La Marseillaise
Update 312 Spying on Terfs Special!
I am back from our lovely family get together ( one slight Terfy skirmish!) and have a backlog, of course, so splitting this update in two.
I know that many people are unhappy with the term ‘gender critical’. So I have decided to make up my own term 😎 and, in tribute to those heroes of the French Resistance, I am naming us the Terf Resistance 😎
All thoughts gratefully received.
Hmmm….got to be Casablanca in that case!
The Premier League Spy Agency
This is an extraordinary story!! Here is Toby Young of the Free Speech Union and Linzi, loyal Newcastle United fan:
https://twitter.com/SpeechUnion/status/1753606157552189450
If you are a fan of a Premier League club you may like to try a Subject Access request as suggested at the end of the FSU video:
https://freespeechunion.org/SAR/
As a Queens Park Rangers fan I apologise for not being able to join in ( just concentrating at the moment on not being relegated from the Championship!!).
'Transgender Guidance’ for Schools
The Department for Education published draft guidance for schools in England on gender-questioning children for consultation at the end of last year. The closing date for responses is 12 March.
Sex Matters have today published their response to the draft guidance and a very helpful guide to how to respond ( which I am going to use for my response). You will find all that here:
Please try and send in a response even if you just repeat what Sex Matters or some other Terf Resistance group is saying 😊
The London Bridge Pillar
Sex Matters have also produced their latest excellent Memo newsletter. Just two pieces from there.
“Pride Pillar” controversy ( 02 February)
Unveiled to mark LGBT+ history month, a pillar at London Bridge rail station has been painted with flags representing “gender fluidity”, “demisexuality” and “polyamory".
Shortly after the story broke, Shane Andrews, who chairs Network Rail’s employee network, posted: “No time for TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists]. They’re not even worth my energy replying/arguing/debating.”
Screenshots of offensive and questionable posts by Andrews were widely shared online. His account is now inactive, as is Archway, the Network Rail LGBT employment network. He has also stepped down from the judging panel for this year’s Women in Rail awards.
In 2020, Network Rail removed an advert reading “I heart JKR” which was paid for by Standing for Women founder Kellie-Jay Keen. The company explained that it had taken the decision because: “We do not allow advertising that is likely to support or promote one viewpoint over another.”
There was a ‘flash mob’ protest by women’s activists at the pillar on Saturday 😎 And here they are - well done, ladies 😎
https://twitter.com/serena_partrick/status/1753395122148876776?s=12
The WOO WHO
This is the second piece from the Sex Matters’ newsletter.
I first reported on the World Health Organisation’s proposal to produce new ‘transgender health guidance’ here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/stand-by-your-man
Sex Matters calls on WHO to rethink (02 February)
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is developing new guidelines for transgender health.
On 18th December 2023 the organisation announced that a panel of activists and clinicians, all of whom are known to support the affirmation-only approach, had been chosen to help develop the guidelines.
A number of organisations sent in detailed comments, including Sex Matters. We wrote from a human-rights perspective, and said that in trying to appease trans-rights activists WHO risks undermining its own governance, purpose and culture:
The mandate and make-up of the group do not reflect WHO’s principles of human rights, universality and equity, or its commitment to be guided by the best available science and evidence.
If WHO is considering the efficacy and ethics of medical intervention to support the desire of people to live as the opposite sex, it must recognise that there are conflicts with the rights of other people, including their freedoms of belief and expression.
None of the proposed panel members has experience in considering other people’s human rights in relation to transition, and many in fact have a track record of disregarding them.
We have compiled an overview of the responses from other gender-critical organisations.
Thanks to a wonderful reader for directing me to the excellent further response from Transgender Trend:
Our submission to WHO extended consultation (04 January)
Transgender Trend responded to the original World Health Organisation consultation on development of a WHO guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people here. WHO subsequently extended the deadline for the public consultation. This is our submission to the extended consultation.
WHO extended consultation on the development of a WHO guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people
The WHO guideline is extensive, covering treatment, healthcare and legal rights. The resulting guideline will therefore be a health guideline but also a political document. In some human rights areas, rights are in conflict, so it is concerning that WHO will develop guidelines based on the view of only trans people who will benefit from those rights, without considering those who will be disadvantaged by them. Legal recognition of gender self-ID for example has significant and serious implications for the female sex (women and girls) whose existing rights to dignity, privacy and safety will be eroded by members of the male sex who are able to identify into single-sex spaces.
