At 75 and having been a radical feminist activist for over 50 years your despair matched mine. Men who want to be women are welcome to form a group of their own and non binary persons can do the same. But there are still lots of women in the world, forced to marry at a young age, raped, killed for not wanting to stay with a violent partner. Who are struggling to help these women - other women. Our first world playing with trendy concepts like non-binary is an insult to so many women’s lives.
Ah Julie... its like the world has deserted so many of us. I'm a rusted on old lefty who - amongst other things - beleives in women's (that is human female's) rights, who can't listen to the ABC any more because every second story and announcer is proud rainbow represetnative of some bizarre bigot-bashing identity crusade. Solidarity for the old dead left and the old dead feminism that used to be about women.
Yesterday I completed and posted off my Bowel Cancer Home Test Kit that all of us over a certain age are issued for free by the Federal Government.
The kit includes a "Participant Details" questionnaire that has to be completed and sent in with the poo samples.
One of the questions on the form is "What gender do you identify as?". There is no question about the participant's biological sex.
The thing is, differences between men and women in susceptibility to, and mortality from, colorectal cancers - differences that are grounded in physiological sex-related differences - are very real, and there is an extensive scientific literature on them. Further, as the science in this field, as in all others, is constantly evolving, one would think that information about the biological sex of participants in this testing program would be something that our Federal Department of Health would want to gather and analyse.
I have written to Mark Butler alerting him to what his department is up to and I will be interested to see his response.
Here is a link to one of the many scientific studies of sex-based differences wrt bowel cancer.
Bill Shorten could be contacted too - although no longer Health Minister - he did take a stand when he was and a Vic Hospital tried to do away with 'mother' and 'father' on birthing records !
“Just how much more inclusive can women be?” Yes to everything you said there. By the time I read that paragraph my blood was already boiling. No wonder we feel so damn tired Julie and then to be told to try harder to be more virtuously inclusive! Being stripped of our rights, our language our female safe havens, we must expend what is left of us on praising and bowing down to the cult that hates us. I appreciate your powerful expression of this experience and your continuing efforts to voice our reality.
As someone of obviously European descent, if I wanted to "identify" as black (Indigenous Australian or African American) I would be howled down. And rightly so.
If I was not medically trained and wanted to waltz in and "identify" as a doctor I would be prosecuted. And rightly so.
As a very curvy, obviously biological woman, if I wanted to "identify" as a male and waltzed into a gay bar, I suspect the patrons would look at me askance. And politely ask me to leave.
(Funny story, way back in my uni days when I was experimenting dressing in a more traditionally masculine manner - I had cut my hair - I actually got pinched from behind in a gay bar. [Us girls often went to gay bars coz it felt a lot safer.] When the bloke came round and saw me from the front, he apologized 🤣)
Being a woman is not an identity that can be slipped on and off.
Dressing in a more or less feminine manner... Presenting in a more or less feminine manner... That is a matter of individual preference available to people of either sex. That is not an identity.
The notion of what is "typically" feminine or masculine appears to have contracted with the rise of gender ideology - to the detriment of all, but most especially young people coming of age today.
And thus we are left with events celebrating women that feature very few... Women.
"Women of the world Unite ...." NO WAKE_UP" to what's going on. The "progressive left" has become too accepting and way too forgiving. My experience of woke gender ideology is that the blokes who pretend to be/want to be women are the most mysoginistic bunch of men who when challenged (eg use the wrong pronoun - whoops who knew !) quickly turn into bully boy standover merchants. Time that the fact of being an adult human female is legislated as a protected characteristic in Australia as it is in many European countries - if not then we face a future where having an opinion trumps a scientific fact. Perhaps the lunatics are already in charge of the asylum ? Just consider the fact that the organisers of the 2023 Lesbian Conference were denied use of the $90 miilion "Gay Pride Centre" in St Kilda Road Melbourne - apparently they were not 'inclusive' enough? SHhhhhh
Thanks, dear friends of Julie, who have liked my comment. What a strange experience being liked in this space is!
I'm a white, late middle aged, unemployable male who, by the infallible mystical woke demographic key, must be a white male supremisist and red-necked Nazi (what preposterous crap). However, being too femalist for the ALP and the Greens does not make me a Nazi. Though - reporting this in utter digust - Julie was so defamed by the Tans Gestapo. These pricks (and they usually are, but dressed in a skirt) have absolutely no human respect.
You are being betrayed from within, dear sisterhood! It was the Gillard Labour government that removed definitions of male and female from the Sex Descrimination Act in 2013. Time to fight back.
