World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Files

That is frightening.

And am I risking being banned from this thread for saying that Mridul Wadhwa is male, even though Wadhwa literally didn't bother getting a GRC which was easily available, and therefore got the job counselling female rape victims (and selecting other "female" rape counsellors to do the same) under false pretences?

Because the problem is that it's impossible to express a principled objection to Wadhwa's position as head of ERCC if one has to pretend to believe that Wadhwa is female. If Wadhwa is a woman, then any such objection becomes an objection to a particular kind of woman. Like objecting to an Indian, or a lesbian - which would of course be wrong.

But women who have been raped and abused by men are often traumatised by the presence of men, and it makes healing impossible for them if they are expected to ignore the presence of a man just because that man claims to feel like a woman.

Trans men nearly always do continue in the female category, unsurprisingly. And of course that makes sense - because they would be so outclassed in the male category that it would be the end of their career.

And literally everyone acknowledges this. Somehow though, when it comes to trans women we have a bunch of (mainly male) posters screaming about how anyone who doesnt think they should compete against females is an awful bigot and that theres no difference between them and a biological female. Wonder why this is?

An amazing ignorance around the practicalities of competitive sport combined with a breathtaking sense of self-regard.

I've yet to see any men's health issue such as prostate or testicular cancer have the fact that it's males who are effected be completely erased. Yet from cervical cancer, to childbirth, and now apparently, strokes, the word "woman" is becoming verboten from female health issues so as not to offend males.

I know it was brought up in the sports thread and not this one but it seems more suited for here. The UN special rapporteur for violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, has put out a statement about the Australian court ruling that sex is changeable and how it could further erode women's sex based rights

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/09/special-rapporteur-decries-australias-federal-court-ruling-further-eroding

Welp. Another of those "things that never happen" just happened again.

At what point does somebody in charge start to consider that maybe defining one category of men as inherently "the most oppressed" and thus putting them in unquestioned, and unquestionable, positions of authority over the genuinely vulnerable like children was always going to attract, well, men wanting power over children?

They used to become priests to get access to children. Now they can just declare they are women.

And to be clear, I am NOT saying that trans women are all abusers, no more than priests or teachers were all abusers.

I'm saying that when society creates categories of men who escape the normal rules that are imposed on men to keep women and children safe from abusers, then abusers will want to exploit the opportunity that affords them.

(I fully expect to be sanctioned for "being a dick" for this. Because that rule clearly only applies to men. Women and children can be abused, raped, beaten up for sport even, by men - and me criticising any of that makes me the "dick". The irony of it.)

I only suggested that plodder because YOU asked the question - what other word could they have used in the context of heart health? I wasn’t actually being serious in suggesting they could use alternatives, and that should have been clear from my suggestion that the use of those words would have them come off like they were on day release. The point was about women’s heart health, not about gender studies.

And that student making a complaint about being expected to use certain terms in a course on GENDER STUDIES, really doesn’t have a point. The fact that it’s a GENDER STUDIES course means it is entirely political… just not her politics:

"Olivia, this is a solid proposal," the feedback read, per FoxNews. "However, the terms ‘biological women’ are exclusionary and are not allowed in this course as they further reinforce heteronormativity. Please reassess your topic and edit it to focus on women’s rights (not just "females") and I’ll regrade." 

While the college student said she has not seen the professor pushing this gender ideology on the rest of the online class, she recalled another banter over privilege.

"In a discussion, I had said that it's not OK to generalize and say that all White men are privileged and she came back and said that it is important to recognize that fact," she recalled. 

The University of Cincinnati reportedly said Krolczyk's dispute is being reviewed through its established policies and processes. Krolczyk told Fox News she met with the school’s gender equity group and they agreed she would do her project with her original proposal. A new professor will grade her work and a file will be sent to the dean. 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/college-gender-studies-professor-allegedly-fails-student-using-banned-term-biological-women

And as it turns out, she got an A grade when her project was re-examined:

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/college-student-gets-a-class-allegedly-receiving-zero-proposal-using-term-biological-women.amp

How useful her academic qualifications in Gender Studies could be outside of Academia, is anyone’s guess really.

