Monday, May 9, 2022
This day in Herstory: Elia Maria González-Álvarez y López-Chicheri, also known as Lilí Álvarez, born May 9, 1905 (died July 8, 1998), was a Spanish multi-sport competitor, an international tennis champion, an author, feminist and a journalist. Álvarez was a pioneer in women's tennis in Spain and was her country's most dominant player during the 1920s. (more)
Prominent Trans Activist Arrested on Charges of Sexually Abusing Teen Boy
From REDUXX (USA)
By Reduxx Team
May 9, 2022
A prominent trans activist whose harrowing story of gender identity discrimination was featured in The New York Times is facing 16 felony charges related to the sexual abuse and extortion of a teen boy.
Carlos Arturo Aparicio Hernandez, 36, was charged last week with aggravated sexual extortion and six counts of forcible sodomy as first-degree felonies, and three counts of forcible sexual abuse, enticing a minor, and five counts of sexual exploitation of a minor as second-degree felonies — all concerning the 2021 abuse of a teenage boy.
… read full article
Rape Crisis Centers Have Sold Out Feminism
As the "women's sector" moves further away from its radical feminist roots, rape victims suffer in the pursuit of funding
From 4W (USA)
By Josephine Bartosch
May 9, 2022
If the feminist movement could be said to have a home, it’s surely within the walls of each rape crisis center. Born of grassroots organizing in the 1970s and 80s, the idea of allowing survivors to open up about male violence in a women-only space was, and remains, a revolutionary idea. But today, the success of rape crisis centers is marked in outcome boxes ticked and measured by the funding secured. Many second-wave feminists who built the original centers have watched in horror as third sector professionals have moved in and attempted to sever the link with the women’s liberation movement. … read full article
Gender-affirming care ban goes into effect in Alabama
From The Hill (USA)
By Brooke Migdon
May 9, 2022
Story at a glance
An Alabama law criminalizing gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary minors went into effect Sunday. Under the law, doctors providing gender-affirming care to patients under the age of 19 may face up to a decade in prison.
The measure was signed into law last month by the state’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey and was immediately challenged in several lawsuits filed by affected families, doctors and LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations.
More than two dozen bills under consideration in state legislatures also aim to restrict access to gender-affirming health care. One other state — Arkansas — has passed legislation restricting access to gender-affirming care, but its enforcement was blocked by a federal judge in July.
An Alabama law criminalizing gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary minors went into effect Sunday, making it a felony — punishable by up to a decade in prison — for doctors in the state to provide or recommend puberty blockers, hormone therapies or other interventions to patients younger than 19 years old. … read full article
The Totalitarian Ego
From Twitter (a thread)
By Mia Ashton
May 9, 2022
When I first learned about the atrocity being committed in paediatric gender clinics, I imagined that when it finally came under scrutiny, the house of cards would collapse in an instant.
But now having witnessed people ignore Sweden & Finland halting paediatric transition, not bat an eyelid at the damning findings of England's Cass Review, and completely disregard the developments in certain US states, I realise people can ignore any truth no matter how obvious
The explanation for this is what psychologist Anthony Greenwald calls the totalitarian ego, which he says functions like a police state, suppressing incompatible evidence, no matter how strong and compelling, and locking away threatening ideas.
We all do this because we all cherish our core beliefs, and the more important the belief, the stronger this impulse is within us.
Surely there can be no one for whom this impulse is stronger than those who have supported paediatric medical transition.
If doctors providing gender-affirming care accept the findings of the Cass Review, they must accept that they've done terrible harm to so many children. That instead of being the saviours of "trans kids" they now see themselves as being, they'll go down in history as monsters.
The surgeons who've spent the past decade amputating the healthy body parts of young people must block out the mounting evidence that this is an internet-fuelled social contagion because to accept that as true means they must face up to the true horror of what they have done.
But worst of all are the parents who've transitioned their kids. For them the cost of accepting the truth is unimaginable. If there's no such thing as a trans child, only children in desperate need of help, then they've failed their child in the worst way imaginable.
So they cannot allow themselves to listen to us. We simply have to be wrong. We have to be bigots motivated by hate. Because the other option is too terrible to contemplate.
Of course, the reckoning is coming. The day that every one of these people has to face up to what they've done is rapidly approaching. But we can be sure they'll put it off for as long as is humanly possible, and while they do, this abominable medical crime will continue.
