#gender reckoning

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Sammy Gecsoyler

Published: Apr 21, 2024

The doctor behind a landmark review of the NHS’s gender identity services for children and young people has said fears had been raised about her personal safety amid online abuse after the report’s release.

Dr Hilary Cass told the Times she wished to address the “disinformation” circulating about the findings and recommendations handed down by the Cass review when it was published on 10 April.

She said she had received online abuse in the wake of the report and had been advised to stop using public transport.

The report said the evidence base for gender medicine in young people had been thin and children had been let down by a “toxic” public discourse around gender.

Cass told the Times: “I have been really frustrated by the criticisms, because it is straight disinformation. It is completely inaccurate.

“It started the day before the report came out when an influencer posted a picture of a list of papers that were apparently rejected because they were not randomised control trials.

“That list has absolutely nothing to do with either our report or any of the papers.”

Referring to the online abuse she had received, she said: “There are some pretty vile emails coming in at the moment, most of which my team is protecting me from, so I’m not getting to see them.”

She added: “I’m not going on public transport at the moment, following security advice, which is inconvenient.”

The report said the now shuttered Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, the only NHS gender identity development service for children in England and Wales, used puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones despite “remarkably weak evidence” that they improved the wellbeing of young people and concern they may harm health.

The report recommended that young people struggling with their gender identity should be screened to detect neurodevelopmental conditions and there should be an assessment of their mental health, because some who seek help with their gender identity may also have anxiety or depression, for example.

When the report was released, Cass stressed that her findings were not intended to undermine the validity of trans identities or challenge people’s right to transition, but rather to improve the care of the fast-growing number of children and young people with gender-related distress.

NHS England has since announced a second Cass review-style appraisal of adult gender clinics. Cass confirmed to the Times that she would not take part in the adult report after the abuse she suffered in recent weeks.

She said: “You heard it right here: I am not going to do the adult gender clinic review.”

--

==

"If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?" -- Sam Harris

These gender ideologues are cultists. There's no science, no evidence, no reasoning that would convince them of reality, because they don't believe based on science, evidence or reality. They believe entirely on ideology and faith. Nothing will convince them that, wait, perhaps we got this wrong? Is there something we missed? Could this have gotten out of hand? Is there information we don't know about?

They don't care.

They do not care.

They don't care about truth. They don't care about people. They don't care about kids; they just use them as a shield from criticism. They don't care about anyone. They only care about their ideology of gender revolution and "queering" the world, no matter the cost, no matter who gets hurt along the way.

Never ever forget and never ever forgive. Make sure these lunatics are as notorious in history as Mengele and Lysenko.

[future-supertuna]

this is very in-text but i love that zoro gets attuned to kiku from the get-go not only because of this sword wielder code that he's followed through all extremes of the practice, from brook to kin'emon -- recognizing and respecting all masters -- but because her existence is the solid evidence, the living proof that kuina was wrong

[coffinwoodx]

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT BOOV GENDERS

THERE’S AN 8TH ONE AND ITS JUST

[loud whistling noise]

[invinciblerodent]

side note, it makes me feel kind of unreasonably giddy that my four "main" games of bg3, i'm playing:

a man loving a man

a woman loving a man

a man loving a woman (and a man)

and a woman loving a woman

and literally all of the characters involved are bi/pansexual.

diversity win, i'm queer and so is everything and everyone I do and make

[dykerikki]

is it a weird time to say ive been thinking of changing my name to jackie or mb just jack but NOT because of the yj girltwink. its because of my crush on my primary school netball coach okay? also i think itll be really funny to be called jack but regardless call myself a jane of all trades for the bit.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

The first real test of the cardinal principle of the right of white women to protection came when Confederate women faced enemy troops in areas under Union occupation, as they did in some places as early as the fall of 1861 and winter of 1862. Then began the painful education of all parties to the reality and consequences of Confederate women's partisan commitments. It was clear from the outset that Virginia would play an outsized role in the war, and, as state Unionists had insisted, that the Shenandoah and Kanawha valleys would prove to be the Flanders fields of the war. It was true of both places.

