March 1 to 13: NHS moves to end the medical transing of children, boys and young men increasingly skeptical of women's rights
Also, Colorado fails to decriminalize prostitution.
Calls to Action
Join the Athena Forum to collectively tackle gender ideology in law across Europe.
Woman: Adult Human Female
March 04 - Maine women inmates accuse transgender prisoner of harassment
Unless prison officials intervene, it’s just a matter of time until this male inmate, who is incarcerated for killing his own parents and their family dog, violently assaults or even kills one of the women that are now forced to share space with him in prison.
Efforts to Silence Girls, Women, and Their Supporters
March 08 - Kellie-Jay Keen forced out of Women’s Day event for asking about single-sex services
Kellie-Jay Keen was once again removed from a public event after asking pointed questions about single-sex services.
Save Women’s Sports
The Department of Education, at least, has this young woman’s back (as well as the backs of parents in small school districts around the nation).
San Jose State University (SJSU) and California State University (CSU) are in turn suing the Deptartment of Education for investigating them at all.
March 06 - Trans weightlifter whose secret was rumbled by porn video insists she never broke any rules
Foiled by his own sexual degeneracy. A trans-identifying male weightlifter exposed after appearing in an explicit video maintains that no rules were violated.
March 04 - Some rugby programs eliminate women’s teams in favor of ‘open’ category for trans athletes
Time will tell but I have a feeling that these teams who decided to eliminate their women’s category will see a drop in enrollment and in the number of teams willing to face them. Or at least I hope so.
Women’s Rights and Sex-Based Discrimination
March 06 - How well known are notable women’s rights figures?
How well do you know the history of women’s rights?
March 05 - Gen Z males twice as likely as baby boomers to believe wives should obey husbands
It’s worth noting that the survey spanned multiple countries with dramatically different cultural contexts. For example, the overall response to agreeing with the statement that women should obey their husbands was around 30%. But this varied by country, with 66% of Gen Z men in Indonesia agreeing versus 13% of Gen Z men in Great Britain. Still, the generational shift towards more traditionalist views is one to keep an eye on. I’d say it’s also worth studying the roots of changing beliefs (e.g. are many of these men so young that they’ve never experienced a relationship, and would naturally evolve with maturity and experiences of intimacy?)
March 05 - 40% of teenage boys believe women lie about domestic and sexual violence: new research
This survey is much more controlled than the one highlighted by the previous article, taking a representative sample of 3400 teens and adults across Australia. The data outcomes are very concerning, as they show a growing backlash against women’s rights.
Women’s Health
March 05 - Pregnancy changes the brain – and we are only beginning to understand how and why
I would love to hear anecdotal accounts of women who’ve gone through pregnancy. I remember one of my mom friends, whose two children are the same ages as mine, talking about how much more easily she cries since having her children, whereas I’ve noticed the opposite in myself. In any case, considering that billions of women have experienced pregnancy throughout human history, the late arrival of serious scientific attention to the topic is frustrating.
Sexual Violence
Very misleading title. In reality the bill would have decriminalized operating a site for prostitution, like a pimp or madam, and purchasing sex as well. It was not at all about just “protecting” those whose bodies are for sale.
March 09 - Luxury real estate brokers and their brother convicted in federal sex trafficking trial
Another horror story of women being deceived, drugged, and raped by wealthy men. And why? Why rape when there are plenty of women who would probably have willingly partnered with these men? The case is another grim reminder that sexual violence is often less about access to sex than about control and domination.
March 05 - Jennifer Shahade: ‘There’s a long and embedded history of abuse in chess’
Shahade’s comments highlight the vulnerabilities women still face in male-dominated competitive spaces.
March 03 - WEB WARNING New UK porn ban set to make ‘barely legal’ content and screenshotting illegal
The United Kingdom is moving more aggressively than most Western countries to regulate online pornography.
March 01 - US moving pregnant immigrant girls to Texas to avoid providing abortions, critics say
The average age of these pregnant immigrants is 15-16 years, with some as young as 13. Harrowingly, it is estimated that as many as 80-90% of undocumented immigrant girls experience sexual assault along their journey to settling in the US.
