Mick Hartley

Dignity for trans people in custody

A Reduxx report:

A male inmate who identifies as “transgender” will be transferred to a women’s prison for the first time in Minnesota history after suing the state for “discrimination.”

Christina Lusk, born Craig, launched the lawsuit against the state’s Department of Corrections in 2022 after claiming to have been subjected to “misgendering” and “harassment” while incarcerated in the Moose Lake correctional facility for men. Lusk’s suit was supported by Gender Justice, a trans activist organization, as part of their “dignity for trans people in custody” campaign.

Jess Braverman, the legal director at Gender Justice, previously claimed Lusk was vulnerable at the men’s prison, stating: “She’s a woman, and suddenly she’s placed in a men’s facility. She’s in a locked cell with a number of men, and she’s really exposed to harassment and violence in that setting.”

I don't know: he certainly looks like he can take care of himself:

Lusk was incarcerated in 2019 on charges of first-degree drug possession after being found with a copious amount of cocaine and methamphetamine as well as paraphernalia suggesting he had been dealing the deadly substance....

Lusk had a previous felony conviction for first-degree robbery.

In June of 2022, Lusk filed a discrimination suit against the Minnesota Department of Corrections with the assistance of Gender Justice. In the court documents, it is claimed that Lusk “came out as transgender in 2008” and began “living authentically” as a “woman” at that time.

But Reduxx located a Facebook account belonging to Lusk from before he was arrested showing that he still appeared to identify as “male.”

Using his birth name of Craig, Lusk’s account obsessively posted about seeking female sexual partners....

On June 1, the Minnesota DOC announced it had come to an out-of-court agreement with Lusk to transfer him to the state’s only women’s prison as well as provide him $495,000 in compensation.

It's almost as though.he's, well.... taking the piss. I mean - $495,000. If they're offering that kind of money for any male criminal who suddenly claims to be a woman and doesn't mind growing his hair - who knows, it might just catch on.

Mothers of boys with Gender Identity Disorder

Study shows that 53% of mothers of boys with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) have borderline personality disorder or depression

These mothers also had child-rearing attitudes and practices that encouraged symbiosis and discouraged the development of autonomy.… pic.twitter.com/krOOfQKxbj

— Ashley St. Clair (@stclairashley) June 5, 2023

Of course we should always be wary of blaming mothers: remember the dicredited  "refrigerator mother" theory for autism.

Still....interesting.

Making irreversible decisions that have huge lifelong consequences

More people speaking up about the nightmare of "gender-affirming" care:

When Ritchie Herron woke after gender reassignment surgery, he had a feeling he had made a terrible mistake. Five years later, his scars still sometimes weep and he cannot walk long distances or ride a bike. “I’ve awakened from what was a mental health crisis, to a body that will be for ever changed and damaged,” he said. He no longer identifies as transgender and is living as a gay man “as best I can, given what has happened”.

Now, the Newcastle-based civil servant, 36, has launched legal action against NHS England, alongside the “heartbroken” father of a 21-year-old who has been booked in for imminent genital-removal surgery at an adult gender clinic. The two men are demanding a judicial review which includes an independent inquiry into the safety of NHS treatments being offered to young people under the age of 25 who are experiencing gender dysphoria....

Herron was 25 when he decided he was a woman living in a man’s body. He had been bullied at school and struggled to cope with his parents’ divorce, and was diagnosed in his early 20s with depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

He decided he was transgender and “all my struggles were due to gender dysphoria” — an idea he says was encouraged by older activists in internet forums. He fixated on the idea that “my body was being poisoned by testosterone”, he says.

In 2013, he was referred by his GP to an NHS adult gender clinic, and says he was asked early on by an NHS clinician if he had considered gender reassignment surgery. He attended a private clinic as there was a long NHS waiting list, where he was diagnosed as transgender....

In 2017, he was given another referral for surgery, to be performed at a private hospital but paid for by the NHS.

