More shocking anti-trans comments from Scott Morrison’s hand-chosen Liberal Party candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves have come to light, including saying trans women are indulging in “womanface”.
The revelation comes as the prime minister and senior ministers double down on their support for her.
In the days leading up to the beginning of the election campaign, Deves attempted to scrub her online presence from the internet by deleting her Twitter account.
However, many of her posts on Twitter were captured by tools that automatically archive the internet and comments made on other people’s YouTube channels are still online.
Reporting from news.com.au and Guardian Australia found that Deves had previously called trans people “surgically mutilated and sterilised”, claiming half of trans men are sex offenders and likened anti-trans activism to opposing the Holocaust.
However, her history of transphobic comments goes much further than that. Deves has a pattern of accusing trans people of transitioning for nefarious reasons beyond their gender identity — frequently accusing them of using it to sexually assault women.
In October last year in response to a UK incident when a trans woman was accused of sexually assaulting another woman in a hospital, Deves accused the NHS of facilitating sexual assault by treating a trans woman as a woman.
“Men with a special identities being able to access ‘quality health care’ does not mean offering up vulnerable women as sacrificial sexual assault victims, making ward staff and patients sex props in a AGP [autogynephilia] fetish, or indulging a womanface identity,” she tweeted.
Autogynephilia is part of a controversial concept proposed by a sexologist in the 80s that claims that trans women either transition because they are attracted to men or because they’re sexually attracted to their own body as a female. Despite being promoted by anti-trans campaigners, it has not been adopted by the medical community who treat trans people and has been criticised.
Deves also made comments to publication Epoch Times in December last year that male rapists would transition to “erase the sins of the past” and to attack women.
She also tweeted that “gender identity ideology is a gift to sex predators” because trans women could be imprisoned with other women.
Deves said that sexual predators would “weaponise and exploit” becoming trans to access young women in a video posted to YouTube Channel TERF Talk Downunder.
“On the one hand we have this huge debate in the political arena about sexual harassment in the workplace and in Parliament House and so on, and on the other, we’re just completely opening the door,” she said.
In an interview with Benjamin A Boyce at the end of 2020, Deves spoke disparagingly about the consequences of a 2020 Victorian law that banned conversion therapy and other practices meant to change or suppress a person’s gender identity.
“You could get out of a sticky divorce settlement by saying you weren’t supported in this and you don’t have to give half your earnings or whatever, I mean you could really game this,” Boyce said.
“Oh absolutely,” Deves responded.
She also agreed with Boyce when he says that trans teens would transition to “completely demolish their parents or enact vengeance on their family.”
Deves has also made disparaging comments about women in sport, including misgendering intersex woman Caster Semenya as a “he” when calling for her exclusion from women’s running events, and claiming that the presence of trans swimmer Lia Thomas in the change rooms was “state sanctioned sexual abuse” in an interview just a month ago.
Deves’ interviews also give more insight into her political intentions. She told Boyce that she had voted for every political party and was political homeless”. She lamented that politicians criticising trans rights were often “divisive, conservative figures.”
“This is my great interest, fighting against gender identity ideology,” she said.
Despite intensifying pressure, Morrison as recently as Saturday said that he still supported Deves’ candidacy.
Archives of 6,000 tweets deleted by Deves can be found here. Spot anything interesting? Get in touch at cwilson@crikey.com.au.
