Sunday, July 31, 2022
Happy Birthday, Joanne! You are our Queen! (It's also the birthday of her character Harry Potter himself, who (as any sentient being knows) discovered on his 11th birthday that he is a wizard.)
This day in Herstory: Joanne Rowling CH OBE FRSL, born July 31, 1965, better known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author and philanthropist. She wrote Harry Potter, a seven-volume children's fantasy series published from 1997 to 2007. The series has sold over 500 million copies, been translated into at least 70 languages, and spawned a global media franchise including films and video games. The Casual Vacancy (2012) was her first novel for adults. She writes Cormoran Strike, an ongoing crime fiction series, as Robert Galbraith. (more)
Today is the birthday of a heroine as brave and brilliant as any of her immortal characters: J. K. Rowling. It's also the birthday of her character Harry Potter himself, who (as any sentient being knows) discovered on his 11th birthday that he is a wizard.
We at GC News salute the GC Queen, JK Rowling, for her ongoing work to fight for children, for women's sex-based rights, and for gay and lesbian people. We deeply appreciate her support for all of us in the trenches, and for many other heroines in our fight: especially Maya Forstater and Allison Bailey, both of whom had recent and significant wins in the fight against He Who Must Not Be Named.
Here is Rowling's 2020 essay, an evergreen and seminal statement of GC views. Re-read it or read it for the first time. Our Queen says it best:
J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues
From J. K. Rowling - official website (UK)
By J. K. Rowling
June 10, 2020
This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.
For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.
My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.
All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began. ... read full essay
US - Europe Steps Back From ‘Trans Rights’ Agenda for Children
In America anyone questioning or raising concerns about non-medically necessary procedures as radical as double mastectomies for female adolescents is called a ‘transphobe.’
From The New York Sun (USA)
By Maud Maron
July 31, 2022
The National Health Service of England just announced that the infamous Tavistock clinic, which promotes the transition of children under the gender-affirming model, is going to be shut down and replaced with regional centers at children’s hospitals that take a therapy-first approach.
This follows similar decisions in Sweden and Finland implemented after exhaustive research found low benefits associated with high-risk medical transitions in children.
Unfortunately, this is the opposite of what we see in the United States, as gender-affirming clinics continue to proliferate and politicians double down on the flawed and dangerous gender-affirming model. ... read full article
US - Critics fear HHS rule will encroach on doctors' judgment for transgender procedures
From Washington Examiner (USA)
By CASSIDY MORRISON
July 31, 2022
The Biden administration’s move to add gender identity as a protected category to anti-discrimination rules in healthcare has prompted concerns that physicians will be subject to government pressure to administer gender transition care despite their own medical judgment.
The Department of Health and Human Services issued a new proposed rule this week to revise anti-discrimination guidelines for every health entity that receives financial assistance directly or indirectly through HHS, which can include state or local health agencies, hospitals, health insurers, physician’s practices, pharmacies, and nursing facilities. The new proposed rule would return to the 2016 version's definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity and sexual orientation. The Trump administration had rewritten the 2016 rule to exclude protections for transgender people, considering only biological sex, not gender identity. ... read full article
US - Trans Serial Killer Who Targeted Women Was Granted Entry to Women’s Shelter, Used Photos of Victim on Facebook
From REDUXX (USA)
By Genevieve Gluck
July 31, 2022
A transgender serial killer with prior convictions for the murders of two women was granted access to a homeless shelter for women, where he reportedly was interacting with his third victim.
Harvey Marcelin, 84, who identifies as a transgender lesbian and uses the name Marceline Harvey, was arrested on March 4 for the murder of Susan Leyden, 68. Leyden, a former jewelry designer from New Jersey, was a resident of the Sage Center at Stonewall House, an LGBTQ residence in Brooklyn that also houses homeless seniors. ... read full article
US - A Crucial Court Case Exposes the Darkness of America’s Worst Industry
Remember the name Serena Fleites—a survivor who has become a hero.
From The Dispatch (USA)
By David French
July 31, 2022
Let me begin with a warning. This newsletter will contain terrible content. It describes a court case that features truly dreadful facts about the porn industry. But it’s important to share. It’s important to understand the reality. And it’s important to understand the character of some of the industry players who stream pornography onto the smart phones and computer screens of tens of millions of Americans—damaging minds, breaking hearts, and destroying lives.
