Before having an MRI in 2024, I was asked two very odd questions.
“Before you lie down sir, I must ask you if you’re breastfeeding?” I looked the nurse in the eye and answered in my deepest 69-year-old masculine voice, “No.”
She continued. “Now I need to ask you, are you pregnant?”
At this stage we both started laughing. She apologised and said that she had to ask as it was the new policy.
It certainly gave me something to think about during the MRI. Did I look pregnant? Were my man-boobs that noticeable?
It was something far more insidious, I’m afraid. It was my first confrontation with a health service completely smitten with transgender ideology.
If we want anything to be truthful, it’s information about our health. If we’re told a fib about the train timetable, we’re inconvenienced but hopefully not dead. If we’re told a porky about our health, we start to wonder if reality is going to play a part in our care at all.
This has become glaringly obvious with the 2024-2025 Federal Government’s cervical cancer screening campaign. The campaign has drawn criticism, but not as much as it deserved.
The campaign is aimed at “women and everyone with a cervix.”
Now I’m unsure about you, but I thought only women had a cervix. When I taught biology at the University of NSW it was a medical fact that only women had a cervix. Just who are these “people” with a cervix?
The campaign, costing $7.7million dollars, was coordinated by ACON, the largest LGBTQA health organisation in Australia. While ACON stands for AIDS Council of NSW, its reach has outgrown the AIDS cause to embrace the transgender movement.
“Everyone with a cervix” is aimed clearly at the transgender community. The fact remains however, that only women have a cervix.
A man who truly believes he’s a woman is called a transwoman. For ease, let’s call him Sue.
Sue can take hormones, apply makeup, wear a dress and if really keen, have sex change surgery. This will involve removal of his penis, and a false vagina created out of bowel tissue. No sex-change surgeon has ever built a false cervix or uterus. There’s never been a cervix or uterus transplant either.
Here lies the first piece of confusing language in the campaign. A man like Sue who uses every tool in the trans-toolbox to become a woman, still does not have a cervix. He is still a biological male.
But that might just be ACON being “inclusive” to not hurt Sue’s feelings—I just hope he doesn’t turn up for a cervical screening test.
But that’s the minor part of the confusion. The “people with a cervix” campaign also targets women like Robert, a woman who believes she is male (a trans-male).
Robert can take hormones to make her beard grow. She can wear men’s clothes and have her breasts surgically removed. She can have throat surgery to lower her voice. But unless she’s had a full hysterectomy, which is rare, she still has a cervix. The campaign is aimed directly at her.
But here’s the contradiction. When Robert goes for cervical screening, she is publicly declaring that she is a woman because only women have a cervix. She knows full well she has a cervix. Robert is a biological woman.
In the rare case of Barry, who has had a hysterectomy, she knows she doesn’t have a cervix. Barry wouldn’t go for screening. However, she is still a biological woman.
The campaign’s language is purely to satisfy the “feelings” of the micro-minority transgender and non-binary community. What has always been a women’s health issue using simple language has been corrupted to satisfy a tiny group—less than 0.5 per cent of the population. For $7.7 million of public money, you’d think we deserve facts.
“Non-gendered” language such as this has even drawn the attention of Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls.
“I am very concerned by the increasing onslaught on women-specific language which seeks to erase the reality of womanhood itself,” Alsalem said during a speech in December 2024.
With the “women and everyone with a cervix” campaign we see how easily truth can be blurred under pressure from gender activists. It’s been blurred in school sex education sessions across Australia much to the confusion of our children.
It’s been blurred in women’s sports where men who identify as women can now play in female community sports. Both unfair and unsafe.
And now it’s been blurred in the one area we need 100 per cent biological fact: Health.
There are only two sexes—male and female. No one has ever changed sex and no one ever will. Truth is not flexible according to feelings.
Being Catholic is not separate from science because both rely on one thing—living with truth.
Phil Dye is the Founder of The Declaration of Biological Truth Australia.