Weekly News Roundup: December 2-8
Some petitions, some lawsuits, and more discord around the world.
Calls to Action
Remove Superintendent Jeff Moore - This is a very local matter. Parents in a district in New Jersey are petitioning to remove the superintendent, who they allege has prioritized identity politics over education and student wellbeing. We recommend you read through the petition and related news stories to help you decide if you want to sign the petition.
Share data on violence against women and children as it relates to custody cases - The Special Rapporteur of the UN is seeking data to compile a report on this issue. If you work for an organization that may have relevant info, see if your employer is able to respond to this information request. Deadline is 12/15.
Repeal the Gender Recognition Act 2004 - Women in the UK can sign this petition to make it known that we do not agree with gender identity.
All About Women
12/7/22 - Are women getting angrier?
Women around the world are reporting feelings of anger more than they have in the past. And are we really surprised by this given the ridiculous headlines in this newsletter each week?
Silencing Women
12/8/22 - Aer Lingus cabin crew manager loses discrimination case over uniform rules
Ireland’s Workplace Relations Commission agreed with airline company Aer Lingus that women who work as flight attendants for the airline should shut up and look pretty. A brave cabin crew manager named Elizabeth Barry had tried to argue that the company uniform sexualizes women workers and is impractical compared to the men’s work outfit.
12/5/22 - Worker: NYC shelter fired me for warning about transgender serial killer Marceline Harvey
Monica Archer, who was caseworker at a shelter for seniors, was fired for warning her employer that trans-identified man “Marceline” Harvey was dangerous. Harvey had already killed once before, and Archer’s instincts were proven to be right when Harvey went on to kill another woman at the shelter.
Males in Female Spaces
12/7/22 - Amber McLaughlin could be the first woman [sic] executed by Missouri since 1976
Here, the female space is data and records. “Amber” will not be the first woman executed in Missouri since 1976 because “Amber” is not a woman. In fact, “Amber” is on death row for brutally abducting, killing, and then raping an actual woman in 2003. Shame on this news source for their deceptive reporting.
12/6/22 - ‘They Failed at Every Juncture’: Loudoun County Mishandled Bathroom Sex Assault, Grand Jury Finds
This is an update on the case from Virginia where a trans-identified boy sexually assaulted two different girls at two different schools. Thankfully, a grand jury was reasonable enough to hold school administrators responsible for attempting to sweep sexual assault under the rug in order to avoid scrutiny of their trans-friendly bathroom rules. More good news: one of the adults resposible for the cover-up has lost his job.
12/5/22 - New Zealand says self-identity enough for transgender athletes in community sport
The picture that Yahoo included with this article summarizes things pretty well. Here’s “Laurel” Hubbard feeling a rush of trans joy as he inserts himself in a women’s competion:
Government and Society
12/6/22 - New Clinical Guidance Offers Therapeutic Alternative To ‘Affirming’ Gender Dysphoric Youth
The new approach is a bit of a “well, duh,” but it’s still good to see it written out by mental health professionals. In short, some providers are recommending an exploratory—rather than affirmative—approach to children with gender dysphoria. This means not pushing the patient in one direction or another, and instead assessing the patient’s background, circumstances, and co-morbid diagnoses to understand what is at the root of the distress he or she feels.
Horrifying. The company that was once known for selling beautiful dolls with thoughtful, culturally-rich backstories has now published a body image guide that promotes gender ideology..
12/3/22 - Backlash as Citizens Advice tells staff to wear gender pronoun badges
Citizens Advice is a social welfare charity in the UK tasked with offering advice and cash assistance for those needing help with legal, housing, energy, and debt problems. Baffingly, given how the tide is turning against the trans trend, the charity is pushing gender ideology among its staff. The charity has sent its employees 23 pages of policy instructions around being more trans-inclusive, including directions to wear pronoun badged and to go to Mermaids for further education.
12/3/22 - Cambridge academic who sparked student protests appointed to Government’s equality board
Professor Arif Ahmed has been appointed to the board of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which oversees human rights in the UK. Professor Ahmed is a fierce defender of free speech, as he demonstrated when he invited Helen Joyce to speak at Cambridge. This is good news for how human rights are enforced in the UK.
