The world is burning
By Corbin Afanasyev, Nossal High School
The climate catastrophe, a ticking time bomb of world-ending proportion, is being accelerated by corporate greed.
Wars are being waged across the world over arbitrary lines on the ground, leaving hundreds of thousands dead.
Protestors, journalists and political dissidents are being abused, jailed and killed under authoritarian regimes.
Rising cost of living, falling union membership and stagnating wages are creating a deadly
recipe for poverty; backdropped against record breaking corporate profits.
And yet, despite all these perfectly good reasons to worry, and maybe even panic just a little, a chorus of politically influential voices have decided that there is one issue which is far more pressing.
The culture war - specifically the current fight against “woke gender ideology”
Drag queens armed with picture books are on a mission to convert all of our innocent children to transgenderism.
Woke teachers handing out mutilating hormones at schools while leaving poor parents in the dark about the irreversible damage and indoctrination being done to their own kids.
Polyamorous, homosexual transvestite groomers are on a mission to pervert and destroy the sacred institution of marriage, their ultimate goal being nothing short of the obliteration of western civilisation itself.
These statements are saturated with highly emotive buzzwords, designed to agitate fear and
outrage in those less politically literate.
These statements are also blatantly, demonstratively false.
Now it’s easy to dismiss these arguments as “so obviously hyperbolic,” that it is pointless to address them at all. Maybe it seems preferable to dismiss and ignore these ideas - they’re so clearly detached from reality.
This attitude, however, undervalues the very real danger that this rhetoric carries with it, both at the interpersonal, micro, level, and at the systemic, political, macro level.
Despite the fact that these, and all similar culture war arguments, achieve little more than divert political attention from the aforementioned, tangible crises plaguing the world, this does not mean that they are not, tangibly, life or death for many.
The normalisation of “the trans debate” and, broadly, anti-queer sentiment in modern political discourse, has pushed these ideas from the fringes of socially condemned bigotry, into the window of socially acceptable debate. This has led to dangerous, hateful ideas becoming mainstream, emboldening those who strive to prevent human rights and equality from being the default worldview.
Jeremy Wiggins, CEO of Transcend Australia, has said the climate around trans issues in Australia was "incredibly hostile and damaging to people who are already a highly marginalised population".
One effect this has had on real peoples lives is to limit the access of transgender folk to
life-saving medical care. The widespread arguments surrounding transgender healthcare has made it politically challenging to provide special training to medical practitioners and to fund accessible public gender-affirming treatment, especially for young people.
In Victoria, children under the age of 16 can technically access a gender clinic; the Adolescent Gender Service at the Royal Children’s Hospital.
Imagine, with me for a moment - you’re a kid, you’re about 12 and you’re starting to realise something is off. Before now, you’d had pretty much no concept of gender - and why would you? You’re just a kid, running around, climbing trees, riding bikes and doing what kids do, vaguely annoyed when your family decides to shove you in an uncomfortable dress for an event. That was, until you’re sent to a single-sex school and find yourself entering puberty and suddenly everything is Bad. Might I even say dysphoric.
So what do you do? Well, in an ideal world, your GP refers you to the gender clinic - it isn’t a complex process, then you get an initial appointment relatively quickly, and get professional therapy to help you understand your relationship to gender, as well as being prescribed puberty blockers - a temporary and reversible measure, to put the distressing physiological changes on hold until you’re old enough to decide whether to allow your natural puberty to go ahead or to go on opposite-sex hormones.
What happened to me, however, was my GP failed to even mention, let alone refer me to the RCH Gender Service. It took three more years and a diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa - which I developed as a form of self-medicating, to minimise visible secondary sex characteristics.
Only then could I get onto that waiting list. And then I spent another two years on that waiting list, due to the clinic’s severe underfunding and understaffing problem, a result of the aforementioned political barriers.
By the time I got to my initial appointment, five years after first presenting signs of gender dysphoria I was unceremoniously pushed into the private sector to get the treatment I needed, because I’d aged out of the Clinic’s care.
I wish my story was unique, but unfortunately it’s the farthest thing from it. A 2015 study has found that transgender individuals are at a four times higher risk of developing an eating disorder compared to cisgender folks.
You have to understand, “Life saving treatment” is no exaggeration.
On top of the prevalence of eating disorders in the trans community, gender affirming treatment has also been found to reduce the rate of suicide among trans individuals.
An Australian study conducted in 2021; finding that 43% of transgender participants had attempted suicide - this number drops drastically with a supportive family, social circle, medical care and legal transition.
This study also cites "interpersonal microaggressions" as an exacerbating factor of suicidality, which - I don’t think I have to spell out for you - are not decreased by the culture war narrative which frames all queer people as an abomination upon this world. A vermin to be “eradicated from public life” *
The narrative that emboldens neonazis to march brazenly in the streets of our own city. Right here, in Melbourne.
Because this isn't just an "American" issue, this is more than a Twitter argument gone awry. The narrative being pushed by American politicians and media is being swallowed hook, line, and sinker by Australians and people worldwide.
It’s right here in Melbourne – in the Monash City Council – that the same neo-nazis and their sympathisers have bombarded threats of violence and intimidation at a drag performer, the councillors and organisers, resulting in the cancellation of the event intended to celebrate the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. I hope
That really is the crux of my point here - the culture war, in the abstract, is not as catastrophic as climate change, or war, or famine.
This world, however, is not abstract, the people under attack are not hypothetical talking points. The hateful rhetoric of transphobia leaves real people dead, killed by social pressure, forced into the closet, denied medical care, shunned from their community, forced into homelessness, or just. outright. murdered.
It is not pointless to push back. It is crucial to not let these ideas become calcified in the political status quo of our culture.
So write to your representatives, donate to LGBTQ charities, attend counter-protests and rallies, protect your trans siblings.
This is a matter of life and death.