Author: fem4admin39

Gender identity clinic accused of fast-tracking young adults

Jamie Doward for The Guardian writes:

Britain’s only NHS gender identity service for children is reviewing its operations amid claims made by a senior member of staff that it is failing to examine fully the psychological and social reasons behind young people’s desire to change gender.

The views are shared by a group of parents of transgender children, who have raised their own concerns that the Tavistock Centre’s gender identity development service (GIDS) in London is “fast-tracking” young people into life-altering decisions without fully assessing their personal histories.

The parents claim that the huge increase in numbers of children seeking referrals, which has risen from 97 in 2009 to 2,519 in the year to April, is placing great demands on the clinic, with potentially negative consequences for children.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/03/tavistock-centre-gender-identity-clinic-accused-fast-tracking-young-adults

More than 800 Aboriginal children could be adopted under NSW law change

Lorena Allam for The Guardian writes:

More than 800 Aboriginal children in New South Wales could be adopted without parental consent if controversial changes to the state’s child protection legislation go ahead.

The Department of Family and Community Services has confirmed that between 810 and 815 Aboriginal children are on guardianship orders, which could be converted to open adoptions under the Berejiklian government’s planned changes to the system.

But Grandmothers Against Removal says Aboriginal children already have a forever home.

“Our children are not orphans,” said Hazel Collins, one of the GMAR founders. “They have grandmothers, aunties, uncles who want them and love them.

“We are questioning [family and community services minister
minister] Pru Goward as to what right she has to dictate what happens with our children when she can’t even sort out the dysfunction in her own department.”

“We have intergenerational trauma from the child removals of the past. How are we supposed to heal without our babies? They don’t understand the kinship ties, the extended families that children will lose.

“What the hell was the apology for? What did they say sorry for, if they still keep doing it?”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/07/more-than-800-aboriginal-children-could-be-adopted-under-nsw-law-change?

Misogynist stereotyping in history, Part I: Those prudish Victorian women

culturallyboundgender writes:

Indeed, the prudishness of the Victorian woman is even supposed to reflect on modern political struggles: she is invoked as a grim-faced, disapproving specter of the past, whose ignorance of anatomy (and unpredictable attacks of the vapors) necessitated separate toileting and changing facilities for men and women. In the view of the modern left, desegregating the sexes is merely rectifying the wrong committed in the name of these prim, fragile ladies of leisure.

That was her stereotype. This is an attempt to find something closer to her truth.

Rather, they were arguing in favor of the basic inclusion of women in full public life: until these facilities existed, women simply did not leave the home for long enough to require restroom facilities, unless she had a carriage in which to relieve herself.

These facilities offered women an unprecedented ability to engage in public … which directly resulted in the ability of suffragists to organize the first women’s movement.

It is impossible to understand Victorian women’s attitudes toward sex without a comprehension that in the Victorian era, sex was more dangerous than it had ever been, especially for the exact women most famed for their prudishness.

Childbirth was the leading cause of adult female death in the Victorian era, a situation that was significantly worse than in previous centuries.

Abstinence, of course, is a full pregnancy preventative, but no woman in the world could claim in Victorian times that she had been “maritally raped.” The concept did not yet exist, and men’s legal rights to a woman’s body and sexuality in the context of the marital relationship were nearly boundless.

In fact, the husband’s rights extended to complete ownership and custody of all children born from the relationship.

Sex was the most dangerous activity engaged in by Victorian women, and it showed in the attitudes of women of that time.

The Victorian woman is a target of mockery and derision for her unwillingness to act playful and coquettish about sexuality — for refusing, in other words, to act like sex was no big deal, although even a single act of intercourse could foreseeably lead to her death.

The stereotyping of the Victorian woman, then, is patriarchy whistling the same jaunty tune as ever: Women’s fears are unfounded “prudery,” and women’s “no” is a result of deeply-hidden secret desire — which carries a mysterious, erotic charge.

