The Lesbian Action Group (LAG), an Australian lesbian group in Victoria, is seeking an exemption to the Sex Discrimination Act so it can legally prevent transgender women from attending its events. “Trans lesbians see themselves and seek to manifest themselves to the world as women and lesbians. The exclusion here seeks to perpetuate the view that actually they are neither of those things,” senior counsel for the Human Rights Commission, Celia Winnett, said. LAG maintains it does not wish harm on the trans community but having “biological males” in their spaces made some members feel unsafe.
This is not a new issue. In 1991, Nancy Jean Burkholder, a trans woman, was asked to leave the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, a lesbian feminist women’s music festival. This was retroactively justified by the instatement of a “womyn-born-womyn” policy which ultimately excluded trans women from the festival. After years of conflict and protests, the festival ended in 2015 after almost 40 years.
