Author: fem4admin39

Women’s groups intentionally over-simplify the impact of trans law reforms

Bronwyn Williams writes for the Tasmanian Times:

Yesterday’s joint statement by Tasmanian women’s groups, Women’s Legal Service Tasmania, Engender Equality, Hobart Women’s Shelter and Women’s Health Tasmania, continues the litany of oversimplified assurances about the benign nature of the radical birth registration and anti-discrimination law reforms proposed by Labor and the Greens.

These organisations say Women Speak Tasmania doesn’t represent the large number of women associated with them, but how many women, exactly, do THEY represent?

We generously estimate their Boards and staff to number around 120 people in total. But what about their clients?

Has Hobart Women’s Shelter, for example, asked all its traumatised family violence clients how they would feel about sharing sleeping quarters with an intact male who identifies as a woman?

Women Speak Tasmania has had personal contact with many women in Tasmania, and we have formed close links with an expanding number of women’s groups, both interstate and overseas, in a short period of time.

Rather than presuming to speak for Women’s Legal Service Tasmania, Engender Equality, Hobart Women’s Shelter and Women’s Health Tasmania, Women Speak Tasmania openly acknowledges the fundamental ideological difference between us.

They say ‘transgender women are women’. Our position is that they are not. They are biological males, and in the centuries long history of female oppression, biology matters.

Women Speak Tasmania has put forward an alternative legislative framework that protects the rights of female persons and transgender people – see our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/womenspeaktas/.

Finally, we reject the assertion by Women’s Legal Service Tasmania, Engender Equality, Hobart Women’s Shelter and Women’s Health Tasmania that putting forward a women’s rights argument leads to ‘greater danger, including physical assaults to transgender women, non-binary individuals, and women who do not conform to stereotypes of femininity’.

All available data suggests violence against these groups is overwhelmingly perpetrated by MEN, not by women standing up for their basic human rights.

https://tasmaniantimes.com/2018/11/womens-groups-intentionally-over-simplify-the-impact-of-trans-law-reforms/

Luke Foley quits after journalist’s sexual harassment claim

Tom McIlroy for the Financial Review writes:

Facing growing pressure from colleagues after former ABC state political reporter Ashleigh Raper confirmed on Thursday she was the journalist at the centre of claims about sleazy conduct, Mr Foley announced he would stand down immediately.

She alleged the Auburn MP stood next to her and touched her inappropriately as he prepared to leave the event.

“He put his hand through a gap in the back of my dress and inside my underpants,” she said in the statement.

“He rested his hand on my buttocks.

Ms Raper said a former Fairfax Mediajournalist witnessed the incident but she chose not to make a complaint for fear she would lose her job covering NSW state politics.

https://www.afr.com/news/abc-journalist-details-sexual-harassment-allegation-against-nsw-labor-leader-luke-foley-20181108-h17nsm?

Dutch man Emile Ratelband, 69, wants to legally change his age to 49

Kelly McLaughlin for INSIDER writes:

A 69-year-old entrepreneur in the Netherlands wants to legally change his age to 49 so he can go back to work and meet more women on Tinder, according to his lawsuit.

Emile Ratelband filed a lawsuit against the Dutch government in an attempt to change the birth date on his passport from March 11, 1949, to March 11, 1969, the Dutch publication De Telegraaf reported.

The self-proclaimed positivity guru argued that he feels 20 years younger, and compared the age difference to being transgender, despite the concepts being completely different.

“You can change your name. You can change your gender. Why not your age? Nowhere are you so discriminated against as with your age,” he told De Telegraaf.

“When I’m 69, I am limited. If I’m 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car. I can take up more work. When I’m on Tinder and it says I’m 69, I don’t get an answer,” he said.

https://www.thisisinsider.com/dutch-man-emile-ratelband-wants-to-legally-change-his-age-to-49-2018-11?

Whose Security Matters?

Sarah St. Vincent for CrimeReads writes:

“Do you realize,” I asked, “how enormously more likely I am, as a woman, to be killed or maimed by a current or former partner than by anyone the government thinks of as a terrorist?”

