This day in Herstory: Sarojini Naidu, died March 2, 1949 (born February 13, 1879), was an Indian political activist and poet. A proponent of civil rights, women's emancipation, and anti-imperialistic ideas, she was an important figure in India's struggle for independence from colonial rule. Naidu's work as a poet earned her the sobriquet 'the Nightingale of India', or 'Bharat Kokila' by Mahatma Gandhi because of colour, imagery and lyrical quality of her poetry. (more)
Canadian women's groups to protest men in women’s prisons on Sunday
Protests are planned at several locations across Canada, including Kitchener's Grand Valley Institution for Women
Press Release from caWsbar and Heather
March 2, 2022
In 2017, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) changed its transfer policy to allow convicted male criminals, including serial sex offenders and child rapists, to be transferred to women's prisons.
Males are exploiting the CSC's interim policy on gender identity. By declaring to be a woman, these criminals may be transferred to women's prisons to complete their sentences under reduced security - often with their male anatomy fully intact. Research suggests that there are at least ten males in women's prisons within the federal system.
This policy has resulted in several female victims of male-perpetrated sexual violence, and women are afraid to speak out. The CSC's policy is part of the federal government's efforts to prioritize gender self-identification theory above women's Charter-Based rights to safety.
As part of an ongoing national initiative, Canadian women's groups will protest for a seventh time this Sunday at several locations across Canada, including Kitchener's Grand Valley Institution for Women, to insist these offenders be sent back to the men's prisons from where they were transferred.
Canadian Women's Sex-Based Rights (caWsbar) say the CSC's disastrous policy is a prime example of how Canada's gender identity legislation puts women and children at risk. As well, it demonstrates a complete failure of the federal penal system to protect the health and safety of the women and children under its care.
"We are being used as shields to protect male convicts who suddenly claim to be women," says Heather Mason, a former GVI prisoner and women's prison advocate. "Now, in addition to inmates and staff being harassed and assaulted, we're dealing with pregnancies and STDs among the prison population. The entire thing is a mess."
Mason suggests Corrections Canada establish separate wings in men's prisons for gender non-conforming males "for their own safety and where their unique needs can be addressed."
Male transfers to women's prisons include Michael Williams, who raped and murdered a 13-year-old Indigenous girl in 2005. Steven Mehlenbacher, a serial bank robber, was charged in March 2020 with sexual assault during his incarceration in a federal women's prison.
A protest is also planned for Abbotsford, B.C.
Feminists threaten to sue Scottish government over gender recognition law
From The Times (UK)
By Mary Wright
March 2, 2022
Feminist campaigners have vowed to take the Scottish government to court if it introduces a bill today to make it simpler for people to change their legal gender by allowing them to self-identify.
Shona Robison, the social justice secretary, is expected to announce draft legislation for the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill despite calls to pause the legislation to resolve concerns from some women’s groups.
Dr Nicola Williams, director of the campaign body Fair Play for Women, said the proposed reforms would breach the Scotland Act 1998 and warned that “changing who can be recognised as what sex anywhere in the UK is outside the legislative competence of the Scottish parliament”.
She added: “The expected changes would allow anyone, for any reason, to hide the sex they were born by changing the sex written on their birth certificate.
“This extraordinary privilege was originally granted to severely dysphoric transsexuals but could now be extended to a new and much larger group of people, including those born outside Scotland. … read full article
Black and blue
The feminist fix: Make the Sarah Everard inquiry a statutory investigation of internalised police misogyny
From The Critic (UK)
By Julie Bindel
March 2, 2022
“Black and blue” is the seventeenth article in Julie Bindel’s online column for The Critic, “The feminist fix”, which explores feminism’s answer to today’s challenges. The sixteenth article, on how sexual harassment will never end in the workplace as long as it’s legal in the marketplace, can be read here.
For decades, feminists in the UK have focused on fixing the problem of a statute book, which historically provided wholly inadequate protection to women and children. Amongst other things, they have successfully lobbied for the criminalisation of rape in marriage, which, before 1992, was perfectly legal.
If conviction rates fall any lower, rape might as well be decriminalised
But what do we do about the shocking, monumental failure of police and prosecutors to enforce our existing laws? If conviction rates for rape fall any lower in the UK, it might as well be decriminalised. If men continue to murder their former and current female partners at a rate of one every three days, is it not obvious that not enough is being done to tackle the most serious cases of domestic violence before they escalate?
