#Jo Bartosch

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jo Bartosch

Published: Apr 21, 2024

How did people emerge from the hysteria of the witch trials? What must it have felt like to live through the period when supposed witches were suddenly revealed to be ordinary women? What did the accusers say when it became clear that these supposed agents of Satan were simply adult human females? Did they feel guilt and try to make amends? Did they shirk their responsibility? Or did they double down?

The reactions to the publication of the Cass Review last week might give us some idea. The activists, medical professionals and celebrities who championed the trans cause have been confronted with the horror they helped create. Dr Hilary Cass’s report into the NHS’s treatment of gender-confused kids has radically transformed the trans debate, exposing ‘gender-affirming care’ as a dangerous experiment. Now, the disciples of trans ideology are scrambling to save face.

The most common reaction from cheerleaders of trans ideology has been to meekly plead ignorance. One such case is that of Dr Adam Rutherford, geneticist, science communicator and president of Humanists UK – an organisation that in recent years has made a hard turn away from science and rationality in favour of worshipping the cult of gender identity. Yet when he was invited to comment on the Cass Review by Sex Matters director Maya Forstater on X, Rutherford said: ‘It’s not something I know much about.’ Really? It’s somewhat difficult to believe that Rutherford has somehow missed seeing this bit of hugely significant medical news.

This is mirrored by the bleating entreaties for ‘nuance’ from television presenter Kirstie Allsopp. For the past few years, Allsopp has smeared gender-critical views as transphobic. Now she is attempting to rewrite history by claiming that it has always ‘been possible to debate these things and those saying there was no debate are wrong’. We all know this isn’t true. As JK Rowling correctly points out, ‘one of the gender ideologues’ favourite slogans is “no debate”’.

Perhaps the most egregious response of all has come from former Stonewall CEO Baroness Ruth Hunt. It was Hunt who oversaw the charity’s transformation from a gay-rights charity to an LGBT lobby group, with the emphasis firmly on the T. It was under her watch that Stonewall tried to silence warnings about the dangers of experimental puberty blockers. Yet last week, Hunt told The Times that she had simply ‘trusted the experts’ on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, so she couldn’t possibly be held accountable. Given that Stonewall itself was deferred to as an ‘expert’ organisation on the issue of gender-affirming care, it is hard to accept Hunt’s projection of innocence. She was hardly some misled ingénue.

Even more deranged and delusional are those who have dismissed the Cass Review as ‘unscientific’. Apparently, Cass’s four years of research and the reams of data she gathered are simply a pretext for promoting a ‘transphobic’ narrative. This rejection of reason is perhaps most eloquently demonstrated by the hyperbolic hashtag, #CassKillsKids, which has been tweeted out by the likes of broadcaster and trans activist India Willoughby. But this position is so patently untrue that only a small minority of the most committed zealots seem to be defending it.

The fact is, it is incredibly difficult for trans activists to obscure their roles in this scandal. Many of them must now be aware that they cheered on a gruesome, ideologically motivated experiment on children. After all, the facts are now indisputable.

In measured tones and meticulous detail, Cass’s report reveals what was really going on inside the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). She concludes that the ‘gender affirming’ medical treatments it provided, like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, are based on ‘wholly inadequate’ evidence. Doctors are usually cautious when adopting new treatments, but Cass says ‘quite the reverse happened in the field of gender care for children’. Instead, thousands of children were put on an unproven medical pathway. Worse still, medical professionals seemed largely uninterested in uncovering the side effects and long-term risks of these drugs. Cass says that all but one adult gender clinic refused to share patient data that would allow her team to study how childhood transitioners fared as adults. This made it virtually impossible to research the potential longer-term consequences of transitioning.

The implications of the review are so grave that politicians have had no choice but to act. On Monday, health secretary Victoria Atkins gave an excoriating speech to parliament, laying out the changes in policy that have already been made and those still to come. She reiterated that NHS England would no longer be able to prescribe puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria outside of clinical trials. She also promised a crackdown on private prescriptions, as well as an urgent review on clinical policy for prescribing cross-sex hormones. Vitally, she also announced that NHS trusts that initially refused to cooperate with the review will now share their data, hopefully opening the door for further research. These developments were all sorely needed.

Atkins also made a point of thanking the clinicians, academics, activists and journalists who raised the alarm. She acknowledged that they had ‘risked their careers’ to do so. She told her fellow politicians that it should trouble each of them that the NHS ‘was overtaken by a culture of secrecy and ideology that was allowed to trump evidence and safety’.

Finally, politicians are taking these concerns seriously. Until very recently, they did not want to know. Back in May 2019, I was one of a handful of people to attend the First Do No Harm meeting at the House of Lords. There, in a tiny cramped room, we listened to clinicians and campaigners who were desperately worried about the goings on in the GIDS Tavistock clinic in London.

First Do No Harm was organised by campaigner Venice Allan and Let Women Speak founder Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker), with the aim of bringing together journalists, politicians and medical experts. It was chaired and spon.sored by Labour peer Lord Lewis Moonie, who himself had a background in psychology and clinical pharmacological research. Among the attendees was psychoanalyst Marcus Evans. He had resigned from his post as a governor at the Tavistock clinic in February that year, citing concerns about the influence of lobby groups on clinical practice.

Despite this wealth of knowledge and expertise, First Do No Harm went largely ignored by politicians. Invitations were sent out to every member of parliament. But, aside from Moonie, the only politicians in attendance were Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and Conservative MP David Davies. As Evans explained at the time: ‘No one would basically attend, they’d be threatened that they would have the whip withdrawn if they attended… the silencing of opposition in this area is unbelievable.’

