Friday, April 15, 2022
Friday, April 15, 2022
This day in Herstory: Elizabeth Catlett, born April 15, 1915 (died April 2, 2012), was an African American sculptor and graphic artist best known for her depictions of the Black-American experience in the 20th century, which often focused on the female experience. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C., to parents working in education, and was the grandchild of formerly enslaved people. It was difficult for a black woman at this time to pursue a career as a working artist. Catlett devoted much of her career to teaching. However, a fellowship awarded to her in 1946 allowed her to travel to Mexico City, where she worked with the Taller de Gráfica Popular for twenty years and became head of the sculpture department for the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. In the 1950s, her main means of artistic expression shifted from print to sculpture, though she never gave up the former. (more)
South Carolina bill would ban gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary minors
From The Hill (USA)
By Brooke Migdon
April 15, 2022
Story at a glance
A South Carolina Senate bill introduced this week would restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary youth under the age of 18.
Minors under the bill would be prevented from receiving medications like puberty blockers and hormones, as well as gender-affirming surgeries, which are already not recommended for children under 18 years old.
The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, this week on social media said he respected leaders like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who have led similar charges against LGBTQ+ people.
A South Carolina Senate bill introduced Thursday would prohibit health care providers in the state from administering gender-affirming care to transgender and nonbinary minors.
Under the bill, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, affirming doctors in South Carolina would be prohibited from prescribing medications like puberty blockers or hormones to trans and nonbinary youth for the purpose of “attempting to alter the appearance of or affirm the minor’s perception of his gender” if that perception is inconsistent with the minor’s sex assigned at birth. … read full article
Women won’t be silent as our rights are stolen
Like the suffragettes, JK Rowling and the sisterhood are ignoring the hatred and ridicule to focus on organising resistance
From The Times (UK)
Janice Turner
April 15, 2022
The cartoonists who lampooned the suffragettes only had two jokes. Either they drew a female head in some cruel device which trapped her tongue — if only! — or women were depicted at rallies, while back home husbands burnt supper and babies wept.
“At the suffragette meetings,” reads a caption of a cartoon where attendees are wrinkled, cross-eyed and blotchy, “you can hear some plain things and see them too.” Another shows an imaginary pub populated only by women, drinking, smoking, talking together, with, outrageously, not a man in sight.
Loose-tongued, unnatural women, too old to please the male eye, carousing, plotting. A witches’ coven, a monstrous regiment. Even today, women-only gatherings are treated as suspicious and self-indulgent. What are these bitches up to?
When JK Rowling hosted a River Café lunch last week she invited women who’d fought lonely battles for their gender-critical beliefs. Some were ostracised at work, even fired: academic Kathleen Stock, tax expert Maya Forstater, journalist Suzanne Moore, barrister Allison Bailey, Labour MP Rosie Duffield. Others were lesbian heretics who won’t bow to the gender transubstantiation that women can have penises. … read full article (share token)
Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
It’s not just a phase.
From The Atlantic (USA)
By Jonathan Haidt
April 11, 2022
What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar. They built a tower “with its top in the heavens” to “make a name” for themselves. God was offended by the hubris of humanity and said:
Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.
The text does not say that God destroyed the tower, but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.
The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past. …
Babel is a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done to nearly all of the groups and institutions most important to the country’s future—and to us as a people. How did this happen? And what does it portend for American life? … read full article
Four parents sue Ludlow Public Schools for policy that affirms transgender children
From The Boston Globe (USA)
By Jeremy C. Fox
April 14, 2022
Four parents have filed a lawsuit against the Ludlow School Committee and several school officials claiming they have violated their rights by choosing not to tell parents when children seek to establish a new gender identity at school, court records show.
Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri, parents of two children in Ludlow schools, and Jonathan Feliciano and Sandra Salmeron, who also have two children in the district, claim the district’s policy affirming transgender students’ identities violates the US and Massachusetts constitutions, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in US District Court in Springfield.
The lawsuit does not identify the policy.
