EvolutionPublishing.com.au – Katrina Fox
Brisbane-based trans activist Linda Petrie has lodged a complaint with state and federal education ministers over the omission of the terms ?transsexual? and ?transgender? from certain school dictionaries.
While ?homosexual?, ?lesbian?, ?bisexual? and ?transvestite? were included in the latest editions of Collins Australian School Dictionary, Macquarie Australian School Dictionary and Oxford University Press?s The Australian Basic School Dictionary, ?transsexual? and ?transgender? were excluded.
Petrie accused the publishers of ?prejudiced and biased censorship that can easily lead to deliberately rendering invisible ? transgender and transsexual peoples? and that such omission of the terms could give justification to children who bully children with transsexual parents.
?I believe that the exclusion of these terms ought to be of major concern to yourselves as Australian Ministers of Education since they may be apparently possibly highlighting an unhealthy vein of prejudice, value judgements and discrimination which apparently has little regard for the consequences of their bias,? Petrie said in the letter.