Derived from a meeting of the Isocracy Network with Carla Bruce-Lee and Meredith Lee as speakers, held on October 11, 2026.
Sex is generally considered a biologically bimodal distribution, whereas gender refers to the social roles and representations assigned to the sexes, which vary across societies and over time. People who do not follow gendered stereotypes have suffered discrimination, outright hatred, and draconian legislation. As little as three weeks ago, South Australian MP Cory Bernardi said, "We will end the transgender movement". Whether it is from those who opposed votes for women or women in the workforce, to contemporary attempts to block gender-affirming health care, the attempts to force and restrict people to pre-defined roles limit freedom and cause real harm.
Carla's life has been upended by tragedy, having lost their eldest child, Rue Bruce Lee, to suicide on 3/3/2023. Rue was 18, a young, AuDHD trans woman, with a history of severely poor mental health, despite Carla knocking on every door possible to seek more appropriate support – it sadly never arrived. It's a harrowing journey, and Carla's intense grief is amplified due to the fact that initial Coroner’s findings into Rue's death have not yet been completed or published. Carla channels their unresolved grief into action and is an impassioned mental health advocate, especially for queer, trans, and gender-diverse youth. They recently met with the Minister for Equality, MP Steve Dimopoulos & Commissioner for LGBTIQA+ Communities, Mr Joe Ball, to make a representation on her behalf to the Coroner's office as well as a number of other government agencies and departments to firstly understand what contributed to Rue's death and secondly to make changes with the aim of keeping more trans folk alive. Her driving force in life now is to speak up, tell her and Rue's story, to raise awareness and make our world a better, safer place for the whole alphabet soup of humanity.
Meredith Lee and Derek Moo are two sides of the same person, living a life openly in two genders. This occasionally complicates things and raises eyebrows and questions about unspoken rules and what it means to be transgender, and indeed what the idea of gender itself means at all. Smart, sassy, loud, authentic, caring, creative, resourceful, open-minded - these words have all been used to describe them. The word 'stylish' has also been frequently applied to Meredith but almost never to Derek, which is both an insight into their respective interests and also a commentary on our social expectations of gender. Meredith and Derek prefer the term "dual-gender" rather than "bi-gender", simply because of how bi-gender looks when written without a hyphen. They have written a book about their journey, a memoir titled Double Exposure: A Life Visible in Two Genders".
The acronym, LGBTIQA+ or LGBTQIA2S+ covers sexuality and gender. We need to remember there are letters referring to sexuality: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Asexual; AND gender: Transgender (1-2% of total population), Intersex (1-2% of total population); and 2S = 2 Spirit (a North American Indigenous term). The acronym is in a constant state of development and updating, for instance, 2S is an attempt to include culturally appropriate terms inclusively in the picture, no one version is entirely inclusive; It’s not all about sexuality. Much like the lack of a "universal theory of everything" in physics, there is no "universal theory of everything" when it comes to gender and sexuality. Much remains unexplained, even though it is definitely experienced.
In infographics like The Genderbread Person, these are based on multiple spectrums, not just a binary switch. The expression of identity is fundamentally filtered through a subjective social lens. We structure & perform social rituals (eg weddings) and roles (woman, man, wife, husband) that are inherited from generations before us. We know this by comparing our culture with other cultures. This is my own understanding that I've come to for myself. I am not an expert of any kind. We have the potential to have an innate sense of our own identity in our own individual minds; however, how we express this outside of our mind, ie in the material world (our bodies, hair, clothing, shoes, voices, ways of moving, etc.).
Identity is innate (not completely socially determined) but not fixed, and is informed by our social environment, and (usually) manifests through socially understood conventions. Politically, the treatment of identities (regardless of their origins) comes down to whether or not certain social manifestations are acceptable or not. The social conventions around these things are arbitrary, and the definition of acceptable changes over time. Nobody is saying that gender differences are undesirable. We are saying that these differences should not be used to disadvantage people, and the differences can be celebrated. The forces that define gender, both our social perception and our individual experience, come from capitalism and patriarchy, which benefit from gender being more rigidly defined, and therefore socially controlled through "bio-essentialism", patrolled by unexamined cisgender biases that are taken to be immutable. Social conventions like the insistence on cisgender-only spaces, the reinforcement of pink and blue, trucks vs dolls (gender-acceptable play), gender reveal parties, etc., lead to systems which cause harm & exclusion, whilst generating profits for the capitalist class, of course.
