Monday, February 21, 2022
Current news and opinion from a Gender Critical perspective
This day in Herstory: Eunice Kathleen Waymon, born February 21, 1933 (died April 21, 2003), known professionally as Nina Simone, was an American singer, songwriter, musician, arranger, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel and pop.
The sixth of eight children born to a poor family in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist. With the help of a few supporters in her hometown, she enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. She then applied for a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she was denied admission despite a well received audition, which she attributed to racism. In 2003, just days before her death, the Institute awarded her an honorary degree. (more)
Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman says left-wing media bows down to trans bullies
Writer accuses editors of silencing her on JK Rowling furore
From The Times (UK)
By Jake Kanter
Feb 21, 2022
One of the country’s leading columnists has appeared to take a swipe at her employer for capitulating to “left-wing bullies” who have restricted critical discussion about transgender rights.
Without naming The Guardian, Hadley Freeman, a staff writer at the newspaper, said that she did not feel supported by journalism colleagues for daring to voice doubts about “gender ideology”, and took aim at “the left-wing media [being] loath to raise any questions about the transgender movement”.
The writer said she was isolated in advocating for “women-only spaces” and arguing that there was a “clear clash between gender-based rights and women’s rights”.
In an article for UnHerd, a website that champions free speech, she said that a magazine editor prevented her from writing a freelance article about the vilification of JK Rowling because it would create “too much of a Twitter storm”.
The Harry Potter author became a target for some transgender rights campaigners in 2020 when she criticised attempts to “erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class”. … read full article (share token)
Parents in Texas and beyond won’t stand for schools undermining their values on race, sex
From Fort Worth Star-Telegram (USA)
By Nicole Russell
Feb 21, 2022
Here’s one thing we know about parents in 2022: They’ve had it. And not just with the pandemic and working from home.
It turns out they care about something even more pressing — their kids’ education. Thanks to government-forced shutdowns, in the last two years, some parents have finally seen what their kids are learning. And it wasn’t always just reading, writing and math.
In addition to the basics, some schools are leaning hard into critical race theory and expansive sex education that includes graphic sexual details and conversations about fluid gender identity. In states like Virginia, North Carolina — and even in parts of Texas — parents are realizing they’re not OK with this and they’re starting to speak up.
Teachers were instructed at a recent training at Walsh Middle School in the Round Rock Independent School District near Austin about how to correct a student if he or she uses another student’s “incorrect” pronouns. They were not only prompted to encourage fluid gender identity in school also directly told not to tell parents if a student tells them they identify as transgender or non-binary. … read full article
Giving prostitution a union won’t protect women – it’ll just legitimise their pimps
From Mail+ (UK)
By Julie Bindel
Feb 21, 2022
To believe that it’s possible to unionise prostitution you would have to be convinced, first of all, that a woman’s body is a suitable workplace, and that labour rights would put an end to the violence and abuse inherent in the sex trade.
Clearly, Unison, one of the UK’s largest trade unions, has swallowed this guff. Last week it voted for a motion to end its support for the criminalisation of punters, otherwise known as the Nordic Model. The model, so named because it was first implemented in Sweden in 1999, takes a radical approach to solving the myriad problems relating to the sex trade.
The main planks are the criminalisation of the clients – almost exclusively men –and the decriminalisation of the people selling sex – almost all women. This along with the availability of exiting strategies to support those who wish to leave the industry. This has been successfully implemented in a number of countries since 1999, including Ireland, France, Canada, Israel and elsewhere.
Now, after being persuaded that this approach is harmful to the women, and that ‘sex work is work’, Unison has chosen to adopt the approach that the buying and selling of women’s bodies is merely labour.
This is terrible news for the rights of women. Why remove support for the Nordic Model when every credible piece of research has shown that it reduces violence, removes the stigma from the women on to the men and gives prostituted people no impetus to leave the sex trade? It’s supposed to be the job of unions to protect against exploitation, not encourage it. … read full article
Don’t make misogyny a hate crime
The state should focus on violence against women — not hurt feelings
From UnHerd (UK)
By Joan Smith
Feb 21, 2022
Here is a little-known fact: in the last year, there were 10,679 prosecutions for hate crime in England and Wales, leading to 9,263 convictions. It is a strikingly high success rate, especially when compared to the figures for rape. According to the most recent statistics, 61,158 rapes were reported to the police in 2020-21, but there were only 1,557 prosecutions — and a mere 1,109 convictions.
