I went to one of the religious based schools that the proposed changes to the Australian Sex Discrimination Act and Religious Discrimination Bill would allow to discipline or expel students or teachers that identify as trans. I was there twenty years ago when I doubt they would have even let the homosexuals slip through unscathed like they have this time.
Look how far we have come, I dare you to say. Like it is an achievement the breadcrumb scattering of anti-discrimination rights that slowly get fed to the country. You don’t get to celebrate how good you are for recognising Peter now, when you still completely prepared to disregard Paul.
Back then I was way too scared to come out as gay. Despite showing signs of queerness since early childhood and forming a same-sex relationship in grade eleven, I did not feel safe to come out at school. I didn’t need a Religious Discrimination Bill to acutely point out its disapproval of my existence. My internalised homophobia carefully crafted from a lifetime of social norms indicating I was abhorrent was enough.
I wanted to be, and later was, voted School Captain so I had a reputation to uphold. It took me nearly six months to tell my three closest friends that I was dating a woman, of which they responded “yeah der, we know”. Everybody knew, but nobody said anything. Why was that?
Because everybody was scared of the consequences. Not just me. Nobody wanted their friend; their classmate; or even their student to be discriminated against by the ever so righteous Catholic School Principal. This was in the early 2000’s. We were starting to get TV shows with gay characters. Men of course, but it was becoming somewhat vogue. The world was catching up but, as usual, the religious schools were lagging behind.
Not unlike now really. Today we have openly trans people in popular media. We are slowly starting to see representation. If little me where coming of age now, I may have had more understanding of gender to work with. Instead I stuffed it into uncomfortable clothes and hid in closets disguised as a lesbian.
Imagine, a whole childhood and early adulthood to explore my body and identity in an curious and affirmative way just like my friends?! I can’t even begin to think what that would have felt like. Where might my confidence be now if I, and everyone around me, didn’t have to start learning what cultural safety meant as a grown ass adult?
This is the baseline we are setting for our trans and gender diverse kids in Australia if we say you need to start behind everyone else. You don’t get to experience a world safe from political and religious judgment until you leave school. Even then, you are going to be up against it. You can start figuring all that out while your peers are figuring out how to get a job and be an adult.
Whether or not the Bill makes it through the Senate the conversation alone says we are less than. Just like segregation did to people of colour. Just like the same sex marriage plebiscite did for the lgbt community. Women trying to get equal pay in the workforce. Someone else gets to decide whether you can experience a life of free from discrimination. Who the hell should be allowed that kind of power?
What lives are going to be at risk if a trans kid gets to go to school and be themselves? How exactly will religion or schools suffer at the hands of this? Will it lead to ongoing depression, anxiety and trauma for them? Will they suffer from higher rates of suicide? How will this external transphobia compare to the internalised transphobia young kids will experience and manifest into deep self-hatred? What do we value more in our country, keeping the faith or keeping kids alive?
I believe we need to protect young trans and gender diverse people. Let them grow up feeling normal. Let them worry about pimples; the battery life on their phone; maths tests; whether their crush is into them. Let them experience a world like their peers. Let them get expelled for smoking in the toilet blocks, not for living their truth.
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