QTWAV Statement of Concern

Queer and Trans Workers Against Violence (QTWAV) is a collaborative capacity-building group of LGBTIQA+ Sistergirl and Brotherboy professionals working across LGBTIQASB+ community organisations and Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence services in South East Queensland. We consider the collaborative model of QTWAV to be a high standard exemplar of key principles within the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032:

●       Sexual, domestic and family violence services and programs led by LGBTIQA+ specialist services

●       Building the capacity of the broader service system to respond to the needs of LGBTIQA+ people

●       Collaboration and partnership between specialist domestic, family and sexual violence services and other services such as… LGBTIQA+ community organisations 

●       Work to address violence against LGBTIQA+ people… led by organisations and individuals within those communities, based on their own frameworks and priorities

As Queensland workers and community members, we have remained concerned to see the shifting political approach towards marginalised communities that has come with a change in government. We have seen that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been immediately, deeply and directly affected both through the repeal of the Path to Treaty Act[1], and the progression of QLD’s Making Queensland Safer legislation despite widespread opposition from experts[2]. Most recently, following Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, we have seen First Nations LGBTIQA+ Sistergirl and Brotherboy communities subject to traditional and social media attacks[3]. We understand that this is a clear reflection of a larger rise in intersectionally discriminatory beliefs and attitudes that must be addressed[4]. We express our ongoing solidarity and deep care for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander siblings and community, and we do not forget the primary hurt of First Nations people through the ongoing impacts of colonisation.

As a collaboration of LGBTIQASB+ specialists in the prevention and response to domestic, family and sexual violence, QTWAV has also been extremely concerned by the cessation of vital healthcare for trans, gender diverse and non-binary children and young people. The decision to maintain a cessation of stage 1 and stage 2 treatment[5] comes against comprehensive advice from highly reputable stakeholders, including the Queensland Human Rights Commissioner[6], Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner[7], the Queensland Mental Health Commissioner[8], the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners[9], the Royal Australian & New Zealand College of Psychiatry[10], the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health[11] and the Australian Medical Association Queensland[12]. The decision is not consistent with the findings of a recent Queensland Gender Clinic independent review13], and persists despite the Federal announcement for the establishment of National standards of care with the National Health & Medical Research Council[14], in alignment with Action 3b from Australia’s 10 year national action plan for the health and wellbeing of LGBTIQA people 2025-2035[15]. In seeking to understand the Queensland Government's reasoning, we note that the decision ultimately delivers on a party commitment passed at an LNP 2024 conference[16]. We do not consider the local example here to be neutral or isolated. It is necessary to note the fundamental flaws of the primary piece of international evidence[17] in support of the decision, but this is only one factor in a much wider global context of anti-LGBTIQASB+ movements [18].

Currently, QTWAV members and our professional peers are directly engaged in the provision of frontline support to trans, gender diverse and non-binary young people directly affected by the ban. Many key issues have already been well articulated by families with lived experience, and the assortment of legal, medical and human rights bodies supporting them. However, we wish to articulate a deeper concern for the ways in which the decision furthers a trend of erosion of rights that are interpretable through, and connected within, a gender equality framework. Such trends both global and local are not confined to trans or even LGBTIQASB+ communities, coinciding with intersecting policies undermining hard-fought First Nations, migrant and refugee, disability and reproductive health and autonomy rights. Trans, gender diverse and non-binary marginalisation exists within and alongside many other cohorts, in which women and people with a marginalised gender experience share common and disproportionate impacts. We understand that the policy language of gender equality may not be immediately familiar or accessible to all of our LGBTIQASB+ communities and community organisations in articulating shared goals and experiences. However, we consider this an outcome of our formal absence from the rooms and tables where such crucial policy frameworks have continued to be developed over many decades.

Gendered healthcare is one of five priority areas under the National Gender Equality Strategy[19] alongside unpaid and paid care, economic equality and security, leadership, representation and decision-making and gender-based violence, all of which are policy issues that disproportionately affect LGBTIQASB+ communities. In situating Queensland’s healthcare ban as a gender equality issue, it is clearly inconsistent with a national goal of ending gendered health discrimination[20] and promoting gender responsive healthcare approaches[21], as articulated by the Australian Women’s Health Alliance. Societal and political trends of backlash to trans health equality[22] are a crucial indicator of broader trends of backlash and resistance to gender equality for LGBTIQA+ communities [23] [24]., and to gender equality more broadly[25] [26]. Given the interconnected nature of the policy pillars for gender equality, the weakening of gendered health policy is inherently connected to drivers of gendered violence[27] and this is of immediate concern and interest to QTWAV and our networks.

