Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • Changing gender under Labour

    Meanwhile, Labour keeps digging away at that trans hole. Clearly Anneliese Dodds learned nothing from her recent meeting with the LRB Alliance:

    Labour will make it easier to change gender and is considering allowing a single family doctor to sign off on the decision under plans to “simplify” the process.

    The party is considering how to make the legally binding certificate easier to obtain while still having guardrails to prevent mirroring controversial ­proposals in Scotland that would have ­removed doctors from the process ­altogether.

    The plans include ditching a panel of doctors and lawyers that approve ­gender recognition certificates, the document allowing transgender people to have their affirmed gender legally recognised, and only requiring one doctor to be involved in the process.

    The Times understands that one option under consideration is that the doctor could be a GP. Labour would ­also ­remove the ability of a spouse to object to the change. A source said the party wanted to make the process “less medicalised” but added that the plans would retain the involvement of a doctor and would not allow people to self-identify in order to obtain legal changes….

    Anneliese Dodds, the shadow women and equalities secretary, said she wanted to strip out the “futile and dehumanising parts” of acquiring a gender recognition certificate.

    “We believe everyone should be treated with dignity and respect,” she said. “We want to see the process for gender recognition modernised, while protecting single sex spaces for biological women. This means stripping out the futile and dehumanising parts of the process for obtaining a gender ­recognition certificate, while retaining important safeguards.”

    Making self-ID easier, with the fig-leaf of a GP's approval, is back to the bad old days, following along the SNP's disastrous path. What on earth are they thinking?

    And the bit about "while protecting single sex spaces for biological women" is window-dressing nonsense. Easier self-ID and protecting single sex spaces are simply not compatible.

    Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said she would be concerned about “shifting sole responsibility for signing gender recognition certificates to GPs”.

    She said while the college supported improving care for patients with gender dysphoria “including tackling the long waits they face for treatment and ­services”, she added: “For most GPs, detailed management of gender dysphoria is outside of our area of expertise.”

    Badenoch said: “There is no reason whatsoever to relax the safeguards that are in place. [Labour] should stop trying to weaponise this issue and allow professionals to do their job properly.”

  • A heresy hunt

    A victory at last against the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre and its head, Mridul Wadhwa – a trans woman appointed despite the job being advertised, for obvious reasons, as women only, and despite his lack of any GRC. 

    An employment judge has condemned a support service for rape victims and found that its chief executive was behind a “heresy hunt” against a ­female worker who held “gender-critical” beliefs.

    Roz Adams won her claim of constructive dismissal against Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, which is funded by the Scottish government, with the ­tribunal finding that she had been ­harassed and discriminated against.

    Supporters of Adams condemned the “abusive management” she was forced to endure….

    The judgment describes an investigation undertaken by the centre into Adams’s opinions as “unfortunately a classic of its kind, somewhat reminiscent of the work of Franz Kafka”.

    Ian McFatridge, the employment judge, identified Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman who is ERCC chief executive, as a key figure in an internal investigation that “should not have been launched in the first place”.

    McFatridge said the review “was clearly motivated by a strong belief among senior management and some of the claimant’s colleagues that the claimant’s views were inherently hateful”.

    He added: “It is clear that [Wadhwa] was involved in the process since she was the one who selected and ­contacted who would deal with the ­various stages of the disciplinary and grievance process.”…

    The tribunal, which has yet to decide on a settlement, heard that the dispute began when Adams spoke to colleagues about a rape victim who asked if her counsellor would be a “man or a woman” because she would feel “uncomfortable talking to a man”.

    It intensified when a non-binary member of the staff copied Wadhwa ­into an email chain.

    In evidence, it was revealed that Wadhwa had told a university event that the “best way” to get staff to support trans inclusion policies was to “fire them”.

    Helen Joyce, of the campaign group Sex Matters, said: “Sex-based boundaries matter for everyone, but most especially women who have experienced male violence and sexual assault. By standing up against the abusive management, Roz Adams has helped women across the UK.”

    Adams now works at Beira’s Place, a centre funded by the author JK Rowling, which ­offers a “sexual violence support ­service for women run by women”.

    Good luck to her.