Finally, in 2018, “two days before my 31st birthday, I underwent a surgery that removed my genitals, inverting them in a procedure that has been marked as refined, but is no more civilised than an amputation” he said.

“Today, despite multiple follow-up surgeries, my scar lines still weep, occasionally becoming inflamed and causing crippling pain. In the flesh cavity that was created to mimic a vagina, I feel mostly nothing, aside from the occasional stabs of pain. I can’t use the toilet properly . . . and no matter how hard I push or strain, a dribble emerges, which may continue for hours after I have left the seat.”

Herron was not diagnosed with autism until this year, but says he raised the condition with the NHS gender clinic. He adds that if he had received a comprehensive psychological assessment and treatment for conditions such as autism and OCD at the outset, he would never have undergone genital surgery. “I can deal with my own regret, and my own stupidity, but I can’t deal with the fact that I’m not alone in this. That there are not just dozens, or hundreds, but thousands of others like me, and more to come.

“We deserve a safety net, we deserve to be challenged in our beliefs before we make irreversible decisions that have huge lifelong consequences, we deserve to be caught and cared for. We do not deserve to be punished for asking for help, by being castrated and gaslighted into a way of thinking that isn’t our own.

“It is a matter of urgency that the treatment offered by adult services is reviewed and that safeguards are put in place.”

"First do no harm." Ha.

The brains behind the operation

There's a long piece in the Sunday Times Magazine by Richard Lloyd Parry, arguing that Kim Jong-un’s sister Yo-jong is the real power in North Korea, and could be the next leader:

Her formal role has changed over the years; officially, she is in the middle ranks of a political and military pecking order still dominated by the names of older and more experienced men. But, to those who follow the opaque workings of the Pyongyang leadership, there is little doubt that she is the most powerful and important person in North Korea. “Some days, I think they just put Kim Jong-un in there as a military leader because they needed a big dude to project authority,” says Michael Madden, a Pyongyang expert who runs the website North Korea Leadership Watch. “Kim Yo-jong is the brains behind the operation.”

Nothing is clear or certain in North Korea — but she could easily end up being the country’s next supreme leader. When Kim Jong-un succeeded his father in 2011, few outside the capital knew his sister’s name. Now she directs her country’s relations with its most important enemies, oversees its propaganda operations and stands as her brother’s heir presumptive...

I don't buy it. For a start, North Korea is a deeply patriarchal society and the chances of a woman taking power are minimal to non-existent. Clearly as a daughter of the Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il, and therefore a scion of the sacred Mt.Paektu bloodline, Kim Yo-jong had to have some role found for her - but it's mainly involved hurling intemperate and gauche insults at South Koreans...like a "running wild dog on a bone given by the U.S", "they must be really idiots", and North Korean defectors..."rubbish-like mongrel dogs" and "cowering poodles". She doesn't, to be honest, come across as the smartest of bulbs.

This one picture from the article is doing a lot of work:

Yes, she does look here to be super-competent, helping her momentarily hesitant brother to sign a document. Clearly posed. I think we need more than that.

In such a secretive world, I suppose, any old rumour can have its day...

Rose gallery

At Queen Mary's Gardens Regent's Park this morning:

A self-satirising celebration of narcissism

Andrew Doyle in the Spectator wonders - Who is Pride really for?

Those who point out that Pride has become a parody of itself are accused of ‘transphobia’ and ‘hate’, a cynical but effective method of evading criticism. For all these smears, it is important to identify where Pride went wrong. When the original march took place in London in 1972, homosexuality had only been legal for five years, and the prospect of gay marriage or even an equal age of consent seemed impossible. Only 2,000 people turned up to protest these injustices. By contrast, the Pride parade in London in 2022 attracted over a million. It’s become a family day out, where one suspects that heterosexuals are the dominant demographic.

