Interesting case re PBs in Australia

[Justme56]

https://x.com/profpparkinson/status/1909863509779005644?s=46&t=ZX_bLozRqm8etdGICMcAvA

If you are not on X this is the actual report

https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/FedCFamC1F/2025/211.html

Parents go through bad divorce. Boy lives with mother. Mother claims child is dysphoric and affirms as girl. Wants PB’s, father doesn’t so ends up in court.

It’s a really long read but covers lots of things from diagnosis, affirmation, conversion laws, mother’s actions (paragraphs 75+), Cass etc.

Seems the judge isn’t impressed - very critical of clinicians, child is moved to father’s custody and no more visits to the gender service.

What are PBs?

Puberty blockers.

💡thanks!

Wow impressed by the judge really

1. There are many wonderous and wonderful aspects of childhood, suffused with an innocence that passes with maturity and adulthood. Children may fervently believe, feel and, indeed, wish for many things which may well fall by the wayside as they develop from childhood into adulthood. At one end of a very broad spectrum, these may be innocuous, whilst, at the other end thereof, they may be deep-seated and genuinely felt or held. But, even then, they are still children, and their beliefs, feelings or wishes in childhood may have potentially grave ramifications for their future lives

paragraph 3 in the introduction to the judge’s reasons for judgment.

It is also important to note that this was a Victorian case. And highly likely to be the Royal Melbourne Children's Hospital.

About time someone exposed them in court. And started to make Michelle Tefler accountable for her unquestioning adherence to ideology.

Interesting, thanks.

Cynical me wonders how long it will be before the judge gets compulsorily retired.

I know two people with family in Australia. The families don’t know each other and live far apart. The way they live their lives is completely different. One family lives in a state capital, the father working for a government agency, the other lived off-grid until their children were approaching secondary school age.

Both families have two daughters of secondary school age and no sons. One daughter in each family identifies as a boy. The parents are supportive and if the grandparents (who are the ones I know) have misgivings they would not express them to family, friends or outsiders. They have mentioned their grandchildren’s name changes to me, though, in a neutral way.

They are the only people I know with connections in Australia, apart from another family who only have much younger children.

It’s probably an odd coincidence.

Fascinating. The judge made extensive use of the Cass report, and was absoutely clear about the damage pbs do. This is a child who has an enmeshed relationship with their mother, and absolutely no idea of the implications of giving up bone health and. all sexual function. But the judge did. I hope the child’s ok.

Thanks, super interesting and offers hope. Why does it so often seem to be the mothers who instigate this? What is it about women that has made us so vulnerable to this ideology with respect to children? I know many men seem to follow meekly along and the TRAs are mostly male, but why are so many mothers actively doing this to their kids? Attention? Approval? Community? You’d think a mother’s instinct to protect her children from harm would kick in somewhere, and override these other appeals. But somehow the alert system is being overridden by this. Like the Catholic Church did to mothers who sent their kids off to be altar boys. Or the scouts with their scout leaders who would with hindsight make anyone’s alarm bells go off. Somehow, these mothers have switched off their protective circuitry…

Sadly it always does seem to be mothers that are the biggest "culprits" when it comes to anything like this - from the more innocuous crunchy/almond mums all the way up to antivax/Munchausen/transhausen via other "my child is special and unique because..." issues.

Yes, the whole gambit. Though somewhat fortunately for the kids the anti vax mums do seem to be in the opposite camp to the transhausen mums, so at least the trans kids seem to be vaccinated and the unvaccinated get to keep their puberty… small mercies… I do find myself clutching at straws to stay in the conversation at ‘mum’s dinners’ with my utterly normal, seemingly reasonably content children with no allergies or major food aversions, no ‘dys’(ins. Bladibla ia), no psychotropic medication regime, no corrective pronouns, no unusual name spellings, etc etc. The most I can offer is that DD sometimes gets quite cross with me about chores and DS might one day need braces. Gawd no wonder 70s mothers were so bored if that’s all they had to talk about…

That's very positive verdict by the judge, I hate to cheer on the fact that a child has been taken off a mother and given to the father, it sounds so chillingly like a giant step backwards for women but it does sound like the child would be better off with the father than the mother.

