August 16 to 21: Tickle v. Giggle, Title IX USSC decision
And the UK government highlights misogyny as a form of extremism. But what does that mean, really?
Calls to Action
Tell Congress to Investigate Planned Parenthood through this petition organized by the Independent Women’s Network.
Erasing Women, LGB, and Their Spaces
Aug 22 - Australian court rules in landmark case that asked 'what is a woman?'
This covers the decision made in the “Tickle v. Giggle” case, in which a trans-identifying dude 🥸 filed suit against Sall Grover’s app Giggle claiming the female-only app discriminated against him. The judge sided with Mr. Tickle, saying that “sex is ‘changeable and not necessarily binary’”. Fear not, however, the case will likely go to appeal where the guiding case law can be scrutinized.
Aug 22 - College affirms women-only admissions policy despite ‘transphobic’ accusations
Here’s a win for women! Virginia’s Sweet Briar College has clarified in its admission policy that only those who were “assigned” female at birth can attend the school. Trans-identifying women 🥸 (i.e. “nonbinary” and transmen) complain that it forces them to identify as something they are not. Excuse me, but WTF are you doing at a women’s college in the first place if you don’t want to identify as a woman?
Usually The Daily Mail pretends to be respectful of trans-identifying people’s preferred pronouns, so it’s hilarious to see the author ignore that protocol and straight up refer to the creepy dude as a “sex-change pest.”
France has banned discrimination of people based on “sexual identity,” which there includes gender identity, since 2012. When one woman was disturbed to find an obvious man changing in the bathroom of a women’s-only hostel, she asked the hostel to reimburse her for its false advertising. The craziest quote in the article comes from the hostel manager who says that the woman’s observation of the man being a man is political rather than factual.
Silencing Women, Girls, and Our Allies
Aug 17 - Transgender Liberation protesters disrupt women’s rights rally in Melbourne
In a protest in Australia, the 20 women who had gathered faced jeers, eggs, and water balloons thrown at them by about 150 Trans Rights Activists.
Males in Female Sports
The good news is that it sounds like the season is nearly over, so we can a get break from this embarassing team taking anymore headlines for a couple months.
Aug 20 - Federal judge rules transgender student can play on girl's tennis team in Virginia
The judge argues that the emotional harm and potential “medical regression” that will happen to the boy outweighs the safety and dignity of the girls he desperately wants to play alongside.
The AFL does have rules against men in women’s sports at the highest levels, but allows trans-identifying men 🥸 to join willy nilly at the community level. A spokeperson from the AFL explains that inclusion is the goal at the community level, not fairness. It was pressure from female competitors that inspired the rule change against men at the elite level, and so I wonder if women standing their ground on this issue can have the same impact for recreational players.
Aug 19 - 2 students sue over transgender athlete rules in New Hampshire
“We just want our kid to have a normal high school experience like everyone else,” says the mother of one of the trans-identifying boys in the article. And you don’t think the parents of the actual girls on these teams want the same thing, lady? Is this the selfish line of thinking that motivates these boys, mens, and their allies?
Aug 19 - Valentina Petrillo: Rival says first transgender Paralympian has ‘an advantage’ in sprinting
How much more can we say to express our disgust of men who infiltrate women’s sports? Instead I’d like to remind you of the archiving website SheWon.org that names the girls and women who actually deserve recognition for besting their fellow female competitiors.
Women’s Liberation
Survivors of domestic violence recount the appalling ignorance and condescension they endured from judges overseeing their cases in family court.
Reproductive Rights
Aug 22 - Arkansas Supreme Court rejects bid to put abortion initiative on the ballot
Secretary of State John Thurston used a small technical error on the part of petitioners to block an abortion initiative on the Arkansas ballot. Arkansas is a red state that bans abortion at any stage of pregnancy. It seems anti-abortion extremists recognize that they will lose every time that the matter of reproductive rights is left in the hands of voters themselves.
Sexual Assault and Exploitation
Aug 22 - Thai massage workers 'intimidated' by abuse
At the intersection of racist stereotyping and sexually predatory behavior.
News Impacting Society and Children
Aug 22 - Puberty blockers temporary ban extended
Reason perseveres.
