Thursday, April 28, 2022
This day in Herstory: Phoebe Sarah Hertha Ayrton, born April 28, 1854 (died August 26, 1923) was a British engineer, mathematician, physicist and inventor, and suffragette. Known in adult life as Hertha Ayrton, born Phoebe Sarah Marks, she was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripple marks in sand and water. (more)
Assembly election: All main non-unionist candidates refuse to answer simple question on women’s rights
All the main non-unionist parties have failed to respond to questions from feminist campaigners asking if biological men dressed as women should be allowed to use a communal changing room with teenage girls.
From Belfast News Letter (Northern Ireland)
April 28, 2022
Standing for Women Northern Ireland (SFWNI) has surveyed every candidate fighting the Assembly election and asked them if those who self-identify as women even though they have male genitalia should have the right to use young females’ changing facilities.
The survey was completed yesterday in the same week as another feminist campaign group, Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland, erected billboards near the junctions of the M2 and M3 motorways in central Belfast.
The message on it reads: ‘Dear MLA candidates, What Is A Woman? RespectmySeX.’
… continue reading
Gender Dysphoria and Adverse Childhood Experiences
The way out of rushing to surgical interventions lies in acknowledging that transgender identification has deep roots in the psyche and evaluating gender distress through the lens of adverse childhood experiences.
From Public Discourse (USA)
April 28, 2022
Seven years ago, in my first Public Discourse article, “I Was a Transgender Woman,” I shared that the reprieve provided by surgery and life as a woman was only temporary, and that traumatic childhood events explained my desire to identify as female. In my experience, and those shown in many other personal testimonies and academic studies, the neglect of traumatic childhood events and other mental health issues leads to an excessive focus on gender and a potentially dangerous rush to medical and surgical interventions.
Medical professionals have coined the term Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) to refer to a range of negative situations a child may face or witness while growing up, such as physical neglect, parental separation or divorce, living in a household in which domestic violence occurs, or living in a household with an alcoholic. These experiences negatively alter the brain at a deep level where most basic needs originate and a person’s identity is formed. … continue reading
Student midwives at Napier University taught that men can get pregnant
Online module had guide to catheterising ‘birthing people’ with penises
From The Times (UK)
April 28, 2022
Midwifery students in Scotland were taught that biological males could become pregnant and were given guidance on how to catheterise “birthing people” with penises.
An online module at Napier University in Edinburgh provoked disbelief by promoting the “biologically impossible”, but most students were said to have been reluctant to speak up for fear they would be victimised for challenging its “inclusive” content.
The course book has been condemned by Joanna Cherry, an SNP MP, who said that “an attempt to produce trans-inclusive language” had resulted in “poor-quality, scientifically inaccurate teaching materials”. … continue reading
People with penises don't have babies
So why are our student midwives being taught this?
From The Mule (UK)
April 28, 2022
Last night a story was broken by the feminist website Reduxx that people found hard to believe: student midwives in Scotland had been given a training module on catheterisation that had been updated to teach them how to catheterise a male person, because, “….you may be caring for a pregnant or birthing person who is transitioning from male to female and may still have external male genitalia.”
It seems too ridiculous to be true, but I can tell you that it is true, and that the ‘whistleblowing’ students got in touch with me about it at the end of March 2022. I had been sitting on the emails over Easter (having offered the story to the Mail who initially weren’t interested - they are now!), and was planning to write about them on this substack in the next few weeks. Life is hectic and I am not a news outlet. I wish I’d written about it sooner but here we are. … continue reading
A Tale of Two States: Gender-Affirming Care in Florida and New Jersey
Florida is converging with social democratic Europe in the treatment gender dysphoric youth while New Jersey is going the opposite direction
From Year Zero (USA)
April 28, 2022
Today’s guest post is by Lisa Selin Davis, the author of TOMBOY, a nonfiction book about gender-nonconforming girls that grew out of an op-ed she published in the New York Times in 2017. In a recent Callin interview, Davis talked about how she avoided looking too deeply into the transgender movement while researching TOMBOY out of a mingled sense of caution and incredulity at what she was hearing.
