Distressed parents fear imprisonment if they take any action to attempt to stop possibly damaging and permanent therapy in response to new Victorian legislation that compels mothers and dads to embrace their children’s wish to change gender.
The new rule is so broad that even seeking to set up counselling and expert evaluation for their children might result in parents and mental health experts being charged with a crime if the advice provided did anything other than confirm the children’s recently found gender dysphoria.
Many parents feel helpless and unable to stop their children from making potentially hazardous and permanent alterations, such as chest binding, hormone blockade use, and eventually sex-change surgery.
Additionally, their children are often the target of encouragement and cajoling by activist pro-trans instructors and counsellors while the parents are unable to intervene.
One parent even discovered texts from a therapist encouraging her daughter to leave home so she could follow her newly discovered desire to transition to becoming a guy without interference from her doubtful parents.
Parents in this situation have created a covert network to share strategies for navigating the legal quagmire set up by the Change of Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021 out of fear of being prosecuted.
Health experts were reportedly too afraid to treat their adolescent daughter, Sarah*, because of the “social contagion” of gender dysphoria. Sarah* also works in the field of medicine.
No one will see our kid because it is too politicised, an expert in mental health told us bluntly, Sarah said. So, my kid is simply a political football for politicians looking to get votes, I thought.
The Act will be enforced by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission.
According to the organization’s website, it is now illegal for parents to oppose their child’s request for medical care that will stop physical changes brought on by puberty that do not conform to the child’s new gender identity.
It is also illegal to prevent their child from receiving any health services that would affirm that identity.
Additionally, the Act also makes it unlawful for parents to take their children outside of Victoria for counselling.
The Commission’s website cautions parents that gender suppression may involve ‘wait and see’ strategies as well as overt resistance to the children’s preferences, and that you should advise your kid to think more carefully before moving through with gender change.
Sarah, like many other parents, now worries about being prosecuted for just attempting to receive mental health assistance for their at-risk kids, many of whom are impacted by a variety of disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder, trauma, familial dysfunction, and neurodiverse problems.
‘My kid needs support, but the government established a legislation that makes this so tough, and if you can’t afford private care, it’s much harder,’ Sarah said. ‘All the public services are sponsored by organisations advocating affirmation.
“It is difficult to gauge the scope of the statute.” It seems to be indicating that if I attempt to speak to your kid and we discuss other topics while she wants to take hormones, it would be deemed conversion therapy.
I get the impression that the government meddles in people’s personal lives and families. That is really upsetting to contemplate.
As her daughter suffers with typical physical changes related to puberty, she is always concerned that her daughter’s school and allied health providers may urge the girl to commit to transitioning.
She searches online and is informed that she must be trans because she has “chest dysphoria” or “period dysphoria,” Sarah said.
This legislation is only encouraging that.
I’m uncertain about the police and commission’s commitment to the law. It is very vague and badly written.
“Is it conversion therapy if I stop her from tying herself and she continues to do so?” It is simply insane that I can’t instruct my kid to stop engaging in this destructive behaviour.
Parents are so frightened that they aren’t even looking for one another. You start to feel a little paranoid.
After her 13-year-old daughter came forward two weeks ago with information of a sexual assault that had occurred at her private school, Jane* and her husband have just found themselves in the nightmare of the law.
She sat holding a rainbow lanyard with the pronouns “they” and “them” that had been given to her by the school when her father went to pick up his upset daughter, and it took him two hours to persuade her to return home to her family.
A private counsellor she had been seeing at the time was messaging her pushing her to leave her parents, warning her that they were dangerous, that she needed a safety plan right now, and cautioning her not to let the sexual assault overwhelm her gender problems.
If she had entered foster care, Jane said, “We would never have gotten her back.” “She would have been put on a route to out-of-home care and all the ramifications that come with that,” said the speaker, “if she was placed in a setting that acknowledged her parents were abusive because we wouldn’t affirm her gender.”
She was appalled to discover further texts the counsellor had been sending to her daughter after the event.
The distraught mother pleaded, “We can’t find a new therapist for her, and she needs treatment.”
Due to the school’s support for gender transition, the professional parents with two older children had to remove their daughter from the programme.
We consider ourselves fortunate to have the sexual assault allegation to use as justification for getting her out, Jane said.
We’d run the risk of breaking the law if we claimed that we were removing her because their policies would steer her toward making lifelong, destructive decisions that would have no chance of being undone.
“Until she develops an adult brain, we want our child to have a neutral path,” we said.
We won’t support a transition or the notion that you were put in the incorrect body at birth.
I worry that if we say the wrong thing, someone might report us to Child Protection Services on suspicion of abusing her and have her taken away from us. Since I don’t know her stance on gender, we haven’t told our doctor.
Rachel is also attempting to shield her 18-year-old daughter, who is autistic, from Victoria’s laws.
She went home and informed her mother she was trans and that she wanted to start testosterone and undergo a mastectomy after only two mental health counselling sessions.
