In a case before the NSW Family Court, Justice Andrew Strum ruled against the madness that a 12 year old boy, his mother, and various “experts” thought that he was a girl who should be injected with puberty blockers.

Justice Strum ruled that the boy was not a girl, and must not be allowed to go to the local ‘gender clinic’.

One of the “experts” described the boy's father (opposing his son's “transition”) as a Nazi. That seems like a crude emotional appeal to Justice Strum's Jewishness. Thankfully, the ploy didn't work, and the judge advised that there was no place for ideology in his court.

When the mother's side brought up the old “transphobia” and “bigotry” waffle against her ex-husband, Justice Strum advised that ‘biology is not bigotry’.

Sanity at last

Trump is filtering through; is it possible?

Hi ttbn

I think the ruling was a bit more nuanced that that. The judge did not rule that the child was a boy (or a girl), he ruled that s/he should not be given puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. The ruling was influenced by the Cass report in the UK which urged a more cautious and evidence-based approach to the treatment of gender dysphoria and incongruence in children and adolescents, especially when using methods that could permanently and irreversibly affected their health and bodies.

This is a wickedly complex problem but I think that Cass, and the Australian judgement, got the balance right. It is not about denying the existence of trans people or suppressing their identity, but working out what is in the best interests of a child in a complex and potentially distressing situation.

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The biological process of producing a human being is extremely complex and infinitely delicate.

The sex of the newborn is not just a binary phenomenon, male or female. For about 2% of births, it is a multitude of phenomena—which some interpret as meaning that we humans are born male or female with a 2% margin of error.

The fact is, whatever the cause, a very small minority of humans are born with congenital conditions of atypical sex development. Something in their chromosomes, hormones, gonads, or genitals is different from what many people expect from a “boy” or a “girl”.

Science proves there are more than two human sexes.

While 2% might not sound like a lot, it nevertheless means there could be 164 million people or more who do not fall into the category of boy or girl. If all those people were in one country, it would be among the top ten most populous countries in the world.

To deny this would be to deny reality.

But, of course, there is an excuse for all those who simply ignore it, i.e., the large majority of humanity — in fact, almost everybody !

.

Yes, I had to look into this case because nothing about it sounded right to me.

For starters, anyone who says “biology is not bigotry” clearly understands neither. They also demonstrate that they don’t understand the difference between gender and sex - and a judge who made such category errors wouldn’t exactly be praised for legal nuance, to put it mildly.

But that’s not what happened here.

Justice Strum didn’t declare that the child “was not a girl.” He didn’t rule on identity at all. What he did say was that the assessments so far were inadequate - that the child hadn’t received a full psychological evaluation, and that important factors like autism hadn’t even been explored. He didn’t shut down the possibility of the child transitioning. In fact, he said quite plainly that the child might grow up to identify as a transgender girl - or might not.

The whole point of the ruling was to avoid rushing into something irreversible without enough evidence. That’s not ideology. That’s what courts should be doing - keeping the focus on the child’s best interests, not on settling culture war scores.

So yes, it was a sensible ruling - but not because it lined up with simplistic slogans like “biology is not bigotry.” It was sensible because it was careful, and because it took the child seriously.

Dear Banjo,

We must not forget that this was family court.
The issue of hormonal treatments was only brought before the court because it was disputed between the parents.
In this particular case, the judge ruled in favour of the father, who also received custody of the child.

Had that happened in a healthy consensual family, then the issue would never be brought before the courts and nothing would have stopped the child from getting these hormonal treatments.

In my view, a child should be able to ask the courts to completely renounce one (or even both) of their parents, in which case the court would need to decide whether their request was free and genuine - anyway, that did not happen here, no such request was made, and so the judge had to rule on the specific disputed points.