The Texas Department of Public Safety is taking a much stricter approach to alterations of gender markers on ID cards. So, it looks like reason perseveres in the USA as well, but only if you live in a Republican-led state apparently.
Aug 21 - Mormon church issues new restrictions on transgender members
In short, the Church of Latter-Day Saints (i.e. Mormons) is choosing to treat transgender-identifying people the same way that the Church treats sexual deviants.
Aug 18 - Misogyny to be treated as extremism by UK government
I want to put this in the Wins for Women section, but Labour has a lot to prove. Mary Harrington over at Unherd writes much more thoughtfully than I ever could about the issues with this effort.
Aug 18 - Concern for religion's future in America grows as young women stop attending church: report
This isn’t that surprising when you consider the simultaneous trend of women becoming more politically liberal in the US.
Aug 16 - Supreme Court blocks temporary enforcement of expanded protections for transgender students
To be clear, the Court has only blocked the Title IX rule expansion, meant to expand sex-based rights to “gender identity-based rights” in schools that receive federal funding, in the (all-red) states that have challenged the new rule.
Beyond the West
Aug 22 - The Taliban publish vice laws that ban women’s voices and bare faces in public
I’m starting to get the sense that the Taliban spends so much time kicking around its female citizens because that’s the only thing they can do. They have proven to be a completely impotent ruling power otherwise, as their country remains one of the poorest in the world (and the poorest in all of Asia).
Aug 18 - Taiwanese public largely rejects gender self-identification, survey finds
In a survey of more than 10,000 participants, a whopping 91% of respondents disagreed that trans-identifying men should have access to women’s spaces, like jails and sports teams and bathrooms. It goes to show how when a country’’s government and media aren’t actively promoting Trans Rights Activism, the people do a pretty good job making sense of things themselves.
Aug 16 - Taiwan attempts to silence UK women’s right campaigners in Olympics gender row
Meanwhile, also in Taiwan, continued efforts to defend Lin Yu-ting, the male with a DSD who insisted on boxing against women in the Olympics. If you’re not already sick of this story, here is fitness guru Jillian Michael’s no-nonsense take on the both the DSD boxers.
Op-Eds, Commentaries, and Book Reviews
Women’s Liberation
Aug 16 - The Conversation: Prison is a disaster for women – here’s what would work instead
Gender Ideology
Aug 16 - Washington Post: Why elite women’s sports need to be based on sex, not gender
Aug 18 - The Critic: Don’t shoot the piano man
Aug 19 - Massachusetts Informed Parents: A Young Woman Lost Her Life. Is the MA "Gender Affirming" Industry to Blame?
Aug 19 - Singal-Minded (Jesse Singal): Yale’s “Integrity Project” Is Spreading Misinformation About The Cass Review And Youth Gender Medicine
Aug 19 - gender:hacked (Eliza Mondegreen) Don't you dare keep that woman prisoner!
Aug 21 - The Hill (Kara Dansky): Tim Walz owes Democrats some answers on ‘gender identity’ and children
Aug 22 - Bodies Get in the Way (Lucy Leader): “There was no neuroscience to change my brain, so I had to edit my body.” - Prisha Mosley
Sexual Exploitation
Aug 18 - The Telegraph: How Indian women tricked into sex with promises of marriage are seeking justice
Reproductive Rights
Aug 20 - The Atlantic: Abortion Takes Center Stage
Motherhood
Aug 21 - ‘It felt shameful’: the profound loneliness of modern motherhood
I read what I thought was an amazing post followed by lots of comments mostly saying the same weird thing. What was this thing you might ask. Well, evidently a number of women, that is people born female, are quite happy to have men, who now say they are women, join their private spaces. Why, you might ask, well, it seems this is OK because, wait for it, these men who now say they are female, are hardly ever likely to attack born females, or rape them, or generally treat them violently. That’s fine then, as long as men wear a dress and say they are now a woman, they can join private women’s clubs, go to the same changing rooms and bathrooms, play in women’s sports, infiltrate everything women set up for themselves, because they are not likely attack us, and we’ll let them in and support them. Crap.
The women are not becoming less religious, their religiosity is just leaving the institutions behind. The number of "nones" in religious self-categorization keeps growing far faster than the number of self-identified atheists. Rather than giving up on God, they are giving up on rules. Religion in America is now "a la carte," Oprah-style.