Female, Vegetarian, Ecology student. Pacific Northwest, U.S. I reblog content regarding human rights movements, environmental justice, plant identification, and links to studies and articles I discover. See my pages for a list of my common tags if you would like to filter any content.
Gender is not something that you can “have”. There are not variations of “gender”. It is not something that is this “quirky” inherent characteristic that everyone possesses.
Gender is a system. It is a complex hierarchical social system in which males oppress females on the axis of biological sex.
“Gender identity” is a faith-based belief system in which people internalize sex-based roles, expectations, and norms and believe such norms are what “create” and distinguish men from women or something entirely other. It is a regressive spirituality that encourages rituals of extreme body alterations in order for a person to achieve “true happiness”. The only self-evidence that a person has that they are “of” a specific “gender-identity” is purely based on a subjective, supernatural “feeling”. “Gender identity” was first founded by Robert Stoller and John Money. Stoller fought to normalize perversions and Money sexually abused and forcibly transitioned a child in his quest to “prove” the existence of gender identity (the child, David Reimer along with his brother ended up killing themselves).
There is no scientific consensus on the existence of “gender identity”, and because the existence of gender identity is based on a subjective “feeling” (read: faith) that someone is a certain gender, science will not be able to prove this existence.
Until liberal circles are able to recognize “gender identity” for what it is: an extremely sexist and homophobic faith that lacks a divine Creator and a pseudoscience, we will not be able to progress in deconstructing gender as a system of oppression.
The formerly obscure acronym Terf – short for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” – has begun to appear in newspaper headlines. Why?
Even if you didn’t know what a “terf” was when the word prickled into national news reports a couple of weeks ago, you would probably have grasped from the context that being one was a Bad Thing. After a confrontation at Speakers’ Corner on 13 September between a group of feminists and a group of trans activists, the Sun headlined its report: “Fight breaks out during TERF ('Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists') protest in Hyde Park”. In the Mail, it was: “Members of the Action for Trans Health (ATH) clashed with their bitter enemies the Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (or so-called TERFs)”.
As the brackets suggest, “terf” isn’t yet familiar enough to be used in the mainstream press without glossing, but it’s getting there. Those who use it claim it’s a neutral, descriptive acronym for a group that holds a defined position – that is, radical feminists who exclude trans people. That doesn’t wash with others, who argue that in practice it functions as a term of abuse, and point out that no one actually self-identifies as a “terf”.
In a detailed and even-handed blog post, the linguist Deborah Cameron has concluded that, “Terf does not meet all the criteria that have been proposed for defining a word as a slur, but it does meet most of them at least partially”. But significantly, she added this: “Terf is now being used in a kind of discourse which has clear similarities with hate-speech directed at other groups (it makes threats of violence, it includes other slur-terms, it uses metaphors of pollution)…”
If you’d been at Speakers’ Corner on 13 September, you’d have seen that discourse in action. As a group of women gathered in Hyde Park for an event called “What is Gender: The Gender Recognition Act and Beyond”, they were met by protestors who chanted “When Terfs attack, we fight back!” (At this point, it’s worth noting that the “attack” consisted of trying to hold a meeting.)
One of the women there for the “What is Gender” event was 60-year-old Maria MacLachlan. Janice Turner of the Times was also there. Here is her account of what happened next:
“So at Speakers’ Corner trans activists and feminists were chanting and taunting each other. Maria was taking photographs when an opponent grappled with her, snatched her camera and smashed it on the ground. Then a tall, male-bodied, hooded figure wearing make-up rushed over, hit her several times and as police arrived, ran away. I asked a young activist if she was OK with men smacking women: ‘It’s not a guy, you’re a piece of s*** and I’m happy they hit her’, came the reply.”
The violence is shocking, but the immediate justification of it is somehow even more so. While Action for Trans Health London said it condemned violence against women, the Edinburgh branch issued a series of uncompromising tweets stating that “punching terfs is the same as punching Nazis. Fascism must be smashed with the greatest violence to ensure our collective liberation from it”, and “violence against terfs is always self defence” (it also accused the London branch of "undermining" its stance).
In other words, there is a fringe of people who think it is OK – more than OK, laudable – to hit a 60-year-old woman if she thinks the wrong thing, because thinking the wrong thing is understood to be an act of aggression in itself.
And it is women specifically who elicit these vicious reactions. In November last year, the fundamentalist campaign group Christian Concern held a conference in London on trans issues called “The New Normal: Tackling Sexuality and Gender Confusion Amongst Children and Young People”. Among its speakers were a former Ukip candidate who had been expelled from the party for homophobia, and a therapist who claimed to be able to counsel people out of same-sex attraction. “The New Normal” was openly publicised and easy to access. It went off without disruption and unprotested.