But the Sunday Globe Magazine reported in September that the Ludlow schools allow students to choose their own pronouns and names, and that school staff cannot discuss a child’s gender identity with a parent, without the child’s consent.
But in their lawsuit, the parents say the district has not adopted a formal written policy on the practice, in violation of a state requirement, according to the 58-page filing. … read full article (web page archive)
Bill Bennett says young children should not be taught about gender identity in schools: 'This is madness'
Former education secretary says school curriculum will be big issue in midterms
From Fox News (USA)
By Fox News Staff
April 15, 2022
On "America's Newsroom" Friday, former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett shared his expertise on the "confusing" ideology invading classrooms and advised parents to stay vigilant in monitoring the actions of school boards and legislators. Bennett was asked about public schools in Washington state and Oregon teaching topics related to gender identity to children as young as five.
BILL BENNETT: This is madness. It is wrong. It is harmful. Any governmental psychologist or psychiatrist who hasn’t been bullied into political correctness will tell you that. It will confuse children. It is not where their curiosity is. That curiosity needs to be turned to reading, math and other subjects. This is ideology making its way into the classroom and what’s fueling school choice. This is why a lot of parents are fleeing the classroom. This is just quackery and madness and again very harmful and parents are reacting to it. It’s interesting now, with the political season, education will be an issue. A very important issue, I think, in November. And as we saw in that Virginia race for governor, it can make a big difference where people stand.
… watch full interview
Home Office Insisting Civil Servants Indicate Pronouns
From Guido Fawkes (USA)
April 15, 2022
The Free Speech Union has written to Matthew Rycroft, the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, to complain about a directive to Home Office staff to include their pronouns in their email signatures. They are concerned that this instruction, which appears to be mandatory, is a form of compelled speech that violates the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion and the right to free speech (Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights). They also argue it is a breach of the Equality Act. … read full article
Policy's gender definition at center of debate for Highlands School Board
From Trib Live (USA)
By Tawnya Panizzi
April 15, 2022
The question of what constitutes gender could be front and center at the next Highlands School Board meeting.
On Tuesday, board members will consider approval of an education equity policy that at least two members have voiced concern about.
The aim of the proposed policy is to remove educational barriers that could interfere with students’ success in school.
The meeting will take place at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the high school library and virtually on Zoom.
“Of course, I believe in the opportunity for equal education for everyone,” board member Judy Wisner said. “The part I have a problem with is the section that deals with the definition of gender.” … read full article
How a Skeptic Turned Transgender
A cautionary tale of dogmatism and mental contagion
From Ryan’s Newsletter
By Ryan Sereno
April 15, 2022
It has been over a year since I detransitioned.
I lived as a trans woman for almost four years.
I am an otherwise skeptical and rational person.
I had no history of mental illness or behavioral disorders aside from teenage depression.
How did I get here?
Self Diagnosis:
In 2017, at the age of 23, I stumbled upon the stories of transgender individuals.
They talked about their-life long internal struggles.
How they were not able to connect with others, especially those of the same biological sex.
They talked about how transitioning- wearing clothes of the opposite sex, taking hormones, having surgeries, changing their voices and mannerisms- had finally relieved their internal conflict.
A weight had been lifted off of them.
They had become the happiest they have ever been in their lives.
Then I found their 'transition timelines'- photo montages of their before and after transformations; before hormones vs after 2/3/4 years on hormones.
Their results were surprising and intriguing. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to Ryan’s Newsletter!)
It’s all getting much worse, and fast
From Kara Dansky's Substack (USA)
By Kara Dansky
April 15, 2022
On April 14, 2022, I came across this tweet:
I watched the video. It does, indeed, depict masturbation and promote puberty blockers. I was not able to confirm that it’s being taught in 5th grade in New Jersey schools, but it certainly appears to be aimed at children and refers to boys and girls masturbating.