Sigismunda Stribling Kimball was a planter woman who had the misfortune to live on a farm near Berryville, Virginia, a small town in the Shenandoah Valley not far from Winchester. Kimball lived in the very eye of the storm. For Winchester was critically located at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, close to Maryland on the one side and West Virginia on the other. It was also the headquarters of the Confederate army of western Virginia under Major General Thomas S. (Stonewall) Jackson and was violently contested terrain. The town changed hands as many as seventy times during the war, and Kimball's Berryville area went with it, usually a few days in advance. From the time the Yankees first took Winchester in March 1862, Kimball, her slaves, and all of her neighbors and their slaves lived alternately in United States and Confederate territory. The turnover could be rapid. "We are again in Dixie," Kimball wrote on December 6,1862; "Yankees in Berryville," she corrected herself on December 27. Nothing held for long. The Yankees had been in Winchester less than two weeks when they made an appearance on Mrs. Kimball's farm. When three "yankees" rushed up to her door looking for "a rebel that belongs to this house," the mistress made her first foray out to meet the enemy. Although an avowed and open Confederate, she took the gendered high ground, revealing her own-and many other planter women's -assumptions about how this was all to go. "I told him there is no one at home but ladies of course they are always respected and protected." To Kimball's shock, the soldier, a private, would have none of it: "He said they had plenty of ladies prisoner and they were the worst traitors in the world." But Kimball was not through. Like the young Louisiana woman counseled by her soldier brother to use "cold politeness" to control "the impudent dog in blue cloth," and to request orders of protection from the resident enemy commanders, Mrs. Kimball redirected her appeal to the man's officers, counting on their gentlemanly instincts. "Immediately went to the Col, claiming his protection, which had been offered before," she noted.

Remarkable as it might seem, many elite Confederate women saw their right to protection as an obligation that extended to enemy men. Nor were they wrong. Like many other Yankee officers in the occupied South, Kimball's colonel was not only solicitous, recognizing her as a lady deserving of respect, he committed to protect her against the rougher sorts in his own army. In actions repeated all over the occupied and battleground areas of the South in 1861 and 1862, Colonel McDowell issued an order of protection and posted a guard of five men at Kimball's gate until his troops withdrew from the area. "I had no idea I could feel so desolate without such protection," she wrote after they left. "We have been so fortunate in having gentlemanly officers to guard us and feel thankful for colonel MacDowel's protection." "Victory to our arms," Sigismunda Kimball prayed, when the Yankee pickets withdrew from her gate. The idea that women were entitled to protection (or at least that elite women were) held firmly on both sides in the first year or so of the war.

But orders of protection revealed more than the value of chivalry; they reflected something fundamental about the law of war. Sigismunda Kimball made no secret of her politics and national allegiance while she demanded the protection of Union officers. Clearly she thought herself entitled both to her own political opinions and national allegiances and protection as a woman. Like many other "secesh" ladies, as the soldiers called pro-Confederate women, she was alert to the strategic value of her identity as a lady, that elevated form of Southern womanhood. It was not at all unusual for planter women to lecture Union soldiers about their chivalrous obligations. But the obligation to protect women was also, as some knew, a more formal matter. Mary Greenhow Lee, a widow who lived just a few miles from Kimball in Winchester and shared the alarming experience of life in the combat zone, delivered an unusually acute speech in which she indicated her knowledge of what was required not just by gender customs but by army regulations. In January 1863 she sought an interview with the Union provost marshal. "I told Captain Alexander," she recorded in her diary, "that we were all rebels but that we expected as citizens to be treated according to the usages of civilized warfare, and as women, we demanded the courtesy that every lady has the right to expect from every gentleman." In seeking orders of protection from enemy officers, as she did from General Milroy two months later, Mary Greenhow Lee demonstrated her knowledge of the laws of war and the obligations it imposed on occupying forces with respect to noncombatants.

stephanie mccurry, confederate reckoning: power and politics in the civil war south

[sciderman]

