Individual submissions in support of the Lesbian Action Group’s AHRC exemption application
In August 2023, the Lesbian Action Group (LAG) applied to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) for a single-sex event exemption to hold a lesbian-only event in celebration of international lesbian day on October 8th.
Of the submissions submitted to the AHRC by organisations and individuals, a clear majority (397 submissions out of 498) supported the Lesbian Action Group’s request. Despite this outpouring of support, the AHRC rejected the Lesbian Action Group’s exemption application. In doing so, the AHRC adopted a position of sex unknown to Australian law - a fact we pointed out to them before they made their final decision. The final AHRC decision can be viewed here.
Read our group submission and other group submissions on the AHRC website.
If you would like your individual submission to AHRC included below, send it to us at contact@lgballiance.org.au
Why share individual submissions?
Although group submissions are available for reading on the AHRC website, we believe that individual submissions, which are not publicly available, will provide insight into why single-sex lesbian and gay events matter to our community. With lesbians unable to hold publicly advertised lesbian-only events for more than 20+ years now, there is undeniably an impact on lesbian community and culture, and a harm to lesbians that has been, and continues to be, ignored by those, such as the AHRC, who have been trusted with making decisions around who lesbians are allowed to publicly mingle with and, critically, exclude from lesbian-only events.
If you sent an individual submission to AHRC and would be willing for us to anonymously include it below, please email it to us at contact@lgballiance.org.au
Individual Submissions
This is not a frivolous matter. Lesbians have normal human needs; we want relationships like anyone else. We want to fall in love, find partners, make friends, and be part of a like-minded community. Heterosexual women who wish to find a boyfriend or make friends with other heterosexual women have no shortage of spaces in which to do so. Lesbians do not. We are a tiny minority: our dating pool and social circle is necessarily very small and scattered.
When I came out as a lesbian in the late 1980s and early 1990s I was welcomed into a thriving community of women. That community has helped and supported me through a range of life experiences, especially those experiences of exclusion that were prevalent at that time. In the intervening years and on the basis of my lesbianism I have been physically assaulted; verbally abused; refused service; stared at in public; asked to leave premises; lost employment opportunities and ostracised at work. While these were unpleasant experiences, they are experiences that I share with other lesbians, especially those that do not conform to regressive gender stereotypes about what women should do, how they should behave and how they should dress. While these experiences have been profoundly negative they are common among lesbians and have developed a steely resilience within myself and my community.
Since coming out over 30 years ago I have been harassed by males asking how I “have sex as a lesbian” on buses, planes, boats and cars; in bars, clubs and restaurants; in classes, on tours, walking down the street and countless other locations. I have been leered at and threatened with sexual assault by men in those environments. I have had men tell me that I just haven’t met the right man, while insinuating that they might be the answer. Now I am told by institutions such as yours that it is bigoted of me to refuse to engage in any type of sexual relationship with men. Mainstream Rainbow Organisations that are meant to represent my interests have made homophobic public statements referring to lesbians who do not wish to have sex with men as “sexual racists” who need to reconsider their choices, as if lesbianism were a choice I could opt out of to serve the sexual needs of men.
That trans-only spaces exist without any concern for "cis" lesbian inclusion shows the hypocritical prioritising of other groups over lesbians - including by the major LGBTQ organisations who opposed LAG. AHRC agreeing with this stance evidences how low the priority of lesbian views and feelings are around our own spaces, events, and cultural practices.
In 2017, I was one of the 60% of Australians who voted for the right of gay and lesbian Australians to marry a partner of the same sex. I did so because I understood that same-sex attraction is real, and it seemed only fair that same-sex attracted Australians should be able to have their relationships recognised equally with those of heterosexual people like myself. I'm horrified to now learn that at the same time that we were celebrating this change, same-sex-attracted women were unable to publicly meet at lesbian-only events.
If lesbians, natal female lesbians, cannot meet without the presence of natal males, then gender identity itself becomes a form of conversion therapy – lesbian conversion therapy.
If lesbians cannot gather without the inclusion of natal men, gender identity becomes its own form of discrimination: discrimination against sexual orientation, where natal female lesbians are legally prevented from holding events based purely on sexual orientation – a protected characteristic.
If lesbians cannot gather without the inclusion of natal men, gender identity becomes a tool for exclusion rather than inclusion: the exclusion of female lesbians, who are sexually oriented to other female lesbians and not to a female gender identity.
1. Section 7.31 – the exemption would amount to unlawful discrimination to exclude Heterosexual, Bisexual, and Gay males, Heterosexual and Bisexual females, Transgender people and Queer plus people.
I contend that several of these groups have their own ‘only’ events which exclude Lesbians. The application is on the basis of our sex and our sexual orientation, which make us a vulnerable and protected category. Why is our vulnerability being ignored in favour of gender identity?
Of course, it is lesbians (and women generally) who are being marginalised here. Only in minds ruled by legalistic bloviation would it be possible to conclude that the application of a group of women to meet for the purpose of finding friendship was in any way “unreasonable” or “inappropriate.”
While I acknowledge that the AHRC's mission includes upholding the principles of non-discrimination and equality, it is equally important to consider the specific needs and vulnerabilities of various communities. Single-sex events, especially on an occasion as significant as International Lesbian Day, are important.
Refusal of this LAG exemption would send a message to Australians that some lesbians are not worthy of protection from exclusion, harm, discrimination and abuse. The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 is supposed to protect women from discrimination.
What is the point of the Sex Discrimination Act if it doesn't protect women and grant them the right to hold their own meetings & events. Are women entitled to have their own spaces & gatherings? If not, why not?
I would like to present the following evidence to support this statement. LOTL Media has been supplying news and features globally to the lesbian, queer and bisexual community since 1989. LOTL in a recent Facebook survey asked the question, “Are you supporting the application from the Lesbian Action Group seeking exemption for ‘female-born lesbian’ event?” The results were 96% said yes, 4% said no. This is overwhelming evidence that there is support for female born lesbian events.
I won’t sign my name to this as, like many lesbians, I am frightened of being attacked or ostracised from my own community.
As a genderqueer cis-woman living in Melbourne, I have not found many ways to meet women and form healthy, lasting relationships (spanning the years before and after gay marriage). The opportunities presented by the rest of the queer community are masculinist and alcohol fuelled.
I have not read up to the exact date that the Human Rights Commission Bill was passed, but I know that in the revised edition of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, she expresses regret that she had defined gender as indeterminate, and wanted to add in a spectrum from genderfluid to determinate.
There should be room in human rights for everyone, which means that this group [lesbians] should be given the same opportunity to define its celebration space as trans people are given.