JOIN US FOR FORUM SAT. SEPT. 14th ON CASS REVIEW: EXPOSING LIES BEHIND CHILD TRANSITION

Feminists in Struggle presents a forum on the independent Cass Review that is blowing holes in the rationalization for the medical transitioning of gender non- conforming children and youth.

This event will take place  on Zoom on SATURDAY, SEPT. 14th at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time, 2:00 p.m. Eastern.

Tickets on sale now on Eventbrite:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cass-review-exposing-the-lies-behind-child-transition-tickets-1001755045307?aff=oddtdtcreator

Dr. Cass conducted an independent systematic review of existing evidence on behalf of the NHS in the U.K. She documented the poor quality of the published studies, and the weak evidence supporting use of puberty suppression and cross sex hormones along with their unknown long-term effects.

Join us for the discussion of Dr. Cass’s findings and recommendations and how to get the word out to stop this harmful sterilizing experiment on children who are different, including future generations of gays and lesbians.

SPEAKERS:

Aaron Kimberly is a Canadian woman born with a rare ovotesticular intersex condition who took testosterone as an adult and lived almost 20 years as a transman. She is a mental health nurse who first blew the whistle on pediatric gender medicine in 2019. In 2001 she cofounded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance to educate about different types of gender dysphoria. In 2023 she cofounded the LGBT Courage coalition with the Missouri whistleblower Jamie Reed, to support other whistleblowers and to protect gender nonconforming children, most of whom are gay/lesbian, from medical harm.

Ann Menasche is a lesbian, radical feminist and socialist, and a life-long activist who is a co-founder and co-coordinator of Feminists in Struggle (FIST). FIST is committed to spreading the word about the Cass Review and challenging the myths used to promote so-called “gender affirming care.” This issue is also personal for Ann. As a girl who aspired to the freedom and privileges of men, she would have likely succumbed to an ideology that said her body was “wrong” and in need of medicalization, were she growing up today.

This forum is a women-only event. It will be video-taped. Men who wish to view it can watch it later for free on FIST’s YouTube channel. Our Forums are interactive events with plenty of time for questions or comments from the audience. Women should check in 10 minutes before the event. Participants are free to close their camera or change their name after they have checked in.

The Zoom link will be sent by email to registrants prior to the event.

Minority Statement on Missouri Senate bill Banning Child Transition

Members of FIST voted to support the Missouri Senate bill banning so-called trans “affirming” care for minor children, as posted on this blog March 31.  However, that vote was quite close and those of us in the minority would like to put forward our arguments in the spirit of furthering the feminist debate on this important issue.

The Missouri bill does not “stand-alone” but is one of a tsunami of bills released recently sponsored by the Right, as part of a concerted build-up for the next presidential election—basically to get a far-right person elected president in 2024 (DeSantis or Trump).  The fact that some feminist groups joined the Right in promoting these bills has no influence on the Right’s culture war strategy.  Other rightwing bills that are part of this strategy include: the plethora of abortion bans in 13 states (including the recent attack on medication abortion); the erasure of actual US history from K-12 curricula, in the name of “protecting children” from knowing the truth about slavery (and civil rights and women’s rights); the attacks on affirmative action, Social Security and voting rights. We cannot separate all of these right wing attacks (even the one that we might agree with) from the general attack on everything progressive that is unfolding before our eyes—and we do not think FIST should play a part in what will play into that build-up by the Right despite our best efforts to separate ourselves as Leftists, lesbians, etc. .

A major argument in the fight for abortion has always been: “politicians should not be legislating healthcare—this is the province of medicine, not politics.”  “Bans off my body”  should be upheld for all adults, but minor children are often treated with additional care.  Any legislation on specific medical procedures can be used to strengthen the hand of politicians to adjudicate and police abortion care.

If state power is used to enforce “healthcare” bans at a time when there is so much sentimentalized propaganda FOR “gender affirming treatment”, it will make the parents seeking these procedures for their children into MARTYRS and will simply strengthen public sympathy FOR “gender affirming care.”

Even when the Right seems to be in agreement with us on transgender ideology, the way they see women and gender is very different  from a feminist perspective.  They want to preserve gender norms while feminists have always argued that the stereotypes associated with sex are confining and oppressive and should be eliminated.

A better strategy for us might be to put our energy into pressuring medical organizations (AMA, etc) or mounting a public service campaign to increase public understanding of the dangers of these “treatments.” Really putting on the pressure as to how their junk science is mutilating children, making them sterile, some unable to ever enjoy orgasm while simultaneously turning children into lifelong medical patients consuming the exact same powerful steroid hormones that the Women’s Health Movement of the 1970s worked so hard to warn us about. We could be spreading the word about the reasons Sweden, Finland and the UK have closed “gender clinics” and publicize the fact that even the US FDA has been forced to add the word “experimental” to its definition of sex hormones in “gender affirming treatment.”

