[I]t is sheer caricature to portray the fight over cancel culture as left–right trench warfare.. . .
The case of J.K. Rowling is a good illustration. She is unabashedly a political progressive. Her transgender rhetoric may be acerbic, but the politics are feminist, not conservative. It belongs broadly in the gender-critical school of feminism that sees women’s oppression as anchored in the female body itself, the cultural assumptions that surround it, and how it is “vulnerable in specific ways to sexual violence, such as pregnancy from rape”, as Susanna Rustin put it in The Guardian. This goes back to Simone de Beauvoir, and stands in opposition to the later queer feminism of Judith Butler, which substitutes gender identity – the subjective feeling of being male, female or something in between – for the biology of being female. The attempts to cancel J.K. Rowling are therefore attempts to cancel a particular version of feminism and declare it invalid. The aim is to expel Rowling from the progressive fold in order to set the meanings of progressivism: it is a border war within progressive politics. . . .
[C]ancel culture is the story of a young, socially conscious generation trying desperately to remedy the injustices they see, but having been left with wholly inadequate tools for the job.
If liberalism is about freedom, cancel culture is about power. . . .
But perhaps cancel culture’s most fatal problem is that while it intuits liberalism is insufficient, and seeks to dismantle it, it cannot escape it. In fact, it ends up imbibing several of its basic ideas. This isn’t immediately obvious due to liberalism and woke politics’ opposing focus on individual rights and collective identities, respectively. That seems completely incompatible until you recognise that cancel culture adopts a postmodern version of identity that becomes highly individualistic. So, on gender (though not on race) identity is largely determined by individuals who declare themselves into existence, then require society to recognise them on those terms. That is very different from pre-modern identities, which were overwhelmingly given to people by society, assigning membership of a collective, which came with established roles and obligations to other people.
This problem of using liberalism’s terms to fill the holes in liberalism causes wokeness to stretch these liberal concepts to breaking point. Hence woke politics’ wildly expansionary use of terms such as “harm” and “safety”.
Thus does cancel culture devolve into what moral philosopher Hugh Breakey calls “meta-argument allegations”, which foreclose debates on grounds of harm and safety rather than truth.
Source: Woke politics and power: How liberalism’s blind spot let cancel culture bloom | The Monthly
Category: Transgenderism
The disappearing article – The Glinner Update
On Friday, leading psychology journal, Psychology Today, published an article by one of its regular contributors, award-winning journalist and documentary maker, Tina Traster. It was called “Trans Kids May Reject Family, Not the Other Way Around”.
Parents responded to the article with gratitude and by sharing their own experiences, stories which reflect just what Traster has written about.
However, the voices of concerned parents were drowned out by a barrage of abuse from trans rights activists in what looked like a co-ordinated campaign to get the article shut down.
Within hours of it being published, Psychology Today editors pulled Traster’s article. “This post is more problematic than needed”, they said.
Instead of caving into them, Psychology Today should be asking themselves just why the TRA attack dogs are so intent on shutting down this article? They should not have pulled it, they should be shouting it from the rooftops.
Luckily, Transgender Trend have a far sturdier backbone and are happy to host this important piece on their site.
Because the safety and wellbeing of children depends on having this discussion.
Trans man loses UK legal battle to register as his child’s father | Transgender | The Guardian
A transgender man has lost his legal battle to be registered as his child’s father or parent in the UK after the supreme court refused to consider his final appeal.
In the appeal court, Lord Burnett came down in favour of the right of a child born to a transgender parent to know the biological reality of its birth, rather than the parent’s right to be recognised on the birth certificate in their legal gender. Burnett said that laws passed by parliament had not “decoupled the concept of mother from gender”.
The supreme court’s decision marks the end of the road for McConnell’s legal case in the UK but he said he would apply to the European court of human rights in Strasbourg to hear the case.
A spokeswoman for the supreme court, the highest in the UK, said on Monday that the justices had decided not to consider the case because “the applications do not raise an arguable point of law which ought to be considered at this time bearing in mind that the cases were the subject of judicial decision and reviewed on appeal”.
Source: Trans man loses UK legal battle to register as his child’s father | Transgender | The Guardian
The Swedish U-Turn on Gender Transitioning for Children – CANADIAN GENDER REPORT
In the fall of 2018, Sweden’s Social Democrat government proposed a new law that would have reduced the minimum age for sex reassignment surgery from 18 to 15, remove any need for parental consent and allow children as young as 12 to change their legal gender.
The government received a major backlash from the scientific community, however. Christopher Gillberg, a professor and psychiatrist at Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy, wrote an article in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper warning that hormone treatment and surgery on children was “a big experiment” which risked becoming one of the country’s worst medical scandals.
The Swedish government shelved their proposed law and instead, have instituted a 3 part review in response to a proposal from The Swedish National Council on Medical Ethics.