Now some commentators are up in arms because the Law Commission, an independent body that recommends changes to the law, has rejected a proposal to make misogyny a hate crime. Many women, however, are relieved that the commission hasn’t given in to lobbying. While superficially appealing, the change would not tackle the central problem, which is the staggering failure of police and prosecutors to enforce existing laws. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to PITT)
Time Magazine: Response from a parent of a trans identified youth
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
Feb 21, 2022
Time Magazine—you had me at the headline: Pediatricians Who Serve Trans Youth Face Increasing Harassment. Lifesaving Care Could Be on the Line
It was quite dramatic. Pediatricians working with “trans” youth face harassment. The horror. Lifesaving care for “trans youth” could be on the line? Oh my. What is this horrific disease called “trans”? What lifesaving care is at risk, and why would pediatricians face harassment for helping?
Upon opening the article, I see an extremely somber looking woman sitting in a dimly lit room. This concerned pediatrician looks like quite the victim here. I wonder, what is her dilemma? I must know, so I read on.
Oh, the issue is protestors! Those multitudes of ignorant people gathering to inform others of the “dangers” of Dr. Sequeira’s gender-affirming care. How misguided must they be to protest something so pure and good, so morally righteous!
Now I am starting to see where this hit piece is going. This article is going to elevate a Machiavellian doctor, who is causing medical harm to vulnerable children/adolescents/young adults, while vilifying these alternatively informed “protestors.” … read full article
A proposed state law that would prevent anyone under age 18 from taking steps toward gender transition is moving in the Ohio House.
From Journal-News (USA)
By Jim Gaines, Staff Writer
Feb 21, 2022
The bill would prohibit medical personnel, public or private, from helping minors transition; prohibit public funding to anyone who does so; and prohibit insurance and Medicaid from covering any gender-transition therapy or procedure.
It specifically targets “school nurses, counselors, teachers, principals, or other staff or officials,” requiring them to tell parents – even if those parents are potentially hostile – about a minor’s gender dysphoria.
House Bill 454 is sponsored by state Reps. Gary Click, R-Vickery, and Diane Grendell, R-Chesterland. They introduced the “Save Adolescents from Experimentation,” or SAFE Act, in October and it had a first hearing in the House Families, Aging, and Human Services Committee on Wednesday.
The bill asserts that most children “who are gender nonconforming or experience distress at identifying with their biological sex” lose that feeling by adulthood.
LGBT advocates have denounced the bill as ignoring science and medical authorities, further marginalizing vulnerable youth. … read full article
Trans Child Sex Offender Boasted About Lenient Sentence
From REDUXX (USA)
By REDUXX Team
Feb 21, 2022
A 26-year old man convicted of sexually assaulting a child and currently serving his sentence in a youth treatment facility boasted about the lenient sentence offered to him by Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, according to newly leaked audio from the offender.
James Tubbs, who now goes by the name Hannah Tubbs, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in 2014. At the time, he was two-weeks shy of his 18th birthday.
In a recent decision that sparked massive backlash, L.A. County prosecutors said Tubbs would not have to register as a sex offender after completing his two-year sentence, which would be served in a juvenile treatment center where he would be housed with female youth. … read full article (and SUPPORT REDUXX)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: Gender-affirming care for transgender children is abuse
The American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association and American Academy of Pediatrics all support providing age appropriate, individualized care for children experiencing gender dysphoria.
From The Dallas Morning News (USA)
By Lauren McGaughy
Feb 21, 2022
AUSTIN — Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued a new interpretation of state law that says certain types of medical care for transgender children are abuse, a dramatic change contrary to medical standards that if implemented could make Texas one of the most aggressive states in targeting trans youth access to health care.
On Monday, Paxton issued an opinion stating his office believes gender-affirming health care for transgender youth – including treatments like hormone therapy and puberty blockers – is a form of child abuse. The move comes despite opposition from the top medical and child welfare groups, who oppose blanket bans to care.
“There is no doubt that these procedures are ‘abuse’ under Texas law, and thus must be halted,” Paxton said in a news release. “The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has a responsibility to act accordingly. I’ll do everything I can to protect those who take advantage of and harm young Texans.”
It’s unclear what Paxton’s opinion could mean for transgender children. Attorney general opinions do not have the force of law and are meant as written interpretations of current statute. Paxton issued his opinion after state Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, asked him to weigh in on the issue. … read full article
The revenge of the posh
All hail Laurie Penny, brave spokeswoman for the downtrodden bourgeoisie.
From Spiked (UK)
By Brendan O’Neill
Feb 20, 2022
Is anyone else sick and tired of public life being dominated by the neuroses of the upper middle classes? The petty concerns of the self-pitying rich have colonised politics, culture and the media. Newspapers overflow with sob stories from plummy writers about the horror of being misgendered or the abject terror of someone asking them, ‘But where are you really from?’. Netflix is a hotbed of dramas about privileged suicidal teens and their goddamn pronouns. MPs and celebrities and princes tell all about their struggles with mental illness. Bipolar is all the rage. It’s the new adopting babies from Africa in the celeb world. Schools have been overrun by PhD-wielding culture warriors telling teenage girls to bind their shameful breasts and reprimanding infants who aren’t au fait with all the new linguistic rules on race, gender and sexuality. Even the once stiff civil service now regularly invites in race-baiting columnists and think-tankers to drone on about the horrors of life in ‘white supremacist’ Britain.
