This day in Herstory: Constance Georgine Markievicz, born February 4, 1868, also known as Countess Markievicz and Madame Markievicz, was an Irish politician, revolutionary, nationalist, suffragist, socialist, and the first woman elected to the Westminster Parliament, and was elected Minister for Labour in the First Dáil, becoming the first female cabinet minister in Europe. She served as a Teachta Dála for the Dublin South constituency from 1921 to 1922 and 1923 to 1927. She was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Dublin St Patrick's from 1918 to 1922.
A founding member of Fianna Éireann, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Citizen Army, she took part in the Easter Rising in 1916, when Irish republicans attempted to end British rule and establish an Irish Republic. She was sentenced to death, commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds of her gender. On 28 December 1918, she was the first woman elected to the UK House of Commons, though, being in Holloway Prison at the time and in accordance with party policy, she did not take her seat. Instead, she and the other Sinn Féin MPs (as TDs) formed the first Dáil Éireann. She was also one of the first women in the world to hold a cabinet position, as Minister for Labour, from 1919 to 1922.
Markievicz supported the anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War. She continued as (abstentionist) Dáil member for Sinn Féin until 1926 when she became a founding member of Fianna Fáil. She died in 1927. (…more)
When is a bot not a bot?
Answer: when it’s a feminist
From The Critic (UK)
By Jean Hatchet
February 4, 2022
The New Statesman published an article yesterday which asserted that a recent example of successful feminist activism was probably created by bots and that no one really likes feminists who are critical of gender. We are unpopular; not as hot as we think we are. In fact, who the hell do we think we are? Reading this article, you may be forgiven for thinking that we number just half a dozen slightly miffed women.
Sarah Manavis based these assertions — that gender critical feminists lack support — on an article by Logically AI which appeared on 24 January. This article suggested that the well-supported feminist hashtag #KeepPrisonsSingleSex was actually mostly supported by Twitter “bots” (automated Twitter accounts controlled by bot software).
It is concerning that both of these questionable articles dismiss the vast range of feminist activism that focusses on this very issue. It is patronising and infantilising to suggest that women aren’t capable of swift and effective political organisation. The suggestion that those who oppose the assault on women’s rights by trans rights activists are few is simply not true. … read full article
Why I'm resigning from the Green Party
by Zoe Hatch
From The Glinner Update (UK)
February 4, 2022
Abolitionism, Transgender Prison Placement Policy and Keeping Female Prisons Single Sex
From On being a professional academic in an anti-intellectual age (UK)
By Jo Phoenix
February 4, 2022
Where do we place transgender prisoners in a prison system that is sex-segregated?
The discussion about trans rights and prison placement policy currently revolves around calculations of risk. We know that the majority of transgender prisoners are currently housed in the male prison estate. We also know that there is a disproportionate number of sex offenders in the (known) transgender prisoner population. Transfer of transgender prisoners from the male estate to the female estate (and vice versa) is determined by a multi-agency panel who assesses the risks posed to and by the prisoners who apply. We further know that there is a disproportionate number of women in the female estate who have experienced male violence. Recognition of the risks presented to the female prison population of male-bodied transgender prisoners with histories of sexual offending was the rationale for Amendment 214 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. … read full article
Why stop at keeping males out of female prisons?
There is a lot about discussion and debate over the placement and housing of transgender prisoners that is strange.
From The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (UK)
By Jo Phoenix
February 4, 2022
It often divides prisoners into ‘the worthy’ and ‘the unworthy’, the dangerous and the vulnerable, in ever stranger ways of calculating and managing risk. The argument is happening in the absence of any actual research and so it plays out in a rather abstract manner.
Prisons as risky places
Those arguing the case that transgender prisoners ought to be placed in the prison of their self-declared gender identity claim that male prisons are very risky places. The argument is that the mental and physical health of transgender prisoners is at grave risk in the male estate.
The denial or failure of the prison to recognise their gender identity can potentially lead to suicide, the argument goes. Indeed, there have been six such suicides in the male estate since 2013. But there were 782 suicides of men who were not transgender and 31 of women over the same time.
Prison suicide is not, in other words, a specifically trans issue. It seems rather more likely that there is something about prisons that drives those incarcerated to suicide.
Some also claim that transgender prisoners in the male prison estate face potential threats of violence and victimisation from other male prisoners (and staff). It is difficult to know how to assess this claim.
The number of recorded sexual assaults in prison has gone up since 2010 from being measured in the 10s to being in the low 100s. The problem, however, is that sexual violence is notoriously under-reported, especially in prison, and any increase against such relatively small numbers may simply indicate changes in recording practices.
Whatever the realities, in relation to transgender prisoners in the male prison estate, the claim is routinely made that “sexual violence is endemic in [male] prisons”. The argument is then: the hypermasculine conditions of a male prison combine with individual transgender prisoners’ physical and psychological vulnerability to mean that the safest, least risky place for transgender prisoners who are legal males (and transgender prisoners with a gender recognition certificate and thus are legal females) is in the female prison estate. … read full article
Much ado about mothers
Mumsnet has been airing the trans lobby’s dirty laundry
From The Critic (UK)
By Victoria Smith
February 4, 2022
The mother, wrote the political philosopher Martha Albertson Fineman, “embodies dependency at the same time she is trapped by the dependency of others … she is marred by her burdens of obligation and intimacy in an era where personal liberation and individual autonomy are viewed as both mature and essential”.
In other words, Mummy’s a drudge at a time when everyone else associates drudgery with the ludicrously essentialist idea that bodies and relationships of dependency define us. Poor, stupid, bigoted Mummy. Still, at least she can wash your pants while you ponder the ethics of a disembodied, pant-free future.