The case is called Serena Fleites v. MindGeek, and on Friday a federal district court judge named Cormac Carney wrote an opinion that should send a shudder throughout the entire pornography industry. Fleites sued MindGeek, the company that owns Pornhub.com, one of the world’s most-visited websites (3.5 billion visits a month in 2019), and she sued Visa, the company that enables Pornhub to monetize its content. ... read full article
UK - Fall of the Tavistock
A once influential gender clinic goes from scandal to closure
From Gender Clinic News (Australia)
By Bernard Lane
July 31, 2022
The world’s largest youth gender clinic, the stand-alone U.K. Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), is to be shut down and replaced by regional centres more safely anchored in the mainstream mental health system.
The aim is to cope with skyrocketing demand from children and teenagers while making sure that “gender-affirming” groupthink does not lead clinicians to ignore non-gender causes of distress such as psychiatric problems, same-sex attraction, autism or family trauma. ... read full article
UK - Don’t buy the Stonewall line on gender identity? Fine. You can’t be sacked for that now
Recent court rulings vindicate a woman’s right to believe that biological sex matters
From The Guardian (UK)
By Sonia Sodha
July 31, 2022
You might think the last place to harbour unlawful discrimination would be a barristers’ chambers that prides itself on “defending human rights and upholding the rule of law”. But the employment tribunal last week found that Garden Court Chambers discriminated against and victimised its tenant Allison Bailey on account of her “gender critical” beliefs. ... read full article
UK - Now the Tavistock clinic is closing we must ask: where does the trans revolution end?
Trans people have always existed, but the radical ideology that drove this clinic was authoritarian
From The Telegraph (UK)
By TIM STANLEY
July 31, 2022
The day it was announced that the Tavistock clinic would close, Tom Daley marched into the Commonwealth Games with a pride flag bearing trans colours. If you wondered how it came to this, to kids being given puberty blockers on the NHS, the answer is that for nearly a decade the idea of gender non-conformity has been embedded into our culture, by celebs, doctors, TV, Tory ministers and even the odd bishop. And it is not, as the feminists would have you believe, a wrong-turn in liberalism from which we can now easily reverse – it is the direction of travel.
Trans-ideology is the inevitable culmination of the 1960s cultural revolution. Conservatives warned you this is where it would end; you ignored them; et voila.
For the record, trans people exist. I’ve known many, and surveys of history and anthropology reveal they’ve always been and in all places. The number one country for gender realignment surgery is Thailand. Number two? Iran. ... read full article
UK - The creation of the trans child
Cheap mysticism posing as care
From The Critic (UK)
By Debbie Hayton
August 1, 2022
Gender identity ideology has had a profound impact on western society. The concept of an innate and immutable gendered essence — like a gendered soul, perhaps? — has displaced the reality of biological sex in law and policy, even compromising the meaning of words as basic as man and woman.
It is now two years since an exasperated JK Rowling announced, “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” Maybe in 2022, some sense is being restored? After a three year battle, Maya Forstater established the right to tell the truth, “A man’s internal feeling that he is a woman has no basis in material reality”, and not get sacked the next day. Meanwhile sporting governing bodies are finding the gumption to reserve women’s sport for human females. ... read full article
UK - Call drag queens ‘pantomime dames’ to fool protestors, librarians told
Council librarians attend training in how to handle conflicts with parents over children’s story hours hosted by drag queens
From The Telegraph (UK)
By Sophie Atherton and Ewan Somerville
July 30, 2022
Drag queens should be called “pantomime dames” to fool protesters, council librarians have been urged in a crisis meeting amid embattled “story-hour” sessions for children.
More than 100 librarians attended the training earlier this month in how to handle the fierce row with parents over a country-wide summer tour by Drag Queen Story Hour UK (DQSH). ... read full article
UK - Labour Party urged to take gender stance by elections chief Shabana Mahmood
From The Times (UK)
By Geraldine Scott
August 1, 2022
Labour will not win by “playing it safe” on transgender issues, the party’s elections chief has said.
Shabana Mahmood, Labour’s national campaigns co-ordinator, said the issue was a prime example of where the party needed to take more risks and admit there was a clash between the rights of transgender people and women who want single-sex spaces. ... read full article
UK - BBC ‘disappearing women’ as gender quota filled by trans guests who self-identify
Corporation’s 50:50 equality project fails to ‘monitor whether a contributor’s gender differs from their sex registered at birth’
From The Telegraph (UK)
By Ewan Somerville
July 30, 2022
The BBC is “disappearing women” by allowing a 50-50 quota for programme guests to be filled by those who self-identify as female, The Telegraph can reveal.
The 50:50 equality project was founded in 2017 by Ros Atkins, the BBC News presenter, and heavily promoted on the corporation's website to empower women.