Now – because why not? – Laurie Penny has served up peak posh neurosis. Her new book, Sexual Revolution: Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback, is the ultimate expression of the political, sexual and cultural hang-ups that have become so vogue among the well-brought-up, socially aware set. Seriously, this book is crackers. At first it’s depressing – Ms Penny paints an image of the West in which women are kept in line by threats of rape, where fragile white men with ‘sweaty hands’ (?) are making life miserable for minorities, and where everything exists within a ‘framework of trauma’. Ready my noose! But eventually it becomes funny. It’s so relentlessly grim that all you can do is laugh. If you tell yourself it’s parody – parody of those intense millennials from privileged backgrounds who have managed to convince themselves that they’re oppressed – you will enjoy it enormously. Five stars! … read full article
Just a pill?
How psychiatry pathologises female experience
From The Critic (UK)
By Victoria Smith (@glosswitch)
Feb 21, 2022
Photos of ghost children decorated the walls of the adolescent psychiatric unit. “Patients from the olden days,” staff would tell us. “They could have been locked up for life.” Unlike you lot, was the implication. The year was 1987 and I was twelve years old. I’d stare at the blank-eyed, monochrome children and count my unlobotomised blessings.
It seems no one is ever in any doubt about psychiatry’s shameful past: fathers institutionalising wayward daughters, husbands locking up inconvenient wives, brains destroyed for being too female, too black, too gay.
It’s not as though the discipline itself shies away from these truths. They are in plain sight, pictures put in the service of promoting a more enlightened present. Why not, I guess. When you’ve got the clitoridectomies, chemical castration and the pathologisation of runaway slaves in your back catalogue, anything you do henceforth will look enlightened by contrast.
Reading Jessica Taylor’s Sexy but Psycho, a feminist challenge to the psychiatric labelling of women and girls, I find myself thinking of contemporary psychiatry as the abusive partner who tries to control you by telling you how shit all the other men are.
“C’mon,” he wheedles. “It’s not as though I’m administering electric shocks until you start to have seizures. Or sticking an ice pick through your eye socket and wiggling it around in your brain matter. It’s just, like, a pill or two. What’s the big deal?”
Of course, contemporary psychiatry doesn’t see itself that way. It sees itself as a force for good and anyone who disagrees is, at best, anti-scientific and stuck in the past, at worst, a conspiracy theorist, a promoter of stigma, a pill-shamer, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit mad. … read full article
Parents' fury after biologically male counselors who identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns slept in rooms with fifth-grade girls for three nights during school-organized science camp
Los Alamitos parents shared their outrage after learning that nonbinary counselors, who are biologically male, shared cabins with fifth-grade girls
The counselors spent three nights sleeping in the same rooms as the students, which drew the fury of some parents of Weaver Elementary School students
The district said that it takes ‘all complaints and concerns seriously’ and would be investigating the parents’ grievances
The camp has defended its actions, saying that it was following California law by placing staff ‘in cabins they identify with'
The Los Alamitos Unified School District has spent this year at the center of a culture war over LGBTQ issues, CRT and coronavirus policies
From Daily Mail (UK)
By Brian Stieglitz
Feb 21 2022
A group of parents lambasted an infamously woke California school district after learning that biological male counselors who are non-binary and use they/them pronouns were sleeping in the same rooms as fifth-grade girls at a school-organized science camp.
The parents said that their children, who attend Weaver Elementary School in the Los Alamitos Unified School District, came home from spending three nights at Camp Pali in San Bernardino, from January 25 to 28, to say that some of their counselors were nonbinary, yet biological men.
“I contacted the school and asked them if they were able to confirm that there was not a man actually sleeping in the same cabin as the girls. They were not able to confirm that,” Rachel Sandoval, one of the parents, told KTLA. … read full article
Sex, gender differences impact asthma experiences and treatment
From Healio News (Australia)
By Richard Gawel
Feb 21, 2022
Sex and gender can influence the pathogenesis, clinical course, diagnosis, treatment and management of asthma, according to a review published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.
Usually defined as male or female, sex is based on genetically determined anatomical and physiological attributes, Christine R. Jenkins, MBBS, MD, FRACP, head of the respiratory group at George Institute for Global Health in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues wrote.
Gender, which is more complex, encompasses socially constructed roles, behaviors and expressions of identity in girls, women, boys, men and gender-diverse people, the researchers continued, adding that there is no universally recognized definition of gender. Previous literature about asthma has been inconsistent in addressing sex and gender, the researchers continued, preventing accurate data interpretation and hindering research. … read full article