Sunday, March 20, 2022
This day in Herstory: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, born Rosetta Nubin on March 20, 1915 (died October 9, 1973), was an American singer and guitarist. She attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar that was extremely important to the origins of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians, including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. (more)
The Observer view on gender identity services for children
The Cass review’s interim report finds children with gender identity issues are ill-served by adults who shut down debate
From The Guardian (UK)
Observer editorial
March 20, 2022
Ideology has no place in medicine. An individual’s healthcare must not be influenced by a clinician’s biases. But an independent review has highlighted that the quality of care for children with gender dysphoria in England has been unconscionably compromised in recent years, partly as a result of adult affinities to an unevidenced worldview.
The review, led by the distinguished paediatrician and former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Dr Hilary Cass, has published its interim report. Its findings echo concerns already flagged by the courts, the Care Quality Commission, and, as the Observer has reported over the years, several NHS whistleblowers.
The report highlights a profound lack of evidence and medical consensus about the best approach to treating gender dysphoria in children. Yet the NHS’s specialist Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) takes a child’s expressed gender identity as the starting point for treatment. This “affirmative approach” leaves little space for exploration of the potential relationship between their dysphoria and neurodiversity or psychosocial needs, including those arising from childhood trauma or internalised hostility to same-sex attraction. GIDS has compounded this lack of evidence with its own failure to track patient outcomes. … read full article
Parole Decision Confirms Male Prisoner Was Violent Towards Incarcerated Women Continue reading Parole Decision Confirms Male Prisoner Was Violent Towards Incarcerated Women
From Women Are Human (Canada)
By Karen Finlay
March 20, 2022
Canada — Ottawa, Ontario. The Parole Board of Canada’s (PBC) January 2022 decision regarding Anngela Valentino confirms female prisoners’ reports of Valentino assaulting and/or threatening them while incarcerated at Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVI).
These allegations were first reported by Women Are Human in January 2021, after Heather Mason sounded the alarm on social media. Mason is a former Canadian federal prisoner at GVI and is now an advocate for women in prison.
I have been receiving a ridiculous amount of phone calls from women in Grand Valley Prison for Women in Kitchener, Ontario regarding Angela Valentino who was transferred there after they released Steve Mehlenbacher on bail for a sexual assault charge. Thread pic.twitter.com/mbeL3mxCyN — Heather Mason 🇨🇦 (@Mason134211f) January 4, 2021
The PBC report outlines Valentino’s extensive violent criminal past, with a release from prison history that “could be described as dismal”, due to “ongoing criminal activities” during periods of statutory release.
While the report does not specify the prison where Valentino was most recently housed, it notes that Valentino completed various women’s program while incarcerated, such as the Women Offender High Intensity Program (WO-HIP) – programs designed for female prisoners, and thus not available in men’s institutions. Valentino seems to have actively participated in WO-HIP while in class, a program that included only one other prisoner, though a facilitator notes Valentino did not use learned skills outside the classroom. … read full article (and DONATE to Women Are Human!)
Modern-day Suffragettes protest against SNP's 'anti-women' census in Edinburgh
Women have decorated the National Records of Scotland in purple, green and white ribbons and labels building in protest self-ID in the 2022 census.
From Scottish Daily Express (Scotland)
By Jessica North (@JessicaNorth_)
March 20, 2022
Women have gathered to protest Census Day 2022 by tying ribbons in the Suffrage colours and messages to railings outside the National Records of Scotland building in Edinburgh.
The controversial inclusion of self-ID in the official records of Scotland has sparked outrage amongst campaigners who say that in order to protect women's rights biological sex must be recorded rather than the sex someone identifies with.
Campaigners described the railings outside the building as the "Gates of Shame" and tweeted: "So many ribbons!"
It has also come to light that parents are able to choose a gender identity for children as young as two years old in a move that has been described as "plain crazy".
