A Week in the War on Women: Monday 26th September - Sunday 2nd October
Monday 26th September - Labour Losing Women
UNHERD: Joan Smith writes about the Labour Party Conference, its capture by gender identity zealots and the silencing of feminist organisations.
Two feminist groups were denied a platform at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool this week.
Labour Women’s Declaration is an organisation which advocates for women’s sex-based rights and spaces. FiLiA is a female-led organisation with charitable status which defends and promotes women’s rights and last year organised the largest feminist conference seen in the UK for decades. The Labour Party denied them both a a stall at its conference.
The party claims excluding them was a commercial decision. However, both organisations were more than happy to pay the full rate for a stall and were prepared to be flexible about size and location etc.
All appeals to the party to reconsider were rejected. Even an open letter to The Observer signed by over a dozen Labour MPs and peers was ignored.
As Smith points out, it is pointless expecting any intervention from Keir Starmer who has routinely ignored all of her communications to him about women’s rights and safety and pointing out the abuse women face in speaking out to defend them. “Instead of standing up for free speech and women’s rights, as you might expect a former Director of Public Prosecutions to do, Starmer has proved himself anything but an ally… In the face of intemperate and frankly deranged attacks by gender extremists on women who have supported Labour for decades, Starmer has observed a Trappist silence.”
Dame Jenni Murray also wrote about the Labour Party’s betrayal of women in The Daily Mail this week.
“Feminists such as me are utterly bewildered by Labour… So many women I know who have consistently voted Labour for years, like Joan, tell me they now feel disenfranchised. They say they can't vote for a leader who can't answer the simple question: ‘What is a woman?’”
Tuesday 27th September - Ladies Of Spain
THE TIMES: Spain’s proposed self-ID ‘trans law’ will destroy women’s sex-based rights according to the Deputy Prime Minister.
A controversial draft law will allow anyone over the age of fourteen to legally change their sex without requiring any medical intervention or even diagnosis. La Ley Trans (‘the trans law’) would remove the current conditions requiring a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria by at least two clinicians before official records can be altered.
More worryingly, it could allow children aged 14-16 to change their legal sex. Minors would need parental consent but could circumvent this requirement by going to the courts in the event of any opposition from their parents.
The bill was drafted by the equality ministry which is operated by the government’s junior coalition partner, the Podemos party. Last year it was passed by the cabinet and is pending debate in Parliament.
Spain’s deputy prime minister, Carmen Calvo, is opposed to the bill and fears it will erase women’s sex-based rights. Last year she signed a document outlining the dangers of such a law. This week she told El Mundo that the proposed legislation could ‘destroy all equality legislation’.
Supporters of the bill have made it clear that they will not tolerate any opposition. In February last year trans activists hung an effigy of Carmen Calvo by the neck from a tree.
The sign reads, “I am lost, where is the patriarchy?”.
Wednesday 28th September - A Cuckoo In The Nest
A long-standing lesbian rights campaigner was barred from a lesbian conference because she doesn’t believe that men can be women.
Faika El-Nagashi is an Austrian politician who represents the Austrian Green Party (Die Grunen) and is spokeswoman for it diversity and integration policy. She describes herself as ‘a woman of colour with a migrant Muslim background’ and she is a long-standing lesbian rights campaigner.
As she detailed in a Twitter thread, Faika has long associations with the European Lesbian Conference (EL*C). She spoke at the first conference in Vienna and was invited to join the EL*C board in January 2018. She managed the finances, helped maintain the organisation’s charitable status, co-moderated the second conference in Ukraine in April 2019 and organised the EL*C’s contribution to Europride in Vienna.
Naturally, Faika was very much looking forward to attending the third EL*C conference in Budapest, the city of her birth, and reconnecting with old friends. Instead she was effectively barred from attending the event because she doesn’t believe males can be lesbians.
Only hours before she was due to leave for the event, Faika received an email from the EL*C board titled ‘EL*C is a trans inclusive space’. The board refused to accept Faika’s registration because of her ‘recent public statements’ which, it claims, ‘go against EL*C core values’. (The EL*C board is so determined to prioritise heterosexual males over actual lesbians that it uses an asterisk in its abbreviation to denote its ‘inclusivity’.)
Earlier this year Faika gave an interview to Austrian weekly newspaper, Der Standard, in which she spoke of the need to protect the category of ‘woman’ and base its definition in material reality. Even though she insisted trans people must be protected from discrimination, the article made her a target for trans activists and was probably the reason for her banishment from the conference.
