She doesn't even bother with "Zionists". Straight to the chase…
I'm guessing North Yorkshire councillor Pat Marsh has strayed from official @LibDems policy when she says Jews are "evil", "vile", "horrendous", "a disgrace to the world" and claims "Israel owns the USA". It looks like #antisemitism to me. Perhaps the @YandHLibDems could advise? pic.twitter.com/wGCsZuA44x
— Steve Cooke (@Steve_Cooke) February 18, 2024
A footnote to the trans milk affair, now featured in today's Times:
Little research has been done on the transference of high doses of these drugs to babies through milk.
Inducing lactation may not be successful for every transgender woman, and the amount of milk produced can vary widely. Very few transgender women manage to exclusively feed a baby with their milk alone and must supplement with formula, but say the experience is worth it nonetheless.
A paper in the Journal of Human Lactation earlier stated that: “For transgender women … on oestrogen-based, gender-affirming hormone therapy, the ability to nourish their infants through production of their own milk may be a profoundly gender-affirming experience.”
Little research on the effect on babies of this cocktail of drugs, but for the autogynephilic men "the experience is worth it nonetheless", and it "may be a profoundly gender-affirming experience". That's the story, in a nutshell.
Well, this blows a hole in the old "danger of suicide if not given immediate gender-affirming care" line. From Mary Harrington at UnHerd:
A new study challenges the common assertion that gender-dysphoric youth are at elevated risk of suicide if not treated with “gender affirming” medical interventions. If it’s true, it ought to have a seismic impact on the accepted medical approach to gender-confused youth.
Reported in the BMJ, the study examines data on a Finnish cohort of gender-referred adolescents between 1996 and 2019, and compares their rates of all-cause and suicide mortality against a control group. While suicide rates in the gender-referred group studied were higher than in the control group, the difference was not large: 0.3% versus 0.1%. And — importantly — this difference disappeared when the two groups were controlled for mental health issues severe enough to require specialist psychiatric help.
In other words: while transgender identity does seem to be associated with elevated suicide risk, the link is not very strong. What’s more, the causality may not work the way activists claim.
That is, "gender-dsyphoric" youth have a greater risk of suicide anyway – transition or no transition. Which, frankly, is what you'd expect.
But as the study puts it: “Clinical gender dysphoria does not appear to be predictive of all-cause nor suicide mortality when psychiatric treatment history is accounted for.” Rather, what predicts risk in this population is “psychiatric morbidity”. And contra the activists, transitioning does nothing to reduce it: “medical gender reassignment does not have an impact on suicide risk.”
Every suicide is a tragedy, and leaves grieving loved ones behind. No one wants to be complicit in pushing a young person down that path. So the suggestion that questioning someone’s gender beliefs may have this effect serves as a powerful emotional cudgel. But if the Finnish study is correct, this whole rhetorical, legislative, and medical edifice may be built on sand. If the elevated risk of suicidality in trans youth disappears when you control for other psychiatric difficulties, this suggests strongly that trans youth are not more at risk due to transphobia or invalidation, but due to the well-documented fact that gender dysphoria tends to occur in people who are disturbed and unhappy more generally.
It ought to follow from this that the way to manage suicide risk in trans-identified young people is not to affirm their gender identity and whisk them off for medical interventions, but to watch for and treat psychiatric comorbidities. Ultimately, though, the claims of gender ideology are less scientific than metaphysical. So don’t expect scientific evidence that contradicts its prescriptions to have much impact on trans advocates. Even if “following the science” would make a real difference to suicide risk in gender-dysphoric youth.
A surprising Saudi interview with the widow of ISIS Leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. She has nothing good to say about him, or about ISIS. "The Islamic State turned into a "women" state, with regard to taking slave girls as a matter of faith."
State Rep Emily Alvarado (D-Seattle) introduced what critics rightly call the “Hamas amendment” to legislation mandating Holocaust education in public schools.
