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FROM LAWN BOWLS TO PRONOUNS – TRANS ADVOCACY NOW AND THEN TEDDY COOK Teddy Cook (he/him) has over 15 years of experience in community health and non-government sectors. Joining ACON in 2012, Teddy is currently acting as Director, Community Health where he oversees client services, LGBTQ community health programs, Pride Training and Trans Health Equity. Teddy specialises in community development, health promotion and program delivery, and is architect of TransHub. He is the Vice President of the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH) and Adjunct Lecturer for the Kirby Institute, UNSW. Teddy is a proud man of trans experience.
If you’ve read anything about trans people, published over the last couple of years in the mainstream media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that being trans is a new fad. The truth, though, is that the trans experience (which describes the phenomenon of knowing your gender – female, male, non-binary – is different to that presumed at birth) has been part of humanity since time immemorial. The media scrutiny seems squarely focused on trans young people right now, re-emerging in recent years with the marriage equality fight over and the visibility of trans people starting to reach that tipping point promised by Time in 2014.1 We find ourselves in a protracted culture war that not only denies the validity and importance of the trans experience, but calls into question the very existence of trans people, and the support offered
HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER | VOLUME 30: ISSUE 1 – AUGUST 2021
by our families, friends, communities and health professionals. We must be doing something right for all this attention to erupt but of course this is also not new; trans people have been treated like a spectacle since the advent of the silver screen, positioned as deceivers and abusers, disrupters of social harmony by daring to exist. But indeed, we’ve always existed: we see gender diversity manifested across every First Nations clan group on earth, including in Australia – home to the longest living continuous culture. Perhaps it could be said that rigid gender norms and the gender binary, catapulted into the cultures of colonised countries, are the new fad. Trans advocacy in Australia is also not new; we have been fighting for basic human rights for a long time here. In 1979, a Sydney woman called Noelena Tame was kicked out of her lawn bowls club for being trans; soon afterwards, she founded a support group for trans women – the Australian
