But what if you identify as benefiting from chiropracty?

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Some people may find this phrasing awkward.

… a clinical health psychologist and clinical director of the Transgender and Intersex Specialty Care Clinic at Mayo Clinic.

Oh great, medically promoted forced teaming. My understanding is that the preferred and/or technically correct term is DSD, and that “intersex” was considered insulting and misleading. But here we have the MAYO CLINIC using it in order to lump it in with transgenderism, in accordance with the bullshit “Sex is a spectrum!” tenets of gender ideology. DSDs are, in my understanding, a range of discreet, sex-specific ways in which human development fails to achieve the goal of producing one of two types of healthy, functional reproductive tissues and systems that normal development is, ideally, supposed to build. While the occasionally ambiguous or confusing external genitalia may lead to an incorrect “assignment at birth” to the wrong sex*, with subsequent complications resulting from the psychological baggage that comes with socially imposed gender roles, the DSD condition itself has nothing whatsoever to do with putative “gender identity.” To suggest there is some connection (which this teaming up is designed to suggest, like some genderist version of Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Throat) is deceptive.

Where do these two completely different phenomena overlap? Nowhere, as far as I can tell. What commonalities of treatment are there? I would think very few. I can only conclude that this yoking together of such disparate conditions is a politically motivated [tactic], not medical. Who gains from this arrangement? Trans ideology. Who suffers? Anyone suffering from a DSD condition, as their actual physiological needs have been coupled to the demands of a delusional belief system that is completely unrelated to DSDs, and may be almost entirely psychological. Have they updated their obstetrics and midwifery centres to shackle them to departments dedicated to studying and promoting the important roles played by storks and cabbage leaves in human reproduction? It would make as much sense as this linkage between transgender “medecine” and the care of people with DSDs.

*The use of which terminology is one of the sole reasons, along with the imputation of sex being a “spectrum” through abuse of the whole “intersex” idea, that transgenderism has ever concerned itself with people who have DSDs. The politically expedient appropriation of concepts germane solely to DSDs is the only point of the operation, the only reason they’ve been dragged under the “trans umbrella” in the first place. This unethical appropriation provides a good chunk of the supposed “science” that genderists claim to have supporting their ideology. Take that away and they’re left with even less justification and proof for their contentions.

The Mayo Clinic blog in September 2022:

Is chestfeeding the new breastfeeding?: Explaining gender-neutral medical terms.

Articles or online posts — even other articles on this blog — are now often using phrases like “person with a uterus,” “pregnant person” or “anyone with a prostate,” instead of the words “woman” or “man.”

Some people may find this phrasing awkward or wonder why it is used — believing that the words “men” and “women” are simpler. The change in language could even feel challenging or threatening.

The change in language could even feel like, and be, part of a ferocious campaign to push women out of sight in every possible context.

“Controversy is created when people feel like gender-neutral terms are erasing the gender binary. And that’s when we get a little bit of pushback, because some say, ‘Well then, you’re basically saying that men or women don’t exist,’ ” says Cesar Gonzalez, Ph.D., L.P. (he/they), a clinical health psychologist and clinical director of the Transgender and Intersex Specialty Care Clinic at Mayo Clinic. “That’s not what we’re saying.”

No, he/they, that’s not what we say. What we say is that you’re linguistically deleting women from everything to do with women, for the sake of pretending that men can be women. We also say that medics of all people should not try to convince us that some men are women.

The purpose is to use terms that are accurate and apply to you no matter your sex or gender identity.

Think about pregnancy, which is often viewed as being an exclusively female phenomenon. It’s easy to use the term “pregnant women” without a second thought.

But there are transmasculine individuals who may become pregnant, and they don’t feel that the term “pregnant women” applies to them. The more neutral term “pregnant person” can apply to someone who is male, female or nonbinary, and everyone is included.

But “transmasculine individuals” who “become” pregnant are women, whether they feel that the word applies to them or not. It’s not the job of medics to prop up people’s fantasies, especially fantasies about something as basic and medically relevant as which sex they are.

Using exclusive terms can be harmful. As an example, contraception is sometimes defined as ways for women to prevent pregnancy, says Dr. Davidge-Pitts.

No, it’s always defined as that, because that’s what it means. Think about it. Contra. Ception. Get it now?

But that definition excludes transmasculine individuals, Dr. Davidge-Pitts says, who then might not feel that they need contraception. And even if they are aware that they need contraception, they may not be comfortable asking for it if they don’t feel that their provider will be accepting of their identity.

Then they need to grow the fuck up. They do not need to change the language for everyone for the sake of their fragile breakable feeble idennniny.