All of which begs the question: who is Pride really for? With equal rights for gay people long established, Pride has gradually morphed into a self-satirising celebration of narcissism, where avaricious corporations can pose as virtuous by merely flying a flag and tossing off a few hashtags. Whereas the struggle for equality for those who are innately same-sex attracted was tangible and important, we are now expected to show solidarity for heterosexuals with a kink. This week the British Library decided to celebrate Pride by tweeting about hermaphroditic fish, and holding an event that will ‘celebrate nature in all its queerness’. The very concept of a ‘2SLGBTQIA+ community’ and all its attendant absurdities has made Pride a laughing stock.

A new ideology has hijacked the Pride movement, one whose commissars are obsessed with group identity and the belief that gender is more important than sex. This has grave consequences for gay people. In her book Time to Think, Hannah Barnes found that between 80 to 90 per cent of adolescents referred to the Tavistock paediatric gender clinic in 2012 were same-sex attracted. Studies have long confirmed a correlation between gender non-conformity in youth and homosexuality in later life. At the Tavistock, staff used to joke that soon ‘there would be no gay people left’. Somehow, the medicalisation and sterilisation of homosexuals has been reframed as ‘progressive’.

Even Stonewall – the UK’s foremost LGBT charity – has defined the word ‘homosexual’ on its website and promotional materials to mean ‘same-gender attracted’. Its CEO Nancy Kelley has claimed that women who exclude biological males from their dating pool are akin to ‘sexual racists’. There has been an intense resurgence of old homophobic tropes online from gender ideologues who believe that ‘genital preferences are transphobic’ and that lesbians who aren’t interested in penises must be suffering from ‘trauma’. Gay rights were secured by recognising that a minority of people are instinctively attracted to members of their own sex. The new ideology of gender identity rejects this notion, and actively shames gay people for their orientation.

Little wonder that so many gay people now feel that Pride no longer represents them. The ideology it now promotes denies that same-sex attraction is the very essence of what it means to be gay. Well-intentioned members of the public, keen to support equality, have barely noticed the transition from a pro-gay rainbow flag to the anti-gay version that currently prevails. Gay people have been duped into marching in lockstep with a movement that works against their interests. So although Pride was once essential, today it’s a sham. It’s time to lower that flag once and for all.

The case of the non-binary shopper

A weird report from the Oxford Mail:

A non-binary shopper said they felt 'dehumanised' and accused a fashion brand of being 'transphobic' after they were refused entry to a women's changing room.

Non-binary? So why the women's changing room? - why not the men's? Is he confusing his terms and he's really a transwoman, or is he just a self-entitled narcissist and all-round pain-in-the-arse?

Giorgio Firico, 21, tried to go to the ladies changing room at Zara in Oxford when the female assistant told them it was against the rules and refused to give them a number for the clothing.

Giorgio, who studies in the US and is in Oxford visiting a friend, said: “I was wearing men’s clothing but I had two gowns on my shoulder, it was obvious what I wanted to try on.

And he has a beard, ffs. He seems to think the changing rooms are segregated by the type of clothing rather than the sex of the customer, so if a bloke wants to try on a dress he's entitled to use the women's.

“At first I was shocked and I went away. Then I thought for one second, it’s my right. I do not identify myself as a man, I have a right to be there. I went back and explained clearly, I am non-binary, I am not a man.

And, by your own self-definition, you're not a woman either.

"She kept saying it’s against the rules. But I said, I do not think you know my gender identity better than me."

Ha! Perfect. Entitled narcissist it is.

Giorgio walked past the shop assistant and into the ladies dressing room next to their friend Anna where they closed the curtain and tried on the clothes.

Giorgio said: “Afterwards I went out and said you should be ashamed of the way you have dehumanized me especially as the shop does not have a gender neutral changing room.

“Afterwards the manager was nice and said they were sorry.

Why? What for? The shop assistant was doing her job, keeping men out of the women's changing rooms.

Anna's mother Susanna Perutz said: "There were a couple of people standing behind us waiting to take a number for their clothes who witnessed it all which was even more embarrassing for Giorgio.