There was certainly a cost for Moonie. After over 40 years in the Labour Party, he was told by party general secretary Jenny Formby that his membership would be at risk if he proceeded with the event. So he resigned. Five years on, and the concerns of Moonie, a small band of whistleblowing clinicians and tenacious campaigners have finally been acknowledged.

While First Do No Harm was the first public meeting bringing concerned voices together, staff within GIDS had already been sounding the alarm for some time. It was all the way back in 2004 that Susan Evans, wife of Marcus, first spoke out about the ‘precipitous referral’ of gender-confused children on to a medical pathway. As a clinical nurse at the Tavistock, she tried to raise the possibility that there were alternatives to medically transitioning children. But she was advised that GIDS would be unable to attract patients without offering puberty blockers. Evans resigned in 2007.

Today, Evans tells me that, while she is relieved about the findings of the Cass Review, she is frustrated to see ‘what happened at GIDS described as a debate between two sides’:

‘I wanted to ensure that kids were receiving a thorough assessment and that as a team there would be a more holistic exploration… That’s not a toxic debate, that is clinical discussion and that’s what a responsible clinician ought to do. All I ever did was raise ordinary but important clinical and safeguarding concerns and questions. I was inquisitive.’

Thankfully, there were still some other inquisitive clinicians out there. In 2018, Dr David Bell, consultant psychiatrist and staff governor at the Tavistock, wrote an internal report that slammed GIDS for promoting a model of uncritical gender affirmation. He blamed trans lobby groups like Mermaids and Stonewall for infecting the organisation. He also explained that many of the young patients seeking to medically transition would otherwise grow up to be lesbian, gay or bisexual. For this, senior management at GIDS threatened Bell with disciplinary action, in an attempt to silence him.

Shortly afterwards, in 2019, clinical psychologist Kirsty Entwistle, who had previously worked at the GIDS satellite clinic in Leeds, penned an open letter, echoing similar concerns. She warned that patients were falsely being told that puberty blockers were ‘fully reversible’ and that accusations of transphobia were stifling important medical and safeguarding discussions.

GIDS was desperate to silence anyone who expressed doubts about how clinics were operating. One such whistleblower was Sonia Appleby, who was a social worker and safeguarding lead at the Tavistock. In 2016, Appleby began to raise concerns about the shambolic record-keeping and the potential over-prescription of puberty blockers. For this, she was bullied and monstered by management, and shunned by GIDS director Dr Polly Carmichael. Carmichael apparently told her team that Appleby had ‘an agenda’ and discouraged staff from sharing any safeguarding concerns with her. In a small act of justice, in 2021 Appleby was awarded £20,000 in damages for the appalling way she was treated at the Tavistock.

Many of the stories from those who spoke out chime with one another. They talk about being alarmed that children’s underlying issues were being systematically overlooked. GIDS was more interested in prescribing medical treatments than in helping children who were suffering from homophobic bullying, mental-health issues, sexual abuse or other traumas. When questions were asked about the safety of puberty blockers and hormones, staff faced an atmosphere where clinical curiosity was discouraged. In all, between 2016 and 2019, a total of 35 clinicians left the Tavistock, with many citing concerns about children being over-diagnosed. Meanwhile, management ignored all these concerns and children continued to be prescribed puberty blockers.

It was shortly after Carmichael’s appointment in 2011 that GIDS began its first trial of puberty blockers. Before the research had even concluded, these drugs, which have also been used to chemically castrate sex offenders, were made more widely available to children. In 2014, the minimum prescription age was dropped from 16 to 11. Some private clinics even started prescribing them to children as young as nine.

GIDS management, it seemed, was remarkably unbothered by the lack of evidence for puberty blockers. In 2016, Carmichael told a World Professional Association for Transgender Health conference in Amsterdam that they were crucial for trans-identified kids and ‘incredibly successful’. But in the same speech, she admitted that ‘actually, the Dutch are the only team really who have published long-term perspective studies about this. So there is very little data available.’ Indeed, as Carmichael admits, virtually the only bit of evidence ever referenced in support of puberty blockers is a piece of flawed research from the Netherlands. It was later revealed that the findings from GIDS’s own puberty-blocker trial were far from reliable.

It was left to those on the outside to bring public attention to what was happening at GIDS. Yet, just as with the silencing of clinicians, those outside the medical profession were also smeared as transphobic for questioning the new wisdom about so-called trans kids.

One of the earliest groups to demand an evidence-based approach was Transgender Trend, which was founded by Stephanie Davies-Arai in 2015. She and her organisation were almost instantly hounded and derided by trans extremists. A children’s book published by Transgender Trend was even compared to ‘terrorist propaganda’. But this smear campaign wouldn’t stop the truth from being revealed. Transgender Trend soon attracted the attention of Oxford professor Michael Biggs. In 2019, he published a report with the organisation, showing that the use of puberty blockers did not reduce the mental distress experienced by patients – a conclusion now backed up by Cass.

This reality became impossible to ignore, especially as ‘detransitioners’ began to speak out. The existence of people who regretted their decision to transition proved to be a thorn in the side of the trans movement and a powerful testimony against so-called trans healthcare. In November 2019, a women’s rights group called Make More Noise hosted the first panel discussion of detransitioners in the UK, giving them an opportunity to share their stories with journalists. With testosterone-cracked voices and mastectomy scars, these young women embody the harms of gender medicine. They were the ‘data’ that the clinicians at GIDS had overlooked.

