This day in Herstory: On March 9, 1913, Virginia Woolf delivered her first novel to the publisher. The Voyage Out was originally titled Melymbrosia, but Woolf repeatedly changed the draft. The novel is set on a ship bound for South America. Woolf began work on The Voyage Out by 1910 (perhaps as early as 1907) and had finished an early draft by 1912. The novel had a long and difficult gestation; it was not published until 1915, as it was written during a period in which Woolf was especially psychologically vulnerable. She suffered from periods of depression and at one point attempted suicide. The resultant work contained the seeds of all that would blossom in her later work: the innovative narrative style, the focus on feminine consciousness, sexuality and death. (more)
JK Rowling says Labour sees women as ‘they who must not be named’
From The Times (UK)
By James Beal
March 9, 2022
JK Rowling has waded into another trans row — joking that Labour would call International Women’s Day “We Who Must Not Be Named Day”.
Her comments came after Anneliese Dodds, the shadow minister for women and equalities, struggled to spell out what the definition of a woman was when asked on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. She said: “Well, I have to say that there are different definitions legally around what a woman actually is. I mean obviously, that’s when you’ve got the biological definition, legal definition, all kinds of things.”
Asked what Labour’s definition was, Dodds replied: “I think it does depend what the context is surely. You know, there are people who have decided that they have to make that transition . . . because they live as a woman they want to be defined as a woman.” After the exchange, Rowling tweeted: “Someone please send the shadow minister for equalities a dictionary and a backbone.”
Rowling — in reference to her character Lord Voldemort — added: “Apparently, under a Labour government, today will become ‘We Who Must Not Be Named Day.’”
Rowling posted a picture of Joanna Cherry, the SNP MP, writing: “What a woman who owns a dictionary and a backbone looks like.” Cherry opposed reforms of the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland which will allow transgender people to obtain a gender recognition certificate through a declaration. … read full article
What is a woman? Labour frontbenchers don’t seem to be sure
Yvette Cooper becomes the second shadow cabinet minister unable to give a definition on International Women's Day
From The Telegraph (UK)
By Camilla Turner
March 9, 2022
Labour’s frontbenchers have been unable to define what a woman is, with one saying the issue is a “rabbit hole”.
On Wednesday, Yvette Cooper became the second shadow cabinet minister to refuse to give a definition of a woman.
The shadow home secretary told Times Radio “I just think people get into rabbit holes on this. Why are we all getting ourselves tangled up?”
When told it was “straightforward” to explain what a woman is, she replied: “As you can see I am avoiding going down a rabbit hole, it’s pointless.”
Her remarks came after Anneliese Dodds, the shadow minister for women and equalities, struggled to spell out what the definition of a woman was when asked on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
'Different definitions legally'
She said: “Well, I have to say that there are different definitions legally around what a woman actually is. I mean obviously, that’s when you’ve got the biological definition, legal definition, all kinds of things.”
Asked what Labour’s definition was, the MP for Oxford East replied: “I think it does depend what the context is surely. You know, there are people who have decided that they have to make that transition...because they live as a woman they want to be defined as a woman.”
Following the exchange, JK Rowling tweeted: “Someone please send the shadow minister for equalities a dictionary and a backbone.” … read full article (paywall)
Third-Grader Summer Camp Teaches ‘Gender Is A Spectrum,’ Using Condoms
The camp is set for June in Indianapolis.
From The Daily Wire (USA)
By Mairead Elordi
March 9, 2022
A sex education summer camp for children in grades three to five will include a condom demonstration, among other camp activities, The Daily Wire has learned.
The “Sex Ed Summer Camp” for students as young as seven is scheduled to get rolling this June in northern Indianapolis. The camp is set to run June 6 to 10 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Half Liter BBQ, in the restaurant’s private banquet area.
Registration costs $200 until March 2, when spots will begin selling for $250 until the end of May.
A flyer for the camp says a condom demonstration for the kids will be part of camp activities.
“At this age, kids are primed for level-headed learning. They are information-gatherers. There is no shame or ickiness associated with using bandaids and that same philosophy is applied to condoms and other barriers in this body-positive curriculum,” reads the flyer.
In addition, the kids will not be separated by gender when learning about puberty, bodies, and sex because “gender is a spectrum” and “everyone needs to learn about all bodies,” the flyer states. … read full article
Daughter with Severe Mental Health Issues Gets Hormones at First Appointment with Planned Parenthood
From Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) (USA)
March 9, 2022
This is a transcript of a Partners for Ethical Care (PEC) parent story. The original version can be found here, and the podcast version can be found here, as part of PEC’s podcast series, “The Witness: True Stories of Children and Gender Identity.
Thank you for the chance to share my story, which I hope will primarily highlight the grave disservice that Planned Parenthood is doing to young women in these confused times.