“By not acknowledging inclusivity, we’re adding to health inequity, we’re adding to further discrimination, and we’re adding to people not being comfortable seeking medical care, which then relates to poor well-being and health long term,” Dr. Davidge-Pitts says. “It has this domino effect.”

Hey, guess what, Doc, it works the other way too. I’m not comfortable seeking medical care from medics who talk this kind of drooling pathetic bilge. I want adult medical care thank you very much.

“People who don’t fit into boxes are the ones who experience the most stigma, the most discrimination, the most harassment, the most health disparities,” Dr. Gonzalez says.

Really? Really? Are you sure about that? Not immigrants? Poor people? Homeless people? Addicts? People of color?

I think Dr. Gonzalez just made all that up. A homemade on the spot statistic, which seems highly unlikely to be true.

Suzanne Moore on Labour’s indifference to women:

On the conference floor, grumblings of winter fuel allowances, the cruel two-child benefit cap and assisted dying rumble under the surface. But the big issue Labour [has] yet to get its head around is that of people like me: women who believe, shockingly, that biology is real. 

This is the first year that the Labour Women’s Declaration (LWD) movement has been allowed into conference and it has a stall and some terrific events. The LWD believe that women and girls are subject to discrimination and oppression on the basis of their sex, have the right to single-sex spaces and are not to be intimidated for discussing this. 

Such a zany belief, yeah?!

But The LGB Alliance, which was founded in opposition to Stonewall’s policies on transgender issues, is still verboten. When I asked their spokeswoman why, she said they are never given any explanation. Why lesbian, gay and bisexual people cannot organise without including the many diverse groups now under the cover of the trans umbrella, many of whom aren’t same sex-attracted, is simply ridiculous.

Well, if Labour won’t explain, we’ll have to explain it for them. They’re misogynist and homophobic. If they don’t want to be called that, they should stop performing it.

It’s fine for women with status to stick their necks out – which these days simply means insisting that biological sex exists – but others in the room told us that if they speak up at their local Constituency Labour Party (CLP) meetings they are met with hostility.

The institutional capture of radical trans ideology may slowly be beginning to crumble top down but it is still deeply embedded in our schools, the NHS and universities. And that’s a challenge.

Most Labour people will say this is not a priority. There is too much other stuff to sort out. But at some point even the dimmest of them could join the dots between this dismantling of women’s rights and the fact that male violence is rising and that most of those who present with gender dysphoria are teenage girls who reject the burgeoning signs that they are turning into women. 

If it were anyone else it would be a priority, but it’s just boring tedious women so we have to sort all the other stuff out instead.

Wait.

Isn’t this parody? Everyone is yelling at it but surely it’s parody. Isn’t it?

Another thing about those residential “schools” –

Residential school students did not receive the same education as the general population in the public school system, and the schools were sorely underfunded. Teachings focused primarily on practical skills. Girls were primed for domestic service and taught to do laundry, sew, cook, and clean. Boys were taught carpentry, tinsmithing, and farming. Many students attended class part-time and worked for the school the rest of the time: girls did the housekeeping; boys, general maintenance and agriculture. This work, which was involuntary and unpaid, was presented as practical training for the students, but many of the residential schools could not run without it. With so little time spent in class, most students had only reached grade five by the time they were 18. At this point, students were sent away. Many were discouraged from pursuing further education.

So in fact they weren’t even schools, they were prisons with forced labor. It’s all so very Goldenbridge.

Abuse at the schools was widespread: emotional and psychological abuse was constant, physical abuse was metred out as punishment, and sexual abuse was also common. Survivors recall being beaten and strapped; some students were shackled to their beds; some had needles shoved in their tongues for speaking their native languages. These abuses, along with overcrowding, poor sanitation, and severely inadequate food and health care, resulted in a shockingly high death toll. In 1907, government medical inspector P.H. Bryce reported that 24 percent of previously healthy Indigenous children across Canada were dying in residential schools.  This figure does not include children who died at home, where they were frequently sent when critically ill. Bryce reported that anywhere from 47 percent (on the Peigan Reserve in Alberta) to 75 percent (from File Hills Boarding School in Saskatchewan) of students discharged from residential schools died shortly after returning home.

75 percent!!!

Says celebrity trans person Brianna Wu:

Here is why I am frustrated with non-binary people. In 1979, the protocol came out to legally change genders. There’s been a serious public policy effort to educate not just medical providers but the public and legislators. This has been a moderate political movement, strategically nonpartisan with lots of science to back it up. Then about five years ago, this non-binary trend exploded. Their main political tactic has been to conflate my medical condition with their identity even though there’s zero evidence this is the same thing. Rather than legitimate activism through the political process, they mostly just Hector and shame people that cannot magically intuit their pronouns.