Detransitioners fought to make themselves heard. In 2020, a high-profile legal challenge by detransitioner Keira Bell against the Tavistock prompted NHS England to commission the Cass Review. Leading paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass was then tasked with finding out what was really happening at GIDS.

Detransitioner Sinead Watson, who, as a young adult, took medical steps to present as male, is one of those who gave evidence to the Cass Review researchers. She tells me: ‘They asked about my story, how I was evaluated, how quickly, about the side effects of [testosterone] and about the surgery. They asked how I was helped to deal with the regret when I sought out support from the NHS, and seemed genuinely surprised I had received no help.’

It truly is a scandal that children and youngsters were put on a pathway to medicalisation and then promptly abandoned. There are now calls for a public inquiry, and it looks like adult services will also now face their own Cass-style review. But the problem with the trans ideology is that it extends far beyond medicine. It is a mind virus that has infected almost every British institution.

Certainly, there can never be true justice for detransitioners. They will continue to carry the mistakes of the medical establishment, and the failure of the government, on their bodies. It also seems unlikely that any of the whistleblowers who were vilified for raising the alarm will receive apologies or retractions. Trans cheerleaders will continue to deny any complicity. No doubt the GIDS management and healthcare professionals who tried to suppress the truth will be able to slink off to lucrative careers elsewhere.

Still, the Cass Review has revealed that the witches were right. Its publication ought to mark a historical turning point, and serve as a reminder that truth can win out. We must remember all this when the next hysterical mania sweeps over society.

[thearbourist]

The DWR Passage of the Day - Jo Bartosch - There is no 'moderate' amount of reality.

Jo Bartosch writes in The Critic about some of the more recent nuances of the gender debate in the UK.  Women espousing a defence of their rights and reality are starting to be heard and acknowledged, and it is about damn time. “Acknowledgment of both reality and personal liberty must be the basis from which progress is made. In the eyes of the self-styled “moderates”, this makes me one of those…

[coochiequeens]

The tide is turning and the TQ+ only have themselves to blame

Brits are turning against gender ideology

Ordinary people are swiftly waking up to the threat posed by 'trans rights'.

JO BARTOSCH. 30th September 2023

In news that has left members of the dinner-party set spluttering over their decolonised soya lattes, it turns out the great British public isn’t as bigoted as they fantasised. Published last week, the latest British Attitudes Survey (BAS) has shown that Brits are increasingly tolerant of same-sex relationships and ever-more accepting of sex before marriage or abortion.

But perhaps most tellingly, as attitudes toward sexual morality have become more liberal, attitudes toward transgenderism have become far less sympathetic. The survey shows that the proportion of people who think someone should be able to change the sex on their birth certificate if they want has fallen from 53 per cent in 2019 to 30 per cent today. The proportion of people who ‘describe themselves as not prejudiced at all against people who are transgender’ has also declined from 82 per cent in 2019 to 64 per cent today.

That particular statistic has been taken to mean that there is a rising tide of ‘transphobic’ bigotry. But I see no trace of that in the gender debate or in broader society. More likely, these stats capture the public’s growing concern about policies and ideas associated with transgender ideology, from the erosion of women’s rights to children’s safety.

Predictably, this change in attitudes has been condemned by those who have built their careers on the grievance politics of trans activism. Former Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelley opined on X (formerly Twitter) that ‘years of relentless toxic coverage and political manipulation is making us less tolerant and less supportive of a marginalised community’.

Kelley is just wrong. This attitudinal shift is not prompted by ‘toxic’ reporting or ‘political manipulation’. It’s actually prompted by a greater understanding of ‘transgender issues’. And here Kelley is correct – news coverage has made a difference. It has made us aware of what the cause of trans rights actually entails.

So, as stories like that of double rapist Adam Graham (aka Isla Bryson), a man who was put in a women’s prison, have received column inches in the British press, public opinion has begun to shift. Furthermore, in the face of obvious injustices, such as men triumphing in women’s sporting competitions and winning female-only awards, accusations of ‘transphobia’ have lost their power to silence would-be dissenters. The public is gradually waking up to the reality of transgender ideology and they don’t like it.

Gillian Prior, deputy chief executive at the National Centre for Social Research, which produces the BAS, disagrees. She seems to think the public’s turn against trans rights is evidence of our growing illiberalism. ‘In the case of transgender people’, she said, ‘the recent public debate about the law on gender recognition has appeared to have resulted in attitudes becoming less liberal than they were just a few years ago’. But this completely misunderstands the issues. There is nothing illiberal about not wanting women to give up hard-earned rights and spaces to accommodate the feelings of men who identify as trans.

In fact, the survey shows just how liberal Britain is now. The change in attitudes toward homosexuality has been remarkable and encouraging for those who believe in equality. Over the past 40 years, the proportion of those who think that same-sex relations were ‘always wrong’ has fallen from 50 per cent to just nine per cent.

The cause of LGB rights is very different to that of ‘trans rights’. Gay liberation was a fight to achieve legal parity with heterosexuals. The fight for trans rights is not about fairness or legal parity. It’s about allowing children to be put on experimental, puberty-blocking drugs, advocating for taxpayer-funded cosmetic surgery and, above all, demanding that the rights of other groups, especially women, are infringed upon.

These illiberal and dangerous demands have been pushed by trans activists, not those advocating for LGB rights. As Kate Barker, chief executive officer of LGB Alliance, the only charity advocating exclusively for same-sex attracted people, explains, the battle for equality for gay and lesbian people has largely been won. If there is a growing threat to gay and lesbian rights today, it comes precisely from trans activists.

