May 16 - 22: U.S. bans funding for "gender-affirming care", takes action on revenge porn
And a Californian track athlete defiantly claims her first-place position
Top News: U.S. BAN ON *ALL* FUNDING FOR “GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE”
May 22 - House passes reconciliation with gender-affirming care funding ban
Yesterday, the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” reconciliation package in a 215-214 vote. The Bill includes provisions that will prohibit the use of federal funds to support “gender-affirming care”.
The Bill had been limited to only restricting Medicaid and CHIP coverage of “gender-affirming care” for people younger than 18, but Republican lawmakers made a revision late on Wednesday night to have the restriction apply to everyone.
The Bill also drops requirements that some health insurers must cover “gender-affirming care” as an “essential health benefit” and forces states that currently mandate such coverage to find it independently. Plans could still offer coverage for transgender care but without the EHB classification patients will likely pay higher out of pocket costs.
The so-called big and beautiful bill covers many other subjects as well, some of which may not be as palatable to many WAHF readers. It slashes taxes for the super-rich and increases spending on oil drilling, the military, and immigration, while also making cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs.
The Bill will likely see some modifications as it is reviewed and amended by committees, and then will be brought back to the floor for debate. Stay tuned.
Efforts to Silence Girls, Women, and Their Supporters
Congresswoman Nancy Mace was glad to see bond denied for the 19 year-old trans-identifying male who threatened to kill her. Rep. Mace gave a lengthy statement about how the threats had impacted her and her family, as well as calling out the rampant misogyny behind the threats:
"This case isn’t just about one man’s threats. It’s about a culture that tolerates violence against elected officials, especially women who speak up," Mace said. "We do not accept terror. The normalization of threats against public servants corrodes democracy from within.”
Erasing Women and Women’s Safe Spaces
May 21 - Parliament told to obey ‘law of the land’ over trans ban
After the Houses of Parliament refused to ban gender-identfying males from women’s washrooms (see story below), the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) told organizations, including the House of Commons, to follow the updated guidance it released on Tuesday, including making women-only washrooms. Those who do not follow the guidance risk legal action.
May 20 - Houses of Parliament refuse to ban trans women from female lavatories
Despite the April ruling from the UK Supreme Court that biological sex is the subject of the Equality Act (not gender identity), AND the subsequent interim guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the Houses of Parliament (House of Commons and House of Lords) claim they are “waiting for (full) guidance” from the Equality and Human Rights Commission before changing its rules, as they want to ensure that all are treated in an “inclusive manner”.
Peter de Jonge (a trans-identifying male who goes by Sharona Samantha Maria de Jonge) is serving 23 years in prison for the extremely grotesque murders of two men - one of whom was a prostitution client and one who unwittingly opened his home to de Jonge and his accomplice. Housed at Ter Peel women’s prison, De Jonge is also serving as “chairwoman” of the inmate’s committee, which represents, and makes decisions about policies regarding, vulnerable female inmates.
In his role as “chairwoman”, de Jonge enthusiastically advocates for trans-identified males being able to be in women’s prisons. He has written, “Here in the prison where I am, the women among themselves experience no problems with the presence of trans women.” Yet Ter Peel has already been the location of one very brutal attack by a trans-identifying male on a female guard.
While female inmates are rarely convicted of serious crimes, the trans-identifying males who end up housed with them have often committed brutal and abhorrent crimes. The males used to be housed in a special care unit in men’s prisons, but now are placed among the female inmate population.
Women’s Health
May 18 - Fertility clinic bombing spotlights ‘nihilistic’ violent extremism wave
On May 17, a car bomb exploded outside a reproductive centre in Palm Springs, California, killing the suspected bomber, 25 year-old Guy Edward Bartkus, injuring four others and severely damaging the centre along with several other buildings. Bartkus left behind a website with audio detailing his reasons for the bombing — in short that he was “antinatilist” (against all life), and believed it is wrong to bring new life into this (as he sees it, horrible) world through IVF. The FBI is calling the blast an ‘intentional act of terrorism’.
Males in Female Sports
May 21 - Loudoun County residents demand public school leaders drop locker room investigation
This time it happened to boys. A trans-identifying female entered the boys’ locker room, making the boys feel uncomfortable. The difference from other situations we’ve seen is that the boys’ immediate reaction was to loudly call out the situation and request the girl leave. And now they are the subject of a Title IX sexual harassment investigation.
The girl had entered the locker room with a hidden video recording running, so the entire interaction was caught. At first there is only audio as she concelaed the device, but when the boys began objecting to her presence, she pulled out the device she was recording on and openly filmed the students. To be clear: Filming in a school locker room is a crime, yet the girl is not as yet facing any charges, while the boys’ and their reputations are being dragged through the mud.
“The video released by local media clearly shows there’s absolutely no valid reason for investigating this matter unless it’s to charge the person who illegally recorded those minors in their safe space,” the grandmother of one of the boys told the school board.
High school student, Reese Hogan, placed second in a long jump competition and posed for pictures on the podium along with first-place winner — a trans-identifying male. Or at least that is how the narrative was supposed to go. However, as soon as the male left the first-place spot, Reese hopped up to the spot and gave a beaming smile as she stood in her rightful place in front of a cheering crowd.
A trans-identifying male in middle school claimed three medals at a track event in Naperville, Illinois hosted for 7th grade girls. Doug Krein’s daughter would have won a third place medal in the 200m race, but for the boy. Krein stated, “It’s hard to see these girls’ reactions after they lose to a biological male.”