Among the tagged messages were assertions that biology cannot be changed, that the money spent on the once in a decade questionnaire has been wasted and some comic relief from women asking if they can identify as someone younger. … read full article
Inside the mental health epidemic among teenage girls
Our girls are struggling. How can we help?
From The New Statesman, UK Edition
By Rachel Kelly
March 20, 2022
Picture the scene: a school in west London. A wood-panelled hall, around 80 girls aged 14 to 15 assembled on tiered seating, a sea of ponytails, backpacks and tracksuit bottoms. How many of them have suffered from any kind of mental health problem, I ask, as part of a workshop I’m running on psychological wellbeing. Almost every hand shoots up.
It has been the same story whenever I have given talks at schools over the past two years as a mental health advocate and ambassador for several charities. Girls are struggling. It is young women who confide in me at the end of the workshops, when most of their male peers have left the room. They tell me that they suffer low self-esteem, feel that things are out of control, worry about their body image or are concerned about passing exams. Often they tell me that they haven’t been able to talk about any of these issues openly. … read full article (web page archive)
‘Transgender’ Suspect Charged With Hate Crime for Hammer Attack on Subway Platform
From Women Are Human (Canada)
By Diana Shaw
March 20, 2022
US — New York, New York. A 48-year-old with a history of 56 arrests has been charged in relation to a hammer attack on a Manhattan subway platform, which police are calling a hate crime. At arraignment, the suspect was additionally slapped with charges for stealing ice cream and beating up a store employee.
Chris Jeffers, who is male and identifies as a woman, is facing charges of Assault, Aggravated Harassment and Menacing, each of which has been enhanced as a hate crime, in addition to a Weapon Possession charge after a March 8 incident left a man with a deep cut to the head.
A 29-year-old and his friend headed home after a dinner in Chelsea. As the pair waited for a number two train at 14th Street and Seventh Avenue at 9:20 PM, “we saw the assailant come out from the turnstile,” he later told NBC New York.
“As he was coming out he bumped into another individual that was in front of us” and those two exchange heated words.
The suspect then walked in the victim’s direction. The victim moved to the side to avoid contact, he later told the press. … read full article (and DONATE to Women Are Human!)
How many more women will be sacrificed to trans ideology?
The NHS is in denial about the dangers of ‘trans inclusive’ wards.
From Spiked (UK)
By Jo Bartosch
March 20, 2022
There are times when ‘I told you so’ seems glib, when you don’t want to be proved right. What follows is one such example.
In August last year, I wrote for spiked about the need for single-sex hospital wards. I ended the piece with a question: ‘How many female patients will be placed in danger before the NHS realises that sex still matters?’ What I didn’t know when the piece was published was that there was already one woman who had been raped on a single-sex hospital ward. And to comply with NHS guidelines, her male attacker had been accommodated in line with his gender identity as a transwoman.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Baroness Nicholson told her peers in the House of Lords about the case. The police investigation was hampered, despite there being CCTV evidence and witnesses, because the NHS Trust argued that ‘there was no male in the hospital, therefore the rape could not have happened’. … read full article (and DONATE to Spiked!)
The Transgender Equality Network Ireland admits faults in accounts
From The Sunday Times (UK)
By Mark Tighe
March 20, 2022
The Transgender Equality Network Ireland (Teni) has accepted it was wrong for two of its directors, including the chairwoman, to receive almost €6,000 in consultancy fees for working on a publicly funded project without the transactions being declared in its annual accounts.
Records released under the Freedom of Information Act show that in 2017, Sara Phillips, Teni’s chairwoman, was paid just under €3,500 for consultancy work on a project funded by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC). Alex Lawson, a director, got just over €2,400 for consultancy work on the same project.
Teni, which supports transgender people and lobbies for them, has faced governance issues in recent years, and has consistently failed to file its accounts on time. The HSE, which has given it €1.24 million in grants over the past five years, has set a deadline of March 31 for Teni to file overdue accounts or it will seek to recoup its 2022 grants.
