BY VERA FIGNER
ABC journos, we see, have been out and about emceeing events for the Pride outfit of trans lobby ACON:
- Jeremy Fernandez, facilitator of the CEO panel at ACON’s Pride in Practice Conference three years running (2019-2021) and co-host of the 2022 awards night of ACON’s AWEI scheme
- Mon Schafter, MC of 2021 awards night for ACON’s Pride in Sport, Jeremy’s co-host at the AWEI 2022 awards night, and inaugural MC of the 2022 awards night for ACON’s Pride in Health program, and host Pride in Sport 2021 panel on lesbian women in sport,
- Tracey Holmes, host of 2018 awards night for ACON’s Pride in Sport program
- ABC’s Rudy Jean Rigg presenting a ‘Rainbow History Class’ for the 2022 Pride in Practice conference and appearing in an episode of the QUEER THINKING podcast for Pride in Sport.
To which we can add
- Patricia Karvelas, who was going to host the 2022 AWEI awards but pulled out due to illness.
Ah, ABC journos. We love ’em.
We see them at writers’ festivals, at charity and local community events, lending their prestige to support culture and worthy causes. But should ABC journos be lending their celebrity status to ACON?
Let’s see first what Aunty herself has to say about external work (paid or unpaid) by her employees. First thing: The ABC recognises that ABC journos engaging with the community can provide genuine benefits to both the ABC and the individuals involved. But the ABC also recognises that there are risks:
And these risks, so the ABC realises, are particularly high for high profile on-air presenters and reporters:
That’d be you, Jeremy, anchor of ABC News NSW; and you, Mon, Walkley winner; and you, Tracey, first female presenter of Grandstand; and you, Ms Karvelas, presenter of RN Breakfast.
Then, says the ABC, the nature of the organisation the work is being done for is also a risk factor:
Working for ACON’s Pride oufit fits the bill for high risk: it’s a lobby group, and it’s super controversial. In fact, it’s a giant, misogynist, regressive, unscientific, homophobic, anti-child behemoth that:
- encourages employers in the Pride in Diversity AWEI scheme to stop collecting sex-disaggregated data, thereby making it impossible to measure progress towards sex equality
- encourages employers to include men-who-say-they’re-women in programs for women employees eg leadership programs
- encourages employers to push for the inclusion of men-who-say-they’re-women in women’s workplace networks
- promotes, through Pride in Health’s associated website TransHub, the increasingly discredited practice of kid-transing through puberty blockers, and the dangerous practices of binding and tucking
- promotes the pseudo-science that for all people sex is ‘assigned’ rather than ‘observed’
- promotes access to women’s change rooms and toilets by men-who-say-they’re-women (‘toilet of choice’)
- homogenises LGBTQ with no acknowledgement of the tensions between the LGB and the TQ which arise through the TQ ideology attempting to erase the standard LGB understanding of sexual orientation in favour of attraction between so-called ‘gender identities’
- refuses to engage with critics in public forums – for example the rep from Pride in Diversity pulling out at the last minute from Melbourne Uni’s Pride and Prejudice in Policy event in October last year
- influences projects such as the notorious Guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport (2019) – elaborated/endorsed by three members of ACON’s Pride in Sport program (Australian Human Rights Commission, Sport Australia, and Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports) – which vigorously promotes the inclusion of boys/men-who-say-they’re-girls/women in the women’s teams, a practice which is increasingly being condemned as unfair and unsafe for women athletes.
And finally, says the ABC, beware of conflict of interest:
We can give you a few more examples, Aunty:
- Jeremy Fernandez interviewing the head of Pride in Sport on the ABC News
- Mon Schafter content-leading an ABC Instagram account (ABCQueer) that peddles the unscientific notion promoted by ACON’s Pride outfit that ‘some men have periods’
- Tracey Holmes reporting on women’s sport campaigner Kath Deves and trans athlete Hannah Mouncey, and more recently a glowing account of head of Swimming Australia Kieren Perkins that fails to mention his remarkable view that there’ll be ‘human carnage’ if men-who-say-they’re-women like Lia Thomas are banned from competing in the women’s category
- Patricia Karvelas reporting on Kath Deves and trans weightlifter Laurel Hubbard
So should ABC journos be lending their celebrity status to ACON’s Pride outfit? No, they bloody-well shouldn’t!! By doing so they’re undermining the ABC’s integrity and reputation. But, yeah, we know there’s little chance of ABC management pulling these journos into line: Aunty herself is a member of AWEI (gold status at that!), gets points for these journos’ moonlighting, and is willing to tell us it’s a total coincidence, and nothing to do with its AWEI membership, that its broadcast and on-line content, and its commissioning guidelines, are saturated with the gender-identity ideology ACON’s Pride outfit pushes.
So Aunty, we urge you once again: get your integrity and independence back by breaking your ties with ACON. The BBC got out of Stonewall – you can do the same.