Weekly News Roundup October 7-14

Many commentaries this week, some conservative-leaning and some liberal-leaning.

Oct 14, 2022

Erasing Women

10/10/22 - Midwifery students to be told how to look after 'pregnant people' and 'birthing parents' rather than 'women' as degree courses adopt more 'inclusive' language

Politics should not influence language and policy in the health field.

/thread

Violence Against Women

10/12/22 - Self-proclaimed incel, 22, pleads guilty to hoarding weapons and plotting to murder 3,000 women including sorority girls at Ohio college

Elliot Rodger 2.0 was stopped before he could mass murder young women at a school in Ohio back in 2020. Recently, he pleaded guilty to attempting to commit a hate crime.

Males in Female Spaces

10/13/22 - Randolph, Vermont high school volleyball girls share their feelings with The Daily Signal

The Daily Signal @DailySignal

NEW: @DailySignal spent this week in Randolph, Vermont, speaking to high school girls who face heavy criticism + potential punishment from their school for pushing back against a biological male using their locker room. Here's what these girls have to say for themselves:

10/10/22 - Democrats aren’t eager to talk about transgender athletes. The GOP can’t get enough.

This is a surprisingly mostly-neutral article about how the issue of transgender people in sports (and let’s be real, the main issue is trans-identifying men in women’s sports) is divisive enough that it significantly impacts how both Democrats and Republicans in the US campaign ahead of the November midterms.

News Impacting Society and Children

10/12/22 - ‘Blatantly Intolerant’: Physician Assistant Sues Michigan Health For Allegedly Firing Her Over Religious Beliefs

Physician Assistant Valerie Kloosterman was fired from Michigan Health after 17 years of exemplary service. Her sin was to refuse to use a patient’s preferred pronouns or refer the patient for “gender-affirming” surgery. One of these many lawsuits we’re seeing is going to make it to the Supreme Court, and I still think that it’s one like this, arguing about infringement of religious rights, that has the best chance of loosening the grip of gender ideology in the US.

10/10/22 - Transgender schools guidance says discussing women's rights could be offensive

The National Education Union, a teaching union in the UK, is proposing policy in schools that weeds out “transphobia.” How does the union define transphobia? Any discussion that is “harmful to trans people.” Thankfully, it sounds like people on both sides of the political aisle are expressing their discomfort with this policy that suppresses academic freedom.

10/10/22 - Biden admin: Trans women must register for draft; trans men don’t have to

Interesting that the President understands the difference between males and females when it serves the government to make a distinction.

10/10/22 - Planned Parenthood is under fire for cartoon ad that encourages children to get on puberty blockers if they think they're transgender and tells them the drugs 'work like a stop sign'

This is a good spot to plug a past commentary we published about the forced teaming of reproductive healthcare with “gender-affirming” care. I would love to see a deep dive into the history of Planned Parenthood that pinpoints where in the timeline (and why) the organization decided to expand its focus beyond family planning to trans rights advocacy.

10/09/22 - Irish gender affirmation surgeon based in Florida is reported over “false promotion” in TikToks

Genspect is leading a complaint to the FTC against Dr Sidhbh Gallagher, i.e. the TikToker who promotes the “yeet the teets” slogan to children. Dr. Gallagher brags that she performs upwards of 500 “gender affirmation” surgeries a year, and at least a dozen of those are minors. No word from the FTC if they are investigating the claims in the complaint that Dr. Gallagher’s advertising methods are deceptive and harmful.

10/08/22 - Now NHS staff are warned they must NOT promote transgender Mermaids charity in latest blow to organisation after trustee quit in paedophile row and JK Rowling challenged the group to sue her

The slow motion collapse of Mermaids picks up speed.

10/07/22 - Vanderbilt hospital agrees to pause gender-affirming surgery on minors, officials say

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is pausing its practice of doing “gender-affirming” surgery on minors. The hospital claims that it only operated on about five children a year, and never performed genital surgeries, since 2018. It’s not clear what “pausing” means here. Does it mean stopping until there’s less media attention on the hospital, or does it mean doing an honest internal review of its extreme practice?