Monday, July 18, 2022
"... the movement we once knew as the Left has been colonised by an elite campaign to abolish material reality to the detriment of everyone else."
This day in Herstory: Jeanne Córdova, born July 18, 1948 (died January 10, 2016), was an American trailblazer of the lesbian and gay rights movement, founder of The Lesbian Tide, and a founder of the West Coast LGBT movement. Córdova was a second-wave feminist lesbian activist and proud butch. (more)
US - WATCH: 'Queer' teacher explains how she helps third graders explore gender identity
From Washington Examiner (USA)
By Luke Gentile
July 18, 2022
An "openly queer" elementary school teacher is going viral after being exposed for quietly helping third-grade students find new gender identities.
The teacher, identified as Brianna Rose in a report, posted a video on TikTok in which she discussed the importance of a classroom safe space for gender-questioning elementary school students. ... read full article
US - Gender transitions at school spur debate over when, or if, parents are told
From The Washington Post (USA)
By Donna St. George
July 18, 2022
Alexzander Baetsen came out at school to an English teacher. The revelation was made in a short letter on a piece of lined notebook paper, handed to the teacher as the eighth-grader left class one day. The teen explained that while they were assigned female at birth, they identified as transgender and gender fluid.
Baetsen remembers the teacher’s reaction: “Just come to me at the beginning of class and let me know what name and pronouns you want to go by for that day.” It was better than Baetsen expected — not only acceptance but someone who was able to “wrap their head around my situation.” ... read full article
US - Schooling the Washington Post (and Others) on School Policy
What few in the media understand about secret social transition
From BROADVIEW with Lisa Selin Davis (USA)
By Lisa Selin Davis
July 18, 2022
Today, the Washington Post reported on controversies around schools secretly socially transitioning kids who identify as transgender, using the child’s chosen name in school and their given, legal name with parents, to keep them in the dark.
The reason for this secrecy is “to avoid outing kids who could be in harm’s way at home or aren’t ready to tell their parents,” they write. A young person who told a teacher six months before coming out to his parents says, “You fear the worst.”
... read full article
US - California school board weighs Planned Parenthood clinic on high school campus
'The Norwalk-La Mirada school board should be ashamed,' parents' rights group says
From Fox News (USA)
By Jessica Chasmar
July 18, 2022
A southern California school board will consider an agreement Monday for Planned Parenthood Los Angeles to open a clinic at a local high school.
The seven-member school board of the Norwalk-LaMirada Unified School District will vote during a meeting Monday evening on allowing Planned Parenthood to open and operate a clinic for reproductive health care at John Glenn High School in Norwalk. ... read full article
US - An Attempt to Accurately Explain the Viral Controversy Over the Leon County, Florida School System’s Policy on Trans Kids
Progressives have a problem with online outrage and panic, and it makes already-complex policy discussions even more fraught
From Singal-Minded (USA)
By Jesse Singal
July 18, 2022
A couple weeks ago there was a mass Twitter panic about the Leon County, Florida school system. In a now-deleted tweet (I’ll explain), an actor and TV writer named Benjamin Siemon wrote: “This school board in FL voted that if an LGBTQ child is in a P.E. class or attending an overnight trip that ALL the parents in their class will receive a notification about it, which essentially paints these children as sex offenders that require warnings.” ... read full article
US - Biden's Title IX protections for transgender students on ice after court victory for Republican AGs
From Washington Examiner (USA)
By Kaelan Deese
July 18, 2022
President Joe Biden 's measures for protecting transgender students are on hold after a federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked enforcement of the Education Department's Title IX guidance.
Judge Charles Atchley for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee temporarily blocked the enforcement of two directives by the administration that aimed to protect LGBT people in schools and workplaces from discrimination. ... read full article
US - Vast Majority of Texas Republicans Agree Modifying a Child’s Gender Is ‘Child Abuse’
From Breitbart (USA)
By Hannah Bleau
July 18, 2022
An overwhelming majority of Texas Republican voters believe modifying a child’s gender is, in fact, child abuse, a CWSResearch/DefendTXLiberty survey found.
The survey detailed how it is “currently legal” for a doctor in the Lone Star State to “chemically castrate a child through prescription drugs or to surgically alter their anatomy to allow them to appear more like the opposite sex.” ... read full article
US - Why did the ACLU push for gender self-ID in prisons?
A change in prison policy towards trans inmates had a predictable result
From The Post by UnHerd (UK)
By Mary Harrington
July 18, 2022
News that a women’s prison in New Jersey has recently moved a transgender prisoner to a male facility after impregnating two females highlights a grim fact: that the movement we once knew as the Left has been colonised by an elite campaign to abolish material reality to the detriment of everyone else.