“People were contacting me and telling me scary stories that sounded like right wing conspiracy theories,” she said. And I thought, "There's probably some truth to it, but come on." And they said, "Please, talk to detransitioners and please look at the research that shows that the bulk of gender nonconforming kids with gender dysphoria will not grow up to be trans, but most will grow up to be gay.” … continue reading
Four Reasons To Stop Saying “Gender Dysphoria”
The vague and sexist concept creates the very symptoms it claims to describe
From 4W (USA)
April 28, 2022
The gender identity debate is inherently a debate of language and concepts. Concepts like “transgender” and “transsexual” are hotly debated among radical feminists.
Many advocate against the use of these concepts as upholding the false premise behind them — that a person can change their sex.
In the search for accurate terms to question the practices and ideas of transgenderism, gender critical and radical feminists may fall back on another term: “gender dysphoria.” … continue reading
Government-funded report urges NHS to use terms 'chestfeeding' and 'frontal birth' instead of breast or vaginal
The recommendations are based on the experience of 121 pregnant trans people
Some said a lack of 'inclusive language' in maternity was 'consistently triggering'
One celebrated being provided a private room to give birth in to avoid women
From Daily Mail (UK)
April 28, 2022
Maternity services should use 'inclusive' terms like 'chestfeeding' so trans pregnant people aren't offended, a Government-funded report says.
The report, from the LGBT Foundation, made the recommendation after surveying 121 trans Britons on their experience of pregnancy.
Another example of a gender-loaded term is 'vaginal birth', recommending 'frontal' or 'lower birth' instead. … continue reading
German Government Institute Refers to Women’s Anatomy as ‘Front Hole, P*ssy’
From REDUXX (USA)
April 28, 2022
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), a German federal government agency and biomedical research institute, has called women “people with short urethras” whose primary sex organs are the “front hole” or “pussy.”
In March, RKI released a questionnaire for “trans and non-binary people” in which one of the questions asked participants if they were female without using the words “female” or “woman.”
The text of the question read, “People with short urethras are sometimes at higher risk for certain infections, for instance inflammation of the urinary bladder. People with short urethras include, for example, people with a front hole, vagina, pussy, etc. Here we are referring to people who haven’t (yet) had gender reassignment surgery as well as people who have had gender reassignment surgery. Are you someone who has a short urethra?” … continue reading
Rishi Sunak shares fears that women’s rights are being eroded
From The Times (UK)
April 27, 2022
Rishi Sunak has said that biology is “critically important” in gender identity debates and suggested that women’s sports, toilets and prisons should be female-only.
The chancellor backed women’s fears that their rights were being “eroded” in debates over transgender issues as he became the latest Cabinet minister to come down clearly on one side of one of the most heated divides in modern politics.
Boris Johnson has previously said that biological males should not compete in women’s sports and that hospitals, prisons and changing rooms should have dedicated female-only spaces. The government has also delayed a ban on therapy that seeks to change someone’s gender identity, suggesting that it is more complex than banning attempts to stop people being gay. … continue reading
Trans Activists Create Tool to Silence Feminists on Twitter
Trans activists have created a spreadsheet and reporting tool titled “Report a Transphobe.”
From 4W (USA)
April 28, 2022
Feminist campaigner Christie Grace has uncovered a coordinated attempt to suppress freedom of speech on Twitter. Trans activists have created a spreadsheet and reporting tool titled “Report a Transphobe.” The document includes a list of 4,316 Twitter users deemed to be “transphobic” with instructions about how to report accounts that violate social media terms and conditions.
“Report a Transphobe” contains Twitter handles of politicians, news outlets, journalists and campaigners from across the globe. 4WPub was listed alongside many of our regular contributors. … continue reading
Welsh Labour council candidate suggested trans people are 'brainwashed'
A Welsh Labour candidate for Cardiff council shared social media posts suggesting that transgender people are "brainwashed", The National has found.
