Sat., Feb. 26 and Sun., Feb. 27, 2022
Current news and opinion from a Gender Critical perspective
This day in Herstory: Sonia Ann Johnson, (née Harris), born February 27, 1936, is an American feminist activist and writer. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and in the late 1970s was publicly critical of the position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), of which she was a member, against the proposed amendment. She eventually was excommunicated from the church for her activities. She went on to publish several radical feminist books, ran for president in 1984, and become a popular feminist speaker. (more)
How the word ‘woman’ became taboo
From The Spectator (UK)
By Julie Burchill
Feb 27, 2022
When I was a little girl, my mum told me that I shouldn’t use the word ‘woman’ – but rather ‘lady.’ ‘Woman’ was just too visceral to her, whereas a ‘lady’ might well be a doll. But by adolescence my shoplifted copy of The Female Eunuch and Helen Reddy bawling ‘I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman!’ had reinforced by belief that my mother was wrong. I never dreamt that the w-word would be taboo again.
How could the word woman become so contentious that the stating of the dictionary definition – ‘Adult Human Female’ – could become a matter for the police? It started with Posie Parker, a disillusioned member of the Labour party member: ‘I left in 2016 – I had been asking online Labour groups this question: “Does my 11-year-old daughter have the right to use a female-only changing room and not see an adult penis?” and was told I was raising a pervert who stared at genitals and a transphobe. No one agreed that my daughter had the right. On the back of silence from the leaders, I knew my time in Labour had ended.’ In 2018 she hired a £700 billboard for the duration of Labour conference in Liverpool stating this biological fact. A doctor (I wonder how he did in biology?) complained that this was ‘transphobic’ and the billboard company capitulated.
This was the start of the thought-policing of women who dared claim their name. In 2019 Thames Valley Police announced that those responsible for reportedly slapping a few Adult Human Female stickers around in Oxford could be charged with a public order offence and appealed for witnesses. It’s interesting Thames Valley Police are so keen to chase ‘Hate Speech’ on the grounds that (following the half-witted trans-mantra) ‘Words are literal violence’ when the same police force vetted a man known fondly as ‘The Rapist’ by his colleagues – and who would go on to murder Sarah Everard. Words are only literal violence when women use them, apparently.
This w-word kerfuffle has continued for four years now, most insultingly in the NHS, where women have been called ‘cervix-havers’ and ‘chest-feeders’ rather than upset a tiny minority of men with body dysmorphia. (Would the NHS approve of believing anorexics when they say they’re fat? What’s the difference?) But interestingly, the word ‘man’ goes unchallenged. The current awareness campaign by Prostate Cancer UK unashamedly (and correctly) names ‘men’ repeatedly as its target audience; and when complaints piled in, the charity styled it out:
‘Thanks for your concern. We are of course aware that trans-women have prostates, however we want to reach as many at-risk individuals as possible and have chosen to use the word men to achieve this.’
It’s worth wondering why trans men don’t tend to kick off. Is it because trans women grew up with male privilege while trans men grew up socialised to be people pleasers? Interestingly – and one of the reasons why in my book Welcome To The Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics I define wokeness as a reactionary rather than a revolutionary movement – campaigns like #BeKind are aimed solely at females, who, looking at the crime statistics, aren’t logically the sex that needs to be nicer. … read full article
A childhood is not reversible
From Transgender Trend (UK)
Feb 27, 2022
Childhood social transition is portrayed as ‘kind’ and ‘affirming.’ But what are we setting a child up for when puberty hits, if we pretend they are the opposite sex for the best part of their childhood? A clinical psychologist, with over 15 years of experience of working with adults, children and families, explains the inevitable consequences.
It was when it happened the third time in a week that I started to really wonder. The parent would be telling me about their teenager, about their mental anguish, suicidal thoughts and self harm, and then they’d drop something in, so casually that I’d almost think I’d missed it, ‘Oh, and he’s a transboy (or girl), transitioned when he (or she) was five (or six or seven), but that’s all fine’. And with that, I knew I’d been warned off. Nothing to see here.