My now-21-year-old daughter (whom I’ll call Allison) had spent her childhood happily engaging in what one would call typical girly activities, with no gender-stereotyping encouragement from me at all.
That continued even after the onset of a mental-health issue in high school. She seemed to have things under control when she moved far away for college. The environment of her new city and her university was gender-nonconforming and pro-transgender-identities, and she began speaking to us by phone of being “non-binary,” which I naively took to mean something like bisexual.
Then her anxiety and depression came back to overwhelm her. She dropped out of college and moved back to our home town, resuming care from her original psychiatrist.
Allison’s appearance, always feminine and done to the nines, had changed dramatically. A shaved head, boys’ clothes, and obvious unhappiness were now her camouflage from the world.
She went from non-binary to claiming that she was really a boy. As I learned later, her explanation matched the online transgender “coaching” that’s designed to rebut the traditional diagnostic criteria of persistent, insistent, consistent behavior:
“I always knew something was wrong but didn’t have words for it until I started watching videos on Tumblr and YouTube.” “When I was little, I was afraid to tell you that I didn’t feel right.” … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to PITT)
The taboo trans question
Why can't we ask what drives people to change sex?
From UnHerd (UK)
By Sarah Ditum
March 9, 2022
“Sexuality is who you go to bed with, gender is who you go to bed as.” Learn it, remember it, drill it into your brain: this is one of the most important precepts of gender identity activism, and one of the most rigorously policed when outside voices address trans issues.
Maintaining this division is fundamental to maintaining the belief that a thing called gender identity — and gender identity only — explains individuals’ decisions to transition. It’s a belief in gender identity that allows the broadcaster Natasha Devon to write: “A trans woman is just as much a woman as I am — just a different sort of woman, with different needs.”
Once you accept the existence of some kind of internal, inherent womanhood it becomes possible to argue that physical sex is a triviality that must be looked past. The flesh is a faulty representative of the true self within, and the path to enlightenment comes when you learn to trust other people’s accounts of themselves over your own lying eyes. … read full article
Girls more likely to attribute failure to lack of talent: study
From rfi (France)
March 9, 2022
Washington (AFP) – Across the world, girls are more likely than boys to blame academic failure on a lack of talent, according to a large study on gender stereotypes published Wednesday.
Paradoxically, the idea that males are inherently more brilliant was most entrenched in countries that are more egalitarian.
Such stereotypes have been explored in the past, but the new work, published in the journal Science Advances, has the advantage of encompassing 500,000 students across the world, making it possible to compare between countries.
It used data from the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a study conducted every three years to learn more about the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students in math, reading, and sciences.
The 2018 survey included the sentence: "When I am failing, I am afraid that I might not have enough talent."
The result: in 71 of the 72 countries studied, even when performance was equal, girls were more inclined to attribute their failures to a lack of talent than boys, who were likelier to blame external factors. The sole exception was Saudi Arabia.
Contrary to what one may expect, the differences were most pronounced in wealthy nations.
Within wealthy OECD countries, 61 percent of girls said they agreed with the statement, compared to 47 percent of boys –- a difference of 14 percent.
In non-OECD countries, the gap was still present, but the difference was just eight percent. … read full article
The Essay That Prompted an Editorial Revolt
From The Chronicle of Higher Education (USA)
By Tom Bartlett
March 8, 2022
Kathleen Stock’s essay in the latest issue of Law and Contemporary Problems was controversial before she even wrote it. Last summer eight student editors resigned from the journal, which is published by Duke University’s law school, rather than be associated with the essay. The remaining student editors elected not to work on the issue in protest, and they voiced their objections in a note appended to the journal’s masthead. The proposed topic, along with Stock’s reputation, was enough to prompt a staff revolt.
The essay, titled “The Importance of Referring to Human Sex in Language,” is part of the journal’s “Sex in Law” special issue, which is dedicated to the “high-stakes, highly polarized” debate surrounding how sex is defined by courts and legislatures. In it, Stock, who until last fall was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, in England, argues against what she calls “sex-denialism.” The core of her case is the following: “Though it is normally polite and desirable to observe the preferred descriptors and pronouns of trans people in interpersonal contexts, there are times when literal and accurate reference to actual sex is important.” Among the times she cites: medical settings, sports teams, and prisons. Stock insists that “the concept woman does vital cognitive work that simply could not be done were the concept changed to refer to gender identity or social role.”
It’s hard to imagine a more opportune — or a more fraught — cultural moment for a conversation about sex and the law. State legislatures around the country are considering, or have passed, bills related to transgender participation in sports or to medical procedures for transgender youth. Meanwhile, Lia Thomas, a transgender woman on the women’s swim team at the University of Pennsylvania, has sparked a national debate about fairness and inclusion, and has placed the NCAA’s shifting policies under intense scrutiny. … read full article (registration required)
Eugenics and Other Evils
"Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as we all do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think they are doing, and not by the evil which they really do."
