Kenny, D. InTRANSigence: Gender Ideology, Social Contagion, & the Scandal of Youth Gender Medicine – YouTube

‘Greens’ offer to reinstate me, it’s not enough’, says co-founder Drew Dutton | The Australian

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

Expelled Australian Greens co-founder Drew Hutton will have his life membership reinstated under a deal proposed by the party’s Queensland division recognising that he was wrongly marched for questioning its pro-transgender platform.
In a humiliation for the Queensland Greens, their own lawyers found the 78-year-old had been denied natural justice on four occasions during the internal disciplinary proceedings that led to his expulsion – a process backed by federal leader Larissa Waters, Mr Hutton’s one-time friend and a Brisbane-based ­senator.
Ironically, the Greens’ capitulation on Mr Hutton will need to be endorsed by their state council, the body that ratified the decision to boot him in July over complaints that he had breached its code of ethics.
But a settlement is still some way off, with Mr Hutton ­renewing his demands for a public apology and reimbursement for his hefty legal costs from Supreme Court action he launched in ­September.
Mr Hutton also wants changes to the complaints and disciplinary processes that were used against him.
Mr Hutton set up the Queensland Greens before co-founding the national organisation in 1992 with Bob Brown, the party’s first federal leader.

Source: ‘Greens’ offer to reinstate me, it’s not enough’

Secret email shows Anna Cody plotted move against UN women’s rights investigator | The Australian

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

Australia’s under-fire Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody secretly queried whether any influence could be used to block the reappointment of a senior UN human rights official who had strongly opposed radical trans ideology and who sought to intervene against the landmark sex discrimination case brought by trans woman Roxanne Tickle.
In an internal email to Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) chief executive Leanne Smith, obtained by The Australian under freedom of information laws, Dr Cody criticises the UN Special Rapporteur on ­Violence Against Women, Reem Alsalem, over her “intervention on issues of trans women and their rights”.
Dr Cody asks Ms Smith whether the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) – of which the AHRC is a member – “can have any role in influencing the ­reappointment of special procedures and express a view about the inappropriateness of an ­appointment”.
Ms Alsalem told The Australian she was “disappointed but not surprised” by Dr Cody’s move, pointing out that the UN Human Rights Council placed great emphasis on protecting its special rapporteurs – independent human rights investigators – from “interference, intimidation, or reprisals”. “I find Ms Cody’s judgement of how I do my work rather ironic given that it is coming from her,” Ms Alsalem said. “At least I am able to clearly ­define the subject of my mandate – women and girls – and their sex as biologically female. As I have said in my opening remarks at the Human Rights Council session of June 2024, ‘you cannot protect what you cannot define’.”

Source: Trans plot to have UN official axed

BBC staff tried to block ‘very problematic’ JK Rowling interview | Evening Standard

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.Former BBC editor Mark Urban revealed an attempt at the BBC to block an interview with JK Rowling over her views on trans rights.

•It comes after a leaked internal BBC report into impartiality said there was “effective censorship” by LGBT staff in the news division.

•BBC leaders director-general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness have resigned following backlash over editing of a Donald Trump speech in a Panorama documentary.

Michael Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC’s editorial watchdog, added the broadcaster had been “captured by a small group of people’ promoting a pro-trans agenda and “keeping other perspectives off air”.

The BBC said: “We have taken a number of actions relating to our reporting of sex and gender including updating the news style guide and sharing new guidance, making our Social Affairs Editor responsible for this coverage, and where there have been concerns about particular stories, we have addressed them.

Source: BBC staff tried to block ‘very problematic’ JK Rowling interview

Why and How Men Can’t Be Biological Mothers | Lucy Leader

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

Up until around six-seven weeks after fertilization, all fetal genitalia are the same and are phenotypically female. Phenotype refers to how something looks, not necessarily what it is or what it will become. At this point the expression of a gene on the Y chromosome induces changes that result in the development of the testes, and it becomes increasingly obvious which sex is going to eventually be born.

