Category: Transgenderism

Twitter is banning women who “speak out against the dangerous dogma of trans ideology”, a feminist group has said.
In a letter to Twitter director Martha Lane Fox, Fair Play for Women says the company is allowing “a concerted attack on women’s free speech”.
Fair Play for Women describes itself as a group of “ordinary women” who argue that “in the rush to reform transgender laws” women’s voices will not be listened to.
It says Twitter users have been banned for stating “basic, incontrovertible biological facts” such as saying men are not women.
Transsexual writer Miranda Yardley said she was banned from Twitter for stating that Green Party LGBT spokesperson Aimee Challenor, a trans woman, is a man.
Writing on her blog she said: “According to the rules of Twitter it is now hateful conduct to call someone who is a man, a man.
“The implication of this is that the concept of proscribed speech, things we are now not allowed to say, now extends to the truth. This is fundamentally illiberal.”
Currently, if someone wishes to have their gender identity legally recognised they have to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate – a process LGBT campaigning group Stonewall describes as “long, demeaning and bureaucratic”.
Stonewall is calling for a system of gender recognition based on self-identification, and wants to remove the requirement for a medical diagnosis before a transgender person can change their legally recognised gender.
In July 2017 then Equalities Minister Justine Greening said the Gender Recognition Act needed to be updated and that a consultation would begin in the autumn.
The Scottish government is currently consulting on gender recognition.
The campaigning group Man Friday argues allowing people to self-identify as a particular gender “removes any gatekeeping to women’s identity and protected spaces”.
To protest against any change to the law, the group choose Fridays to identify as men and take part in activities such as using male changing rooms.
On Friday a group of women attempted to access the men’s only bathing pond in Hampstead Heath as part of a protest against self-identification.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-44288431

In an audacious move, lesbian feminist campaigners Get the L Out marched to the front of the Pride bearing banners with the words ‘Lesbian = Female Homosexual’ ‘Lesbian Not Queer’ and ‘Transactivism Erases Lesbians.’ Pride London organisers told them their banners were ‘offensive’ and bystanders harassed and swore at the women.
Explaining why she took action, one of the campaigners explained:
“We protested the LGBT movement as a whole and Pride specifically because many lesbians feel erased and betrayed by a movement which claimed to represent us. The L in “LGBT” is meaningless when the LGBT organisations claim that a man can identify as ‘lesbian.’
“We either respect women’s sexual boundaries to refuse penises under whatever name or we don’t . And right now the LGBT organisations and Sadiq Khan naming lesbians “hateful” and “anti-trans” for daring to say “no” is disgraceful, misogynistic and anti-lesbian.”
Outside of shouty, blue-fringed students, the idea ‘some lesbians have penises’ is ridiculous. And yet, empowered by late-transitioning transwomen, the law is at risk of being changed to make questioning this statement a crime.
https://conatusnews.com/pride-london-lesbian-activism/
“We stand for the rights of lesbians to choose their sexual partners on the basis of their sex not their “gender identity” and condemn any pressure on lesbians to accept so called “trans women” as potential sex partners and the penis as a female organ as coercive and a manifestation of rape culture”
“we oppose the transition of young lesbians on the basis that their appearances or behaviour does not conform to socially accepted images of women. Having short hair and disliking pink is not a sign of having a male brain and does not mean one requires transition. The trans movement is a conservative movement which reinforces sexist sex stereotypes.”
“We oppose proposed changes to the GRA and view self-identification as a threat to women’s and girls rights.
“We demand stronger sex-based protections for women and girls and that women maintain the right to sex-segregated spaces at the exclusion of male regardless of their “identity”.”
https://getthelout.wordpress.com/2018/07/05/the-journey-begins/
https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/lesbian-activists-protest-against-trans-women-pride-london/#gs.EinHAQM

