QWAA brings to you ‘Local Action’ a monthly report on the brave feminist actions by women across Queensland. In Local Action this time we sit down with journalist, top tier TERF and podcaster Edie Wyatt and we discuss culture, the state, and the state we have found ourselves in. Talking with Edie is the intellectual equivalent of eating a salad and going on a long run. So get a cuppa and a snack and learn something with Edie.
Would you consider yourself a feminist?
I have always considered myself a feminist. I think a few years ago when feminism went a bit crazy and most of us were not paying much attention, I thought “I am not that, I am not one of them”. But I grew up considering myself a feminist. I went to university, and I considered myself a feminist. It was only because of studying politics did I start to question why I am a feminist. Feminism for me is the political organisation for the rights of women and girls, almost always against the state. What we have seen arise here is a grass roots movement in the traditional sense. I’m not a radical feminist. I am not an intersectional feminist. I am not one of those feminists that has an academic name. I consider myself a grass-roots feminist. I think most women see the need to preserve the rights of women and girls as a social category protected in government. It wasn’t until I saw that protections for women and girls were being removed that I thought “we need to get organised here”.
When did you decide to get organised?
Well, first I noticed the government was corrupting and it was my own side. That was when Kevin Rudd was in power. I think the second time, he went on Q&A. He was going to demonise anyone who did not agree with same-sex marriage. I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t have a conversation. You know, we could do it over a period. In those days, I was in favour of taking marriage out of the state and just having civil unions for everyone. I thought the better solution was to keep it out of the state and just have it in relation to property and all the other rights afforded by marriage. I could tell that he was pushing another kind of agenda and demonising people and calling them homophobes and I was not OK with the government calling citizens homophobes for religious belief or for a different kind of belief. I knew that there was a corruption happening. I started to follow the LGBTQ. I started to research that because I have that background in cultural policy and my thesis was about when the government oversteps into culture. The government can use culture to manage populations. I looked into queer theory. I had not been in university for 20 years and I could see what was happening in political science that was around 2015. About three years ago, and I started to write about this issue. We said, “so where are the feminists” only to find that the feminism had been corrupted and I realised It had become part of a government structure. It was corrupted itself. I realised we’re going to have to organise and sort this out.
How do you feel about Julia Gillard? Some people think she was undermined from within. Do you have any opinion on that?
I’ve been looking at it again with the WPATH files. They obviously did influence that. I was pointing out the other day that the laws were being changed by the Australian rights infrastructure much earlier than Julia Gillard. Even then it was starting to intervene in court cases where children were being indoctrinated. I became interested in the changes in the sex education we are giving to children in state schools. It was inaccurate. I thought it was inaccurate and anti-feminist. Girls need to know facts about our sex even more than boys. They need to know facts about the way the body functions. I recall it was the Monash Centre of Sexuality or something like that were influencing the safe schools program. That was being embedded in a movement within the Labour Party. They call it progressive. Dan Andrews referred to “the movement” as well. You catch them out. They think that they’re part of a kind of worldwide movement that’s going to make all our lives better and that it is going to put compassion in the government structure itself.
The theory of democracy is that the people are the conscience of the state- you can’t put a conscience in the state. That’s why we took church out of state. That’s why we’ve decided not to have ideologies like fascism. where they say the state itself has authority. We give that to the people. They’re anti-democratic. They’re elitist. They’ve got this movement where they think that they know better.
I don’t think we can lay this on Julia Gillard. Whether she did it well-intentioned or not. Whether she thinks that that they going to save the world, they’ve got this misguided idea that they’re going to save the world from patriarchy and from misogyny and from homophobia. I don’t know how they can’t see the homophobia and the misogyny in this movement. They have to be corrupt. I mean, particularly when people come and ask questions like the Women’s Right Network did asking her that question — What is a woman? Julia Gillard stumbled like an idiot. So maybe it’s well intentioned and then they get stuck in it and their whole financial and career credentials are kind of hanging in it.
What are you feeling about the politics in Queensland?
Shannon Fentiman is a younger generation. Certainly, younger than Julia Gillard. These young women coming in are just like the middle class. The left has been taken over by the middle class. The worker’s movement has been taken over by the middle class. They’re very much the same. You know, I hate to say that Marxism was right about this. Marx would say that the middle class produce the culture that is beneficial to the owners of the means of production. They just provide the rationale for the interests, and they produce the culture that’s the interests of the capital.
