Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • US push to scrap age limits on trans surgeries

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    Who's pushing for it? Yes, that's Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services – and trans woman:

    One excerpt from an unnamed member of the WPATH guideline development group recalled a conversation with Sarah Boateng, then serving as Admiral Levine’s chief of staff: “She is confident, based on the rhetoric she is hearing in D.C., and from what we have already seen, that these specific listings of ages, under 18, will result in devastating legislation for trans care. She wonders if the specific ages can be taken out.”

    Another email stated that Admiral Levine “was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to care for trans youth and maybe adults, too. Apparently the situation in the U.S.A. is terrible and she and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse. She asked us to remove them.”

    Trans ideology at the expense of young children.

  • Capybara funeral

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    Dawn is traditionally when they bury their dead.

  • Against Hamas

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  • On the tracks 1942

    John Vachon, October 1942. "Tulsa, Oklahoma. Loading rack at the Mid-Continent refinery, Tulsa station of the Great Lakes pipeline."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photos: Shorpy/John Vachon for the Office of War Information]

    Jack Delano, December 1942. "Chicago, Illinois. Locomotive over the ash pit at the roundhouse at a Chicago & North Western railyard."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photos: Shorpy/Jack Delano for the Office of War Information]

  • “Trying to silence the Jewish voice and Zionist voices”

    Trouble at the University of California San Francisco (U.C.S.F.) hospital, from the NYT:

    It looked like any other pro-Palestinian encampment at a college campus in the United States. The tents, the flags, the banners calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.

    But this was at the University of California, San Francisco, one of the nation’s pre-eminent medical schools and teaching hospitals. The protesters were medical students and doctors. And the chants of “intifada, intifada, long live intifada!” could be heard by patients in their hospital rooms at the U.C.S.F. Medical Center….

    Jonathan Terdiman, a Jewish gastroenterologist, said the behavior that might be tolerated on an undergraduate campus — such as the “intifada” chant — hits differently at a hospital.

    “People are coming here for chemotherapy. They have dire illnesses,” Dr. Terdiman said. “When that chant goes up and is heard in the patient care rooms, which it clearly was, it’s a violation of our professional obligations as health care providers.”

    Some Jewish doctors said they have darted into side rooms when they have seen staunch Israel critics approaching. Others said they have tried to keep their Jewish identity a secret. Matthew Smith, a doctoral student in biophysics who is Jewish and wears a skullcap, said he has been told by a lab technician that Israel deserved what happened on Oct. 7 and by another student that “Jews control the banks.”

    “It kind of staggers me honestly,” said Gil Rabinovici, an Israeli neurologist who directs the Alzheimer’s disease research center at U.C.S.F. “There is a lot of intimidation going on trying to silence the Jewish voice and Zionist voices.”

    Jess Ghannam also said he cannot believe what U.C.S.F. has become, given its well-known history as a place of diversity.

    Not just U.C.S.F. of course, but yes, you'd hope that a hospital might be spared the Intifada mob.

  • That “both sides” toxicity

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    In full:

    I try to remain reasonable in an unreasonable world. But if one more politician resorts to the "both sides… baffled at toxicity… culture war" rhetoric I may go postal. In the last few years I have:

    – fought through hostile crowd to get to Brighton meeting, been struck on back of head as I entered, with protestors kicking the windows til our ears rang
    – co-organised a research event on lesbian life (nothing to do with trans) where protestors closed the road outside, set off smoke bombs
    – spoke at Cambridge Union, where every time I spoke, protestors drummed louder to drown me out, and where a male transactivist covertly infiltrated my own debate team in order to then denounce me to audience
    – had protestor glue herself to floor in front of me at Oxford
    – had masked men come to my workplace every day making threats and harassing me til I resigned.
    – now require extra security for every public appearance I do
    – have been verbally abused in the street by total strangers several times.

    Please do tell me, with evidence, how I personally have contributed to this "toxic" state of affairs, other than not shutting up and not going away? I am deeply interested to find out the answer.

  • Streeting clarifies

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    Well, credit where it's due. 

  • Labour and conversion therapy

    Here we go again. Times headline – Labour will ban conversion therapy despite ‘test case’ fears:

    Labour will introduce a full ban on conversion “therapy” if it wins the election, despite warnings that doing so may encroach on the freedom of parents and therapists to talk to children about gender identity issues.

    Sir Keir Starmer has committed his party to a ban on the practice, which aims to suppress a person’s sexuality or gender identity. Labour says that this amounts to abuse.

    However, Hilary Cass, the doctor who carried out the landmark review of gender services for children, said that a trans-inclusive conversion therapy ban was likely to prompt concern among medical professionals that they might find themselves in a “test case”.

    She said that although she supported banning conversion therapy, a practice she described as “dreadful”, she was concerned that it would not be possible to “bulletproof” the legislation.

    The conversion therapy Cass describes as "dreadful" is the old-style attempt to "cure" homosexuality – something which just doesn't happen here any more outside the wilder religious fringes. Including gender identity "conversion" though is a whole different ball game, since gender identity is a construct of trans ideology picked up by troubled kids on social media. If left alone to go through puberty drug-free, these kids would almost invariably be fine. We've been through this so many times. These kids, victims of a social contagion, need therapy and time to think rather than immediate affirmation of their ridiculous fantasy that they can change sex and live happily ever after.

    In a nutshell: some kids are gay, but no kids are trans. 

    If this is really what Labour is planning – and to be honest the whole article is confused – then this is a horribly misconceived path to go down.

  • Shutting down debate

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  • With Labour, women have yet again been de-prioritised

    Julie Bindel in the Telegraph – Labour has chosen trans extremists over JK Rowling:

    There was a brief moment recently in which it seemed the Labour Party might have seen a little sense on gender ideology. With Shadow Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, conceding he had gone too far in the past by repeating Stonewall’s “trans women are women” mantra, and Sir Keir Starmer admitting (while stopping short of an apology) that Rosie Duffield MP was correct in saying only women have a cervix, a correction appeared to be underway.

    But, as is becoming tradition with Labour, women have yet again been de-prioritised. In the last few days, the party has reinstated a number of trans policies many had hoped had been shelved.

    It looks as though Starmer and his henchmen have chosen to bend the knee to trans activists rather than listen to the likes of JK Rowling, who has become a proud spokeswoman for right-minded citizens across the UK.

    Yet it is painfully shortsighted for Labour to fail to recognise that capitulation to these bullies will leave them facing further demands, if elected. A Starmer administration could be railroaded into introducing full legal self-identification; allowing schools to teach gender ideology to five-year-olds; threatening therapists with legal sanctions for declining to “affirm” so-called “trans children” and introducing legislation to render “mis-gendering” a hate crime.

    Trans activists will stop at nothing. Having smelt blood, they will go on to rip the throat out of women’s rights, while Labour pretends it is only supporting a marginalised minority.

    It's perhaps fair to note that Starmer has today said that he won't allow ‘gender ideology’ to be taught in schools, after Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, had refused to make any commitment on the matter. The general tenor of the (Times) comments is that yes, he would say that – but do we trust him?

    As I've said before, Starmer has risked a lot in cutting out the Corbyn poison, in terms of alienating Labour's radical left. Is he willing to face them down again in another of their pet causes? I'm not at all sure.

    But the pressure from women like Rowling is beginning to tell.