From Writing Behavior (Canada)
By G.K. Chesterton (from Eugenics and Other Evils)
March 9, 2022
There exists to-day a scheme of action, a school of thought, as collective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we can make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the Oxford Movement, or the Puritans of the Long Parliament; or the Jansenists; or the Jesuits. It is a thing that can be pointed out; it is a thing that can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed. It is called for convenience "Eugenics"; and that it ought to be destroyed I propose to prove in the pages that follow. I know that it means very different things to different people; but that is only because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praised with high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tongued rhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that is only because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called "The Gracious Ones." I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin. Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as we all do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think they are doing, and not by the evil which they really do. But Eugenics itself does exist for those who have sense enough to see that ideas exist; and Eugenics itself, in large quantities or small, coming quickly or coming slowly, urged from good motives or bad, applied to a thousand people or applied to three, Eugenics itself is a thing no more to be bargained about than poisoning. … read full article
Let’s engage students as individuals, not as identity groups
From Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (USA)
By Dani Stangel-Plowe
March 9, 2022
“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I was an English teacher, one of my 9th grade students—a boy of Korean descent, living a high-tech life in suburban New Jersey, playing video games and striving to get into a good college—told me how deeply he connected with the protagonist of the book we were reading. The book was Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie, a coming-of-age novel set in Nigeria in the 1980s. The protagonist, Kambili, is a Nigerian teenage girl.
Notably, my student did not look like the author or the character; he did not have any African ancestry, nor did his cultural knowledge include Nigeria in any obvious way. What he did share with the character was a complicated relationship with his father, and while reading the book my student discovered what it meant to be emotionally ambivalent. He loved this book because it helped him better understand himself and his own father.
But according to Culturally Responsive Education or “CRE”—which is also sometimes called Culturally Relevant Education—this book is not responsive or relevant to my student because his culture does not match that of the novel’s character, country, or author.
CRE is an educational theory that calls for recreating K-12 curriculum so that it “centers” student cultures—by which it generally means skin color, ancestry, ethnicity, or gender. Founded upon the work of Gloria Ladson-Billings, CRE argues for linking student culture to the classroom for African-American and other underserved students. … read full article (and SUBSCRIBE to Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism!)
The Penny drops
The feminist fix: The only way to avoid humiliation is to admit when you’ve got it wrong
From The Critic (UK)
By Julie Bindel
March 9, 2022
Nobody likes to admit that they made a mistake; but everybody, including me, gets it wrong sometimes. So, what is the feminist fix for admitting your error, and how can you avoid being humiliated, slated, disowned and dishonoured?
When I was first involved in feminism as a bolshie 17-year-old, I picked up some extreme views and habits; I decided that the behaviour of men was so abhorrent that I would embrace separatism and viewed them all as the enemy. I would take it to such extremes that I would refuse to go on a bus if it driven by a man (it was 1980, so almost all were) and go bonkers if I were called “love” or “darling”, even though I lived in Yorkshire and, more often than not, men used those terms of endearment for each other.
I learned, and realised that, a) I wanted to live in the real world and seek to change men for the better rather than pretend they didn’t exist, and b) there was nothing inherently flawed in boys and men, some of them chose to be decent rather than sexist douchebags, and it was quite rude to shout at a bloke in the greengrocers just because he innocently asked, “What can I get you, my darling?” … read full article
Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it
Laurie Penny has not reacted well to the skewering of Their latest tome.
From Spiked (UK)
By Julie Burchill
March 9, 2022
It was Iris Murdoch who said ‘a bad book review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia’, and as someone who has had loads, I’d be inclined to agree – I don’t recall a bad review ever even putting me off my feed for a few hours, let alone causing me to have the ab-dabs.
I first became aware of Laurie Penny (who identifies as non-binary) when, in 2011, ‘They’ called me ‘clod-headed’, a ‘rentagob’ and ‘bonkers’ for admiring Israel. At the time, I no doubt chuckled and bounced out to a watering hole, as is my wont. But in the light of recent trends, I’m reviewing the situation, especially the ‘bonkers’ bit. Were They neuro-diverse-shaming me? And didn’t They know that Their words were Literally Violence?
A decade has passed and Penny has since moved to Los Angeles to a plum job writing for HBO and Netflix. Who could possibly have any beef (hope that’s not cow-shaming) with our humble heroine? Well, quite a lot of people, as the recent publication and subsequent mastication of her latest book, Sexual Revolution, showed. The reviews were gloriously brutal, almost making up for the crimes against our mother tongue (sorry, chest-feeding / birthing-parent tongue) that Penny inevitably commits with each ponderous new tome. Even that notoriously right-wing rag, the Guardian, said of Sexual Revolution: ‘This isn’t feminism. This is a swizz.’ … read full article