Tuesday, May 3, 2022
This day in Herstory: Leyla Zana, born May 3, 1961, is a Kurdish politician in Turkey who was imprisoned for ten years for her political activism, which was deemed by the Turkish courts to be against the unity of the country. She was awarded the 1995 Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament but was unable to collect it until her release in 2004. She was also awarded the Rafto Prize in 1994 after being recognized by the Rafto Foundation for being incarcerated for her peaceful struggle for the human rights of the Kurdish people in Turkey and the neighbouring countries. (more)
American feminism has turned its back on abortion
Women's sex-based rights have been sacrificed to gender ideology
From UnHerd (UK)
BY HADLEY FREEMAN
May 3, 2022
Back in the mid Eighties, a woman named Eleanor Bergstein wrote a movie warning young women what would happen to them if their right to abortion was taken away. “It seemed to me that women in the Eighties no longer cared so much about this stuff, so I set the film in the Sixties to show them how recently in America abortion was banned,” she told me when we spoke a few years ago. That film was Dirty Dancing, and when most people think of that movie they think of Baby (Jennifer Grey, obviously) carrying a watermelon and Johnny (Patrick Swayze, double obviously) holding her above his head on the dancefloor. … read full article
Lawmakers in 19 states want legal refuge for trans youth
From AP News (USA)
By HOLLY RAMER
May 2, 2022
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Democratic lawmakers in more than a dozen states are following California’s lead in seeking to offer legal refuge to displaced transgender youth and their families.
The coordinated effort being announced Tuesday by the LGBTQ Victory Institute and other advocates comes in response to recent actions taken in conservative states. In Texas, for example, Gov. Gregg Abbott has directed state agencies to consider placing transgender children in foster care, though a judge has temporarily blocked such investigations. And multiple states have approved measures prohibiting gender-affirming health care treatments for transgender youth. … read full article
‘Gender critical’ barrister claims she lost work for opposing Stonewall scheme
Allison Bailey said she was deprived of work after voicing her concerns about Stonewall when her chambers adopted its Diversity Champions scheme.
From Evening Standard (UK)
By William Janes
May 3, 2022
A barrister who is suing an LGBTQ charity and her chambers over claims that her gender views were discriminated against said she was deprived of work for opposing an employer diversity scheme, according to legal documents.
Allison Bailey claims she saw the amount of work she was asked to undertake drop off after voicing concerns, according to the opening skeleton argument presented to a tribunal.
The document outlined how Ms Bailey, who founded gender-critical campaign group LGB Alliance, opposed the adoption of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme by her employer, Garden Court Chambers, in December 2018. … read full article
Rachel Levine’s ‘gender affirmation’ echo chamber
Dr. Rachel Levine is pushing "gender-affirming care" onto children as hospitals worldwide recognize the danger of hormone treatment.
From New York Post (USA)
By Post Editorial Board
May 3, 2022
Transgender Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine insists “there is no argument” among doctors specializing in kids and teens about “the value and importance of gender-affirming care” — i.e. the use of hormones and puberty blockers — for the young. Bull.
In fact, Levine and the Biden administration simply refuse to listen to anyone who disagrees, including medical organizations across the globe.
Sweden’s Karolinska Hospital — one of the world’s top hospitals — decided last May to stop treating under-18 patients with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
And in March 2021, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence found that hormone treatments did not provide clear benefits for kids suffering gender dysphoria.
Don’t forget the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, an international group of doctors who dispute the idea that getting these treatments is a matter of life or death for kids. … read full article
A Birthing Body Speaks: You Can't Defend What You Can't Define
From Letters from Suzanne (UK)
By Suzanne Moore
May 3, 2022
This birthing body is almost to angry to speak. Almost.
Thank god, this body can no longer birth, it’s been there and got the scars. Thank god this body has a mind all of its own. This birthing body has been pregnant a number of times. Three times children were born of it.
Other times there were miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy and there were abortions. There were times when this body did not want to birth at all and this choice was available. My children were desperately wanted. … read full article
About Roe
From Writing behavior by Eliza Mondegreen (Canada)
By Eliza Mondegreen
May 3, 2022
Everybody knows who will be affected by any Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade and who won't be. So do the people who will be affected by this get to name ourselves and our bodies in clear language and organize unapologetically in our own interests or not?
The split within the left over trans 'rights' ultimately comes down to whether women are free to organize and be recognized and protected as a sex class—or not.
Trans activism says no: women’s movements must prioritize the identity claims of men over the realities of women. We need to center people in our own movement who do not share our experiences, our history, our bodies, our needs. … read full article
Understanding the Radical Gender Movement
From City Journal (USA)
An Interview with Leor Sapir
Leor Sapir is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. City Journal associate editor Daniel Kennelly spoke with him about his work on issues of gender identity and transgenderism.
May 3, 2022
What’s your view of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, including the reaction against it?
