BREAST BINDING IS NOT SAFE - it is a form of self harm. Controversially, 'Working it Out' doesn't see it this way: instead it instructs teachers to support the practice in the cause of diversity and inclusion.
Artists all know that - Women's Bodies are not Male Bodies
When recently popping into a politician’s office, a staffer there mentioned to me, that the words 'chest-binding' brought to his mind Chinese foot-binding - an interesting comparison.
The 'charity' Working it Out (WIO) has been in Tasmanian schools for years, educating students on how sex and gender is on a spectrum, and how to label and 'accept' their true selves as a means to promote harmony in school communities.
Pushing the boundaries further, and emboldened by their protected status for years, WIO is now employed by the Department of Education and Young People, (DECYP) to teach teachers to accept girls flattening their breasts with binders, in order for them to participate in sport, as their true selves: as boys.
Why and how can this be happening?
‘Working it Out’ employs true believers. The staff member I spoke to inside the WIO office in North Hobart, freely spoke to me about how her child's [daughter’s] bilateral mastectomy was ‘the only way to relieve the dysphoria’. When I asked whether her daughter had had a phalloplasty the WIO staff member stated to me ‘we just don’t talk about what’s down there’ as she pointed to her crotch.
Recently turbo charged with $900,000 of Tasmanian tax funded dollars, WIO has commenced 'educating' teachers about students' rights and how to create inclusiveness in Health and P.E classes: including supporting 'gender dysphoric' girls to 'bind safely'. Teachers cannot debate what arguable is WIO’s Junk Science.
Apparently ‘Safe binding' (not sports bras) apparently liberates access to sport
Far from being anything oppressive like Chinese foot binding, teachers are trained by WIO to see ‘chest binding’ as a normal activity gender dysphoric girls may need to be supported to do.
It’s not the binding that needs questioning WIO insist, but any breathing difficulties arising when girls play sport, when wearing their possibly ill-fitting binders. Tasmanian teachers are encouraged to step in here and provide Breast binding cards to the student to help them ‘chest bind safely’.
WIO seeks to normalise a girl's discomfort with their developing bodies (gender dysphoria) by educating teachers to affirm and support 'chest binding' to promote participation in sport and PE. This is despite no retail outlet (KMART or Rebel Sport etc.) selling binders due to health risks.
It takes only a few internet searches to see the uncomfortable reality, that binding a girl's breasts leads to tissue damage and further medicalisation, cementing a girl's rejection of her body.
The Tasmanian government supports this by funding WIO to deliver such training to teachers: sessions in which teachers cannot question these directives without being disciplined: something this writer, as a teacher personally experienced.
In ancient China, girls were socialised to despise their normal sized feet and tailored them to be small, by crushing them to suit Chinese men's erotic foot fetishes. WIO supports a similar fetish, propagated by trans ideology, targeting Tasmanian girls, that derives from a rejection and mutilation of the female body, for the service of a ‘trans masculine gender identity’ and spin offs like cosplay and dysphoric fetishes.
In their training sessions with teachers, WIO never acknowledge girls breasts form part of her reproductive system, which will enable her to breastfeed her babies and are part of her sexuality. These aspects, and binding’s effect on them are never discussed by WIO. Furthermore, the reality that binding is a major step on a dysphoric girl’s path to wanting a bilateral mastectomy is a normalised outcome for WIO, which WIO will not tolerate being questioned about.
WIO is a cheerleader and driver of girls bodies being medicalised.
Adding to an already turbulent adolescent phase for girls, WIO is given front and centre access to Tasmanian schools, disseminating damaging information to students and teachers, in the guise of 'support' and 'diversity' at a time, when girls in particular are most vulnerable: puberty.
WIO is not a medical organisation - yet it acts with the confidence of one. It preaches kindness, but takes a hardline against the safety of women and girls, using Tasmania's Education Department's (DECYP) own policy documents to whip teachers and students into line.
WIO should be removed from delivering any information to staff and students and be defunded because of its harmful content.
It creates a smoke screen for the damage it is doing, normalising girls mutilating their bodies, under the guise of 'diversity and inclusion' using obfuscating language such as the euphemisms 'chest-binding', 'normalisation', 'participation' and 'acceptance'.
Referring constantly to the department's own policies and procedures - as seen in the slide here, WIO interprets the Tasmanian Anti-discrimination Act (1998) to justify its bizarre directives to schools and teachers. 