It’s time to stop looking at the Victorian woman from the gaze of the men who confined her, raped her, shamed her, kept her a non-voter and an invalid imprisoned in her home. They deserve much better from feminists than to be used as an example of “prudes,” rather than one of the first generations of women to feel strong enough to say “no.”

https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2018/11/04/misogynist-stereotyping-in-history-part-i-those-prudish-victorian-women/

Indian girl, 13, beheaded with a hook 'for refusing sex with neighbour who was a higher caste'

Chris Dyer for Daily Mail Online writes:
A 13-year-old girl in India was beheaded with farm hook ‘for refusing to have sex with a neighbour’, police say.
The teenager was brutally attacked with a piece of farm equipment after refusing the sexual advances of the older man, it was said.
Police were said to have dismissed suggestions he was suffering from mental health problems when he slaughtered the youngster.
The girl was studying at a nearby school and had reportedly told her mum about the man’s continuous sexual advances, which she repeatedly turned down.
Her parents who were labourers, are thought to be a lower caste than the accused, which local reports suggest caused his violet reaction.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6350013/Indian-girl-13-beheaded-hook-refusing-sex-neighbour-higher-caste.html
https://thewire.in/caste/tamil-nadu-dalit-girl-beheaded
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/02/asia/india-teenager-caste-killing-intl/index.html

Daughters burnt alive with mother who failed to produce son

Manoj Chaurasia, Patna and Hugh Tomlinson for The Times write:
A mother has been burnt alive with her two young daughters by relatives in eastern India after she failed to bear her husband a son.
Bihar is one of India’s poorest states and discrimination against girls remains rampant. The gender balance averages 916 women for every 1,000 men, according to official records. In some districts, the figure for women slips below 900.
Determining the sex of a foetus was banned across India in 1994 to halt the widespread practice of aborting females, but it is still a thriving covert business and improvements in prenatal technology have made it easier to break the law. A United Nations report in 2013 detailed a steady decline in India’s gender balance, to 919 girls for every 1,000 boys. Some states have been caught inflating female birth rates to disguise their ratios.
Elsewhere in Bihar, a newborn girl was buried alive by her parents this week but found and saved by villagers after several hours in the shallow grave. Others have not been so lucky; there has been a spate of murders of baby girls in recent months.
Sachindra Narayan, a social scientist, said: “This shows the deep-rooted social bias. In a patriarchal society like Bihar, boys are still considered superior to girls as they are known as natural inheritors of family property.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/daughters-burnt-alive-with-mother-who-failed-to-produce-son-j0bnvlhdg

All Women Need To Know About This New Law That Could Impact Reproductive Rights

Christian Democratic Party MP reverend Fred Nile first proposed a bill in 2013 that would make it a crime to harm or destroy a foetus, and he’s introduced iterations of the legislation in subsequent years.
However two factors might just help Nile get some version of his bill across the line this time.
The first is that the state’s premier Gladys Berejiklian has indicated she is open to discussions about changing the law so that the state can pursue charges against a person who kills a foetus, following a horrific car crash that claimed the lives of two young women, one of whom was heavily pregnant with twins.
The second is that Nationals MP Trevor Khan has drafted a list of amendments to Nile’s most recent bill, which he believes could satisfy all parties in this reignited debate over whether or not a foetus is legally a “person”.
The legislation is named “Zoe’s Law” because of Sydney woman Brodie Donegan, who was hit by a drug-affected driver in 2009. Her unborn child, named Zoe, died at 32 weeks. The driver was charged with grievous bodily harm to Donegan, but could not be charged with Zoe’s death.
Ahead of the upper house vote in 2014, women’s rights groups and legal and medical associations raised concerns about the impact on abortion laws of giving a foetus legal personhood.
Donegan has repeatedly said she does not support Nile’s bill.
The ramifications might not be limited to abortion, and women could end up in a similar situation to some jurisdictions in the United States, where women were prosecuted over their own miscarriages . . .
Khan said Nile’s bill applies to a pregnancy “from conception”, whereas his third amendment sets a gestational limit of 24 weeks. The destruction of a foetus before this gestation would not be captured by the offence.
He has also included a section that essentially says if a woman’s foetus is harmed in the course of criminal activity, she could be liable to prosecution.
The last sitting day Nile can try and resuscitate this bill is November 15, on which Labor and Greens MPs have organised protests against the legislation.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/ginarushton/foetal-personhood-nsw-khan-fred-nile?