"I walked in and stood outside Giorgio's curtain to make sure he was OK and so that the dressing assistant wouldn’t bother him."

She said the changing room assistant "rolled her eyes" when they came out.

The more I read, the more I like this shop assistant...

The Maori Wrasse

It is outrageous that previous Pride campaigns have failed to raise awareness of the plight of trans fish.

We cannot leave them to flounder. 🏳️‍⚧️🐠 https://t.co/QqFUPS4rys

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) June 2, 2023

The trans cuckoo in the LGB nest

Pride month used to be Pride day, and was a celebration of the huge gains made by the gay community in the later decades of last century. Now, though, the battles have been won, and there's no risk or sense of achievement involved - so it's been largely taken over by trans issues and morphed into a bloated feast of drag cross-dressing virtue-signalling.

Simon Edge at UnHerd:

Pride used to be a riot, an opportunity to commemorate our achievements since the Stonewall Inn uprising, and shout about the equalities we still had to fight for. Now it’s a bloated month of pinkwashed flummery, of re-imagined company logos, empty sloganeering and corporate parade float sponsorships — and it’s a drag.

The only fighting lesbians and gays do these days is among ourselves. Some people don’t think the T belongs with the LGB — Get Over It! If only we could. Those of us who insist that the trans movement can be homophobic, because it encourages young people to think they were born in the wrong sex if they are gay or lesbian, have found ourselves marginalised. Told by Pride organisers that we will be thrown out — in the name of inclusion, obviously — if we dare show up to the season’s events, we have little option but to snark from the sidelines. If we haven’t already been blocked by them on Twitter....

How did we get here? A decade ago, it wasn’t obvious what the future of Pride should be. The wide array of discriminatory laws had been dismantled, culminating with the legalisation of same-sex marriage. We had achieved everything we’d asked for, and prejudice seemed to fall away, too. Now, surely, we just had to get on with our lives....

But charities need problems to address, lobbyists need grievances, media publishers need to grow their demographic. In 2015, the lobby group Stonewall — which had surpassed even its own expectations in the effectiveness of its campaigning — extended its remit to campaign on trans issues as well as LGB ones. ...

Until that point, the trans movement had been entirely separate, both culturally and politically. As a gay journalist reporting on political developments over two decades, I never met any trans campaigners. But after the passing of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, a merger of the two movements took place, and the rainbow establishment set about pretending that the two camps had already been one. charities need problems to address, lobbyists need grievances, media publishers need to grow their demographic. 

This new movement, a cuckoo in the nest of the campaign for lesbian and gay rights, suddenly had a whole menu full of demands and an agenda that would end up trying to redefine language, reorganise public toilets and changing rooms, kibosh women’s sport and take control of HR departments. At its most baleful, it would try to root out wrong-thinking heretics — such as the think tank consultant Maya Forstater — from every walk of life....

Meanwhile, just look at the rest of the world. Only this week, Uganda rubber-stamped a new law establishing the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality“. And in Turkey, a newly re-elected President Erdogan railed throughout his campaign against “LGBT” people — although, once again, the main target seems to be homosexuality, with his interior minister denouncing same-sex relationships and accusing gay people of bestiality.

This, surely, is the stuff that matters. It’s the stuff we once used to care about, before a fragile generation started treating polite disagreement as “genocide” and our rebranded community acquired a reputation for cry-bully tantrums. One day, I hope, the gender wars will end and we can return to those more proportionate values.

"Transgender colleagues could find it offensive"

Standing up to the ideologues, one step at a time:

A sacked civil servant has received a £100,000 settlement after she reported concerns about political activists operating in Whitehall and expressed her belief that people cannot change sex.

Anna Thomas, 32, had said that political activism was infiltrating the civil service and cited the dissemination of critical race theory in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Thomas, formerly a work coach at a Jobcentre in Portsmouth, tried to raise the alarm about resources for staff, including an exercise asking employees to “assume” that they were racist.

