Bias, not evidence dominates WPATH transgender standard of care

When looking at the WPATH committee who worked on the current SOC document, a cursory examination of the members reveals that every one of the members have significant COIs.  All of them either receive income based on recommendations in the guidelines, work at clinics or universities who receive funds from advocacy groups, foundations, or pharmaceutical companies who heavily favour a certain treatment paradigm, or have received grants and published papers or research in transgender care. The majority of the members are from the US, and six of them have affiliations with the same university–the University of Minnesota Program in Sexuality, which is primarily funded by a transgender advocacy organization (Tawani Foundation).

Eli Coleman, the committee chair for the WPATH SOC, who IOM guidelines stipulate should be completely free of conflict of interest, has his very position at the University of Minnesota funded by Jennifer Pritzer, a trans person and head of Tawani.

[E]ven though only 6 to 23% of gender dysphoric children will persist into adulthood, WPATH, with no rationale given, endorses suppressing puberty as soon as it starts.

In fact, no rationale is given as to why a medical model of affirmation is recommended in the first place. 

When someone says “transition-related care is safe, effective, and supported by the entire mainstream of the medical community”, they are basing their faith unquestioningly on guidelines that were developed by people and organizations with conflicts of interest, with no systematic review, and with no evidence of safety or efficacy of treatment. These “guidelines” do not meet inclusion criteria for any clinical guideline database and have not received an endorsement from any professional body in Canada. And yet, WPATH guidelines are given as the rationale to support the unthinkable: to physically harm a distressed and vulnerable population.

Source: Bias, not evidence dominates WPATH transgender standard of care – CANADIAN GENDER REPORT

Pups, Furries & Kinksters have no place in Pride

There’s a new rights movement fighting for acceptance; it seems the latest group to feel excluded from civil society are those with fetishes. Last week the UK Pride Organisers Network sought to embrace “pups, furries and kinksters” into the rainbow family.

Unsurprisingly, the social media reaction to the suggestion that fetishists be formally included in Pride marches was somewhat hostile. Many ordinary lesbian, gay and bisexual people who have only latterly shed the stigma of being sexual deviants were angry at the association.

When it comes to sexual politics the boundary between private and public is fuzzy. For many years risqué gay men have pushed the boundaries of public decency at Pride marches with arse-less chaps and egregious displays of exhibitionism, but arguably the addition of the ‘T’ to the LGB has turbo-charged this trend toward sexual display. It might not be politically correct to admit it, but for many men transgenderism is a form of fetish, a step-up from cross-dressing.

Two years ago lesbian protesters were ejected from the Pride in London march for refusing to accept “transbians” (that is, men who identify as lesbian women) in their community. In the same year a photo emerged of police officers smiling whilst holding the leads of adult men dressed in “human-pup” fetish wear. This stark contrast, the expulsion of women protestors and the embrace of male fetishists marked a turning point, with many lesbian, gay and bisexual people leaving Pride marches all together.

Critics are warned not to “kink shame,” and told that questioning public celebration of fetishes is evidence of a sexually repressed and closed mind. In stunning social volte face, shame is reserved for those who question the right to exercise one’s fetish in public. But shame has a useful and protective social function, and when uncoupled from homophobia it is not necessarily wrong to judge those who indulge in fetishes that might be harmful to others. It is high time homosexuals and bisexuals united to push fetishes back in the bedroom closet where they belong.

Source: Pups, Furries & Kinksters have no place in Pride | Josephine Bartosch | The Critic Magazine

The real reasons that women are oppressed by patriarchy

Men don’t oppress women because they think they are stupid, incompetent, weak or incapable – they oppress women because they know that we aren’t any of those things. They know that given the chance, we will change the world in several ways which will permanently dismantle male supremacy. And they don’t want that.

The control of female sexuality

Patriarchal control has achieved this by ensuring that women and girls self-sexualise from 7 years old (according to APA, 2007), that women and girls believe and employ rape myths towards themselves and other women, blame themselves (and blame other women and girls) for the sexual and domestic violence of men (Taylor, 2020).

No one has to work very hard to control or manipulate women and girls who already view themselves as sex objects to be used, abused, controlled or enjoyed by men.

