The AUWU has a Trans Problem

Trans people are vastly over represented in welfare statistics, even where we get work, it often isn't enough and we're forced to supplement our income with some kind of payment, one cruelly called JobSeeker, because if we're not advancing, it must be a personal failing. Up until recently, the premiere representative of the unemployed, the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, or AUWU for short, had several prominent trans members. In one act, that number was decimated, and at least one member AUWU member resigned in disgust.

It's true, I resigned. After a vicious campaign by an unaffiliated trans woman weaponising transphobic positions and conveniently timing it so no response could be made without violating a court order, if I had been paying attention at all at the time in any case. The AUWU had decided, arbitrarily, to remove my volunteer status, and deny me access to the email with which I was both in contact with the court and my legal advisor. It was a knife in the back, a body under the bus. The leadership, in full knowledge of my limitations, decided to punish me instead of stand by me - not necessarily my positions - but me. Whether I had opinions on the lives of ruling class brats would be just as relevant if I, for example, was a vanguardist Trotskyite or Marxist-Leninist with aims to violently overthrow the state. Apparently you only get opinions on such matters if you're a cishet white boy.

Anyway, I have opinions.

First of all, as the header may suggest, there's a Queer Caucus. Despite having a lovely Jez Heywood original logo and a discord channel, that's about as official as it got. There was no clear list of membership, there were no meetings and no rules. Any official messaging bearing that logo up until recently was in all likelihood written largely by myself, with contributions from assorted other queer people online at the time. There was to be a mailing list or email or somesuch, but I was never given access, much like trying to set up a local branch before neoliberal court shenanigans informed me to step aside from any duties - I did so voluntarily, I was not asked to.

Now, I mentioned at the top of the article that one trans member resigned from the AUWU, a good friend who I hadn't informed of my situation, but showed solidarity through action in light of the AUWU throwing me to the dogs. First, we should inspect the pseudo-public response that fielded such a reaction.

Knowing what I know now, this response doesn't even mention the disciplinary meeting the AUWU was required to hold under their constitution:

21 Notice to member
(1) Before disciplinary action is taken against a member, the
Secretary must give written notice to the member —
(a) stating that the Association proposes to take
disciplinary action against the member; and
(b) stating the grounds for the proposed disciplinary
action; and
(c) specifying the date, place and time of the meeting
at which the disciplinary subcommittee intends to
consider the disciplinary action (the disciplinary
meeting); and
(d) advising the member that they may do one or both
of the following —
(i) attend the disciplinary meeting and address the
disciplinary subcommittee at that meeting;
(ii) give a written statement to the disciplinary
subcommittee at any time before the disciplinary
meeting; and
(e) setting out the member’s appeal rights under rule
23.
(2) The notice must be given no earlier than 28 days, and no
later than 14 days, before the disciplinary meeting is held

note: Bolding theirs, quotes are automatically italicised on Ghost.

Now I was briefly informed there was to be a meeting, I did not know it was disciplinary in nature, but I was only formally notified after the fact. This is a clear breach of the organisation's constitution. Remember, I was never provided a digital copy of the volunteer agreement, nor is one available on the website, and I was made a volunteer after having already become the target of Labor's poverty proponents for my words.

It's also interesting they specifically acknowledge the particular type of troll part, they had to know the attacks on me were not in good faith, I had been extremely clear about context in my posts about Sarah Alice, the CoM otherwise being well aware of both the barbarity of both the welfare system, including how it specifically harms queer people, and how I have been personally politically targeted by thinktankers. It's actually an interesting response too, because the complaints would not have cancelled my membership, so I would still have to share a space with people who had made them - contributing to an unsafe environment for me. I know for a fact, one complainant, Marina Chapman, who clearly had come straight from Sarah's attacks to my profile to harangue me was one of them.

Ironically, she apparently changed her opinion of me as time went on, because as Sarah's posts escalated, she openly lied and then, believe it or not, blocked the trans women discussing it with her.

In any case, Mae, who was also involved in Wester's interrogation of the facts, submitted this response to the CoM message delivered by Catherine. And it's amazing, hits every note I wish the AUWU had thought about, which they might have if they had any trans women in a leadership position at all.

So...

Had I not resigned, I would be forced to share a space with at least one cis person who had made a bad faith complaint, on the back of only buying a bad actor's story, during a particularly trying time for myself where I could at a certain point not publicly respond to allegations. I could appeal however they hadn't invited me to discuss the situation at all in the first place, they had no time for investigating context, and what would be the point, they had made their decision without me and without me it would be.

Furthermore, Marina's attacks would not stop there. Another AUWU member to whom I had confided my intention to seek legal protection from Sarah and her cronies attacks, Fiona Moore aka Phonakins, evidently leaked to Sarah and Marina that I had done so, leading to Sarah to increase her harassment and threats, and Marina to post this gem.

Here, Marina Chapman, member of the Australian Unemployed Workers Union temporarily forgets that I am a disabled, transsexual, woman on JobSeeker, as I have been unable to obtain a diagnosis for my struggles with mental health, and therefore, cannot access the higher Disability Pension payment, which would also have freed me from mutual obligations and the deleterious effects they have on my mental health to this day. Ma'am, you, as a cis woman, joining in on the harassment of someone you know is going to court to protect herself from this very behaviour. You should know better than to post information you shouldn't have to denigrate a victim of a grueling campaign of harassment you joined in on.

The AUWU seemed to endorse the leak and the ensuing harassment, to my knowledge, no action was ever taken against Fiona or Marina, and the AUWU declined to respond, as usual, especially given the posts are still up.

For someone repeatedly being falsely accused of being AUWU leadership by Per Capita troll and AUWU doxxing co-conspirator Nareen Young, the AUWU decided throwing me under the bus was easier than accepting my political beliefs, without necessarily endorsing them, and simply not recognising the bad faith campaign for what it was. There was literally no need to acknowledge it, I was not active in my volunteer duties, I had not moderated the discord in months, having stepped back. Sarah has a history of targeting trans people in precarious situations, I acknowledged my own precarity in trying to get her to see what she was doing to other vulnerable people, and that was interpreted as weaponising suicide. There's no way to win.

So, to sum up, context didn't matter, I was just a problem to be dealt with, despite my multiply-marginalised status and known personal history, and hell, the history of cis AUWU leadership who has no doubt expressed as much if not more than myself. And honestly, that sums up how trans women are often treated, just scapegoated and pushed to the margins of the greater problems of male violence and phantasms of predation.

There is no suggestion that I had failing in any of my volunteer duties, it's just a perception problem, which continued for days after my resignation because I hadn't made it public and neither had the AUWU - effectively voiding the reasoning for punishing me to begin with. And now they have another aggrieved ex-member who they stopped replying to pretty much immediately.

Update: Since this article was originally written, the AUWU has gone through most of its committee of management, and I have heard of censorship on the discord, hospitalisations, and misuse of union funds. Add to this, with Avery Howard as the president of the organisation, also a NSW Greens candidate at the most recent election, the executive seemed to be paralyzed, their bluesky account is basically dead, in any case. I don't think I can even recommend them for individual advocacy at this time. Given they don't mind that they leak like a sieve, good riddance.