One, hilarious, obviously, but two, “with lots of science to back it up”? Show us on the doll exactly where the science is.

I’m looking for some background. Here’s some from something called Indigenous Foundations with an arts.ubc.ca address, i.e Arts at the University of British Columbia:

The Residential School System

The term residential schools refers to an extensive school system set up by the Canadian government and administered by churches that had the nominal objective of educating Indigenous children but also the more damaging and equally explicit objectives of indoctrinating them into Euro-Canadian and Christian ways of living and assimilating them into mainstream white Canadian society. The residential school system officially operated from the 1880s into the closing decades of the 20th century. The system forcibly separated children from their families for extended periods of time and forbade them to acknowledge their Indigenous heritage and culture or to speak their own languages. Children were severely punished if these, among other, strict rules were broken. Former students of residential schools have spoken of horrendous abuse at the hands of residential school staff: physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological. Residential schools provided Indigenous students with inappropriate education, often only up to lower grades, that focused mainly on prayer and manual labour in agriculture, light industry such as woodworking, and domestic work such as laundry work and sewing.

Residential schools systematically undermined Indigenous, First Nations, Métis and Inuit cultures across Canada and disrupted families for generations, severing the ties through which Indigenous culture is taught and sustained, and contributing to a general loss of language and culture. Because they were removed from their families, many students grew up without experiencing a nurturing family life and without the knowledge and skills to raise their own families. The devastating effects of the residential schools are far-reaching and continue to have a significant impact on Indigenous communities. The residential school system is widely considered a form of genocide because of the purposeful attempt from the government and church to eradicate all aspects of Indigenous cultures and lifeworlds.

And, I would think, because of something perhaps less tangible, but more basic and destructive: the foundational assumption of the whole thing is that the children are being removed (or rescued) from something profoundly inferior. It frames the children’s own families and neighbors, their communities in the very literal sense, as bad, harmful, diseased, broken, horrific.

It’s painful to think about, really. The more obvious harms are bad enough – separation from family and everyone they knew, separation from familiar surroundings, imprisonment among a lot of nuns and priests – but the slightly less obvious messages about the life they knew are…well, they’re making me flinch.

From the 1990s onward, the government and the churches involved—Anglican, Presbyterian, United, and Roman Catholic—began to acknowledge their responsibility for an education scheme that was specifically designed to “kill the Indian in the child.” 

It has the structure of a myth or fairy tale. The child lives with parents who are poor and humble but loving and protective; the child is “rescued” and removed to relatives who are rich but cold and distant. We all know the happy ending doesn’t involve forgetting all about the loving parents.

The early origins of residential schools in Canada are found in the implementation of the mission system in the 1600s. The churches and European settlers brought with them the assumption that their own civilization was the pinnacle of human achievement. They interpreted the socio-cultural differences between themselves and Indigenous Peoples as “proof” that Canada’s first inhabitants were ignorant, savage, and—like children—in need of guidance. They felt the need to “civilize” Indigenous Peoples. Education—a federal responsibility—became the primary means to this end.

You can see why they would think that. Look at us! We got here from way over there because we made this fabulous technology! Obviously we’re the pinnacle!

In the 1880s, in conjunction with other federal assimilation policies, the government began to establish residential schools across Canada. Authorities would frequently take children to schools far from their home communities, part of a strategy to alienate them from their families and familiar surroundings. In 1920, under the Indian Act, it became mandatory for every Indigenous child to attend a residential school and illegal for them to attend any other educational institution.

In short every Indigenous child was sentenced to prison. Quite the interesting law.

I suppose part of the obsession with mass burials is that (if they exist) they’re something tangible and real in the here and now. It’s not possible to shout at the people who passed the 1920 Indian Act, but it may be possible to find some mass graves, some day, if only we can find them.

People can be so absurd. Some of them think just saying loudly that you won’t let anything go wrong=nothing will go wrong.

A transcript from a key meeting at the firm behind the ill-fated Titan submersible has revealed the CEO said in 2018: “No-one is dying under my watch – period.”

Like that. He couldn’t know that. Bravado isn’t magic. The fact that it was his watch was not a magic safety guarantee. Saying “period” was not a magic safety guarantee.

It captures a heated exchange between OceanGate chief Stockton Rush and his former director of marine operations, David Lochridge, plus three other staff.

The log shows Mr Lochridge raised safety concerns, to which Rush responded: “I have no desire to die… I think this is one of the safest things I will ever do.”