I just think they’re same old elitist people who think that they know better than everybody else. They’ve taken the cultural capital of the worker. They’ve taken the cultural capital of gays. They’ve taken the cultural and political capital of women and made it their own. It is distinct from Julie Guillard who is a bit like the boiling frog who started out well intentioned and has become part of the corrupt structure. I think Shannon Fentimen is a corrupt person. To be pushing that ideology and pretend that she doesn’t know that man is a danger to women in prison. To pretend that all trans women are homosexual and neutered males is what she’s doing.
Like they have never truly experience being marginalised …
Women do have a reproductive role and the new left are trying to redefine that as a form of oppression. It is a form of oppression, in that it’s a vulnerability to oppression. What we try to do is get the state to protect us from that oppression. That’s why we have sex-based categories. In all sex protection categories and they are taking them away.
As long as you agree with trans women are women you are safe, it’s patriarchal. I have heard a lot of people say this is patriarchal control. It gives you protection in exchange for control. It’s another form of patriarchy that’s coming in to say that women will get protection as long as we come into the structure. But of course, it doesn’t include all women. If you must use facilities in places like Logan or Woodridge or somewhere like that, you will not be safe. Which is probably a very controversial thing to say. For working class white girls, it will not be safe. Muslim girls, for instance they have a very strong patriarchal culture – if they were going into public facilities and a trans woman entered, I wouldn’t think that would be very happy scenario for the trans woman. Those men will protect women within their community because they have a strong protection and control. The culture in Australia has been eroded by the state.
It seems like the third wave of intersectional feminist is consumed with a victim mentality with a cultural overlay, but feminism traditionally is about liberation. Freedom from control of the patriarchy.
We do need protection because we are vulnerable as women who reproduce. We pay taxes, right? We are citizens. Women do need an extra level of protection because of our reproductive role. It is in the interest of the state to keep women safe because we make all the babies. If you protect women, you protect children. Certain people, certain groups of people, need special protections in the state and that the problem with intersectional theory. It waters down feminism. You’re not a real feminist until you’re an intersectional feminist. You’re not a real famous until you accept trans women (im pretty sure I didn’t say this but I don’t know what I said but it can’t be “famous”. Well, that’s man. You watered down the category of women to include men. It’s a dilution that ruins feminism.
The amendment to the births deaths and marriage bill gives the state authority to define what a woman is. One cannot choose a ridiculous category when selecting a gender (which they conflate with sex). Such as choosing an offensive term as a new sex. As if it was not ridiculous enough to say that a man can be a woman. But in doing that, they give the registrar, who’s a job was to write down male or female, gives that government authority the power to define what a woman is. It’s very sinister.
This comes from international bodies. They’re all kind of being pushed by the UN. A couple years ago, I decided to go down a rabbit hole and read what was coming out in the UN. The research is not bad. It’s just that there’s a spin they put on. It’s a technique that theoretical framework is a type that the government’s learned to eliminate women’s rights, not just women but Indigenous women with the introduction of critical race theory. To erase the voice of indigenous women, erase any kind of ability of those communities to escape as the situation they’re in. It makes the state not responsible for the civil protections the state are responsible for.
Do you think this all stems from the Denton’s Document and the Yogyakarta Principles?
The governments have just all adopted it without any kind of critical thinking and probably no one in the room who comes at it from a female perspective.
Looking at it from liberal theory. It’s about the government leaning into tyranny. If allowed to continue on their own without the checks and balances of the liberal state. Which means they overstep into authoritarianism. They overstep into the rights and the culture of humans. When I was at uni, my thesis was called Policing Culture. At this time the Hawke and Keating government were trying to make the humanities vocational. They were making humanities, the government’s policy development centres. The government’s hired us to make policy.
So what? So now you have a situation where government are paying for its own political theory, its own rationale. Similar to the Yogyakarta Principles. The Yogyakarta Principles were developed by a bunch of activists: “look you can apply this and erase sex in law”. No one said that of course! But that was the outcome. They divested themselves of responsibility to care for their citizens and divest themselves of the accountability to the people. The reason Shannon Fentimen does not want to consult with us, It has a moral reason, the moral reason is from the equity framework. That’s the religion of the state. These are the lived experience. These are these are what the good people think- it’s the development of a system that resists democratic accountability. So that’s why we need to hit it. It is natural for the state to lean to tyranny, and I think the market leans to exploitation.
It is more powerful than religion isn’t it. People of different religious back grounds can still communicate with each other.
This is what happens to religions in the state.
Feminist has become a slur these days – I have never seem so much hate thrown at women and feminism being a slur before. Many women are afraid to call themselves feminist because of the slander it has received.
