#minus18

This survey is incredibly important to have up to date data on the experiences of LGBTQIA+ youth in Australia. So if you're aged 13-25, please give it a look. It should only take about 10 minutes to complete and is pretty straightforward.

Please share it around to any Australians aged 13-25! The more people answer, the more robust the data is!

And, if you have any feedback, they will be especially grateful to hear it (there's an email to send it to) as this is their first year running it!

Content Notice: This article contains photos of bruising and physical injury. Reader discretion is appreciated.

A woman in Melbourne, Australia was hospitalized and left with horrific injuries following a brutal attack from a trans activist over what she speculates was retaliation for her gender critical views.

On September 24, 2022, Ruby* and her partner were attending the Punks Pub Crawl, an annual barhopping event for those in the punk rock scene which has been held in Melbourne since 1982. Ruby, a bass guitarist in a local band, had been attending the crawl since she was a teenager. Though she was excited to return to her tradition following the loosening of COVID-19 restrictions, Ruby’s evening turned into a nightmare.

“I had only just arrived with my partner sometime around 3 p.m. There were about 70 people or so attending the crawl. The whole group of us stopped at Carlton Gardens for a group photo,” Ruby recounts, explaining that immediately after the photo was taken she would have an incident that has since left her with a debilitating injury.

“I was walking away, talking to a friend when I noticed one male walking beside the group but in the opposite direction to the rest of us,” Ruby says. “As he passed me he shoulder-barged me hard, and I stopped to address him.”

Ruby describes her attacker as “male, but not obviously ‘trans.’” As she was with a group of individuals belonging to the punk rock community, she didn’t immediately believe he was attempting to present as the opposite sex, and simply thought he was donning classic punk attire. 

“He just looked like a metal head with lipstick on, and I had never seen him before in my life,” she says. According to a police report Ruby provided Reduxx, the individual is described as approximately 5’7, with long dark hair. He had been wearing a black shirt and black pants.

Startled by the body check, Ruby confronted the male.

“I said something very close to, ‘Is there a problem here? Do you and I need to have a conversation?’ He started denying and gaslighting. He claimed it was an accident and one of his friends backed him up. It was clearly no accident so I replied, ‘No, he just shoulder-barged me as hard as he could.’”

Ruby says the onlookers immediately seemed to take issue with the pronoun she had used for the man.

“I heard a few murmurs of ‘He?’ Like people were offended at my choice of pronoun,” she says. “I stood facing him for another [few seconds] waiting to see if he was going to kick off, but he seemed to have nothing to say so I turned and walked away.”

But just as she did, Ruby says she was suddenly attacked from behind, with the man pushing her onto the concrete with tremendous force.

“I was wearing a heavy studded leather jacket so I went down hard and fast. I put my left arm out to break the fall with anything other than my head and the impact reverberated all up my arm, shattering my shoulder and breaking my arm at the joint.”

Ruby says other pub crawl goers told the man to back off, and she says that while she was in extreme pain, she didn’t immediately recognize the extent of the damage. A friend of hers who knew first-aid put her in a makeshift sling, and it quickly became obvious to Ruby that she needed to seek medical treatment. 

She first attempted to go to a public hospital, but was left in the emergency waiting room for agonizing hours without proper attention, so she left and later sought help at Austin Hospital, which is reputed for its trauma care. Ruby was sent for a CAT scan and X-Ray where she was diagnosed with a fractured shoulder.

Ruby provided Reduxx medical records from Austin Health showing she was admitted to the emergency short stay unit, and that she was initially slated for a surgical intervention by an orthopedic registrar. 

A second orthopedic surgeon Ruby saw while in hospital decided not to operate, feeling her outcomes would be better if she were simply closely monitored and sent for physiotherapy after the initial injury had healed. The surgeon left the possibility of operation open if anything were to come up with the injury in the future.

In the chaos of her attempts to get medical treatment, Ruby had managed to track down the individual who had assaulted her through a band contact. She recognized her assailant had been friends with an individual who her band had performed with in the past, and skimmed his socials to find more information. She managed to identify the attacker, and, armed with the information, went to Melbourne Police and filed a report after being discharged from hospital.

Ruby supplied Reduxx with the statement she signed and witnessed with a Constable about her ordeal. In the statement, she names Sarah Cadzow, a male who identifies as a “woman,” as being her assailant. 

She speculates that their mutual band contact had alerted Cadzow to her views on gender ideology at the Punks Pub Crawl, and that he had body-checked her in retaliation. 

“It became clear that someone had been showing the attacker my Facebook posts. The attacker had never been on my Facebook friends list, as far as I know, but his friend was. My Facebook has been all about women’s rights and spaces for about 4 years now, since I found out about men in women’s prisons,” Ruby says. “We messaged the friend shortly afterwards and he helpfully agreed in writing as to what happened, but attempted to justify it because apparently [Cadzow] was ‘defending his community’ by attacking a middle aged woman from behind.”

In his youth, Cadzow had been associated with LGBTQ youth charity Minus18.

Cadzow was listed as a development team member of the Trans 101 project, a “gender diversity crash course” aimed at youth supported by Minus18, YGender, and the Sydney Myer Fund. He also penned a biography for the Rainbow Story Project, praising Minus18 and boasting about the fact he transitioned when he was approximately 14 years old.