She argued that essentially providing the Hamas perspective that Israel commits genocide, is more “inclusive.”… pic.twitter.com/2EQDmiwGCq
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) February 12, 2024
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More here:
A bipartisan bill on Holocaust and genocide education in Washington state has had a “Hamas amendment” slapped on it by State House Democrats that would guarantee that antisemitic and pro-Hamas talking points are taught to public school children.
[h/t Dom in the comments]
Nigel Henderson, 1949-53 – courtesy of the Tate:
[Photos © Nigel Henderson Estate]
Nigel Henderson previously, in the East End.
Anti-Israel demonstrators yesterday in London try to attack a man with a "Hamas are terrorists" placard. Police, happy to help the mob out, march the man away. Mustn't offend the Hamas fans.
An Iranian dissident stands with a sign saying Hamas are terrorists at the pro-Palestine march. He gets spat at, hit with a stick, punched and called a “w*nker”. Hamas are proscribed terrorists but not on this march. There the rapist killers are heroes.pic.twitter.com/whGHng2deS
— Heidi Bachram 🎗️ (@HeidiBachram) February 17, 2024
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This makes my blood boil!
The brave man who was attacked by an anti-Israel hate mob for holding a placard saying Hamas are terrorists, was aggressively marched off by the @metpoliceuk 👇
The police should be protecting him, not manhandling him. #TwoTierPolicing in full view. pic.twitter.com/5Osk240JRu
— Lee Harris (@addicted2newz) February 18, 2024
They undergo medical & sometimes surgical procedures that change their bodies irreversibly & that they profoundly regret some 8-10 years later. Any organization that ignores this medical scandal is no friend to LGB people. For that reason alone, we must separate LGB from TQ+. /2
— Bev Jackson (@BevJacksonAuth) February 18, 2024
Drug-induced milk from transgender women who were born male is as good for babies as a mother's breast milk, an NHS Trust has said.
A leaked letter from the Medical Director of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust describes both as 'human milk' and says that they are the 'ideal food for infants'.
The letter was sent on behalf of the Trust's Chief Executive in response to a campaign group's complaint about the Trust's gender policies.
It defends the controversial practice of 'induced lactation' by means of powerful medication to enable trans women to simulate breastfeeding. It also claims that the term 'human milk' is 'meant to be neutral and is not gender-biased'.
Pandering to trans ideology is more important than the health of children? This would be grotesque anyway – but coming from a hospital…
But responding to the letter, Labour MP Rosie Duffield said: 'Babies can't be used as guinea pigs for someone else's lifestyle choice.
'When a man has not and cannot grow a baby, why on earth are we pandering to this? Who does it benefit? Not the children. We wouldn't do any other medical experiments on babies. Breast milk made by a baby's biological mother is tailor-made for that baby.'…
The document was revealed as part of a report by the think-tank Policy Exchange.
Lottie Moore, the organisation's Head of Equality and Identity, said: 'This letter is unbalanced and naive in its assertion that the secretions produced by a male on hormones can nourish an infant in the way a mother's breast milk can.'
Ms Moore added: 'A child's welfare must always take precedence over identity politics and contested belief systems that are not evidence-based. The NHS should not be indulging in this nonsense. It is compromising women's rights and child safeguarding.'
In explaining its policies, the Trust cited a five-month scientific study in 2022 which measured 'infant milk testosterone concentrations' and found 'no observable infant side effects' on babies of lactating transgender women. But experts rejected the claims and pointed out the overall lack of scientific studies on such side effects. 'There have been very few publications and the vast majority have not looked at what's in the milk itself,' one medical expert said.
Indeed, some of the campaigners' concerns are over the safety of the drugs given to men to produce the milk – drugs which can cause heart problems. They also point out that the result produces very little milk. There is 'barely enough for a single feed' per day, the same expert told The Mail on Sunday.
Why on earth are they doing this? Oh yes:
University Hospitals Sussex Trust is a member of Stonewall's controversial 'Diversity Champions' programme. It admitted that its policy was derived after advice from 'external organisations' – but refused to clarify which.
As an X commenter put it:
Women: restrict drinking coffee, eating some types of cheese, no alcohol, or you're a selfish bad unnatural mother. The baby matters more than you.
