Several key medical journals, including JAMA, have identified the profound harms caused by medical and health misinformation. They assert that health misinformation on social media disproportionately harms female adolescents, racial and ethnic minority youth, LGBQT+ youth, and other marginalized groups.
The recent conference of the American Psychological Association in Seattle, USA, offered a session titled Safeguarding public health in the misinformation era. The abstract stated:
There's been a backlash against the very concept of misinformation. Independent researchers who study how to halt it are under attack by activists and advocacy groups. Many social media platforms are scaling back their content moderation programs. Institutions working to stop misinformation and improve health communication are facing lawsuits to halt their work. Health misinformation ... is a global harm with drastic consequences, like disrupting population health efforts and increasing health inequities.
The most recent egregious example of misinformation occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic during which a strident diaspora of lay people and medical practitioners decried vaccinations and recommended ineffective and dangerous treatments like ivermectin to treat the virus.
In a commendable display of assertion and common sense, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) revoked certification for two physicians who fronted an organization that promoted ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19 and that offered treatments for people who had suffered "vaccine injury." The physicians challenged the decision on the grounds that it was an attack on freedom of speech but they lost their appeal, leaving them limited to no avenues for re-certification. ABIM spokesperson said, "There are limits to what you can do."
This is apparently not the case when it comes to gender identification and medicalized gender treatments for minors. In this realm, the misinformers have been granted immunity to do harm using treatments that have no sound evidence base.
I have reached this conclusion after reading a paper published last year and endorsed by the National Institute of Health, Current Opinion in Paediatrics:
Medical treatments for GD have a positive effect on mental health, suicidality, psychosocial functioning, and body satisfaction...Political targeting and legal interference into social inclusion for TGD (transgender and gender dysphoric youth) and medical treatments for GD are rooted in scientific misinformation and have negative impacts on their wellbeing.
Almost every word in this statement is demonstrably false. Reviews in the UK, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, many systematic reviews, amicae briefs in various states of the USA, including a recent one from Alabama, and the Cass review all beg to differ.
I have recently written about the shameful organization, WPATH, whose muddled, misguided misinformation about "gender affirming care" is a scourge on a generation of children, adolescents and their families. Yet the very organization and the journal that elsewhere recognizes the harms of misinformation, JAMA, wrote an endorsement of the WPATH guidelines, citing its expanding evidence base of mostly flawed and rejected studies!
Against this background of misinformation about the nature of sex and gender, in Australia, Alex Greenwich, independent state MP, and the Greens party in the state of New South Wales are attempting to push through the Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Bill 2023.
The primary objective of the Bill is "to provide full equality for LGBTIQA+ communities in New South Wales by amending various Acts to address discrimination and promote inclusivity." This Bill affects no fewer than 20 other pieces of legislation. This proposed legislation creates disturbing cognitive dissonance and downright confusion. Below are a few of the proposed amendments consequent to the passing of this Bill.
Again, sex is asserted to be primary. Will the legislation allow for a transman (biological woman) to strip search a transwoman (biological male)? Or a cisman to strip search a transman?
In general, the language throughout the Bill is inconsistent, referring in various places to "recognised transgender person" (Section 38B), "another sex" (s.38A), "acknowledgement of sex" (Schedule 2), "male and female" and "opposite sex" (s.23 & s.34A), "former sex" and "different sex" [s. 38B(1)(c)].
Bizarrely, there is no mention of gender identity, or those citizens who choose to identify as non-binary, queer, genderqueer, genderfluid, or agender. Are these descriptors referring to different sexes? Does this proposed legislation even address these identification categories? Is it sufficient in law to identify as a sex other than one's anatomical sex if that person has not undergone any medicalized sex altering interventions?
On what hospital wards do we place non-binary persons or self ID trans females who remain fully male bodied? This section of the proposed legislation appears to require only a "recognition certificate" to permit an individual to be treated as if s/he were of the sex stated in the recognition certificate.
Further, there are no provisions in the Bill for children under the age of 18. Lower age limits are not even mentioned. How could the political leaders of a nation draft such a nonsensical Bill?
As concluded in the Genspect submission in relation to this Bill:
...the amendments are profoundly anti-women and anti-parent and present a danger to children. Legal recognition of a supposed change of sex is a powerful psychological message for a gender questioning child that will lock them into a pathway of lifelong medical treatment and health harms. Allowing a change of "sex" on a birth certificate (including to categories that are not sexes) falsifies data, perpetuates a myth that sex change is indeed possible, and does not encourage an individual [to develop] a healthy acceptance of [his/her] body.
The recent Federal Court of Australia ruling in the matter of should fill us with disquiet. The case was essentially a legal contest about the category "woman" and who can properly qualify for membership. It is the first case brought to court arguing gender identity discrimination in which a trans female was banned from a women only app on the grounds that she was not a woman. It is no surprise that the Federal Court ruled in favour of Tickle, disseminating the message that sex can be changed at will, and that gender identity trumps biological sex, which, of course, is the basis of the proposed Self ID legislation.
In addition to erasing the meaning of biological sex, this proposed legislation boasts in its title that it is an "equal legislation amendment." In fact, it does the reverse - it renders other categories including women and lesbian and gay communities disadvantaged by denying them safe single-sex spaces and criminalizes those who assert their rights under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984.
Australia now lags far behind our more enlightened counterparts in the northern hemisphere. Can we please return to a semblance of sanity regarding the nature of reality and the immutable fact of biological sex? And perhaps we can send Alex Greenwich, at taxpayers' expense, to enrol in courses in logic, English expression, and biology.