Thomas also posted on an intranet blog expressing her opinion that people could not change sex. “One of the comments I made that they took massive offence to was [that] you cannot identify as a female. I believe you either are one or you’re not,” Thomas said. “It wasn’t intentionally meant to offend anyone — but they said transgender colleagues could find it offensive.”...

Thomas was dismissed in November 2021. She said she understood it was because she was found to have caused “upset”, “distress” and “offence”. She claimed to be the victim of unfair dismissal, belief discrimination, victimisation and harassment.

After three preliminary hearings, the DWP has agreed to pay her £100,000, of which £27,500 is for injury to her feelings. It did not admit any liability.

A DWP spokesman said: “We can confirm an employment tribunal claim was settled . . . without the need for further legal proceedings.”

June Pride cover star

Every single baby ever born was gestated within a woman's body. But there's only one way to get on the cover of a magazine for performing this everyday miracle.🤷‍♀️ https://t.co/ilCjAEp7vL

— Helen Joyce (@HJoyceGender) June 1, 2023

A fight for reality over fantasy

The other way of looking at Tuesday's Gender Wars documentary is that, yes, the two sides were presented as somehow equally worthy of coverage, and given equal time, but then any reasonably intelligent person would have been able to see for themselves who was talking sense and who was spouting fatuous slogans. 

Joanna Williams:

In the documentary’s opening sequence, clips of the mild-mannered, scholarly Stock are set against footage of the masked-up, smoke-bomb-throwing trans-rights activists outside her former university. Stock’s insistence that transgender people exist and should be respected is set against her critics’ incredulous claims to know the real transphobic ‘meaning behind her words’. Transgender interviewees complain about their identity becoming a ‘debate’, while refusing even to acknowledge that gender self-identification means the end of single-sex spaces. Through showing rather than telling, Channel 4 allows viewers a rare glimpse of the intimidation and dishonesty at the heart of the gender wars.

More than anything else, Gender Wars shows how the fight for a sex-based definition of womanhood has become a fight for reality over fantasy. The biggest fantasy of all is, of course, the idea that transwomen are women. Activists assume that frequent repetition of this mantra will make people forget about biological facts. They expect us to affirm the delusions of people who believe that their self-perception is reality. As feminist campaigner Julie Bindel makes clear in the documentary: ‘The word woman is already taken.’ These male fantasists need to find their own label.

The lesson from Gender Wars is that when fantasy is allowed to overrule reality, all possibility of rational discussion is closed off....

And here we are - Oxford on Tuesday:

Well....no. No, they're not. It's a fantasy. 

"Statements of a genocidal nature"

That "trans genocide" line is catching on:

A Civil service diversity adviser has been blasted for linking women's rights groups to the far-Right and suggesting they are calling for trans genocide.

Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale, the transgender ambassador for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), claimed fascists giving Nazi salutes had been 'welcomed' on rallies by so-called gender critical campaigners abroad.

She alleged that some leaders of the movement – who believe biological sex cannot be changed – have made 'statements of a genocidal nature'.

And she called on her trade union to 'work with anti-fascist groups' to show 'what genocide can look like' within the 'anti-trans narrative'.

Her explosive comments were made in an emergency motion tabled at last week's conference in Brighton of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which is behind a wave of recent strikes in the Passport Office, DVLA and HMRC, and is now considering industrial action over the Government's Rwanda migrant policy.

The motion called on delegates to note that 'the presence of far-Right activists at the gender critical rallies in Australia was welcomed by the organisers even when they gave Nazi salutes', as well as the 'statements of a genocidal nature made by some'.

Her claims over the Australian rally have been disputed, with organisers saying the far-Right group gatecrashed the event to cause trouble and were let through by police.

Ms Tweedale tabled the motion in her role as the union rep for the DWP branch in Bradford, but she is also the department's national diversity ambassador on trans issues.

"She" is, of course, a man.

