Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Tennessee Law Banning Transition Care for Minors | New York Times

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider a Tennessee law that bans certain medical treatments for transgender minors, the first time the justices will decide on the constitutionality of such statewide bans.

The move could have broad ramifications for about 25 states that have enacted similar measures. Republican-led state legislatures have pushed to curtail transgender rights in recent years, with laws that target gender-transition care and that regulate other parts of life, including which bathrooms students and others can use and which sports teams they can play on.

The case, United States v. Skrmetti, will be heard in the court’s next term, which typically begins on the first Monday in October, though no date has been set yet for oral argument. The justices had considered whether to hear two challenges to transition care, including the Tennessee appeal and one centered on a Kentucky law, at their private conference each week. But they had repeatedly postponed making a decision, suggesting there might have been debate over whether to do so.

The court’s decision to take up the case signals a willingness by at least some of the justices to delve into yet another polarizing social issue, even as they have yet to rule on some of the biggest cases for this term, involving emergency abortion care, disinformation on social media and the scope of presidential power.

Source: 12ft

Woman who sued therapist for sexual assault wins £217,000 damages | London | The Guardian

A woman who claimed she was raped by a therapist who said penetration could help ease her trauma has been awarded more than £200,000 in damages in a high court ruling after she sued him over the alleged assaults.

Ella Janneh, 37, a victim of childhood sexual abuse who waived her right to anonymity, brought a claim against Michael Lousada, described as a “self-styled psychosexual Somatics practitioner”, over a therapy session involving sexual penetration at his clinic in Belsize Park, north London, in August 2016.

Lousada, who had been an internationally renowned sex therapist and had appeared as a guest on the TV show This Morning, denied the allegations, claiming that the sexual activity was consensual and part of “legitimate” therapeutic activity.

Janneh reported the alleged rape to police after it happened and told a friend “I think I just got raped” but, in 2018, the CPS decided not to proceed with a criminal prosecution. So Janneh launched a civil claim against Lousada for personal injury and negligence.

In court documents, she said that Lousada told her: “His penis was, ‘like a laser beam’ and that it could ‘burn up trauma’, and that he should use his penis to absorb the trauma.” The court heard he did not wear a condom.

She claimed the incident caused her to suffer a panic attack, leaving her unable to communicate and “incapable of providing valid and informed consent”.

In his evidence, Lousada admitted penetration occurred but said he repeatedly received “clear verbal consent” for his actions. The court heard that when challenged by his ex-wife Louise Mazanti about his use of sexual penetration with clients he said his sexual work comprised his “spiritual gifts” and was an “expression of his soul”.

“I am satisfied that the scale of his confidence in his own abilities was such that his perception of reality became clouded by his sense of self-worth,” the judge said in his ruling.

“I am feeling everything all at once,” Ella Janneh said after the judgment. “I’m incredibly proud of myself, first and foremost that I got here. I have put in so much work.”

But, she added: “I’m also in grief for what it means to have given up the best part of a decade to hold a man accountable.”

“I was left wanting to die,” she said. “I was left suicidal. I was left with the harm that I’ve still never recovered from, so there’s grief also about an eight-year fight, and that’s eight years that I’ll never back.”

Janneh said that although her fight for justice had been long, she hoped that the judgment “can be meaningful for other victims”.

Source: Woman who sued therapist for sexual assault wins £217,000 damages | London | The Guardian

School’s equality drive ‘backfires’ as head girl replaced by…a BOY!

One of Scotland’s top state schools has prompted an angry backlash after its head girl was replaced with a boy in what was supposed to be an ‘inclusivity’ drive.

Williamwood High School scrapped its traditional positions of head boy and head girl and replaced them with two gender neutral ‘captains’ elected by other pupils.

However, the move ‘backfired’ after both posts were secured by male candidates, while none of four girls who put themselves forward were chosen.

One of Scotland’s top state schools has prompted an angry backlash after its head girl was replaced with a boy in what was supposed to be an ‘inclusivity’ drive.

Williamwood High School scrapped its traditional positions of head boy and head girl and replaced them with two gender neutral ‘captains’ elected by other pupils.

However, the move ‘backfired’ after both posts were secured by male candidates, while none of four girls who put themselves forward were chosen.

Source: School’s equality drive ‘backfires’ as head girl replaced by…a BOY!

Can cheating amount to coercive control? – Lawyers Weekly

Ashley Madison is an online dating service and social networking platform marketed to people who are married or in committed relationships. The website is known for its slogan, “Life is short. Have an affair.”

It has faced criticism and controversy for promoting infidelity. It is currently trending on Netflix and has generated quite the water cooler conversation about the personal and legal ramifications of cheating.