Sometimes i remember a comics moment i randomly came across somewhere, where Sam Wilson mentiones a musical and Steve Rodgers says he doesn't like musicals, to whitch Sam goes "Guess that means you really are straight" and even tho i don't care about Cap America or the Avengers, the moment stuck in me for that quote by Sam. And like....Sci, any ideas if straight men actually don't like musicals or is that bullshit?

actually i think i know more gay men who hate musicals than i know straight men who hate musicals. i've had a drag queen stop me point blank when i was about to sing a barbra streisand song, and i know so many gays who pointedly hate abba. so based on my experience i think the inverse is true. most of the straight men i know are kind of impartial about musicals, but gay men? hate.

my theory is that a lot of gay men don't want to fall into stereotypes, maybe. but thaaaaat's just a theory! a gay theory.

[ranger-kellyn]

i have since lost the post bc tumblr is tumblr but i saw a post earlier today with someone saying they were confused how gyatso and yama would have been so close if air nomad children are sent to different air temples not long after birth, and i have a very easy explanation: one of them is trans and didn't realize it until their teens 🏳️‍⚧️

[newtclovers]

transmisandry has gotta be one of the nastiest tags I've ever seen on this website. you hate women and think you're oppressed for being a man but now its Transgender and that makes it somehow progressive ... cmon now.

[birdricks]

late night insane post i rlly think birdrick appeals to me partly bc of the alien nature of their relationship… and specifically in how bp kind of bridges the gap between them but in many other ways theyre completely different

[greatrunner]

"Just stay alive! I'm not going to lose you!" - Women and their function in 'Mission Impossible' as motivators

For whatever reason, Mission: Impossible Breaking Dawn, Part One decided to get rid of Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa Faust in favor of keeping newcomer Hayley Atwell's Grace, a pickpocket-turned-IMF rookie.

And as someone who wasn't all that into Faust as a character (because so much of her construction seemed exclusively to lift from action heroines from foreign films, like The Villainess, and not necessarily out of love for said films), I really do not understand the motivation behind the move. Even as a fake-out, which I don't think this is.

If it was to drive home that new badie (Gabriel) was a genuine threat, it was a bad move. For one, this is an old hat in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Since the first film, killing women who were spy contemporaries in Ethan Hunt's line of work as a way of a) raising the stakes or, b) motivating Ethan Hunt (manpain central) has been this franchise's M.O.

You see it coming a mile away like a '"you killed my wife" plot in a Mel Gibson film. It's an antiquated writing device that turns women characters into objects. The only time this seemed to stop was after the third film around the time Cruise was married or still entangled with Katie Holmes).

During that time Hunt's character was married to a woman (played by an actress who is very much a Discount Katie Holmes), whose life was threatened throughout the time she was even considered important to Hunt's story.

In terms of selling the villain on that note (threatening the woman), It doesn't work with Gabriel because whatever dynamic he's supposed to have with Hunt as an old enemy never translates. We get a single flashback where he kills some nondescript woman that Hunt liked before he became a tool of the US Empire (when he was a thief, I guess). But that's it. It's a flashback without substance, a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. It never tells us anything about Hunt's specific relationship with Gabriel besides "You killed my girl!"

But who was your girl? What she did do besides exist in the same moment as you and then die in front of you?

Compare this to how John Woo communicated the relationships between Hunt, Nyah Hall, and Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) as rivals and lovers in the second film. Hunt and Ambrose knew or knew of each other as IMF agents IIRC. Ambrose went rogue, an action that flies in the face of Hunt's principles as an agent of IMF. They both fell in love with Nyah, a career criminal (cat burglar, etc). With Hunt it was recent, but Ambrose had a relationship with Nyah long before Hunt met her (IIRC. It's been a minute).

They both had something to lose and gain in either her survival or death once she was infected by Bellerophon. Ambrose had friends that Hunt knew he cared about and could use to hurt him. Oppositely, Ambrose never thought to go after Hunt's team unless they were actively antagonizing him. There were emotional anchors in the story that raised the stakes accordingly.