The control of female fertility

The patriarchy has long sought to control the reproductive power of women. They understand that they are not capable of the reproductive process without female bodies, hence why there is more and more experimental medical research exploring how to create wombs to gestate human babies in. And more and more fetishisation of female reproductive systems, periods, pregnancy, birth and motherhood.

[W]e have an entire industry of surrogacy which literally sells access to wombs for wealthy people – in which the majority of surrogates are women in less economically developed countries, being exploited for very little in poor conditions, to have babies for someone else who cannot or does not want to. Women’s fertility is not only controlled, but it has been commodified to the point that women are being used as paid-for containers, gestators and womb-havers.

The control of women in government

In general, women are not in control of the world at any significant level, despite making up 51% of the global population. At least, we should expect to be half of all world power. The reality is much less equal. Women make up 8% of national leaders, and within that, 2% of world presidents. Women only make up around 4% of the Fortune 500 CEOs. In the UK in 2020, women make up 5% of the FTSE 100. That’s 5 female CEOs.

The control of women in justice and justice for women

In a world in which 97% of crime is committed by men (according to international statistics collected by the FBI in 2017), it seems odd that men also make up the majority of lawmakers, judges, police chiefs, police commissioners, legislators and senators.

Women are hugely underrepresented in crime. Women make up just over half of the world population but commit 3% of the crime. When women are imprisoned, it is largely due to non-violent offences such as possession of drugs, non-payment of council tax and financial fraud.

However, more and more data is showing that crimes committed against women are going unpunished. We know that the current conviction rate of rape is just 0.2% in the UK, leading to the current inquiries lobbied for by the Centre for Women’s Justice.

So why the disparity here? What would happen if women were more in control of the justice systems? The pattern should be becoming clear by now, that keeping women out of power and influence is important for the upkeep of the patriarchy.

The control of women’s language and spaces

One of the most effective ways of stopping women and girls from taking control of their lives is to limit their language and spaces to do so. If women cannot talk about female oppression anymore, they cannot challenge it or protest. If women cannot define themselves as class of humans that need rights, support and protection, then they will not be able to secure these things. This movement is deliberate. If the word ‘woman’ begins to mean nothing (anyone can define themselves into and out of it) then the laws, legislation and policies pertaining to the advancement and equality of women will mean nothing.

Source: The real reasons that women are oppressed by patriarchy

Were the First Artists Mostly Women?

Women made most of the oldest-known cave art paintings, suggests a new analysis of ancient handprints. Most scholars had assumed these ancient artists were predominantly men, so the finding overturns decades of archaeological dogma.

“There has been a male bias in the literature for a long time,” said Snow, whose research was supported by the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration. “People have made a lot of unwarranted assumptions about who made these things, and why.”

Source: Were the First Artists Mostly Women?

The female price of male pleasure

[S]ince sex is the subject here, what about how our society’s scientific community has treated female dyspareunia — the severe physical pain some women experience during sex — vs. erectile dysfunction (which, while lamentable, is not painful)? PubMed has 393 clinical trials studying dyspareunia. Vaginismus? 10. Vulvodynia? 43.

Erectile dysfunction? 1,954.

That’s right: PubMed has almost five times as many clinical trials on male sexual pleasure as it has on female sexual pain. And why? Because we live in a culture that sees female pain as normal and male pleasure as a right.

Source: The female price of male pleasure

The Strategic Ignorance Award

INAUGURAL WINNER: REBECCA SOLNIT As soon as I’m finished writing this I’m going to buy this three monkeys sculpture off Amazon, call it the Strategic Ignorance Award and send it to Rebecca Solnit at the Guardian for her disgraceful piece about gender-critical feminists (or as I like to call them, ‘feminists’).

Over to Victoria.

Dear Rebecca

. . .

Right now I’m raising three male children and, as the 1970s children’s project Free To Be You And Me advises, I don’t make any assumptions about what they should wear, whom they should love, what they should play with or how they should feel. I tell them being male does not mean they have to be masculine. This is how we destroy patriarchy. Those who perpetuate it are people like the mother of trans child actor Kai Shappley who “spanked, really spanked” her child for liking the “wrong” clothes and toys before deciding her child must have been born in the wrong body. That, Rebecca, is the opposite of the message of Free To Be You And Me, yet that is what you are supporting. 