It also has implications for safety in healthcare for all people; from the issue of data collection on the basis of ‘gender identity’ in place of sex, for women who need or want intimate healthcare to be delivered by females, and for women’s privacy, dignity and safety on single-sex hospital wards.
WHO guidelines will be used worldwide. WHO therefore has a duty to consider regional variations. For example, particularly in some developing countries, girls would be put at serious risk by opening up toilets to men who can ‘identify as’ women. Globally, women’s rights will be eroded by men identifying into positions of political power reserved for women. Freedom of association will also be negatively impacted for women who need to meet in women-only groups. Toilets, changing-rooms, refuges, rape-crisis services, prisons, hospital wards and sports are some of the areas that must be female-only, for the protection, fairness and equality of women and girls.
WHO must not further erode women’s equality or increase the risk of violence against women and girls by taking away safeguards that currently protect women and girls, through advocacy for self-ID in public policies and legislation.
The language used in the current development proposal does not inspire confidence that WHO has considered these issues from the perspective of any other group, particularly women and girls who would be the most severely affected, but also gays and lesbians whose status and legal protection is based on same-sex orientation, not ‘gender orientation.’ Lesbian-only groups must retain the right to exclude men, no matter how they identify, including men who identify as lesbians.
In the Q&A document WHO states that “representatives of people affected by the guidelines” are included in the GDG members. Which of the members represent the rights of women and girls, lesbian and gay people and detransitioners?
‘Gender-inclusive’ healthcare has already led to the word ‘woman’ being erased from medical literature in the UK on issues that affect only women, such as pregnancy, menstruation and menopause, putting women at risk, especially women for whom English is not their first language. For the safety of everyone, including those who identify as transgender, healthcare must be based on biological sex.
The Q&A document states:
“The scope will cover adults only and not address the needs of children and adolescents, because on review, the evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender affirming care for children and adolescents.”
The statement is misleading in itself. The evidence for the benefits of ‘gender affirming’ care is weak. The evidence for the safety of gender affirming medical treatment is non-existent, but evidence of risks is increasing.
Despite this statement WHO does not question the benefits/risks of ‘gender-affirming’ care for adults. On what evidence basis has WHO made the decision to promote the gender-affirmation model in guidelines, above a therapeutic and exploratory approach? A WHO guideline on ‘gender-affirming’ care will inevitably be influential in the treatment of children and adolescents. WHO must adopt a politically neutral approach in developing these guidelines, with no presumption that one model of care is superior to another. To state a position at the outset suggests bias and this will influence choices made about research subjects and assessment of the evidence.
Research must consider the proportion of adults who drop out of a course of hormone treatment, and their reasons, along with those who embarked on medical treatment as adults who later regret hormones and surgery (detransitioners) and the rates of surgical complications and negative side-effects.
Despite restricting the guidelines to adults, there will be a significant effect on the 17-25 year-old demographic. Recent findings in neuro science show that the brain does not stop developing until the mid-twenties, with executive functions such as the ability to weigh up evidence and long-term goals being the last to be completed.
Gender affirming care for this group risks putting more young people on an irreversible path to being a life-long medical patient.
The most detailed evidence of patient profiles for this group comes from an outcome study from the Exeter adult gender clinic.
Service specifications governing treatment at adult gender clinics in England are gender affirming. Psychological support is offered but is not a prerequisite. The support is weighted towards helping patients adjust to their cross-sex identity, not to investigate what may lie behind the desire to transition.
The authors of the Exeter study concluded that:
“Service users may have unmet needs. Neurodevelopmental disorders or ACEs [ Adverse Childhood Experiences] suggest complexity requiring consideration during the assessment process. Managing mental ill health and substance misuse during treatment needs optimising. Detransitioning might be more frequent than previously reported.”
Their research showed that the trend showing a sudden increase in the last ten years in adolescent girls identifying as boys is replicated in adult gender clinics.
The report contains some revealing statistical data; of the natal women under 25 who were treated at the clinic, 89.4% had an adverse childhood experience, 23.4% had a neurodevelopment disorder, 77.1% had a previously diagnosed mental health disorder, 72% had a history of self-harming.
The authors found a detransitioning rate of 6.9% which they considered an underestimate.