But people who knew anything about it knew it was one of the least safe things he could do. The dangers were well known and very real.

People can and do convince themselves of anything. Men can be women and a submersible won’t implode under pressure of 375–400 atmospheres.

Fella wants to make what he considers “spewing bigotry” a jail-worthy crime.

An additional peculiarity is that he considers it “vile hate speech” to say that a man is not a woman.

It’s interesting that he has no understanding of human rights or freedom of speech, and that he thinks men can be women. Wrong on the concepts and wrong on the facts.

There’s a roiling controversy over whether or not there are mass graves of indigenous children in Kamloops, BC.

The revelation convulsed all of Canada.

Ground-penetrating radar had found possible signs of 215 unmarked graves at a former residential school in British Columbia run by the Catholic Church that the government had once used to assimilate Indigenous children forcibly taken from their families.

It’s not as if the Catholic church and its ways with abandoned or poor or otherwise despised and powerless children have always been benevolent and helpful. I say that with deep sarcasm, because the Catholic church has notoriously treated such children with sadistic contempt and brutality. And it has sometimes simply thrown the ones who died in their “care” into garbage pits. Remember the mass grave recently discovered at Tuam?

Back to Kamloops:

It was the first of some 80 former schools where indications of possible unmarked graves were discovered, and it produced a wave of sorrow and shock in a country that has long struggled with the legacy of its treatment of Indigenous people.

But no physical remains have yet been found.

While there is a broad consensus in Canada that children were taken from their families and died in these schools, as the discussions and searches have dragged on, a small universe of conservative Catholic and right-wing activists have become increasingly vocal in questioning the existence of unmarked graves. They are also skeptical of the entire national reconsideration of how Canada treated Indigenous people.

Stop right there.

Finding or not finding unmarked graves is one thing, and how Canada treated indigenous people is quite another. (The same applies to how the US treated indigenous people.)

“There’s, so far, no evidence of any remains of children buried around residential schools,” Tom Flanagan, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary and an author of “Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth About Residential Schools),” said in an interview.

“Nobody disputes,” he added, “that children died and that the conditions were sometimes chaotic. But that’s quite different from clandestine burials.”

“Chaotic.” Now there’s an exculpatory word. Also the indirect, agentless “conditions were” is an evasive tactic. It was worse than “chaotic” and it was people who did it. It wasn’t some vague thing that just happened, it was a system.

Murray Sinclair, a former judge who headed the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the residential schools system, estimates that at least 10,000 students never made it home from the schools, which were established by the government and operated from the 1880s to the 1990s.

During that period the Canadian government forcibly removed at least 150,000 Indigenous children from their communities and sent them to residential schools, most of which were run by the Roman Catholic Church. Indigenous languages and cultural practices were forbidden, sometimes using force.

And when the children died the government refused to pay to return their bodies to the communities where they came from.

That’s what matters.

For Mr. Flanagan and others who share his viewpoint, their disbelief that there are many gravesites is part of a broader argument against the key conclusion of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission: that the residential schools were a system of brutality that led to “cultural genocide.’’

“The narrative that’s been constructed pulls out all the bad stories and retails those and minimizes the benefit of residential schools,” Mr. Flanagan said, adding that converting Indigenous people in nations colonized by Europeans to Christianity and eradicating their cultures was once common worldwide.

Why yes, it was, and that was a bad thing.

In which we learn that fables about the Holocaust are “controversial books by white male authors” and need to be replaced by books that are “more representative.”

Solent University wants to separate itself from Ben Lindsay but it’s struggling.

If they really want to get the facts straight, why on earth say “for a number of years” instead of just saying precisely how many years? Using the vague term suggests that they don’t know how many years it’s been, which in turn suggests that they’re just making it up.

Anyway that’s not what he says, so it will be interesting to see what (if anything) happens next.

JKR demolished the dreadful sycophantic Times article about poor persecuted Sandy Brindley yesterday, but I just want to add a kick or two of my own, because that’s how I roll.

After years on the wrong end of online campaigns hashtagged #BrindleyMustGo and as the subject of criticism from very prominent online warriors, Brindley, 50, has had enough. She says that she does not expect to be in her post by this time next year.

You probably think the Times goes on to say why there are campaigns saying Brindley must go along with criticism from “very prominent online warriors” (a slightly deceptive way to describe JK Rowling). If you think that, you’re wrong. The Times never bothers to say clearly what the criticism is about.

Her job, as head of a national body with 17 member centres, means she works with survivors, “making a change for the better in the world”. It is, she says, “wonderful in so many ways” but the flipside is the “real vulnerability” that comes from her public position.