Yes and that 2013 change to the Sex Discrimination Act which so few knew about has brought us to this moment where lesbians cannot advertise a female only event for lesbians (women of course) because they must recognise that men become lesbians by self declaration. The case of Tickle vs Giggle will bring the issue of the replacement of sex with gender identity to the fore. Readers here will no doubt be following the case closely. Sal Grover’s case is still open for crowd funding on Give Send Go. (Forgive this brazen promotion here please).
Many thanks Cathie. I had not heard of this case. Very important! Many thanks for spreading the word around. I've not got 2 cents to rub together right now, but should things improve I will certainly support Sal's legal fund.
Yes, it does seem extraordinary that the bulk of the audience apparently applauded this odd performance instead of seeing it as an insult to womanhood. But perhaps a more charitable explanation would be in terms of crowd psychology ('the madness of crowds').
Very likely the whole audience knew in every fibre of their body that the person on the stage was indeed a young woman, and not actually an alien from outer space. It's just that there's a huge pressure of conformity at work. The pressure to conform was generated by the very fact that this was an audience - a crowd of like-minded people focussed psychologically on the stage - and for quite unconscious reasons the individuals in the crowd found themselves unable to dissent from the distorted reality being presented so enthusiastically to them. So the solution is to hold two contradictory thoughts in one's head simultaneously: (i) of course this is a young woman, but (ii) she calls herself 'non-binary', which logically means that she doesn't believe she is a young woman any more. Politeness requires that we applaud her performance in order to maintain the shared illusion. And we look askance at anyone like Julie Szego who refuses to conform to the buzz.
Unfortunately, this is how some quite pernicious social movements tend to spread. When they are promoted by authority figures, we can see some unpleasant consequences in the historical record. An extreme example was the spate of witch-burning in Europe in the 1600s, when an eccentric but harmless old woman might find herself denounced by the village and its religious leaders. Today we see the transgender ideology being backed very strongly by key sources of authority in political movements like the Greens, in boards and HR departments in all sorts of organizations, and in the media (including the ABC and The Age, it would seem). Strangely, these modern authorities see themselves as left-wing dissenters, rather than as the new orthodoxy. At least the true dissenters are not being executed, but they certainly stand to lose their jobs and their reputations in the eyes of all right-thinking opinion-leaders.
At 75 and having been a radical feminist activist for over 50 years your despair matched mine. Men who want to be women are welcome to form a group of their own and non binary persons can do the same. But there are still lots of women in the world, forced to marry at a young age, raped, killed for not wanting to stay with a violent partner. Who are struggling to help these women - other women. Our first world playing with trendy concepts like non-binary is an insult to so many women’s lives.
Ah Julie... its like the world has deserted so many of us. I'm a rusted on old lefty who - amongst other things - beleives in women's (that is human female's) rights, who can't listen to the ABC any more because every second story and announcer is proud rainbow represetnative of some bizarre bigot-bashing identity crusade. Solidarity for the old dead left and the old dead feminism that used to be about women.
Yesterday I completed and posted off my Bowel Cancer Home Test Kit that all of us over a certain age are issued for free by the Federal Government.
The kit includes a "Participant Details" questionnaire that has to be completed and sent in with the poo samples.
One of the questions on the form is "What gender do you identify as?". There is no question about the participant's biological sex.
The thing is, differences between men and women in susceptibility to, and mortality from, colorectal cancers - differences that are grounded in physiological sex-related differences - are very real, and there is an extensive scientific literature on them. Further, as the science in this field, as in all others, is constantly evolving, one would think that information about the biological sex of participants in this testing program would be something that our Federal Department of Health would want to gather and analyse.
I have written to Mark Butler alerting him to what his department is up to and I will be interested to see his response.
Here is a link to one of the many scientific studies of sex-based differences wrt bowel cancer.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2020.607909/full
Bill Shorten could be contacted too - although no longer Health Minister - he did take a stand when he was and a Vic Hospital tried to do away with 'mother' and 'father' on birthing records !
Oh that is so so good!! And so spot on .
“Just how much more inclusive can women be?” Yes to everything you said there. By the time I read that paragraph my blood was already boiling. No wonder we feel so damn tired Julie and then to be told to try harder to be more virtuously inclusive! Being stripped of our rights, our language our female safe havens, we must expend what is left of us on praising and bowing down to the cult that hates us. I appreciate your powerful expression of this experience and your continuing efforts to voice our reality.
As someone of obviously European descent, if I wanted to "identify" as black (Indigenous Australian or African American) I would be howled down. And rightly so.
If I was not medically trained and wanted to waltz in and "identify" as a doctor I would be prosecuted. And rightly so.
