Combatting anti-trans disinformation

The Problem: Anti-Trans Disinformation

Anti-trans lobbyists are using targeted disinformation campaigns to attack the lives, rights, and health care of the trans and gender diverse community. We have already seen in the US and the UK how damaging these campaigns can be. In these countries we have seen increased numbers of hate crimes, the passing of discriminatory laws, and sweeping restrictions on trans people’s access to vital healthcare.

Over the last year the Trans Justice Project has been a leader in combatting anti-trans disinformation through inoculating key constituencies, strengthening civil societies responses to anti-trans campaigns, and working to prevent anti-trans lobbyists from gaining positions of influence within the health community.

Unfortunately we know that as we head towards the next federal election that the campaigns against the our community are only going to escalate. Anti-trans politics is already being used as a cynical scapegoating tactic to try to win and hold onto power. For example, the WA Liberal Party has announced that it will seek to ban gender-affirming care for trans young people if elected in March. Additionally, the Tasmanian Health Minister recently wrote to the Federal government calling on them to support a hostile inquiry into trans healthcare.

This is an area in urgent need of resourcing and the good news is that Trans Justice Project’s campaigns have already been incredibly successful in limiting the impact of anti-trans disinformation and ensuring that anti-trans lobbyists don’t gain a foothold in Australia.

TJP’s efforts to delegitimize and undermine the impact of the Cass Review (an anti-trans review of trans health in the UK) prevented it being taken up by the media, helped to lead the international response, and recently resulted in the report being rejected by the peak body for psychiatry in Australia.

Trans Justice Project’s solution to the problem

TJP’s role is to help network and coordinate the responses of broader civil society, identify moments for mobilising, and to invest in long-term organising for social change. With international connections across the US, UK, NZ and Canada, TJP are in a unique position to take bold action on the challenges before us.

Building on the success of their existing campaigns, TJP will:

● Continue to strengthen the responses of civil society, government, and media by: launching a resource on combating anti-trans disinformation, detailing the latest research, key messages, and strategies organisations can use to combat attacks in the public and on their organisations.

● Continue to deny anti-trans groups avenues of influence: by running targeted campaigns to attack the credibility of key opponent groups and undermine their ability to build influence in their respective sectors (for example, TJP’s campaign to oppose anti-trans group SEGM from presenting at the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
annual conference).

These are the victories that without TJP would not have happened and they are seeking $45k to support them for the year ahead, to expand and continue this important work.