Slide from WIO teacher training session 2024
WIO - proposes designer bodies and the nullification of all that it is to be female 
It’s not appropriate that the Tasmanian Government fund a 'charity' organisation like WIO to the tune of $900,000, when it behaves as a political lobby group, undermining student safeguarding and promoting its own political agendas and fetishes, at the expense of Tasmanian students physical and mental health.
WIO - a sacred cow; a protected class
Behaving as a protected class, WIO cannot be questioned about its course content, with all political parties and independents refusing to put forward parliamentary 'constituents questions' about its behaviour in schools. Teachers are punished for asking questions within their school community.
Tasmania grants WIO $900,000
Tasmania grants WIO $900,000
In its running of professional learning sessions to Tasmanian teachers in 2024, under the banner of Inclusion in Sport - Supporting Gender Diversity in Schools in HPE, resources such as these Breast binding cards are offered to teachers as a resource, to hand to students and other groups. The information on them has no evidence or medical oversight. This slide from WIO teacher training session shows just how normalised they see breast binding:
Hijacking of Female Language
Unwilling to even use the word 'breast' in their teaching materials, WIO normalises the nullification of female sex characteristics, by supplanting female language for anatomy. According to WIO, breasts are in fact 'chests'. There can be no debate about how this linguistic slight-of-hand may indeed add to a girl's dysphoria. Teachers who use this new lexicon are seen as 'supporting practices' to aid 'inclusion'. Refusal to use such terms means you must be unsupportive and discriminatory.
Working it Out Discourages Safeguarding
WIO does not encourage teachers to report and note any observations of a female student binding her breasts - especially if distressed during P.E, which should warrant safeguarding: i.e, checking with family/caregivers about what their student is doing, or to even see if school records have a guiding health plan from a doctor. No, instead teachers are encouraged to distribute non-evidenced based information to female students, to assist them to 'bind safely' .
This is in fact then, a blatant undermining of safeguarding which DECYP punishes teachers for recognising.
Mischievously, WIO's own slide confuses the issue and protects itself by bizarrely adding, that binding contributes to dysphoria. Yet they support binding!
Slide from WIO teacher training session 2024
A picture tells a thousand words - the truth about Binding
https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/final-report-faqs/
You cannot buy a binder from KMART, Rebel Sports, Big W or any retail outlet, yet the Tasmanian Government (DECYP) facilitates access to binders through Working it Out
Binders can only be bought online. WIO helps girls to access binders, despite their harm to breast tissue.
Aiding girls to socially transition in this way, means teachers are not safeguarding students, but are being forced to participate in a psychosocial intervention leading to physical harm and medicalisation.
Slide from WIO teacher training session 2024
OEDIPUS REX SYNDROME - PENIS ENVY
Interestingly, WIO have no equivalent slide in their teacher presentation, about male students, who have gender dysphoria, being supported to tuck their penis safely away, whilst playing sport.
Biological reality is now a negotiable for DECYP and WIO, when teaching about the female reproductive system
It’s not appropriate the Tasmania Government fund Working it Out, to train teachers to disconnect the word ‘uterus’ and other parts of the female human reproductive system, from the word ‘woman’, when teaching students about the human reproductive system.
Students and WIO should not be dictating the curriculum to teachers, by trumping 'student voice' as more important than evidenced based pedagogy and adolescent development theories.
Slide from WIO teacher training session 2024
WORKING IT OUT undermines basic safeguarding principles and girls’ rights to dignity, safety and privacy
It’s not appropriate teachers are being trained to bully girls into sharing change room facilities with boys, who identify as girls. As this WIO slide shows, when no gender-neutral facilities are available, girls must override their desire to have privacy and to safeguard themselves or else be seen as participating in the 'harassment' of boys ('trans women/girls') who wish to use their change- rooms.
All slides appeared in WIO's professional learning for DECYP teachers of Physical Education (HPE) July 30th 2024 - Professional learning Institute.
Please write to the following politicians to voice your concerns -
Tasmanian Minister for Education, The Hon. Jo Palmer to voice your concerns:
Southern Ministerial Office: Level 1, 7 Franklin Wharf, Hobart, 7000. Phone: (03) 6165 9420
Northern Ministerial Office: Public Building, 53 St John Street, Launceston, 7250. Phone: (03) 6777 1018
Electorate Office: 236 West Tamar Road, Riverside 7250. Phone: (03) 6324 2002
Parliament House: Legislative Council, Parliament House, Hobart. 7000. Phone: (03) 6212 2346 Fax: (03) 6212 2345
jo.palmer@parliament.tas.gov.au