This week is the first anniversary of the murder of Sarah Everard. The case was shocking not because it was the murder of a woman. Femicide is endemic throughout all societies to the point where most are not even reported in the press. This murder was notable because the perpetrator was a serving police officer.
It was also notable because he was involved in chat groups with other officers, where the most disgusting misogyny was treated as a matter of course. The case highlighted that the roots of that heinous crime lie not in one police officer, but in wider practices and attitudes within the force. … read full article
Judge halts Texas efforts to probe gender-affirming care for trans children
From The Hill (USA)
By Lexi Lonas
March 2, 2022
A Texas judge on Wednesday halted the Abbot administration's efforts to investigate parents who allow their transgender children receive gender-affirming care.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) last month to begin investigating cases of gender-affirming care of possible child abuse.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas and Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit against those efforts on Tuesday on behalf of a DFPS employee with transgender children, who said an investigator allegedly arrived at their home.
On Wednesday, the Travis County District Court granted a temporary restraining order, with the judge setting a hearing on March 11 to consider if the state’s efforts should be blocked more broadly.
Abbott, DFPS, and its commissioner Jaime Masters are named as defendants on the lawsuit. … read full article
The liberal case against pronouns
There's nothing progressive about compelled speech
From UnHerd (UK)
By Andrew Doyle
March 2, 2022
On the day that Vladimir Putin initiated his invasion of Ukraine, the front page of the Daily Mail led with a story about a leaked document from MI5 and MI6, urging spies to acknowledge their “white privilege” and declare their pronouns. Almost simultaneously, a tweet from the Ministry of Defence, since deleted, announced that its LGBT coffee morning that day had been a great success, and that it had included discussions about pansexuality and asexuality.
But the military is far from alone in this new fixation with gender politics. If you haven’t yet been asked to declare your pronouns, it won’t be long. Sooner or later, your employer will suggest that you sign off emails with them, or announce them along with your name at the beginning of meetings.
Declaring our pronouns has become the most common way in which we are expected to pledge allegiance to the new identity-obsessed religion that has captured most of our major institutions. The likes of Nicola Sturgeon, Jeremy Corbyn, and Kamala Harris have all performed the ritual, but other figures have been less predictable. Who would have anticipated that Richard Moore, the Head of MI6, would suddenly decide to include “he/him” in his Twitter bio?
Such examples are a reminder of just how far the virus of Critical Social Justice has spread. Earlier this month, it was reported that members of staff at the British Library were being encouraged to wear pronoun badges with “he/him”, “she/her” or “they/them”. Last year, Scottish civil service staff were being asked to sign off emails with their preferred pronouns in order to “foster an open culture that is supportive of the LGBTI+ community”. Even the BBC has issued guidelines to encourage its staff to make similar gestures, claiming that adding pronouns to emails is a “small, proactive step that we can all take to help create a more inclusive workplace”. … read full article
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here
From Kathleen Stock (UK)
By Kathleen Stock
March 2, 2022
If, in some distant possible world, Buzzfeed were ever to employ me to write a version of that familiar standby, “21 Empowering Books For Your Feminist Reading List”, I’d include at least four books by philosopher John Gray. To my knowledge, Gray has nothing whatsoever to say about feminism, though admittedly my search results weren’t helped by the fact he has the same name as the author of 90s bestseller Men Are From Mars, Women are From Venus. If the philosopher John Gray were to write a book about men and women, it would probably be called Men are Nothing But Efficient Hosts for Bacteria (and So Are Women). According to him, there's no meaning in nature, and nature is all there is. There’s no God, no transcendent purpose, nor universal values. Humans are animals, albeit more predatory and less effective at coordinated action than many other species. Animals are mere assemblies of genes. Everything in the natural world, including us, came about by blind accident. The world is permanent chaotic and there is no redemption.
In a certain mood, I find this picture weirdly comforting - the same sort of mood that finds me engaging in self-care by binge-watching The World At War. In the words of John Cleese’s beleaguered headmaster in Clockwise: “It's not the despair, Laura. I can stand the despair. It's the hope!.” Taken in the spirit of a bracing reality check, I think feminists could learn a lot from this.