Where our communities constitute a small population[28], it is concerning and painful to continue witness an overt lack of consideration and protection for gendered health and equality, just as it is concerning and painful to witness in other marginalised communities to which trans people belong. Although LGBTIQASB+ communities are now more consistently identified as priority cohorts in gendered violence and other gender equality policy, prior analysis from QTWAV[29] has indicated major gaps in commitment and implementation for Queensland LGBTIQASB+ communities over the past decade. This has meant that our communities now face a deepening of gender inequality, a strengthening of the drivers of gendered violence, and an increase of gendered violence itself without sufficiently developed systems, supports and resources that we know are necessary for survival, safety, and health & wellbeing.

It is crucial to highlight an association between gendered health and gendered violence within a gender equality framework here. The denial of access to affirming health treatment itself constitutes a form of domestic and family violence for LGBTIQASB+ communities[30], and withholding of medical care is also a prevalent tactic of gendered violence against intersectionally marginalised cohorts such as women with a disability[31] and women experiencing elder abuse[32]. The use of systems abuse[33] as a means of control has been increasingly understood as an important component of coercive control and domestic violence, and in this moment we are reminded of the work of Carolyn Cousins articulating a ‘parallel process’, in which services and systems can unwittingly replicate interpersonal dynamics of domestic and family violence and coercive control[34]. Ultimately, the systematic framing of trans healthcare and trans people of all ages who seek it as suspicious and dispensable will continue to drive harmful community attitudes and beliefs that devalue LGBTIQASB+ communities and normalise gendered violence, harassment and abuse against us. This is observable for our communities at work[35] [36], in public[37] [38] and in our domestic, intimate partner and sexual relationships[39] [40].

Such attitudes, and the behaviours that stem from them, are based in cisnormativity, heteronormativity and rigid gender norms that also affect women and LGBTIQASB+ people of all genders[41]. However, where gender equality efforts have continued to develop important measures to routinely track, measure and analyse community attitudes[42] and experiences[43] of gendered violence, efforts to capture trans cohorts within such experiences continue to lag[44]. Where the recent  National Survey of LGBTIQA+SB Experiences of Sexual Violence[45] and the Australian Child Maltreatment Study[46] have both shown unacceptable rates of gendered violence against LGBTIQASB+ people of all ages, it is clear that Queensland has not positioned to address or respond to this violence, and that such violence is likely to increase as a result under increasing drivers of gender inequality and gendered violence.

Given the absence of meaningful community engagement, advice and consultation into the ban and review process, QTWAV remains deeply concerned at the lack of an articulated strategy to address harmful community attitudes and behaviours that we anticipate will worsen during in the review period. We do not foresee the current approach of gender inequality for trans communities to be consistent with Queensland’s Coercive Control Communication Framework[47], Queensland’s Plan for the primary prevention of violence against women[48], the Minimum Practice Standards for Specialist and Community Support Services Responding to Child Sexual Abuse[49], the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce[50], or the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children[51]. We anticipate that diminished healthcare for trans children and young people will have significant flow-on effects in respectful relationships education[52] [53], and expect that the inclusion of diverse sexualities and genders, urged by both WSJT the National Plan, will remain unmet. An enduring absence of inclusive respectful relationships education is likely to accompanied by poor outcomes in terms of safety, bodily autonomy and the crucial development of agency and positive identity and relationships for trans, gender diverse and non-binary young people. From a primary prevention and gender equality perspective, this is not an acceptable status quo.

The current circumstances of trans, gender diverse and non-binary healthcare for children and young people in Queensland is something that should concern all stakeholders invested in gender equality and primary prevention of domestic, family and sexual violence. We are alarmed that trans communities - within, alongside and constituted by other marginalised cohorts, are experiencing a devaluation in policy terms, and a subsequent loss in our material health, safety and wellbeing. We urge the Queensland government to take active steps to address these concerns. We express our ongoing and sincere commitment to gender equality, gendered health and wellbeing and safety from gendered violence for Queensland women and LGBTIQASB+ people of all genders, as articulated by the National Plan.