According to this piece, these are “sample lesson plans” in New Jersey, and there are numerous multiple lesson plans that teach “gender identity” to second graders. It’s hard to know what is true, and the New Jersey Department of Education appears to have removed all information about its curriculum from its website. A New Jersey legislator has made some of the materials available on Dropbox. New Jersey officials appear to be saying that the materials are not being taught as a matter of official policy. This is in the same state where violent men are being housed in the women’s prison and impregnating women (men are being housed in women’s prisons all over the country, and in other countries, as we know, it’s not unique to New Jersey).
These videos appear to be the work of a group called AMAZE, which Colin Wright has written about here. You can watch all of AMAZE’s videos (if you can stand it) here.
My point in this piece is that everything is getting much worse, and very quickly, and those of us fighting the “gender identity” industry can barely keep up. Few of us have time to review every single item the NJ legislator put up on Dropbox, for example, or watch all of the AMAZE videos. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to Kara Dansky’s Substack!)
Kids Struggling With Gender Identity Need Their Parents More, Not Less
Even though it seems unfathomable that anyone would oppose a bill that prevents grooming, many oppose Florida’s law because they believe it hurts students. That’s not true.
From The Federalist (USA)
By AUGUSTE MEYRAT
April 15, 2022
Florida’s new law, the Parental Rights in Education act, prohibits sex education in the early grades and requires teachers to inform parents about students’ mental health. All the debate and fanfare over its passage still seems to end with both sides mostly talking past one another.
Opponents dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” law, arguing it prevents LGBT students and teachers from being their true selves and thereby harming them. As such, Disney, a host of celebrities, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his partner Chasten have loudly denounced the bill.
Supporters dubbed it the “Anti-Grooming” bill, arguing that it prevents students from being sexualized, alienated from their families, and made vulnerable to sexual predators. It does so by empowering parents and giving them more influence over what their children learn in the classroom. … read full article
I Wish I Didn’t Know
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
Apr 15, 2022
There are days that I wish I didn’t know everything I do about gender ideology, elective youth medicalization, radical transgender politics and the terrifying changes they have made to our society as a whole.
I wish I didn’t know that my fourteen year old daughter is currently on a path that could see her heavily medicated and surgically modified before her eighteenth birthday. I don’t want to think about my child becoming a permanent medical patient if she persists in her self-proclaimed, likely socially induced, transgenderism. I wish I didn’t sit, worry and wait while she spends time with her affirming father, wondering how much deeper she is sinking into a dangerous ideology while she’s gone. I want to be rid of my understanding that as a Canadian mother I have no right to protect my child and that, if her other parent decided she would be better off on testosterone and would benefit from a double mastectomy, I would be legally unable to challenge the decision. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to PITT!)
BITE Model: Behavior Control
Using the BITE Model of authoritarian control to analyze how the trans movement exerts behavior control.
From prude posting (USA)
By Helena
April 15, 2022
The trans movement is often described as having “cultlike qualities”, or even as outright being a cult. Ex-members of the ideology and the loved ones of people who are sucked into it report eerily similar trajectories and dynamics that reflect the intense manipulation and authoritarianism of the movement. Others, usually those who are currently devout to gender ideology, object to this description, citing the lack of centralization in a leader as evidence that “cult” and “cult-like” are not accurate descriptors, and that calling the trans community a cult hinders our ability to name “actual cults”. However, the lack of a central charismatic leader does not automatically place the trans movement decidedly in the “not a cult” camp. Groups can exhibit manipulative and authoritarian dynamics without a central leader and can even closely resemble the dynamics within traditional cult structures. There are models we can use to analyze the behavior of groups and get a sense of how much their behavior aligns with what is understood to be cult behavior.
Steven Hasan is an author and counselor specializing in authoritarian groups and belief systems. Though his work has been controversial, particularly in the ways he has applied it to politics (something with which I personally disagree), his work on describing and understanding the fundamentals of authoritarian group control has been groundbreaking. While other scholars have tended to focus on cult dynamics within a more literally religious framework, Hasan’s work has explored how authoritarian control is used in groups that lay outside a conventionally religious framework. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE TO prude posting!)