Global – Page 188 – Feminist Legal Clinic

A cry from the heart: Surrogacy scandals in Ukraine

Both Australian couples had opted to use Lotus in Kiev, Ukraine after following Sam Everingham’s advice provided in seminars run by Families Through Surrogacy (now renamed Growing Families). Everingham concedes that his business invites speakers from Ukraine and promotes their ‘educational talk’ on its website for which he gets paid. The 7.30 Report revealed that ASIC figures show that “in the past 5 years, Mr Everingham’s company earnt $2 million in revenue.” Asked on camera about these damning surrogacy stories in Ukraine, Everingham defends his advice stating, “they [the couples] have to take responsibility for their decision.” The families say they are not so sure. Also asked by Tracy Bowden if his company is assisting people to do something that is illegal in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory (where it is a criminal act to engage in international surrogacy) Everingham responds, “We don’t believe those laws are right.” This is an outrageous statement to make and we hope that action will finally be taken against Everingham and his company, such as prohibiting them to run seminars on international surrogacy in states where going overseas is punishable by jail terms or fines over $100,000.

Source: A cry from the heart: Surrogacy scandals in Ukraine | Stop Surrogacy Now

Enhanced maternity pay packages don’t discriminate against men – what new ruling means for shared parental leave

The UK Court of Appeal ruled in late May that it is not sex discrimination for employers to enhance maternity pay but only provide the statutory rate of shared parental pay.

The court found that women on maternity leave are in a materially different situation to men taking shared parental leave, and so, as the positions are incomparable, there can be no discrimination.

Source: Enhanced maternity pay packages don’t discriminate against men – what new ruling means for shared parental leave

Battered Women’s Shelter Doesn’t Need To Admit Trans-Woman, Court Rules

An Anchorage civil rights panel cannot enforce an anti-discrimination ordinance against a battered women’s shelter that refused to admit a trans-woman, a federal court in Alaska ruled.

“Downtown Hope Center serves everyone, but women deserve a safe place to stay overnight,” said lawyer Kate Anderson of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a public interest law practice that represents Hope Center. “No woman — particularly not an abuse survivor — should be forced to sleep or disrobe next to a man. The court’s order will allow the center to continue in its duty to protect the vulnerable women it serves while this lawsuit moves forward.”

Source: Battered Women’s Shelter Doesn’t Need To Admit Trans-Woman, Court Rules | The Daily Caller

Why are women are being erased from breastfeeding advocacy?

Breastfeeding is an issue that affects mothers and their children — there is no need for gender neutral language.

The erasure of women and mothers from breastfeeding support has been a slow but steady creep over the past couple of years. Both internally and externally, pressure on peer and professional breastfeeding organizations to update language and imagery in order to centre the experience of individuals and families who identify as transgender and non-binary has increased. “Mother” should become “lactating parent,” “breastfeeding” should become “chestfeeding” or “human milk feeding,” and so on. Rather than expand the terminology to “mothers and _____,” the demands have typically been to eliminate references to women or female bodies in order to demonstrate respect and care. This has also been accompanied by an increasing number of attempts to normalize induced lactation in fathers and trans-identifying males, with total disregard for the impact these interventions have on mothers and babies (including the lack of evidence regarding male milk composition or the safety of the accompanying drug regimens for a baby consuming the resulting milk).

Source: Why are women are being erased from breastfeeding advocacy?

Hundreds of Mexican women protest police rape of teenager

MEXICO CITY: Hundreds of women demanding protection from Mexico City’s police force took to the streets Friday after a number of high-profile sexual assault cases involving serving officers.

Two reports of attacks on women this month have sparked outrage and bitter recriminations against the city’s police force, with protesters mobilizing on social media through the hashtag #NoMeCuidanMeViolan, or “They don’t protect me, they rape me.”

Source: Hundreds of Mexican women protest police rape of teenager | New Straits Times | Malaysia General Business Sports and Lifestyle News

Politicised trans groups put children at risk, says expert

School counsellors and mental health service providers are bowing to pressures from ‘highly politicised’ transgender groups to affirm children’s beliefs that they were born the wrong sex, a leading expert has warned.