In follow-up to the Naperville track event above, Awake Illinois has filed a federal civil rights complaint against the school district, which alleges Title IX violations for sex discrimination. (As this is the third Title IX action referenced in this edition, it occurs to me that lawyers specializing in Title IX violations are making a fortune these days…)
May 16 - Woman sues Kearsarge School District, claiming she was silenced when speaking about trans athletes
Beth Scaer of Nashua, New Hampshire, has filed a lawsuit against Kearsage Regional School District, alleging the school board violated her First Ammendment rights at a meeting about trans-identfying athletes. The meeting was held last August, after a federal court told the New Hampshire Department of Education that it should not follow a new state law banning specific students from playing on girls' teams — the school district was meeting to reconsider the rule it had enacted that prevented males from playing on the girl’s soccer team.
Scaer attended the meeting in order to voice her concern for the safety of female athletes. But when she began to speak and referenced “a tall boy” who was in the room (but who identifies as a girl), the chairperson cut her off for making “derorgatory” comments.
Said Scaer: "I hadn't even considered what I was saying derogatory and I still don't. I was just stating facts, and it was the facts that were very important to my point, which is that boys shouldn't be playing in girls' sports." Touché.
Pornography, Sexual Harassment & Sexual Assault
May 19 - Trump signs a bill to make posting 'revenge porn' a federal crime. He had the first lady sign, too
President Trump signed the Take It Down Act on Monday, which “mandates social media platforms to remove sexually explicit images and videos of others”. Melania Trump has been working toward the passage of the bill since Minnesota Democratic Senator, Amy Klobuchar, brought it to her attention in January. The first lady thanked members of Congress from both parties for passing the legislation, saying “Thank you all for coming together to prioritize people over politics.”
The media drew much attention to the fact that at the signing, President Trump invited Melania to sign it as well, as a symbolic act recognizing her work on it. It was indeed an unusual act — no first lady has ever signed legislation before, and because she is not elected in any capacity, her signature holds no authority on the document.
News Impacting Society and Children
Washington Democrats gutted key provisions of the bipartisan Initiative 2081 that was enacted last year to strengthen rights for parents public school students. The new bill signed by the governor allows government employees to take up to two days to notify parents if their child was the victim of a crime or sexual assault in school. It also removes the requirement to notify parents when their child receives medical services in schools, entirely removes parental access to medical and mental health records, creates hurdles for parents to hold schools accountable for violating Initiative 2081 rights and gives the Superintendent’s office greater authority to penalize school districts that do not comply with its directives.
Republican Rep. Travis Couture noted that there has been “a stunning amount of sexual misconduct and sexual assaults by educators in our schools just in the last year” and derided Democrats for overturning a measure they previously supported a year ago. Couture had proposed an ammendent for parents to be immediately notified if a student was sexually abused by an employee… but Democrats voted it down.
Op-Eds of Interest
Glenna Goldis: Do Parents Have a Right to Know If Teachers Cocoon Their Sixth Grader in an Alternate Reality?
Christine Emba: The Delusion of Porn’s Harmlessness
Ligia Navas-Murphy: If Trump really wants more babies, he should start by holding absent fathers accountable
Cody Taymore: The Fawn Response: How Your ‘Niceness’ Might Actually Be a Trauma Response (And What to Do About It)
Parting Shot
The fu$%ery of language is a key element of the gender-wang bizarro-world we find ourselves mired in. The linguistic confusion of sex and gender is at the heart of it. Sex can mean sexual activity, or the biological categories of female and male. Gender can also mean biological category (and continues to be used by people who feel uncomfortable saying “sex” because of its other meaning), or the collection of ideals, roles and norms that are associated with each biological catergory.
To overcome this confusion, and the gender ideology supported by it, thinkers and writers advocating for reality have wisely become ardent in solidifying the meanings of these words — insisting in all communications in using “sex” to mean the biological categories of male and female and “gender” to mean the social constructs associated with the sexes.
However, this is not well understood in mainstream, “normie” culture, so widespread and productive dialgoue remains elusive. And there are many other confusions that work to keep people from thinking too deeply about gender ideology. “Sex change” is one — changing sex is impossible. Another is the phrase “transgender woman/man”. People struggle to understand is it “a man living as a woman”, or vice versa? So again, reality-based thinkers and writers have developed a more clear phrase — “trans-identifying male/female”. Certainly, we at WAHF are big fans of this reality-based phrase.
As I worked on this week’s edition, I struggled with the phrase “gender-affirming care”. You might have noticed how many times it appears in the Top News story, and each time in quotation marks. I noticed. But I could not think of more reality-based language for that phrase, so I had to repeatedly use the language of the gender ideologues with quotation marks to highlight that I don’t consider it an accurate term.
And so the struggle continues for reality-based, sound language that will allow us to clearly name and communicate about the problems caused by gender ideology.
If you know of a reality-based phrase for “gender-affirming care”, or if there are other muddled/confused words and phrases that really get your goat, please share in the comments.
Thanks to everyone who has been commenting. I've been taking it all in and mulling it. Here's my thought on a reality-based term for "gender-affirming care":
Criteria: Needs to be "sex" not "gender and also not "sex-change"; cannot be "care", needs to be value-neutral (When our terms are descriptive and value-neutral, people whose ears aren't 100% jammed shut can receive them better. Obviously we have value-laden feelings about the subject, which we convey in the context of a larger statement, not ny the term itself.)
What about: Sex-trait modifications/modifiers
"If you know of a reality-based phrase for 'gender-affirming care', or if there are other muddled/confused words and phrases that really get your goat, please share in the comments."
Well, I refuse to use the term "gender-affirming care" because it's mutilation.
So that's the word I use.
I also refuse to use "trans-identifying." If it's a man, I say man; if it's a woman, I say woman. These sad, deluded people can "identify" however they like. They're still either male or female.