On the risk factors for stroke and AF, neither of us needs to be a cardiologist to be able to read and understand the information being presented. Frankly I’d always assumed that you would have a much better understanding of all this stuff than I do because I’d formed the impression that you’d some sort of background in medicine, whereas me I’m just a couch potato. There’s no need to defend the guidelines, regardless of the fact that one cardiologist sought offence where none was intended (doesn’t matter whether they’re a man or a woman, from their LinkedIn profile it’s clear they have their own biases when they refer to all genders), but I wouldn’t read too much into the fact that the ECS main source of funding comes from the Healthcare Industry either - it’s just an indication that they too have their own biases.

The Irish Heart Foundation have their own biases too, as do RTE in attempting to pass off the information as new research, when it’s actually been known about for some time that women are at significantly higher risk of cardiovascular disease than men, and how the symptoms of cardiovascular disease present differently in women and men, let alone the idea of comparing it to rates of breast cancer in women to make the point in order to increase awareness among the general public about cardiovascular disease in women. As I said - most people will have understood the point without your needling about whether anyone is referring to women, or females, or biological females, or adult human females. That nonsense bickering over terminology just seems unnecessary IMO. I assume neither of us have academic qualifications relating to Gender Studies either? 😒

We obviously have a very different understanding of the term ‘gaslit’ and gaslighting though, when I don’t agree with your assertion that women are being gaslit and don’t realise it. Seems rather bloody convenient for your argument to employ circular reasoning - you’ve managed to establish that women are being gaslit, by virtue of the idea that they just don’t realise they’re being gaslit. That however, is simply not the case. Women aren’t being gaslit, because very few women are convinced that they are victims in the first place, which is a prerequisite for academic success in Gender Studies courses. I’d give that student an A for effort in playing the victim, before I’d ever force myself to read the kind of crap I imagine she submitted for evaluation.

Nah I get you man, but that’s kinda the point - you have to go looking for this stuff to be offended by it, whereas it just doesn’t map to reality for most people under normal circumstances and conditions. That’s why I could completely understand where you were coming from in it occurring to you when watching the RTE news piece that they’re not nailing down the issue to only refer to as you put it - real women*.

The reason why the term ‘biological woman’ would rankle the most hard-nosed of Feminists is pretty simple - it’s a term that Feminists have sought to distinguish themselves from as it conflates biology and sociology as an explanation of women’s oppression in society. Simone de Beauvoir would be doing 9,000RPM in her grave were she exposed to what has become of Feminist ideology today. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but if you do ever get your hands on a copy, her seminal work “The Second Sex” is an absolute cracker. She goes damn hard, but it’s worth it IMO:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Sex

https://philosophynow.org/issues/69/Becoming_A_Woman_Simone_de_Beauvoir_on_Female_Embodiment

She was a tour de force in philosophy before she submitted herself to Sartre and it all went a bit sideways:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/10/gender.politicsphilosophyandsociety

Then again when she wrote of birth control, she, like most women, couldn’t have known then what is now known (and remains unknown) about hormonal birth control and the long term effects it has on women:

Although hormonal contraceptives are safely used by more than 300 million women worldwide (as of a 2019 study by the United Nations), there has been minimal research on their downstream physiological and behavioral effects. 

Past research has found hormonal contraceptive pills may increase women’s risk for chronically elevated inflammation, which carries the long-term risk of developing illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune disorders, as well as potential mood disorders, including depression. However, the mechanisms behind this association have remained understudied and unclear, Mengelkoch said. 

https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/study-shows-how-birth-control-pills-affect-womens

*note that I don’t take issue with the term, use whatever terms you’re comfortable with, I’ll still understand what you mean, it’s sometimes used by women too to distinguish themselves from other women, though I’ve generally only seen it used on social media, whereas the idea of real men has been around for a while, generally used by both men and women to characterise what are their desirable characteristics in men - my old man was fond of saying “we’ll make a man out of you yet!”, as though his input and control over the process somehow extended beyond his participation in my conception 🤨