Review of ‘Over the Rainbow - A challenge to cancel culture’
Edited by Drew Hutton and Libby Connors.
Published by Spinifex
Libby Connors and Drew Hutton have done Australia a great service by bringing together such a thoughtful and insightful group of authors. Their own bookend pieces, Drew's introduction and Libby's conclusion 'The Urgency of Centring Our Biological Selves', tell much of the story of cancel culture.
At over 300 pages, the book is divided into six sections (Community, Therapy, Theory, Society, Politics and Law) containing fourteen chapters in all. Politics is the largest section with five chapters, while Community and Law have one each. The contributors are drawn from both Australia and overseas.
Each writer contributes a chapter attacking the many-headed monster of gender ideology from every conceivable angle. Still the beast lives on, but surely this well-written, thought-provoking book will play a part in bringing this madness to an end.
The following is an overview of some key chapters.
Amongst the many victims of gender ideology, the most poignant are the minors who have been subjected to horrific, medically unnecessary surgeries with only the most cursory safeguarding checks beforehand. And the parents of these children who are informed by medical professionals that their child will kill themselves if they do not have surgery (when according to the data suicide rates go up after surgery) effectively silencing parental concerns. Rachel Hannam in her chapter ‘Treating Gender-Confused Young People: The Suppression of Ethical Therapies’ gives a clear-eyed assessment of so-called gender affirmative medicine which she categorises as “protocol-driven.” She is scathing about how exploratory psychotherapy is marginalised throughout the process. Medical professionals tasked to do no harm have repeatedly proven that they will prioritise adherence to a medically unsupported ideology, and their own self-interest, over the bodily integrity of distressed children.
Bronwyn Winter was given a triple brief for her chapter, entitled ‘The Queer History of Trans Entryism’ -
Provide an intelligible account of queer theory and its influence on the politics of gender identity.
Briefly trace the history of how trans ideology turned a lesbian and gay movement into an alphabet soup.
To show how these two phenomena are intertwined and mutually re-enforcing.
Bronwyn discusses the contradictory foundation of trans ideology; its continual shape-shifting and its reliance on magical thinking to draw people in. She goes on to discuss the expression ‘white-anting’ whereby termites (white ants) cause buildings to collapse by eating the foundations from the inside in much the same way that the lesbian community and movement have been destroyed from within by the process of ‘trans entryism.’ This process is, on occasion, facilitated by lesbians sympathetic to trans ideology - a belief system which manipulates good-hearted people to buy into a worldview that is, in fact, intolerant, undemocratic, and authoritarian.
Interestingly several of the authors in this book are refugees from the Green Party and consequently there are some scathingly brutal analyses of the way the Green Party now operates and how it has become cult-like in its search for ideological purity. No-one who has followed politics over the last few years will be shocked to hear that the Green Party has pivoted away from championing the environment and anti-capitalism to actively supporting environmental destruction and big pharma. Indeed, it has become a cheerleader for unquestioningly medicalising troubled children and young adults. The section on Politics has four out of five chapters dealing specifically with how the Green Party is corrupted by trans ideology with its internal structures and processes completely handed over to the enforcers of gender ideology.
The other chapter in the Politics section details a similar kind of necrosis that has occurred within the Democratic Party of the USA with the result that issues traditionally seen as left of centre, like free speech and the protection of women and girls’ spaces and sports, are now championed almost entirely by Republican politicians. This chapter, by Kara Dansky entitled ‘A Note to American Democratic Women’ also tackles the deeply-ingrained homophobia and misogyny of trans ideology. Dansky interestingly writes about the current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, pledging his support for Pride Month 2023 by singling out the importance of inclusion and diversity and how proud he was that that years’ campaign prioritised promoting and supporting trans and non-binary people. Khan did not mention lesbians and gay men. Not even once…
With the thread of gender ideology running through this book, it is no surprise that the history of the movement is examined. A comprehensive analysis of how trans ideology became embedded into Australian law is described in the wonderfully titled chapter ‘Legislating Lunacy’ by Anna Kerr. This chapter traces the first steps of the trans rights movement into the legislative arena in 1980s Australia to its metastasis throughout the body politic, sweeping away common-sense, decency and a hell of a lot of brain cells in the process. Starting with South Australia’s groundbreaking Sex Reassignment Act 1988 the trans activists’ subsequent campaigns combining stealth and divide and conquer, has brought us to where we are today, with women erased as a sex-based class in Australian law and lesbians being denied the right of free association, culminating in the barely believable ‘Tickle v Giggle’ court case which agreed that some men are now legally considered to be women. Organisations like LGB Alliance, established to support same-sex attracted people, are forced to meet in secret for fear of being cancelled as an anti-trans hate group.
Annie Kia's chapter 'Progressive' Conformity' asks how progressives came to find harms to LGB youth tolerable. She points to a "180-degree turn on sex role stereotypes" whereby a boy who likes fairy outfits is now told he is "in the wrong body", although most such children once grew up to be gay or lesbian. The way out, Kia argues, is a "willingness to think, inquire and have conversations" about issues that gender enthusiasts do not like.
Kit Kowalski's chapter 'ACON at Work' uses Freedom of Information requests to show that ACON has been engaged in "a highly successful agency capture exercise of the Australian government." Its workplace index awards very few points for protecting lesbians, gays and bisexuals, and few organisations have embraced it with the vigour of the ABC. The ABC has since dropped its membership which, as Kowalski puts it, is "both one giant leap" and "only one small step."
This book, undoubtedly engaging and timely, can seem quite a daunting read as we acknowledge the most vexed question of our time is ‘what is a woman?’ A question to which, until about 5 minutes ago, everyone knew the answer. Drew Hutton, one of the editors, leaves us on a positive note, as he states that he believes this book will contribute to legal reform to protect biological sex in Australia and around the world. Let’s hope so. An important contribution to challenge/end cancel culture.