In other words, it’s possible to espouse the most virulent prejudices about trans people without attracting backlash, so long as you’re not a feminist. On the other hand, if you are a feminist, the bar to being called a “terf” is remarkably low. Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray achieved it by writing an article in which she pointed out that someone born and raised male will not have the same experiences of sexism as a woman; novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie likewise made the grade by answering “transwomen are transwomen” when asked whether she believed that “transwomen are women”.
Even those who criticise the use of the word “terf” now often accept that it had a good-faith intent at one time, and has been a victim of mission creep. But from its very first appearance, it has functioned to blame feminism for male violence against trans people. In 2008, a blogger called Tigtog introduced it to mark the distinction between her trans-inclusive feminism and feminism that was specifically focused on the rights of people who are assigned female at birth. Of some comments by radical feminists, Tigtog wrote:
“The contempt just drips from every pixel (eta: of those comments), and why exactly? Isn’t that sort of contempt and disgust exactly what led to Allen Andrade beating Angie Zapata to death when he found out (through an act of sexual assault) that she wasn’t a born-woman?”
Allen Andrade, in case you hadn’t guessed, is a man. An extremely homophobic man, as his trial for the murder of Angie Zapata heard. There was no suggestion that he was influenced by, or even aware of, radical feminism in any form. Yet Tigtog, at the moment she coins the word "terf", seems to imply that the women who criticise male violence (radical feminists) are ultimately responsible for the violence that men commit.
In 2003, the UK government began a reform of sentencing for what were crassly called “crimes of passion” – cases in which a man had killed a woman, but claimed in mitigation that his victim had provoked him through her unreasonable behaviour. The feminists who had campaigned to change the law referred to this defence with grim humour as the “nagging and shagging” defence.
In the word “terf”, the “nagging” defence has been informally reprised, with female truculence defined as a kind of metaphorical violence that can be answered in literal kind. And as the word is accepted, so too is its internal logic that if a certain kind of woman is hit, it must be because she deserves it.
When Alana started a website for lonely people struggling to find love, she had no idea where it would lead.
In 1997, there was no Facebook, no Instagram, no Tinder. Even MySpace was six years away. Alana, who doesn't want to use her full name, was in her mid-20s and had just started dating.
"It had taken me a long time. I was kind of a late bloomer. I thought, 'Maybe there are other late bloomers out there.'
"I noticed people would talk about the 'lonely virgin' and make silly jokes about people who didn't start dating in their teens," she said.
She was living in Toronto, Canada, and started the website, Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, for those who were struggling to form loving relationships.
She described the site as "a friendly place", a simple website where she posted articles and ran a mailing list.
It became a forum for men and women to talk about being lonely, where they could wonder aloud about why they couldn't meet anyone.
"There was probably a bit of anger and some men were a bit clueless about how women are unique, individual humans, but in general it was a supportive place."
One couple who met on the site even got married.
'Things have changed'
"It definitely wasn't a bunch of guys blaming women for their problems. That's a pretty sad version of this phenomenon that's happening today. Things have changed in the last 20 years."
Alana abbreviated "involuntarily celibate" to "invcel", until someone suggested that "incel" was easier to say.
"The word [incel] used to mean anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time. But we can't call it that anymore."
What is an 'incel'?
By 2000, Alana was moving away from the community, satisfied that it would continue without her.
"I didn't notice what was going on because I wasn't paying attention. My dating life was going OK. I didn't want to think about my history as a late bloomer."
Nearly 15 years later, Alana was in a bookshop reading a feminist magazine when she saw a small story about a man named Elliot Rodger.
The 22-year-old had killed six people in a shooting and stabbing spree in Isla Vista, California, before turning a gun on himself.
Before his death, he had distributed a 141-page document exploring his deep-rooted loathing of women, fuelled by an intense frustration over his virginity.
Now Elliot Rodger was being seen as a hero by some in the incel community.
There was worse to come. In April 2018, a man from Toronto called Alek Minassian posted on Facebook: "The Incel Rebellion has already begun… All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!"
Shortly afterwards, he drove a van down a crowded street, killing 10 people.
'Should I feel guilty?'
"I was pretty sad and angry," said Alana. "These murders happening in my own city made it worse of course. I've had to go through some pain.
"I've asked myself, 'Should I feel guilty?' Friends have reassured me that no, I did my best back in 1997 to create a healthy and positive movement."
The incel community in 2018 bears little resemblance to Alana's site. In particular, it refers to online groups of men who feel that they can't enter into sexual relationships.
The attitudes of men who visit the boards vary widely, but online they frequently vent anger against sexually prolific men ("Chads") and women ("Stacys"). More generally, incel forums often include rants aimed at feminism and women.
In November 2017, the social website Reddit closed down its main incel community, which had 41,000 members.
Alana said: "A few months ago, when the van murders happened, I was upset that the term had changed meanings and I couldn't control it anymore, but that was just my ego. So I've let go and I've moved on. I think it's more important to take action."