"You can’t change the minds of fanatics"

Times leader on yesterday's Oxford Union debate:

Hopefully, the tide is beginning to turn. Dr Stock was backed by the prime minister before her appearance in Oxford. Defending the need for tolerance, Rishi Sunak said: “University should be an environment where debate is supported, not stifled. We mustn’t allow a small but vocal few to shut down discussion.” Quite right.

What is concerning is that Mr Sunak was not joined in this rallying cry by Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have both fallen prey to trans-McCarthyism, their leaders locked in an insane belief system that makes it impossible for them to acknowledge the biological sovereignty of women. Dr Stock is not a bigot. She does not hate trans women or want them to be marginalised in society. She believes that they are entitled to legal recognition and protection. But this does not extend to unimpeded access to all female spaces, such as changing rooms and refuges for victims of domestic violence.

She says of her status at the trans lobby’s public enemy number one: “It’s hard to believe now, but when all this started, I genuinely thought that people didn’t understand the issues and if I just explained them, they would concede that transgender women are not women and that facts have to triumph over feelings. It seems terribly naive, but I’ve learnt you can’t change the minds of fanatics.”

That's what I found a bit frustrating about Channel 4's Gender Wars last night. It was very pleased with itself on being so even-handed, and yes, it has been generally praised as presenting both sides of the argument, but what we saw was people like Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel putting forward - calmly and lucidly - the case against gender ideology, against, well...fanatics. With whom there's no arguing. It was calm fact v. emotive bullshit - presented as a debate between two equal adversaries taking part in a "toxic" debate.

Cath Leng says it well:

I’m sure the #GenderWars producers consider themselves brave and impartial, but the programme was predicated on the same failure of judgment I’ve come across in so many BBC meetings: the refusal to distinguish between fact and opinion. That’s entirely a trans advocate position.

— Cath Leng (@leng_cath) May 31, 2023

Here's the whole thread:

I’m sure the #GenderWars producers consider themselves brave and impartial, but the programme was predicated on the same failure of judgment I’ve come across in so many BBC meetings: the refusal to distinguish between fact and opinion. That’s entirely a trans advocate position.

Documentary-makers are not meant simply to report two opposing views: they should make at least some effort to discover, and relay, what is true and what isn’t.

Gender Wars took the line that the indisputable facts of sex are mere ‘views’, and controversial ones at that.

The first line told us what to expect: ‘a toxic culture war has been raging’ and later my personal teeth grinder - ‘toxic war of words.

It swiftly cites unquestioningly the contested concept of ‘gender identity’ - another red flag, signalling the producers’ default stance.

No surprise that it included every trite argument that feminists are familiar with: predators don’t need to transition, just want to get on with life, stop obsessing about genitalia’ and so on.

The programme-makers were themselves either silenced, or complicit.

They were unable or unwilling to point out to the trans advocate contributors and the audience that actually, Stock and Bindel are correct about sex. They do not express views, they articulate facts.

I’m sure Gender Wars was signed off at some terribly high level by experienced journalists, all of whom are content that the facts about sex are presented as opinions, and all of whom believe this makes for an impartial programme.

There is exactly the same stance at the BBC.

The ‘some people might say you’re activists’ trope is alive and kicking in newsrooms where any journalist points out that - as a supposedly trusted and impartial resource - it might be an idea to tell people the facts at some point. Including at the BBC.

Gender Wars was a rehash of the ‘this side, but that side’ features that we saw a lot of around 2017-18 when the GRA UK was under consultation. In fact some footage was actually taken from one of them.

It’s amazing that it’s seen as an achievement to end up back at square one.

After all that, huge praise for Julie Bindel and Kathleen Stock. I found their contributions very moving. Not to point out the facts of sex, however, was a significant decision.

Diverse London

Photographer Nico Froehlich goes south of the river to capture the "overlooked, authentic elements" of London's diverse communities:

[Photos © Nico Froehlich]