Last night, the government’s youngest MP appeared at an online event alongside an international anti-transgender activist who has called gender reassignment surgery a “modern-day frontal lobotomy”.
Tasmanian Liberal Senator Claire Chandler was one of the headline guests of conservative Christian group FamilyVoice Australia’s “Gender Politics: Transgenderism” event on Monday night.
The other speaker was Walt Heyer, an American who de-transitioned from a woman and has since made a career out of promoting the idea that many people who transition regret the move. (Research shows that a minuscule amount of trans people express regret.)
What makes Chandler’s appearance alongside a staunch activist popular with anti-LGBT groups remarkable is that the young senator had, until just over a year ago, never indicated any interest in trans people. But since then Chandler has pivoted to make trans women in sports her political raison d’être.
Trans women in sport is a rather niche issue that affects few people directly and has been around for decades. Many major national and international sporting organisations, including Sport Australia, have established guidelines to support the inclusion of trans athletes and ensure a level playing field.
It has, however, recently become a popular political issue wielded by the right, particularly in the US, pitting trans women as threats to women’s sport.
During Chandler’s stint as federal president of the Young Liberals, her campaign for Parliament and her first year of serving, she showed little interest in sport other than posting on Facebook about attending an AFLW game and event. Her maiden speech doesn’t mention sport, trans people, women or even gender.
In March 2020, that suddenly changed. Chandler gave two interviews with Ben Fordham and Tasmania’s commercial radio station and grilled Sport Australia in Senate estimates about the topic.
Subsequently, Chandler has campaigned hard on the subject. She’s repeatedly used estimates to press government agencies about how they define women, given multiple speeches in Parliament about trans women in sport, and championed a successful motion at this year’s federal council calling on the government to support sports, facilities and services for “single-sex sports”, a definition that excludes trans women.
This same passion has carried over to her social media. Since March 2020, Chandler has posted 55 times on Facebook about trans women in sport, according to social media tool CrowdTangle, and many more times about trans issues — including defending JK Rowling’s free speech after the author made what many felt were transphobic comments. Chandler’s pinned post is a petition calling on Sport Australia to exclude trans women from women’s sport.
This issue seems to be resonating with her followers. CrowdTangle analysis shows that nine out of ten of her top Facebook posts by number of engagements are about trans women.
Chandler was even the subject of a discrimination complaint for her comments on trans women. The matter was dropped after a conciliation meeting and the complainant said they did not have the “legal, financial or other resources” to continue. In a move of political jujitsu, Chandler was able to use this to her advantage, claiming there was a “chilling effect on free speech” — a key message of the right.
A key to understanding why this has become a fixation for the 31-year-old senator was shared in a preamble to a survey circulated by her office earlier this year.
“Too often in Australia, the voices who claim to speak on behalf of women really only speak up for a certain kind of woman,” it says. “But there are women who want to fight for you on issues that matter to real women. Join the movement of mainstream women speaking up for Australian values and what matters to you.”
Trans issues are viewed by conservatives as a weak spot on the left. Earlier this year, Australian Christian Lobby director Martyn Iles — whose group is gearing up for political action — described “the transgender thing” as “where the lie is most fragile”.
Campaigning to deny trans women the same right as other women is an evocative political wedge that’s been a proven culture war winner overseas.
For an early career politician hoping to make a name for herself in a party that’s struggled with women, Chandler has cleverly positioned herself as the future of women in the Liberal Party — a party that has no place for trans women.
Looking for a politician actually interested in helping the lot of the citizens, rather than just indulging in mindlessly destructive wedge politics to consolidate their own career?
Nothing to see here.
I agree that on one level that there is ‘nothing to see here’. On another level, I see an individual elected to our Senate and being paid by us but who is NOT doing her job. The debate about trans women in sport has been a challenging issue for all sorts of reasons (good, bad and biased) for over 40 years so she has a lot of catching up to do on this issue. Is this Senator a ‘single issue’ person? If so she is definitely in the wrong place.
Argentina2021, we are in agreement. When i said “nothing to see here” i meant that if you are are looking for a politician interested in doing good, instead of just being divisive, then you won’t find that good politician here, in this article.
It’s almost sounds as if you are accusing Ms Chandler of deliberately denigrating a fearful and vulnerable minority for naked self advancement, surely not something a follower of Christ’s teachings could ever do. Other than student politics, has this devout christian woman from Erich Island ever had a proper job or anything beneficial for society?
I wonder whether our Prime Minister assigned her the ‘transgender’ Portfolio?
Wonder if LNP have folio for corruption, dirty dealings, back handed deals along with slimy politicians in there filing cabinet, it would be over filled if so!
Doubt it!
Another holier than thou self righteous loon in the LNP, the.