12/3/22 - Detransitioner: ‘I’m suing the doctors who removed my healthy breasts’
This is exactly the kind of story that we’ve been warning is happening: a young woman with mental health challenges and fear of experiencing misogyny was pushed into surgical transition by unscrupulous providers who refused to dig deeper into the root of the woman’s gender dysphoria. Now that the woman has achieved stability, she is horrified that she irreversibly altered her body. Expect more lawsuits like this one in the US as the public and media slowly accept that the trans trend is nothing short of insane.
12/2/22 - Judge blocks Indiana abortion ban on religious freedom grounds
Ironically, religious freedom was successfully argued against the implementation of Indiana’s abortion ban. Indiana, remember, is the state that tried to prevent a 10-year-old rape victim from terminating her pregnancy. Non-Christian women successfully made the case that not everyone believes that human life starts at conception, and it infringes on the expression of their own beliefs for the state to enact an abortion ban based on a value the women don’t share. The ACLU represented the plaintiffs in this case. On the flipside, religious freedom is also being argued before the Supreme Court to allow business owners to deny service to people whose practices (like homosexuality) the owners don’t agree with.
12/2/22 - Regulator announces statutory inquiry into Mermaids
The Charity Commision, a government organization in the UK that regulates charities, is officially opening a statutory inquiry into Mermaids. Under scrutiny is how the charity conducts its business as well as its management. Few were surprised that big news was coming after Susie Green, the head of Mermaids, stepped down from the charity last week. More information about discord inside the organization is reported here and here.
12/2/22 - A looooong thread by Matt Taibbi detailing how Twitter (and the Biden Administration) censored information-sharing that they didn’t like
It’s mostly about Hunter Biden and his laptop, but it gives context to how and why all forms of wrongthink were suppressed on the social media platform.
Beyond the West
12/7/22 - The Abortion Assault
A longform investigation into the abortions carried out by the Nigerian military to “save” women from carrying pregnacies caused by the rape of Boko Haram insurgents.
12/4/22 - Elnaz Rekabi: Family home of Iranian climber demolished
There is suspicion that the home of a female athlete, Elnaz Rekabi, was destroyed because she did not wear a headscarf while competing abroad (which she later said was not intentional). Despite news like this, as well as this awful article about how Iranian security forces are targeting female protesters, feminist protests are clearly having an impact in Iran. Another story was published the same day reporting that the morality police are being disbanded, and the Parliament and the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution are expected to make an announcement about headscarf laws in the coming weeks.
Here is a 20-minute video about the cultural shifting in Iran:
12/3/22 - Feminists are protesting against the wave of anti-feminism that's swept South Korea
Sadly, nothing new here. Women protest against oppression > women make strides in achieving liberation and holding men accountable > men feel threatened and blame all their woes on feminism. This is something that happens in any case where there’s an “us vs. them” mentality, and I can only hope that one day people understand that progress for one demographic doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.
12/2/22 - ‘We’re losing hope’: Honduras anger as first female president fails to fulfil women’s rights pledge
Feminists of Honduras express their disappointment that the first female president of Honduras, who promised to end restrictions on emergency contraception, has failed to support women’s rights in a meaningful way. The Guardian notes that Honduras is the only country in Latin America where women have zero access to abortion and emergency contraception.
Op-Eds, Commentaries, and Interviews of Interest
In Good Faith (Reproductive rights)
Iran’s Feminist Revolution (Iran)
The rise of Archaeologists Anonymous (Career)
My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I’m a writer (Relationships)
Free to Be You and Me. Or Not. (Trans)
The transgender lobby is a massive and well-funded Leviathan (Trans)
An Oregon School District Pulled Kids Out of a Camp with Nonbinary Counselors (Trans)
How I Lovingly Guided My Child Away From Transgenderism — And How You Can Too (Trans)
My Daughter Got A New Haircut. I'm Shocked By The Things Strangers Now Say To Her. (Trans)
Works from and about Hadley Freeman, former writer for The Guardian (Trans/Feminism/Censorship)