The insistence of the sprawling national security apparatus that “security” means safety from threats ostensibly posed by foreigners overseas—especially Muslim men—and that everyone should be willing to give up their rights for that purpose, but not for others, reflects a perspective that is prejudiced and limited in multiple ways. I could have said the same about the government’s failure to regard the “incel” movement as a national security threat despite its international nature and proven record of horrific public violence, including by using firearms and vehicular attacks in the US and Canada.

Massive warrantless surveillance violates human rights and historically has never been a sign of a healthy democracy. But when the government decides to convince us that we should accept being spied on, it points to threats it believes the public will find frightening and important. And violence against women never makes the list—as if the deaths of women were not significant; as if this violence weren’t really violence.

https://crimereads.com/whose-security-matters/

Exam scores docked to reduce number of women at Tokyo Medical School

Tarla Lambert for Women’s Agenda writes:

A medical school in Tokyo has been forced to accept more than 60 female students after admitting it had discriminated against women for the past two years.

The school admitted that in August this year, it had been reducing the entrance exam scores of female applicants to ensure the numbers of female students remained low. The justification given was that women tend to quit their careers in medicine prematurely to raise families, and thus cause staffing shortages at the hospital.

In Japan, the persistent continuation of traditional gender roles prevents women from pursuing equal opportunities at work. Far fewer women enrol in university and even if they do, they are still expected to give up their careers to be home-makers down the line.

The investigation into TMU found that all applicants’ first-stage test scores were reduced by 20 percent this year before adding a minimum of 20 points for male applicants.

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/exam-scores-tampered-to-reduce-number-of-women-at-tokyo-medical-school/

CARPAY: 16 Vancouver women facing human rights complaints for refusing to wax transgender woman’s male genitalia

– The Post Millennial

The anonymous individual “JY” has filed 16 separate complaints with the Human Rights Tribunal after being refused a Brazilian wax from businesses that only service women.

The Justice Centre has been connected with only two of the 16 women, and has provided legal representation to both, without charge.

One of them, Shelah Poyer, is a single mom who works out of her home. JY was willing to withdraw his complaint in exchange for $2,500.

If JY is demanding similar sums from the other 14 women, he stands to receive as much as $35,000 for dropping his human rights complaints.

Fighting JY’s discrimination complaint all the way through to a hearing would cost each esthetician $20,000 or $30,000 or more.

Further, those facing a complaint of “gender identity” discrimination may find it extremely difficult to obtain legal representation.

Without legal representation, it is likely that most or all of these 14 women are going to pay settlement money to JY, to escape the very stressful tribunal process.

JY continues to benefit unfairly from the Tribunal’s anonymity Order, and from the Tribunal not informing the estheticians that free legal representation is available to them.

https://www.thepostmillennial.com/carpay-16-vancouver-women-facing-human-rights-complaints-for-refusing-to-wax-transgender-womans-male-genitalia/

The Dangerous Effects of Surrogacy: A Review of A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India

K. Blaine for Public Discourse writes:

Imagine you live in India. You live in extreme poverty—poverty like most Americans have never witnessed. The kind of poverty that leads you to sign a contract that you cannot read. You relinquish your home, your friends, your family, your children, your body. You leave your community to live in a dormitory where your every move is monitored and recorded. You have no control over the medical interventions performed on you. You are told what you can watch on television, what you can eat, where and how far you can walk, and even what you can listen to.

This is not a spin-off of the “Handmaid’s Tale.” It’s the true story that Dr. Sheela Saravanan has studied and written about in A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India.

Saravanan studied two IVF clinics in Western India. She interviewed and observed thirteen surrogates, six of the surrogates’ spouses, four intended parents, and two doctors. Her research “revealed several ongoing illegal surrogacy cases, near-death situations of surrogate mothers, neonatal and perinatal mortalities, unreported abandonment of disabled infants by intended parents and morbidities among surrogate mothers.”