Let’s focus on the sentence “trans women are women”. It’s occasionally said that this is already widely accepted as an implication of the current public concept of “woman”. Certainly, some speakers sincerely believe it, but still, I think, the usage hasn’t spread widely enough for this to be persuasive. Most use trans people’s preferred pronouns and names, but arguably this only shows a wish, which I share, to be compassionate and respectful. It’s also true that British law recognises trans women as women, but again, this was not intended to settle conceptual disputes but to alleviate discrimination against trans people.
[S}ome philosophers say that, even if the current public concept “woman” doesn’t include trans women, we should actively engineer it to do so in future. It’s argued that this will vastly improve the experience of trans people, ultimately helping to minimise both their sense of gender dysphoria (distress caused by a mismatch between felt and perceived gender identity) and their susceptibility to transphobic violence.
In public discourse, there’s a lot of focus on whether trans women should be counted as women. Whatever the ultimate answer, that’s obviously a reasonable question, despite trans activists’ attempts to count it as “transphobic”. But I think we should also ask whether self-declaration alone could reasonably be the only criterion of being trans.
And though, as in the notorious case of Rachel Dolezal, a person might “self-declare” that she is “trans racial”, it has seemed clear to nearly everybody responding to this case that such a declaration would be not only false, but also offensive to genuinely oppressed members of the race in question. There is no such thing as being “trans racial”; there is only thinking falsely that you are.
Both Theresa May, Britain’s prime minister, and Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour party, have apparently enthusiastically taken up this conclusion. They want to change the law to allow gender self-identification via an administrative process of self-certification as the only criterion for legally changing the sex recorded on one’s birth certificate. However, I’ll now suggest that such a move is not cost-free. In particular, certain harms to original members of the category “woman” should be weighed against any gains.
The category “female” is . . . important for understanding the particular challenges its members face, as such. These include a heightened vulnerability to rape, sexual assault, voyeurism and exhibitionism; to sexual harassment; to domestic violence; to certain cancers; to anorexia and self-harm; and so on. If self-declared trans women are included in statistics, understanding will be hampered.
Even more pressingly, if we lose a working concept of “female” in the way indicated, self-declared trans women (males) may well eventually gain unrestricted access to protected spaces originally introduced to shield females from sexual violence from males. We are already seeing the erosion of these, as companies and charities open formerly female-only spaces such as changing rooms, shared accommodation, swimming ponds, hospital wards, and prisons, to everyone out of a desire not to appear transphobic.
The problem here is male violence. The category of self-declared trans women includes many with post-pubescent male strength, no surgical alteration of genitalia, and a sexual orientation towards females.
Note that this is emphatically not a worry that self-declared trans women are particularly dangerous or more prone to sexual violence. It’s rather that we have no evidence that self-declared trans women deviate from male statistical norms in relevant ways. There’s also a separate worry that violent males who do not consider themselves trans will eventually take advantage of increasing confusion about social norms about such spaces. Sex offenders already go to great lengths to access vulnerable females; there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t use this situation to their advantage.
And changing the concept of “woman” to include self-declared trans women also threatens a secure understanding of the concept “lesbian”.
Harms also arise for females having to share already meagre sex-based resources with self-declared trans women (such as all-women shortlists for political candidacy, representation in the media and sports scholarships). They arise for post-operative “transsexuals” in relation to the approaching massive expansion of their defining category. And they arise for gender-nonconforming children, whose emerging world-view can be strongly influenced by trans-activist rhetoric about self-declaration.
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/07/06/changing-the-concept-of-woman-will-cause-unintended-harms?