With this Gabriel character, they try to make him into something like Christopher Nolan's Bane ("I paid you" / "and you think this gives you power over me?"). He can't be manipulated and is "for the cause" through and through. They do this basically by saying he has no emotional connections to anyone, he just enjoys killing and harming people.

But the Impossible writers seemed to forget that Bane was doing all of this, primarily, because Talia Al'Ghul came back for him after he rescued her from being harmed by the men they lived in that pit with for ages. Bane was acting out of loyalty. Gabriel's whole spiel is that he lives to serve an omniscient Skynet like A.I. trying to destroy anyone it considers a threat. Like a religious zealot stereotype.

I'm sorry, but that's boring as hell (in this case).

At least with August Walker (Henry Cavill), their conflict (at first) was embedded in how they served and were loyal to the US Empire. Walker's dedication to state power (as represented by Erica Sloane, his handler) was in direct conflict with Hunt's ideology that people come before the mission and the state. (Then they fumbled that whole dynamic by making Walker a mole for Solomon whatshisface zealot, but I digress).

So killing Faust for this Johnny-come-lately guy with the presence of wet drywall was not great. The lack of depth in Hunt's relationship with Gabriel, the woman Gabriel killed just to spite Hunt, reduces Ilsa's death to a meaningless one.

This most recent Mission: Impossible film might feature the highest number of women with starring and speaking roles. There have only ever been a few female characters in the series (maybe never over three). The one that got the most Facetime usually was the one Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) was interested in. Vanessa Redgrave might be an exception to that rule, though.

In this film, we got:

Pom Klementieff (Paris) playing Discount Bond Henchman (think Xiana Onatopp),

Vanessa Kirby (White Widow) plays the ghost of Max Mitsopolis (Vanessa Redgrave, Mission Impossible),

Hayley Atwell (Grace) plays Nyah Hall (Thandie Newton, Mission: Impossible 2) sans the romance,

and Rebecca Ferguson (Ilsa Faust) plays the femme version of Ethan Hunt.

That's four women. They had considerable screen time* and a role in pushing the narrative forward.

For the time that Ferguson was in the series, the writers never went beyond innuendos and suggestions with Faust/Hunt. So, when this film started really laying on thick with the open affection Faust and Hunt showed toward each other, I knew she was cooked from the moment she appeared in the film looking like Big Boss.

I guess I'm wondering what was the point? If it wasn't a decision on the part of Ferguson to exit stage left, what did Ilsa's death serve beyond freeing up some space for Hayley Atwell?

And this line of questioning is operating on the pretense that Cruise and Co don't want more than a few women with major roles in the film. Because it's not like Grace and Ilsa couldn't exist in the franchise together.

*(considerable if you think about how Cruise-centric the Impossible series is)

[seased]

i have a lot of respect and even envy for the nonbinary people who can approach it like “this is my gender, i am what i am, you need to change your mind and respect my reality”. a lot of paths seem to get people to that mindset; life circumstances, basic personality, self-assuredness. im much more in the camp of “this is my gender, and i will use the ‘vocabulary’ of cishet society so you people will understand me, i need to change myself to manage your understanding of me”… of course it gets tiring to manage the expectations of others. but again, many different life paths can get someone to this perspective as well. idk just remarking on the two major mindsets i see. im sure you can imagine how these can cause intra community conflict as well…

[common-world-domination]

also worth noting! noct richter has been raised by and grown up with almost exclusively women it seems. for the era hes living in thats going to make him behave and think significantly differently to someone who was not.

[13skeletons]

i also reread animorphs #3 the encounter today and that maybe probably didn't help the gender dysphoria tbh

[ghost-t-cryptids]

I'm just a lil guy!!

[warmothered]

i'm just collecting bits and pieces of information here but i like that even though there's one (1) father everyone kinda knows/assumes is ashe's biological father it doesn't matter because what matters is all 5 of them (for my own reference, they're called yrael, grimshall, logren, ereen and rorn) swore themselves to her mom and to raise and protect ashe and they did and they're all her dads and i just think it's neat