Wednesday, April 13, 2022
This day in Herstory: Josephine Elizabeth Butler (née Grey), born April 13, 1828 (died December 30, 1906) was an English feminist and social reformer in the Victorian era. She campaigned for women's suffrage, the right of women to better education, the end of coverture in British law, the abolition of child prostitution, and an end to human trafficking of young women and children into European prostitution. (more)
Greens call for gender surgery to go on Medicare
From The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
By David Crowe
April 13, 2022
Medicare would be expanded to include gender affirming surgery in a call from Greens leader Adam Bandt for practical changes to help transgender Australians amid an election row over a Liberal candidate who called trans children “surgically mutilated”.
The Greens stance would add a series of operations to Medicare to act on a petition backed by almost 150,000 people who say the costs can reach $30,000 or more for trans people seeking help from medical specialists.
With trans issues now part of the election campaign, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was challenged on Wednesday about comments from the Liberal candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves, that have enraged equality advocates.
Morrison has backed Deves in her call for changes to federal law to ensure sporting bodies can block trans women from female sports, but he added a key caveat on Wednesday by saying this was his personal view and not a government decision to change the law. … read full article
Campaign groups to save women’s cycling classic hit by trans rights row
CiCLE Classic sponsor withdrew after transgender policy change
Sex Matters and Fair Play for Women ready to make up shortfall
From The Guardian (UK)
By Sean Ingle
April 13, 2022
One of Britain’s most prestigious women’s cycling races is on the verge of being saved 24 hours after its longstanding sponsor pulled out in protest at British Cycling’s suspension of its transgender policy.
The Women’s CiCLE classic in Melton, Leicestershire, which has been won by the Tokyo Olympic medallists Katie Archibald and Neah Evans, had looked to be an unwitting victim of British Cycling’s decision to bar the trans woman cyclist Emily Bridges racing against female riders pending a review.
This move came after numerous members – and voices within the sport – raised concerns that Bridges, who broke the national junior 25-mile record as a male before transitioning, would have an unfair advantage in the female category due to retained strength and other advantages.
However, others, including the main sponsor of the Women’s CiCLE race, Peter Stanton, strongly disagreed. On Tuesday he withdrew his £15,000 sponsorship in protest – leaving the women’s and junior race on the same day in June under threat. The men’s event, later this month, was unaffected.
On Wednesday Sex Matters and Fair Play for Women, two groups campaigning for sex-based rights, made a formal offer to make up the cash shortfall so that all events can take place. … read full article
Two inmates at all-women's New Jersey jail are PREGNANT after both had sex with the same transgender prisoner: ACLU won battle to house 47 trans inmates there
The pregnant women are housed at the embattled Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, in Clinton, which New Jersey Governor announced plans to close
It is unclear if the women had sex with the same transgender woman. Edna Mahan houses 27 transgender prisoners, and over 800 cisgender women
The correctional facility began to house inmates by gender identity last year, after reaching a settlement in a lawsuit brought by a trans woman and the ACLU
Edna Mahan, the only women's prison in the state, does not require transgender inmates to proceed with reassignment surgery in order to be housed
In recent years, Edna Mahan has grappled with reports of widespread abuses and systemic failures
Ten prison guards face criminal charges stemming from an alleged assault on inmates, including a transgender woman, in January 2020
From Daily Mail (UK)
By ANDREA BLANCO
Apri. 13, 2022
Two women at New Jersey's only all-women's prison have both fallen pregnant after having sex with a transgender inmate.
The pregnant women, who were not identified, are housed at the embattled Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, in Clinton, which New Jersey Governor announced plans to close last year.
Prison bosses said that in both instances, the sex was consensual. … read full article
Greens leader Adam Bandt accuses Prime Minister Scott Morrison of trying to weaponise transgender debate for election campaign
From ABC News (Australia)
By Bridget Rollason
April 13, 2022
Greens Leader Adam Bandt says Prime Minister Scott Morrison is putting lives at risk, by agreeing with the Liberal candidate for Warringah, who lobbied to stop transgender women from competing in women's sport.
Key points:
The Liberal candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves, previously lobbied to stop transgender women from competing in women's sports
On Wednesday, she apologised for how she described transgender children in a deleted tweet
Greens Leader Adam Bandt says the Prime Minister is putting lives at risk by agreeing with the candidate's views
He was questioned after Mr Morrison's pick for the eastern Sydney suburbs federal seat of Warringah, Katherine Deves, apologised after she described transgender children as "surgically mutilated and sterilised" in deleted tweets from November last year.