‘Today, gay men and lesbians are being branded as discriminatory bigots for being attracted exclusively to one sex, their own’, says Barker. ‘This is the result of gender-identity ideology, which promotes the belief that it is valid for some men to “identify” as women and vice versa. Believers in this ideology say it’s “transphobic” for lesbians to rule out all males who “identify as lesbians” as potential sexual partners. It is a bizarre reversal of the prejudice we faced in the Seventies and Eighties.’

So, despite the howls of protestation from trans activists, Britons are not becoming more intolerant. Rather, they are waking up and saying no to an ideology that threatens us all.

Jo Bartosch is a journalist campaigning for the rights of women and girls.

[itsawritblr]

"The Harry Potter brats owe JK Rowling an apology."

Jo Bartosch, 12th April 2024, via Spiked:

The Cass Review has cast the gender activism of celebs like Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson in a very different light.

JK Rowling is furious. And who can blame her? The recently published Cass Review has proven what she has been saying – and demonised for – for years. On Wednesday, the author and philanthropist posted on X to suggest that she wouldn’t forgive the actors-cum-activists she made famous for turning on her.

Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe (who played Harry in the blockbuster films) and Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) have both previously condemned the franchise’s creator for daring to point out the dangers of gender ideology. Now, in light of Dr Hilary Cass’s damning report, Rowling has said: ‘Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single-sex spaces.’

Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Watson or Radcliffe will be apologising to anyone. The pair have been committed to pushing gender ideology ever since they publicly broke with Rowling in 2020, issuing robotic soundbites in support of trans rights.

This came in response to an essay that Rowling published, in which she outlined her concerns about the threat to women’s rights and children’s health from trans activism. It was powerful, personal and compassionate. Not that any of this mattered to the celebrity set, who turned on the once-beloved children’s author immediately.

Luvvies are as one in their tendency to pick up luxury beliefs like fashion accessories. And for the past few years no cause has been more on-trend than protecting ‘trans youth’. This newly discovered group are, apparently, at unique risk from an evil cabal of haters. Trans lobby groups like Stonewall and Mermaids push the myth that gender-confused kids are at risk of committing suicide unless we unconditionally affirm their identities. By this logic, anyone who disagrees is a guaranteed villain. And so Rowling, a woman who wants to stop kids from being given experimental drugs, and to help them get the support they so clearly need, has been cast as a witch.

Thankfully, the Cass Review has vindicated everyone who sought to raise the alarm about the growing numbers of gender-confused children seeking a medical answer for their growing pains. As Rowling put it on X:

‘And if I sound angry, it’s because I’m bloody angry. I read Cass this morning and my anger’s been mounting all day. Kids have been irreversibly harmed, and thousands are complicit, not just medics, but the celebrity mouthpieces, unquestioning media and cynical corporations.’

Perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘celebrity mouthpieces’ like Watson and Radcliffe have been noticeably silent on any of this. The lives of these privileged brats, elevated to stardom by Rowling’s creative genius, could not be more different from those of the young people who have come to regret taking cross-sex hormones and undergoing surgeries.

To take one example, at around the time Watson was appointed as a visiting fellow at Oxford University’s Lady Margaret Hall in 2016, the then 19-year-old Keira Bell had been taking testosterone for just over two years. In 2017, the year that Bell had her healthy breasts surgically removed, Watson was getting hers out for a risqué Vanity Fair photoshoot. There is a gulf between the smug celebrities who parade around chanting about ‘trans rights’ and the vulnerable young people at the sharp end of these trendy crusades.

Generations of children have grown up immersed in the fantasy world of Harry Potter, where impossible things are true. While it’s charming when kids lose themselves in harmless make-believe, it is downright disturbing when influential adults do the same. Watson and Radcliffe really think that chanting magic phrases like ‘I identify as’ can change reality. And now that the harms of the trans experiment on children are being revealed, their continued silence is shameful.

Watson and Radcliffe would do well to remember that outside the worlds of Hollywood and Hogwarts, their actions have real consequences. Rowling is right: they owe the people harmed by trans ideology an apology.

Jo Bartosch is a journalist campaigning for the rights of women and girls.

Then:

Now:

[thevoyagein]

Apparently everything must now come second to gender ideology, including standard medical advice about feeding babies. When women breastfeed their infants, they are told to avoid everything from paracetamol to a glass of wine. Yet to induce simulated lactation in men requires a cocktail of powerful drugs, the effects of which on babies are unknown. Discharge from men’s nipples is also usually a sign of sickness.

‘Concerns over the actual content of male “milk” are important, but the real issue is more about quantity – it’s not possible for a male to produce enough milk to sustain an infant’, says Milli Hill, maternity expert and author of The Positive Birth Book. ‘This means that their “breastfeeding” would only be supplementary. The baby would therefore be taken from the mother and this would 100 per cent have an impact on her own milk supply.’

For Hill, the key question here is who is being served by indulging this fantasy about male lactation: ‘I’m sorry to say that I think it’s only happening to validate the male in question, and that the needs of both the mother and, most importantly, the baby are sidelined.’

This attempt to sever the relationship between mother and child shows us that nothing is out of bounds to trans activists. First, they rewrote language, claiming ‘she’ and ‘woman’ as their own. Then they colonised the spaces and services that women need to feel safe. Now they are attempting to remake motherhood in their own image. A man subjecting his child to questionable secretions from his nipples feels like the final insult.

Transgenderism is an intensely self-centered movement. We are all now cast as extras in someone else’s fantasy, compelled to indulge them. But the sight of a man using a baby as a prop, to support his delusions about being a woman and a mother, suggests it’s high time we stopped playing along.