In this vastly different online climate, Alana has created Love Not Anger, a project to research how lonely people might find respectful love, instead of being stuck in anger.
She said it's not an attempt to replicate her original site: "You really need to have a moderated forum on this issue, just to keep the violence at bay, and who's got the energy to moderate?
"Dating is hard and happens a bit later in life for some people. Some people need help learning social skills and that doesn't mean they should be stigmatised for that difference."
Getting emotional support
"The internet has a lot of really wonderful effects too. Even in today's incel forums, it's positive that people are being friends with each other.
"It would be wonderful if they could find a more positive take on life. If they could build strong friendships, get emotional support where you need it, that can really help with finding relationships and love. Friendship is the first step towards dating, in my opinion."
Alana admits she didn't expect to be doing this, 20 years on from her original project. "I'm hoping there'll be many people who take up the banner and work for positive change, for people who are lonely."
Click here to listen to Anna Foster's full interview with Alana on BBC Radio 5 live.
The discovery changes our understanding of the basic mechanism of photosynthesis and should rewrite the textbooks.
The discovery changes our understanding of the basic mechanism of photosynthesis and should rewrite the textbooks.
It will also tailor the way we hunt for alien life and provide insights into how we could engineer more efficient crops that take advantage of longer wavelengths of light.
The discovery, published today in Science, was led by Imperial College London, supported by the BBSRC, and involved groups from the ANU in Canberra, the CNRS in Paris and Saclay and the CNR in Milan.
The vast majority of life on Earth uses visible red light in the process of photosynthesis, but the new type uses near-infrared light instead. It was detected in a wide range of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) when they grow in near-infrared light, found in shaded conditions like bacterial mats in Yellowstone and in beach rock in Australia.
As scientists have now discovered, it also occurs in a cupboard fitted with infrared LEDs in Imperial College London.
Photosynthesis beyond the red limit
The standard, near-universal type of photosynthesis uses the green pigment, chlorophyll-a, both to collect light and use its energy to make useful biochemicals and oxygen. The way chlorophyll-a absorbs light means only the energy from red light can be used for photosynthesis.
Since chlorophyll-a is present in all plants, algae and cyanobacteria that we know of, it was considered that the energy of red light set the 'red limit' for photosynthesis; that is, the minimum amount of energy needed to do the demanding chemistry that produces oxygen. The red limit is used in astrobiology to judge whether complex life could have evolved on planets in other solar systems.
However, when some cyanobacteria are grown under near-infrared light, the standard chlorophyll-a-containing systems shut down and different systems containing a different kind of chlorophyll, chlorophyll-f, takes over.
Until now, it was thought that chlorophyll-f just harvested the light. The new research shows that instead chlorophyll-f plays the key role in photosynthesis under shaded conditions, using lower-energy infrared light to do the complex chemistry. This is photosynthesis 'beyond the red limit'.
Lead researcher Professor Bill Rutherford, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "The new form of photosynthesis made us rethink what we thought was possible. It also changes how we understand the key events at the heart of standard photosynthesis. This is textbook changing stuff."
The US reportedly told Ecuador that it would face punitive trade moves if it backed a World Health Assembly resolution promoting breastfeeding, and harried other countries
The US delegation to the World Health Assembly in Geneva reportedly deployed heavy-handed measures to browbeat nations into backing off the resolution.
Under the original text from the World Health Organisation, countries would have encouraged their citizens to breastfeed on grounds that research overwhelmingly shows its health benefits, while warning parents to be alert to inaccurate marketing by formula milk firms.
The New York Times first reported how the Trump administration reacted forcefully to the resolution, which otherwise had the consensus support of all other assembly members.
The administration pushed to remove a phrase from the draft text that would exhort governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding”.
US [was] holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on best way to protect infant and young child health Patti Rundall, breastfeeding campaigner
The administration also had diplomats lean on member states. It told Ecuador, for example, that unless the South American nation withdrew its backing of the resolution it would face punitive trade moves and the potential loss of military help in its battle against gang violence.
During the deliberations over the resolution, according to The New York Times, the US delegation made threatening suggestions that Washington would cut its funding for WHO.
As the single largest donor to the world body, awarding US$845 million last year, that threat would not have been taken lightly.
The resolution was eventually passed with US support, but only after the Russian government reintroduced it using a modified text.
Lucy Sullivan, executive director of 1,000 Days, an international group working to improve nutrition for babies and infants, said on Twitter that the US intervention amounted to “public health versus private profit”
“What is at stake: breastfeeding saves women and children’s lives. It is also bad for the multibillion-dollar global infant formula [and dairy] business.” she wrote.
As with other health policy battles, it comes down to public health vs. private profit. What is at stake: breastfeeding saves women and children’s lives. It also is bad for the multibillion dollar global infant formula (and dairy) business. 8/
— Lucy M. Sullivan (@lucymsullivan) May 25, 2018
The online network of mothers, Moms Rising, called the US move “stunning and shameful. We must do everything we can to advocate for public policies that support and empower breastfeeding moms.”