For an individual, the forces that define gender might be much more difficult to identify and articulate clearly. How does a man "know" that he is a man? Is it simply because he feels things that he has been told are things a man feels? What if he has no reference to evaluate his feelings? A society that allows people to express their gender based on internal feelings might find that the categories of "male" and "female" are not the only groupings that emerge, and that any such groupings are extremely blurry and heavily overlap at the edges.
Young people are socialised into our existing presumptions of binary, cisgender roles. The more broadly and openly we as mentors, role models or parents can present gender options, the safer it will be for young people to explore gender individually. For example, when my teenager first came to me and said that they were questioning their gender, I began to reflect on all of the ways I may have inadvertently presumed or enforced binary gender unnecessarily. I identified and reduced my use of gendered words for my kids: offspring, dependents, young-uns, dependants, demon spawn. When you get into it, it’s actually quite freeing and fun! We do not need to "police" gender; transgender is a challenge to a medieval mindset, not a modern one. If sexual differences weren't enforced through gender performance, what we call gender expression would be an individual style.
There a link between neurodiversity and gender diversity and parallels in the political and media treatment of both. There appears to be some crossover between the transgender experience, neurodiversity diagnosis, and mental health challenges. Autism and gender dysphoria have both been entries in the DSM, and the stigma associated with a “medical diagnosis” has impacted people negatively. Viewing the world through a neurodivergent lens, whether or not it has a common origin, provides insight for critiquing arbitrary rules and norms. Both are subject to being targeted by reactionary politics as the minority scapegoat. The most common way to stoke fear and gain political control is to target a minority group which ostensibly has no visible representation and therefore no voice to push back with. The smaller the minority, the easier it is to stereotype and cast them as a threat to society. But diverse gender presentations will not cause us to lose anything. Unfortunately, some people of unchecked privilege always seem to feel that their rights are being taken away when the rights of others are finally acknowledged. They only lose their privilege of disrespecting trans or autistic folks. Ensuring the human rights of all people does not diminish the human rights of some.
Transphobia can be overt; it can be very subtle, but it is always harmful. It can be written into the law and loudly proclaimed in front of the news media. It can also go completely unnoticed by the people involved, whether or not they are giving or receiving. Transphobia can look like parents thinking they are protecting their kids from dangerous trends at school. Rue died in part because of their own internalised transphobia and ableism. Their story is a reminder that we need to do more as a society to understand & combat transphobia. Meredith provides a story that is an inspiration, that avoids the pitfalls of internalising transphobia and shows that it is possible to break out of enforced cisgendered, heteronormative roles, and keep our nuclear families even while transforming ourselves, our relationships, and our families to be more fluid, responsive, compassionate, and accepting.
The federal government should support the rights of transgender people (including genderfluid, nonbinary and genderqueer people) by amending laws and policies to support healthy lives by, for example, ensuring that appropriate healthcare is available nationwide and that trans people are protected from discrimination and harassment. There have been 26 divisions in the Federal Parliament relevant to transgender issues, of which only 3 were supportive of transgender people; the other 23 tried to restrict equal rights for trans people. Labor and the Greens generally in favour of equal rights, independents are mixed, Liberal, National, and One Nation generally against. The record is available on "They Vote for You". The Greens have traditionally been supportive, but there have been individual Greens members who have been hostile.
We can stand strong against divisive political stances which aim to position trans people as the "other", using lies and propaganda to undermine human rights and safety by stoking fear and anger in our communities. We stand up, speak out and tell our stories. We can be visible, and we can be good allies, when we call out bad behaviour and hypocrisy. We can focus on doing whatever we can to ensure better supports and outcomes for gender diverse people. For example, undertaking training to become a member of Switchboard's Lived Experience (of Suicide Bereavement (or attempts)) Network, to give feedback to government or other policy makers responsible for making changes to reduce risks of harm for queer youth. One can volunteer with The Compassionate Friends Victoria, the peer-run organisation for parents who have lost their children, and seek any and all opportunities to talk about these difficult issues. We know that talking about suicide reduces its occurrence.