From The National (Wales)
April 28, 2022
Sue Lent, the party's candidate for the Plasnewydd ward in Cardiff, also made Facebook comments claiming that "gender ideology" had "infected everything", and shared an article arguing that transgender people are mentally ill.
The finding comes a day after the Welsh Government announced it is exploring options to "unilaterally" ban trans conversion therapy in Wales, and reaffirmed its pledge to protect the LGBTQ+. … continue reading
Michelle Donelan: Increasingly, university is a place where you are told what to think rather than taught how to think. This must change.
From Conservative Home (UK)
April 28, 2022
One hundred years ago, I doubt I would have been able to write this article. I certainly would not be Minister of State for Further and Higher Education, and my ability to speak freely about the issues that matter to me would be severely limited regardless of my position.
Conservative values of freedom, open debate and representative democracy over the last century have led us away from that and toward our proud status as one of the freest, fairest nations on the planet.
And yet, today, we have a cluster of institutions that are in the grip of a close-minded, intolerant ideology – and at the centre of this cluster lie our universities. Once the guardians of free thought and expression, increasingly university is a place where you are told what to think rather than taught how to think. … continue reading
Are Teachers Obliged to Tell Parents Their Child Might Be Trans? Courts May Soon Decide
From Education Week (USA)
April 28, 2022
Are school officials obligated to inform parents if students confide that they’re struggling with how they feel about their gender? What about if they want to use a different name or gender pronoun? Or if they simply show signs of gender-nonconforming behavior?
The answer to those sensitive questions is now being weighed as part of a handful of state or federal court cases—in what promises to further inflame legal and legislative battles that are raging across the nation about transgender rights.
In each of the lawsuits, the parents allege that school officials followed formal or informal policies, guidelines, or “gender support” plans that permit students to choose new names or pronouns, or adopt a different gender identity without their parents’ consent. In some cases, schools have actively deceived parents or refused to abide by their wishes, they claim. … continue reading
'They have got to sort this out': Nadine Dorries plots summit to overhaul sport's transgender rules
It is claimed past policies have been underpinned by 'lazy' attitudes among largely male sports leaders that almost exclusively impact women
From The Telegraph (UK)
April 28, 2022
The Government is preparing a major intervention over “the biggest issue facing women’s Olympic sport” by calling a summit of the country’s most senior sports leaders to collectively form new policies on transgender inclusion.
Telegraph Sport understands that there is private dismay throughout the sector, particularly among senior women leaders, over the handling of an issue that has left many concerned about the future of elite women’s sport, meanwhile trans athletes have been in limbo over their sporting futures. … continue reading
The Influencer Next Door
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
April 28, 2022
Medicalization. Surgery. Pronouns. Name and sex marker changes. Influencers at school. We parents navigate through these troubled waters where our kids are suddenly “trans”… and will do something—ANYTHING—to slow our children down from medicalizing their identities. We rightfully place a good deal of blame on the process, and on the medical personnel and clinicians advocating and prescribing these permanently life-altering hormone treatments and mutilating surgeries, just as what happened with our son in our story. But my article today is written to expose another group. A group of individuals with the ability to help slow this process, tamp down this insanity, and help these confused children take a step back. A group who would normally stand up and fight for young people who are on a destructive path, one which is very difficult to return from. … continue reading
The Wrong Sort of Lesbian
A guest post by Tracey, an invisible lesbian.
From The Glinner Update (UK)
April 28, 2022
I gained what I could claim as a badge of honour this week. I got censured for being the wrong sort of lesbian.
Having bitten the bullet and signed up to attend an online event to celebrate Lesbian Visibility Day being run by the Edinburgh Pride Network, I duly logged on at 5pm on Tuesday 26 April and there, on screen, waiting to ascribe pearls of wisdom about being a Visible Lesbian, was Rosie Russell.
The event had been billed as a celebration of “all lesbian women” (except me, apparently, of which more shortly), and Rosie Russell was clearly billed as “a transwoman and a lesbian who is devoted to her [sic] wife of 25 years and splits her [sic] time between her [sic] home in Edinburgh and work in London, Shannon and anywhere else the role takes her [sic].” … continue reading