Patti Rundall of the UK-based campaign Baby Milk Action told The New York Times: “We were astonished, appalled and also saddened.
This is what uncontrolled greed is about. This is what a corrupt political system is about. US Senator Bernie Sanders
“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the US holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on best way to protect infant and young child health.”
Under an internal code of the WHO, baby formula companies are banned from explicitly targeting mothers and their health carers. Advertising is also controlled.
A Guardian investigation with Save the Children earlier this year found that formula milk firms were using aggressive methods to skirt the regulations to press mothers and healthcare professionals to choose powdered milk over breastfeeding.
The measures were intensively deployed in the poorest regions of the world, where most growth in the baby milk formula business is now concentrated.
In a post on Facebook, US Senator Bernie Sanders wrote: “This is what oligarchy is about. This is what uncontrolled greed is about. This is what a corrupt political system is about.
“The Trump administration's slavish devotion to corporate profits, and their contempt for the health and well-being of Americans and people throughout the world is beyond appalling.”
A plethora of studies have shown the pronounced health improvements brought about by breastfeeding in the US and around the world.
A Harvard study in 2016 estimated that 3,340 premature deaths a year among both mothers and babies could be prevented in the US alone given adequate breastfeeding.
The milk formula industry has been struggling against stagnating sales in recent years, but is still worth US$70 billion annually.
The small number of giants that produce it are concentrated in the US and Europe.
One of those giants, Abbott Nutrition, is part of the healthcare multinational Abbott Laboratories that contributed to Trump’s inauguration ceremonies in 2017.
LONDON, July 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Governments are failing those most at risk from climate change by not placing them at the heart of efforts to adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas, researchers said in a report on the U.N. development goals, calling it "a critical concern".
The analysis of progress made by 86 countries found that just over half their strategies aimed at building climate resilience overlook groups bearing the brunt of environmental pressures, such as indigenous people and low-caste Indians.
The index from the London-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) assessed whether countries are on track to meet a commitment to "leave no one behind", a key pillar of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed in 2015.
Overall, it said 55 countries were "ready" to meet that commitment, 24 partially so, five were "not ready", and two lacked sufficient data.
The 17 goals aim to tackle the world's most challenging problems, from ending poverty and hunger to combating climate change, all by 2030.
This year's ODI index reviews for the first time how far government strategies to adapt to climate change consider groups vulnerable to wilder weather and other global warming impacts.
ODI researchers analysed the language in climate change action plans produced by countries reporting on their progress towards the SDGs at the U.N. High-Level Political Forum in New York this week and those that did last year.
Report co-author Amy Kirbyshire told the Thomson Reuters Foundation governments talk about helping climate-vulnerable people, but "in those documents the reality appears to be that they aren't focusing enough on the groups who are at risk".
In a sample of 57 climate change action plans submitted for the Paris Agreement to curb global warming, researchers found that keywords such as "poverty", "women" and "ethnic" did not appear once in almost half, she added.
National efforts to adapt to climate change must reach the most vulnerable people if governments are to keep a promise to "leave no one behind" in fulfilling the SDGs, the report said.
Women, minorities and other marginalised groups must be included in decision-making on how to respond to climate change, Kirbyshire said.
Governments should start by paying more attention to them when they assess disaster risks, she added.
"It's about ... making sure those groups are seen and heard, and have a voice," she said.
(Reporting by Isabelle Gerretsen, Editing by Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/)
If you think “sex work” should be fully legal based on a sense of social justice and the idea that it’s the best thing for the women in the industry, consider this:
Maybe there are some women who truly do want to be “sex workers”. Maybe some women really can do it without being traumatised. Maybe they even find it empowering. I’ll entertain that idea for a moment to get this point across. The fact is that the demand will always outweigh the supply. Huge numbers of men want to buy sexual access to women’s bodies, and in places where it is legal that demand only increases. In comparison, only a very small number of women truly choose it and want to do it. So what happens when there aren’t enough women willing to offer their bodies up for men to buy to match the number of men wanting to buy them? You get women forced into it by abusive pimp “boyfriends”. You get the sex trafficking of millions of impoverished women. You get huge numbers of women facing an option between prostitution and poverty.
I would rather the small number of women who might genuinely want to be in the sex industry have to find new jobs than have pimps, johns, and brothel owners/managers be able to legally get away with doing this to women. This is why we need the Nordic model, and why I’ll always be an abolitionist despite the loud minority of sex worker activists who assert ad nauseam that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the sex industry.
I would rather have the minority of women who do genuinely enjoy being sexually exploited in ““sex work”“ have to work jobs they do not prefer than have the overwhelming majority of women and girls who are forced into prostitution and other forms of commercialized sexual exploitation have to do it for another second.