This is the first clinical audit of a UK adult gender clinic. Without more studies of this nature from adult clinics, how is it possible for WHO to confidently announce a guideline on ‘gender-affirming care’ with the presumption that this is the right model to follow?
The Q&A point 7 defines ‘gender-affirming healthcare’ as “interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” without evidence to show that this approach is safe and effective. The interim report of the Cass Review of the Tavistock clinic for children and adolescents reported that clinicians felt pressured to affirm a child’s gender identity and that this led to diagnostic overshadowing, where co-morbidities were ignored or dismissed. There is no evidence to suggest that this would not also be true for adults.
WHO has taken an ideological standpoint with language such as ‘sex assigned at birth.’ This is a fundamental mistake about biological sex, which is observed at birth and cannot change. Also of concern is WHO’s wide definition of ‘trans and gender diverse’ people in point 6 of the Q&A. Many people do not conform to the ‘norms and expectations’ for their sex. ‘Male’ and ‘female’ are words describing biological sex, they are not ‘gender nonconforming identities.’
WHO must include definitions of subjective terms such as gender, gender identity and gender-affirming care. As it stands, the proposed guideline will promote a care model that is already highly contested in the field of child and adolescent health. Adults also are entitled to normal standards of evidence-based healthcare, and the ideological basis of the WHO documents suggests that the resulting guidelines will not meet that standard.
Meanwhile the WHO appear to be rowing back a little bit ( thanks to the same wonderful reader for this)…but not enough! This report is from The Society For Evidence-Based Gender Medicine reporting on Reality’s Last Stand.
The WHO Clarifies Its Plans To Issue Guidelines on ‘Trans and Gender Diverse People’—Significant Concerns Remain ( 02 February)
Executive Summary
On January 15, 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued an updated announcement regarding its plan to develop healthcare guidelines for “trans and gender diverse [TGD] people.” The earlier announcement, issued at the end of December 2023, generated much public concern. Various stakeholders—clinician groups, LGBT groups, parent groups, and women's rights champions—expressed alarm that the WHO seemed to be proceeding on the basis of an unproven assumption that expanded access to gender-affirming hormones is universally beneficial. In addition, these groups also objected to the WHO’s assumption that legal recognition of self-declared gender is a key human right and must be adopted by legal systems worldwide.
The earlier announcement suggested that the WHO Guideline Steering Committee was focused on how to translate these two positions into authoritative guidelines for healthcare and legal systems worldwide, rather than considering whether to do so. Considering the full range of benefits and risks of such recommendations is critical given the sharp rise in the number of individuals—especially young people—declaring a TGD identity in recent years and the shift in patient demographics. There is significant uncertainty regarding this phenomenon and the implications of potential medical and legal “gender-affirmative” recommendations, especially for the vulnerable populations of youth with recent TGD histories, as well as for the safety of women and girls more generally.
Another signal that the guideline steering committee viewed these two positions as established, rather than up for discussion, is evident in the composition of the Guideline Development Group (GDG) chosen to issue the recommendations. A significant number of GDG members are in leadership positions in organizations whose core mission is to promote wide access to hormones and/or legal recognition of self-determined gender (also known as “self-id laws”). All but four GDG members appear to have significant conflicts of interest. The WHO conflict of interest (COI) policies guard against interests that may interfere with the GDG members’ ability to impartially assess the evidence and issue evidence-based recommendations. The fact that these affiliations were not viewed as problematic and passed the COI review sent a strong signal regarding the direction of the guideline.
Concerned stakeholders worldwide noted that not only did GDG members have strong intellectual and financial conflicts regarding the contemplated recommendations, but that important points of view were missing from the GDG. The GDG did not contain anyone concerned about the risks of the wide availability of hormones to youth with recent-onset TGD identity (including gay youth, youth on the autism spectrum, and youth with mental illness) or potential harms to reproductive, maternal, and fetal health. They also noted an absence of women’s rights representatives, who should be mandatory stakeholders in discussions of laws that would allow natal males to be legally recognized as female and have access to female-only spaces regardless of medical transition status.
In response to this public expression of concern, the WHO issued an updated announcement, along with FAQs providing clarifications about its planned TGD guidelines. The WHO also extended the public consultation period by an additional three weeks. The new deadline to comment is February 2, 2024.
