Did Katherine Deves suggest 50% of trans women are sex offenders?

Liberal candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves may have deleted all her social media accounts before running for parliament, but people have screenshots of some of her most outrageous claims.

Twenty per cent of men are sex offenders, and fifty per cent of transgender women?

Loud and proud trans rights advocate and athlete Kirsti Miller re-posted one of Deves purported previous posts where she appears to suggest that half of trans women are sex offenders, and around 20% of all men are also sex offenders.

The Twitter post is from just a few months ago, and are far off the mark when it comes to the official statistics for the level of sexual assaults in Australia. In February the Australian Bureau of Statistics released information on the level of sexual assaults comparing the rate of assaults between 2010 and 2011, with the figures of 2019-2020.

They found that 97 per cent of assaults recorded were attributed to men, and the rate of sexual assaults had increased over the decade. In 2010-11 the rate was 46 per 100,000, while in 2019-20 it increased to 52 per 100,000. The reported rate however is a long way off what Deves posted which appears to suggest a rate of 20,000 per 100,000.

While Deves deleted all her social media accounts prior to her run for parliament, there are a wide range of interviews and comments she’s previously made available online.

Deves says 1984 Sex Discrimination Act was introduced for the protection of women, not men

Back in December 2020 Deves appeared on the podcast of US based commentator Benjamin A Boyce where she said she was surprised when she discovered that some Australian states had passed legislation back in 2013 that allowed transgender people to self-identify.

The changes in some states were due to successful High Court challenges that ruled that it was discriminatory for governments to insist on people having physical surgery to be recognised as their gender. Subsequently many state governments have moved away from having formal boards that transgender people need to prove their gender too.

In the conversation with Boyce, Deves said Australia’s introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984 was introduced to stop discrimination against women, but now men were also using the legislation to claim they too were suffering discrimination.

“We have this fantastic piece of legislation called the Sex Discrimination Act, which was put into place in 1984 by the federal government, and that was in relation to our treaty obligations to the United Nations conventions for the elimination of the discrimination, of all forms of discrimination, against women.

“So that treaty was put into the legislation verbatim, now obviously for the purpose of ending discrimination against women, but fast forwarding to this decade, so now it’s used by males as well to argue that they’ve been discriminated against on the basis of their sex.

“What happened in 2013 is they inserted gender identity as a protected characteristic.” Deves said, who said the change was made without broad public consultation or scrutiny, and the result was a “dog’s breakfast” created by then Attorney General Mark Dreyfus.

LGBTI groups use a global strategy to avoid media scrutiny

Later in her discussion with Boyce, Deves says LGBTIQA+ advocates use a technique known as “The Dentons Strategy” that was developed by one of the world’s biggest global law firms.

The report from the global law firm suggests lobby techniques for bringing about legislative change, and his been reported in media outlets such as The Spectator magazine as being one of reason’s transgender rights groups have been able to get politicians onboard with protecting transgender people’s rights.

“They said that you need to avoid media scrutiny, tack your interests on to favourable changes in policy, just quietly.” Deves said, saying that self-ID laws in Ireland had been quietly added to the legislation relating to marriage equality.

“It’s this avoidance of media scrutiny, doing things behind close doors and then presenting something as a fait accompli.” Deves said.

Deves goes on to share her belief that there are global players who fund LGBTI groups so they can bring about secret policy changes, suggesting it may be occurring to benefit pharmaceutical companies.

Wear it Purple Day is used by gender extremists for grooming

The Guardian Australia has uncovered a website where Deves describes the national celebration of Wear It Purple Day as a “grooming tactic” used as a “grooming tactic.”

On the site Deves reportedly says that a young boy might ask to “remove his penis” after attending a session on respectful relationships at his school.

In the post Deves criticises New South Wales Police for taking part in the event saying participants are “endorsing extreme body modification and irreversible hormone treatments for vulnerable children”.

She claimed the event is a “grooming tactic” used by “gender extremists” to “enforce upon society the false idea that biological sex is irrelevant”.

“They want to capture children and adolescents as profit centres by promoting hormonal and surgical gender transition as a solution for emotional distress and social awkwardness, and remove basic safeguarding for children and women,” Deves stated in the post.

Deves compared anti-transgender activism to to opposing the holocaust

In another video available online the candidate for Warringah compared her activism against to transgender people to standing up against the Holocaust.

“I’ve always loved 20th-century history and I think many people would say to themselves, ‘Oh, I’d never be the villagers that stayed quiet while the trains went past, or whatever, I would have been part of the French resistance, the underground, you know, I would have been one of those people’,” she said in the video.

“And when all of this was happening and no one was sort of speaking out I thought, ‘God, this is … the moment in my life where I am going to have to stand up and say something against the status quo and against the establishment and say I don’t think this is right.’ And it might come at a cost to me but I have to say it.”

Calls for Deves to be dropped by the Liberal party

Equality Australia has described Deves commentary as “an example of the dehumanising abuse that trans people, and the broader LGBTIQ+ community, encounter every day”.

For Kirsti Miller, she’s had enough of the constant commentary on transgender people’s lives.

“This is my 23rd year as an out trans woman. The last 4 years have been by far the hardest. The PM has used trans women and children as political cannon fodder since day one of his tenure as PM” Miller said, referencing the PM’s social media posts about “gender whisperers.”

Miller said the PM needed to put a stop to the commentary and disendorse Deves as a candidate, suggesting that some of her previous social media posts may have breached New South Wales anti-vilification laws.

So far Prime Minister Scott Morrison is standing by Deves as a candidate, but has walked back his support for the government adopting the Save Women’s Sport bill put forward by Tasmanian Senator Claire Chandler.

At the 2019 election Scott Morrison criticised the Labor party for not moving fast enough to disendorse candidate Luke Creasey over historic social media posts. “The standard you walk by is the standard you accept” Morrison said.

Graeme Watson, OUTinPerth contacted the Liberal party for comment.

25-05-22 Update: Katherine Deves has yet to respond to the many of the specific social media posts from her past but her supporters have argued that the post regarding 50% of people being sex offenders was referring to transgender people held within the British prison population.

 


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If you are struggling with anxiety or depression, support and counselling are available from:

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