Citizens in rich countries who support the legalization of various forms of commercialized sexual exploitation (most of which do not even have experiences in the situations they classify as “sex work”) act as if pursuing the Nordic Model unfairly targets women because it would strip them of doing something they might actually enjoy as a form of work.
The reality is 80-95% of women (and children!) who are forced into commercialized sexual exploitation are from poor, often politically unstable nations. What little jobs that are offered in the formal sector in these countries are extended to men. The women and girls who are not abducted but seek out sex traffickers are already raped, beaten, and mistreated in their countries and often think, “might as well get paid for it”. However what money they receive goes to their pimps and brothel owners or traffickers (who charge them a life-sentence worth of prostitution to pay off their travel and housing debts), and this does not change when they make it to “destination” countries in which prostitution is legalized and regulated. They are thrown into countries in which they do not know the language of and are unable to navigate. Many die in transit. Any children these women and girls birth are often stolen and used against them to prevent them from escaping. Predominantly male law enforcement that visit brothels who might suspect a prostituted woman is being held illegally or against her will is enticed by brothel owners to use her for free in exchange to avoid being reported. Prostituted women and children are further groomed to stay in their situations through heavy exposure of pornography, threats to their families, blackmail, and other various forms of brainwashing. The painting of commercialized sexual exploitation as “empowerment” and “a job” is thinking pushed by johns, brothel owners, and pimps that further serves as grooming. Often the women who claim they enjoy sex work may unsurprisingly be heavily traumatized, brainwashed, and mentally ill from childhood and current sexual trauma because that’s exactly what the sex trade grooms into the women and children involved in order to offer men more willing and eager “ female products” who wouldn’t dream of escape and likely already find such mistreatment, abuse, and violation “normal”.
Any of this is searchable through Google Scholar in which anyone can find mountains of scientific reports on manifestations of “sex work”. Including what legalization has resulted in within countries like Germany.
While political corruption and poverty “push” women and girls into sex trafficking, legalization laws concerning commercialized sexual exploitation such as prostitution, pornography, camming, escorts, phone sex operators, etc. in rich nations create a strong “pull” and demand for a “lower caste” of “disposable” women.
So while there exists a minority of women (who often do not depend on what supporters classify as “sex work” for survival) might genuinely enjoy being sexually exploited as a “job” because they are in unique circumstances in which they do not depend on prostitution for survival, are able to choose when and with whom they prostitute themselves to because they lack a pimp, and have the privilege and freedom to provide their opinions on the internet on the subject...let’s not prioritize them over the vast majority of those forced into sexual slavery who would be drastically affected by legalization laws in rich countries. If this small subset of women are genuinely choosing to be sexually exploited and like what they do, they can find new jobs, because I am here for the women and girls who do not have a choice or a voice on this.
The push to change oversight of a newly expanded carbon tax credit.
Excerpt:
Some of America’s biggest energy companies are lobbying Washington to change — critics say weaken — oversight of a federal tax credit going to facilities capturing carbon emissions.
Why it matters: The scramble shows the challenge of tackling climate change piecemeal through the nation’s tax laws in the absence of overarching policy.
The technology at issue is considered essential to achieving the greenhouse gas emission cuts scientists have recommended, and the oil industry’s use of it could help spur its widespread adoption. But divisions and uncertainty are emerging after Congress expanded the tax credit earlier this year, which is aimed largely at companies that use captured carbon to extract oil.
A new industry coalition is pushing legislation allowing companies to receive the tax credit without submitting a monitoring plan to the Environmental Protection Agency, which would ensure the captured carbon stays underground after extracting oil. The coalition, called the Energy Advance Center, is also urging EPA to change its rules on the tax credit.
Seeking to take advantage of the expanded tax credit, the coalition says the monitoring requirement is unnecessary because the carbon is stored after extracting the oil. The requirement would make the newly expanded tax credit mostly unusable in oil fields, the companies argue, because: It could violate property rights, such as some state laws (notably in Texas) requiring companies to leave property once they’re done producing, and possibly require renegotiating hundreds of leases. This would “be exceptionally burdensome and could substantially alter the economic viability of a field,” the coalition wrote in its comments filed with EPA.
Why are radical feminists on this site suddenly using the T-slur? It used to be radfems users on here challenged fellow feminist users who used the T-slur, but now the slur seems to be used more frequently without much thought. It's a homophobic term, and one that (alongside the q-slur) is often hurled at homosexual men and women during hate crimes against them. Why do other feminists recently seem to think it's okay to hurl?
I think that when you’ve just always had dysphoria about something it’s really, really hard to imagine that you can ever beat it or that it could not be natural. I never wanted to grow breasts. When I did I was distressed. I wanted them gone. They didn’t seem like they were supposed to be there. I’d imagine peeling them off and revealing my “real” flat chest underneath. I remember telling my mom I was just so glad they were at least small and her telling me I wouldn’t always feel that way but I always did. I remember feeling, near constantly, trapped by my own body.