Only those signed up the Gender Woo Academy maintain that sex is not real and that gender (a belief akin to a cult) is.

Sex dependent differences contribute to altered growth and developmental outcomes for fetuses. Studies on the human placenta, show that male fetuses prioritize growth pathways in order to maximise growth through to adulthood, which helps to ensure their greatest chance of reproductive success. The downside to this evolutionary pathway is that prioritizing growth means that males may not cope with shifting conditions in utero, which increases to a greater risk of morbidity or mortality, when compared with female fetuses.

Conversely, female fetuses adapt more adeptly to changes in the uterine environment, which means they end up comparatively smaller than males, but with better overall outcomes.

After birth, somehow a mother’s body knows if she is breastfeeding a boy or a girl (despite any “assigned at birth” “errors” committed by medical staff) because breast milk has a different composition that is sex dependent. Continuing on a growth trajectory, breast milk is higher in fat for boy babies than girl babies. This study concluded that the breast milk “of lactating mothers from all lactation periods, were affected by the sex of infants”.

Fetal microchimerism: babies and mothers can’t disconnect!

During pregnancy in placental mammals, there is a bidirectional transplacental cell exchange between a mother and her fetus. Because these cells are both present and persistent in women this is referred to as fetal microchimerism (FM). Fetal cells have been found in maternal tissues in elderly women who were pregnant many decades earlier and in women who miscarried, so never gave birth to a live baby.

My hormones made me do it

Both sexes produce the same hormones, but our hormonal profiles create profound and obvious differences between women and men. Adult women have a cyclical pattern of sex hormones, but men do not.

The brains of men and women are structurally more similar than different, but they do age differently and brain aging is largely a product of our sex hormones. These hormones play a crucial part in brain health.

Transplanted uteri won’t help men gestate babies

Men will never be physiologically female, however hard they wish for this or however much they pay for “treatments”. Their challenges include their pelvic structure, which is not designed to accommodate a growing fetus presenting a major physical obstacle, the complex process of successfully connecting a uterus to a recipient’s blood supply, the lack of an appropriate hormonal response to pregnancy and the impossibility of creating a functional vaginal canal.

Since when is it socially acceptable for babies to be used as fetish props?

I do not regard babies as suitable subjects for medical experimentation, especially when the outcome measure is adult satisfaction, rather than infant need. An uncontrolled example of such experimentation in male fantasies is to encourage them to join birth and breastfeeding groups set up to support women.

A final thought about homeostasis

Do you know why men who have paid to have a neovagina made for them have to continually dilate this or it will close over? Because their male bodies, even in the absence of testosterone and under the influence of estrogen views this as a surgical wound, not a natural phenomenon and in the interests of corporeal integrity, men’s bodies are trying to fix this bodily insult.

If their bodies put this much effort into closing an artificially created vagina, what might happen to any embryo unlucky enough to have been inserted into the abdominal cavity of a man?

Source: Why and How Men Can’t Be Biological Mothers

Censorship of Essential Debate in Gender Medicine Research | Journal of Controversial Ideas

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

The integrity of the gender medicine research literature has been compromised, not only by censorship of correct articles, but also by censorship of critiques of articles with unsupported (for instance exaggerated), misleading or erroneous statements. Many such statements concern the evidence base, which can be evaluated rigorously using a key component of evidence-based medicine, systematic reviews of the evidence. These reviews currently find there is limited to very little confidence that estimates of benefit from (and sometimes harm from) medical gender intervention, that is, puberty blockers, hormones and/or surgeries, are likely to match true outcomes. Several medical societies and articles in medical journals have been claiming otherwise, misrepresenting the evidence base as a whole and/or relying upon unsupported or non-representative individual study findings or conclusions. For example, high likelihood of benefit and low risk of adverse outcomes from medical gender interventions are often claimed, while less invasive alternative treatment options are either omitted or mischaracterized. Other unsupported, erroneous or misleading statements occur when studies minimize or omit mention of significant limitations, or report findings or conclusions not supported by their own data; these are then sometimes quoted by others as well. In addition, correctly reported studies are sometimes misrepresented. Critiques which attempt to rectify such statements are frequently rejected. Some examples are presented here. Such rejections have stifled scientific debate, interfering with the continual scrutiny and cross checks needed to maintain accuracy in the research literature. Currently, erroneous and unsupported statements circulate and repeat between journals and medical society guidelines and statements, misinforming researchers, clinicians, patients and the general public.

