Declaration for Biological Truth
We thank James Esses and the UK Declaration for their guidance and inspiration for this document.
Small changes or additions to legal terms like ‘guidelines’, act names or dates will be changed to reflect currency. Notice of these changes will be sent to all signatories who opted-in to ongoing communication.
We are a group of concerned citizens from a wide range of backgrounds and professions. We have very serious and growing concerns about the impact that gender identity ideology is having on our society.
Over recent years, there has been a demonstrable attack on biological reality in Australia. This has skewed public policy and discourse in favour of an ideology that has no scientific basis and which poses safeguarding risks to some of the most vulnerable groups.
1. Child Protection
Gender Dysphoria, puberty blockers & cross-sex hormones
Gender dysphoria is a recognised mental health condition and should be assessed and treated through exploratory therapy. There are often co-morbidities (other conditions that cause problems) to gender dysphoria, including autism, body dysmorphia, trauma-induced illness, and internalised homophobia. Many assessed with gender dysphoria have suffered high level childhood trauma and abuse.
Studies show that most children experiencing gender dysphoria settle into their bodies after puberty. By contrast, the prescription of so-called puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones can cause irreversible developmental issues, physiological damage (such as infertility and sexual dysfunction) and significant social and relational harms.
Contrary to arguments presented by proponents of gender identity ideology, this has a significant, direct and lifelong impact on child development, the true extent of which is not yet known.
Detransitioners
There are also growing numbers of ‘detransitioners’ who have been left physically and emotionally scarred following decisions made in childhood or at a vulnerable time.
This raises serious questions about the assessment of their capacity, competency and ability to provide informed consent. Such safeguarding failures and resultant harm are demonstrated by practices at the now-disgraced Tavistock Clinic in the UK.
Transgender education at school
Furthermore, children are being taught gender identity ideology at school, as if it were fact, often to the exclusion or derision of biological reality. This includes teaching children that it is possible to be born in the wrong body, thereby encouraging vulnerable children to seek powerful medical treatment on ideological, rather than scientific, grounds.
This is at an age where their ability to comprehend their future adult self is extremely limited or absent. Some schools, with probable good intention, shirk their duty of care by enabling pupils to socially transition at school away from their parents. This has a corrosive effect on children and their families.
It is also of concern that teachers are making or endorsing such decisions without any professional training or expertise in the assessment of a complex mental health condition.
We implore that:
- Children (minors under 18) should never be prescribed irreversible, experimental, and highly damaging puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones (save for their use in treating ‘precocious puberty’). This applies to all Australian state health services, registered private clinics and online unregulated providers.
- Exploratory therapy for children with gender dysphoria should be protected.
- No person should be compelled to affirm a child’s desire to transition.
- Schools should teach children biological reality – that sex is binary and immutable, that nobody is born in the wrong body, and that gender dysphoria is a mental health condition.
- Schools should never socially affirm a pupil or enable them to socially transition.
2. Women’s Rights
As a direct consequence of gender identity ideology, we have witnessed an erosion of the reality of what it means to be a woman.
Many political leaders have said they believe that it is possible for a woman to have a penis and have struggled to answer the simple question: ‘What is a Woman?’.
Gender identity ideology seeks to reduce what it means to be a woman to a performative or vulgar stereotype within the vague concept of identity, rather than biological reality.
Without any legislative underpinning, the word woman has been removed from core policies and guidance, and terms like ‘cervix haver’, ‘menstruator’, and ‘child bearer’ are used instead. In a twist of irony, some men who identify as female readily use the terms woman and mother; terms they themselves deny to adult human females.
This distortion of language risks endangering women, for example, those who may not be properly notified of or do not come forward for certain health screenings.
Political campaigns have emerged (most notably in Queensland and Victoria) which seek to enable men to self- identify as women, allowing them unfettered access to women’s single-sex spaces. This has had a chilling effect on victims of domestic abuse and enabled male predators to invade single-sex spaces for potentially dangerous purposes.
Men in women’s sport
Finally, women’s competitive sport is being impacted. Men, with their inherent physiological advantages, are often able to compete against and significantly outperform women. This undermines the dreams, ambitions and achievements of many women and risks destroying women’s competitive sport entirely. The impact is particularly serious on girls who cannot possibly compete on a level playing field.
We implore that:
- The Australian Sex Discrimination Act was amended in 2013 to protect individuals from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status in many areas of public life. This was accompanied by ‘Guidelines’ on gender identity. This declaration insists that the Sex Discrimination Act, (and all future related legislation and official guidance) should make it clear that sex means biological sex.
- The accompanying ‘Guidelines’ should be amended to clarify that obtaining a gender recognition certificate does not change one’s sex.
- Self-ID should never become law.
- Single-sex services, provisions and spaces should be protected and preserved. These spaces include, but are not limited to, prisons, toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, refuges and shelters.
- Male athletes, or men who identify as women, should never compete in women’s or girl’s sports and athletics.
3. Freedom of Speech and Public Sector Neutrality
As a consequence of gender identity ideology seeping into public policy via organisations such as the Aids Council of NSW (ACON), a significant number of people who maintain the belief that biological reality is fact have been dismissed from their employment, expelled from their studies, or had their characters smeared.
Conversely, public bodies and public servants, with a duty to remain politically and ideologically neutral, have improperly supported the tenets of gender identity ideology.
We implore that:
- Biological reality should be explicitly protected. Nobody should be reprimanded or sanctioned for holding such views.
- There should never be a requirement, legal or otherwise, to use ‘preferred pronouns’ or to acknowledge that ‘someone has changed their sex’. No one should ever be forced to state their ‘preferred pronouns’.
- Public bodies should be free from symbolism and bias grounded in gender identity ideology. Public sector workers and organisations (particularly the police, media, education and health workers) should remain ideologically neutral and not display ideological symbols on their uniforms, buildings or vehicles.
4. LGB Without The ‘T’
The conflation of sexual orientation and gender identity creates confusion and can have serious consequences.
There have been a significant number of cases in which children have been encouraged to believe they are ‘trapped in the wrong body’, only for it to subsequently materialise that they were experiencing same-sex attraction. Despite the need for explorative therapy, this was not provided, and many now assert they were pushed down an irreversible medical pathway.
Many LGB people have been accused of ‘transphobia’ or ‘bigotry’ for being same sex attracted, rather than attracted to another’s ‘self-identity’.
There has been ‘forced teaming’ taking place, with LGB people persistently being told that ‘There is no LGB without the T’.
We implore that:
- The term ‘LGB’, referring exclusively to sexual orientation, should be used as a distinct and separate category to gender identity.
- LGB people should have the right to assemble ‘without the T’, and without being unjustly accused of transphobia in so doing.