Breastfeeding Counsellor Punished for Saying Men Can’t Breastfeed
A woman who spent fifteen years volunteering to help mothers breastfeed is now fighting a legal battle for saying that men can't. Her case shows exactly how "gender identity" protections are being used to punish ordinary belief.
Jasmine Sussex spent fifteen years as a volunteer breastfeeding counsellor with the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA). She has now spent the better part of five years being targeted by a trans activist, not for anything she did to a child in her care, but for something she said online.
Sussex is currently defending herself in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) against a vilification complaint brought by Jennifer Buckley, a biological male who now identifies as a “woman”. In 2019, Buckley began taking hormones in an attempt to induce lactation to “breastfeed” a newborn son despite being warned by doctors that it could put the child’s health at risk. When Buckley later posted about the experience on the ABA's Facebook page, Sussex responded publicly, questioning whether Buckley was "a man pretending to be a woman."
That single sentence has now cost Sussex her volunteer role, her presence on social media, and years of her life fighting a tribunal case.
She Wasn't Alone
Sussex was not a lone dissenter picked off for a one-off comment. She was among seven ABA counsellors formally investigated by the association's leadership, and among the five ultimately sacked. The dispute began when counsellors were "subtly corrected" in an internal Facebook group for using the word "mother" instead of "parent". Thirty-seven ABA members, including two former board members, wrote to the board describing the whole process as "frivolous and unjustified" and demanding an apology to the seven volunteers. The board sacked the volunteers anyway. Sussex has been direct about why: "We know only women can breastfeed. It is a really small group in the association that are struggling with reality."
None of this happened in a vacuum. Roughly eighteen months before the sackings, a contingent within the ABA's leadership accepted a $20,000 donation from Rainbow Families to help produce a booklet titled "Breastfeeding, Chestfeeding and Human Milk Feeding." The ABA insists the booklet was only ever meant to guide one-to-one conversations, not to change its general operations or constitution. However, it is curious that this latest push to enforce this strict gender ideology on their volunteers came so soon after this donation.
The Tribunal Case
Pushed out of the ABA and ordered to delete her social media posts by the eSafety Commissioner, Sussex refused to back down. In November 2023, the Queensland Human Rights Commission notified her that Buckley had lodged a formal vilification complaint against her under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991, a law that has "gender identity" as a protected category. Sussex's case matters far beyond her own circumstances, because it shows exactly how "gender identity" protections function once they're written into law.
Also read: LGBT Group Opens Blasphemous Club in Old Catholic Church
Mandating Trans Ideology
Federally, the same pattern has already played out. In Tickle v Giggle, the Federal Court ruled that biological men who identify as women must be allowed into women’s-only spaces because of the “gender identity” protection under the Sex Discrimination Act.
The NSW Anti-Discrimination Act, which also included “gender identity” as a protected category, is currently being actively reviewed by the NSW Law Reform Commission with activists pressuring the government to remove religious exemption protections. Removing these protections would force single-sex Catholic boarding schools to accept students of the opposite biological sex to be admitted into colleges, including into their bathrooms and showers.
Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 is playing the same role that the Sex Discrimination Act did in the Giggle case: it takes "gender identity", a subjective, self-declared status, and gives it the same legal weight as an immutable characteristic like biological sex. Once that happens, stating an ordinary, mainstream belief stops being speech and starts being a thought crime against mandated trans ideology. Sussex isn't being prosecuted for harassment or abuse. A decade ago, nobody would have batted an eye at her statement about biology. Today, thanks to pressure from trans activists, she needs a lawyer to defend it.
What Happens Next
Sussex's case is still before QCAT, with procedural disputes over what evidence can even be heard dragging the matter well past its original timeline. Every month it continues is another month a volunteer counsellor with fifteen years of service is punished by our legal system for stating the obvious.
Cases like this are precisely why “gender identity” protections need to be removed from anti-discrimination bills. Until that happens, anyone who says that biological sex is real risks becoming the next Jasmine Sussex. If you want to help remove gender identity from an anti-discrimination Act, you can sign our petition here.