    Also…

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  • Progressive Oregon

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  • A party of cranks

    Alex Massie in the Times:

    Vindication is a dish to be served at any temperature. As he counts his misfortunes from the backbenches, Humza Yousaf may at least reflect that he did his party, and his country, some service when he evicted the Scottish Green Party from government.

    If any fresh reminder were needed that this defenestration was overdue, last week it became apparent that the party has purged itself of members who dared to suggest that “sex is a biological reality”.

    Members who signed a declaration to that effect last November have been ejected after complaints that tolerating such views risked making the party an unsafe place for its trans and non-binary members.

    “The welfare of all our members is our primary concern,” a Greens spokesperson said, and the miscreants who believe in the reality of biological sex were guilty of breaching the party’s membership policy. That policy may be summarised as: thou shalt not insist upon the truth. Science, which is settled on climate change, is mysteriously unable to reach a firm conclusion on the question of whether or not humans can change their sex.

    The rebel signatories further asserted that women have sex-based rights of association and organisation, that women should be free to discuss female issues “without being abused, harassed, or intimidated”, that sex-based protections “as set out in the Equality Act” should be maintained, that women are too frequently “subject to discrimination … on the basis of their sex”, and that lesbians “by definition” are “women who are same-sex attracted”.

    Since believing these things is now incompatible with membership of the Scottish Green Party we may posit that the Greens do not think lesbians are same-sex attracted, that women do not have sex-based rights and protections, that sex and gender are interchangeable and that sex is not, in fact, any kind of biological reality.

    All this being so, even those of us ill-disposed to the Greens should welcome this clarification. There is no need for tactful niceties and no reason to indulge the fiction the Greens are a cuddly party of tree and seal huggers. On the contrary, they are the most ideological, most extremist party represented at Holyrood. Their departure from the coalition certainly shifts the Scottish government to the right but it also places it significantly closer to the median Scottish voter.

    Even so, the SNP cannot escape their own responsibility for promulgating magical thinking in defiance of millennia of observable reality. The Scottish government’s lawyers argued in court that sex should no longer be considered “immutable”, regardless of the preposterous, indeed biologically impossible, nature of this assertion. Yousaf, meanwhile, struggled to answer the ostensibly simple question: How many sexes are there?. Little of this was encouraging — these were times when madness was let loose across the land — and all of it demonstrated the extent to which the Scottish government was captured by an extremist ideology that, like all such phenomena, brooks no dissent. The expulsion of members guilty of asserting that, yes, the world is round, demonstrates the extent to which the Green Party is now the political wing of the flat earth society. A cult, in other words.

    Massie is just talking about the Scottish Greens, where at least – as far as I'm aware – they haven't had elected councillors shouting "Allahu Akbar" and dedicating their win to the people of Gaza, as happened in Leeds.

  • Ruled by Hamas

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    Well yes, that's exactly what they want. "From the river to the sea". Judenrein.

  • Iranian counter-protestor arrested

    We've seen before how the Met tackle Iranian dissidents at the Free Palestine marches – arresting anyone who dares challenge the Hamas-as-anti-imperialist-heroes line by pointing out that Hamas are, in fact, terrorists.

    Well, here we go again:

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    The man with the keffiyeh is led away to be treated in an ambulance for the "injuries" sustained in that, um, brutal assault.

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  • Ignored and sidelined

    From the Telegraph – Whistleblower ‘forced out’ of Whitehall over gender beliefs:

    A whistleblower claims she was forced out of the civil service by a “politicised” culture which led to her being marginalised for her gender-critical beliefs.

    Eleanor Frances, who joined the civil service in 2019 after completing a PhD in engineering, managed a team of policy officials at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

    Her role, which involved working with government ministers, later moved to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

    She is now taking both government departments to an employment tribunal on several grounds, including unfair constructive dismissal and victimisation, as well as direct and indirect discrimination based on her philosophical beliefs.

    Ms Frances believes that she was left with no option than to quit the civil service last August after she blew the whistle on allegations of discrimination and breaches of impartiality on sex and gender issues.

    She raised concerns formally about a series of issues internally, but claims that instead of being taken seriously, she was ignored and sidelined.