Men: feed newborn babies any chemically induced nipple discharge full of toxins you want. It's you that matters more than the baby.
Hadley Freeman in today's Sunday Times – Academics obsess over bigotry. So why is there no outcry over the Leeds chaplain?
Here’s a story of our times: ten days ago Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, a Yorkshire university chaplain, went into hiding after receiving hundreds of death threats. Now, Jews tend not to be believed when they talk about threats against their lives, which is why Israel had to compile footage from Hamas’s own GoPros of its attacks on October 7, and show it around the world, to prove the terrorism happened. But even that wasn’t enough for some, and at one screening a man in the audience found the images of dead women’s bloodied torsos insufficiently convincing and shouted, “Show the rapes!”
So in case anyone out there heard about Rabbi Deutsch and shouted, “Show the death threats!”, here you go: “We’re coming to his house, we’re going to kill him and you as well you f***ing racist bitch”; “Us Muslims are coming for you, you dirty Zionist motherf***er.” Those are just two of the messages he and his wife received. Threatening enough for you? They were for the police, who told Rabbi Deutsch, his wife and their two young children to get to a safe place.
Last week’s report from the Community Security Trust (CST) showing that antisemitic attacks in the UK had skyrocketed since October 7 by almost 600 per cent compared with the same period last year was widely reported. And yet the story of Rabbi Deutsch hasn’t been. Which seems odd, given that he serves as chaplain to the universities of Leeds, York, Hull, Huddersfield, Bradford, Sheffield and Leeds Beckett. Maybe it got lost in the deluge of British antisemitism.
Or maybe some people feel a little squeamish about this story because the rabbi and his family are Israeli and the protests against him began in November, when Rabbi Deutsch returned to Leeds University’s campus after doing his service in the Israel Defence Forces. While he was away, he sent his students private video messages, defending Israel’s response to October 7. One of these videos was leaked and posted on what the Jewish Chronicle describes as “an anti-Israel social media account with over one million followers”, and several British Muslim groups promptly demanded that the rabbi not be allowed back on campus. A network for Muslim female academics accused him of posting “propaganda about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians”. Last week the Muslim Association of Britain posted a statement on social media directed at Leeds University asking: “How can your students feel safe with a war criminal complicit in genocide roaming your campus?” Shortly after that, the Deutsch family went into hiding.
Maybe that complicates this story for some. It shouldn’t, but I bet it does.
You can criticise Israel’s actions against Hamas. But to terrorise a rabbi for briefly serving in the IDF in the immediate aftermath of October 7 shows that, for some people, there is no act of anti-Jewish terrorism so bad that Jews are allowed to fight back….
By now, antisemitism on US and UK campuses has become so familiar that no one seems to notice how strange that is. Antisemitic incidents on UK campuses have tripled since October 7, according to the CST, while in the US things are so bad that three university presidents were summoned for a much-watched congressional hearing in December, where they refused to say calls for Jewish genocide violated their university policies. “Oh, young people are just very pro-Palestine,” people blithely say, which is all well and good. But “pro-Palestine” does not mean chanting “Death to Zionists”, as happened on Birmingham University’s campus earlier this month, or chanting, “Gas the Jews,” and, “Hitler was right”, as students and faculty allegedly did at a protest at New York University. A professor at Columbia University described the Hamas attacks as “awesome”. One at Soas in London said they were “amazing”, and evoked the “boldness of the Biblical David against the giant Goliath”.
When well-meaning folk ponder how to combat the rise in bigotry, they always suggest the same solution: “More education.” But university campuses show the lie of that. There is a long history of highly educated people spouting the worst kind of antisemitism, from Martin Luther in the 15th century, whose writings inspired the Nazis, to what we are seeing now. In British universities, there is a toxic mix of anti-Israel Muslim activist groups and liberal proponents of identity politics, who argue that Jews are white and therefore can’t be oppressed.
This country used to boast the best universities in the world. Now it produces students who threaten to rape a rabbi’s wife and are told by their friends and tutors that they’re on the right side of history for doing so. What’s happening in Gaza is a tragedy. What’s happening on British campuses is shameful.
Mick Hartley 