Jo Bartosch - The bizarre case of the breastfeeding dad

[rapeculturerealities]

It’s notable that anti-trans feminists are employing similar racist dog-whistles that have been used by the Right for centuries to create out-sized fear and outrage among their constituents and followers to justify the out-sized time and energy spent advocating against the lives and safety of the communities they target.

In early 2019, anti-transgender “feminist blog” Feminist Current held an event at the Vancouver Library during which an activist spoke about her work with the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Center, who denied membership to a trans woman. In her speech, Lee Lakeman, the volunteer, invoked Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work developing intersectionality. Lakeman said, “Feminism is the politics that calls for and has always called for an egalitarian future, for non-violent methods to get there, for open dialogue and transparent processes, for an end to the hierarchies of race and class as well as sex, for an end to the violence that supports those hierarchies, for egalitarian sex practices and sex education, for intersectionality — but not the garbage version that’s being peddled.”

In fact, Crenshaw herself writes that intersectionality should be used specifically for people living at the intersections of identity. “Intersectional erasures are not exclusive to black women. People of color within LGBTQ movements; girls of color in the fight against the school-to-prison pipeline; women within immigration movements; trans women within feminist movements; and people with disabilities fighting police abuse — all face vulnerabilities that reflect the intersections of racism, sexism, class oppression, transphobia, able-ism and more. Intersectionality has given many advocates a way to frame their circumstances and to fight for their visibility and inclusion.” [emphasis added] By weaponizing Crenshaw’s own work against her specific wishes, Lakeman erased the incredible work that women of color, including Black women like Crenshaw, have done to support transgender people.

Anti-Black racism among anti-trans “feminists” is common and runs the gamut from accusing sex work activists of co-opting language from pro-slavery forces during the Civil War to specifically likening anti-trans “feminism” to the Civil Rights Movement. Rachel Dolezal, in particular, provides anti-trans “feminists” with an opportunity to espouse anti-Black racism. “Why did trans women lead the Women’s March?” asks Jo Bartosch, “It would be like Rachel Dolezal addressing a Black Lives Matter rally.” Feminist Current published an article titled “You can’t ‘feel’ race, but can you ‘feel’ female? On Rachel Dolezal, Caitlyn Jenner, and unspeakable questions.”

At its heart, the racist rhetoric of anti-trans “feminists” denies the humanity of women of color around the world, transgender and cisgender women alike. And as always, anti-trans advocacy will have the deepest impact on those living at the intersections of multiple identities: transgender people with disabilities, low-income transgender people, and transgender people of color, especially Black, Indigenous, and Latinx transgender women. And therein lies the movement’s true racism.

read more

[make-more-noise]

FEMINISM: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

There has been a surge of Feminist activism across the UK in the past year. Women are agitated and organised. We are finding our voice and our voice is saying NO.

Make More Noise are one such group, created to provide a space for women to talk freely and address uncomfortable truths.

Feminists are a diverse bunch and we don't always see eye to eye. Respectful and honest discussion is essential if we wish to build a unified platform to fight for real social justice. We can't bury our heads in the sand, we need to ask some tough questions and start difficult conversations. Social media is not the best place to communicate, let's do this face to face.

What are we not supposed to talk about? What is the Elephant in the Room? We invited our guests and allowed them to talk about whatever they liked on the topic of feminism's great taboos.

Speakers are:

Sarah Phillimore - Barrister and Disability Activist

Charlotte Hughes - Journalist and Anti-Poverty Campaigner

Jo Bartosch - Campaigning Journalist and co-director of Critical Sisters

Posie Parker - Women's Rights Campaigner and Free Speech Advocate

​

Chaired by:

Bernadette Hyland - Socialist Feminist and Author

​

Tickets are available here. If you wish to come but are unable to afford a ticket please send us a message and we will try to help you.

​

The venue is wheelchair accessible but please let us know if you are a wheelchair user so we can ensure provision.

[tervacious]

Like I get a huge subset of English people remain permanently embued in a 15th century value system in which they get to deride the people they violently colonized and tried to genocide out of existence after stealing everything not nailed down, but speaking as someone who is personally descended from a variety of those colonized peoples, with all due respect, Jo Bartosch can go fuck herself.

[noncyowen]

Jo Bartosch: The BBC's trans propaganda is alienating licence fee payers

Jo Bartosch: The BBC’s trans propaganda is alienating licence fee payers

Jo Bartosch is a journalist and campaigner for the rights of women. If you knew that a teenager was buying potentially dangerous drugs online would you send in a film crew or call social services? The BBC have made their stance clear; vulnerable kids injecting themselves with hormones is televisual content to educate, entertain and inform the nation. Aired earlier this month, a programme called…

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jo Bartosch

Published: May 3, 2023

Twenty years ago, after one too many beers, I met some pagans in a pub in Gloucestershire. They invited me to travel with them to Ireland the next morning on a spiritual pilgrimage. I expected a mystical experience, but I remained unmoved. On returning to Ireland last week to attend two rival conferences on how best to help people distressed about their gender, I realised that my scepticism is still intact – and that mad beliefs about magic have spread far beyond damp hippies.

The two conferences were very different. The larger, more established conference was organised by the European Professional Association for Transgender Health (EPATH), which claims to promote the ‘mental, physical and social health of transgender people in Europe’. The other conference was organised by a relative upstart called Genspect. Founded in 2021, Genspect is an international organisation that aims to ‘promote high-quality, evidence-based care for gender-nonconforming individuals all around the world’.

