Friday, June 17, 2022
This day in Herstory: Venus Ebony Starr Williams, born June 17, 1980, is an American professional tennis player. A former world No. 1 in both singles and doubles, Williams has won seven Grand Slam singles titles, five at Wimbledon and two at the US Open. She is widely regarded as one of the all-time greats of the sport. (more)
The World's Most Taboo Legal Case
While the media world wept over Amber and Johnny, a lawsuit filed by a feminist group over prison sexual abuse remained earth's most ignored scandal
From TK News by Matt Taibbi (USA)
By Matt Taibbi
June 17, 2022
On November 17, 2021, the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, filed a civil rights lawsuit in California that drew almost no coverage. A press corps gearing up to be outraged en masse by the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp defamation case had zero interest in a lawsuit filed by far poorer female abuse victims.
Janine Chandler et al vs. California Department of Corrections targeted a new California state law, the “The Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act,” a.k.a. S.B. 132. The statute allows any prisoner who self-identifies as a woman — including prisoners with penises who may have stopped taking hormones — into women’s prisons. …
Chandler is the headline legal action in a nationwide battle over whether or not prisoners who self-identify as women, including those with histories of rape or sexual abuse, should be allowed to transfer to women’s correctional facilities. ... read full article
Trans-Identified Repeat Rapist Sentenced on Latest Charges of Sexually Assaulting Child
From REDUXX (USA)
By Anna Slatz
June 17, 2022
A repeat sex offender has been sentenced after admitting to three charges of sexually assaulting a young girl in what was described by the court as a “campaign of rape.”
Rose Whitby, born Mathue Babic and Matthew Whitby, had just been released from prison after serving an 8 year sentence on separate sexual abuse charges relating to having raped two women and attempting to rape another in 2013. The exact age of his latest victim is unknown, but the presiding Judge described her as being of “extreme youth.” … read full article
My puberty was chemically delayed. I was their guinea pig
A former patient who went to the Tavistock clinic aged 12 talks to Lucy Bannerman
From The Times (UK)
By Lucy Bannerman
June 17, 2022
Alex* was a girl who desperately wanted to be a boy. From the ages of 12 to 16, “he” embarked on four years of experimental treatment, in a desperate bid to transform from female to male. Now 18 and trying to catch up on a chemically delayed adolescence, he feels the Tavistock treated him like “a guinea pig”.
The gender clinic that sent him into the medical unknown has no record of the outcome of his case, he says. It does not know the impact of those experimental drugs on his body, or the repercussions of this supposedly pioneering treatment on his life, he claims, because no one ever asked. … read full article
What went wrong at the Tavistock clinic for trans teenagers?
Since 2010, the number of teenage girls referred to the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service has increased by 5,000 per cent. Now former patients and staff members are speaking out
From The Times (UK)
By Janice Turner
June 17, 2022
For me it began with a graph. In 2017, I was shown a chart of children referred to GIDS, the Tavistock and Portman Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service clinic in northwest London. Overall case numbers had risen – from just 72 in 2009-10 to 1,807 in 2016-17 – but there was something more puzzling. Female referrals, once a fraction of males, now made up 70 per cent: from 32 to 1,265. The number of teenage girls with gender dysphoria (ie profound discomfort with their biological sex) had risen by 5,000 per cent in 7 years.
My journalistic curiosity was sparked, more so when I could find no mention of this in the mainstream press. The only people collecting data and testimony were online parents’ groups in Britain and the US. Moreover, their stories revealed a distinct pattern, repeated worldwide from Australia to Sweden. … read full article
Transgender Activists Manipulate Parents With Suicide Threats
From The Daily Signal
By Ginny Gentles
June 17, 2022
“Do you want a dead daughter or a live son?”
This question, which is really a threat, is the central tenet of the campaign selling gender ideology to parents. …
The pernicious assumption behind this horrific question is that parents do not have the best interest of their children at heart and that the “experts” know better. Nothing could be further from the truth. ... read full article
Gender ideology's fatal consequences
From Washington Examiner
by Kaylee McGhee White
June 16, 2022
A common accusation from transgender advocates is that those who disagree with and oppose gender ideology are endangering the lives of gender-confused persons, especially young adults. Deny these youths the care they need, including puberty blockers and other irreversible medical interventions, and they’ll be at a much higher risk for suicide than their peers — or so the argument goes.