FIST issues statement supporting Missouri Senate bill 843 banning child transition

On March 25, 2023, FIST sent a statement to the Missouri legislature supporting a bill that would ban medicalized transition for children under 18.  The letter declared in part, “Child transition involving puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries that remove or modify healthy body parts are extremely sexist and homophobic practices.  They disproportionately harm a growing number of girls, most of whom are same sex attracted, i.e., are likely to become lesbians, and girls that don’t fit in with sex stereotypes of traditional “femininity” imposed on them by a sexist society.

Medical transition is experimental, cosmetic, and doesn’t cure anything.  Instead, it results in sterilization, prevents proper development of brains and bones, and causes other permanent physical disabilities and shortened life spans.  No child is born in the wrong body! As feminists solidly on the Left, we call for saving the tomboys and future lesbians and feminists as well as all children struggling with being different from these permanent medical harms.”

The bill passed the Missouri Senate and is now pending in the House. If it passes, it will join a number of other states that have passed similar laws. According to ABC News, “At least 11 states — Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah — have passed laws or policies that restrict gender-affirming care for people under the age of legal majority, which is the threshold for legal adulthood.”

FIST is highly appreciative of the work of Scott/Kellie Newgent who has been traveling all over the country working on bills to protect children and who encouraged our participation in this campaign.  Please support her work at trevoices.org.

Building Hope for the New Year

It’s been a tough year for women’s rights.  We lost abortion rights (even though access had been eroded for years) when the decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health was issued this past June with our reactionary Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade and 50 years of precedent to give a green light to states to outlaw abortion.  Now 13 states ban all or virtually all abortions and only 17 states and the District of Columbia broadly protect abortion rights. No doubt, many women’s lives and liberty now hang in the balance.

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has continued to fight in the courts against adding the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even though already ratified by the requisite 38 states. See Maura Casey’s article, Publish ERA, let skirmishes begin and watch Equal Means Equal’s video: Joe, Do It!

The ERA would establish sex as a protected category, with the same weight as race, which would make it far easier to challenge all kinds of discriminatory practices in every state in the union, including jobs discrimination, violence against women, and yes, abortion bans. See and share our Why We Need the ERA brochure.

And then the coordinated worldwide effort to deny the existence of sex, and to remove sex-based protections including the ability of women to organize against our oppression and to even have language to talk about ourselves, has continued apace in 2022.  California passed two horrific bills this year, SB 923 and SB107 and would respectively indoctrinate the medical and mental health professions in gender identity ideology and make the state a magnet for minors seeking sterilizing and mutilating so-called “gender affirming care.”  See our post about these dangerous bills.

Indoctrination in our schools and universities is endemic.  Feminists are losing jobs and livelihoods and facing civil rights complaints for refusing to deny the existence of two biological sexes. A lesbian in Norway was even facing criminal charges and up to three years in prison for supposed “hate speech” for stating that men could neither be lesbians or mothers.

And most recently, Scotland passed a gender self-ID law, the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, that will allow any male, including convicted sex offenders, to enter women’s spaces and programs simply on his say-so, disregarding concerns about women’s safety.

So, there is plenty of reason to despair.  But there is also reason to hope.

Women can and are fighting back.  Women in Scotland protested and sang a rendition of Auld Lang Syne outside of parliament during the vote, “women’s rights are human rights.”  Their struggle is not over.

Rise-Up for Abortion Rights has done amazing organizing in response to the overturning of Roe.

Two women who challenged their sacking in the UK for their gender critical views were vindicated in court:  Allison Bailey  and Maya Forstater.

Our Duty, a non-partisan group of parents opposing child medical transition, organized a successful “First Do No Harm Unity Rally” of 100 people in Anaheim California in front of a national convention of pediatricians.  The central organizer is a mother, lawyer, and liberal Democrat.  The Tavistock Gender Clinic in the UK has been shuttered following the investigation headed up by Dr. Hilary Cass revealing dangerous invasive procedures being recommended for gender dysphoric youth with little screening or oversight.

And then there are the women of Iran, who are leading a struggle against an extremely repressive and misogynist fundamentalist regime.  In response to the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in custody of the morals police for not wearing her headscarf properly, and at great risk to themselves, our Iranian sisters have poured out into the streets again and again.

The song, Baraye, has been the anthem of the protests:

For the sake of dancing in the street

For the fear felt in the moment of kissing

For my sister your sister, our sisters

For changing the rotten minds

For shame, for pennilessness

For the yearning for an ordinary life

For the sake of the children that mine the garbage and their dreams…

For women, life, liberty

 

For women, life, liberty!  If they can do it, we can do it!

Happy New Year, sisters!

First Do No Harm Unity Rally

Feminists in Struggle was one of the many groups represented at the First Do No Harm Unity Rally at the American Academy of Pediatrics Convention in Anaheim on Saturday, October 8th to protest the medicalization of children by “gender-affirming care”. There was a great turnout and a lot of spirit!  Women and men, gay and straight, young and old, groups from across the political spectrum, from Green Alliance for Sex-Based Rights, California Legislative Council, Dykes on the Right, Partners for Ethical Care,  to parents groups like Our Duty, which organized the rally, joined together in solidarity in the effort to protect children and youth from the harms of “gender-affirming care”, which medicalizes, sterilizes, and mutilates.  Speakers included Julia Mason, M.D., Pediatrician; Scott Newgent; detransitioners Cat Cattinson, Chloe Cole, and Abel Garcia; and parents decrying this medical scandal.