Ms Deves — who is running against independent Zali Steggall in the seat once held by Tony Abbott for the Liberals — is the co-founder and spokeswoman for a group that wants to limit participation in women's sport to those who were born female.
When asked about the issue on Monday, Mr Morrison said Ms Deves raised "important issues and he "shares" her views. … read full article
Kentucky legislature overrides governor's veto of transgender sports ban
The bill bars transgender girls and women from participating in school sports matching their gender identity from sixth grade through college.
From NBC News
By Matt Lavietes
April 13, 2022
Kentucky’s legislature voted on Wednesday to override Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a bill that would prohibit transgender girls and women from playing on female sports teams, making the state the sixth to enact such a law this year and the 15th to-date.
Beshear, a Democrat, vetoed the bill last week, saying it “most likely” violates the Constitution because it “discriminates against transgender children." Conversely, proponents contended that the measure was necessary to protect the rights of cisgender girls and women in school sports.
The legislature’s override passed the Senate in a 29-8 vote and in the House, 72-23. The law takes effect immediately. … read full article
Joyce Activated, Issue 1
From Helen Joyce (UK)
By DR H JOYCE
April 13, 2022
My road to writing about trans ideology has been long and winding. In my 20s I took a B.A. in mathematics from Trinity College Dublin, and earned a distinction in Part III Mathematics from Cambridge. I went on to gain a PhD in mathematics from University College London (my thesis was entitled “Packing measures, packing dimension and the existence of sets of positive finite measure”, in case you’re wondering) and undertook several years of post-doctoral study before deciding that academia was not for me.
I then spent several years working in public understanding of mathematics, as co-editor of Plus, the magazine of the Millennium Mathematics Project at Cambridge, and founding editor of Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society. I joined The Economist in 2005, initially as education correspondent, writing for the Britain section, and have been at the paper ever since, in various capacities.
My interest in the notion of “gender identity” dates from 2017, when I was asked to write about the rapid rise in the number of young people identifying as trans. It took me a while to think through the consequences of regarding this ineffable essence, something like a sexed soul, as the primary characteristic that determined whether someone was a man or woman—or indeed something else, such as non-binary, gender-neutral or pangender. But I was immediately, let us say, suspicious. Since we humans are mammals, we come in two and only two types, namely male and female. And those categories have deep evolutionary significance, having arisen on Earth more than a billion years ago. They didn’t seem like something we could ignore or redefine without consequence. … read full article
Beware of trans affirmation therapy
The feminist fix: Empower teenage girls, rather than telling them who they are
From The Critic (UK)
By Julie Bindel
April 13, 2022
his week the government has banned conversion therapy for gays but, in a major kerfuffle, not for trans people. I wasn’t surprised. As the EHRC rightly points out, the Government consultation document on the topic contained “no clear definition of what will amount to “conversion therapy”. Neither was it clear about “the meaning of ‘transgender’; — a term which has no clear legal meaning, is potentially wider than the concept of gender reassignment in current UK law, and is understood by different people in different ways”. So why all the confusion? What does this all mean for gay and dysphoric youth? And how does it relate to my own experience of conversion therapy?
In 2014, during research for a book on lesbian and gay culture I decided to challenge some of the mythology around what conversion therapy actually is and is not. I was sick of some conservative-minded gay men who would only speak out against conversion therapy because they believed that there is something such as a “gay gene”, and therefore sexuality is hard-wired in the womb. Their argument was, in a nutshell, that lesbians and gay men should be afforded tolerance on the basis that we “can’t help it”.
These gay men argued that the “born this way” strategy would overcome prejudice and achieve equality. I disagree. Firstly, I have long been sceptical of the notion that sexual orientation is in any way predetermined. Even if the “gay gene” were found once and for all, what difference would it make? … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to The Critic!)
New N.J. sex education standards spark belated backlash. Here’s what Murphy, Republicans say.
From NJ.com (USA)
By Brent Johnson and Matt Arco and Adam Clark
April 13, 2022
Sex education standards that New Jersey adopted two years ago have suddenly drawn fierce new scrutiny from some parents and Republican officials, making the Garden State the latest stage for a national cultural debate over what students should be — and actually are — learning in classrooms.