Over the last two weeks, the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) has been analyzing the WHO’s updated announcement, the FAQs that accompanied it, and the documents referenced by the FAQs. While some concerns have been alleviated (e.g., the WHO clarified that it does not plan to include children and adolescents in its upcoming recommendations for expanded access to hormones), other concerns remain (e.g., the vulnerable group of young adults <25 years is still in scope). The overarching concern that the WHO may be inadvertently involved in the production of a biased guideline has only intensified based on the additional information provided.
The full report is here:
Dublin Vote NO March
I am waiting for a full report back on Saturday’s march. Bear with me.
Puberty Blockers
Really remarkable evidence is now coming out about the disastrous effects of puberty blockers on IQ - in fact, unprecedented evidence of lowering of IQ which would normally only ever occur if there was something devastating like a brain injury. This evidence, in itself, should be enough to stop the use of puberty blockers. EDI Jester reports here:
No Larping Men
To back up my report in the last update ( https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-return-of-the-long-goodbye ), my first witness is EDI Jester:
My second witness is Kellie-Jay Keen who is responding to the following article in The Times by Janice Turner:
Bloke in a Frock
I reported on Kirralie Smith’s great campaign in Australia some time ago:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/were-off-to-see-the-wizard
She is still battling on! Thanks to Feminist Legal Clinic as ever for this report.
Transgender soccer player fights ‘Binary’ campaigner in court ( 02 February)
A transgender soccer player from a small town on the Mid-North Coast has failed in her bid to have a court order taken out against high-profile ‘Binary’ campaigner Kirralie Smith.
Although Taree magistrate Allison Hawkins found that Stephanie Blanch would have felt “harassed, isolated and targeted” by Ms Smith’s social media posts over a one-month period last year, she ultimately declined to grant the Apprehended Personal Violence Order.
“They don’t reach the level of harassment that is appropriate for the court to intervene,” Ms Hawkins said.
Ms Smith is a spokeswoman for Binary which aims to “promote and honour the inherent differences between boys and girls, men and women”.
The 18 posts published included photos of Ms Blanch and terms such as ‘bloke in a frock’, the court heard.
Source: Transgender soccer player fights ‘Binary’ campaigner in court
Now don’t start telling me I should start referring to us as Binary Campaigners!!
The Secret Gender Files
This is the name of Malcolm Clark’s substack and I recommend it. Here is his latest brilliant and entertaining piece skewering LGBT WTF LOL (to use Dennis Kavanagh’s phrase) History Month. I loved “a few sorry and pathetic tales of second-rate cross-dressers.”
LGBT+ History Month Is a Joke (05 February)
PREVIEW
“The bed out of which all the social sciences spring is history; there they find, in greater or lesser degree, subject-matter and material, verification or contradiction.”
- A.L. Rowse in ‘The Use of History’.
It's February so it must be LGBT+ History Month; yet another opportunity for the LGBTQ+ lobby to siphon off public funds and clamber on its rather unconvincing moral high horse.
Yep, a whole month in which we will be fed a palliated diet of misinterpretation, overinterpretation and downright lies. What gets my goat most is that in schools up and down the country all the richness and spectacle, mind-boggling surprises and awe-inspiring achievements of thousands of years of human history will be filleted and filtered in order to serve up a few sorry and pathetic tales of second-rate cross-dressers to a generation of young people who deserve so much more.
This feels personal because when I was a kid it was history above all that took me out of the limited world I lived in and opened up my mind to places and times I could never have imagined otherwise, peopled with characters who lived life boldly and did things that seemed impossible. Now kids are being presented an impoverished, one-dimensional version of the Past designed not to challenge their assumptions or even make them think, but to reflect back an attentuated picture of human behaviour as approved by the jittery and deeply unintelligent LGBTQ+ lobby.
The full piece is here:
Endpiece
I got to mention QPR!! Here is Rodney Marsh ( I was there 😊):
What a great protest at that insidious pillar! The TRA’s are thick as… it’s easy to shout “transphobes” instead of listening to what is actually being said. I think that may have peaked a lot of people. 👊🏾
The Terf Resistance. I like it 💪🏻.
It’s shocking that the WHO should still be pushing puberty blockers and ‘gender affirming care’ in the face of all the evidence. If some tras have been on puberty blockers with the subsequent drop in IQ, it could partly explain their infantile behaviour. Or maybe they’re just thick to begin with. 😄
Very good piece by Malcolm Clark.
Great work as ever Dusty.