But last night I caught myself thinking to myself, “I love my boobs.” It wasn’t in the way people ever wanted me to love them. It wasn’t as some symbol of sexuality or femininity or potential maternity. It was more like, “what a cute, funny feature of the strange sort of animal that I am.”
Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is just that it’s possible. You can make it here. You can find peace with your body even if your distress feels intrinsic and even if everyone else is insisting you can’t. You don’t have to change.
As more teens come out as trans, experts clash over how schools should help
Miles Everitt, 18, thinks himself lucky to have been well supported by his school when he came out as transgender. Growing up female, he’d always preferred to wear boys’ clothes and play the male character in online games; at secondary school, after he cut his hair short, many teachers assumed he was a boy. It was seeing a trans character on Hollyoaks and then reading blogs by young trans people on Tumblr that made him realise he could be transgender.
Three years ago he came out in a video he posted on Facebook. His mother’s response was to go into his school at Wadebridge, Cornwall, to talk to Miles’s “awesome” headteacher, Tina Yardley: “She went in, and said, ‘My child wants to be called Miles,’ and she [Yardley] was like, ‘That’s fine. We’ll make sure all teachers call him that from now on’.”
Miles says: “It meant my teachers were calling me the correct name and pronouns, and it means a lot to all trans people to be accepted and addressed in the right way.”
As well as respecting Miles’s new name and pronoun, Wadebridge school agreed he could use an accessible changing room for PE and the male staff toilets. Miles, who is now at college and plans to study paramedic science at university, is taking testosterone to complete his transition and is planning gender reassignment surgery.
Schools are supporting increasing numbers of transgender students, using a variety of guidance from the teaching unions and charities such as Mermaids (which has a grant of £35,000 from the Department for Education to deliver training to 35 schools).
This rise is reflected in referrals to the children’s Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust, which increased by 1,978% – from 97 in 2009 to 2,016 in 2016-17. Of those children, 70% are biologically female.
Bernadette Wren, a clinical psychologist at Gids, says many young people seen by the service have been bullied or self-harm, and a number are on the autistic spectrum.
Hessle Academy in Yorkshire, which has three students transitioning from female to male, has used Mesmac, a local charity, to train staff on transgender issues, while Barnardo’s has delivered assemblies and workshops to year 8 and 10 students. The school has also set up an email address that students can contact anonymously about their gender identity.
Sarah Young, the school’s head, sees the increase in numbers identifying as transgender as largely positive: “These young people are being given the opportunity and support to come and talk to somebody earlier than they might have done in a previous time.”
Now a fierce national debate over gender self-identification is spilling over into guidance for schools. On one side are those who think women and girls should be entitled to safe spaces that aren’t automatically accessible to trans girls. On the other are those who believe all who identify as female should have full access to female toilets and changing rooms. Recently, Girlguiding leaders have protested about a policy that allows boys identifying as girls to share tents with girls on overnight trips.
Profound disagreement has arisen about what schools should do. Should they, in the words of a widely used toolkit from the Allsorts Youth Project in Brighton, “make visible and celebrate trans people”? Or take the “watchful waiting” approach advocated by the Transgender Trend pack, which warns schools to be “aware of the risk of ‘social contagion’ from celebrity trans internet vloggers who glamorise medical transition”?
Stephanie Davies-Arai, a parenting adviser, launched the Transgender Trend resource pack in February half-term, thinking it would barely get noticed. Instead, she says: “It just blew up”. The LGBT lobby group Stonewall accused Transgender Trend, the organisation Davies-Arai set up two-and-a-half years ago, of spreading “damaging myths, panic and confusion”, and advised local authorities not to use the pack. On Twitter, people piled in, with one describing the pack (which had been checked by lawyers) as a “modern edition of Mein Kampf”.
Davies-Arai says she took an interest in the subject because as a child she had felt herself to be a boy, and she didn’t think it was a good idea to label children like her as transgender because she believes that in some cases, these feelings resolve naturally by the end of adolescence.
While the Allsorts advice states that “trans pupils or students should have access to the changing room that corresponds to their gender identity” and that in PE lessons, students “should be enabled to participate in the activity which corresponds to their gender identity if this is what they request”, Davies-Arai argues that shared changing rooms present difficulties for some girls. Few teenage girls will be willing to admit that they feel uncomfortable sharing a changing room with a biologically male student, she says.
She points out that the technical guidance on the Equality Act for schools suggests offering students “private changing facilities, such as the staff changing room or another suitable space” – the approach taken at Miles’s school.
Susie Green, CEO of the charity Mermaids, disagrees, saying the debate about single-sex toilets seems “engineered to whip up fear” and is equivalent to “arguing people of colour shouldn’t be allowed to use the same toilets as white people in case they make them dirty”.