Rachel fought back tears as she remarked, “She couldn’t articulate what gender she was.” It appeared non-binary,
“I had the impression that it was more about escaping being a woman than a strong sense of being a man. She acknowledged that she feared and didn’t understand men.
I was speechless. I told her I loved her and meant it, but my first thought was grief at how much she detested being a woman on the inside. She wanted to flee since being a lady gave her so little pleasure.
When Rachel started looking for a new therapist, she was unable to find one who would address her autism and mental health issues in addition to her gender dysphoria.
She had to travel out of state.
The National Association of Practicing Psychiatrists, among others, advise a neutral exploratory approach to treat gender dysphoria, and Jane found it absurd that the Victorian legislation works against that recommendation despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary.
She wrote the Attorney-General and the Health Minister three times last year, outlining her situation and the difficulty the law has made in getting her daughter the help she needs.
However, she has received no response.
She now intends to ask the Ombudsman and the opposition for help.
Every mother I’ve spoken to in a similar circumstance has a daughter who has neurodiversity, has experienced trauma, and is being bullied, said Rachel. The traits are quite similar.
They need much more than having their breasts removed and being given testosterone, according to the speaker.
Dr. Dianna Kenny, a former psychology professor at the University of Sydney, has been treating children with gender dysphoria for about four years.
Since the legislation was passed, a steady stream of parents from Victoria have contacted her for assistance.
According to Dr. Kenny, “psychologists in Victoria are scared to provide non-affirming treatment for youngsters with gender dysphoria.”
They don’t want their kids to see therapists who support gender equality,
Dr. Kenny reported that despite knowing that roughly 40% of children who presented with gender dysphoria also had other serious mental disorders, such as autism, the gender clinics continued with changes.
The same debunked approach was used in London’s Gender Identity Development Centre located at the Tavistock Clinic, and often people were launched on that route after just a few brief treatment sessions.
Following a devastating study into its procedures for accelerating children’s gender transition, that clinic was given the go-ahead to shut its doors last week.
Some of the parents are seeking a second opinion and different approaches to assist their kid in managing their challenges since they are more aware of the risks associated with puberty blockers and transgender hormones, according to Dr. Kenny.
However, many people are now going directly to non-gender affirming therapists because they don’t want to bring their kids to clinics that promote gender affirmation.
The majority of physicians won’t treat children because they won’t approach it unless they agree with the gender affirming paradigm because of concern about breaking the law.
According to Dr. Kenny, Victoria has the nation’s most pervasive gender laws, and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne is in the epicentre of this ‘hotbed’ of gender-affirming treatment.
Dr. Kenny added, “It is a really defective piece of legislation and difficult to establish in court that you are engaging in gender treatment conversion therapy, which is a total misnomer.”
Patrick Parkinson, a law professor at the University of Queensland, advised Victorian parents to be very concerned about every facet of the government’s attitude to kids who suffer gender incongruence.
They need to be concerned about what is going on in the classrooms, at the Royal Children’s Hospital, and with Department of Health policy, he added.
The rule might deprive some children of the care they most need and prevents doctors from working with children who are experiencing gender dysphoria or gender incongruence, according to a study.
There is no scientific support for it since there is no evidence that treatment that encourages children to feel more at ease with their natal sex does any damage.
The law, according to Professor Parkinson, is “very exceptional – based on ideology and a fiction.”
He emphasised the irony of a regulation that does not consider encouraging a child to change gender to be conversion therapy but considers it to be any treatment that helps children feel more at ease with their natal sex.
He said that the federal Family Law, which needed court permission if one parent denied gender medical intervention, was superseded by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission’s overreach, which went so far as to overrule it.
According to Professor Parkinson, “the real risk comes from the Human Rights Commission’s activities, which could have a chilling effect and prevent clinicians from seeing children.”
According to a Commission spokeswoman, the Act was created to protect LGBTQ Victorians from abuse and to address it when it occurred, allowing them to live genuinely, with dignity, and in safety.
‘Medical and psychological therapies done in conformity with professional standards and that are essential in a health care provider’s reasonable professional opinion remain lawful,’ the spokeswoman stated.
The specifics of a case will determine whether a health professional’s actions qualify as a change or suppression practise.
There is unambiguous scientific and anecdotal evidence that suppressing practices and change are still prevalent in Victoria.
The spokesman said that the State Government was responsible for making judgments about Victorian law and that the Commission did not feel the Tavistock decision affected the Act in any way.
A representative for the Victorian Government disputed that the legislation prevented young people from receiving medical or mental health care.
The representative said instead that it prevented “dangerous practitioners from passing off their destructive quackery as real psychiatric therapy.”
In order to draught the regulations, “we extensively talked with survivors, LGBTIQ+ groups, and religious organisations,” the spokeswoman added.
“The public firmly advocated that change or suppression methods be forbidden.”
These regulations protect children and teenagers against individuals who would try to persuade them that they need to be “fixed” when, in reality, they are fine just the way they are.