The issue exploded in recent weeks, after a local school board in Union County shared sample resources educators could use to follow the state’s standards, which take effect in the fall and outline when New Jersey students should learn about topics such as sexual orientation, gender identity, and anatomy. Officials said the documents were merely a demonstration provided by the state, aren’t mandated by the state, and won’t specifically be part of the district’s curriculum.
The situation, however, sparked new attention to the matter, with a Republican lawmaker and conservative media circulating the documents. Opponents say the sample materials are too graphic and warn the state’s incoming standards will lead to children being taught sensitive subjects at too young an age, undermining the rights of parents. … read full article
How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Culture War
From New York Times (USA)
By Ross Douthat
April 13, 2022
To understand the contours of the renewed culture wars over sex education, sexual orientation and gender identity, start with a Rorschach test.
According to Gallup, the share of younger Americans who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender has risen precipitously in the last decade. Almost twenty-one percent of Generation Z — meaning, for the purposes of the survey, young adults born between 1997 and 2003 — identifies as L.G.B.T., as against about 10 percent of the millennial generation, just over 4 percent of my own Generation X and less than 3 percent of baby boomers. Comparing the Generation Z to the baby boom generation, the percentage of people identifying as transgender, in particular, has risen twentyfold.
Here are three possible readings of these statistics. The first interpretation: This is great news. …
The second interpretation: We shouldn’t read too much into it. …
A third interpretation: This trend is bad news. … read full article (web page archive)
Twitter is silencing Gay Men
My appeal for freedom of speech in online gay politics
From Kavanagh’s Substack (UK)
By Dennis Noel Kavanagh
April 13, 2022
CC: Equality and Human Rights Commission, Mr. Elon Musk
Re: Account “Dennis Noel Kavanagh (@Jebadoo2)
Dear Twitter Support,
Introduction and outline
1. I write in respect of the above account which was permanently suspended on 10.04.2022 following what appears to be an orchestrated and homophobic attack on the principle of free speech in the context of the ongoing gender debate. This letter constitutes my case for the reinstatement of my account on the basis that my participation in such debates should not be contingent on my support of biology denial / gender ideology. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to Kavanagh’s Substack!)
How Feminism Got Hijacked
The movement that once declared “I am woman, hear me roar” can no longer define what a woman is. What happened?
From Common Sense (USA)
By Zoe Strimpel
April 13, 2022
“Pregnant people at much higher risk of breakthrough Covid,” The Washington Post recently declared. This was in keeping with the newspaper’s official new language policy: “If we say pregnant women, we exclude those who are transgender and nonbinary.”
“I’m not a biologist,” Ketanji Brown Jackson, the next Supreme Court justice and a formerly pregnant person herself, told her Senate inquisitors while trying to explain why she couldn’t define “woman.”
“It’s a very contested space at the moment,” explained Australian Health Secretary Brendan Murphy—a nephrologist, a doctor of medicine—when he was asked the same question at a hearing in Melbourne. “We’re happy to provide our working definition.”
The meaning of “woman,” the Labor Party’s Anneliese Dodds, in Britain, observed, “depended on context.” (Never mind that Dodds oversees the party’s women’s agenda.)
“I think people get themselves down rabbit holes on this one,” Labor’s Yvette Cooper added the next day, March 8, International Women’s Day. She declined to follow suit.
What were normal people—those who did not have any trouble defining woman, those who found talk of “pregnant people” and “contested spaces” and “rabbit holes” baffling—to make of this obvious discomfort with “women”? … read full article
Democrats’ Political Death Wish
From Association of Mature American Citizens (USA)
By Seamus Brennan
April 13, 2022
Heading into what increasingly looks to be a tough year for the Democrats in midterm elections, logic would dictate that they should be working hard to stave off unnecessary political liabilities and prevent any further disaster for their party at the ballot box. Instead—at a time when our nation is overrun with crises almost entirely of the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats’ own making—Democrats seem to be going out of their way to reinforce the notion that they are a party of radical elitists who are disconnected from the values, needs, and interests of the American people.
Rather than finding meaningful ways to ease crippling inflation, lower gas prices, or avert yet another disastrous spring on the southern border, Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress have evidently decided to double down on progressive culture war issues that are alienating parents, families, and everyday Americans in extraordinary numbers. As the left pushes extreme left-wing policies like sex reassignment surgery for children, allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports, and Critical Race Theory and gender ideology in schools, they continue to generally ignore the cascade of real crises that affect normal Americans. And they are doing so at their own increasing peril. … read full article