The fast-tracking of medical transition appears to be the protocol in place at many of Canada’s gender clinics, with parents and some detransitioners expressing surprise and shock that medical transition is being offered as the 1st line of treatment. The sharp drop-off in referrals in Sweden corresponded to the realization by parents and General Practitioners that sending children to a gender clinic would not necessarily provide them with additional assessment or services, but rather put them on a fast-track to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
The experience in Sweden, and corresponding similarities in Canada, points to a significant gap in assessment and services for trans-identified youth to ensure that their long term physical and mental well-being is prioritized over and above a quick fix of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Research indicates youth become trapped in a one-way medical path as almost 98% who are prescribed puberty blockers proceed with medical transition even when there is no evidence of long-term benefits.
Further, suicide risk is often used as the rationale for easy access to medical transition for trans-identified children and adults. Pro-transition advocates consider the need for assessments and screening to be dehumanizing and unnecessary. Clearly, the data from the Swedish NBHW does not support this position. People who commit suicide have an underlying mental illness that requires expert treatment and care. It would be medically negligent to avoid psychiatric assessment and/or deny corresponding psychological services to provide treatment for this population where the risk of suicide is elevated due to these comorbidities.
When will Canada start asking questions like Sweden?
Source: The Swedish U-Turn on Gender Transitioning for Children – CANADIAN GENDER REPORT
Ashton Challenor, the boy who disappeared – The Glinner Update
Aimee (nee Ashton) Challenor is a 23-year-old trans-identified male who, until recently, had a prominent role in UK politics and within Stonewall, a major LGBT lobbying group.
His political career has been covered elsewhere, but we feel it’s time to shine a light on some of the murkier aspects of this story. There is a certain urgency now that he and his associates are moderators of dozens of groups on Reddit, including some intended for young people.
Ashton / Aimee Challenor grew up in a house where his father raped and tortured a 10-year-old girl whilst wearing a frilly dress and a nappy and calling himself Lucy.
From a very young age, Aimee had intimate relationships with at least three much older males, two of whom claim female identities, all of whom are part of the furry/ furbaby/adult baby/nappy-lovers fetish scenes, all of whom seem to have a deeply troubling interest in pre-pubescence and one of whom, Aimee’s husband, has openly expressed his sexual fantasies involving children.
Whilst we might recognise that Aimee Challenor is a tragic victim in this mess, we must remember the positions of power and influence he held and how quickly and easily he reached them.
He was the Green Party’s LGBTQI and Equalities officer, stood for parliament and in local elections was even in the running to be the party’s deputy leader.
He campaigned vociferously for the Green Party to adopt the policy of self-identification, crushing any dissenting voices.
In 2017 Aimee and his father took out a private court injunction against another member of the Green Party, Andy Healey, to prevent him from speaking at the Green Party conference against the policy of self-ID.
Aimee then tried to bring a criminal prosecution against Healey for ‘hate speech’ (mainly ‘misgendering’ ie correctly referring to Aimee as male) which the police eventually rejected. Aimee attacked the police and the CPS for failing to act and was even given an opportunity to complain to a parliamentary committee.
Andy Healey is still waiting for his suspension from the Greens to be lifted and has no received no apology from those who called him a bigot for raising concerns. Amelia Womack, the deputy leader, Claire Phipps and Rachel Collinson should be doing a lot of soul-searching right now.
Not only did Challenor hold tremendous sway in a major political party, he often appeared in the press and was given a regular media platform. Furthermore, even after the revelations about his father and husband-to-be, Challenor was on the Stonewall trans advisory board until as late as July 2019. He was advising the charity which provides training for schools, public bodies and innumerable businesses.
While women like Helen Watts were losing their positions for raising concerns about Stonewall’s advice, this young and deeply troubled boy, ushered into positions of power and influence with his paedophile father close at heel and his furry, diapered, much-older boyfriends lurking in the background, fought ferociously for the rights of males to identify however they want and smash basic safeguarding principles.
Did nobody ever stop to wonder why?
Source: Ashton Challenor, the boy who disappeared – The Glinner Update
Custom Vaginoplasty “For Your Inner Well-Being” – Jennifer Bilek
Most people in mainstream culture, not privy to the internal workings of the trans agenda, have no real understanding of what is transpiring in the medical community advancing macabre and dangerous procedures they term “healthcare for transgender people,” or where all this “care” is leading.
When medical professionals will invert a scrotum to create a man-made vagina, while leaving you with your penis intact for the purposes of your “inner well-being,” will cut off your genitalia completely, to help you express yourself, a young man celebrates his castration with a party and a penis cake and is featured on the cover of a major pop culture magazine, and young women who’ve had their breasts removed because they believe they are men are used in corporate marketing as expressions of self-empowerment, something is very, very wrong.