Source: Censorship of Essential Debate in Gender Medicine Research

IOC moves closer to ban on transgender women – BBC Sport

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

The International Olympic Committee has moved a step closer to introducing a blanket ban on transgender women from female categories across all sports.

IOC president Kirsty Coventry vowed to bring in the policy as part of her election campaign, and set up a working group on the protection of women’s sport.

Last week, the IOC’s medical and scientific director Dr Jane Thornton updated its members as the organisation works through the details of the potential move.

As first reported by The Times, she revealed that initial findings of the science-based review suggested that athletes born male retain physiological advantages, even after reducing testosterone levels. BBC Sport has been told any blanket ban is unlikely to be introduced before the 2026 Winter Olympics, but could be brought in before the Los Angeles Games in 2028.

Source: IOC moves closer to ban on transgender women – BBC Sport

Meet the Remainer lawyer trying to dismantle British sports’ transgender ban | The Telegraph

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

Until a fortnight ago, the closest Jolyon Maugham got to sporting notoriety was clubbing a fox to death with a baseball bat. But that will all change if the crusading KC’s Good Law Project succeeds in overturning a ban imposed on those born male playing in women’s sport.

Almost two weeks ago the Maugham-led GLP announced it had begun legal action against the England and Wales Cricket Board over the latter’s transgender participation policy. The threatened lawsuit is the latest attention-grabbing case taken on by the GLP, which was founded by Maugham, an arch-Remainer, in January 2017 in the wake of the Brexit referendum.

Best known for defeating Boris Johnson’s government at the Supreme Court over the then prime minister’s 2019 prorogation of parliament, the group is now determined to overturn the same court’s ruling that only those born female should be deemed women under the 2010 Equality Act. A legal battle, that has already resulted in Maugham becoming locked in a toxic feud with JK Rowling, has now spilt over into the world of sport, in which the ECB was one of several governing bodies to respond to April’s judgment by the UK’s highest court by banning trans women from female-only competitions.

Maugham told Telegraph Sport the GLP was suing the ECB on behalf of an unnamed trans cricketer in what he proclaimed was a “test case” for the whole of British sport, warning that the Football Association was next in his sights.

Source: Meet the Remainer lawyer trying to dismantle British sports’ transgender ban