Claire Birkenshaw, a transgender former headteacher, says the wide range of different advice creates confusion and conflict. “There needs to be clear statutory guidance for schools that incorporates the views of experts from education, the medical profession, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and trans people,” she says. “Rows about a vulnerable and marginalised group in education are not helpful.”
The EHRC is planning to issue guidance of its own next month, something Birkenshaw welcomes. “Schools want to support the transgender young person, but at the same time they’ll be reflecting on how other children may feel, on how staff are going to feel and parents.”
Davies-Arai says her broader concern is that by affirming students’ gender identity, schools may be nudging them down a route that can lead to cross-sex hormones and life-changing surgery without enough time to reflect. Teachers, she says, “are essentially being forced to collude in an experimental approach towards children with gender dysphoria”. She adds: “You can support children and accept them, without affirming their belief that their body is ‘wrong’.”
Adele Robinson (not her real name), a head of year at a secondary school, shares Davies-Arai’s worries. The school has had 12 children, all girls, come out as transgender in the past 18 months. The majority, she says, have autism, and some have experienced sexual abuse.
When they come out, she says, they have brought in information sourced from Tumblr blogs and YouTube videos. Although her team does its best to “support every child in a loving, kind and compassionate way”, she feels that staff are too frightened to challenge what she sees as harmful practices: “We have chest binders worn in school, which is horrible. If a child was cutting, they would be straight in with a counsellor. Yet damaging developing breast tissue goes unquestioned. It’s a gross failure in terms of child protection.”
Green disagrees, and argues for a biological underpinning to transgender identity: “If a child or young person consistently, insistently and persistently states their feelings, to ignore, punish or repress their gender identity would effectively be reparative therapy.”
At Wadebridge school, Miles’s former headteacher says: “You just have to put the child at the centre of everything to enable that child to feel comfortable and supported. The biggest message I’d want to get out is that this is not a transgender issue, this is a supporting young people issue.”
The best way of providing support is, however, something that the two sides seem unlikely to agree on.
What Do Radical Feminists who don’t recognize trans identity as valid (refraining from using that dreaded T word out of respect for the discussion) even mean by “performing femininity”— genuinely curious, so please just educate me if I’m misinformed, I don’t want to fight I really just want to know
So the fundamental tenant of core Feminist Theory is to eliminate a sex based oppressive system (patriarchy) by first destroying the culture of contempt for women and girls (misogyny) that perpetuates it, right?
Whatever your feminism dives into beyond that/ how your activism manifest itself is a matter of personal preference, so I don’t really care about that.
My question is this:
If the intent isn’t to do away with gendered pronouns (re:keeping he/him & she/her), if the intent isn’t to do away with gender clothing, or sex segregated bathrooms— if the intent is to “abolish gender”, what’s the plan for doing that?
We’ve established that it’s fine for women to wear makeup if they choose that for themselves (correct me if I’m wrong), that it’s fine for women to have long hair and to wear “feminine” things like dresses and heels. We’ve established that sex segregated spaces and services are important and necessary. And we’ve established that the personal autonomy and bodily agency of individuals (especially women) is crucial to be free on a base of base level.
If all of this is true,
Q1: How are we to abolish gender without abolishing the constructs that comprise how we interact with people on the basis of sex category?? That is to ask, how is gender abolition going to work if the systems that divide us on the basis of gender are to remain??
Q3: If gender IS intrinsically linked to biology (re: trans women cannot be women as they are biologically male, which makes them men), meaning that, no matter our biology we are either men or women, how are we supposed to then view gender as phenomenon explicitly separate from biology? That is to ask how we are meant to interact with the word around us in a gender absent fashion if gender constructs remain.
Q3: Some Radical Feminist see trans women as “caricature” of Real Women But—
Isn’t asserting that womanhood can be caricatured at all, misogyny? Isn’t the implication of trans women being imposters— that they embody the most “stereotypical” aspects of femininity, itself rooted in the misogynoir of acceptable feminine respectability? I’m so far as, if a Real Woman can have long hair and wear makeup and dresses, how is that not bad, but it is when a a trans person does it?? Also, if being a trans woman is innately caricature, what about trans women who present in a stereotypically masc masculine way?? Are the still caricaturing women, and if not, how would this not be considered perpetuating acceptable feminine respectability— by saying that they can’t be women because they aren’t feminine enough??
Isn’t the characterization of a person who isn’t actively parodying women (drag) misogynistic??
If I’m not following logically, let me know BUT
It seems to me that the obsession with the femme aesthetics of trans women stems from male ideas of acceptable womanliness, because if there is no one way to be a woman— how can a trans person parody a woman??
If women have the capacity to exist outside of femininity while still doing things that are considered, even by radical feminists, to be feminine— how is acceptable to assert that they can be parodied on the basis of femininity and that not be misogyny??
Is this whole argument the assumption that feminism is bad instead of the way femininity is socialized being bad???