Poor woman. I hope she has support. But I do not understand why you would want your child to take those drugs, even if you sincerely believe they have dysphoria. Let them make their own choices as an adult.

Because a medical “expert” has told you that your child will commit su*cide if they do not have access to these drugs. It is unconscionable, but it happens, and if you are a scared and under-educated (in this area, not in general) parent, you will listen - why wouldn’t you? They are the supposed experts, after all.

Impressive, and would give you a bit of faith back that everyone hasn’t lost the plot. Rather like O’Callaghan in the case of Deeming vs Pesutto.

The expert witnesses for the mother seemed to be quite zealous genderists. Goodness, the psychologist even found some of the export reports which did not concur with her genderist view ‘hard to read’.

Well, at least that boy was spared from their clutches.

It’s an excellent judgement. Everyone should read it.

I’d suggest a quite odd coincidence - I live in Australia. I know one 24-year-old woman who is non-binary (that was a couple of years ago though, so she might have grown out of it).

That’s it.

I live in Australia. My niece is at a State school where two years ago there was 12 trans kids but there are none this year. Her friend was FTM at 14, but quietly dropped that by 16. The waiting times meant she never got drugs.

My friend recently had a strange experience at a Government preschool; we're talking 3 to 5 year old children.

Nine years ago, when my kid was at the same preschool as my friend's child, all the kids could play with baby dolls one minute and trucks the next, and there was no comment from the teachers....

Last year, my friend's 3 year son played with a baby doll a few times, so a teacher asked what pronouns to use for her child? She said just leave it, he's 3, toys don't change who he is, and was given a very disapproving look.

She asked the other mums about it and found out several children were being socially transed at preschool - with permission of the parents. She was made to feel this was perfectly normal and she was behind the times for the following reasons; she was older (42!), or because she's Catholic (this was assumed due to her Italian heritage, she's not religious), or because her husband is from a Muslim country and she's being repressed (not her experience!). She was told by the mother of a boy who is now referred to as a girl, she herself got on board to make life easier for her 'daughter'. It was made clear to my friend the other mums and the teacher considered her to be damaging her own child.

As a result my friend and her DH will now be sending their son to a Catholic school, which they had no intention of doing before, but they no longer trust the State system. Here, 20% of Australian kids go to Catholic schools, and 40% of those kids are not Catholic. Irony of ironies, the old woman-hating institution is now being trusted to protect female spaces (I say that as a someone who had a Catholic education). For the record Trans kids are given a unisex toilet in Catholic schools, but there is no social transing by the teachers (supposedly).

Edited for SP

That is so beautifully put. I hope it gets quoted many times, and will be a precedent of impact.

Not this mother, though. The gender dysphoria diagnosis only came through after the legal challenge occurred. The mother was very insistent her child was trans. The child’s mother was heavily engaged with a local trans support network, and it was noted that this was her only social group. She called the child a feminine name without the father’s knowledge and purchased padded bras and male genital-flattening underwear, again without his knowledge. The underwear had been recommended by the trans support group.

The child’s dad was unperturbed by his son being “gender expansive” and wearing skirts, having long hair and the like, he just didn’t want his child going down the hormonal pathway.

It seemed like that the mother had built an identity around being the mother of a trans child.

I stand corrected. Also, appalled.

I do feel sorry for her though. He was 12, I think, at the time of the judgment and she was still co-sleeping with him. Very enmeshed. She’ll be bereft, but for the child’s sake it’s the right decision.

As well as maintaining her social standing in the trans support group, I wonder if she wanted to trans him to stop him growing up?

Good summary article here:

https://www.genderclinicnews.com/p/all-options-open