Demi Minor, a male serving 30 years for manslaughter, was housed in a women’s prison. This followed prison policy changes resulting from a court case pursued by the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of a transgender prisoner who sued the New Jersey prison system in 2019 for being refused the right to be moved to a women’s prison. ... read full article
US - Yes, Things Are Really as Bad as You've Heard
A Leftist Schoolteacher Struggles to Say Aloud the Things He Regularly Witnesses That Are So Outlandish They Sound Made Up by Right-Wing Provocateurs
From Year Zero (USA)
By Wesley Yang
July 18, 2022
The summer program where I'm currently teaching enrolls about seventy students between the ages of six and twelve. Classes are technically open to any child in the district, but only a few parents actually sign their children up themselves; instead, the vast majority of kids are registered for the program by a teacher who was concerned with their academic performance the previous year. Parents can choose to accept or reject the enrollment, but the acceptance rate is something like 90% – it's free, after all, and plenty of these parents are already looking for a safe place to send their children while they work during the day. ... read full article
US - Gender activists push to bar anthropologists from identifying human remains as ‘male’ or ‘female’
From The College Fix (USA)
By CHRISTIAN SCHNEIDER
July 18, 2022
As soon as ancient human remains are excavated, archaeologists begin the work of determining a number of traits about the individual, including age, race and gender.
But a new school of thought within archaeology is pushing scientists to think twice about assigning gender to ancient human remains. ... read full article
US - Chevrolet partners with LGBTQ group pushing gender identity indoctrination in schools
"With this latest LGBTQ+ focused partnership, we are building on that history and reinforcing Chevy’s commitment to driving substantive cultural progress."
From The Post Millennial (USA)
By Christina Buttons
July 18, 2022
General Motors' Chevrolet brand has entered a partnership with GLSEN, an advocacy group that pushes gender ideology in K-12 education both in the US and worldwide. Chevy joins the ranks of other mega-brands like Disney and Target, incorporating lucrative social justice initiatives into national marketing campaigns.
Chevrolet and media company Q.Digital are creating a new "series of documentaries and in-depth articles around leading LGBTQ issues," as part of a content series called "Authentic Voices of Pride." The video series will include the topics LGBTQ Families, Drag as Activism, Inclusion in Sports, Youth Homelessness, and Justice Reform.
... read full article
US - The Left started a culture war over pronouns, not the Right
From Washington Examiner (USA)
By Zachary Faria
July 18, 2022
Elizabeth Spiers, the founding editor of Gawker and a New York Times opinion contributor, thinks conservative white men care more about pronouns than transgender people or liberals.
Don’t laugh. She really means it.
Spiers’s remarks come after Fareed Zakaria declared that Democrats need to become the party of building things, which is “a lot more important to most Americans than using the right pronouns.” Zakaria, who is neither conservative nor white, received backlash for this statement from various left-wing figures, including Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
The backlash was so great, in fact, that the Washington Post altered the headline of Zakaria’s piece to remove the mention of pronouns. ... read full article
US - Summer camp, where teens rule (and so does their gender religion)
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
July 18, 2022
Ah, Summer Camp, that grand American tradition, where kids and teens go for anywhere from 1 week to 2 glorious months of escape from parents, school pressure, and star-crossed teen romance. Where they revel in newfound independence, canoe racing, hikes, stargazing, creepy campfire tales, and games of Mafia, and bond in shared disgust over communal bathrooms, spiders and mice, and unidentifiable food objects. ... read full article
US - Consortium on Female Sport Demand NCAA and Penn Withdraw Name of Lia Thomas For NCAA Woman of the Year Award
From Swimming World (USA)
By John Lohn
July 18, 2022
The Consortium on Female Sport, which is an international campaign group that advocates for the preservation of the female sports category, has released a statement calling for the NCAA and the University of Pennsylvania to withdraw the nomination of Lia Thomas for the NCAA Woman of the Year Award.
Last week, the NCAA released the names of the athletes who were nominated for the prestigious award, and Thomas’ name was included on the list. Thomas is the transgender woman who spent three years as a member of the men’s program at Penn before transitioning and competing during the 2021-22 campaign for the Quakers’ women’s squad. Thomas advanced to three finals at the NCAA Championships and captured the title in the 500-yard freestyle. ... read full article
US - ‘Women don’t matter’: Former college athletes slam Lia Thomas’s NCAA nomination
From Washington Examiner (USA)
By HEATHER HAMILTON
July 18, 2022
Former female college athletes blasted the University of Pennsylvania’s nomination of transgender athlete Lia Thomas for the NCAA Woman of the Year award.
