Saturday, Feb. 19 and Sunday Feb. 20
Current news and opinion from a Gender Critical perspective
This day in Herstory: The Feminine Mystique, published on February 19, 1963, is a book by Betty Friedan, widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States. The Feminine Mystique became a bestseller, initially selling over a million copies. Friedan used the book to challenge the widely shared belief that "fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949—the housewife-mother." (more)
By Any Other Name
The story of my transition and detransition.
From prude posting (USA)
By Helena
Feb 19, 2022
My name is Helena, and as of this writing I’m a 23-year-old woman who, as a teenager, believed I was transgender. In the years since detransitioning (stopping testosterone treatment and no longer seeing myself as transgender), I’ve become interested in exploring why, in the last decade, nearly every English-speaking country has seen a meteoric rise in adolescents believing they are transgender and pursuing cosmetic medical and surgical interventions. Here, I’d like to go over how and why I came to see myself as transgender, the process of transitioning, and the events leading up to and following my detransition.
The short version of my detransition story for those who want the bare details is that when I was fifteen, I was introduced to gender ideology on Tumblr and began to call myself nonbinary. Over the next few years, I would continue to go deeper and deeper down the trans identity rabbit hole, and by the time I was eighteen, I saw myself as a “trans man”, otherwise known as “FtM”. Shortly after my eighteenth birthday, I made an appointment at a Planned Parenthood to begin a testosterone regimen. At my first appointment, I was prescribed testosterone, and I would remain on this regimen for a year and a half. It had an extremely negative effect on my mental health, and I finally admitted what a disaster it had been when I was 19, sometime around February or March 2018. When the disillusionment fully set in, I stopped the testosterone treatment and began the process of getting my life back on track. It has not been easy, and the whole experience seriously derailed my life in ways I could never have foreseen when I was that fifteen-year-old kid playing with pronouns on Tumblr.
But what leads a girl with no history of discomfort with stereotypical “girl” toys and clothes, or even the slightest desire to be a boy in childhood, to want to be a “man” through hormonal injections as she approached adulthood? In a vacuum, such a profound confusion leading to such drastic measures sounds like it should be rare and a sign of some sort of severe mental disturbance. Was I a fluke? Was I some kind of idiot who mistakenly believed I was trans because I’m crazy or just downright irresponsible? … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to prude posting)
A Twitter Thread
By Jennifer Peasmugglasaurus 💚🤍💜@eyre_ann
Feb 20, 2022
We know the trans lobby latched onto @jk_rowling because she reached more people with her wonderful writing than any artist in modern history. The hearts and minds of generations were won and capitalist think tanks set upon Rowling’s good-hearted legacy with insidious intent.1/
The gender industry’s goal was to warp minds and damage bodies for profit while ensuring protest would be efficiently stifled. The New York Times is doing its part in the process. @nytimes has always manufactured consent for the capitalist machine and continues to do so. 2/
Despite this well-entrenched, calculating monster, those seeking to protect from its harm are making progress. The recent conversations around Penn Swimming haven’t been as contained as the machine would’ve liked. Their greedy arrogance is getting serious mainstream push back.3/
If we and the marvellous J.K. Rowling were not making an impact, that truly contemptible NYT stunt piece would not have happened. These pernicious organisations are flailing. More and more people are waking up. The damage done so far is becoming impossible to ignore. 4/
We will keep fighting and knock the mercenary spin that’s deluded so many off its axis. Rags like @nytimes will be shunted into well-deserved obscurity. We will prevail. We will stop this disgusting capitalist beast. We will heal and repair ourselves and our young people. 5/
The EHRC is here to support the rights of all – whatever anyone says to the contrary
My commission is accused of shifting its approach to equality but this is far from the truth
From The Guardian (UK)
By Kishwer Falkner
Feb 20, 2022
It is 15 years since the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the independent body charged with protecting and promoting equality and human rights for everyone in Britain, came into being. We regulate and enforce human rights and equality laws and advance rights through carefully considered recommendations for reform. While we have made significant progress over the past 15 years, there will always be more to do.
We have many and varied stakeholders – knowledgeable and effective advocates in encouraging and challenging us to address the equality and human rights issues about which they care deeply. Our relationships with civic organisations, campaigners and those they represent are vitally important in helping to inform our thinking and our priorities. But with our vast remit and so many people and groups advocating on so many issues, it is inevitable that we can’t please all of them all of the time.
My position and integrity as the EHRC’s chair have come in for particular criticism by some stakeholders, who perceive that the commission has undergone a shift in its approach. I can’t speak for how the previous chair ran things, but I can say that what matters to me, to the board and our new chief executive is that we are determined to uphold our independence, impartiality, evidence-based decision-making and to resist undue influence from any quarter. … read full article
Activists pursue academics who want university to cut Stonewall ties
From The Times (UK)
By Sian Griffiths
Feb 20, 2022
Academics at Cardiff University who signed a letter raising concerns about freedom of speech in relation to transgender rights have had their names and photos circulated on leaflets branding them “transphobic” and featuring a cartoon of a woman holding a gun.