A member of the EL*C governing board is a trans-identified male. Rhonda D’Vine describes himself as ‘trans feminine’ and is the co-founder of a group called Queer Polyamory Meetup Vienna. He hosted a panel on bisexuality at the conference.
Furthermore, D’Vine was one of the leaders of the Dyke March which closed the conference.
A woman was barred from a lesbian conference while a man led its flagship march.
Thursday 29th September - The Right Side Of History
4W: Feminist groups at a demonstration for abortion rights in Paris were physically attacked by trans activists.
September 28th was International Safe Abortion Day and French organisation, Union Nationale des Syndicats Autonomes (UNSA), organised a demonstration in Paris. Two feminist groups, L’Amazone and Osez Le Féminisme, took part in the march.
We have written previously about the numerous times L’Amazone and its members have been attacked by trans activists. In August 2020 trans activists broke into and vandalised L’Amazone’s feminist space, in March 2021 they assaulted L’Amazone founder, Marguerite Stern, at a feminist demonstration in Paris and in July 2022 they destroyed a memorial to murdered children because of L’Amazone’s involvement.
This week trans activists attacked L’Amazone and Osez Le Féminisme at a demonstration for safe abortion. They tore up women’s signs and shouted “TERFs hors de nos luttes! (TERFs out of our struggle!)”. They even physically assaulted several of the women at the protest.
When the demonstration resumed, the feminist groups tried to avoid further confrontation. However, the trans activists followed and continued to intimidate them. The women appealed to the organizers to intervene but they did nothing. When told the attacks from the trans activists were going to continue if they were not excluded from the march, the organisers simply responded, “We know”.
Also Today - This Never Happens
BBC NEWS: A paedophile who masqueraded as a woman online to procure victims has been jailed for 18 years.
This week 22-year-old Jonathan Woodward pleaded guilty to 39 child sex offences. He was charged with two counts of rape of a child under thirteen, 20 charges of causing or inciting a child under thirteen to engage in sexual activity, 14 counts of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, and with making indecent images of a child. He was sentenced to 18 years behind bars at Guildford Crown Court.
Woodward used social media accounts to lure children into engaging in sexual activity online. He recorded them and then used the content to blackmail them into sending him more sexually graphic material.
He did all of this by pretending to be a woman.
Something that Shona Robison MSP claims has never happened.
Friday 30th September - A Room Of One’s Own
WCAX: Girls on a Vermont high school volleyball team have been barred from their own locker room for protesting the presence of a male.
Vermont education policy prioritises gender identity over sex and allows males to invade female sports, bathrooms and locker rooms etc if the ‘identify’ as girls.
Consequently, a trans-identified male has been allowed to not only play on the Randolph High School girls’ volleyball team, he is also permitted to use the girls’ locker room. A number of the girls on the team protested this situation after the male in question made an inappropriate comment to them as they got changed.
Instead of protecting the girls and their dignity, the school barred the complainants from their own locker room and is now forcing them to get changed in a wholly inadequate space. Furthermore, the school is accusing the girls of harassment and conducting an investigation.
Blake Allen, one of the girls involved, told WCAX she doesn’t feel it is fair that she is facing accusations of bullying simply because she doesn’t want to share a locker room with a boy. “It’s a huge thing. Everyone’s asking, ‘So, why aren’t you allowed in the locker room?’”, she said. “They want all the girls who feel uncomfortable - so pretty much 10 girls - to get changed in a single stall bathroom.”
It sounds rather like these girls are being punished for the crime of wanting to preserve their safety and their privacy.
Saturday 1st October - More Mermaid Tails Of Woe
THE TIMES: A Mermaids moderated chatroom for vulnerable teens is an ‘irresponsible free for all’.
Mermaids operates a private online youth forum for 12-19 year olds who have issues around their gender identity. Parents and carers are barred and no proof of age or identification is required. It is supposed to be supervised by Mermaids moderators.
Other providers of online spaces for minors, such as Childline, have very strict safeguarding regulations and protocols in place. However, “Mermaids conducts its forum very differently”. For example, it suggests children should use an email address to which their parent or guardian has no access, it allows uncritical discussions about medical transition and hormone treatment and it fails to intervene when users post personal details or contact information.
Furthermore, The Times has seen evidence of users openly arranging to move their discussions about medical transition on to unregulated platforms with the apparent approval of the Mermaids moderators.
