5 days ago
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan flares up at reporter over ‘respectful relationships' gender policy that is anything but
It's tempting to shrug at news Victorian children as young as five are being told their body parts may not match their gender.
The only surprise is that ideologues in the country's most socially progressive state are waiting until the kids are that old before attempting to induce an existential crisis.
You have to admire the audacity.
They took a Royal Commission into family violence and used it as cover to roll out 'Respectful Relationships', which, in practice, has about as much to do with preventing domestic abuse as a rainbow parade has to do with road safety.
Before parents could ask what gender fluidity had to do with teaching kids that boys and girls should be kind to each other, the department was busy dismantling little Johnny's biology with the enthusiasm of a Year 7 science student dissecting a frog.
Under the Department's new guidelines, children as young as five are told their body parts might not match their gender, and that boys who say they're girls can play on girls' sports teams.
That sound you hear?
It's the collective eyeroll of every parent who thought 'Respectful Relationships' was about respect.
Or relationships.
Can there be any greater disrespect than planting the seeds of gender confusion - and paving the way for irreversible medical procedures - in the minds of children behind their parents' backs?
Can there be any greater assault on relationships than teaching impressionable children that there are no safe spaces for girls?
The curriculum's sample lesson introduces kids to 'Stacey' - a boy who identifies as a girl and who wants to play on the girls' team.
Children naturally think this is unusual.
Not because children are bigots, but because a boy named Stacey wanting to play wing attack for the girls' team is, well, unusual.
But the Victorian Education Department have taken it upon themselves to rewire the state's children so that they believe boys identifying as girls, even from a very young age, is something that should be encouraged.
Kids are taught that if students question Stacey's spot on the girls' team, Stacey is right to tell them: 'Yes I can play with the girls' team because I am a girl!'
Or, for extra gravitas, 'Go ask the teacher.'
Ah yes, the teacher is now the final arbiter of your child's reality.
If the state can teach five-year-olds not to believe their own lying eyes, then the state is well on the way to manufacturing an entire generation who will believe absolutely anything by their 25th birthday.
And that's important.
How else to keep the whole 'renewables are the cheapest form of energy' charade going?
But I digress.
To really cement the lesson, five-year-olds are told that some people 'did not get a good match for their body parts' and don't want to be called a boy or girl at all.
Because if there's one thing kids need, it's an identity crisis before they've even mastered tying their shoes.
Parental groups have warned this is part of a 'school-to-clinic pipeline,' where children who express gender distress are 'affirmed' without parental consent, and then nudged toward medical interventions - puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, even surgery.
In the UK, paediatrician Hilary Cass's independent review concluded that the evidence for such treatments is 'remarkably weak', which in medical terms is somewhere between 'don't try this at home' and 'run for your life.'
Queensland has hit the brakes on new prescriptions for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors.
But Victoria?
They're planting the foot on the accelerator while waving at biology in the rearview mirror.
Child psychiatrist Jillian Spencer, exiled from her hospital role for questioning the gender-affirming dogma, warns these interventions carry risks: infertility, loss of sexual function, lifelong health problems, and regret.
Her radical alternative - helping children feel comfortable in their own bodies – was considered too dangerous for the medical establishment to tolerate.
The Victorian government insists that affirming a child's chosen gender is the path to better outcomes, citing suicide risk statistics that psychiatrists like Andrew Amos say are not supported by actual evidence.
In fact, Amos argues, gender ideology may make things worse by masking other mental health issues.
But why let psychiatry get in the way of social engineering?
Premier Jacinta Allan today launched a blistering attack on critics of the Respectful Relationships curriculum.
Perfectly channelling that condescending tone Victorians remember so well from the Daniel Andrews era, she told journalists that any criticism was 'disgraceful and hurtful'.
'It is all about protecting kids and strengthening resilience,' she said with a straight face.
And if you believe that, you probably also believe that woman can have a penis and that men can get pregnant.
In the end, Victoria's school curriculum isn't about respect or relationships.
It's about the state quietly inserting itself between parent and child, planting confusion where there should be security, and building a generation for whom truth is whatever the Education Department says it is this week.
And if you object?
Well, go ask the teacher.
James Macpherson is a columnist at and the co-host of The Late Debate and Danica & James on Sky News Australia.