These slow witted bufoons ought to bow there heads in shame!
I know little about Senator Chandler apart from this article so her understanding ding of these issues might be quite simplistic, but the debate about sex-segregated sporting competitions is a lot more complex than this article implies (then again, it’s by Cam Wilson so one doesn’t expect in depth analysis of complexities and nuances). It’s not a basic left-vs-right thing. The religious right have jumped on this because they largely believe in conformity to rigid sex stereotypes and gender roles, but there are also people on the left who are concerned about the question of fairness in women’s sport and the conflation of sex and gender identity.
The issue is that people who go through male puberty – however they identify – have physiological traits such as increased muscle, lung capacity and testosterone that confer advantages in competition in a number of sports over women, trans men and others who have gone through female puberty. That’s not saying women aren’t strong or capable of competing at the elite level, but we have sex-segregated sport for a reason. So we have the dilemma of fairness to trans women on the one hand, who wish to compete in female teams, and fairness to the women on those teams who might lose their place or opportunities that they too have worked hard for. I’ve seen no cogently articulated argument as to why trans women cannot compete on men’s teams – would that not be truly groundbreaking? Why aren’t the players of AFLM being asked to include their trans sisters? – or why a mixed-sex competition that would also include non-binary athletes isn’t an option. Interestingly there is no discussion of the section of the trans community which definitely most risks total exclusion from sport: trans men. If they’re on cross-sex hormones, they can’t compete in the women’s teams because the elevated testosterone would constitute doping, and the odds are they may not be able to compete on an equal level with males and make the men’s teams.
Trans men do compete in mens sports though: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/trans-man-wins-debut-pro-boxer-pat-manuel-771783/
What transmasculine athletes don’t have is an audience of the “legitimately concerned” pouring over their every aspect of their lives looking for reasons to discredit them – which is how you end up with famous British sitcom writers tweeting out pictures of transmasculine athletes to their half million twitter followers claiming that they are trans women: https://twitter.com/shaun_vids/status/1253026161896144899 (Context: https://www.espn.com/espnw/voices/story/_/id/27652214/what-does-journey-transgender-wrestler-mack-beggs-teach-us )
And yet in 2019, new World Athletics rules came into force preventing women like South Africa’s Caster Semenya from participating in 400m, 800m, and 1500m events unless they take medication to suppress their natural testosterone levels.
This article by Cam Wilson is so politically correct. It over simplifies a complex problem and in so doing may well harm individuals with gender dysphoria even more.
Several points that highlight some of the issues.
“A minimal number of trans people express regret”. This is a fraught topic. The emotional investment in transitioning is so great that there is a huge problem with admitting they may have made a mistake. Some clinicians working for years in the field have stated that regret is quite common in teenagers who transition, some realise they are gay, some make a mistake. It’s a very difficult area not helped by glib statements.
“Trans women in sport is a rather niche issue that affects few people directly and has been around for decades”. Yes to a much lesser degree but we are now seeing individuals with XY chromosomes competing against women with XX chromosomes. Even if hormonal levels are adjusted there is a huge advantage to XY with greater muscle and bone mass. In many sports it isn’t fair to XX individuals. To think otherwise suggests a poor understanding of biology.
And whilst it has been around for decades the rate of transitioning has increased exponentially around the world. Annual referrals for transitioning have increased from less than 10 per year to hundreds. The reason for this especially when it sometimes occurs out of the blue in groups of girls needs to be taken seriously to minimise psychological damage.
“including defending JK Rowling’s free speech after the author made what many felt were transphobic comments.”
I defy anyone with an interest in fair and open debate to read Rowling’s essay and not find it a balanced insightful and worthwhile contribution. Cam Wilson doesn’t say it is transphobic (it isn’t), but simply quotes the widespread attitudes of SJWs that anyone who tries to discuss the issue in a balanced evidence-based way is transphobic no matter how clearly compassionate they are.
“Trans issues are viewed by conservatives as a weak spot on the left”. Too right it is. The right have been increasingly exposed as corrupt, antidemocratic, racist and sexist. They therefore seize upon an opportunity to fight back. Let’s not give it to them.
I’ve quoted Stephen Fry before, but it’s important for those of us on the left to understand his argument:
“I fear that political correctness is a weapon that the right values, the more we tell the world how people should be treated how language should be treated, all of this is meat and drink to malefactors
They are recruiting sergeants for the right by annoying and upsetting people.
The reason Trump is where he is, is not the triumph of the right it is the catastrophic failure of the left.”
This is not about biology but ideology, delusion and misdirection.
The Right roll about laughing on their big piles of money which is growing, every time the nonRight (hardly “Left” – that died a generation or more ago) intersectionalises yet again, over & over into always tinier cohorts.