One colleague informed me that at his “peak” (pardon the pun), he could have up to 30 intimate partners a week. Frankly, I am not sure where he found the time or stamina, but he clearly has a good PT and physio.

On a serious note, I have had many clients (and colleagues) ask me if having an affair is illegal/criminal in Victoria. My high-level advice is:

Affairs can be a form of coercive control (i.e., family violence). When one partner engages in an affair, they are often exerting power and control over their partner by betraying their trust, manipulating their emotions, and causing emotional harm.

The affair can be used to control the partner’s behaviour, emotions, and choices by threatening to leave them or using the affair to manipulate and gaslight them. In some cases, the affair may also involve physical or sexual coercion, further reinforcing the power dynamics in the relationship.

Overall, affairs can be a form of coercive control and can have damaging effects on the partner who is being manipulated and controlled.

This can warrant an intervention order being granted against the person having an affair (on the grounds that family violence has been committed).

While coercive control or having an affair are not criminal acts/able to be prosecuted in Victoria, if committed when an intervention order is in place, this behaviour could constitute a breach of the order and result in criminal charges.

Whereas, currently in Tasmania and from July 2024 in NSW and from 2025 in Queensland, coercive control is a criminal offence.

So before having a fling, or if you’re looking for an extramarital relationship on or offline, consider the above legal ramifications.

[Ed: Interesting legal perspective – perhaps wishful thinking. Coercive control laws commence in NSW from 1 July 2024. See here for more information. Only time will tell how broadly they will be applied. To date police and courts have been typically reluctant to act on psychological abuse when there is no physical element. Frankly if an AVO or IVO is already in place, it seems odd to have an expectation of fidelity. It is to be hoped these laws are not used to further control and coerce women rather than curb male cruelty.]

Source: Can cheating amount to coercive control? – Lawyers Weekly

Sam holds Dutch gender clinic liable for misdiagnosis: “Going into transition was not the solution to my problems”

Sam* is holding the Amsterdam UMC, which includes the gender clinic of the VU Medical Centre, liable because he feels a proper diagnosis was not made. And he is not the only one: his lawyer is now handling 10 cases surrounding transgender care, two of which involve misdiagnosis.

Sam was struggling with himself when, at 16, he thought he was transgender. “There was a broadcast on television with a trans boy sharing his story,” he looks back. “And that was when I was already feeling very unhappy, I was very confused with myself.”

During that time, Sam also discovered that he fancied men. The teenage boy found it difficult, which he “certainly didn’t want. Also, I had a lot of trouble with myself as a person: I found myself disgusting, I hated myself and thought I was a terrible person.”

Sam acknowledges that he wanted the transition himself and was clear about it to his practitioners. According to the Medical Treatment Agreement Act (WGBO), a person aged 16 and over can decide whether to undergo treatment.

But he now thinks that does not negate the fact that the psychologists in the gender team could have countered. “They should have helped me look at the whole picture and not just that transition,” he says. He also feels that his parents were not involved enough and that his mother was not listened to when she expressed doubts about the process.

When Sam was about to undergo more cosmetic surgery at 22, he came to the conclusion that transitioning to become a woman was not the answer. He decided to stop using female hormones and said “no” when he was later called by the hospital for gender-affirming surgery.

Sam has since been living as a man for 3 years and is gradually improving. “I was this close to having the sex operation. If I think about that, it can be very upsetting. I think I was very lucky to have narrowly escaped.”

*Sam is a pseudonym. His real name is known to the editor.

Source: Sam holds Dutch gender clinic liable for misdiagnosis: “Going into transition was not the solution to my problems”

Fascinating charts show explosion in number of children who think they are trans amid claims Covid lockdowns fuelled rates – especially in young girls | Daily Mail Online

Fascinating charts track the explosion of gender-questioning youth in the UK over the past few years.

More than 5,000 referrals were made to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in 2021/22, compared to just a few hundred a decade earlier.

Girls have accounted for an increasing proportion of the total.

Almost two-thirds of referrals in recent years were in teenage girls.

For comparison, boys made up the vast majority when NHS medics were offering gender care to children and young people a decade ago.

The statistics formed part of the bombshell Cass review, which ruled that staples of NHS treatment of trans youth – like doling out puberty blockers and sex hormones – were built on ‘shaky foundations’.

A damning 400-page dossier by respected paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass found such treatments have little evidence of positive outcomes or safety in the long term.

Source: Fascinating charts show explosion in number of children who think they are trans amid claims Covid lockdowns fuelled rates – especially in young girls | Daily Mail Online

The Sydney suburbs that are home to thousands of guns | SMH

A rise in the number of guns in NSW has sparked concern over how they are controlled, with firearms licences this year handed to people with histories of mental illness and violent behaviour, despite police objections.