Which was a problem when I decided to leave the left. Well, I am middle class I thought, okay, I’ll be a classic liberal. But of course, they were also anti-feminism just not loud about it. I recall when men’s rights activist Milo Yiannopoulos wanted to come to Australia. He was cancelled and I thought, okay, I don’t agree with him being unable to able to speak. I didn’t think he should be shut down or cancelled. I think all people should be able to speak. But that whole movement there was coming because men feel they have lost themselves and he had a strong fan base. I guess some of it is because men have lost their ability to find themselves. So, they are blaming women.
Just about to say that they are just blaming women. They could go out and find themselves like we do.
I recall a men’s rights activist claiming we were on the same side. I quickly realised he was against trans woman in women and girl’s sport. He was against that, but he wasn’t against men coming into women’s safe spaces, change rooms, toilets, DV shelters and prisons. Then my friend said to me “there is a fine line between a men’s rights activists and a trans woman, and it is drawn with a eyebrow pencil.” That was a big revelation – these are the same guy.
Like incel culture and transmaxxxing…
They can force lesbians. They can force their way into lesbian spaces. They are predators essentially. Women have instincts — women won’t have anything to do with them. Men like that end up not being unable to pick up because women know that they are predators. It is easy for them to cross women’s boundaries they are legal predators. Which most of us on the inside told government representatives.
Like male pattern violence. I have an old-fashioned politics degree. They teach you how to debate. I’m probably a little bit autistic as well. So, I get stuck on the mathematics of it. There is a lot of mathemeticians coming into this debate. This is about logic. How can allow a man to identify as a woman and immediately lose all male pattern violence because of a “special essence?” These essences that cannot be measured or even observed makes them a woman. Well, how do you know that he is not pretending that they’ve female to get into women’s spaces? “Ohh, that’s not happening.” Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense. That’s religious belief. You know, I believe a man died on a cross 2000 years ago and that is not as ridiculous as believing a man can announce he is a woman with a woman essence and suddenly loses all male pattern violence.
It seems like nobody’s noticed the effects that this has on people with disabilities what is your take on this? How do you feel about people being unable to select a carer of the same sex for intimate care?
My family has a history of Huntington’s disease. That’s a degenerative condition that takes everything from a person before they die. When I wrote my first article for Quillette that was one of the things I received pushback from transactivist. My cousin, Nicky, required care for the last years of her life. She had support workers before that as well. She had been raped as a child and she was a lesbian. She had a suspicion of men. She was nonverbal in the end. So, she couldn’t even protest. The thought of her having a man care for her and her being frightened, she can’t even speak, it is really frightening. That’s a violation of human rights. Now people with disabilities cannot even chose the support worker’s sex. The government takes away the ability for women to even choose other women – that’s rape culture. Seriously rape culture, there’s no question about it. It’s institutional rape not just rape culture, but institutional rape which is a horror story. These are the most vulnerable people in society. I can’t — I never thought they would get to that point when people would ignore the safety of women with disabilities.
They wheel out these lovely trans people like Carlotta. They won’t show this 6.5 foot, autogynephilic men who has decided to become a nurse or support caregiver, which is not that hard. The qualifications are not that large. Like men used to become priests.
I can’t complain really. The state took care of my family very well. My family has had access to state housing and care workers. People with disabilities who have advocates get better care generally than those that don’t. The people who have children with disabilities biggest fear is what’s going to happen when they die. The state is a great thing, but it’s not a great carer. It’s a terrible parent. It’s not a mother. That’s what they’re trying to do when they put the moral in the state. They’re trying to say we really care for you; we really are more moral.
You mentioned autism earlier. How do you feel about the large number of young women and girls with autism who are being captured bt trans ideology? It almost seems like a conspiracy to sterilise neuro divergent people.
You can make the case that it is top down. It is top down, but there has to be a cohort of trans people coming in. So, we ended up with what we call the trans community. This has been created online. Trans is essentially created. This has been vetted online and a lot of them are autistic. Autistic people like to look for the rules of life and they look at it like a game or a problem to be solved, So they will connect with that and it makes sense. I don’t think they targeted autistic children, but they are just fodder, and this is a very anti human ideology. It is shameful more people have not come out to support autistic people. I think that autistic people and disabled people are just useful fodder for the activists. Gender ideology gives them very strong structured ways to understand sex and sex differences it attracts them. They get brainwashed. You hear the de-transitioner who are in their 30s and it takes some years to figure out. “Hang on This is not real”.
You can catch Edie Wyatt at the Spectator, on her substack Culture and State and on Welcome to the Dollhouse which she cohosts with Kit Kowalski.
Affiliation of Australian Women's Action Alliances 