Feminist Legal Clinic

Of all the profound questions posed to humankind throughout time, no one could have guessed that the question “what is a woman?” would be one of them. Especially as the question itself is not profound at all. Yet the trending narrative that “anyone can be a woman” is now considered a truth to the point that major changes have recently been passed into New Zealand law that allows men to legally falsify the nominated sex on their birth certificate, hiding evidence of their actual sex. The new law allows them to be legally recognized as a woman based on nothing more than a personal declaration.

Gender-identity ideology originated out of American academia and threatens that everyone must invest in its most outlandish, impractical and unrealistic beliefs – even those who work within government departments. The Regulatory Impact Statement for the Sex-Self ID Bill, which was recently passed into law, claimed that (p12, 32.):

“Only recognising binary genders may have had a negative impact specific to Māori. Research suggests that there was gender diversity within Te Ao Māori and that has diminished with colonisation. This has negatively affected the acceptance and participation of gender diverse Māori in their own communities.”

This is a direct appropriation of our culture. So, why did Māori Members of Parliament who have the power to take the Government to task over such ridiculous claims, remain silent on the matter? I can only speculate.

The truth is that there is no haka, no waiata, no mōteatea, no whakataukī and no whakairo that proves that diverse gender identities ever existed in Te Ao and in pre-colonial times for Māori. Humans can never change sex. Regardless of culture, lying to any child about biological reality is incredibly cruel. How a child feels on any given day should never be responded to with off-label cancer drugs to stop their natural pubertal development or radical surgical amputation of their healthy breast or penile tissue. The very idea is horrific to the point of insanity, yet it has been written into New Zealand law.

I am co-founder of Mana Wāhine Kōrero, the only indigenous group created by indigenous women to advocate for the safeguarding of our wāhine, tamariki, mokopuna and our cultural integrity primarily against gender-identity propaganda.

We refuse to capitulate to this ideology which inserts itself uninvited into our culture, erases our mana as wāhine and hijacks our ability to safeguard in law that which we hold dear above all else; our tamariki and mokopuna. How can tangata whenua (the people) survive when this ideology seeks to permanently end the continuation of our whakapapa through the castration of our children and grandchildren? When I am asked about this topic “Why are you so angry?”, I respond “Why are you not

Source: Pre-Colonial Māori Culture Had No Diverse Gender Identities

In September 2022, the Nursing Council of New Zealand suspended Jennifer Scott’s practicing certificate, citing “transphobia” as the reason.

Before her suspension, Ms Scott had been working as a registered nurse for eight years. In 2021, during her stint at a Mental Health ward, she noticed an uptick in patients’ trans-identification.

Ms Scott became alarmed about the changes to the medical recording system, which, according to her, happened without consultation with the public.

In a video published at her channel, Ms Scott described that a drop-down menu where health staff could select a patient’s sex marker, suddenly showed not only “Male” and “Female,” but also “Not-specified,” “Gender Diverse,” “Indeterminate,” and “Unknown.”

After Ms Scott found out about these changes, she emailed her superiors and complained this was “an unsafe medical practice” because “healthcare professionals need to know someone’s sex to provide adequate care.”

When New Zealand’s mainstream newspapers informed about her nursing license suspension, they did so calling Ms Scott an “anti-transgender activist.”

“The silencing and Cancel Culture of women in NZ is strong,” Ms Scott explained to 4W.

Source: NZ: Women’s Rights Campaigner Had Nursing License Suspended for ‘Transphobia’

According to WPATH SOC8, gender clinicians may exercise the judgment to start hormone blockers in children at Tanner Stage 2 in their development. For girls, this may be age 9. For boys, age 11. Most children who start puberty blockers then go on to be prescribed cross-sex hormones, also called gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT). This whole protocol works in contradiction to the child’s natural endocrine system. At this point, irreversible changes have happened.