For more information, see:

Wesley Yang

The Post Millenial

The Daily Wire

NTD TV

The Epoch Times

HELP US STOP SB 923 & SB 107!

California bill SB 923 is a blatant attempt to indoctrinate all medical personnel from clerks all the way up to M.D.s, therapists, and anyone in healthcare who has direct client contact, into gender ideology and so-called “gender-affirming care”.  It requires healthcare professionals to be “educated” by untrained transactivist lobbyist groups who would be the recipients of public funds for this purpose, and directs healthcare professionals’ governing boards to monitor and discipline their licensees’ compliance.

California bill SB 107 makes California a magnet for those seeking or providing “gender-affirming care”, a euphemism for radical interventions that causes infertility, inhibited bone and organ development, sexual dysfunction, and which sentences minors to a lifetime of medicalization and mutilating surgeries for the profit of pharmaceutical companies. SB 107 would not only shield those who enable minors to flee to California for such radical “healthcare”, but those medical doctors who prescribe and perform these treatments, even if outlawed in their home states, and it would bar law enforcement from cooperating with subpoenas or extradition orders.  For more background on SB 107, see: California Aspires to Become a Sanctuary State for Those Who Mutilate Children for Profit

Feminists in Struggle vigorously opposes these bills and calls for feminists and feminist allies in every state to help defeat them.  Both #SB923 and SB 107 have passed the California Senate and the California Assembly and now await Governor Newsom’s signature or veto.

Please call (916) 445-2841, Fax: (916) 558-3160, email, and tweet Governor Gavin Newsom @CAgovernor and @GavinNewsom and urge him to VETO both of these bills.

Here are some sample tweets:

I oppose #SB923 bc it pushes gender ideology, a dangerous belief system rooted in unreality that is seducing children, adolescents, & young adults into believing they were “born in the wrong body” and can alter their sex. VETO #SB923!

I oppose #SB923 bc it pushes “affirmative care” which is a profit-driven enterprise that creates lifelong medicalization and dependence on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery. VETO #SB923!

I oppose #SB923 bc it prevents medical professionals from using their judgment as to what constitutes appropriate treatment & places it in the hands of untrained political activists/trans lobbyists w/no clinical background. VETO #SB923!

I oppose #SB923 bc it erodes parents’ ability to protect their children from irreversible harm from sterilization, lifetime medicalization, and mutilation. VETO #SB923!

I oppose #SB923 bc it hampers healthcare providers’ ability to “first do no harm,” putting patients at risk of misdiagnosis and providers at risk of malpractice. VETO #SB923!

I oppose #SB923 bc it is an egregious misuse of taxpayer funds by mandating repeated “cultural training”of all medical personnel requiring MediCal, PACE, state, & partially-funded programs 2 spend millions of $$$ annually on re-education2 crush dissent. VETO #SB923!

I oppose #SB923 bc it is an egregious misuse of taxpayer funds to funnel $$ to lobbyist groups for politicized indoctrination, enriching political pacs rather than spending funds on legitimate services. VETO #SB923!

I oppose #SB923 bc it’s a violation of the 1st Amendment to compel medical personnel/providers to profess belief in gender ideology & use names/pronouns demanded by persons assuming a gender identity conflicting w/his/her sex VETO #SB923!

I oppose #SB107 bc it would sanction the aiding & abetting of criminal acts & the kidnapping & injuring of children by facilitating unscientific & untested experimentation on children by life-altering, irreversible & mutilating invasive procedures. VETO #SB107

I  oppose #SB107 bc it would sanction the aiding&abetting of kidnapping&injuring of children by usurping parental authority&substituting state authority over minors by empowering CA family courts 2assert jurisdiction&authority over children who come to CA. VETO #SB107

I oppose #SB107 bc it would sanction the aiding&abetting of criminal acts&the kidnapping&injuring of children by prohibiting CA law enforcement agencies from enforcing arrest warrants from states that restrict “gender-affirming health care,” for violations of those state’s laws&allows them 2flee2 CA2evade prosecution &receive full immunity from any&all legal responsibility 4their actions. VETO #SB107

I oppose #SB107 for violations of those state’s laws&allows them 2flee2 CA2evade prosecution &receive full immunity from any&all legal responsibility 4their actions. VETO #SB107

I oppose #SB107 bc it would sanction the aiding & abetting of criminal acts & the kidnapping & injuring of children by prohibiting CA law enforcement agencies from enforcing arrest warrants from states that restrict “gender-affirming health care” VETO #SB107!

I oppose #SB107 bc it would sanction the aiding&abetting of criminal acts&the kidnapping&injuring of children by preventing the prosecution of anyone who transports out-of-state minors into CA for “gender-affirming care”. VETO #SB107

I oppose #SB107 bc it would sanction med procedures w/o parental consent & allow parents to take their children out-of-state4these purposes w/o the other parent’s consent or in violation of custody & visitation orders, even refusing 2honor med subpoenas VETO #SB107