    Her concerns included complaints about a “politicised climate of fear” around equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policies, with civil servants who question the institutional position on issues such as gender facing negative professional consequences.

    Ms Frances also claims that an internal “Gender Identity and Intersex” policy was adopted, without proper consultation, following a workplace assessment by Stonewall, the controversial gay rights organisation.

    She says the policy’s use of politicised language and concepts – for example, defining “transphobia” as including the “denial/refusal to accept” someone’s gender identity – meant that civil servants were effectively compelled to recognise male people as women.

    She also claimed that the policy of “self-identification” in government premises meant that men were allowed to access female single-sex facilities, with the threat of disciplinary action against any women who might object….

    The Free Speech Union (FSU) is launching a crowdfunder to pay for Ms Frances to have legal representation at her tribunal, for which there was a preliminary hearing last month with further hearings expected for later this year.

    Jill Levene, legal counsel at the FSU, said: “Impartiality is the cornerstone of a well-functioning civil service. Eleanor’s treatment is a clear example of a civil service that has been captured by radical progressive ideology.”

    Go here for the FSU crowdfunder.

  • New dean of Haifa University

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  • Huddersfield & Holmfirth 1972

    Raiding the catalogue of Café Royal Books again, this time with photographer George Wright:

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    [Photos © Cafe Royal Books/George Wright]

  • Cass in America

    The US medical establishment, it seems, is unimpressed with the Cass Report. 

    A month after the publication of her report into youth gender services in the UK, Dr Hilary Cass has been doing the rounds in the American media. This week, she gave an interview to the New York Times on her research, which found “remarkably weak” evidence for paediatric gender transitions.

    Speaking to the NYT, she said that “the real problem is that the evidence is very weak compared to many other areas of paediatric practice”, adding, “I can’t think of any other situation where we give life-altering treatments and don’t have enough understanding about what’s happening to those young people in adulthood.”

    The Cass Report cast serious doubts on the model in use in many Western countries, including the US, in which clinicians automatically affirm children’s trasngender identities and recommend cross-sex medical interventions for minors. While the UK was quick to restrict puberty blockers and other interventions in light of the report, the American medical establishment has doubled down on supporting gender transitions for young people.

    The Endocrine Society, which supports puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, told the NYT this week that the Cass Report “does not contain any new research” that would contradict those guidelines.

    Stephen Hammes, the organisation’s president, also defended its position in the Wall Street Journal last year. “More than 2,000 studies published since 1975 form a clear picture: Gender-affirming care improves the well-being of transgender and gender-diverse people and reduces the risk of suicide,” he wrote.

    The American Academy of Pediatrics, one of the most vocal champions within the US medical establishment of child gender transitions, declined to comment on the Cass Report for the NYT story and instead reiterated its opposition to legal restrictions on the practice. The AAP’s 2018 statement in support of child gender transitions calls for minors to have access to “comprehensive, gender-affirming, and developmentally appropriate health care”, for doctors to advocate for laws expanding access to such treatments, and for children’s medical charts to reflect their gender identity rather than their biological sex.

    The American Medical Association, which supports cross-sex treatments for minors and resolved last year to intensify its lobbying efforts in support of youth access to gender transitions, has not yet made a public statement on the Cass Report.

    Meanwhile, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) said Cass’s review was “rooted in the false premise that non-medical alternatives to care will result in less adolescent distress for most adolescents”.

    Well yes, there's money to be made from all this "gender-affirming" care. But if that were the whole story, you'd expect the Republicans to be even keener than the Democrats – but that's not the case:

    While many Western countries are restricting transgender treatments for children, there’s no end in sight in the US, where the debate has taken on distinctly partisan contours. Red states have attempted to ban the procedures, while the Biden administration has promoted childhood gender transitions throughout the federal government.

    At bottom, then, it's about the ideology. The left buys into the gender cult, under the familiar mantra that "gender-affirming care" – puberty blockers and all the rest – reduces the risk of suicide.

    Meanwhile:

    A new study hot off the press has confirmed what most of us already knew: people who get "gender-affirming" surgery have more than 12 times higher instances of suicide attempts than those who don't get the surgeries.