Ex-judge admits doubts over landmark ‘pro-trans’ ruling | The Australian

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

The judge who led Australia’s Family Court when it green-lit liberalised access of puberty blockers to gender-distressed children in 2013 has revealed she now has doubts about the landmark ruling, in an extraordinary intervention into the trans medicine debate.
Former Family Court chief justice Diana Bryant says it may be better for parliaments to step in now and regulate the field of pediatric gender medicine rather than rely on whatever disputes come before judges.
[I]t was under her leadership just over a decade ago that the Family Court accepted expert evidence that puberty blockers were reversible, safe and a no-regrets option to give children time to explore their gender identity.
In the 2013 case involving a 10-year-old boy known as Jamie – who had long identified as a girl and was well advanced in male puberty – Ms Bryant wrote the key decision abolishing the rule that, even if parents agree, court approval is necessary before a child with gender dysphoria can start on puberty blockers.
This was hailed as a human right victory at a time when the transgender movement was taking off in Australia and the rest of the developed world. The Re Jamie ruling has been the law ever since.
When Jamie’s case first went to the Family Court in 2011, Justice Linda Dessau drew on an expert report by “Dr MW” and remarked that as puberty blockers were “fully reversible, without long-term effects on fertility, the child will be free to change her mind at a later date, when she is more cognitively able to grasp the long-term implications of the decision”.
In the ensuing 2013 appeal case, the court accepted an argument by the Australian Human Rights Commission that the risk of a child being wrongly prescribed blockers was not too serious because anonymised experts in the proceedings had asserted the drugs were “fully reversible” and had “no side-effects”.
In her decision, Ms Bryant invoked then recent changes to the federal Sex Discrimination Act – the subjective concept of gender identity unrelated to biological sex was added under Australia’s first female prime minister, Julia Gillard – as a sign that “those who are transgendered are an identifiable group in our society and their right to live as a member of the sex with which they feel compatible is to be respected”.
Although Justice Dessau had imposed strict suppression orders in 2011, saying “it could only be damaging for Jamie to be identified”, the court waived this four years later – and Neighbours star Georgie Stone emerged as a role model for trans youth and an “ambassador” for the RCH Melbourne gender clinic with its offer of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. The clinic had just begun to experience a dramatic increase in patient numbers under Dr Michelle Telfer.
Stone starred in a 2016 ABC Australian Story episode entitled About A Girl, with an emotive introduction by Victoria’s then Labor premier, Dan Andrews.
Alongside Dr Telfer, she appeared in publicity material for the RCH Melbourne Foundation, which has used alarming but misleading suicide statistics to raise money for the gender clinic, and Stone encouraged others like her to “reach out to the gender service and get the help you need”.
Although the Family Court still supervises these medical treatment decisions for minors when parents disagree, Ms Bryant said hormone drugs are reportedly available online beyond the control of judges and “it probably would be better” for state parliaments to codify consent rules.
A pivotal moment came in April when the court’s Justice Andrew Strum dealt a series of hammer blows to the foundations of “gender-affirming care” and made orders protecting “Devin”, a 12-year-old gender-nonconforming boy, from puberty blockers at an anonymised gender service later identified as the clinic at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne.
Following a public interest application by The Australian, that clinic’s former director, Dr Telfer, was identified as the anonymous “Associate Professor L” rebuked by Justice Strum for failing in her duty to give objective expert evidence to the court and for presenting a misleading account of the Cass review of gender dysphoria treatment.
Earlier this year, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody argued that Queensland’s pause in puberty blockers – not the drugs themselves – could “harm the physical and mental wellbeing of children”.
The commission did not reply when asked about RCH quietly backtracking on its once confident claims about puberty blockers.

Source: Ex-judge admits doubts over landmark ‘pro-trans’ ruling

Nutmeg’s Week | The Glinner Update

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

This week, a former member of the BBC’s own standards committee released a 19-page dossier to The Telegraph and government departments. Fed up with being ignored by senior staff, they documented fake news and systemic bias at the corporation. The most damning example: the doctoring of a Donald Trump speech one week before the election, editing it to suggest he was calling for violence when he’d said something entirely different.

The Telegraph began drip-feeding stories from the dossier, exposing misinformation at the BBC and the corporation’s own awareness of its shoddy reporting. Trans coverage featured prominently. The dossier reveals that trans stories are handled exclusively by the BBC’s LGBTQ desk—which refuses to cover “difficult questions about the trans debate”.

The BBC’s bias has countless examples. Here’s one that resurfaced this week. When Megha Mohan, the BBC’s ‘global gender and identity correspondent’, started at the corporation, she lied outrageously about the number of intersex people in the world. The BBC quietly corrected her but apparently never disciplined her. She then wrote to colleagues, instructing them not to platform left-wing women who don’t believe men are women.

At the time of writing, the BBC hasn’t given any detailed response to the contents of the dossier.

Wi Spa 2

The victim is a woman of colour, the villains are all white, the ‘transwoman’ is a sex offender. This is Wi Spa 2.

US singer-songwriter Tish Hyman had her gym membership terminated for complaining about a man using the women’s changing room. The man has since been identified as a violent convicted felon.

Source: Nutmeg’s Week: Martine Croxall, Tish Hyman; Helen Belcher