In June Cancer Research UK, a charity, tweeted: “Cervical screening (or the smear test) is relevant for everyone aged 25-64 with a cervix.” The odd phrasing—“everyone with a cervix” rather than “women”—was not accidental. The charity explained that it had deliberately chosen to use what it described as “inclusive language”. Similarly, the campaign Bloody Good Period, which donates tampons and sanitary towels to asylum-seekers, uses the word “menstruators” rather than “women”. And Green Party Women, an internal campaign group of the British Green Party, confirmed last year that its preferred designation for the constituency it represented was not, in fact, “women” but “non-men”.
These linguistic peculiarities are all responses to the astonishingly rapid advance of trans activism. Mara Keisling of the National Centre for Transgender Equality, an American lobby group, claims that it has made “faster progress than any movement in American history”, and the same holds true across the globe.
Trans people face substantial injustices, most significantly violence (perpetrated, like all violence, largely by men) and discrimination. The process of applying for a gender-recognition certificate is intrusive and burdensome for many, and there are frustrating waiting lists for medical transition, which are compounded when doctors appear unsympathetic or obstructive. Yet rather than confront male violence or lobby the medical system, the focus of trans activism has overwhelmingly been the feminist movement, spaces and services designed for women, and the meaning of the word “woman”.
It is notable that Cancer Research UK did not test its “inclusive” approach with a male-specific cancer. Its campaign messages about prostate and testicular cancer address “men”, rather than “everyone with a prostate” or “everyone with testicles”.
Women’s groups are aggressively picketed for being exclusionary; men’s clubs are left unmolested.
This asymmetry is a problem. Gender equality has not been achieved. Men still earn more than women for equivalent work, run most of the biggest companies, dominate representative politics and commit the great majority of violent crime. But the drift towards gender-neutral language (at least when discussing matters that affect women) makes it increasingly hard to articulate all this. How can you describe the maternity penalty as a factor in women’s disadvantage in the workplace, without committing the “essentialist” faux pas of associating women with pregnancy and motherhood?
In sports, trans inclusion means trans women (natal males, such as Laurel Hubbard, a weightlifter from New Zealand) competing against and beating female athletes, while trans men (natal females) present little threat to male competitors.
Too often, gender neutrality is accomplished by neutralising services or analyses centred on women. But it is also important to understand that, far from loosening the shackles of gender, modern trans ideology often tightens them.
There is a word for a situation where women talking about female bodies is considered impermissibly antisocial, where describing the consequences of sexism for women is systematically impeded, where resources for women are redistributed to male users while resources for men are left in male hands, and where “male” and “female” are rigidly associated with masculinity and femininity. That word is not “progressive”, “liberal” or any of the other terms usually associated with trans activism. The word is misogyny. Trans rights should not come at the cost of women’s fragile gains.
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/07/05/trans-rights-should-not-come-at-the-cost-of-womens-fragile-gains

A restaurant in Washington, DC, is apologizing for an incident that took place Friday night, when one of the eatery’s managers unlawfully asked a transgender woman for ID before she used the ladies’ restroom.
Charlotte Clymer was dining out with her friends at the Cuba Libre Restaurant and Rum Bar when, toward the end of their meal, she was asked by an employee to provide ID stating that she was “female” after she attempted to enter the bathroom.
“I told him that’s nonsense, turned on my heel, and continued into the restroom,” Clymer wrote on Facebook.
Clymer, who works for the Human Rights Campaign, said she informed the manager that he was mistaken and asked him to show her a law that backs up his claims, to which she was simply told, “You being in [the women’s bathroom] will make women uncomfortable.”
When he didn’t pick up the phone, Clymer took matters into her own hands and called them herself.
“I could not have asked for a more professional and affirming experience from the Washington Metropolitan Police Dept,” she wrote. “The responding officers — all cisgender men — were patient and kind in their communication, assured me I was right on the law, and radioed for their LGBTQ liaison unit to respond.”
Clymer now claims the restaurant is being investigated by the city’s Office of Human Rights, and says she, too, is pursuing “legal options” against Cuba Libre.
https://nypost.com/2018/06/25/restaurant-demanded-trans-womans-id-before-using-restroom/

