This is going to be a gender-heavy week. I have loads of links, and nowhere else to put them, so here we go. I am, however, going to try to not overload each post. For a change.
The US bishops met last week, and one of their agenda items was to revisit their Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic healthcare, particularly in light of gender issues. One commenter somewhere sniffed “finally,” reflecting that it’s taken them long enough. I used to feel the same way – I’ve been writing rather intensely about this since 2019 (hard to believe), and there was a period when I was frustrated with the US bishops for not speaking with one voice on this issue right now.
I’ve changed my mind on that. Now, I’m glad that the bishops didn’t try to issue comprehensive documents in 2019 or even 2020. I’m pretty confident that an earlier document would have been vague enough to be damaging, and that the public conversation on this has moved, in recent years – or even months – to a point at which bluntly confronting the truth about this movement and embracing reality – is no longer seen as a vile violation of the command to just be kind.
And so what we’ve seen in the past couple of years – from the statements of various bishops to the March 2023 USCCB document, have been balanced and realistic. Thank you to a commenter here a few weeks ago for pointing me to this site, with lots of good resources, including links to most church documents related to this issue.
Ritual reminders, if you are new here:
My writings (most of them) on this issue are here.
My gender-critical Twitter feed is here.
Basics (skip if you’ve heard this before….):
It’s impossible to change sex.
The ultimate goal (at this moment) of the trans-rights movement is gender self-identification – that is, that society, culture and law should treat people according to what sex/gender they themselves determine they are – no gatekeeping allowed.
There is no such thing as “trans,” and that is not a synonym for genocide, people. It’s saying that “trans” as an “identity” doesn’t exist. You can’t be born in the wrong body. As presently used “trans” is an umbrella term used to group young women seeking, for one reason or another – personal trauma, mental illness, reaction against expectations – to reject their female identity, along with men who get a sexual charge out of seeing themselves as women, as well as effeminate males – and it doesn’t take much to see how ridiculous it is to group all of those (and more) under a single “identity” with specific rights to be delineated.
Opposition to gender ideology, as it is quickly evolving in the United States and Europe especially, is not a “right wing” perspective, and to attempt to characterize it as such usually occurs, depending on the audience, either because the speaker wants to discredit and fear-monger or wants to ignore the critiques of ideology that come from a feminist perspective. Most of the organized effort against gender ideology in Europe, for example, is coming from feminists.
So let’s link:
Sometimes the cases I highlight here seem (and are) outrageous and might even be outliers, but for me, they are nothing but “logical consequences.”
So, take Dana Rivers. Yes, the case of a trans-identifying male who murders a lesbian couple and their son is not an everyday occurrence, but the facts of his incarceration do provide us with the logical consequences of gender-self identification,
Rivers’ “gender identity-based” prison accommodation is the result of California’s SB132, also known as the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act.
The law was signed into effect in January 2021 by Governor Gavin Newsom, and provides inmates housing based on their self-declared gender identity status.
Almost immediately after the law was implemented, California correctional centers were hit with hundreds of transfer requests from male inmates seeking movement into women’s facilities. According to Keep Prisons Single Sex USA, fully one-third of all male inmates who have requested such transfers were registered sex offenders.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has previously confirmed to Reduxx that prison placements and transfer requests are based entirely off of a Gender Identity Questionnaire that can be issued at intake or requested later by inmates at any time during their incarceration.
The Questionnaire is form with a short series of questions in which inmates can declare their pronouns, honorifics, and gender identity.
Male inmates do not need to identify as transgender to request transfer or immediate accommodation in a women’s prison, and can simply identify as gender non-conforming or non-binary.
Why this matters: First of all, and most importantly, it matters for the sake of the safety and dignity of the women incarcerated with men.
Secondly, it matters because it helps us see the logical consequences of this moment. If there is no “gatekeeping” and gender self-identification is the norm, then there is no standing on which to deny Dana Rivers a place in a woman’s prison or any male a place in a woman’s space.
To bring up Dana Rivers or any other of the dozens of males housed in women’s prisons in the US is not cherry-picking. It’s simply presenting a case consistent with the stated desired outcome of this movement. Now: explain, please.
As Keep Prisons Single Sex USA says in their Twitter thread on this:
Please share this story so the public is aware of the damage resulting from enshrining “gender identity” in the law.
Dana Rivers actually had sex change surgery in June 2000: https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=124059&page=1
Once again….. In writing, always use quotation marks with “transgender” (also “trans,” “trannie,” “trans-identifying,” etc.) to signify that it is a faux term since nobody can change their genders. In conversation, be sure to make it clear that the term is not accepted and won’t be acknowledged for the same reason. Don’t ever give in on this, even for so-called politeness reasons. Apply the same approach to the despicable, anti-freedom-of-speech insistence that people must deny objective reality and refer to other people by their “chosen pronouns” that do not coincide with their biological/gender realities.
On the latter point, as I have stated many times. This is a very frequently cited article: https://fairplayforwomen.com/pronouns/