Judge ‘erroneously’ found mother committed family violence by denying son access to violent father, court finds | Australia news | The Guardian

A judge “erroneously” found that a mother committed an act of family violence against her son when she prevented him from spending time with the father because she feared he could be harmed, a court has found.

The father had been violent to the woman, and to an older child of his from a different relationship, when his former partner withdrew his access to the child soon after its birth in 2016, the federal circuit and family court found.

But Justice Michael Jarrett also ruled last year that this act by the mother should be regarded as family violence, given legal definitions designed to capture behaviour often characterised as coercive control, and granted the father shared parental responsibility of the boy.

The mother appealed this decision, arguing on six grounds of appeal that Jarrett had erred in fact and law when he made the order for shared parental responsibility in part based on the finding that she had committed an act of family violence.

In a judgment published last week, the federal circuit and family court appellate jurisdiction found Jarrett “erroneously” described the mother’s action as family violence, but dismissed her appeal.

Despite Jarrett’s decision regarding family violence being found “erroneous”, the woman’s appeal was not upheld.

Deputy chief justice Robert McClelland and Justice Peter Campton found in their reasons that this was because despite the mother having established an error by Jarrett, the “error did not affect the result of the proceeding”.

Source: Judge ‘erroneously’ found mother committed family violence by denying son access to violent father, court finds | Australia news | The Guardian

She cooks, cleans and cares … so why is a woman in Uganda worth only 20% of divorce assets? | Primah Kwagala | The Guardian

[L]ast year, an appeal court in Kampala overturned a high-court divorce case ruling which gave a couple an equal share of the matrimonial home. The court decided that the woman, who did most of the housework, only deserved 20% of the assets. While the man in this case had receipts to show how much he’d paid to build and maintain the house, the woman had none.

The wife argued that she cared for the couple’s four children and ensured the family’s wellbeing. When the family house was being built, she cooked for builders and supervised construction. While the court acknowledged her contribution to the marriage, it said the “man’s contribution, evidenced by receipts and invoices, was bigger and therefore deserved [an] 80% share”.

This ruling sets a bad precedent and rolls back years of hard work to recognise unpaid care work. It values a moneymaker over a homemaker and exposes the law’s failure to address the systemic discrimination of women in Uganda.

The worry now is that judges in lower courts could totally disregard women’s non-monetary contribution in future divorce cases. Most women cannot afford to pay legal fees to appeal against such decisions.

Source: She cooks, cleans and cares … so why is a woman in Uganda worth only 20% of divorce assets? | Primah Kwagala | The Guardian

Gender clinic scrutiny reveals legal, safety fears

Doctors treating children at a major public hospital gender clinic have questioned the basis of the ‘gender-affirming’ approach in medicine.

Senior physicians at the NSW Children’s Hospital Westmead’s gender clinic have studied the physical and mental health of 79 patients in a rare academic study of the outcomes of children who presented with gender distress and gender dysphoria. The findings cast doubt on the scientific basis of the gender-affirming approach followed by the nation’s other children’s hospitals.

In an open access academic paper, CHW psychiatrists, endocrinologists and other physicians, and a senior medical ethics expert, called for a “much more nuanced and complex approach” as analysis revealed 88 per cent of children presenting at Westmead’s gender clinic had at least one co-morbid mental health condition, with more than 50 per cent diagnosed with behavioural disorders or autism. One in five children who consulted the clinic with gender-related distress later had these feelings resolved, and almost one in 10 with a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria, some who had taken puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, later discontinued transitioning.

Parents of children with gender distress are often told their child is at high risk of suicide if the gender-affirming path is not followed. “An unanswered question in the paediatric literature is whether gender-affirming medical treatment improves or does not improve mental health outcomes and quality of life,” said CHW doctors, including paediatric psychiatrist Kasia Kozlowska, paediatric endocrinologists Geoffrey Ambler and Ann Maguire and physician Joseph Elkadi.

The study comes as the approach of doctors practising gender-affirming medicine comes under scrutiny in court, as parents seeking to block prescription of puberty blockers to their children call expert witnesses to challenge the evidence. One recent Family Court case initiated by a parent seeking to halt their child being prescribed puberty blockers was settled midway through evidence as doctors from a major children’s hospital gender clinic called as witnesses came under scrutiny.

Solicitor Bill Kordos, who acted for the parent, said: “What became apparent to me running the case is that the science and the evidence didn’t seem to support the recommendations of the gender clinic. The unravelling of the science and the medicine was so telling that I in fact became alarmed that, if this is one case, and there are hundreds of children being put on what seems to be a conveyor belt, and young children are being told they have gender dysphoria without the whole picture being addressed, at the end of this court case I felt it was a form of child abuse.

“I also formed the view that they appeared to have politicised healthcare, which directly threatens the welfare of children. An inquiry should be held as to how these clinics are operating. I think they’re exposing themselves to a massive class action.”

Source: Subscribe to The Australian | Newspaper home delivery, website, iPad, iPhone & Android apps

The Spin Newsletter: new books, author events and more

The new definition of sex has been hailed as progressive. But is it really? What ideology is expressed by it? What consequences will it have? And for whom?

In this groundbreaking book, Swedish feminist and Marxist, Kajsa Ekis Ekman, traces the ideological roots of the new definition of woman. She shows how biological determinism is back – but minus the biology.

