Women’s Sport.

 

To my knowledge, none of those pictured are Intersex. Certainly none are Trans. Humans vary.

Serious Stuff

Some quotes from a person of questionable sanity:

" I don’t want to reach the evil fuckers and give them more information, to teach them how to con more Lesbians. I want them gone permanently. "

Pseudo, you’re right — they’re the ones who kept taking about violence and murder. But really, they should be careful about giving some angry women those ideas. I can’t imagine that every one of them hasn’t raped or molested a female at some point. They’re male and that’s what males do!

I knew those fuckers were disgusting, but really, they’re worse than I thought in how they don’t even pretend to care about females. To blame us for them being killed by other men? Their arrogance and oppressiveness is amazing. It is funny though that they are so used to Feminists immediately bowing before them that they don’t know how to deal with that we don’t care what happens to them. They expect we’ll be shocked to see statistics about them being killed, and don’t realize, some of us wish they would ALL be dead.

oh my god, Margaret and Fab — I can just imagine their gloating if they can get female body parts and reproduce (not to mention how reproduction is destroying the earth and the likelihood of birth defects and bad health from babies coming from such a place.) There are no words to describe them. There are tiny parasitic wasps who paralyse small animals (spiders, caterpillars, etc.) and lay their eggs on them, so the animal is alive while being slowing eaten by the growing baby. But the wasps aren’t deliberately cruel. These men remind me of a deliberately female-hating version of that. They’ve prove what I’ve been saying for decades — they are more female-hating than even many het men. The character in Silence of the Lambs who skinned women to wear really seems more accurate all the time.

Those quotes are all from just one person, Bev Jo Van Dohre, on just one website (since made private) http://wewillnot.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/wtf-is-with-the-intersex-comments in 2010. There are many others by her elsewhere just like those.

That wouldn't matter too much, except in light of her influence on the organisers of the Seven Sisters Festival, who don't seem to be aware of her true agenda.

And her influence on certain Australian academics.

Thanks, Sharon. I agree it’s good to get and share support from all potential allies, but it’s loaded for me when you name someone who I feel oppressed by and censored (Dirt) — or plagiarized by (as in the case of Sheila Jeffries, who got some of her politics from us and our book.) Because of her academic privilege, she’s in a position to reach more, and I’m glad about that, but quoting her to me as if I hadn’t been writing about the trans cult for years earlier is annoying to me.

https://bevjoradicallesbian.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/transmen-are-still-women-part-2-of-the-pretenders-defining-lesbians-out-of-existence/#comment-394

No longer Germaine

To give an idea of the sometimes comic but always spiteful nature of some strains of "feminist transphobia", see http://www.transadvocate.com/sex-essentialism-terfs-and-smelly-vaginas_n_14924.htm

 "Most recently, Germaine Greer made headlines (in queer media circles) for appealing to a bad vagina smell as being essential to authentic womanhood. During a question and answer session at The Cambridge Union, in which she again asserted trans medical care to be unethical, Greer suggested that trans women aren’t truly women because trans women don’t know what it is “to have a big, hairy, smelly vagina.”

Interestingly, prior to Greer asserting that trans women don’t have smelly vaginas, Sheila Jeffreys asserted that trans women have incredibly smelly vaginas, asserting, “The newly carved-out orifices of male-bodied transgenders do not resemble vaginas [and] create new microbial habitats in which infections develop and cause serious smell issues for their owners.

That's fairly typical. First a bizarre test of what sex someone *really* is - this one, genital aroma, is in fact an article of faith amongst TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists), Then the unevidenced assertions that Trans women don't pass the test due to diametrically opposite reasons - one because they do, one because they don't - all asserted without a shred of evidence.

The Religious Right is anti-Trans because Transsexuality undermines a well-ordered society where men are men and women are women, that it's all a Leftist plot to undermine the Gender Binary. (See former pope Benedict's speeches on the subject).

The TERFs are anti-Trans because Transsexuality upholds the Gender Binary, and that Trans people are tools of the Patriarchy.

This appropriation of Trans people is discussed well and with some wit at http://quinnae.com/2010/10/01/i-am-whoever-you-say-i-am/


As an aside, the microbial flora in neo-vaginas is nearly identical to that of the usual kind in premenstrual girls, but that's merely a fact and so irrelevant to the issue.

"Weyers and his colleagues studied 50 postsurgical transsexual women and found microbial microflora that were simiilar to those of premenstrual girls:

Our study indicates that the microflora of the neovagina is characterized by bacterial species from the skin and the intestinal microflora, somewhat similar to what is observed with premenarchal girls…

They also found microbial populations similar to those of women with vaginitis, and they noted an absense of lactobacilii (which is present in the vaginas of ovulating women, but not in girls) in all but one of their subjects."

But to go into this just buys into their irrationality. Like trying to argue with Flat Earthers.