The group of 16 had called on the university to consider severing its ties with a scheme run by the gay rights campaigning charity Stonewall. Stonewall has said that there should be “no debate” on some trans issues and has compared so-called “gender-critical” beliefs — the belief that it is not possible to change your biological sex — with antisemitism.
The academics said that while Stonewall was “entitled to campaign towards this end”, they felt it was “inappropriate that such a group should be embedded within the university, influencing policies which affect freedom of expression and expose dissenters to harassment”. … read full article
Non-binary biological male counselors allowed to sleep in fifth-grade girls' cabins at science camp
"Per California law, we place staff in cabins they identify with," the camp's assistant director said.
From Post Millennial (Canada)
By James Anthony
Feb 19, 2022
Parents of students at Weaver Elementary School in Los Alamitos, California, are upset with the Los Alamitos Unified School District after learning that non-binary biological male counselors were allowed to sleep in cabins with fifth-grade girls at a school-organized science camp in San Bernardino County, according to KTLA.
The parents allege that the young girls told them some of biological male counselors who use "they/them" pronouns at Camp Pali spent three nights on the school trip sleeping in cabins with the female children, the local outlet reported.
Another parent, Rachel Sandoval, said she contacted the school and asked if they're able to confirm that there was not a man sleeping in the same cabin as the young girls. School officials "were not able to confirm that," Sandoval stated. … read full article
‘Her penis’ and the dangers of trans doublethink
From Spiked (UK)
By Jo Bartosch
Feb 20, 2022
A fabulous example of doublethink was published this week. The Daily Record claimed a ‘Scot flashed her penis and used sex toy in public leaving onlookers shocked’. The pronoun ‘her’ was eventually removed from the headline, after much justified ridicule on social media.
But the details of the story are serious. A sex offender had been found to have ‘pleasured himself’ in view of an unwilling audience, including children. Witnesses agreed that the person they saw was ‘a male’, with one describing him as wearing ‘an ill-fitting black wig, a ra-ra skirt and a midriff-length top’.
The Glasgow-born male, who goes by the name of Chloe Thompson, has 17 convictions for 22 offences and was still under a suspended-sentence order at the time of this incident. In 2011, when he was known as Andrew McNab, he sexually assaulted an underage person and was put on the Sex Offenders Register. But today, thanks to the tireless work of transgender-lobby groups like Stonewall, the likes of Chloe, if sentenced to prison, could be incarcerated in a women’s prison. What could possibly go wrong? … read full article
Justice for Jen
From The War on Women (UK)
By Jennifer
20th February 2022
There will be a rally in Newport this week in support of Jennifer Swayne who was arrested for putting up feminist stickers. Further details on what happened to Jen can be found here.
#CanIReadThis
After Jennifer Swayne was arrested the police searched her home and removed stickers, posters and a book edited by academic Heather Brunskell-Evans. WRN Wales are sharing feminist books on social media with the hashtag #CanIReadThis to highlight the absurdity of this situation.
Call to action
The rally in support of Jen is at 1:30 pm, 24th February at Newport Police station.
Please amplify this story in any way you can. On social media use the hashtags #JusticeForJen and #WomenWillNotSubmit. Share your feminist books with #CanIReadThis and tag in @gwentpolice.
Dutch Sociologist Promoted Pedophilia, Bestiality Liberation
From REDUXX (USA)
By Genevieve Gluck
Feb 20, 2022
A widely-cited academic and former professor at the University of Amsterdam has written extensively in support of pedophilia, even once interviewing with a pro-pedophile rights organization during which he called children "sexy."
Gert Hekma, a Dutch sociologist and former professor in the fields of gender studies and sexuality, has a history of framing paraphilias such as pedophilia and bestiality as “sexual variations” rather than as forms of abuse.
Hekma has authored over 300 academic articles, largely in the fields of sexology and sociology. Among his publications are “Sexual Expression Best guarantee Against Exploitation: Children and Sexuality,” “Queering de Sade," and “Is Gay Sex OK for Boys?”
From 1984 until 2017, Hekma was an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he lectured students on the works of the Marquis de Sade, from whom the eponymic term “sadism” was derived. … read full article (and SUPPORT REDUXX!)
Diversity Mel, Pop ‘n’ Olly and the targeting of primary school children
From Transgender Trend (UK)
By Shelley Charlesworth
Feb 20, 2022
From Unicef, the global charity with a budget of over $7billion, to the single trader offering inclusive LGBT+ training, the same narratives and policies about ‘trans’ children are being spread in schools using resources which are in breach of government guidelines.
Diversity Mel, an LBGT+ training provider in Dorset, is representative of this circular exchange. It’s run by Mel Lane, a former primary school teacher who appears to be the only person on the books. Her website says that she has worked with 35 schools and 4000 pupils across the county.