In a press release from March, Genspect’s director, psychotherapist Stella O’Malley, summed up the difference between the two organisations’ approaches when dealing with those experiencing gender distress: ‘The EPATH programme promotes heavy medical interventions while Genspect favours the least-invasive approach first.’ Genspect, explained O’Malley, aims to ‘crack open EPATH’s mono-focus on medicalised modes of treatment’.

The Genspect conference set out to challenge both the magical thinking of trans ideology and the medicalisation of childhood distress that this has led to. This was reflected by the presence of around a dozen ‘detransitioners’ among the delegates – that is, people who regret transitioning and want to revert to their original gender. These detransitioners, who were predominantly under 30, are now living with the consequences of taking hormones and having their healthy body parts amputated. In time, they might recover their mental health. But in many cases the harm done to their bodies will be permanent.

Michael Biggs, an associate professor in sociology at the University of Oxford, has long been investigating the effect of puberty-blocking drugs on sexual maturation. Presenting his findings at the Genspect conference, Biggs revealed that patients who have suppressed their puberty as children before surgical transition may never be able to orgasm as adults.

Speaking after the conference, Biggs told me that there is a wilful lack of published research on the long-term effects of taking puberty blockers. He said that ‘puberty blockers have been used in the Netherlands for over three decades, and yet the long-term effects are known for only one person’. By the age of 35, that ‘one person was depressed and ashamed of their genitals’.

Biggs also revealed that where research has been carried out into puberty blockers there have been attempts to suppress it. The NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at London’s Tavistock clinic, which is due to be closed down later this year, began a study of 44 children aged between 12 and 15 in 2011. But GIDS director Dr Polly Carmichael effectively kept the results of this trial to herself. The findings remained unpublished until they were discovered and first analysed by Biggs in 2018. ‘It required a complaint to the Health Research Authority, questions in parliament, and a judicial review’, Biggs tells me, ‘before Dr Carmichael finally published the full results’.

Most disturbingly, Biggs told me of the awful fate of one healthy Dutch teenager. After having his puberty blocked as a child, the teenager underwent a vaginoplasty aged 18. The complicated procedure involved taking tissue from his bowel to create a replica vagina and vulva. Within 24 hours of having surgery, he had died in hospital of necrotising fasciitis.

Predictably, EPATH’s conference featured no such criticism of these surgical or medical interventions. Far from it. The conference was even spon.sored by a company offering facial-feminisation surgery, and from the off EPATH went on the offensive. In the opening address, the organisation’s outgoing president, Joz Motmans, attacked ‘anti-gender and anti-trans voices, legislation, policies and movements’. Motmans even claimed that the growing public scepticism towards trans ideology was driven by ‘far-right parties’. ‘We respect everyone’s freedom of speech’, he said, ‘but we choose not to listen to it’.

In the interests of actual free speech and debate, EPATH attendees were told that they would be permitted access to Genspect with their EPATH ticket. This gesture was not reciprocated. Indeed, EPATH has even blocked Genspect from its Twitter account.

Whether or not EPATH chooses to listen, the debate over how best to treat patients with gender distress is gaining momentum across Europe. Last year’s announcement that the Tavistock clinic would be shut down, on the grounds its model of care is ‘not safe’ for children, has sent shockwaves across the continent. Medical bodies are now sounding the alarm in Sweden, France and most recently Norway. More and more clinical professionals are coming out to ask for the evidence that mental distress can be successfully treated by ‘gender-affirming’ medical interventions.

Last week in Ireland, the authority of EPATH’s gender priests took a battering. They showed themselves to be unwilling and perhaps even incapable of engaging with those who hold opposing views. More damning still, they refused to engage with the evidence.

Trans ideology is now being exposed for the magical thinking it always was. Its adherents are doing real harm.

==

Telling people to get a facelift or a boob-job when they're depressed or anxious used to be regarded as unethical.

Now it's a moral imperative.

[thearbourist]

The DWR Feminist Quote of the Day - Jo Bartosch

The DWR Feminist Quote of the Day – Jo Bartosch

I hope Ms.Bartosch is right. The loonery that is gender ideology needs to be stripped of its untouchable status and relegated to the back burner with the rest of religious cock-a-doodle.

[coochiequeens]

A trans comedian is receiving praise from mainstream media, but backlash from women, after a musical performance on UK comedy show Friday Night Live. 

During the live program, trans-identified male comedian Jordan Gray ripped off his clothing to expose his entire naked body, and began to play his keyboard with his penis. This was during Gray’s rendition of his song “Better Than You,” which featured misogynistic lyrics intended to mock females.

“I’m a perfect woman, my tits will never shrink. I’m guaranteed to squirt, and I do anal by default … I am the lizard king, and I can do anything that any other woman can’t … I used to be a man, now I’m better than you,” Gray sang to an audience of delighted onlookers.

The explicit performance took place during a specialFriday Night Live revival event marking Channel 4’s 40th anniversary. The revival featured former Friday Night Live cast members Ben Elton, Enfield, Brand and Julian Clary as well as a number of new comedians, including Gray.

Mainstream media coverage of Gray’s performance has been overwhelmingly positive. PinkNews, a UK-based outlet, referred to Gray’s song as “rousing” and called the performance “iconic,” and characterized any opposition to the performer’s exposure of his genitals on television as “anti-trans.” The sentiment was shared by some LGBT activists on Twitter.

Irish Mirror chose to emphasize glowing comments which praised Gray as “amazing” and stated that “seeing a trans woman get naked on TV is exactly what we needed.”

Reporting on Gray’s exhibitionist stunt, The Daily Mail in particular prompted criticism for the use of the term “her penis” to refer to the incident.

