Category: Transgenderism

Alice Thomson of The Times writes:

According to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy I am a man. I know this because I adhere to social norms of masculinity: I am independent, confident, rational, sexual, competitive, take risks and care about my work. I am not a northern woman (who the association says are unusually strong and aggressive), nor am I on the autistic spectrum which, they add, would allow me to identify as female despite being more logical than emotional. It’s all very confusing, especially if you’re a ditsy woman.
Having four children and wearing a bra is irrelevant, according to the association, as are my XX chromosomes. To be a woman I should be “nurturing, caring, social, emotional, vulnerable and concerned with appearance.” That’s not a test I’d like to pass and I’d rather be a man any day — they sound like they have much more fun.
In trying to be progressive and inclusive, the association has merely shown itself to be old fashioned, effectively portraying femininity as little more than sparkly nails and high heels. In attempting to be more fluid, it has actually become more rigid.
Teenagers are getting an astonishingly dysfunctional idea of what it is to be an adult. No wonder they are increasingly concerned about how they identify. Reading the association’s guidelines, my daughter was horrified that she was expected to be meeker than her brothers. They in turn were annoyed to be considered less nurturing.
This may be why so many are now struggling with their identity. There has been a roughly 1,000 per cent increase in referrals to the Tavistock NHS gender identity service for gender dysphoria in the past six years, with 2,519 referred in 2017-18. Girls aren’t allowed to identify with the tomboy George from The Famous Five any more without a great deal of soul-searching or counselling. Some even want the puberty-blocking drug Lupron and hormone replacements; others are convinced they need surgery even though some treatments could render them infertile.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gender-obsessives-are-old-fashioned-sexists-5xrnhknhn?

Across the world in the last few years, researchers and clinicians have noted a sharp uptick in the number of young people, primarily females, who are requesting medical transition services. For example, in the United Kingdom gender clinic referrals have quadruped in the last five years. This constitutes an epidemic. As a leader in public health research, it is incumbent upon Brown University to investigate the causes and conditions leading to this sharp increase, as well as the long term outcomes.
Littman’s study offers, for the first time, a glimpse into families who hold space for their dysphoric children while also seeking out mental health care that focuses on underlying conditions.
We, the signatories to this letter, overwhelmingly support the rights of transgender people, but we want better diagnostic and mental health care for youth who suddenly demand serious medical interventions, particularly in the absence of a history of dysphoria. We believe that medical interventions that may benefit some individuals may not help, and may even harm, others, as already evidenced by the growing number of desisters and detransitioners, many of whom have already suffered from irreversible side effects of their earlier medical transition . We support more research to help distinguish between the two groups, and Dr. Littman’s study is an important first step.
https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/brown-university-and-plos-one-defend-academic
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180822150809.htm

Camilla Turner and Steven Swinford of the Telegraph report:
Transgender activists have been accused of attempting to shut down debate, as a former children’s minister said that young people’s welfare is being “sacrificed on the altar of political correctness”.
The women’s minister is facing a backlash after saying that she is “a little cautious” about the number of teenagers undergoing gender reassignment treatment.
Victoria Atkins warned the country needs to be “particularly alert” to the issue, and expressed concern that a rising number of teenagers were seeking “life-changing” medical interventions.
LGBT+ campaigners accused her making “damaging” comments and warned that people’s “lives are at stake”.
Figures released by the Tavistock Clinic, the only NHS unit specialising in child gender issues, show that in 2017-18 it received 2,519 referrals, compared to just 314 in 2012-13. The NHS has estimated that two million people in Britain will question their gender in coming years.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/27/transgender-activists-accused-attempting-shut-downdebate/
Natasha Chart of Feminist Current reports:

The UK Green Party has launched an investigation into the circumstances that led to Aimee Challenor, a trans-identified male and the party’s equality spokesman, appointing his father as his campaign election agent. Aimee Challenor withdrew his candidacy for deputy leadership of the Green Party on Sunday, following last week’s announcement that David Challenor had been sentenced to 22 years in prison for the torture and rape of a 10-year-old girl.
https://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2018/08/26/green-party-statement-aimee-challenor-stands-down-in-green-party-deputy-leadership-race/
On August 10, 2018 the New Zealand Governance and Administration Committee issued a report on the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill, recommending that the bill be passed with proposed amendments allowing people to “self-identify” as the opposite sex without any requirement for medical treatment or demonstrable transition. While this issue is being cast in the media as ‘LGBT’ legislation, others say the recommendation to remove all safety mechanisms from the legal sex change process puts women and girls in danger.
Lesbian Rights Alliance Aotearoa writes:
This move will make it impossible for females to retain the right to female-only or lesbian-only spaces, services and provisions – as any male can simply declare he is female and have every legal right to use them. ‘Self declared sex’ risks the safety of women in prisons, the continuation of women-only and lesbian-only organisations, and ultimately renders the sex discrimination protections in the Human Rights Act meaningless.
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2017/0296/latest/DLM7273502.html
https://lesbian-rights-nz.org/press-release-13-08-18/
Democratic National Committee members adopted language to their charter and rules Saturday to include gender self-identification and gender nonbinary members.
The language now says committees “shall be as equally divided as practicable between men and women (determined by gender self-identification) meaning that the variance between men and women in the group cannot exceed one (1).” Gender nonbinary members will not be counted as either male or female, “and the remainder of the delegation shall be equally divided.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/25/politics/democrats-gender-nonbinary-charter/index.html?utm_content=2018-08-25