I think the law makes a great deal of sense in light of what’s been happening in K-12 schools throughout the country. The effort to brand the bill as “Don’t Say Gay” speaks volumes to the stealthy tactics used by trans activists to push radical and unpopular policies in our schools. Anybody with familiarity on this topic knows that Florida’s law is not about homosexuality but about teachers, activist groups, and DEI consultants promoting scientifically and medically unfounded ideas about gender and sex. Though its approach is not flawless, the DeSantis administration is becoming a real leader in pushing back against trans extremism. … read full article
Canada census reveals how many people are trans
From The Post by UnHerd (UK)
By Debbie Hayton
May 3, 2022
One in three hundred Canadians identify as transgender or non-binary. Or to be precise, of the nearly 30.5 million people in Canada aged 15 and over living in a private household, 59,460 were transgender and another 41,335 were non-binary. The data comes from a new census which Statistics Canada claims to be a world first to report on transgender and non-binary people.
What’s more interesting, though, is the breakdown by age and sex. Young people are much more likely to be transgender. I think we could have guessed that, but now we have the numbers to prove it. Statistics Canada labels it a “generation gap”. … read full article
BioPhobia: A Progressive Manifesto
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
May 3, 2022
Frailty, sickness, physical suffering, the decline that comes with aging, the inevitability of death: these have haunted humanity throughout the thousands of years of our existence.
These difficulties are inherent to our embodied existence. Religions throughout the ages have grappled with these frailty of human life, sometimes by offering a renewed and perfect life after death (the promise of an after-life in heaven), sometimes —as in Buddhism— by counseling acceptance and reconciliation with the inevitable suffering and mortality of our flesh. Historically, some religions taught the rejection of the body: for example in the intentional mortification of the flesh to purify one’s immortal soul.
Now there is a new medico-techno belief system that encourages the rejection of the body in favor of a mystical gender identity. This rejection of the body is BioPhobia.
BioPhobia, an unreasonable fear and loathing of one’s sexed body, springs from a complex of forces: techno-medicine vested interests, lobbying campaigns by trans activists, internet social media and the relative decline of ‘real life’ activities, and the TikTok styled cult of victimhood and suffering in which healthy physical development is rejected because it is somehow “privileged” and/or “boring” and lacks fetishized victimhood. … read full article
We're Living in the Upside Down
How the Left media gaslights liberals
From BROADVIEW with Lisa Selin Davis (USA)
By Lisa Selin Davis
May 3, 2022
On May 1, a UK newspaper published what I thought was a reasonable and sane piece responding to Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine’s assertion that there is medical consensus around gender-affirming care. It hit all the notes that any respectable newspaper reporting on trans kids should: It talked about the shift in policies in Sweden and Finland and rethinking of the affirmative model in France and the UK. It mentioned detransitioners. It noted Levine’s extortionist use of inflated suicide stats.
Maybe it could have spent a little more time acknowledging that some children do seem to fare well after transition, even if we have no long-term evidence to evaluate that claim or understand the ultimate medical implications of physical transition. But all in all, I thought: This is a good model for how papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post should and could be writing about these issues. Don’t just reprint activist or government talking points; push back, investigate, seek alternative opinions and don’t assume dissent and opposition are rooted in hate. … read full article
The false euphoria of dysphoria
Pink News presents breast removal as “pure trans joy” in a new video
From The Critic (UK)
By Laura Dodsworth
May 3, 2022
“Joy”, “amazing”, “happiness”, “wholesome”, “freedom”, “light at the end of the tunnel”, “greatest day of my life”, “euphoria” and “bliss of fairy dust” — what do these words describe?
The answer is “top surgery” in a new Snapchat video called “What is Top Surgery Like For Trans Guys”, created by Pink News.
If you don’t know what that is, according to the video it is “a procedure that trans men and trans masculine people can choose to have, where breast tissue is removed and the chest is sculpted to have a more masculine appearance”. Put more simply, it is a bilateral mastectomy, given to women as a treatment for gender dysphoria.
The video paints an uncritical picture of top surgery, as you might expect from the first episode of a series entitled “Pure Trans Joy”. I am sure its positivity will be welcomed by trans men, which is clearly its purpose. … read full article
Self-ID: tell the Scottish Parliament your views!
From Sex Matters (UK)
May 3, 2022
When the Gender Recognition Act came into force in 2004, it was a single regime for the UK. The Scottish Executive at the time considered whether Scotland should have separate legislation, but rejected this approach due to “cross-border anomalies”.
In 2019 the UK government stepped back from its plan to bring in gender self-ID. It says the current regime achieves an adequate balance of rights.
But the Scottish Government has continued to pursue self-ID.
A draft bill was introduced to the Scottish Parliament on 2nd March. It proposes doing away with medical diagnosis in favour of self-declaration, reducing the timescale to six months, and allowing children as young as 16 to legally change their sex.
The committee overseeing its scrutiny is running a consultation which closes on 16th May 2022. … read full article