I’m a psychologist, my job is to explore, to look for meaning. I work with families and young people. I try to understand why people behave and feel the way they do and to share that understanding. I ask uncomfortable questions sometimes, particularly of parents, about how everyone’s behaviour in the family is inter-related and how children can sometimes show the distress for the whole family. Usually I’m curious about any big change in a child’s life. I’d ask, so how did that happen? What was going on about that time? How was that decision made?
Not with this though. I can’t really ask about their gender identity for fear of being seen as transphobic, and of being accused of practicing conversion therapy. I’m meant to celebrate their trans identity, use the preferred pronouns and definitely not ask any questions at all about what this might mean. I know what is expected of me.
These children’s stories started years before, and I know that because I saw some of it happening on Facebook. Distant Facebook friends would say things like “We’ve known for a while this day was coming. But today we took the plunge. The barber cut Joanna’s hair and we have thrown out her old clothes. We welcome Joseph to our family!’ accompanied by a picture of a beaming 4-year-old with short hair wearing a Spiderman t-shirt. So easy to do for a four-year-old. Cut or grow their hair and no one will know the difference, and anyone who raised any concerns would be told that it’s ‘Fully reversible, it’s just clothes and pronouns! No one is medically transitioning children! Stop the moral panic!’ … read full article
It would be a moral and medical disaster if Britain became a surrogacy centre
From The Guardian (UK)
‘Routine’ childbirth is dangerous. Let’s not add commodified women to the risk list
By Catherine Bennett
Feb 27, 2022
With its torrents of blood, animal howling, vagina hilarity and creepy relish in terms such as “cord prolapse”, “ovarian torsion”, “placental abruption”, the television adaptation of Adam Kay’s This Is Going to Hurt has not pleased everyone.
Yet if some of us were unlikely to enjoy pleasantries such as Kay’s “same shit, different vagina”, with others finding its scenes of chaotic maternity staff and mashed innards actively disturbing, you could also see this ugliness as a potentially helpful corrective to enduring, often officially encouraged myths about the desirability of all-natural deliveries. This tendency probably contributed to tragedies like those at first hushed up at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS trust. Only the intervention of bereaved mothers, as the BBC’s Panorama has reported, brought the hospital’s avoidable fatalities to light. The senior midwife, Donna Ockenden, who will soon publish her final report on the scandal, has previously told Panorama about the maternity unit’s pride in its low-intervention births. “Low caesarean section rates were a prize.”
Added to this, and to the many personal accounts that followed the NHS’s recent recognition – after it coerced countless women into compliance with its caesarian-avoidance targets – that “normal” childbirth can be deeply unsafe, unpredictable and terrifying, Kay’s misogynistic capers may even be well timed to educate another body of influential officials. The Law Commission would still prefer, judging by its proposals for facilitating surrogacy in the UK, to see childbirth as a routine if occasionally risky procedure after which, to the convenience of all involved, compliant female participants can be expected to emerge intact. You could easily take these lawyers for loyal students of the late childbirth guru, Sheila Kitzinger, with her mantra that pregnancy is not an illness, were it not that her related precepts on euphoric delivery might conflict with their own project for more numerous and efficient baby handovers. … read full article
Women don’t count in Scotland, but “biological sex” now validated in court
From Fair Play for Women (UK)
Feb 27, 2022
Last week we took our fight over the meaning of “sex” to the Scottish Appeal Court. We lost. As the dust settles, this blog discusses what the loss means, why we did what we did, and what next?
What has happened?
Sex doesn’t count in Scotland. The Scottish Census opens for returns next week, on Monday 28 February. The data collected for “sex” will now be based on self-ID. Some male people will be counted as female. Scotland will no longer collect clear and reliable data on sex for women and girls. Equality monitoring, and the ability of public bodies to fulfil their obligations to uphold fairness for all, will be seriously impeded. The data will be lost, never to be regained or disentangled later.
Individual ‘wants’ prioritised over the needs of others. The Scottish Courts attached little value to the Census and its link to Equality Monitoring. That link is undeniable: the Guidance accompanying the sex question states this in black and white. When told about this Lady Dorrian asked our QC what he meant by “equality monitoring”. This was the moment our battle was lost.