A new study from the Heritage Foundation, however, proves the exact opposite: Children and adolescents who are exposed to so-called “gender-affirming care” are actually at a much greater risk of suicidal thoughts and attempts than those who are not. …
This research confirms the findings of several other extensive studies, most of which were conducted in Europe, on the matter of “gender-reassignment” interventions and procedures. ... read full article
Tech And Trans Confusion
If parents and policymakers want to protect kids from the harm of transitioning, they need to turn up the heat on tech companies.
From The American Conservative (USA)
By Jared Eckert
June 17, 2022
In December 2000, the Atlantic published an exposé reminiscent of The Twilight Zone. Earlier that year, reports broke of a British surgeon who had amputated the healthy limbs of two patients. What author Carl Elliott found underneath these strange events was even more puzzling. A once rare condition—psychological distress over healthy limbs—was now plaguing thousands. How did this happen?
In his interviews with amputee-wannabes, Elliott discovered a common factor fueling what is now called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID): the internet. For those with access, the internet provided a flood of information and social connections. Its disembodied, anonymous environment may have made the problem worse. The result? An ecological niche in which BIID could bloom. …
Like the amputee-wannabes of 2000 or anorexic teens of the 2010s, new media are fueling yet another form of teenage self-harm. Take Keira Bell, the young woman who won a United Kingdom High Court case against the gender clinic that fast-tracked her transition. Before the counselor’s office, clinic, or classroom, she was exposed to gender ideology on the internet. … read full article
Ban Politics from Gender Healthcare
The Right and the Left Are Competing for Who’s Worse
From Year Zero (USA)
By Lisa Selin Davis
June 17, 2022
One reason Democrats object to Republicans’ attempts to ban “gender-affirming care”—puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for minors—is that they’re too heavy handed. The bans wrest decisions from doctors, patients and parents and place them in the hands of government. It’s overreach: one-size-fits-none.
But no party is above hypocrisy, especially when it comes to medical authoritarianism. On Wednesday, the White House issued an “Executive Order Advancing Equality for LGBTQI+ Individuals” that’s dangerously overreaching, too. … read full article
Michigan Attorney General calls for every school to have a drag queen
Nessel made her comments during a civil rights conference in Lansing after falsely claiming that Critical Race Theory isn’t being taught in schools, despite multiple instances showing it to be true.
From Rebel News (Canada)
By Ian Miles Cheong
June 16, 2022
The Michigan Attorney General has called on every school to have its own drag queen, stating that drag queens are “fun” and “make everything better.”
AG Dana Nessel made her comments during a civil rights conference in Lansing after falsely claiming that Critical Race Theory isn’t being taught in schools, despite multiple instances showing it to be true.
“You know what’s not a problem for kids who are seeking a good education? Drag queens,” said Nessel, Detroit News reported. ... read full article
Zach Elliott asks a really good question here. Following is my reply. This seems like it could be an interesting story for some industrious investigative journalist! - Ed.
The right side of history or the winning side?
From The Glinner Update (UK)
By Eliza Mondegreen
June 17, 2022
Trans activists love to talk about being on the "right side of history." But the mentality is something else—not the sense of being on the right side of history but the confidence of being on the winning side.
When you believe you're on the right side of history, you should tend to act like it: take the high road, practice grace. Among trans activists, that self-belief doesn't translate into a principled approach but contempt. Trans activists have the assurance not of a just cause but of coming out on top—no matter what you say or do to get there. Being on the winning side of history means anything goes: violent threats, bald-faced lies, emotional manipulation, language that obscures. ... read full article
The gendrification of Ireland
How gender identity theory has become embedded in Irish society
From The Critic (UK)
By Colette Colfer
June 17, 2022
The Irish Government has adopted a once-obscure academic theory and is rolling it out through national strategies which have wide reaching consequences for all sectors of Irish society including prisons, sports, health and education. These strategies have enormous implications for human rights in Ireland.
Gender identity theory involves the idea that a person’s internal sense of gender is different from, and often more important than, their biological sex. The theory can be recognised by language (such as “cis”, “sex assigned at birth”, “everyone has a gender identity”), by questions such as “what gender do you identify as?”, and by pronouns in email signatures and social media profiles. Although the theory is contested, it is now being taught as fact in the Irish education system. The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, the largest teachers’ trade union in Ireland, has an online video learning-resource which teaches that boys can change into girls and girls can change into boys. ... read full article
Ireland to Strip Maternity Law of Sex-Based Language. 'The Countess' Objects
"The era of no debate on the conflict between women’s rights and trans rights is over in Ireland."