Marcus Evans, a psychotherapist and ex-governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, whose Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) is the only NHS clinic to provide gender counselling and transitioning, said many experts were living in fear of being labelled transphobic, which was having an impact on their objectivity.

In April, it emerged that five clinicians had resigned over concerns that some children had been sent for life-changing medical intervention without a thorough assessment of their options.

Source: Politicised trans groups put children at risk, says expert | Society | The Guardian

We need to talk about sexism & homophobia in Gender Activism

Claims of “identifying” with another race have been made to varying degrees by Rachel Dolezal, Martina Big and Ja Du to name a few. The Hungarian State Opera asked singers to “identify” as black in order to put on a production of Porgy & Bess.

Compare this with a man — any man — declaring that he is a woman. Imagine him saying he has always been a woman, that he is as much of a woman as any other woman, and that women who said he is not a woman were haters lived in the past and did not deserve to be included in polite society.

At some point in the last few months or years, this scenario has gone from being one of absurd sexism, to a mainstream political belief.

I’m going to take the wild, radical step of saying that this is ridiculous. Absurd. Simply wrong. Factually incorrect. Perhaps even delusional.

Are we really meant to believe that legions of left wing writers, feminists, lesbians and others have suddenly become alt-right haters just because they acknowledge the existence of biological sex?

Source: We need to talk about sexism & homophobia in Gender Activism

Michael Moore

For decades now the NRA has successfully lobbied Congress to prevent any funding for the CDC to study why gun violence in the US has grown to epidemic proportions.

I don’t have a Ph.D, and I’m not a social scientist, but I’d like to offer a few observations and ask that we perhaps “study” the following:

1. Nearly all gun murders are committed by one gender. Let’s study why that is.

2. The vast majority of guns are owned by white people. Why is that? Most of these white people live in nearly all-white suburban and rural areas which have little or no crime. Why, really, do they need all those guns?

3. Why are most of these school shootings and other mass shootings committed by young white males?

4. Why, when the media covers gun violence in our black communities, do they never speak of it as the result of millions of African Americans still forced to live — 150 years after slavery — in a premeditated, predetermined system of enforced and cruel poverty, thus causing a tremendous amount of suffering and pain and death.

5. Why are many men unable to work out their anger issues without violence? And what are they afraid of? Why not study why there is so much unfounded fear within white men. Are they subconsciously afraid because they know they live in a society where one race gets a pass (or at least a chance), and the other races are left to fight for the crumbs? Why not study why there is so much unfounded fear within white men. Do white men who see so many fellow white men crushed by a dog-eat-dog economic system, they fear they too may be next?

So the frightened scared man needs a gun. Yet women — who have a REAL reason to be afraid in this society — carry hardly ANY of the 300 million+ guns in this country. Let’s study that.

6. Why are women so often the victims of this violence? Let’s study how millions of boys are raised and socialized in this culture to be man-boys who fear & despise women. And why women end up dead because of this ugly misogyny.

7. Perhaps it simply comes down to this: In the US, women hold no real political, economic or social power. 75% of Congress are men. A woman wins the presidency, but a slave-era law prohibits her from taking office. Just 6% of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies are women. None of the major religions are run by women. Wall Street is not run by women. We still haven’t passed the Equal Rights Amendment for women.

Wouldn’t a scientific study by the CDC show that if Congress was majority female (which might give us better schools, universal health care, day care and senior care), and if women were paid the same as men (a strong wage so all could have a decent life), wouldn’t this then be the ultimate result: Far less of us will die on any given day from an angry spray of random bullets?

Over 200,000 people sign petition against sex doll imports

More than 200,000 people have signed a petition against the import of life-size sex dolls into Korea. As of Wednesday, more than 210,000 people signed the petition on the Cheong Wa Dae website, a month after the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision to allow the import of such dolls. “They are not ordinary sex toys,” the petitioner wrote. “A life-size sex doll resembles a woman’s body in every detail. It can even be customized to fit an individual’s needs for hairstyle, facial structure, birthmarks or anything.