The story of Katherine Deves, her opposition to trans women in sport, and her support in the Liberal Party is all about misdirection.
Text messages from NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet to Prime Minister Scott Morrison supporting a ban on trans women in sport were splashed across the front of News Corp newspapers and websites this morning. News.com.au’s Samantha Maiden wrote that Perrottet denied leaking the texts, suggesting that it was the prime minister’s office — an exceedingly common occurrence for his “private” communications.
Regardless of where it came from, the leak shows support for Morrison’s backing of Deves, makes life awkward for NSW Treasurer Matt Kean after his public intervention and, perhaps most importantly, tries to centre the public debate around the issue of trans women in sport.
But that’s not what the past week of coverage has been about. The attention on Deves has been because she spent years publicly espousing transphobic views to anyone who would listen. She tweeted thousands of times, she made public submissions linking being transgender to autism, she gave interviews where she made claims that were not only reprehensible but also flat-out wrong. Those arguments that gender transition will be used by sexual predators and paedophiles are cribbed straight from anti-gay arguments from the 1970s.
The reaction to Deves has been because of her lies, her disgust and her obsession with a marginalised group that she gladly broadcast when the bright lights of election scrutiny weren’t on her.
(Deves has the audacity to even use rainbow imagery in her campaign video which is an obvious attempt to invoke the LGB — and yes –T flag.)
If it’s not clear from the above, Deves’ advocacy on trans women in sport is only part of her interest in trans people. In an interview posted at the end of 2020 after she had already co-founded Save Women’s Sport Australasia, she said as much: “This is my very great interest, fighting against this gender identity ideology.”
The anti-trans women in women’s sport private members bill created by Liberal Senator Claire Chandler, supported by Deves and backed by Morrison and a handful of government members is another misdirection. As Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg said, the Sex Discrimination Act already has carve-outs for allowing exclusion based on biological advantages that transgender people might have.
Sports bodies around the world have spent years figuring out how to handle the intricacies of gender and competition. These policies are still being worked on, but also something that is well within their domain. The idea that the federal Parliament would come stomping into this area to mandate this is like if members of Parliament wanted to codify different boxing weight categories into law. It doesn’t make any sense.
Importantly, it’s not something that women in sport want either. Sport researchers Erik Denison and Richard Pringle found that most women who played rugby union expressed strong support for inclusion of trans women. Fewer than a quarter of women club sport athletes in another survey thought trans women had an unfair advantage. (You know who were about twice as likely to think trans women had an unfair advantage? Men.)
So if women in sport want trans women to be included — and noting that trans women are a quite a small part of the population, and their participation would affect a very small number of others — why is Morrison spending his week doubling-down on a transphobic candidate whose single claim to fame is her public advocacy against trans women in sport?
It’s because Morrison’s support for Deves isn’t really about trans women in sport. We know that trans women in sport is the thin edge of the wedge against trans people and the LGBTIQA+ movement generally. It’s been used that way in the US and UK. Specifically, anti-trans rhetoric is a way to court women back towards conservative politics — a group Morrison is desperate to claw back support from.
We’re seeing a stubborn, desperate prime minister who is still a long way back in the polls hoping that maybe Deves could be the Israel Folau of the 2022 federal election and bring religious, socially conservative voters back home. Calling the reporting and criticism of her past comments is a manipulative attempt to frame her — a candidate backed by the prime minister running for a former blue ribbon seat for the party — as the victim and not the marginalised group she has spent years smearing.
Will it work? As noted in previous pieces, Australians overwhelmingly support trans people having the same rights and protections as other Australians. But with Morison dog-whistling about it, with News Corp highlighting it across its mastheads, public opinion could change.
I’ve written a lot about Deves over the past week but the last word on this belongs to someone whose gender identity has been talked about a lot, but has been given scarce opportunity to be heard.
Sally Goldner is the joint founder of Transgender Victoria. When I spoke to her on the phone about the past week she told me she was over it: “I’ve been out 27 years this month. The same old nonsense keeps popping its head up.”
Goldner said the national conversation around Deves was evoking unpleasant memories of the same-sex marriage debate when trans people were used as the bogeyman.
“This is taking up a lot of space where there’s more important things to talk about. We need to talk about the real trans issues, such as inclusive healthcare, such as a uniform approach to recording gender,” she said.
“This is an issue that’s made up by people outside the group. They don’t understand it, they don’t have any skin in the game, and they simply don’t care.”