Even some beloved British figures took to social media to heap praise upon Gray. Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs complimented Gray’s “magnificent boobs and equally magnificent member” and called for Gray to run for Prime Minister.

But while no mainstream British outlet has called into question any safeguarding concerns related to the program, many on social media have stated their shock and outrage at what they consider to be indecent exposure, a sexual offense, being normalized, celebrated, and highly publicized. 

Speaking with Reduxx, UK-based journalist and women’s rights campaigner Jo Bartosch criticized the media outlets who chose to reference Gray’s genitals using feminine pronouns, and highlighted the significance of factually-based language. “Whether it’s calling a man ‘Miss’ or using the oxymoronic phrase ‘her penis,’ these linguistic capitulations to men’s paraphilias are dangerous. It is a public sign of the power men like Gray enjoy. And it is terrifying, yet darkly comic, that respected journalists and broadcasters will now lie in this way, because to do otherwise is to risk breaching media guidelines which have been informed by trans lobby groups,” Bartosch said. 

“The phrase ‘her penis’ is an insult to the profession, to audiences and to the truth,” she added.

Bartosch explained that she views pornography as an influential force in the concept of a “female penis,” noting that while it may seem bizarre to “the uninitiated,” there exists within the “male domain of pornography a logic to the idea of a ‘female penis.'” 

She then cited as examples genres such as forced feminization, and sissification, which portray men as being transformed into women through processes that involve makeup, lingerie, sexual submissiveness, and humiliation.

“Whether it’s the rebranding of sexual entertainment as ‘children’s education’ or the use of language to reflect men’s fantasies; aggressively male behaviour which festers in online pornography has seeped over into the real world,” Bartosch stated.

“The excitement men feel is because they know that the social bounds that keep their base impulses in check are straining and being broken, and that it is happening in plain sight. Pornographic values have become so mainstream when men brazenly flash their fetishes they are celebrated for their bravery. One wonders which taboos will be the next to be broken?”

In the days following Channel 4’s broadcast, internet sleuths have brought to light how Gray boasted about being a representative for a charity that promotes gender identity ideology in schools. The charity, Educate and Celebrate, describes its 

programs as offering “the knowledge, skills and confidence to embed gender, gender identity and sexual orientation into the fabric of your organization”. 

Since news of his involvement with the charity has been spread on social media, Educate and Celebrate quietly pulled a page from their site that listed Gray as a patron. “I go into schools to talk about gender as part of a campaign called Educate and Celebrate,” Gray told GuysLikeU. 

“Toddlers kind of get it straightaway. I went into one school recently where there was a 7 year-old transgender girl. And her four year-old classmate, who was a boy, said: ‘Jessie’s a girl and she wants to be a girl. And I am a boy who wants to be a boy.'” “Young minds are very accepting,” Gray added. “It’s teenagers who are harder to get through to. It’s good to educate these kids when they are young.”

A patron of Educate and Celebrate listed alongside Gray, Peter Tatchell, has previously made statements in support of pedophilia and questioning age of consent laws. Tatchell, a former leader of the Gay Liberation Front, authored an obituary in The Independent for Ian Dunn, founder of the former pedophile activist organization the Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE).

Tatchell also published an essay in an anthology released by former vice-chairman of PIE, Warren Middleton, wherein he argued that argued that “children have sexual desires at an early age” and should be “educated” so that they can decide when they want to have sex.

“While it may be impossible to condone pedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive, and harmful,” Tatchell wrote in a letter to The Guardian in 1997.

The revelation that Jordan Gray worked alongside Peter Tatchell for a charity promoting the notion of a gender identity to young children mirrors a recent, widely-publicized scandal involving a pro-pedophilia campaigner’s ties to a children’s charity that promotes the medical “transition” of minors.

Earlier this month, Jacob Breslow, an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics, stepped down from his position as a trustee for UK-based trans activist organization Mermaids following revelations that he had ties to pro-pedophilia lobbyists.

Breslow had, on several occasions, made statements and published academic work that favorably portrayed pedophilia, and had once authored a blog that linked directly to child sexual abuse materials.

ByYuliah Amla

A man thinking he’s better than women and then thinking people want to see his penis

[theresgloryforyou]

excerpt:

What unites women like me and Sadia is that, as socialists, we feel bitterly let down by the left. It seems the apparatchiks have decided to be inclusive of ideologies that exclude the fight for the rights of women and girls. Concerns about the safety and liberty of women and girls should be central to political discourse, and not side-lined because they prompt difficult questions. Rather than awkwardly pretending personal choices and identities exist independently of social structures, we should be striving to change the conditions that inform choice. This concern might be academic, but in reality, it is being written into the statute and informing policy and procedure across the country...

...Similarly, the mainstream left has stayed tight-lipped about sexism in Islam. Islamic faith schools have been found to routinely discriminate against girls, indeed at one co-educational school that’s at the centre of an ongoing court case, books were discovered that promoted violence against women and girls. As Maryam Namazie notes ‘Islamists have become adept at using rights language to impose rights restrictions. Islamist projects like the niqab or Sharia courts are deceptively promoted as “rights” and “choices” when in fact their aim is to control and restrict women and girls.’

Protecting the rightd of people blinded by religion to keep their daughters ignorant about sex and healthy relationships will only hurt their daughters. Protecting the right of transwomen to identify into women’s prisons, hospital wards and domestic violence shelters will only put women at risk. Either way, the majority of white men who file through lobbies in parliament will congratulate themselves on their inclusive and enlightened stance, while never facing the consequences.