This weekend Lynne Tracey, interim joint chief executive, said Teni accepted that not declaring the consultancy fees paid to Phillips and Lawson in the accounts for 2017 was wrong. … read full article (share token)
Great Ormond Street cancels trainee doctor conference over trans ‘safety’ complaints
Zoom conference descended into chaos as trans activists refused to appear alongside gender-critical speakers
From The Telegraph (UK)
By Ewan Somerville
March 19, 2022
Great Ormond Street Hospital has been forced to cancel a top trainee doctors conference after trans activists protested that speakers would make Zoom attendees feel “unsafe”, The Telegraph can disclose.
All trainee child psychiatrist finalists from across London were due to attend the day-long video conference on March 16 on how they can support gender-questioning young people.
High-profile speakers from across the trans debate were invited by a group of trainees at the hospital to speak on panels, including major trans charities, academics and gender-critical groups.
But the programme quickly descended into chaos as trans activists refused to appear alongside gender-critical speakers, trainee doctors sent dossiers of allegations about speakers they disagreed with, and two feminist writers were cancelled.
NHS officials pulled the plug the day before after some internal activists even resorted to using health service whistleblowing procedures to protest about the event, in what has been branded an “outrageous” silencing campaign.
Helen Joyce, an editor at The Economist, was due to discuss her best-seller, Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, in a panel discussion alongside academics on the opposite side of her gender-critical stance about biological sex being binary and immutable. … read full article (web page archive)
Ivy League Parents Write New Letter of Protest To NCAA’s Policy On Transgender Athletes, Treatment of Women
From Swimming World (USA)
By Dan D’Addona
March 20, 2022
A large group of swimming parents from five Ivy League Schools wrote a letter to the NCAA, published in the New York Post, protesting the eligibility of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.
Thomas, a senior at Penn, won the 500 freestyle on Thursday. She formerly competed as a three-year member of the Penn’s men’s squad in the Ivy League. After transitioning and undergoing hormone-suppressant therapy, she joined the women’s squad at the Philadelphia school, having met antiquated NCAA guidelines that only required one year of testosterone suppression.
Debate over Thomas’ participation in women’s competition has been hot since early December, when she posted nation-leading times in the 200 freestyle and 500 freestyle. Her story was highlighted, and multiple questions arose. How is it fair for a swimmer who underwent male puberty to race against biological females? Shouldn’t Thomas be given an opportunity to race? Obviously, there are differing opinions on the topic. Olympian Erica Sullivan, who swam against Thomas, wrote a letter of support. … read full article
What happens when you can't ask basic questions
When questions like "Is it fair?" and "why is it fair?" are off the table, trans-identified people and allies need talking points
From Writing Behavior (Canada)
By Eliza Mondegreen
March 20, 2022
Something I've noticed about online trans communities: It's almost always "How do I respond to X argument?" and almost never "Is there anything to X argument?"
…
This is what cognitive dissonance often sounds like: "I know [the right answer]. That's obvious... It's a case of me knowing the right answer but I cannot begin to form a counter in my head for whatever reason..." If it's threatening to think about something—if thinking something through will cause dissonant thoughts to clash—you won't.
… read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to Writing Behavior!)
Women 'discriminated against' in sport due to trans participation, ex-GB athlete claims
GB Olympic medallist Sharron Davies MBE says women have 'lost the ability to win their own races' because trans athletes compete in female categories.
From LBC (UK)
By Seán Hickey
March 19, 2022
"Athletes have been silenced, coaches have been silenced, people have been silenced from voicing their honest concerns" about trans inclusion in female sport, Sharron Davies told Andrew Castle, following controversy over Lia Thomas' victory in a college swim meet in the USA.
Ms Thomas, 22, made history on Thursday night by becoming the first transgender person to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I title. She transitioned in 2019 and has competed in women's NCAA swimming since 2020.
… read or listen to full article