Meet two incredible change-making women, Georgie Stone and Rebekah Robertson.
Welcome to Season 4 of Ladies in the House, a Museum of Australian Democracy and History Detective collaboration.
In this 3-part series we are celebrating the lives of trailblazing women who have made significant change to Australian society.
Download the FREE teaching resources and the transcript for this episode at the MoAD website.
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Music written and performed by Kelly Chase.
Hi, this is Kelly Chase and you are listening to Season 4 of a Museum of Australian Democracy and History Detective Collaboration: Ladies in the House. In this 3-part series we are celebrating the lives of trailblazing women who have made significant change to Australian society. I am excited to talk about two incredible change-making women, Georgie Stone and Rebekah Robertson.
Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is being recorded today. I pay my respects to the elders and knowledge holders past, present and emerging.
When Georgie Stone was born her gender was assigned male, but as a toddler, she began expressing to her mum, Rebekah Robertson, that she was a girl. In her heart and soul, she knew she was a girl. By the time she was 8, she was presenting as a girl in public.
Because it was the early 2000s, there was limited community understanding about trans children and no guidebook for how parents could support their children. Georgie, began to present as a girl at school, but unfortunately the school she attended was not very understanding of her needs, especially when it came to Georgie going to the bathroom. They forced Georgie to use the boys’ toilets while at school swimming lessons exposing her to vicious bullying from some of older boys at school. Additionally, they would not allow her to wear the female uniform. Luckily Georgie’s mum, Rebekah Robertson, was supportive and they found a safer school for her to attend.
However, there was a danger lurking in the future and that was the issue of puberty. If Georgie were to go through puberty without medical intervention, she would be forced to grow into a body in which she knew she did not belong. Rebekah tracked down some medical experts and after much consultation, Georgie was advised to take puberty blockers. The only problem was that legally, the doctors and her parents were not allowed to make the decision for Georgie to take the gender affirming medicine that she needed. Instead, she had to go to a court of law and a judge – who was not a medical expert—would decide if she was allowed to access this medicine. This was a time consuming, expensive and emotionally draining process and took around five years for Georgie to get access to all of the medicine she needed to be her true self.
During this time, Rebekah recognised that there was an immense gap in the area of support for parents and families of trans children who needed help navigating the complicated world of law courts and medical professionals. Rebekah founded the Transcend organisation in 2012 to help connect families of gender diverse children and to show parents how to access the help and resources they needed. But that is not all, Rebekah and Georgie were not content with having a judge grant just them permission to access the medical treatment that Georgie needed. They wanted to change the Australian law, so that parents and trans children no longer had to go through the arduous and expensive court system to receive treatment.
Georgie started a Change.org petition and gathered more than 15000 signatures to support her cause. She wrote, “Having to go to court is costly, time consuming and stressful for trans teens and their families. It is totally unnecessary as the court base their decisions entirely on the expert submissions of the child's treating clinicians. No application has ever been refused.” Georgie and Rebekah presented this petition to some politicians in Canberra. Their campaign was a success, and in 2017, families no longer had to go through the gruelling court process to receive gender affirming medicine.
But Georgie and Rebekah’s achievements did not stop there. Georgie loves acting, and wanted to find a way to simultaneously do what she loved, and advocate for trans rights. When Georgie was in Year 12, she wrote a letter to the bosses at Australia’s longest running soap opera, Neighbours, and pitched an idea to have a trans character on the show. They loved it so much, that they emailed her back and invited her to audition. She got the part! She worked with the writers to ensure that both the storyline and the language used on the show was a true representation of her experience.
Her mother Rebekah, published an extraordinary book called About a Girl, which is a touching and personal memoir about her journey raising a transgender child and the emotional rollercoaster that the family endured during the drawn-out court cases.
In 2020, both Georgie Stone and her mum Rebekah Robertson were awarded Order of Australia medals for their service to transgender and gender-diverse communities.
These two incredible women saw the need for law reform, community support, and media representation and they paved the way for future generations of trans children to access the support that they need. What I would like you to think about today, is what actions, small or large can you take to make your community a more inclusive place?
This is Kelly Chase, on the case.
If you are a teacher and would like a free lesson plan for any of the Ladies in the House episodes, you can head to the Classroom Resources page on the Museum of Australian Democracy website to download the lesson plans. You’ll find a link to the page in the show notes.
See you next time!