@ilnol The content on your blog is almost entirely pornography gifs, and that alone makes me a bit skeptical that you really care to genuinely learn about these concepts... but if I am wrong, and you would like to have a discussion about it, I would also be open to be directly messaged by you.
Using the skills and market access they get through a program run by a Dutch dairy corporation, women farmers in Nigeria are finally able to help support their families, challenging deeply entrenched attitudes about traditional gender roles.
ALAGA, Nigeria – Every morning, Ayisat Mohammed wakes at 5:30 a.m. to milk some of the 50 or so cows she keeps in this sleepy town in Oyo state, southwest Nigeria.
When she’s done, Ayisat, 40, transfers the raw milk into a container, which she and her husband take to the town’s milk-collection center. There, the milk is tested before being transported to the town of Iseyin, where it’s cooled and tested again. Then it travels 125 miles (200km) in a refrigerated tanker to the Lagos depot of one of the world’s largest dairy corporations.
Seven years ago, Ayisat was barely scraping by, making about 3,600 naira ($10) a week selling cheese around town. Now she brings in 8,400 naira ($23) a week as one of the 200 female dairy farmers in Alaga who make a living supplying raw milk to Dutch multinational Friesland Campina through its Dairy Development Program (DDP).
The program, which was launched in Asia in the 1980s before coming to Africa in the 2000s, trains smallholder dairy farmers in collecting raw milk, hygienically, with the aim of helping communities achieve food security while also expanding the company’s milk supply chain. The Nigerian arm of the program was established in 2011 across five towns in Oyo state.
“The program gives local farmers access to skills and knowledge to help them raise the safety and quality of the raw milk they produce,” Friesland Campina’s regional DDP manager, Sybren Attema, says. “[It] also increases farm productivity and supports farmers by improving access to markets for their products.”
The program focuses on female farmers because “women play an important role in agriculture, including dairy farming,” Attema says.
Last year alone, 920 women in Oyo state were trained as part of the program. The farmers are shown how to collect milk hygienically and store it in aluminum buckets. Friesland Campina extension officers regularly visit the farmers to give follow-up training and support, and run spot checks on the milk’s quality.
Investing in Women
Ologun Olakunle, an investment banker based in Nigeria, says a program like this is win-win: it benefits the women farmers with training and a steady income while also ensuring the corporation has a regular supply of clean, raw milk. “Major corporations will find it financially beneficial,” he says.
The International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), a United States-based nonprofit multinational organization, is also confident that the model is good for farmers and companies alike. Since 2012 the Alabama-headquartered IFDC, which focuses on increasing and sustaining food security and agricultural productivity, has been linking smallholder farmers with major organizations such as Nestle and the Nigerian Brewery. Farmers receive training on how to produce and supply quality raw materials such as maize, sorghum, vegetables and cow milk, and the corporations keep their supplies topped up.
“Currently we have an average of 73,000 smallholders farmers, out of which 29 percent are women,” says Thompson Ogunsanmi, IFDC country agribusiness portfolio leader.
One thing the IFDC learned once it launched the program was that women are much more vulnerable in terms of integrating into the agriculture value chain.
“Most times, women have limited information on how to succeed in a value chain or are hindered in some way – like where women are not expected to own land due to cultural bias,” Ogunsanmi says. “What we do is bridge that gap through programs, seminars and workshops.”
Making Money and Changing Attitudes
According to Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, women account for 75 percent of the country’s farming population, and are usually responsible for tasks such as feeding livestock, rearing young animals, milking, cleaning and bookkeeping. But opportunities for women to make good money or advance their careers in agriculture are limited.
“Typically, women achieve yields that are 20–30 percent lower than men because of a lack of access to productive resources and services,” says Attema at Friesland Campina.
The women involved in the program say it has given them some financial independence – for the first time in their lives, they don’t need to ask their husbands for money to buy food or other necessities.
Ayisat Mohammed, 40, was barely scraping by producing and selling cheese curds, but now makes a good living providing raw milk to the Dutch multinational dairy corporation Friesland Campina. (Festus Iyorah)
The female farmers’ newfound economic autonomy is also changing the community’s attitudes toward the roles of men and women. Patriarchal norms are deeply entrenched in parts of rural Nigeria, with men responsible for providing all a family’s food and other needs. But since the women in Alaga have been making their own money, they have been sharing in the family spending.
Sulaimon Adam’s wife, Hawau, has been delivering raw milk to the collection center every day since joining the program last year. Adam, 22, says his wife has been supporting the family financially since she started making a profit.
“Anything the house needs, like palm oil and other food items, she buys it from the money she makes supplying raw milk,” Adam says, smiling.
For Ayisat Mohammed in Alaga, being part of the program has helped ease her financial stress and lets her spend more time with her family and friends.
“Supplying milk is better than selling cheese,” she says, flashing a wide grin. “After milking my cow in the morning, I rest. I will never sell cheese again.”
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