Thread by @KirstiMiller30

If we don't stop this sickening attack in Texas on trans & gender diverse kids and their families it won't stop there. We need some BIG voices to help call this transgender genocide out.

Currently sitting in the Nsw Parliament is a @OneNationAus Bill. This Bill seeks nothing less than the total erasure of any and all trans and gender diverse content, inclusion programs and even counselling from every school in NSW, government and non-government alike.

In doing so, it seeks to completely erase trans and gender diverse kids, too.

It does this by adding the following definition to the Education Act 1990 (NSW):
gender fluidity means a belief there is a difference between biological sex (including people who are, by their

chromosomes, male or female but are born with disorders of sexual differentiation) and human gender and that human gender is socially constructed rather [than] being equivalent to a person’s biological sex.

This definition effectively excludes the very existence of trans and gender diverse people.

Latham’s Bill then prohibits the inclusion of anything to do with ‘gender fluidity’ from all courses approved for use in schools across NSW.

And it prohibits not just ‘the teaching of gender fluidity’ (proposed section 17A), but also any ‘instruction, counselling and advice provided to students by:

non-teaching school executives;
non-teaching school counsellors,
non-teaching staff, contractors, advisors and consultants of a school,
non-school based staff, contractors, advisors and consultants of a school, and
volunteers at a school’ (proposed section 17C).

Everyone – from teachers, to principals, counsellors, and parents volunteering in the classroom or the tuckshop – must adopt an official silence on anything to do with trans and gender diverse people.

The consequences for teachers breaching this silence are severe: the Bill proposes amendments to the Teacher Accreditation Act 2004 (NSW) that would cancel the accreditation of any teacher who even acknowledges that trans and gender diverse people are a thing.

As Latham stated in his Second Reading Speech:

My bill outlaws gender fluidity teaching, course development and teacher training and ends the accreditation, and thus the employment, of any individual breaking that law.

Of course, the consequences for trans and gender diverse students are far worse. They will be made to feel completely invisible, with no information about who they are, let alone reassurance who they are is okay.

There will be no trans and gender diverse content in health and physical education classes, at any age, or in any other subject, either. History, literature, indeed all of the social sciences, must be purged of any reference to trans and gender diverse characters and people.

As Penny Sharpe MLC interjected during Latham’s speech, this is book-banning writ large.

Trans and gender diverse students will have nowhere to turn for assistance. School counsellors, who are supposed to help all students, will be prohibited from even talking about gender identity issues with them.

Even sympathetic teachers will feel compelled to pretend that the trans and gender diverse kids in their classrooms, sitting right in front of them, do not exist. They will be encouraged to misgender and deadname them, or jeopardise their careers.

They would likely be unable to intervene to stop transphobic bullying and harassment of these kids as well. Because to acknowledge that trans and gender diverse kids exist would be to acknowledge that sex is different to gender, and that gender exists on a spectrum.

Tragically, the purging of all trans & gender diverse content from courses, the invisibilisation of trans & gender diverse kids themselves, and the removal of all support from teachers, counsellors & others, will inevitably lead to trans & gender diverse kids killing themselves.

But then that’s possibly the point in both Texas and Nsw Australia. Mark Latham’s Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 appears to be built on the ideology that it is better for a child to be dead than to be happy, well-adjusted and trans or gender diverse.

This legislation will cause for trans & gender diverse employees. It seems likely that identification as non-binary will be prohibited – teachers, & other staff, would not be able to insist on the use of they/them pronouns, or other non-gendered language.

They would be forced to deny who they are. The situation for binary trans teachers and other staff would be nothing short of horrifying.

If anyone in the school community, from students to other staff and even parents, became aware of their gender identity, and decided to weaponise it against them, they would be unable to defend themselves, because again to do so would be to affirm sex is not gender.

They too would be powerless to stop themselves from being deadnamed and misgendered.

The attack on trans and gender diverse people, and especially trans and gender diverse kids, in this legislation in both Texas and Nsw Australia is brutal, it's transgender genocide.