I don’t believe you are too dumb to understand a children’s book. You are perfectly capable of seeing the difference between children being supported in rejecting stereotypes and children being terrorised into rejecting their sexed bodies because they don’t match the stereotypes. You are pretending not to see. You are lying and the safety of women, trans people and children is less important to you than the safety of your career. 

Enjoy your award.

Source: The Strategic Ignorance Award – The Cry of GLINNER!

Meet The Forgotten Female Scientist Who Debunked Theories Of Male Superiority

Leta Stetter Hollingworth was a trailblazing psychologist and champion of women’s rights. But a century after the 19th Amendment, equality has a long way to go.

Source: Meet The Forgotten Female Scientist Who Debunked Theories Of Male Superiority

The alarm has been sounded, who’s going to respond?

Opinion By Heather Mason CA — .

For months, I have spoken out about prisoners seeking transfers to women’s prisons from men’s prisons, because women I know, my sisters inside, are dealing with a new form of abuse: biological male prisoners, some who genuinely claim trans identity and some who don’t, peeping through their cell windows, walking around in nightgowns with their penises in full view, saying they can have sex with any women they want, engaging in harassing and grooming behaviours, sexually assaulting women in bathrooms, and on and on and on. I say some do not genuinely claim trans identity, because I’ve heard many reports from women that some of the recent transfers brag about being men and playing the system to secure their transfers to a women’s prison.

Source: The alarm has been sounded, who’s going to respond? | Women Are Human

At the NHS and BBC, Important Steps Toward Restoring Balance in the Gender Debate

In recent months, a sense has emerged that the tide might finally be starting to turn in the gender debate: Things that most everyone believes to be true, but that no one has been allowed to say, are now increasingly being said by writers, lawmakers, and litigants.

Look for any mention of Mermaids today on the NHS site, and you’re likely to find the pages are gone. The BBC, too, seems to have wiped away references to Mermaids from its list of “Gender Identity” “Information and Support” resources, which listed Mermaids prominently until last month. This has unfolded during the same period when the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation, which provides mental-health services to children, is facing a lawsuit from a former patient who says she was rushed into an aggressive, and ultimately destructive, program of hormone therapy. A former psychiatric nurse at Tavistock is making related legal claims, alleging the provision of drugs to children as young as nine. Numerous clinicians have resigned in protest at such policies. And it may be the case that lawyers at the BBC and NHS are simply seeking to protect their clients from legal exposure.

BBC Woman’s Hour has reported that much of the language on the NHS website referring to gender dysphoria was removed or entirely reworded last week, so as to more accurately reflect science instead of ideology. Crucially, the NHS no longer repeats the fiction that puberty blockers such as Lupron are “reversible,” since there are few studies on the physical or psychological effects. (It has been known since 2017 that trials of peripubertal GnRHa-treatment, i.e., hormone blockers, in sheep reveal “permanent changes in brain development [and] raises particular concerns about the cognitive changes associated with the prolonged use of GnRHa-treatment in children and adolescents.”) Also removed from the NHS site: Emotionally loaded references to suicide, which had previously served to terrify parents into seeking rapid treatment, lest any delay lead a child to end their lives. The association of “gender identity” with regressive stereotypes also is gone. And the website no longer suggests that sex itself can be changed. Instead, we get more accurate language to the effect that “some people may decide to have surgery to permanently alter body parts associated with their biological sex.” That the NHS now uses the term “biological sex” at all is itself a huge win, even if such language is obviously appropriate on the level of science and medicine.

Source: At the NHS and BBC, Important Steps Toward Restoring Balance in the Gender Debate – Quillette

Reclaim Her Name: why we should free Australia’s female novelists from their male pseudonyms

The Women’s Prize for Fiction has just published 25 literary works by female authors with their real names for the first time. Could we do the same for Miles Franklin and Henry Handel Richardson here?

For these authors, using a pseudonym was not just about slipping their work past male publishers who did not think publishing was a place for a woman. It was also about more diffuse forms of gender prejudice.

Women writers – witheringly dubbed “lady novelists” in the 19th century – also worried that their work would be marginalised as “women’s writing”; as domestic, interior, “feminine” and personal, as opposed to “masculine” themes such as history, society and politics that are, according to social norms, deemed to be more serious and culturally significant.

Source: Reclaim Her Name: why we should free Australia’s female novelists from their male pseudonyms