Society and Children
March 13 - EU court orders gender IDs to reflect ‘lived gender’ and not biological sex
Born from a court case in Bulgaria, the EU, in contrast to the UK and USA, has ruled that member states must acquiesce to individuals’ requests to change official documents like birth certificates. Bulgaria is a nation that recognizes a difference between sex and so-called “gender identity”, but it is the opinion of EU officials that its new ruling is necessary to standardize documentation across countries
March 09 - Uber’s women-only option goes nationwide in the US
Women, and men who have a gender marker on their license that identifies them as women, are able to limit their pool of drivers and riders to only those of women (and the aforementioned men). Men and presumably women who identify as nonbinary are not permitted to use this feature.
March 07 - NHS poised to stop prescribing cross-sex hormones to trans-identifying children under the age of 18
Finally, more than a decade after the trans movement morphed into a full-on craze, its consequences are being undone. Mid-week resolution: NHS England did indeed formally declare the end of cross-sex prescriptions for children. Longer term guidance to come after a 90-day period for public consultation.
Spoiler alert: women are, in fact, better drivers. If we measure driving competence by safety at least, women have a much better record. Men, on the other hand, are overrepresented in fatal car collisions, DUIs, speeding offences, distracted driving, and other high-risk behaviors.
March 06 - Built for burnout – how job design fails women
Now is as good of a time as any for an economic revolution. Our current system serves no one well, neither women nor men.
March 05 - The Statues Were Mostly Men or Nude Women. So These Knitters Got to Work.
The nude part wasn’t even really the problem for the knitters so much as the general lack of female statues compared to male ones. 484 male statues versus 43 female statues - and a chunk of those female statues aren’t even real women, like the goddess Venus.
Federal officials are warning states that disagreements over a child’s gender identity are not, on their own, grounds for removing a child from parental custody. Without going too much into my background, I’ll share that I worked in the realm of child welfare. Vice President of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR) Shannon Minter denies that any child welfare agency has ever removed a child for the reason stated above. I can tell you that, while it may be true it isn’t the initiating reason for removing a child, a parent’s refusal to support transition was routinely used as a reason to deny reunification in the state where I worked.
March 03 - Supreme Court blocks law against schools outing transgender students to their parents in California
A California law had banned automatic parental notification if a child changed his or her pronouns or “gender expression” at school, and the Supreme Court has just blocked that law. If we were a more thoughtful society, this would open a much wider conversation - beyond transgender stuff - about what level of privacy children, and even young adults still dependent on their parents (e.g. parents paying college tuition or covering insurance), are entitled to as well as the function of schools in intervening in the values that a child is raised by. Here is a deeper dive into the stories of parents whose children were transed without their knowledge.
March 01 - The rise of singlehood could impact everything from housing to taxes
Housing markets, tax structures, and social policy were largely designed around married households, leaving economies to adjust to what a new demographic reality might mean.
Beyond the West
March 06 - Women in South Africa take up guns and martial arts for protection against gender violence
South Africa has one of the worst femicide rates in the world, and 35% of its women have experienced physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives.
I don’t know about you, but I feel absolutely helpless reading about the horrors women deal with beyond the West. Reading their work offers one way to move beyond statistics and hear individual voices confronting repression firsthand. More on Afghanistan: the practice of bacha posh, disguising pre-pubescent girls as boys to extend their freedom; and the rights of husbands to beat their wives.
Entertainment News
Gyllenhaal argues that the world needs to see more explicit, violent sexual assaults on film to confront the reality that such assaults happen in real life.
Op-Eds of Interest
Women’s Liberation
Sam Adler-Bell (NY Magazine): The Women Leaving the New Right
Emma Robinson (The Cornell Daily Sun): Embarrassing Boyfriends and The Male Loneliness Epidemic: One Woman’s Take
Society
Leqaa Kordio (Zeteo): EXCLUSIVE: I’m the Palestinian Who Has Been in ICE Detention for Almost a Year
Gender Ideology
Ben Appel (The Atlantic): In Defense of Effeminate Boys
Graham Linehan (The Glinner Update): Trolling women on your dime
MadFem (Unwelcome Archive): Cis Privilege Isn’t Real
Connie Shaw (The Telegraph): I stood up to the pro-trans fanatics who tried to silence me
Joseph Clement (The Federalist): What To Know About SCOTUS’s Mirabelli Decision And How It Protects Parents And Kids
Andrew Doyle (Andrew Doyle): Why are men still being held in women’s prisons?
Jennifer Sey (Sey Everything): We Knew What A Woman Was Until About 5 Minutes Ago





Thanks for a really useful round up, Soh
Have cross posted
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/life-is-a-cabaret
Dusty