Throughout Gray’s work, a habitual target is a philosophical worldview which arose in the Enlightenment, and which for want of a better term we can call “liberal humanism”. According to the liberal-humanist narrative, humans are special, distinguished by their unique capacity for rationality. This capacity is presumed to take humans out of the animal realm into the realm of “persons” - roughly, individuals who have free will, are capable of consciously choosing actions in the light of reasons rather than instincts, and who can reflect upon right and wrong. This same rational capacity is also thought to bestow upon humans unconditional rights, understood as moral prohibitions on certain kinds of treatment. The development of science, meanwhile, is viewed as helping humans overcome their limitations, the better to control the natural world with the help of technological devices invented for the purpose. The trend in well-being is conceived of as generally upward: there may be blips, but on the whole, as we move through time and acquire increasingly objective knowledge of the world and of ourselves, it can only increase. It’s also assumed that, as time passes, the human species will become ever more morally enlightened. The popular trope of the “right side of history” betrays this conceit: as if, at some point in future, there will be a reckoning from a secure vantage point, and an incontestable sorting of the past into definitively good and bad. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to Kathleen Stock!)
Detrans Awareness Day
From The War on Women (UK)
By Hannah
March 2, 2022
Iowa Senate passes bill prohibiting transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams, bill to head to governor’s desk
The bill, which Republicans held as a fairness issue, was called discriminatory by legislative Democrats.
From The Daily Iowan (USA)
By Emily Delgado
March 2, 2022
The Iowa Senate passed a bill prohibiting transgender girls and women from participating in sports that align with their gender identity both in K-12 schools and Iowa’s public universities.
Republican Senators argued that cisgender girls would be disadvantaged by competing with transgender girls.
“But this bill is about fairness; it does not exclude anyone from participation in sports. This bill serves to ensure the integrity of girls and women in sports,” said Sen. Chris Courynor R-Scott, in the floor debate on Wednesday. “The integrity and equity that women fought long and hard for so girls, then, today, and in the future can compete in a fair way.”
House File 2416 passed out of the House last week and passed in a party line vote 31–17 in the Senate on Wednesday.
State Sen. Eric Giddens, D-Cedar Falls, used his time to read a letter written by constituents of his arguing for the benefits of team sports for all athletes, regardless of gender identity.
“The lessons learned in winning and losing teamwork and how to be a good winner or loser. Please pause and reflect on the values you’ve learned being part of a team. If you vote for this bill, you do not support life, just some lives,” Giddens said, reading from a letter.
Republicans argued that allowing transgender girls to compete goes against the 1972 Title XI Act, which allows for girls to have access to education and sports.
“There are many other kids and young adults, girls and women who are equally valuable. They do have rights and they deserve protection,” Sen. Jim Carlin, R- Sioux City said. “These rights in this protection include an honest application of Title IX, the integrity of female sports, and fairness during competition.” … read full article
What a load of pants
Transgender awareness seminars push sexist ideology disguised as progress
From The Critic (UK)
By Sarah Summers
March 1, 2022
Businesses are paying transgender activist Katie Neeves to run internal trans awareness seminars to educate staff on what it means to be a transgender woman.
On the surface this appears to send a positive message to employees, demonstrating a commitment to inclusion and equality. Giving a voice to underrepresented and marginalised minorities seems to be a laudable attempt by employers at demonstrating LGBTQ allyship.
But in reality, these “educational” sessions are pushing a homophobic and sexist ideology disguised as progress and liberalism. Misogyny is misogyny, even if the misogynist is wearing a woman’s blouse.
Katie Neeves came out as a transgender woman at the age of 49 and three years on claims he “lives as a woman” full time. Living as a woman, according to Neeves, is wearing a short skirt and boots and having white van drivers stop to let you cross the road.
It is difficult to think of an appropriate time to talk about knickers to a room full of strangers
Although Neeves prefers she/her pronouns, this article will refer to Neeves as he/him. This is not to be rude, disrespectful, or unkind to Neeves but to highlight that the behaviour Neeves displays when running these trans awareness seminars is typical of a middle-aged, paraphilic male.
Pronouns can act like rohypnol. They can be used to trick women, lower women’s defences, push women’s boundaries and fool women into feeling comfortable and relaxed. Pronouns can encourage women to behave in a way they would around other women rather than to be wary and guarded as they would be around men.
Neeves’s website states, “I offer a very personal, powerful and authentic insight into what it’s like to be transgender in the UK” and he has delivered training to many organisations including Deutche Telekom, Virgin Media and Zurich Insurance.
Neeves recently delivered a webinar to a large, London-based corporation as part of LGBT history month. The event was billed as an informative and entertaining session lead by an “inspirational trans ambassador”. … read full article