Thursday, May 5, 2022
This day in Herstory: Adele Laurie Blue Adkins MBE (born May 5, 1988) is an English singer and songwriter. She is one of the world's best-selling music artists, with sales of over 120 million records.[3] After graduating in arts from the BRIT School in 2006, Adele signed a record deal with XL Recordings. Her debut album, 19, was released in 2008 and spawned the UK top-five singles "Chasing Pavements" and "Make You Feel My Love". The album was certified 8× platinum in the UK and triple platinum in the US. Adele was honoured with the Brit Award for Rising Star as well as the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. (more)
A note from Lee: What follows is a very important story from PITT. It details a tragic story of abuse of a child and the consequences of the state using a vulnerable child as a political pawn. We are grateful to PITT for publicizing this story, painful as it is. Please read and share it far and wide. Sage and other children like her need all of us to do everything we can to change this horrifying situation.
Saga of Sage
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
May 5, 2022
I am the grandmother of a 15-year-old girl, Sage Lily.
I adopted Sage when she was just shy of 2 years old. Sage and I live in Virginia with my husband.
Sage started going through gender confusion in 8th grade. To that point she was a straight A student who enjoyed playing piano and writing poetry. At her small school, as Sage informed me, all the girls were either bi, trans, or lesbian. At some point social influence overcame her. … read full article
Violent Trans-Identified Male Stands Trial For Threatening to Rape, Murder Mother
From REDUXX (USA)
By Anna Slatz
May 5, 2022
**This story contains some details readers may find disturbing, discretion is advised**
A notorious Irish criminal is standing trial after threatening to sexually assault and murder his mother and an employee at the psychiatric hospital he had been detained within.
Barbie Kardashian, born Alejandro Gentile, has pleaded not guilty to a total of 11 counts of threatening to kill or cause serious harm to two individuals while in Coovagh House, a special care unit for 11 to 17-year-olds within a psychiatric hospital in Limerick. … read full article
It’s that you stop pretending and stop asking us to pretend for you
Another insightful tweet thread from Eliza Mondegreen
May 5, 2022
It's that you stop pretending and stop asking us to pretend for you.
Don't pretend you don't know what a woman is: everybody does. Don't ask anybody else to pretend that they don't know what a woman is on your behalf either. That's it.
We can play a society-wide game of make-believe that sex doesn't matter, reinforced with severe social penalties for noncompliance, or we can speak clearly and defend women's rights when those rights are under attack. We can't do both.
Women who refuse to play your game of make-believe when our most basic rights are at stake are *not* asking you to pretend you don't exist, much less wishing you didn't exist at all, so cut the hyperbolics. We're asking you to take your head out of your ass.
Eventually, wishful thinking runs up against a hard fact. Roe going down and what that means for female people, regardless of how they identify, is a hard fact.
Believe it or not, Chase, the solution here is not more pretending: it's less pretending. Ideally, no pretending.
Read more of Eliza’s writing at Writing behavior by Eliza Mondegreen
Stonewall is lecturing firms on transgender issues, tribunal told
Barrister Allison Bailey accuses LGBT charity of 'prosthelytising' on 'gender theory' as part of a concerted effort to change people’s views
From The Telegraph (UK)
By Gabriella Swerling
May 5, 2022
A barrister has accused Stonewall of "prosthelytising" on transgender issues and her chambers of "moving away from the law", an employment tribunal heard.
Allison Bailey, 52, is suing the gay and transgender rights charity, Stonewall, as well as Garden Court Chambers after alleging that she lost work and income following a row over Stonewall's Diversity Champions scheme and its assertion that “trans women are women”. … read full article
Candice Jackson eviscerates shoddy study reported in Newsweek
An incisive critique of a recent “study” being hawked by the Trevor Project
From Twitter
by Candice Jackson
May 5, 2022
This thread discusses an article published yesterday (May 4) in Newsweek.
What a slanted, alarmist way to push “LGBTQ” propaganda. First, the article provides no comparison for rates of serious suicidality among youth at large; anxiety, depression, & mental illness is on the rise generally & COVID isolation has made it worse, for everyone.
Second, neither Newsweek nor the “LGBTQ” group that conducted this self-selecting online survey (Trevor Project) segregates data by sex & sexual orientation. Generally, males have higher suicide rates; females have higher parasuicide rates; data for gay/bi males differs from lesbians, but we aren’t told how many survey respondents are M/F, homosexual/bisexual.
Third, the article fails to realize that reasons why “minority stress” *may* lead to higher suicidality among LGB is linked to whether coming out is a traumatic event w/ negative social consequences, a factor that isn’t exactly present for youth claiming TQ identities - they are celebrated & affirmed & praised by every institution & media outlet around them. Getting beat up in school for having a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend, or a parent throwing a 17 yr old out of the house for having a boyfriend, is not the same as having your parent refuse to “use your pronouns” or a boy not using the girls’ bathroom - & youth who think it is, need loving support, not pandering to fantasies.
Fourth, the survey clearly doesn’t attempt to factor in reasons for suicidality that have nothing to do w/ L G B T or Q, such as socioeconomic barriers to mental health resources.
Fifth, it links increased self-reported “LGBTQ” suicidality to “anti-LGBTQ rights” laws. But not one state law restoring sex classifications (eg sports) or restricting minors’ access to health-damaging hormones & surgeries to “affirm their gender” affects anything applicable to gay/lesbian youth — only youth swept up in a cultish contagion convincing them they will die or be oppressed w/o universal validation of their feelings.