Why is this question asked? The sex question provides vital information for organisations on national and local population statistics, and for long term analysis, as it has been asked since 1801. This question is also used for equality monitoring.
The court was concerned with the convenience and feelings of the individual while remaining blind to the needs of others. Lord Malcolm focused on the long-term transsexual “who would be for all intents and purposes a woman”, known and regarded by everyone as such. Which box should she tick in the Census if she doesn’t have a GRC? Our QC answers “male”. The throwaway reply was “but what if she didn’t want to get a GRC?”. Here the priority of the court became clear. Despite a law existing for almost 20 years allowing such a person to change their lawful sex status, the judges are saying there is no need to bother with it. Self-identifying as a GRC holder is apparently enough. … read full article
UK: Primary School Had Drag Queen Dance for 9-Year-Olds
From REDUXX (USA)
Feb 27, 2022
A primary school in the UK is under fire after parents revealed a drag burlesque performer had been invited to dance for the children.
On February 22, Hollymount Primary School in South London hosted drag queen Dolly Trolley as part of its diversity themed week-long events. According to a Hollymount newsletter, Tuesday was intended to be "This is Me" day, during which students were encouraged to wear creative clothes that "show[ed] who they are."
There was no indication provided in the mailer that a drag queen would be coming to the school, and parents were apparently not advised. One mother told The Mail on Sunday that this was unusual as parents were normally provided advanced notice prior to a guest visiting the school.
"My daughter said she felt weird and didn't like it. She said a lot of the teachers were pulling funny faces when Dolly came out in a very revealing short beaded dress and thigh-high black leather boots," the mother said. … read full article (and SUPPORT REDUXX!)
Now pretend you're not pretending
From Writing Behavior (Canada)
By Eliza Mondegreen (republished with the author’s permission)
Feb 26, 2022
One of the threads that ties the new global empire of disembodiment together is all the pretending that goes on, including the expectation that women will pretend not to pretend.
Take prostitution. When men pay for sex, the women they buy sex from are supposed to act like they're not being paid. As Kajsa Ekis Ekman puts it: "The best prostitute, therefore, is the one who doesn't act like a prostitute but never forgets that she is one."
Or surrogacy, where we're supposed to pretend a baby can have three fathers but no mother.
When it comes to the expectations imported to our sex lives from hardcore pornography, young women are expected to pretend we enjoy being smacked around and abused by our partners (don't kink-shame!) and that we aren't terrified of being choked.
Or gender identity, where women are supposed to pretend that the mental health issues or fetishes that make men believe they're women (like getting erections in frilly panties) have anything to do with the things that make us women (being female). We're supposed to pretend that sex, which has always shaped women's lives, doesn't matter. And then we're supposed to pretend we're not pretending. We're supposed to really mean it or at least put on a convincing display of 'allyship.'
The Right to Be
From Holyrood (Scotland)
By Mandy Rhodes
Feb 27, 2022
It’s been a confusing time for sex. And that’s not me oversharing. But with the definitions of ‘sex’, ‘gender’ and indeed that of ‘woman’ itself now being battled out in court, we have only just traversed the outer edges of a toxic, but so far fringe, debate.
And as it has set us on a course for an argument fallaciously framed as being either pro- or anti-trans, we are about to see it get even more febrile as it breaks into the mainstream, with the Scottish Government making the case for the reform of the Gender Recognition Act.
For some of us, there has been a long and painful rehearsal to get to this point. Four years of deep introspection, emotional turmoil and complex argument that has already torn natural allies apart.
A time when invisible walls between longstanding contacts have been erected. When well-established relationships have become fractured. When reputations have been trashed, and livelihoods threatened.
When damaging and vexatious complaints have been made. When some of the most powerful legislators in the land have spoken behind closed doors but publicly failed to stand up for what they believed in or to defend those they should have stood squarely behind. A time of being ghosted by previously close contacts. And a time when you could start to feel a chill. … read full article