Cécilia Lépine for Feminist Current writes:
Last year, Pakistan started issuing passports with a third gender category marked by an “X”. In March, the country took things a step further and passed legislation allowing people to change their sex on legal documents, based on self-identification.
While this might indeed seem like a step forward to some, an important detail brings up questions: despite Pakistan’s apparent embrace of trans-identified people, homosexuality remains criminalized in the country. What liberals and progressives who support this kind of legislation have failed to ask themselves is why transgender politics are being embraced by conservative and regressive regimes like those in Pakistan and Iran.
If you compare India’s transgender population to Pakistan’s, you’ll notice an interesting similarity: an overwhelming majority are males.
One Pakistani man named Zara tells The Guardian:
“I was born with a very small male organ. Inside, my feelings are female… I want to live like a woman, cook and do domestic work.”
The implication is that a small penis and a preference for “woman’s work” mean that Zara is not sufficiently masculine, and therefore not male.
Those who claim transgenderism is universal will also bring up Indigenous societies to show that “male” and “female” are simply rigid inventions of Western, colonial culture, offering “third genders” and “two spirit” people as proof of this.
It also is misguided to assume that non-Western, non-white “third genders” necessarily shatter the gender binary.
The fact that those placed in this “third” gender category are usually males raises another red flag. It suggests that, while men can be downgraded to the status of females, women cannot rise up to the status of men.
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/08/25/cultures-third-genders-dont-prove-transgenderism-either-ubiquitous-progressive/

Blair Meikle from the Scottish Sun writes:

PARENTS are in uproar after two primary schools in Renfrewshire installed ‘gender neutral’ toilets.
One concerned parent told the Scottish Sun: “They’ve just gone a bit mad and not told anyone about this. The woman from the council said they’d done an impact assessment and said it would have no impact – but they haven’t asked anyone.
“There’s loads of parents not happy and saying they’ve not been consulted.
Independent Councillor David MacDonald had earlier revealed that a number of furious parents had contacted him with concerns.
He said: “As you can probably understand, this has left some parents, worried, angry and upset, particularly for parents of girls approaching and going through puberty and those who need private spaces to deal with menstruation.
“On top of that. Let’s be frank here. Boys urinate on toilet seats whether by accident or on purpose.
Cllr MacDonald wrote to the council and received a response East Renfrewshire Council’s Head of Education (Equality and Equity) Janice Collins.
She said that the move was made on guidance from the Scottish Government and that an impact assessment was conducted.
But our source added: “Her remit is obviously to promote equality, which is great, but this is just craziness.
“Lets have a discussion first, don’t just do it.”
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/3104261/furious-parents-renfrewshire-schools-gender-neutral-toilets/

Sanchez Manning for the Daily Mail Online writes:
Almost two thirds of children and teenagers who say they want to change sex have been diagnosed with serious mental health disorders before expressing the desire to transition, a new study has found.
The research, published in the scientific journal Plos One, raises fears that young people who claim to be confused about their gender could actually be suffering from other psychological conditions. A growing number of parents and psychologists have expressed concerns that the NHS is being too quick to accept children’s claims that they are transgender.
The UK’s only NHS gender identity service for under-18s, the Tavistock clinic in North London, has seen its referral levels rise dramatically from 94 in 2009 to more than 2,500 so far this year.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6074899/Two-thirds-youngsters-wanting-sex-change-earlier-suffered-mental-health-problems.html

James Kirkup of the Spectator writes:

Is it now a crime to say “women don’t have penises”? A police force and a City mayor seem to think it might be. They are promising to investigate women who say so. That question arises because some women are putting up stickers in public places bearing those words. Some of those stickers are pink and shaped like penises. The point being made is that some people believe that if you have a penis, you’re not a woman. Other people believe that some women have penises. It is perfectly possible to be recognised in law as a trans woman while retaining fully-functional male genitals, and some estimates suggest the majority of those describe themselves as trans women still have their male anatomy intact. This is the bedrock of the dispute between trans rights advocates and feminists. To the latter, biology trumps language: it doesn’t matter what you call yourself or what you think you are, if you have a penis, you are a potential threat to women.
For some, the basic question posed here is: Do women have a legal right to say No to being in an enclosed private space with a person who has a penis? And the current law, as it is applied, does not say an unqualified Yes to that question. Proposals to allow people to change gender on the basis of their own self-declaration (without, for instance, a medical diagnosis) leave some women even more concerned that they will have no meaningful legal right to exclude people with penises from their spaces.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/is-it-a-crime-to-say-women-dont-have-penises/amp/
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/aug/20/sticker-protest-on-antony-gormleys-beach-statues-accused-of-trans-hatred?

I was elected as a Labour Councillor to Cambridge City Council in 2014 and re elected in May this year. Just five weeks after the elections, the Council’s breach of the 2010 Equality Act surfaced on Twitter. Just ten days after the Act became law, an amendment to the Council’s Equality policy had been voted through committee. This amendment abolished women-only facilities in the city including toilets and changing rooms – and plunged the council into illegality. It meant that male-born transwomen could access female facilities.
The council further breached the Act by failing to consult with women and by not conducting an Equality Impact Assessment to assess potential negative consequences on those affected by the change.
Because of All Women Shortlists (AWSs) we now have a House of Commons, especially on the Labour benches, that is more representative of the wider population than ever before – but let’s not forget that the wider population is 51pc women, so that improved representation still falls short. AWSs still have work to do. But now, the present iteration of the Labour Party is busily re-writing history to claim that AWSs were never ever exclusively designed for women, so that the Leadership can justify instating natal-male transwomen into women’s places within a mechanism that was designed to circumvent sexism. This is biologically-based sexism – in the Party, without first consulting with ALL women members. It is treachery.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/ive-quit-the-labour-party-because-it-has-betrayed-women/