As a very curvy, obviously biological woman, if I wanted to "identify" as a male and waltzed into a gay bar, I suspect the patrons would look at me askance. And politely ask me to leave.
(Funny story, way back in my uni days when I was experimenting dressing in a more traditionally masculine manner - I had cut my hair - I actually got pinched from behind in a gay bar. [Us girls often went to gay bars coz it felt a lot safer.] When the bloke came round and saw me from the front, he apologized 🤣)
Being a woman is not an identity that can be slipped on and off.
Dressing in a more or less feminine manner... Presenting in a more or less feminine manner... That is a matter of individual preference available to people of either sex. That is not an identity.
The notion of what is "typically" feminine or masculine appears to have contracted with the rise of gender ideology - to the detriment of all, but most especially young people coming of age today.
And thus we are left with events celebrating women that feature very few... Women.
Sniff. 💜 solidarity
"Women of the world Unite ...." NO WAKE_UP" to what's going on. The "progressive left" has become too accepting and way too forgiving. My experience of woke gender ideology is that the blokes who pretend to be/want to be women are the most mysoginistic bunch of men who when challenged (eg use the wrong pronoun - whoops who knew !) quickly turn into bully boy standover merchants. Time that the fact of being an adult human female is legislated as a protected characteristic in Australia as it is in many European countries - if not then we face a future where having an opinion trumps a scientific fact. Perhaps the lunatics are already in charge of the asylum ? Just consider the fact that the organisers of the 2023 Lesbian Conference were denied use of the $90 miilion "Gay Pride Centre" in St Kilda Road Melbourne - apparently they were not 'inclusive' enough? SHhhhhh
Thanks, dear friends of Julie, who have liked my comment. What a strange experience being liked in this space is!
I'm a white, late middle aged, unemployable male who, by the infallible mystical woke demographic key, must be a white male supremisist and red-necked Nazi (what preposterous crap). However, being too femalist for the ALP and the Greens does not make me a Nazi. Though - reporting this in utter digust - Julie was so defamed by the Tans Gestapo. These pricks (and they usually are, but dressed in a skirt) have absolutely no human respect.
You are being betrayed from within, dear sisterhood! It was the Gillard Labour government that removed definitions of male and female from the Sex Descrimination Act in 2013. Time to fight back.
Yes and that 2013 change to the Sex Discrimination Act which so few knew about has brought us to this moment where lesbians cannot advertise a female only event for lesbians (women of course) because they must recognise that men become lesbians by self declaration. The case of Tickle vs Giggle will bring the issue of the replacement of sex with gender identity to the fore. Readers here will no doubt be following the case closely. Sal Grover’s case is still open for crowd funding on Give Send Go. (Forgive this brazen promotion here please).
Many thanks Cathie. I had not heard of this case. Very important! Many thanks for spreading the word around. I've not got 2 cents to rub together right now, but should things improve I will certainly support Sal's legal fund.
Yes, it does seem extraordinary that the bulk of the audience apparently applauded this odd performance instead of seeing it as an insult to womanhood. But perhaps a more charitable explanation would be in terms of crowd psychology ('the madness of crowds').
Very likely the whole audience knew in every fibre of their body that the person on the stage was indeed a young woman, and not actually an alien from outer space. It's just that there's a huge pressure of conformity at work. The pressure to conform was generated by the very fact that this was an audience - a crowd of like-minded people focussed psychologically on the stage - and for quite unconscious reasons the individuals in the crowd found themselves unable to dissent from the distorted reality being presented so enthusiastically to them. So the solution is to hold two contradictory thoughts in one's head simultaneously: (i) of course this is a young woman, but (ii) she calls herself 'non-binary', which logically means that she doesn't believe she is a young woman any more. Politeness requires that we applaud her performance in order to maintain the shared illusion. And we look askance at anyone like Julie Szego who refuses to conform to the buzz.
Unfortunately, this is how some quite pernicious social movements tend to spread. When they are promoted by authority figures, we can see some unpleasant consequences in the historical record. An extreme example was the spate of witch-burning in Europe in the 1600s, when an eccentric but harmless old woman might find herself denounced by the village and its religious leaders. Today we see the transgender ideology being backed very strongly by key sources of authority in political movements like the Greens, in boards and HR departments in all sorts of organizations, and in the media (including the ABC and The Age, it would seem). Strangely, these modern authorities see themselves as left-wing dissenters, rather than as the new orthodoxy. At least the true dissenters are not being executed, but they certainly stand to lose their jobs and their reputations in the eyes of all right-thinking opinion-leaders.