The medical industrial complex itself, wedded to every inch of the capitalist marketplace are the key drivers of this madness. This should not come as a surprise. Big Pharma has driven so much madness through society from psychosis itself, along with its cure, to drug addiction, depression and childhood psychiatric conditions, all in the name of profits. It is now doing so with identity medicine, their profits carved from the flesh of our human sex.
That people are still attempting to justify this as progressive, speaks to how deeply sick western societies have become. “Transgenderism” may be the last symptom and siren being ignored by people so far removed from their land, each other and biological reality by industrial civilization, that they can no longer feel.
B.C. Supreme Court judge orders surgeon to deny trans teen’s mastectomy wish | Vancouver Sun
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has stopped a transgender teen’s double mastectomy days before it was to go ahead, granting the teen’s mother a court order delaying the surgery for almost a month.
“The mother needs to see all of the protocols that led to the two doctors coming to the conclusion that what they intended to do is in the best interest of the child,” said M.A.’s lawyer, Carey Linde.
“She says removing the breasts of her daughter are not in the best interest of her,” said Linde. He said A.M. is also opposed to the teen receiving steroids because they would make her sterile.
“She needs psychotherapy,” A.M. said. “I would like her to be referred to a non-biased psychiatrist.”
A.M. said she would like the doctors to provide her with details about what counselling her child received leading up to the decision to have the surgery.
Source: B.C. Supreme Court judge orders surgeon to deny trans teen’s mastectomy wish | Vancouver Sun
Transgender reform debate heats up Tasmanian Liberal conference – ABC News
[T]asmania’s Liberal Party faithful determined the state’s landmark transgender reforms, which passed State Parliament with the support of Liberal Speaker Sue Hickey last year, should be repealed.
A motion to repeal the changes, which make gender optional on birth certificates and remove a requirement for transgender people to have sex reassignment surgery before they can legally change their gender, was moved at the party’s annual State Council meeting at Bellerive on Saturday.
Source: Transgender reform debate heats up Tasmanian Liberal conference – ABC News
Of all people, female prisoners deserve single-sex spaces | UK| The Article
A female prisoner is bringing a Judicial Review against the Government after she was sexually assaulted by a transgender, male convicted rapist who was placed in a women’s prison. The victim is challenging the lawfulness of placing male-bodied transgender prisoners convicted of sexual and violent offences against women in the female estate. The High Court case was due to begin last week but has just been adjourned till later this year.
Make no mistake; the public sector is suffering from ideological capture in the shape of “gender identity ideology”; and that capture is undermining science, data and research, and women’s rights. To illustrate this we need to look no further than the Minstry of Justice’s revised policy document that covers the care and management of transgender individuals within the prisons estate.
Alarm bells go off straight away when we read that the policy refers to individuals who express a wish to live as a gender “opposite to the biological sex assigned to them at birth”. This is scientifically illiterate. Everyone knows that sex is not assigned at birth. But the language is familiar — you will find it wherever institutions have succumbed to gender ideology.
The Ministry of Justice has unilaterally brought in sex Self-ID, a policy now explicitly rejected by the Government. It says that, “Individuals managed by HMPPS are able to self-declare that they are transgender and are supported to express the gender (or non-gender) with which they identify, with staff using correct pronouns”. This appears to mean that a violent rapist can declare that he is female, and from then on female staff will be required to refer to him as she.
Source: Of all people, female prisoners deserve single-sex spaces | TheArticle
I Signed Up to Study Sexual Health. What I Got Was Gender Ideology, Fetishism, and Porn – Quillette
I am not a conspiracy theorist. And as recently as a year and a half ago, if someone had told me the things I am reporting here, I would have accused them of culture-war paranoia. That was before I enrolled in a professional training program that I’d hoped would expand my skills as a therapist, but instead delivered an extreme form of ideological indoctrination.
The Sexual Health Certificate Program is a prestigious University of Michigan program conducted in affiliation with the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT). As someone who recently studied in the program, I can attest that, notwithstanding whatever mission AASECT once had, it now operates largely as a de facto activist group that seeks to reshape standards applied to mental health care and education, and to limit the rights of parents to make decisions about their children.
I am not an extreme social conservative complaining about the failure of these organizations to support “abstinence only” sex education. Nor do I object to teaching kids that it’s okay to be gay or bisexual. The agenda of AASECT now extends far beyond those old debates, and into an overlapping set of doctrines that encompass gender, violent BDSM subcultures, polyamory, pornography, and intersectionality. My opinion is that it is no longer focused on teaching scientifically verified knowledge or responsible clinical practices, and now seeks to instead impose an orthodox set of beliefs about sexuality. . .
Our first classroom module was titled “Sexual Attitude Reassessment.” I amused myself with the thought that this sounded like an unsettling euphemism for a brainwashing session. Sadly, that’s what it was. . . .
Source: I Signed Up to Study Sexual Health. What I Got Was Gender Ideology, Fetishism, and Porn – Quillette