The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal overturned a decision not to grant someone a firearm once every two weeks in May and June this year, prompting concern from public health experts. Police tried to block those people from accessing a gun because they alleged they had histories of mental illness, schizophrenia, or violent or threatening behaviour.

The number of registered firearms in NSW jumped from just over 1 million in 2020 to 1,112,734 at the end of last year, and some suburbs of Sydney are now home to thousands of firearms. An extra 10,000 people have also been granted a gun licence in that time, with 251,563 now legally able to own and shoot a gun.

Under NSW law, firearms use is considered a privilege and the applicant must be deemed a fit and proper person to own a gun without being a danger to public safety, as judged by the NSW Police. Refusals can be challenged via an internal review, and any final decision can be challenged at the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Last year an extra 7000 people listed sport target shooting as the reason for needing the firearms licence compared to 2020.

NSW Greens MP Sue Higginson said the reasons for accessing firearms should be reviewed and novel solutions were needed to make sure suburban homes were not becoming boltholes for guns.

“The data suggests the uptick is because people are using a gun for fun, and this is no laughing matter. It’s very concerning that this is resulting in a concentration of lethal weapons in the community in particular suburbs and localities, such as western and south-western Sydney,” she said.

“Guns for recreation do not necessarily need to be owned personally and stored away from the purpose-built place they are used … When access to guns becomes more commonplace, it is inevitable that people will become more exposed to gun violence.”

Source: 12ft

Labour has dismissed women like me. I’ll struggle to vote for it | JK Rowling

On Thursday evening, I went to the best book launch I’ve ever attended, and I’m including all of the Harry Potter launches, crazily memorable though those were. This one took place in a large, old wood-panelled room in the middle of Edinburgh, and the evening was so warm the windows were open, so we could hear the distant strains of bagpipes from the Royal Mile.

This was a belated, post-publication party for The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, the book of essays to which I contributed, and which came out last month. “Wheesht” is a Scots injunction to be quiet: “haud your wheesht” means “hush!”

The book has contributions from 30 or so problematic Scottish females who didn’t agree with the former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s vision of a country where a man could become a woman simply by declaring himself one.
Among the writers were politicians, journalists, activists and policy analysts. However, many contributors have no public profile. Some had written their essays anonymously.
I can’t use the word “ordinary” for the latter women, because they’re about as far from “ordinary” as you can get. These are the women who risked (and in some cases, lost) their livelihoods by standing up against an ideology embraced by Scottish politicians, state institutions and by the police.
These supposedly ordinary women fought because they could see no alternative but to fight: for other vulnerable women and girls, for single-sex spaces, for the right to speak about our own bodies as we please, and to retain the ability to call a man as a man, without which no analysis or activism around sex-based issues and inequalities is possible.
The women there were so funny, so brave, so determined; I don’t think I’ve ever felt as much solidarity in a room, a solidarity that stretched across party divides. I still felt elated and inspired when I got home.
[T]here I was, on the edge of my sofa seat on Thursday night, waiting to hear Starmer clarify his views on an issue that places many left-leaning women on the spectrum between anger and disgust at his party’s embrace of gender identity ideology. Did he still maintain that women and cervixes ought not to be mentioned together?
“On the biology,” Starmer began, “I agree with what Tony Blair said the other day, in relationship to men having penises and women having vaginas.”
“So you’ve changed your position?” asked the moderator. “On the biology,” emphasised Starmer, leaving the impression that until Tony Blair sat him down for a chat, he’d never understood how he and his wife had come to produce children.
In the interests of full transparency, I should say that Rosie Duffield’s a friend of mine. We’d probably have been friends no matter where or how we’d met, but we found each other as part of a group of women fighting to retain women’s rights.
She and I share more than the occasional meal and a fairly sweary WhatsApp thread. Last month, a man received a suspended prison sentence for sending both of us death threats. Rosie was to be taken out with a gun; I was to be beaten to death with a hammer. The level of threats Rosie has received is such that she’s had to hire personal security and was recently advised not to conduct in-person hustings.
The impression given by Starmer at Thursday’s debate was that there had been something unkind, something toxic, something hard line in Rosie’s words, even though almost identical words had sounded perfectly reasonable when spoken by Blair.
It seems Rosie has received literally no support from Starmer over the threats and abuse, some of which has originated from within the Labour party itself, and has had a severe, measurable impact on her life.
As long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the rights their foremothers thought were won for all time, I’ll struggle to support them. The women who wouldn’t wheesht didn’t leave Labour. Labour abandoned them.

Source: Labour has dismissed women like me. I’ll struggle to vote for it