Rob Mullins

I realise I am not the target audience but to me Sapphic Sounds is just listening to some Bikini Kill, indigo girls...things of that nature.

Clearly the drafters did not anticipate one or both of the following two possibilities: trans women can breastfeed and trans men can be pregnant. So why not adopt a gender neutral interpretation? Problem solved.

Something I keep coming back to is that the whole interpretation falls apart once you acknowledge that trans women can breastfeed and therefore should be protected under s17(4). It's the clearest example of the human rights incompatibility of the FWS interpretation (there's no "clash" of rights).

I think about sex/gender too much and am wary of turning into a crank myself. But one of the more depressing and scary aspects of immersing myself in this debate has been discovering how prevalent this kind of naive "race realism" is.

Yes. As a default we should use whatever titles, honorifics, pronouns or names people ask us to use. (This includes Nkechi Amare Diallo by the way, whatever her faults and whatever the merits of her claims.)

Yes, it was clearly part of the "mischief" the GRA was addressing. I am more sympathetic than some to the interpretive challenge the court faced but their complete silence on this point was unforgivable.

To be even clearer, I can definitely see the Federal Court getting this one wrong. But it is at least refreshing to see the proper arguments being made.

I mean I don't want to place too much faith in the Australian judiciary here, but I couldn't understand why the Scottish Ministers spent so little time interrogating the idea of "biological sex", because the older case law shows that the judges applying the concept were aware of its limitations.

I've been half following the Giggle v Tickle proceedings and it's interesting to see how forcefully counsel for Tickle are pushing back on the coherence of the idea of "biological sex" (but we have a different set of precedents here in Australia and have not routinely followed Corbett v Corbett).

It's not the law, per se. It's the terms and conditions of employment. Employers can (indeed have to) require employees not to harass people. See Mackereth v DWP.

I'm still mad about Terry Tao. Australia should pour a reasonable amount (maybe 5%?) of its GDP into Terry Tao's research activities.

Right. I guess it's a sign of how much they are feeling themselves that they are prepared to be like this rather than welcoming a convert into the fold.

This is a new thing I have seen popping up. The ultras are getting increasingly rabid and angry any time someone tries to moderate their anti-trans stance.

FWS might end up being remembered among the most technically wanting decisions of the Reed court

Yes, and I love his late wife's illustrations.

They say they were fired for merely refusing to use the correct pronouns (e.g. not using pronouns at all), and, if that is true, that would be a trickier case. But i think even then because of their role it is arguable that would be harassment of prisoners.

It will be interesting to see the details, but if they were fired for actively misgendering then the law is clearly on the side of trans rights here and people are desperately over interpreting FWS.

I'd be careful Stephen, because in my experience they are generally prepared to bite this very unwholesome bullet.

Can't trans women who date men (or male allies who date trans women) join the LGB alliance? They're Supreme Court certified "same-sex attracted". So it's time for some entryism.

The killing code: strange symbols in a WA settler’s diaries lay bare frontier atrocities Exclusive: Stories of murders passed down by Yamatji elders are confirmed by a cipher hidden in the 1850s journals of prominent pastoralist Major Logue. Now descendants on both sides want to break the...

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Some really brilliant work here … strong recommend

Yes I saw your thread which said it better than I did. I think it's right in law--it's a form of exact correspondence discrimination I think, but we'll have to wait and see.

Attacks on the humanities at Australian universities are not new – but they are now more lethal | Julianne Schultz Punishing fees for arts degrees must be ended if the country seriously wants to participate in the information age and give students the opportunities we need them to have * Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast It’s a question from a young graduate student that should chill every educated politician, public servant and university administrator to the bone. “Why do they hate us so much?” It’s a good question, and she hoped that Graeme Turner, the eminent professor of cultural studies who has recently published a scathing diagnosis of the condition of Australian universities, Broken: Universities, Politics and the Public Good, might be able to answer it. Continue reading...

Attacks on the humanities at Australian universities are not new – but they are now more lethal | Julianne Schultz

if australia wasnt so stupid we'd offer terry 400 million dollars to come home but we are stupid so we won't

If the CCP know what they're doing they'll scoop his whole research team up on the cheap.

Terry Tao is without a doubt the greatest living Australian intellectual. Probably the greatest intellectual we have ever had. This should (but won't) be a diplomatic incident.

*the causal part of the claim.

A small correction, sorry. Dinah Rose KC took silk in 2006, after Croft was decided.

Cis people have trouble understanding this because we have never received the unfavourable treatment in question. But it is obvious to anyone who is trans. bsky.app/profile/theo...

This is, more or less, what Dinah Rose QC (as she then was) argued (I think quite brilliantly) in Croft, but I think the force of her arguments has been overlooked.

This is the sense in which the sex of the comparator is immaterial. Non-trans men and women do not receive this unfavourable treatment because they are not trans.