… read full article
UK - Tranocity:
A seriously abridged version of my journey through trans madness
From Julie Bindel's podcasts and writing (UK)
By Julie Bindel
July 31, 2022
This story begins, for me, in 2003. I noticed a small report in a tabloid newspaper about a teacher who had left her primary school as ‘Miss’ and was returning the following term as ‘Mr’, having gone through sex reassignment surgery. I decided to write a feature on the madness of the diagnosis of transsexuality, and how misogynistic psychiatrists in the 1950s had come up with the notion of being "trapped in the wrong body". ... read full article
UK - A Genealogy of Gender Identity - The Issue of Definitions
Part II
From Gender Dissident (UK)
By Alessandra Asteriti
July 31, 2022
I closed the last piece saying that the issue of definition made discussing gender identity as a legal artefact is especially fraught as legal definitions serve to exclude and contain the application of the law. Gender ideology resists this normative function of the law, as it is predicated upon self-identification. It is banal to note that no legal rule that confers positive rights can accept self-identification as the basis for conferral.
Simply put (and somewhat simplistically, from a legal theory perspective), positive rights are rights that comport positive duties from the State (in a legal setting), therefore that put the State under a duty to act, as opposed to negative rights, which prohibit the State from acting, or better, interfering. The right to privacy, or as Judge Brandeis defined it, the ‘right to be let alone’, is a classic negative right (Brandeis). The right to education is a classic positive right, because it requires the State to provide the resources for schools, teachers etc. ... read full article
UK - A roar for women’s rights
The Lionesses’ victory is a reminder of why we must defend women’s sport.
From Spiked (UK)
By Brendan O’Neill
July 31, 2022
So it’s come home, at last. The men couldn’t do it, but the women did. In front of a packed-out Wembley Stadium of 90,000 spectators, and millions of viewers across the land, the Lionesses have won Euro 2022. They beat Germany 2-1. This is something really worth celebrating – England’s first major football trophy since 1966, when the men’s team also beat Germany, and also at Wembley. It is exactly what the doctor ordered for our otherwise troubled nation: a moment of pure sporting joy. Who could fail to be moved by the sight of these brilliant footballers celebrating their victory as heaving crowds of fans sang ‘It’s coming home, it’s coming home…’? ‘I’m buzzing me head off!’, screamed goalscorer Ella Toone after the match, and we all know how she feels. ... read full article
Scotland - Tavistock scandal: Calls for Scottish Sandyford service to close
For Women Scotland wants the use of puberty blockers for teenagers in Scotland to be examined
From The Sunday Times (UK)
By John Boothman
July 31, 2022
Campaigners are appealing to the NHS to recall all former patients of a Scottish gender identification clinic for young people as part of a review.
The calls in relation to Glasgow’s Sandyford service come after it emerged that England’s Tavistock clinic, which led the way in prescribing puberty blockers to children who questioned their gender, is being shut down. ... read full article
Scotland - Critics of gender self-ID face bar from Yes campaign under code of conduct plan
From The Herald (Scotland)
By Kathleen Nutt
July 31, 2022
ANYONE holding the belief a person cannot change the sex they were born as faces being barred from the official independence campaign, according to a motion being considered for debate at the SNP's annual conference.
The resolution seeks to ensure there is a tolerant and inclusive debate and campaign ahead of the referendum planned for October next year but concerns have been raised that it could excluding some groups of feminists should it be passed. ... read full article
Scotland - SNP denies trying to silence feminists in transphobia row
Code would marginalise people who believe that biological sex is immutable, says Joanna Cherry
From The Times (UK)
By Mark Smith
July 31, 2022
The SNP’s president has denied that a new code of conduct could bar gender-critical feminists from the Scottish independence campaign after one of the party’s senior MPs warned that such a move would be “discriminatory and unlawful”.
The rules are being considered for debate at the SNP’s annual conference and would require everyone in the Yes movement to take a “zero-tolerance approach to discrimination” which specifically includes transphobia. ... read full article
Germany - All eyes on Marie-Luise Vollbrecht
From The Glinner Update (UK)
July 31, 2022
Dear scientists worldwide, dear twitterers and sisters.
A "quarrel" has been simmering in Germany for weeks between trans activists and a doctoral student of biology at Humboldt University in Berlin, Ms. Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, who was supposed to give a lecture on bisexuality in sea anemones, among other things, at an event for families, the "Long Night of Science"
The lecture was canceled after trans-activist protests. ... read full article