The Good News Supplement: Monday 3rd June - Sunday 9th June

IMAGE CREDIT: The Famous Artist Birdy Rose

Another bumper edition of good news stories from the gender beat this week. Enjoy!

Woman Of Steel

Alison Teal, who fell foul of the Green Party’s gender zealotry, is to stand in Sheffield as an independent.

Alison Teal is a former Sheffield councillor and long-standing environmental campaigner. In September 2022 she was selected by local members of the Green Party as the parliamentary candidate for Sheffield Central. In October 2022 she was suspended from the party following a complaint about her adherence to sex realism and rejection of gender ideology. When the general election was called, the party replaced her with an ‘emergency selection’ candidate.

This week Alison resigned from The Green Party and she has announced that she will stand in Sheffield Central as an independent candidate. For more information and to contribute to her election campaign fund, please see this link.

Best of luck, Alison!

Leaving Them Kids Alone

Gays Against Groomers reported that Chile has stopped medicalising gender-confused minors.

Australian journalist, Bernard Lane, provided more information on this story, reporting that Chile’s Health Minister, Ximena Aguilera, has instructed the public health system not to prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to any new patients.

Broadcaster, Paula Comandari, reported on this story during her programme on Chile’s Tele13 radio station. She said that Minister Aguilera, a surgeon and public health specialist, acknowledged the lack of scientific evidence for using these drugs and spoke of the need to analyse The Cass Review.

In similar news from Europe, two major medical societies in Switzerland and Germany have announced that they will reject Germany’s new so-called ‘gender-affirming’ guidelines for the treatment of gender-confused children.

SEGM writes, “The news from Germany and Switzerland signals that they may soon join the growing list of countries that have returned to the principles of evidence-based medicine in youth gender medicine, committing to sensitive and compassionate care that follows the time-honoured principle of ‘first, do no harm’”.

There was also great news from Norway this week. A trans-identified doctor and former WPATH members who was struck off for prescribing hormones to minors will not be able to practice ‘gender medicine’.

Esben ‘Esther Pirelli’ Benestad is a GP who was struck off by the Norwegian Health Authority (NHA) in2022 after he was caught out prescribing puberty blockers and cross sex hormones to children without proper approval.

Determined to continue medicalising vulnerable kids, Benestad has been fighting to get his licence restored ever since. In June 2023, the NHA reduced the severity of its ruling, restoring Benestad’s licence but preventing him from prescribing hormones, and requiring him to practice medicine under supervision. He appealed this decision.

This week Benestad lost his legal battle against the HNA and the restrictions on his licence remain in place. He cannot prescribe puberty blockers or hormones and he must practice under supervision.

Staying In Their Lane

Swim Ireland has released its new ‘Transgender and Non-Binary Participation and Competition Policy’ which will protect women’s categories and guarantee fairness for female competitors.

Swim Ireland has acknowledged “Transgender women [sic] swimmers retain a significant advantage over cisgender [sic] female swimmers, even after reducing their testosterone levels through medication”. It has determined that “Fair competition must take precedence”.

Consequently, there will be a female category based on birth sex and an open category to include males, men who identify as transgender or non-binary, and anyone not eligible for the female category.

In The Soup

The trans-identified male who threw tomato juice at Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker) in New Zealand last year has pleaded guilty to assault.

35-year-old Eli Rubashkyn (legal name, Eliana Golberstein) faced two charges of assault after throwing tomato juice at KJK in Albert Park, Auckland, in March 2023.

He originally pleaded not guilty and tried to have the charges dismissed. That didn’t work out too well for him and in November last year his application was rejected.

Eli Rubashkyn/Eliana Golberstein

This week he pleaded guilty to two common assault charges and he will be sentenced in September.

Booking Marvellous

One of the hottest titles in the bookshops this week is still the brilliant The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht. It is No 10 on the Waterstones’ hardback non-fiction chart and still listed as one of Waterstones’ best selling non-fiction books.

Very excitingly, the book is also No 3 on the hardback non-fiction Sunday Times Bestseller List this week!

Huge congratulations to Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn and everyone involved in the book’s publication.

And more great news on the literary front, Sharron Davies’ book, Unfair Play, was nominated for the Pinsent Masons Sports Writing Award this week. And it is due out in paperback very soon.

Huge congratulations, Sharron!

Glinner Of Hope

Don’t miss Our Graham writing in The Critic this week.

And in conversation with James Freeman of The Freeman Report on TNT Radio.

Graham will be appearing at the next Ireland Free Speech Summit on 18th June in Dublin. For more information and to buy tickets, click here.

Don’t forget that Graham’s memoir, Tough Crowd, is still available from Amazon, The Express shop, Lightning Eye, Waterstones, Blackwells and all other discerning outlets. (There are also audio versions available on Audible and Spotify too.)

And Finally…