Unicef’s Rights Respecting Schools Award
Her link to Unicef is as a Rights Respecting Schools Assessor. This award scheme is based on the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which schools sign up “to embed children’s human rights in their ethos and culture” after which they are a “Rights Respecting School.” The Articles in the Convention are universalist in language and do not mention sexual orientation or gender identity. Nearly 5000 schools are currently working towards becoming Rights Respecting.
As part of the scheme, Unicef has partnered with Stonewall’s School Champions scheme to produce a resource for schools which focuses on the inclusion of LGBT rights. The result is an unhappy marriage of Stonewall’s school policies which distort equalities legislation and the language of human rights. For example, Article 2 of the UN Convention, which says every child should be protected against discrimination, is re-interpreted in the Stonewall/Unicef resource as an instruction to ‘use gender-neutral language, replace head girl or boy with head student.’
This is a politicised reading of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Gender neutral policies in schools fail to consider girls and their rights as members of the female sex. In some situations, such as sports, treating girls and boys the same in effect discriminates against girls. When separate facilities are needed, girls need accurate language to describe and maintain their rights. They need to be able to talk about the girls’ teams and the girls’ achievements.
Article 16 states children have a right to privacy. But Stonewall/Unicef say this means providing gender neutral toilet facilities and sensitive changing spaces, again promoting privacy for just one group at the expense of other groups, who have rights based on sex or religion/belief. Gender neutral policies mean girls cannot claim the right to privacy for themselves. … read full article
Do Britons favour trans rights? The truth is most people self-identify as ‘don’t knows’
From The Times (UK)
By Sarah Ditum
Feb 20, 2022
What does the British public actually think about gender self-identification for trans people? Ask trans activists and you’ll get two wildly different answers. On the one hand, we’re told that this is a nation of anti-trans bigotry. The UK is referred to as “Terf (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) Island” by disapproving liberals — an embarrassingly retrograde motherland where people insist on saying “mother” and not “birthing parent”. Trans people, it is said, do not feel safe here.
Simultaneously, the same activists will claim that, for the average Briton, allowing people to legally define their own gender presents no concern at all. So we live in a country that is somehow both uniquely hostile and fundamentally welcoming to trans people. Incoherent as this position is, it makes a kind of rhetorical sense: it appeals to the ultimate victimhood of trans people, while simultaneously stigmatising critics of self-identification as unrepresentative.
Ask those critics what they think public opinion is and you’ll get yet another answer. They’ll tell you that, when it comes to penises in women’s prisons and strapping male athletes muscling into female sports, the populace is very much on Team Terf. People know what sex is and they understand that granting the right to legally change it at will opens up vast loopholes for the worst kinds of men to step through.
All this, though, is guesswork. And you can add to the mix that it might not even make sense to talk about the “British public” in this context: opinion is devolved and so is the legal framework, with the Conservatives at Westminster and the Scottish National Party at Holyrood striking out on divergent paths when it comes to reform of the Gender Recognition Act. … read full article (share token)
Why I stopped being a good girl
Women can no longer afford to sit out the gender wars
From UnHerd (UK)
By Hadley Freeman
Feb 20, 2022
I was always a good girl, by which I mean a people pleaser, because that is what being a good girl is. I enjoyed the benefits that such a personality brings (straight As at school, a close relationship with my parents, a decent job) and endured the usual downsides (teenage anorexia, frequent bouts of insomnia, lifelong anxiety). I had what a therapist later described as “total conflict avoidance”, which is a therapy way of saying I would rather eat my hair than argue with someone.
For example, when I was 10, I wore a Santa jumper to school. “You can’t wear Santa, you’re Jewish! Do you believe Jesus was born on Christmas?” a girl in my class said to me. I didn’t really know what she was talking about, but I knew what she wanted me to say, so I said it: “Yes, Jesus was born on Christmas.” She walked away, satisfied, and I felt a little like I’d given something away, but I was mainly relieved I’d avoided an argument.
And that’s how things continued for me, until 2014, when everything changed.
I was reading the New Yorker one evening and came across an article with the headline “What is a Woman?”. It was, according to the standfirst, about “the dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism”, a subject about which I knew nothing. I read it, vaguely interested in the social shift that meant being “transgender” no longer refers to someone who has undergone a sex change operation, but is now “how someone sees themselves”, as the writer Michelle Goldberg put it. This meant, Goldberg continued, that women-only spaces were increasingly changing to women-and-transwomen spaces, even if those transwomen still had male bodies — and to query this risked accusations of bigotry.
What really interested me was how quickly institutions were falling into line with this new ideology: venues cancelled talks if a radical feminist was on the bill; all-female bands pulled out of women-only festivals for fear of looking transphobic. How strange, I thought, that those with authority capitulate to the obviously misogynistic demands of a few extreme voices. Oh well, that’s just America — obviously it will never happen in the UK. … read full article