“The message all year long from Penn, honestly, the Ivy League, and the NCAA has just been that women don’t matter,” said Kim Jones, a former All-American tennis player and the mother of a daughter who competed against Thomas. “They’re not worthy of receiving access to fair competition. They’re not even worthy of dignity and comfort in their locker rooms. This nomination is just the embodiment of that message.” ... read full article
US - Lia Thomas and the threat to women’s sports
The male-bodied swimmer has just been nominated for ‘Woman of the Year’.
From Spiked (UK)
By James Esses
July 19, 2022
2022 marks the 50th anniversary of Title IX in the US. This federal civil-rights law prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education programme that receives funding from the federal government.
Title IX has played an especially important role in the development of women’s sports. So it is no surprise to see university sporting bodies celebrating the anniversary. One such body is the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which regulates school, college and university athletics. ... read full article
UK - Why women don’t trust Penny Mordaunt
She is not being honest about her record
From The Critic (UK)
By Stephanie Davies-Arai
July 18, 2022
In her bid to be prime minister, Penny Mordaunt has attempted to rewrite history on the issue of her views on gender. For those of us who have been campaigning for women’s voices to be to be heard in this debate since 2015 as I have, her recent claims ring very hollow. Aside from her assertion that she has never supported self-ID, it was this claim in particular that drew my attention:
During my tenure at @GEOgovuk I challenged the trans orthodoxy with real and genuine concern, especially the volume girls referred into trans services. I set up this Inquiry. pic.twitter.com/N70xTD2TDl ... read full article
UK - Why feminists like me are backing Badenoch
Unlike her rivals, Kemi is clear on the issue of women's rights
From The Spectator (UK)
By Raquel Rosario Sánchez
July 18, 2022
Kemi Badenoch is the surprise candidate in the Tory leadership contest. Badenoch was, until a few weeks ago, a relatively lowly minister in Boris Johnson's government. Now she stands a credible chance of becoming the next prime minister. Her success in facing down her Conservative rivals has catapulted her into the limelight. But for feminists like me who campaign for sex-based rights her impact on the leadership contest isn't entirely unexpected.
Why? Because unlike her rivals like Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, Badenoch knows the answer to a simple question: what is a woman? Of all the candidates, her support of sex-based rights, including single-sex spaces and services, makes her stand out in a field of contenders who have dithered and hesitated on this increasingly toxic policy issue. ... read full article
UK - London’s ‘Eunuch-Maker’ Was A Queer Activist in Leading ‘Gender Diversity’ Organization
From REDUXX (USA)
By Genevieve Gluck
July 18, 2022
A man who came to international attention after being arrested for performing dozens of fetishistic castrations out of his home in North London can be revealed as a Norwegian activist affiliated with a powerful ‘Queer’ lobby group.
Marius Gustavson, 44, was arrested along with six other men in February. Shortly after his arrest, he told The Independent in an interview that had undergone an amateur orchiectomy himself and carried the operation out on 58 other men. He stated that he had his own genitals surgically removed because he wanted to “look like a Ken doll with nothing down there.” ... read full article
UK - Do the Tories care about women?
They don't understand the impact of gender law reform
From UnHerd (UK)
By Kathleen Stock
July 19, 2022
In Orwell’s 1984, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Last week, came the discovery, surprising to many, that Tory leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt has always been at war with self-ID. This is the policy — first promoted by the Tories at the behest of Stonewall — that would make declarations of inner gender identity the only relevant administrative criterion for gaining a Gender Recognition Certificate, in order to legally change one’s sex. The applicant would be freed from the existing requirement of a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or of any other practical constraint over and above self-declaration. In recent days, Mordaunt told the Telegraph “I’ve never been in favour of self-ID. I mean, I just, I haven’t. That’s the fact.” ... read full article
UK - We dismiss the culture war at our peril
Unless we win the culture war, society will never meet the needs of ordinary people.
From Spiked (UK)
By Frank Furedi
July 18, 2022
Time and again, media commentators insist that the culture wars are a distraction from the big issues of our time, such as the cost-of-living crisis. They often argue that ordinary people do not care about cancel culture or arguments over trans rights. Many suggest that the only people who care about the culture wars are Tory mischief makers, trying to deflect attention from the economic mess that they have created.
A recent essay by Henry Mance in the Financial Times claims that battles over identity politics feel ‘contrived compared with the cost-of-living squeeze’. He also argues that ‘economic identities have come to the fore again’. ... read full article
Thank you for providing this roundup! Lots of important stories I did not come across.