Ministers have vowed to defend women’s rights to exclude transgender people from female-only spaces such as changing rooms, lavatories and swimming sessions.
In a significant victory for campaigners, the government has promised not to put the rights of those who identify as women ahead of those who are biologically female. Its intervention comes in the wake of a series of clashes that have come to light in the year since the government floated proposals to allow adults to change their gender legally without a doctor’s diagnosis.
Men identifying as women were permitted to swim in the ladies’ pond on Hampstead Heath in north London; a woman who requested a female nurse to perform her cervical smear was called in by a person with stubble; and a woman with a fear of men was locked in an NHS women’s psychiatric ward with a burly 6ft transgender patient.
Now the government has faced down pressure from Labour and influential backbenchers to tilt the balance further in the direction of transgender rights, as it prepares to announce a consultation on the Gender Recognition Act. This is expected to coincide with the Pride in London parade on July 7.
A statement from the Government Equalities Office, overseen by Penny Mordaunt, the women and equalities minister, promises that “advancing the rights of trans people does not have to compromise women’s rights”.
It said: “We are clear we have no intention of amending the Equality Act 2010, the legislation that allows for single-sex spaces. Any Gender Recognition Act reform will not change the protected characteristics in the Equality Act nor the exemptions under the Equality Act that allow for single and separate-sex spaces.”
It pledges: “Providers of women-only services [can choose not to] provide services to trans individuals, provided it is objectively justified on a case-by-case basis. The same can be said about toilets, changing rooms or single-sex activities. Providers may exclude trans people from facilities of the sex they identify with, provided it is a proportionate means of meeting a legitimate aim.”
The government statement came in response to a petition launched by Amy Desir of Man Friday, a feminist group that seeks to ridicule the notion that people should be allowed to self-identify with a particular gender.
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/06/25/whats-current-ministers-vow-defend-womens-rights-female-spaces-uk/ https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/261-politics/76747956

Mexico’s electoral tribunal has disqualified 15 male candidates who pretended to be transgender to get around gender parity rules in the southern state of Oaxaca.
The ruling proved thorny for the tribunal, which said in a statement: “The manifestation of belonging to a gender is sufficient to justify the self-registration of a person.”
But the tribunal added: “Electoral authorities must take care with the possible misuse of self-registration, to not permit … the transgender identity be utilized in a deceptive way to comply with the constitutional principle of equity.”
“Not a single spot designated for men was filled by a transgender person. However, 19 places designated for women … were filled by men who say they’re transgender,” said Anabel López Sánchez, director of the Women’s Citizenship Collective in Oaxaca, which denounced the phoney candidates in May.
Mexico has gradually introduced gender parity rules over the past two decades. Previous rules mandated a 60-40 gender split in nominations, while a constitutional reform in 2013 required a 50-50 balance in all congressional candidacies.
But candidates have attempted to get round the law from the start. In 2009, eight female lawmakers requested leaves of absence immediately after taking their oath of office and were replaced by male substitutes.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/22/mexico-elections-fake-transgender-candidates-disqualified

Jesse Singal’s piece about “detransitioners” was both well-reported and empathetic — so why is he being attacked?
Singal speaks with Laura Edwards-Leeper, a psychologist who runs Pacific University and Oregon’s Transgender Clinic and trains clinical-psychology doctoral students to conduct “readiness assessments” for young people who want to transition, but who has been challenged simply for doing assessments at all, which trans activists and families of so-called trans kids claim is “traumatizing.” Edwards-Leeper facilitates transitioning for kids, including putting them on puberty blockers when deemed appropriate, but still worries that the field is moving to a place where “we’re maybe not looking as critically at the issues as we should be.”
Singal also interviews clinicians who support the “affirming care” model (including the medical director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development, who rejects mental health assessments when determining whether kids should begin transition, saying, “I don’t send someone to a therapist when I’m going to start them on insulin”), as well as trans activists who believe the “detransitioners” narrative makes it more difficult for trans-identified people to access the services they want.
Though well-reported, the piece itself was not particularly hard-hitting. The idea that kids might change their mind about a trend that is very clearly rooted in the existence of rigid notions about differences in boys’ and girls’ personalities and preferences, as well as the challenges girls face when they go through puberty in a world wherein they are objectified, is common sense. Nonetheless, Singal has been attacked viciously online as “dangerous” and “transphobic.”
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/06/19/must-trans-activists-smear-put-forth-inconvenient-narratives-gender-identity/