From 4W (USA)
By Andreia Nobre
June 17, 2022
Irish grassroots women’s advocacy group The Countess have launched on June 15, 2022, a campaign to raise awareness among the public of a government proposed legislation to remove the words woman, female, mother and girl in maternity protection laws, which they say is being rushed through without allowing enough time for debate.
The group created a campaign video, called #TheseWordsBelongToUs, featuring the very personal stories of 15 women whose lives have been profoundly affected by being born with female anatomy. The women featured either have their own maternity rights denied, or are women whose mothers have been failed by the Irish government.
The poignant stories include 86 year old Eilish, who would have been her mother’s 22nd child had all her siblings lived. She recounts the horrors and the grief endured by the women who lived at that time. … read full article
Sharron Davies: Athletes are scared to speak out against SNP gender reforms
Sharron Davies, a silver medallist at the 1980 Moscow games, said she wanted a respectful debate about science
From The Times (UK)
By Mike Wade
June 17, 2022
The Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies has said that Scottish athletes are too scared to speak out against the SNP’s gender reforms but many believe the changes will “destroy” fairness in sport.
Davies, a silver medallist at the 1980 Moscow games, united with Mara Yamauchi, an elite marathon runner, to condemn proposed amendments to gender recognition law which they said amounted to “complete madness” when applied to sport. ... read full article
Sharron Davies calls for female cyclists to revolt against 'ridiculous' trans athletes rules
Olympic swimming silver medallist speaks out against new rules for trans women as UCI stops short of a blanket ban
From The Telegraph (UK)
By Ben Rumsby
June 17, 2022
Sharron Davies has told female cyclists they must stage a public revolt against “ridiculous” new rules allowing Emily Bridges and other trans women to compete against them after two years’ hormone treatment.
Davies said those who had privately threatened a rider boycott if forced to race against Bridges in April needed to come out and join her fight to protect women’s sport because “they are the ones that will lose out”. ... read full article
We can have a rational discussion — and still protect trans people
'This bullying and utterly totalitarian attachment to a particular ideology was always going to end badly'
From Irish Examiner (Ireland)
By Alison O’Connor
June 17, 2022
What a terrible pity it came to this. Discussions not being had for entirely wrong reasons — festering away for a long time — bursting onto the national stage. The repercussions are really unfortunate.
The trans debate launched on the national talking shop that is Liveline. The RTÉ programme devoted days to this topic, so highly controversial that in recent years to raise concerns in any way would lead to immediate accusations of transphobia. This bullying and utterly totalitarian attachment to a particular ideology was always going to end badly. The surprise is that it did not happen sooner. … read full article
Rise in transgender children is just a phase, MP tells schools
Nick Fletcher sparks outrage after telling teachers in his constituency that he believed ‘boys are boys and girls are girls’
From The Telegraph (UK)
By India McTaggart
June 17, 2022
A rise in transgender children has been described as “nothing more than a phase” in a letter penned by a Tory MP to schools in his constituency.
Nick Fletcher, the MP for Don Valley in South Yorkshire, stated that he believed “boys are boys and girls are girls” and said that he wanted to “clearly set out his position” on the issue, asking headteachers to do the same.
In the letter, he said: “Books which make this ideology acceptable to embrace and such media in all its forms that glamorise this transgender lifestyle are, I’m afraid, affirming something that is nothing more than a phase.” ... read full article
Reflections of a Father
For Father’s Day
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
June 17, 2022
What’s the most difficult thing about being a parent?
All of us are familiar with the par-for-the-course difficulties: the sleep deprivation, helping your child through an illness, and the myriad humdrum worries that assault us in the quiet moments. Will my child do well in school? Will they make friends? Will they forge a rewarding career, and find a person with whom to spend their lives?
But perhaps the most difficult moments for me are when I start to believe that I’ve failed my child. Maybe I didn’t protect them when I should have, or maybe I was overprotective when I should have let them learn the hard way. Maybe I didn’t say the right things. Perhaps I didn’t hold them to the right standard, or wasn’t consistent. Maybe I didn’t support them when they needed it. And I probably allowed them to do things that were bad for them. … read full article