Surrogacy is a global problem. Men and women from places like the United States, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands travel to places like Thailand, Nepal, Mexico, Laos, Dubai, and Cambodia to take advantage of lax legislation, inequality, and indescribable poverty to build their families.

Overall, Saravanan’s research found, not surprisingly, that surrogacy is a money-making business that exploits both surrogate mothers and intended parents. She states, “surrogacy was a bazaar where everything about women’s reproductive capacity and the children born was priced,” including the number, weight, and gender/(dis)abiliites of the child(ren) born.

https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/10/42720/?

ICE Detention Center Says It’s Not Responsible for Staff’s Sexual Abuse of Detainees

Victoria Lopez and Sandra Park of the American Civil Liberties Union write:

A recent investigation into sexual abuse in immigration detention found that there were 1,448 allegations of sexual abuse filed with ICE between 2012 and March 2018. In 2017 alone, there were 237 allegations of sexual abuse in immigration detention facilities.

At least three former employees have been arrested for sexually abusing migrant children. One was convicted, and one of the facilities was closed down following allegations of staff abusing children.

These are not isolated cases. They clearly show that officials are not doing enough to detect and respond to incidents of sexual abuse in immigration detention. The result is that immigrants are put at serious risk for sexual violence while they are detained.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/immigrants-rights-and-detention/ice-detention-center-says-its-not-responsible

Meanwhile Jeet Heer at The New Republic reports:

Trump incites a “lock her up” chant against women who make sexual harassment accusations.

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/152046/trump-incites-lock-up-chant-women-make-sexual-harassment-accusations

Why women receive less CPR from bystanders

ScienceDaily reports:

Previous research has shown women who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrest receive CPR less frequently than men, said Sarah M. Perman, M.D., M.S.C.E., assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver and lead author on the survey study.

In a new survey (Poster Presentation 198) Colorado researchers asked 54 people online to explain, with no word limit, why women might be less likely to get CPR when they collapse in public. In the replies, the team identified four themes:

  • Potentially inappropriate touching or exposure;
  • Fear of being accused of sexual assault;
  • Fear of causing physical injury;
  • Poor recognition of women in cardiac arrest — specifically a perception that women are less likely to have heart problems, or may be overdramatizing or “faking” an incident; or
  • The misconception that breasts make CPR more challenging.

The team’s findings showed that in their descriptive study, participants in their cohort performed CPR or used an AED on virtual-reality female victims less than on virtual male victims.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181105105453.htm

On Sex, Ribbons, and Why Cows Still Aren’t Bulls

culturallyboundgender writes:

Whether you are new to the world of feminism or not, you have probably heard one of these arguments in favor of accepting identity-based sex/gender* definitions:

  • Sex is a spectrum, not a binary
  • There are people with chromosomes that don’t match their outward physical appearance
  • There exists a huge range of intersex conditions, challenging the very idea of what we consider “male” or “female”

But these sex is a spectrum arguments are sophistry. They are a word game. . . . Because these arguments always lead up to “identity,” and intersex conditions are conditions existing in material reality.

Let’s take, by way of example, something we all accept is a spectrum already: visible light.

Blue light and red light exist toward the ends of this spectrum, and there is a dramatic range of colors in between.

And yet, discoveries of new colors within that spectrum — or the fuzzy boundaries between what we, for instance, perceive as red versus orange — do not mean that yellow is whatever someone identifies as yellow (or believes is yellow with all their heart).

[S]ome sheep being born with ambiguous genitalia and infertility issues doesn’t mean a ram can suddenly be a ewe upon request.

Sex spectrum arguments are irrelevant to the idea of identity-based sex and gender definitions. They are a deliberate time-wasting tactic engaged in by mansplainers, who jump in with an “Aaaaactually…” and then use this red herring to confuse the argument and claim victory.

Bookmark this post — and the next time you hear someone making this argument, send them this way.

https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/on-sex-ribbons-and-why-cows-still-arent-bulls/