You Can't Be the Side of 'Women's Rights' If You Don't Know What a Woman Is
From Newsweek (USA)
By Colin Wright
May 8, 2022
The Republicans are poised for a massive red wave in the midterms which could carry on through to the next presidential election. With COVID panic winding down and the harsh economic reality of our response beginning to sink in, a full 50 percent of respondents to a new CNN poll said that "the economy" was their top concern, and Americans are not conflicted about who they blame; a recent Gallup poll showed that people believe the Biden administration's "poor leadership" ranked alongside inflation and the economy as one of the "most important problem[s] facing the country today."
This is the context in which to understand some of the recent cultural battles that the Democrats have been waging—as a naked attempt to excite the base. Faced with the impossible task of convincing voters that they will be an effective solution to the country's current economic woes, Democrats have been attempting to kindle performative outrage on a range of cultural issues, particularly those relating to the LGBT community.
The most successful campaign was the hyperbolic reaction to Florida's "Parental Rights in Education" bill, which called for greater curriculum transparency and prohibiting classroom discussion about sexuality and gender identity in kindergarten through 3rd grade. Perhaps noting that a majority of Florida Democrats supported the bill, Democrats opted to rebrand the bill as the "Don't Say Gay" bill to cast a popular bill as a form of homophobia. False claims of Republicans attacking transgender athletes and blocking necessary medical treatments for trans-identifying children have also been used as a rallying cry. … read full article
Barbie Kardashian Found Guilty Of Threatening to Rape, Murder Mother
From REDUXX (USA)
By Anna Slatz
May 9, 2022
A notorious Irish criminal is has been found guilty of threatening to sexually assault and murder his mother.
Barbie Kardashian, born Alejandro Gentile, had pleaded not guilty to the charges, which initially included 11 total counts of threatening to kill or cause serious harm to his mother and a care worker at Coovagh House, the secure facility for children he had been staying at since being remanded to special care in 2012. … read full article
Democrat strategist James Carville says Conservative justices are ending Roe v Wade because they know his party is too busy fighting over woke issues like 'veganism and pronouns'
Appearing on CNN's OutFront, Carville slammed his own party for getting caught in promoting woke policies while the GOP seizes on the opportunity
Roe v Wade is is over two-to-one in approval,' Carville told host Erin Burnett Thursday. 'And Alito and them [conservative Justices] said we don't care'
Carville said that outrage fueled by the leaked Supreme Court draft last week might not be sufficient to drive voters in Democrat's favor this November
He claimed that the ultra-liberal politics of much of the Democratic party have largely ignored the mainline of the US, which has led the GOP to become fearless
From Daily Mail (UK)
By ANDREA BLANCO
May 8, 2022
A leading Democrat strategist says his party's woke obsessions with 'veganism and pronouns' has emboldened the GOP to end federal abortion protections.
James Carville - a former advisor to the Clinton administration - said his party is now so in thrall to petty progressive obsessions that its left conservative Supreme Court justices with 'no fear' of ending Roe v Wade.
Appearing on CNN's OutFront, he said: 'Today they [Republicans] have no fear of Democrats, that's why they do this. You gotta' understand what a huge event this is in American politics ... Roe v Wade is is over two-to-one in approval,' Carville told host Erin Burnett Thursday. … read full article
Breastfeeding counsellors exit amid row over use of ‘mother’
From The Age (Australia)
By Wendy Tuohy
May 9, 2022
Five volunteer counsellors at Australia’s largest breastfeeding support group have left their roles after colleagues complained about social media posts that allegedly included “near obsessive use of the word mother”.
Seven long-term volunteers were investigated by the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) after allegedly repeatedly commenting on social media posts using terms such as “mother” or “breastfeeding” even if the original poster had used “parent” or other gender-neutral language. … read full article
Medical textbook strips gender dysphoria definition after being cited by Florida
Flordia's surgeon general slammed the move as 'political activism disguised as scientific advancement'
From Fox News (USA)
By Jon Brown
May 8, 2022
The world's bestselling medical textbook removed the definition of gender dysphoria from its website after the Florida Department of Health cited it in recent guidance advising against gender transitions for children and adolescents, according to an email obtained by Fox News Digital.