Yes it’s just because of her public position. It’s the publicness that’s the problem, you see, not what she did and continues to do.

The closest the Times gets to saying why Brindley has been getting hostile attention is:

She is at pains to stress that she will not be leaving her post because of the furore surrounding Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, where Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman and activist, quit this month amid allegations that she harassed staff with gender-critical views. A review found that the chief executive had not grasped “the limits on her role’s authority”.

If you don’t already know all about it, that’s a very opaque account. Where who quit? Quit what? Who is this Wadhwa person? Why was she harassing staff? Who’s the chief executive and whose role’s authority did the chief executive not grasp? A reader not already up on the subject would derive no information from that evasive paragraph. What furore? What’s it about? Who is Wadhwa? What was he doing there? Remind us who the chief executive is?

There’s a lot more of the same. It’s annoying.

While exploring Rape Crisis Edinburgh’s website I began to wonder if all UK rape crisis centers are for everyone as opposed to for women.

A look at Rape Crisis South London promptly dispels that worry.

Specialist South London sexual violence support for women and girls who have experienced rape and/or childhood sexual abuse.

Boom.

Our services are in response to the needs of survivors and the disproportionate nature of sexual violence committed by men against women and girls. We believe sexual violence to be both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality and are committed to a feminist, empowering model of working.

Thank fuck for that.

There is such a thing as rape of boys and of men, but that doesn’t mean that raped women can’t or shouldn’t have somewhere to go that is just for women.

For one thing it’s men doing the raping of boys and men, and for another thing it’s nothing like the onslaught against women. Men are bigger and stronger than women, so 1. it’s much easier for men to rape women than vice versa and 2. it’s much easier for men to resist being raped than it is for women. In short men don’t need rape services the way women do, and promoting the fiction that they do is profoundly insulting to women.

I’m relieved that some rape crisis workers understand this.

In case you’re thinking Edinburgh Rape Crisis has improved in the wake of all this attention –

Who[m] We Support And Our Services

Women only services

We have been trans inclusive since 2008. This means that we have a diverse group of women and non-binary workers and volunteers.

In a survivors initial meeting, the worker will give a clear overview of the services that we offer, including our trans inclusivity. This meeting will be held by a woman who has always lived as a woman and will include exploration of the type of support a survivor wishes and would benefit from. This conversation will also explore any concerns or preferences a survivor has around the support, and who they receive it from. The survivor is then supported by someone who meets their needs. It is important to us to provide safe access to all survivors of sexual violence, and we will continue to do so.  

It’s fascinating, this sniffy from a great height pitying categorization of half the population as “women who have always lived as women.” In an organization that exists for the purpose of supporting rape victims.

Then the real spit in the eye:

Our women only times at our centre located at 17 Claremont Crescent are:

• Mondays 5pm -7 pm,
• Tuesdays 9am – 1pm,
• Fridays 9am – 12pm/noon .

Golly, nine whole hours every week. How very generous.

Ouch. That’s gotta sting.

I particularly like “Perhaps you should reframe your trauma.”

I think “Dear Sandy” should become the instantly recognizable label for a decisive, lethal retort.

The guy who dumped soup on a woman yesterday because he doesn’t like her opinions is…you’ll never guess…in the Equality & Diversity trade. I guess it’s the “but not for you” kind of equality & diversity.

A recent Southampton Solent graduate, I have remained at the university as their first Student Equality & Diversity associate – in short it’s my job to engage with students about their experiences of university and hopefully help to make the campus that little bit more tolerant and friendly for everyone.

Unless they’re feminist women, in which case he’ll assault them. That little bit more tolerant and friendly for everyone.

In my personal life I am a working stand-up comic, amateur journalist and committed social justice activist – all passions which feed into the work I am currently lucky enough to be doing.

It’s amazing to me how glibly this goon trots out the Platitudes of Virtue while priding himself on not letting women speak up to defend our rights.

He has a BA in comedy writing and performance.

She WHAT???

Why not just give the journalist keys to the rape victims’ front doors?

He’s out on conditional bail.

A Yorkshire man charged has been charged with assault during a demonstration in Sheffield city centre.

Ben Lindsay, 34, of Fitzwilliam Street, Barnsley, was arrested and charged with two counts of assault by beating during a demonstration in Barkers Pool, earlier today (Saturday, September 21).

He will appear before Sheffield Magistrates’ Court on November 25, after being released on conditional bail. South Yorkshire Police issued the following statement, it said: “Man charged with assault after incident in Sheffield city centre.”

It’s almost as if men are not allowed to assault women for saying things the men don’t like. Is there any justice in the world?