Complaint: ABC puts anti-trans hysteria before the story
ABC joining the far right in bashing trans women, without even confirming the story's veracity first.
UPDATED! 22:55 WA Standard Time, 26/11/2025
The ABC surprised the Australian transsexual community a few hours ago putting a practically word-for-word anti-trans hysteria piece [archive link] up under its ABC Sport page, talking about a presumed though ultimately unconfirmed trans woman competing in a "strongman" women's competition in Texas. I know. The setup this late in 2025 feels too on the nose. This is my complaint on the matter, and I encourage anyone else to complain here.
The complaint below was informed by lived experience, a quick goto reference, and the Gay Express piece pointed out by Jessie, thank you, ma'am!
This is a disgusting article.
Calling transsexual people “biologically male” even couched in scare quotes just reinforces bigotries against us. There has been no effort to balance the article based on knowledge of what hormone replacement therapy does to bodies, especially when in place of an undisturbed puberty. This study for example suggests that while there are performance differences, you cannot perfectly map a transsexual woman to a cis man's performance:
The undisclosed author has then also followed up with overt transphobia, in printed uninformed opinions that we should always be tied to the sex we were classified in at birth, because somehow that, and not the experiences, and most importantly, the treatments we undergo somehow does not matter, that that singular aspect and observation of biology, before puberty, is our destiny.
You are not making my life easier printing this kneejerk, reactionary nonsense. You are promoting attitudes and beliefs that in fact make it hard to socially interact as a transsexual person. I don't participate in sports, mixed sex or otherwise, and who could in this environment that you as a broadcaster are openly creating and maintaining?
There may very well be a story in a trans woman lying about her circumstances to participate in a niche, sex segregated competition, however seeing the same wording as decidedly right wing publications, while the facts are that no one has outright confirmed her transness at all. Gay Express, a New Zealand queer publication, suggests this literally could just be a transphobic beat up that you're uncritically parroting against a cis woman, much like the previous ones against intersex cis women athletes, or Imane Khelif.
YOUR EX
Tagging the story “gender identity” feels like a smack in the face, as if we don't change our bodies. May as well just print “man pretending to be woman steals first,” which is what the Noticer basically printed, Noticer being a term for Neo-Nazi who “notices” antisemitic Jewish caricature features of their political enemies.
Attached: ABC News following the footsteps of the far right in denigrating transsexual women. [two images depicting search results showing ABC's headline and coverage, far right coverage, including the New York Post, Daily Mail, Sky News and a nazi site]
Needless to say, the national broadcaster has absolutely failed to report on this matter responsibly, given that compared to queer news sources, they fail to cover anything at all in comparison. We deserve better.
EDIT: Didn't take long for the article to lose something like a third of its contents, almost entirely transphobic ranting by non-experts, stop degendering the target of the transphobic abuse, and acknowledge these claims are completely unproven at this stage.
There is has been no acknowledgement beyond the edit to say the article was "updated," nor have the ABC bothered to amend the offensive language: "biological male". The updated piece has been archived here.