One moderator encouraged children to move their conversation from the Mermaids forum onto Discord, a site notorious for hosting graphic content and failing to verify user ages. Last year the National Centre on Sexual Exploitation named Discord as part of its campaign which highlights organisations that facilitate and profit from sexual exploitation. It described Discord as a haven for sexual exploiters.
The Times has seen screenshots of a conversation on the Mermaids forum in which youngsters discussed moving to a Discord chat room. A moderator interjected to say, “Great idea for you to have a Discord server together! I have to be a bit of a buzzkill here”. The moderator warned the youngsters not to mention their connection to Mermaids once they moved to Discord. “Give it a different name and you’re golden. Have fun :)”
The Times asked Mermaids to clarify the ages, training and background of its forum moderators. Mermaids refused to respond.
THE TELEGRAPH: Mermaids is using the services of a law firm to help teenagers change their legal names behind the backs of their parents.
Since April 2021 Mermaids has partnered with law firm, Latham & Watkins, to host an online ‘clinic’ offering ‘guidance’ to under-20s who want to ‘change gender’.
The clinic offers advice on legal name changes and helps teenagers to alter their names on their passports, bank accounts and medical records. For those aged sixteen and seventeen, parental consent or even knowledge is not required.
While sixteen year olds can already formally change their name via Deed Poll without parental consent, that Mermaids operates this service only further demonstrates its apparent strategy of excluding parents from their children’s decisions.
(The technique of separating someone from their family is a very common one in abusive and coercively controlling relationships.)
As one parent commented, “Mermaids sees itself as the ‘hero’ or ‘rescuer’ of children, from ‘unaccepting’ parents. Anything that sidelines parents is a red flag.”
Also Today - Rowing Back On Women’s Rights
British Rowing has published its new ‘transgender guidelines’ which effectively erase the female sport by allowing males to compete on women’s teams at all levels.
As Fair Play For Women have pointed out, British Rowing have shown, “No concern for competitive fairness. There’s also no thought for those who need single-sex sport in order to participate, such as those whose religion requires it”.
Sunday 2nd October - Stacking The Deck
THE TELEGRAPH: A three year £700,000 study into the use of puberty blockers has been ‘hijacked by trans activists’.
Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences was given a £700,000 tax payer funded grant to research the healthcare needs of trans-identified young people. The three-year project was led by Dr Melissa Stepney and Dr Sam Martin and interviewed 50 trans identified and ‘gender-diverse’ people aged between 12 and 35 and 20 parents and carers.
Dr Sam Martin uses ‘they/them’ pronouns and is involved in a project called ‘QueerViBE’ which grew out of his 2019 PhD thesis, “Developing and Evaluating QueerViBE: An online intervention to empower trans and non-binary youth”.
The Oxford University research project has been criticised for its ‘hard-line trans activism’. The advisory panel features three staff from Mermaids, the charity which is currently being investigated by the Charity Commission over a number of serious safeguarding concerns, and the CEO of Gendered Intelligence, a trans lobby group which campaigned to overturn the High Court ruling in the Keira Bell case.
The study had also initially cited Gender GP. This private offshore clinic is unregulated in the UK, its founder was prosecuted for running it illegally, it was found supplying drugs to minors without parental consent or even knowledge and it was implicated in the suicide of a trouble trans-identified teenager. The reference to Gender GP in the study was only removed when leading Oxford academic, an expert in sociology, Professor Michael Biggs, complained about its inclusion.
Professor Biggs submitted a further complaint to the University of Oxford’s registrar and raised concerns with the ethical board over the study’s objectivity. He alleged a conflict of interest with some activists using the study to advertise their own consultancy businesses. He told The Telegraph that other medical professionals share his concerns.
One of the parents who was interviewed for the study has similar concerns. He told The Telegraph, “Trans rights activists have hijacked this study, they’ve used it as a figleaf for hardline trans activism and have recruited from a very narrow selection of channels... They were shocked at how off-script I was. I am under the name Elijah and the only parent without an introduction, without a biography, heavily redacted. The whole purpose of the study was to push for barrierless medication for children as quickly as possible, that was the starting point”.
See you next week.
That study is nothing more than farmers, abattoirs, and butchers carrying out research into whether people should eat meat.
I absolutely love how the article describes Stonewall as what it truly is - 'The study’s list of resources links to the controversial trans charities Stonewall, Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence and the Gender Identity Research and Education Society'.