Start reading the book here

Register now for the international online book launch for On the Meaning of Sex.
The book will be launched by Bronwyn Winter on International Women’s Day, Wednesday 8th March 2023

6.00pm Brisbane | 7.00pm Sydney | 8.00am London
(for additional timezones please go to timeanddate.com)
Your Try Booking ticket will include an online calendar link converted to your time zone with the ZOOM link.

Free to attend but registration required. Limited numbers so get your ticket here.

 

Why is social media pushing young women to donate our eggs? | The Spectator

The Egg Bank was offering me egg extraction and two years of storage for free, in exchange for donating half of the collected eggs for use in its IVF clinic. It’s presented as an altruistic project – though in 2021 (the last year for which data is available) the London Egg Bank registered £784,603 in profit. Couples struggling for a child will pay almost anything for a chance at a family.

It’s not just the London Egg Bank that’s on the hunt for donors. Almost all my young female friends have noticed a rise in the number of egg donation adverts they’re being served across many social media sites, from places such as Altrui, Care Fertility, Manchester Donors and many more.

It’s all presented so breezily as if this is an entirely uncomplicated business, but it’s not. Young women are asked to give their eggs (an invasive procedure not without risk) without having any of the downsides flagged to them. Here, everyone is #inspirational, but these egg banks make little reference to the fact that a child may be born sharing your DNA – and that child, your biological son or daughter, may well be in touch in later life. None of the adverts immediately mention the psychological impact of becoming a mother to a child who won’t be yours. Legally, egg banks have to offer donors counselling – but that’s only once they’ve started the process of donation, and not everyone accepts it.

Source: Why is social media pushing young women to donate our eggs? | The Spectator

Twitter’s free speech threatens radical trans activism | The Spectator Australia

The issue with the Musk takeover of Twitter is not that the Left are frightened of hearing right-wing opinions (they all know what they are), they are not worried about Hitler rising from the dead, and they are not even worried about the identities of the imaginary gendered. The new establishment Left are worried about their inability to create universal regulatory capture. If Twitter doesn’t submit, that is a big deal, and gender identity is a vital cog in a very authoritarian wheel

In my feminist side of the political pool, we say that an organisation is ‘captured’ if it has accepted the ideology that human beings are capable of changing sex with gender confessions. Once an organisation that you work for has accepted this ideology, (which is central to the Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) run by ACON), if you are found saying that men can never be women on social media, in printed opinion, or at a dinner party that someone can overhear, your income can be in jeopardy.

Gender identity does not so much erase women, as it puts them in direct and legal subjugation to the worst of men. This is why trans activists (TRA’s) and men’s rights activists (MRA’s) have almost identical arguments. There is a fine line between an MRA and a TRA, and it’s drawn with an eyebrow pencil.

This simple fiction that gender is prominent over sex is now being used to remove Western women’s right to politically assemble in protest against terrible and dangerous legislation.

Source: Twitter’s free speech threatens radical trans activism | The Spectator Australia

JK Rowling critic forced to publicly apologize for calling her a Nazi after lawsuit threat | Fox News

One Twitter user named JJ Welles posted a now-deleted tweet that said Rowling was “a nazi or at least has views that align with them.”

Rowling responded with a threat of legal action in December, “Okey dokey, JJ, we’ll play it your way. Give my regards to your solicitor!”

On Monday, two months after the Nazi accusation, Welles issued a retraction.

“I would like to publicly apologise for a previous Twitter thread where I interacted with JK Rowling on matters relating to the transgender community. I have now removed these tweets and would like to apologise to JK Rowling directly for causing potential upset,” he wrote.

Source: JK Rowling critic forced to publicly apologize for calling her a Nazi after lawsuit threat | Fox News

Open letter calls for support of amendments to Family Law Act after previous laws ‘favoured fathers over mothers’ – Lawyers Weekly

A family lawyer has urged Australian women to get behind proposed amendments to the Family Law Act, which would abolish the default presumption of parents spending equal time with children.

While fathers’ rights groups have been around since the 1970s helping fathers to see their children, there are fewer organisations specifically for supporting separated mothers, one family lawyer has argued in an open letter to Australian women.

Mediator, arbitrator and accredited family law specialist Lynette Galvin said that “this shouldn’t be a gender issue, but it is”.

The exposure draft of the Family Law Amendment Bill became available to the public for consultation on 30 January this year — and is open for submissions until 27 February.

Ms Galvin has been a family lawyer for over 35 years — and has been practising since before the amendments and after the amendments, seeing their impacts.

“On behalf of the children of the future, I am asking all women who have anything to say to make those submissions, so that this time, the men’s rights groups are not the loudest voices to be heard.

Ms Galvin warned that “if women don’t get heard” now, a whole generation of children could be negatively impacted, and added that the 2006 amendments “favoured fathers over mothers”.

Source: Open letter calls for support of amendments to Family Law Act after previous laws ‘favoured fathers over mothers’ – Lawyers Weekly

Trailer • The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling

Nicola Sturgeon to resign as first minister of Scotland | Nicola Sturgeon | The Guardian

Nicola Sturgeon will stand down as first minister of Scotland, she has announced at a press conference.

The SNP leader has had a series of political setbacks recently, including the UK supreme court defeat of her plans for a fresh independence referendum and a damaging row over a double rapist being sent to a female jail after announcing she was a trans woman.

[A] series of opinion polls have shown popular support for Sturgeon personally and for the SNP and independence has fallen in recent weeks, partly fuelled by the intense controversy over the rapist Isla Bryson.

Source: Nicola Sturgeon to resign as first minister of Scotland | Nicola Sturgeon | The Guardian