Single parents forced to attend 'story time' or lose Centrelink payments

Luke Henriques-Gomes for The Guardian writes:

Chia is one of 68,000 parents who have been placed on a new government program, Parents Next, after receiving a call from Centrelink assessing whether they are at risk of “long-term welfare dependency”.
Since July, these parents – overwhelmingly single women – must meet a fortnightly participation plan negotiated with a case worker, known as their ParentsNext provider. If they don’t, their parenting payment – $384.25 for a single person – can be suspended or terminated.
Parents say they have been forced by their providers to attend activities such as “story time”, swimming lessons or playgroup, or told to sign up to education courses at their own expense, even if they already hold qualifications.
“It’s offensive that the government believes that … women aren’t trying to do what they can to increase the welfare of themselves and their child,” Terese Edwards, the chief executive of the National Council of Single Mothers, told Guardian Australia.
Now that it was compulsory and women faced penalties for not complying, Edwards said it had gone “from a soft touch … to almost blaming women for undertaking unpaid care”.
People can receive parenting payment until their youngest child turns eight, when they are moved on to the lower Newstart payment. They can be placed on to the ParentsNext program once their child is six months old.
https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/06/single-parents-forced-to-attend-story-time-or-lose-centrelink-payments?fbclid=IwAR3m9KJmExoKyLqwAnM-r6wfoywVQEqpnNv8Lhg8Iv-kJRfcVFSdydWkDiY

Everyone probably knows a paedophile, Britain's top police officer claims

Charles Hymas of The Telegraph (UK) reports:
The viewing of indecent images of children is so prevalent that people probably know someone within their circle who does it, Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner said today.
She told the BBC that viewing of such images had “grown hugely”, with official figures showing a 700% rise in the number referred to police by social media companies since 2012.
“People think that is horrendous, it is, but I’m afraid we probably all know somebody who does that,” she told the BBC.
“So we must think more about the people who are making the images, live streaming and that kind of thing.”
Ms Dick cited the growth of child abuse as another pressure on police resources amid the growing debate over force priorities.
Earlier this week, Sara Thornton, head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said she wanted police to focus on tackling violent crime and burglaries rather than being distracted by expanding hate crimes to include misogyny.
She was backed by Ms Dick, who said she wanted her officers to focus on violent crime, rather than hate crime.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/02/everyone-probably-knows-paedophile-countrys-senior-officer-claims/

Abortion services lacking in regional NSW, placing stress on women

Ainslie Drewitt-Smith and Melinda James for ABC News write:

Women seeking abortions in regional NSW are being forced to travel long distances, pay large sums or self-terminate their pregnancies due to poor access to publicly-funded services, according to caseworkers.
Earlier this month Queensland decriminalised the termination of a pregnancy, making NSW the only state in Australia where abortion remains a criminal act, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Pregnancies can be terminated in NSW legally if a woman’s mental and physical health is in danger.
“Regional and rural access is extremely poor and that’s the bigger picture,” Illawarra Women’s Health Centre general manager Sally Stevenson said.
Tracy Lumb runs the Women’s Health Centre in the Shoalhaven region, which has the second-highest domestic violence rate in the state.
“We see a lot of times that women who are victims of domestic violence continue to fall pregnant because that’s another form of manipulation and abuse, tying the woman to that perpetrator,” Ms Lumb said.
A spokesperson for the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District said public health facilities across the state do perform terminations, however they must adhere to the legislative framework and be approved by a general practitioner.
“As such there is no designated public service providing terminations of pregnancy,” the spokesperson said.
Bulk-billed medical terminations can be accessed through certain clinics and can cost up to $500.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-02/abortion-services-in-regional-lacking-case-workers-say/10455510

Women's choice drives more sustainable global birth rate

Futurity reports:

If the average fertility rate in 1970 still held true, the global population would be 14 billion, or twice what it is today. So what’s behind the change? Choices by women, according to a new report on global fertility rates.
Despite strong opposition from governments and established religions, the birth rate began to fall in English-speaking countries and Nordic countries from around 1870. Over the following 50 years, other European countries followed.
Previous research shows that the Australian decline was associated with the agency of women increasing through the universal education of girls. This meant that women, rather than men, were putting themselves in charge of fertility decision-making, McDonald says.
The importance of the link between women’s education and the decline in birth rate is an obvious one . . .
https://www.futurity.org/global-fertility-rates-1901352/