This kind of bad data, bad interpretation, & bad premises behind the data, just to push an ideology, is irresponsible journalism, shoddy fraudulent activism, & endangers kids & families who need a rational, objective, supportive society that remains neutral to spiritual beliefs.
For more of her brilliant analysis, be sure to follow Candice on Twitter!
Doctor planning risky womb transplant to allow transgender woman to carry a baby
A doctor has told how he is 'optimistic' about his plans to transplant a uterus into a transgender woman, so she could go on to carry a baby
From Mirror (UK)
By Adrian Addison and Rosaleen Fenton
May 5, 2022
A surgeon has told how he is planning the world's first womb transplant on a transgender woman who was born male.
The organs would be taken from a dead donor or from another woman who decided to become a man and had their wombs removed in the process.
This would mean that the person could fall pregnant through IVF - although the operation has never officially been performed successfully yet. … read full article
Opinion Can the women’s movement be as effective without the word ‘women’?
From The Washington Post (USA)
By Megan McArdle
May 5, 2022
If you were raised on 1970s feminism, as I was, the linguistic shift toward phrases such as “birthing people” and “uterus havers” has been a bit jarring. We grew up on “women’s liberation,” “women’s issues” and “women’s rights”; now, suddenly, those issues and rights seem to belong to select bits of our anatomy.
The incongruity between old language and new became particularly noticeable this week, after Politico published a leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade. … read full article
You can’t be born in the wrong body
The science behind gender ideology is dubious at best
From UnHerd (UK)
By ELLEN PASTERNACK
May 5, 2022
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d swapped bodies with someone else: your mum, the boy next door, “a monstrous vermin”, an older version of yourself? Would you still be “you”?
There’s a reason this setup is a classic. Most of us feel that there’s an “us” conceptually distinct from the body we inhabit. In fact, anthropologists suggest it’s a belief held in some form or other across all human cultures. … read full article
The Left’s hypocrisy on women’s rights is nauseating
Politicians who have spent years unable to utter the word ‘woman’ are now trying to pose as the defenders of their liberties
From The Telegraph (UK)
By JOANNA WILLIAMS
May 5, 2022
Abortion is far more divisive in America than any mere culture wars spat. Positions are deeply held, fuelled by moral or religious conviction, and leave no room for compromise. The leaked Supreme Court draft opinion this week unsurprisingly enraged pro-choicers.
Protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court; references to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, immediately began trending on Twitter – the implication being that women in America were to become slaves to their wombs. Commentators described their rage and sorrow. … read full article
VICTORY: MD Prison Bill Dies In Committee
From WoLF (USA)
May 5, 2022
Maryland’s Senate Bill 550 and its companion House Bill 453, the Maryland "Transgender, Nonbinary, and Intersex Inmates (Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act)" has died in committee, thanks in part to oral and written testimony submitted by WoLF Advisory Council member Jennifer Chavez, and Kacie Mills of the WoLF Board of Directors.*
Despite the demonstrable harm that has resulted from mixed-sex prison policies, the activist group that sponsored the bill actively misled the Committee members, claiming that no harm had resulted from the implementation of SB 132 and other policies like it. In addition to the evidence submitted by WoLF, nearby states that have already implemented these policies have seen rape (New York) and multiple pregnancies (New Jersey). … read full article
The Mallory McMorrow Fallacy
Or Should We Call It The Popeye Fallacy?
From The Liberal Patriot (USA)
By Ruy Teixeira
May 5, 2022
Mallory McMorrow is having a moment. The Michigan legislator made a short speech assailing a fellow legislator who had accused her in a fundraising email of “grooming and sexualizing” kindergartners, which was subsequently viewed millions of times on McMorrow’s Twitter feed. Her message, delivered with some well-chosen personal touches, boiled down to: stand up to hate.
The speech was rapturously received in Democratic circles, particularly among activists and Democratic-leaning pundits. One went so far as to compare McMorrow to Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel. And many asserted that here, finally, was a blueprint for an effective Democratic midterm strategy. … read full article
A Mother's Day Message to ROGD Moms
To my fellow ROGD moms on Mother's Day, you are not alone.
From MamaOfLesbian’s Newsletter
By MamaOfLesbian
May 5, 2022
With Mother’s Day quickly closing in, I find myself replacing thoughts of a gift or a card, breakfast in bed, an afternoon in the sun or a delicious meal that I didn’t make with those of my fellow ROGD moms. The common thread of our children’s admission to the game of pick-a-path genders and the very serious health risks that come along with them has been sewn through our maternal hearts and minds. Many of us work tirelessly, together from afar, to see the tenants of this harmful ideology hammered into the world around us crumble. … read full article
"Just say this/don't say that, it's not that hard."
From Writing behavior by Eliza Mondegreen (Canada)
By Eliza Mondegreen
May 5, 2022
I’ve been writing a lot about abortion lately—find me an American feminist who hasn’t—and every time I sit down and start to type, I think about a conversation I had with a friend of mine who identifies as trans. This friend expressed feeling hurt when I had referred to abortion as a women’s rights issue and when I’d objected to language like ‘uterus-havers' and ‘birthing bodies.’ … read full article