The email from Melissa Adams, who is Merck Manuals' director of marketing and brand awareness, also asked the Florida Department of Health to adjust their guidance based on the update in the manual, which was first published in 1899 and remains the oldest continuously published medical textbook in English. … read full article
Just don't bother
Never ever try to please these people by doing anything whatsoever that you were not already going to do for other, better reasons anyway
From Writing behavior by Eliza Mondegreen (Canada)
By Eliza Mondegreen
May 9, 2022
I’ve been catching up on Blocked and Reported and loved the Lindo Bacon episode, which includes what can be described as an outbreak of cannibalism in the fat-activist community over the 'cultural appropriation’ of the term 'fupa.' (Really.)
Anyway. The whole bunfight reinforces my belief that you should never ever apologize to people like this if you don't agree that you did something wrong and that you should never ever try to please them by doing anything whatsoever that you were not already going to do for other, better reasons anyway. … read full article
My autogynephilia story
We are fuelling the fantasies of impressionable children
From UnHerd (UK)
By Debbie Hayton
May 9, 2022
Autogynephilia — literally “to love oneself as a woman” — is controversial stuff. Men are not supposed to fancy themselves; at least they weren’t when I grew up in the Eighties. Back then, the idea that any of us might be “sexually aroused by the thought or image of our self as a girl” was unthinkable.
Kathleen Stock recently suggested in UnHerd that autogynephilia (AGP) was a motive for “some but not all within the male trans demographic” to immerse themselves in the fiction of changing sex. Ray Blanchard, the sexologist who coined the terminology, went further. Last year, he told me that “in the Western Hemisphere and English-speaking Commonwealth countries, the overwhelming majority of adult natal males presenting with gender dysphoria are of the autogynephilic type”. … read full article
As a Mother Fighting for My ROGD Kid, I Fear a Mental Breakdown
Parenting a child caught in ideological thinking, drastically changing social tones and manipulative language cast over the truth requires one to hold on tight to their sanity, with both hands.
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
May 9, 2022
Since my fourteen year old daughter has taken the path of trans-identification, I have walked, jogged and ran on a parallel path of my own, full of reading, research, podcasts, YouTube watching, information gathering, support seeking, hate receiving, attempted indoctrination, blatant dismissal as a parent and endlessly heedful conversation with my child. To say that this is stressful is a gross understatement.
To imply that peaked parents of otherwise ‘affirmed’, love-bombed and pedestalled kids might be having a hard time is an enormous underestimation. We are not okay! I am not okay but I have decided to take the hurt and anger, the disrespect and negation, and the insults and unjustified reprimand that I receive on a daily basis and use them to fuel the fire that will keep me pressing forward in my efforts to help derail this dangerously fast-moving train. … read full article
Pennsylvania school slammed for hiding kids' gender transitions from parents
Fishbein said parents need to be aware of what schools are teaching their children
From Fox News (USA)
By Taylor Penley
May 8, 2022
As activist gender rhetoric continues to plague U.S. public schools, one Pennsylvania middle school faces backlash after attempting to hide students' gender transition from parents and for simultaneously constructing an LGBTQ+ club for students to join.
Dr. Elana Fishbein, president of leading anti-critical race theory (CRT) and anti-gender activism group "No Left Turn in Education," is on a mission to "revive" American education by shutting out the divisive rhetoric behind CRT and gender ideology taking modern classrooms by storm. … read full article
Woman, 27, who had a mastectomy and took male hormones for six years is DE-TRANSITIONING back to being female after realizing being a man 'didn't represent who she is'
Alia Ismail, 27, from Michigan is de-transitioning back to female
At age of 18 she had realised she was not comfortable in body she was born in
She underwent surgery and went by male name Issa but now using Alia again
The 27-year-old realised being male identity Issa did not represent who she was
From Daily Mail (UK)
By OLIVIA DEVEREUX-EVANS
May 9, 2022
At the age of 18, one woman found that she was not comfortable in the body she was born in and began the journey of transitioning to male.
Now, after spending six years completing the process, Alia Ismail, 27, from Michigan, is de-transitioning back to female after realising that her new identity did not represent who she was. … read full article
The big idea: why we need to rewrite the history of female bodies
Centuries of prejudice have led to bad science, physical suffering and missed potential
From The Guardian (UK)
By Rachel E Gross
May 9, 2022
In the 17th century, ovaries got their modern name, which essentially means “place for eggs”. Before that, they were known only as female testicles, thought to be vestigial versions of male gonads that may or may not produce “female sperm”. A young Dutch anatomist, Regnier de Graaf, was the first to show that they actually made eggs, by dissecting just-mated rabbits. “Nature had her mind on the job when generating the female as well as when generating the male,” he wrote. … read full article