Sydney Women Protest ABC Biased Coverage of Gender Ideology

Sunday 6 June 2021

Women descended on ABC headquarters in Sydney today in protest over biased media coverage of gender-related issues. 

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Organiser Eileen Haley says she tipped off Media Watch to the issues in a recent Australian Story episode on Michelle Telfer’s gender clinic.

Ms Haley says “This broadcast covers up and misrepresents what Dr Michelle Telfer did in 2014. She told a patient there would be no long-term consequences to the use of puberty blockers. Experts now admit the long-term consequences of puberty blockers are unknown. The very positive treatment accorded Dr Michelle Telfer in ‘Australian Story’ was enhanced by distorting her 2014 professional performance to make it look more nuanced and fact-based than it actually was. It surely isn’t, or shouldn’t be, the role of the ABC to misrepresent and cover up deficiencies in a high-profile featured subject’s professional performance in this way, particularly when it involves such a serious issue as gender dysphoria.” 

Another protestor commented “it is homophobic to say that a feminine boy should become a girl”. 

ABC News also failed to report on the landmark Keira Bell court case in the UK where it was found that children could not consent to puberty blockers.

Signs read “No child is born in the wrong body” and “Don’t leave it to Murdoch to blow the whistle” on puberty blockers, unfairness in women’s sport, and female erasure in response to the ABC silence on these issues. 

The women demanded representation of feminist perspectives from the ABC, naming Holly Lawford-Smith and Janet Fraser, Feminist Legal Clinic and Womens Guild NSW as parties who are ready, willing and able to participate in panels and discussions.

Other protesters asked to remain anonymous because they fear repercussions from online mobs. 

https://www.facebook.com/Coalition-for-Biological-Reality-Public-Page-107062111256295 https://www.facebook.com/Womens-Guild-NSW-110826383597612

Sister Resisters

IWD Brisbane Meanjin held a similar protest in Queensland.

‘our’ ABC’s editorial policy states it will “present a range of views with impartiality” and that it “presents a diversity of perspectives”. But on gender identity ideology, the ABC refuses to interview women from women’s and lesbians’ organisations who actively oppose gender identity ideology. How about some balance from ‘our’ ABC?And guess what? As we take it to the streets, “we’ve only just begun ….”

IWD Brisbane Meanjin

Posters from the event!

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‘we can stop this drug, and your body goes back to how it would have been with no long-term consequences’ [reblog]

Reblogging this piece from another author. This text has been sent to Media Watch, the journalists who investigate our media. It is in regards to a special-interest piece by our dear national broadcaster about the Michelle Telfer who heads up Australia’s premier gender id clinic for children. Dr Telfer believes she can “give [a girl] a boy’s body”. Note the timecodes in ().

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I’ve just sent this tip-off to Media Watch: ‘A Balancing Act’, Australian Story. ABC, 24/5/2021. This broadcast covers up and misrepresents what Dr Michelle Telfer did in 2014.

There are two issues here:

• long-term consequences of puberty blockers
• effect of puberty blockers on bone density

Long-term consequences

In 2014, Dr Tefler told the Langley family that if Isabelle decided to ‘go back to being Campbell’, ‘we can stop this drug, and your body goes back to how it would have been with no long-term consequences‘. This interaction was filmed and broadcast on 17 November 2014 in the episode ‘Being Me’, Four Corners, ABC (at 20:52).

The Langley family, and what Dr Telfer told them in 2014, feature again in ‘A Balancing Act’. However, she is presented as saying to them: ‘We can stop this drug, and your body goes back to how it would have been…’(at12:50). In other words, the phrase ‘with no long-term consequences’ has been cut out.

Of course this matters. It matters because of recent admissions that the long-term consequences of puberty blockers are unknown. See, for example, the amendments to advice about them made on the UK’s National Health Service website in June 2020.

https://www.transgendertrend.com/nhs-no-longer-puberty…/:

GONE is the claim that puberty blockers are considered to be fully reversible:

“The effects of treatment with GnRH analogues are considered to be fully reversible, so treatment can usually be stopped at any time after a discussion between you, your child and your MDT”.

NEW is the admission that long-term effects are unknown:

“Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria. Although the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) advises this is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be. It’s also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children’s bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations.”

It is precisely the reason why the application of puberty blockers has been suspended in the UK, Sweden, and Finland. https://segm.org/Sweden_ends_use_of_Dutch_protocol

Effect on Bone Density

In the 2014 footage incorporated into ‘A Balancing Act’, a voiceover is interpolated of Dr Telfer saying: ‘Puberty blockers are reversible. The only risk is that it can affect your bone density’ (at 11:55). The vision accompanying this voiceover is of Dr Telfer speaking to the Langleys in 2014, such that, to an ordinary viewer, it appears that this was something she told them in 2014, and that was broadcast in the Four Corners episode ‘Being Me’.

Was it broadcast in ‘Being me’?

No it wasn’t. Was it something Dr Telfer told the Langleys in 2014, either off-camera or on-camera but edited out before broadcast in 2014? Possible, but highly unlikely, since the effect of puberty blockers on bone density was pretty much unknown at that time: https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5647/rr-0https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7433770/

Conclusion

The hagiographic treatment accorded Dr Telfer in ‘A Balancing Act’ was enhanced by distorting her 2014 professional performance to make it look more nuanced and fact-based than it actually was. It surely isn’t, or shouldn’t be, the role of the ABC to misrepresent and cover up deficiencies in a high-profile featured subject’s professional performance in this way, particularly when it involves such a serious issue as gender dysphoria.

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A sincere thank-you to the author for her analsys.