Despite having provided Melbourne Police with two witness statements as well as the identity of her attacker, Ruby explains that it took months for Cadzow to finally be charged in a process that initially left her feeling abandoned.

“I can’t speak for police resources or procedures, but it was very concerning to me that it took so long to charge him. They seemed to be handling the assailant very delicately,” she says. “I wanted there to be some immediate disincentive for him to do this again – to me or anyone else – and the police didn’t seem to take that concern seriously at all.”

Ruby says she observed a definite “tone shift” when police learned her assailant was transgender.

“The delay in charging and the manner in which they went about it certainly felt to me like a reluctance to act. This was very serious violence and all I could think about during that waiting time was ‘Where are the consequences? What’s stopping him doing it again? What happens if he sees a woman in an Adult Human Female t-shirt?'”

On January 25, almost exactly four months after the incident, Cadzow was finally handed charges related to Ruby’s assault. He is currently scheduled for a hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on April 14.

While Ruby expresses some relief that Cadzow has now been charged and the legal component of her ordeal is moving after months of stagnation, she has been left with the lingering impact of her attack.

“I play bass guitar, and at first we weren’t sure if I was going to be able to play gigs anymore. Fortunately, it’s looking like I will be able to, just not too often and it hurts like a bastard to tune up,” she says, explaining that her impacted arm can no longer be lifted above the shoulder

“I will never swim again, [or] shoot hoops with my son, get things from high shelves, or hang washing. The doctor said: ‘your ability to lift that arm above your head ended when you hit the ground.'”

In relation to Cadzow’s upcoming hearing, Ruby says she hopes the consequences for Cadzow are serious enough to act as a deterrent. 

“I hope others who may have similar ideas realize that you simply can’t just go around attacking women with impunity.” 

But even then, Ruby explains that she has concerns about how the case will be handled by Australia’s criminal justice system, which has become notorious for its position on gender self-identification. 

“This was a clear-cut act of male violence but I have my doubts as to whether statistics or records will reflect that in the end,” she says.

“It’s getting very scary to be a woman speaking up about women’s rights these days. This kind of violence is going way, way too far and it has to stop before something even worse happens.”

* – Subject has been assigned a name to protect her privacy.

Hi, Anon!  Congrats on coming out to your mom and your sister as non-binary!

As for the binding, that’s complicated.  Binding, like pretty much anything, can be dangerous if it’s not done correctly, but can be safe when it’s done correctly.  

A good example of this is driving.  Driving can be incredibly dangerous if it’s not done correctly.  People need to drive safe vehicles, drive within the speed limit, drive in the correct lanes, drive with the proper training, drive sober, drive with any special equipment (like eyeglasses, in my case), drive only for certain periods of time (not for 18 hours solid), etc. in order for driving to be safe.  

In order for binding to be safe, you need to have a binder that fits properly (isn’t too tight, for example), and is made of safe materials (don’t use ace bandages, for example).  You need to make sure you’re not wearing it for too long, and take breaks, and be aware of your body and your breathing and health.

There are some people who bind who are so affected by dysphoria that they don’t bind safely, and it can cause health problems.  Your mom might be worried that you will be one of these people, or that once you get a binder, you’ll be so happy with how you feel in it that you’ll disregard binder safety and use your binder in an unsafe way.  She might be scared that it could turn into a power struggle, where she’ll have to beg/order you to take it off after several hours, or something like that.

I know this is hard, but it might be worth trying to talk to her about what, specifically, she’s scared of.  If she tells you that she’s scared you’ll bind 24/7, then you can promise her you won’t (and keep that promise).  If she’s scared you’ll pick a too-small size and damage your body, you can talk to her about proper sizing and maybe even get her help with measurements/ordering, if you’re comfortable with that.

Binding is a tool, like a car.  And like a car, binding needs education to use it correctly.  When you bind correctly, it’s safe.  When you don’t, it’s not.  So it’s not so much about convincing your mom that binding is inherently safe (because, like anything, it can be misused).  It’s more about promising your mom (and yourself) that you will bind in a responsible, safe way, and to help educate yourself and her about what that might look like for you.

I’m not sure what country you’re in, but no matter where you are, Minus18 is a great website based out of Australia that has incredible resources for LGBTQIA+ minors.  Your mom might be more willing to trust a source that is from an established organization.  Here is their guide on binding: https://www.minus18.org.au/index.php/resources/sexuality-info/item/441-how-to-bind-your-chest

YOU ARE LOVED! Put this poster up to remind the LGBTQIA+ Community that they are loved and accepted.

Today is the first day of National NAIDOC week, celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and achievements. The theme of this year’s NAIDOC is “Our Languages Matter” and focuses on the importance, resilience and richness of Indigenous Australian languages.

We acknowledge and pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, in particular those who identify as LGBTI+ and Sistergirls and Brotherboys.

We are so excited to announce that we are doing 22 Days of Troye this year!

22DoT is an edit challenge to celebrate Troye Sivan's birthday and to raise money for Minus18. From May 15th we ask all of you join us in filling 22 prompts by posting any kind of fanwork each day until Troye’s birthday on June 5th.

If you have any questions about the project or prompts feel free to message us here or on twitter.

Under the cut you'll find more information on the challenge.

new pride patches only AUD$4 each !!

100% of the profits will be going to minus18 !!