[homoliberation]

On actual exclusivity at Pride

Jo Bartosch - Feminist Current 

Ada Wells (née Nathanael Abbotts) at Pride Edinburgh

The downside of including “bisexual” in my dating profile was that I got a slew of invites to threesomes from fleshy suburban swingers. The upside was that I benefited from a bigger dating pool. Around six years ago, on the eve of my 29th birthday, I was reading through the dating profile of a handsome and well-educated man when I came across the word “trans.” At the time, I couldn’t figure out what it was that put me off, and I berated myself for my prejudice. In principle, being trans shouldn’t have bothered me. I reasoned that it was the potential  of surgically constructed genitalia that made me clam-up.

I was reminded of this incident during Pride last year. I have always loved going to Pride — from the glittery drag queens to the freedom of knowing I can hold my same-sex partner’s hand without hostility — it has been a sanctuary for me. The experience of solidarity and acceptance, and the knowledge that for once I was not in a minority was life-affirming. Now in a long-term relationship with a wonderful woman, part of our getting to know one another was through participating in Pride events together. But we didn’t go this year; and I’m not sure we will ever attend again.

While the full humanity (and marketing potential) of LGBT people has at last been embraced by legislators and the mainstream media, the LGBT movement itself has become ever more constrained by regressive ideas about gender. It is widely understood that the majority of women who opt to become transmen were lesbian or bisexual prior to transition. In my own friendship circle I know lesbians who have decided to “live as men,” though none have been able to describe what “living as a man” actually means without relying on sexist stereotypes that should have died out in the 50s. What seems clear is that “living as a man” requires altering their female bodies.

While I respect their choice to live as they wish, I wince when I see my friends’ bound or mastectomy-scarred bodies — it seems to me the opposite of pride in who you are, and the antithesis of the “body positive” feminist message.

Search online and you will find a plethora of positive “trans coming out” stories showcasing young people whose self-hatred was supposedly cured through surgery and hormones. What’s more worrying than all the positive PR for these medical interventions, is the influence of advocacy and pressure groups who produce guidance for statutory bodies from schools to councils. Gendered Intelligence, for example, whose Trans Youth Sexual Health Guide defines gender as one’s “emotions and personality,” tells 16-24 year olds:

“Surgery will affect sex in many ways but the most noticeable effect is a boost in body confidence. You may enjoy sex more as you begin to feel better about expressing yourself.”

The number of children referred to the NHS as a result of confusion about their gender and “transgender feelings” has quadrupled in five years. Trans advocacy organizations are quick to claim that this rise in rates of “trans kids” is due to increased visibility and acceptance. But it’s important to acknowledge that even the most personal behaviour is impacted by that of our peers. When I was at a girls’ school in the 90s, there was an apparent epidemic of eating disorders and cutting. The increase in “trans kids” could equally be viewed as evidence of social contagion.

Binding breasts seems no more progressive than archaic, sexist practices like wearing a corset, breast-ironing, or foot-binding. But following an explosion of girls identifying as transboys, this practice has become so normalized across the UK that schools have been advised to modify physical education classes to accommodate girls who can’t breathe properly due to breast-binding.

The British Medical Association advise staff not to refer to “expectant mothers” in order to avoid excluding trans people. The preferred politically correct term is now “pregnant person,” which obscures the fact that it is only women who can give birth. Rather than making awkward linguistic accommodations to alter reality for a minority of people, or staying tight-lipped about dangerous and unhealthy practices, perhaps we should be encouraging everyone to love their bodies — in particular young lesbians.

We need to stop and to ask ourselves why girls are so frightened to grow up and become women who love women. Or to simply become “unfeminine” women. We need to spread the message that there is no essentially “male” or “female” way of being, and that bodies don’t need to change, sexist stereotypes do.

The misogyny of trans politics is not new to me, but I had a moment of sickening clarity at Pride last year. After a long day and night of festivities, my partner and I were leaning on a table in a bar. There was a young lad dancing alone; when I looked closer I could see the tightly bound chest and the beginnings of a beard. This was a kid of about 18, who had been told that altering her body in this extreme way would somehow resolve the discomfort and self-hatred she experienced under patriarchy. This image was a visceral reminder that lesbians, as they are — as women with diverse female bodies, who love other women with diverse female bodies — were no longer welcome at Pride.

The space for women like me at Pride has been squeezed by trans activists brandishing signs like, “Kids: Puberty is Optional.” The tyranny of queer politics has barred lesbians and feminists from even meeting without men; and leading organizations we might once have looked to for support (here’s looking at you, Stonewall) have opted for popularity points at the expense of lesbians. Sexuality has been re-branded as a costume that straight people can step into, and at Pride there is no room for those who question this. The mutilated and bound bodies of women do not represent a victory for tolerance, but evidence of young lesbians who have been let down by the movement that should have helped them understand and accept themselves.

I long for the day when my partner and I can return to Pride, and celebrate alongside lesbian and bisexual women who are proud of their bodies.

Jo Bartosch founded the feminist campaign group Chelt Fems, which she chaired for seven years. In March she stepped down to become a Director of Critical Sisters, an organization formed to promote women’s liberation and critical thinking across the left. Follow @CriticalSisters.

[hypnictwitch]

Taking issue with a boy who wants to wear a dress is ridiculous. However, it is equally ridiculous to suggest a boy who chooses to wear a dress is therefore a girl. To present the arguments about gender non-conforming children as “regressive Christians” versus “enlightened progressives” is to do us all a disservice.

What about the children who said they were transgender – and then changed their minds?, Jo Bartosch, Independent, 14/09/17