other

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Speaker 6: organizations involved in the Rainbow Coalition would certainly reject that argument.

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Speaker 1: Coming up the idea is transphobic to have a preference

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Speaker 1: for a certain kind of body? Not surprisingly, this is

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Speaker 1: very hot on social media. In twenty nineteen, there was

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Speaker 1: a tweet by a Canadian competitive cyclist and transgender activist

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Speaker 1: called Veronica Ivy who said genital preferences are transphobic. So

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Speaker 1: that's going further than the discussion about spaces. That's saying that,

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Speaker 1: no matter how you identify, it is transphobic to have

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Speaker 1: a preference either for penises or vaginas, isn't it?

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Speaker 6: Yes, it is saying that, and the younger lesbians who

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Speaker 6: I interviewed were saying they do come across that thinking

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Speaker 6: in queer circles and in university circles, and they said

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Speaker 6: in their own queer circles as well, and because that

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Speaker 6: is an idea that distresses them, that you know, a

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Speaker 6: lesbian should be prepared to date have sex with someone

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Speaker 6: with a penis who also identifies as lesbian, has really

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Speaker 6: seen them ostracized within the gay community.

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Speaker 1: M Rosemary Neil is a senior journalist with The Australian.

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Speaker 1: You can read her thoughtful, incisive journalism anytime at The

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Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au