Let’s talk about the drugs. The most common GnRH (puberty blocker) is Lupron. Lupron is not designed for children who identify as transgender—it’s more commonly used to treat cancer. It costs at least hundreds of dollars a month, but I’ve normally heard it costing thousands. Lupon can have devastating side effects, and even the gender clinicians are aware of this, and some have talked about rushing children off puberty blockers and on to cross-sex hormones as quickly as possible.

Girls who are put on this path inject testosterone. Testosterone can act as a mild anti-depressant. Girls taking testosterone report having more energy. Testosterone is also expensive. Boys on this path take estrogen. Estrogen is sometimes used to treat sex offenders to reduce their sex drive. Estrogen is cheaper in oral form, but is associated with higher risk of stroke. From my own experience, I was not ready to handle male puberty, and estrogen acted like a governor on my sex drive. It helped me avoid learning about my body.

After a period on hormone replacement therapy, boys are expected to follow a path that includes castration and the construction of a vagina-like orifice using the penis as material. Without testicles, the boy will become dependent on external hormones for the rest of his life. Girls on this path will experience vaginal atrophy from testosterone, and eventually her other sex organs will be destroyed by the testosterone. After hysterectomy, the girl will become dependent on external hormones for the rest of her life.

For boys and girls in this situation, and for people like me, our health is wholly dependent on the medical system. We must have regular blood tests (at least once a year), and we must report in to our providers to get renewals for our external hormones. These hormone treatments are not optional: we have no gonads. Without them, our bones will become frail, and we will experience other physical symptoms, including mental health problems—hormones regulate our entire bodies.

I am leashed to a medical provider. The best I can do is pick who holds the leash. The children who are being transitioned are being put on to a leash. They are typically starting the process with healthy bodies. But then our bodies are deliberately damaged. Why? For aesthetics. I’m unusual in that I’m vocal about my criticism of the system. I have heard from so many trans people that they would like to say something, but they are terrified that the people who hold their leashes will jerk on the reins.

Planned Parenthood is one of the most generous of the leash-holders. They will essentially let anyone sign up to get a leash, and they don’t ask for very much from their pets. How does this sound? Maybe not so bad? What is the medical discipline that understands the endocrine system? It’s endocrinology! And yet, nobody writing prescriptions at Planned Parenthood is an endocrinologist. My local gender clinic, which sees perhaps 1000 patients, has no endocrinologist on staff. Not only are we on medical leashes, but the people who hold the leashes aren’t even experts in the field. They are learning about best practices and then experimenting on us. However, as someone once pointed out to me, it’s not an experiment. In an experiment, someone is collecting data.

Source: The medical leash of hormone replacement therapy

Rarely have the special accommodations demanded by one group been so deleterious for others.

Gender ideologues are notorious for word games and language manipulation. When it suits them, the word “gender” is used as a synonym for “sex.” At other times, and depending on the context, gender is taken to refer to roles and behaviors stereotypically associated with being male or female. And, when all else fails, gender is interpreted as an ethereal inner essence, like a soul, that cannot be directly observed or studied, but must be taken at face value as real and only knowable from a first-person perspective. Together, these inconsistent, overlapping definitions are used by gender ideologists to resist being pinned down, to evade addressing logical contradictions, and to dismiss material reality.

What makes the gender subterfuge so effective is that gender is simultaneously cast as separate from and synonymous with sex. When seen as separate, it’s argued that a person’s gender expression—stereotypical behaviors and preferences associated with being male or female—can only be arrived at by a conscious individual sometime after birth. But as “gender” is also used as a surrogate for “sex,” an inability to pin down a person’s chosen gender expression immediately upon emerging from the womb is used to argue that biological sex itself cannot be determined at birth (let alone in utero!). Instead, gender ideologues insist that doctors simply “assign” a gender and/or sex to infants, where there is again endless equivocation between sexual anatomy and social roles.

All of this would amount to little more than bizarre navel gazing was it not for the fact that gender ideology, when allowed to influence policy, has significant negative impacts on women, gays, lesbians, children, free speech, freedom of religion, and democratic rights.