I was thinking of Fineman’s quote in relation to the latest outrage over Mumsnet. Yes, it’s that time again, when a band of young “feminist” writers and tweeters competes to come up with the snappiest way of asking “why aren’t these past-it cows wittering on about nappy rash while we mock them for their triviality, instead of pretending to understand politics like they’re still fully rational human beings?”
Mumsnet, you will recall, is the site where, to those yet unsullied by age and/or pregnancy, women who’ve given birth are supposed to retreat to discuss how to descale the dishwasher, compare high-end strollers and complain about the neighbour’s dog eating their begonias. Alas, in recent years there’s been much panic over the fact that not all such women are staying in their lane.
This week’s particular outrage is over a webchat with MPs Stella Creasy and Caroline Noakes, in which both women wished to discuss women’s rights without having a meaningful, effectively circumscribed definition of what a woman actually is.
Many Mumsnetters took issue with this, with some going so far as to suggest that biological sex might not only be real, but politically salient. I know, right? Talk about radicalised! (Or don’t — best stick to rusks and stain removal.) … read full article
When Asked ‘What Are Your Pronouns,’ Don’t Answer
A seemingly innocuous question masks a demand for conformity with a regressive set of ideas
From Wall Street Journal (USA)
By Colin Wright
Feb. 4, 2022
“What are your pronouns?” is a seemingly innocuous question that has become increasingly common. Pronouns are now frequently displayed prominently in social-media bios, email signatures and conference name tags. Vice President Kamala Harris features “she/her” pronouns in her Twitter bio, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg includes “he/him” in his. Then there are the singular “they/them” pronouns used by “nonbinary” people who identify as neither male nor female, as well as a growing list of bespoke “neopronouns” such as “ze/zir” or “fae/faer,” and the even stranger “noun-self” neopronouns like “bun/bunself” which, according to the New York Times, are identities that can encompass animals and fantasy characters.
A recent survey of 40,000 “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth” in the U.S. found that a full 25% use pronouns other than she/her and he/him exclusively. The Human Rights Campaign, which claims to be the “nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization,” recently tweeted that we should all begin conversations with “Hi, my pronouns are _____. What are yours?” We are told that asking for, sharing and respecting pronouns is “inclusive” to trans and nonbinary people, and that failing to do so may even constitute violence and oppression.
If this all sounds confusing and makes you uncomfortable for reasons you find difficult to articulate, you’re not alone. While being subjected to constant rituals of pronoun exchanges may seem silly or annoying at best and exhausting at worst, in reality participating in this ostensibly benign practice helps to normalize a regressive ideology that is inflicting enormous harm on society. To understand why, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with its core tenets. … read full article
Why T is different than LGB: a parent’s perspective
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT)
February 4, 2022
When my older daughter was in her early teens, she enjoyed going to Teen Pride events. For a while, she dated girls. She never “came out”, it wasn’t necessary. She knew we didn’t mind whether she dated girls or boys. The only action we had to take was to drive her to her dates. Easy.
My younger daughter, who is in her early teens is a much different situation. She “came out” as transgender at the age of 12 after a lockdown binge on TikTok. As parents, unlike with sexual orientation, we are not supposed to give her space to explore this adolescent phase of her life - in some countries, if we did so, this would be considered “conversion therapy”.
Instead, here is what we are expected to be doing according to the World Professional Organisation for Transgender Health, aka WPATH:
Call her by a different name, and refer to her as “he” when we talk about her.
On the (terrible) advice of a therapist, we started performing this piece of theatre, but apparently it is insufficient - we are supposed to not just pretend she is a boy, we must also believe that it is true. (As a gender non-conforming woman myself, I believe that the only thing that makes you a woman is a female body. I don’t believe in gender souls.) This social transition has made her miserable.
Get her on puberty blockers ASAP.
These drugs block the changes that take place during natural puberty. Trans activists say they are a “pause button” and “fully reversible”. In reality they have unknown effects on brain and bones, possible detrimental effects on mental health, and almost all children who take them will move on to cross-sex hormones. We know this because the National Institute for Care Excellence in the UK (NICE) has done an excellent systematic review of the evidence. Puberty blockers are not a pause button that allows you to consider whether you are really trans: they are the first step to a lifetime of chronic medication; they are used off-label because there is no evidence in favour of giving them to distressed teens with normal bodily function; and they have unknown long-term effects.
Get her on testosterone when she is 14.
At roughly the same age my older daughter was exploring her bisexuality by going for milkshake dates with girls, my youngest is supposed to start getting weekly injections that would give her a beard, deep voice, and clitoral growth; that would have unknown effects on her sexual function; that will make her infertile; and that would lead to vaginal and uterine atrophy within five years.
Have her breasts amputated when she is 15.
At roughly the same age my oldest started dating a boy, an age when you’re still too young to consent to sex, I’m supposed to take my youngest to hospital to have her healthy breasts removed. As a young teen 30 years ago, I too hated my breasts, in a way that consumed my life at the time. I still find them annoying. But I’ve also fed two babies with them, and they’re great for sex. On balance, the upsides outweigh the downsides. How is a 15-year-old supposed to fully understand this?
Take her for a hysterectomy aged 17.
My throat constricts when I think about this. I have had a hysterectomy. It was brutal. I nearly died. It changed my body. It took many months to recover. At 17 you are just beginning to find your stride in life. The turmoil of your early teens starts to subside. But how could you settle into yourself if you’ve spent your formative years radically altering your body? By this point she would have been on chronic medication for five years, and it would be her second major surgery. At seventeen, and with a perfectly healthy body. … read full article