The Democratic Party, The Green Party, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, La Leche League, the National Organization for Women, the British Labour Party, Unitarian Universalists, the mainstream media, Democracy Now, practically every university, many local school districts, and nearly every socialist group have joined the gender religion. When the dam breaks and people realize the fraud being perpetrated by gender ideology, it is toward these organizations that popular anger will be directed.

People are free to disbelieve Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, astrology, and any number of other belief systems. No one claims that this “denies the existence” of Catholics, Muslims, Jews, or astrologists. But gender ideologists insist that failure to adhere to their ideology is to deny their very existence. This overreach is manipulative and undemocratic.

None of this is progressive, let alone revolutionary.

If the left doesn’t get itself sorted out on this issue—and quickly—the right will opportunistically step in to pose as the guardians of reason and civil liberties. This has already begun. Absent left-aligned forces willing to stand up for women, gays, lesbians and children on this issue, traditionally conservative law firms, politicians, and media personalities have begun to fill the void.

As always, there is a heavy price to be paid when the left finds itself on the wrong side of a major issue—lining up, as it were, on the wrong side of the barricades. That price is paid not only by those organizations and individuals who fail as leaders, but by the many average people who suffer directly and indirectly from that misleadership.

The alarm clock is ringing. It’s time to wake up!

Source: On ‘Gender,’ the Left Is Shooting Itself in the Foot

Anthropologists and archaeologists have taught me that every culture we know of has gender — which I define as ideas about how women and men should behave — in some form or another, even if they make room for individuals who don’t conform to those standards. Gender is hardly a Western creation. Rufo also notes that many kids are learning that sex as well as gender is a spectrum, or that everyone has a gender identity — that is, a gendered soul, independent of the body. Such ideas are taught and are rippling through mainstream publications as unassailable truths.

Plenty of feminists and liberals, and some trans people who acknowledge their biological sex, object to this belief system and find these claims about sex dubious but are rightly afraid to say so. They fear losing their jobs, friends, or livelihoods, being censured by colleagues or censored by social media. I believe people should be armed with the knowledge and courage to question and push back — effectively and respectfully — on these notions. Questioning and pushing back should be standard practice in a democracy and an acceptable approach for both liberals and conservatives.

Rufo writes that gender ideology advances the notion that “sex and gender are socially constructed — that is, they are human inventions used as instruments of power, rather than features of objective reality.” Of course sex is not socially constructed; biological sex is real and, in humans, dimorphic. But after that point, I diverge from Rufo. While some male-typical and female-typical behavior has biological roots, much of gender as I and other feminists define it — culturally based expectations of how men and women should behave — is socially constructed. And gender can indeed be used as an instrument of power.

Gender identity ideology embraces the very gender stereotypes that feminists and others on the left spent decades dismantling in order to advance women’s rights. These days, in an attempt to be inclusive, some adults assume that a girl who wears her hair short and plays baseball or has other typically masculine interests may identify as or actually want to be a boy, as I know from personal experience. We hear tales of young boys who wanted pink, sparkly dresses and felt at an early age that they were girls.

We have taken social transition, a treatment for extreme gender dysphoria, and rejiggered it for the larger population, telling children that “boy” and “girl” are constructed social categories, not biological ones. We have redefined gender to be a fixed feeling inside someone — rather than a repressive idea imposed on them.

I want liberals to help spread this message: There is no one right way to be a boy or a girl — and these are fundamentally biological, not social, categories of humans. It’s important for scientific and medical reasons to recognize sex differences. You can be as masculine or feminine as you want to be or naturally are. There is nothing wrong with your body if you behave more like members of the opposite sex than your own — and there are many ways to treat gender dysphoria if you feel that way. There is nothing wrong with same-sex attraction.

Source: Kids and gender — we have to (be able to) talk about it – The Boston Globe