The Social Construction of Sex

The Social Construction of Sex - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society - Alice Dreger

This, then, brings us to the issue of gender identity. Gender identity can be described as the internal feeling of being a boy, girl, man, woman, or something else. Is gender identity socially constructed—that is, are people taught to feel like one or the other?

When I started doing intersex work,I thought so. I thought we were taught to feel, act, and behave like girls and boys. But I don’t think that anymore. That is to say, sure we’re taught these things, but many of us probably get our core gender identities as much from our biological origins as we do from our gender educations. I’ve met too many people who, in spite of careful gender educations—sometimes even intensive gender educations—just clearly felt the gender assigned to them was the wrong one. I’ve also seen a lot of evidence from intersex that prenatal hormone levels correlate with gender-type behaviors, gender identities, and even sexual orientation. (Correlate, not cause! But correlations can be useful clues to causal factors.)

...

On this note, let me just say this: People who think gender identities, gender roles, and sexual orientations are all socially constructed are the most naive biological determinists I’ve ever seen. They think all human brains are completely without structure when it comes to these things; we all have empty slates in our skulls at birth. No, we don’t! Really!
In fact, I think we can’t know that much about any individual person’s biology without a huge amount of study on that person—and even then, it’s hard to know much. (I think the same is true about an individual person’s social history.) In this sense, I’m much less of a strict biological determinist than the social constructivists people incorrectly lump me with. I happen to think that, for any given child, we can’t predict with certainty what gender identity or sexual orientation she or he will grow up to have, even if the child is raised in a very sex-role-strict culture. Some will go against our best guesses and educational attempts—we know that again from cross-cultural studies, where transgender, lesbian, bi, and gay children and adults show up again and again.

Yup. That sums it up pretty well.

The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

The Gender Similarities Hypothesis Hyde, Janet Shibley American Psychologist, Vol 60(6), Sep 2005

The differences model, which argues that males and females are vastly different psychologically, dominates the popular media. Here, the author advances a very different view, the gender similarities hypothesis, which holds that males and females are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables. Results from a review of 46 meta-analyses support the gender similarities hypothesis. Gender differences can vary substantially in magnitude at different ages and depend on the context in which measurement occurs. Overinflated claims of gender differences carry substantial costs in areas such as the workplace and relationships.

It's a meta-meta analysis - a summary of summaries of experiments - and later work has shown rather more differences than the early metastudies would imply. About the only glaringly obvious ones visible here are those determined not by gender as such, but purely by testosterone levels.

Nonetheless, it supports two contentions that later work has shown to be well evidenced. First, that genuine innate (albeit statistical) differences exist. Second, that men and women are far more similar than different.

Historically, it's been the differences that have been overblown due to ideological belief, with no evidentiary basis. These days, it's the differences that have been minimised or even denied, again due to ideological belief, and against the evidence. Throughout, the statistical nature of the differences, that one can make no claims at all about individuals in any one area, have been completely ignored. Men and women differ from each other. Men differ from other men too, and women from other women. Both men and women as individuals can be more or less stereotypically masculine or feminine in different areas, gender is not a binary but a complex multivariant.

They've got form (Part III)

They've got form, but I have a life - so this will be succinct.

Jan 22 Voices from the trans community: 'There will always be prejudice'

Jan 19 Feminism shouldn't be about telling trans women they're not female enough

Jan 18 Why I'm trans … and a feminist

Jan 13 Julie Burchill has ended up bullying the trans community

And the hits keep coming...

They've got form (Part II)

Being in the main a compendium of links about l'Affaire Burchill.

The most helpful one I think is Julie Burchill, transphobia and hostility towards the victims of oppression. Tellingly, it's in the Grauniad's Science section.

The recent media furore over an article by Julie Burchill has brought to light prejudice against transgender individuals among people who should know better. But this tendency to demonise the victims of unfair treatment is a well established phenomenon

It ends thus:

But If I was going to try and explain all possible reasons for this animosity toward trans people, this blogpost would run into the terabytes. There are so many social, psychological and countless other factors in play, it would be like trying to untangle a ball of Christmas tree lights the size of the moon. I just offer the above rationalisations as possible explanations for illogical transphobia. Of course, some people are just bastards, let's not forget that.

I don't have any ideological or personal involvement with the whole debacle that occurred recently, and I'm certainly not making any expert pronouncements on what's happening. I'm a behavioural neuroscientist who works in mental health, and I just saw supposedly intelligent people behaving in ways that seemed illogical, even hypocritical, and I thought I'd offer a possible explanation as to why. But obviously things are a lot more complex.

I'm also a Guardian blogger though, and not even a serious one (I usually write about boobs or moustaches). But given that it was Burchill's article that caused so much offence, and the Guardian's perceived poor track record in this area, I felt it was necessary to have at least one piece published under the Guardian banner that presented transphobia as illogical and irrational, which it definitely is.

It may not be a just world, but that doesn't mean we can't at least make an effort to change that.

As they say, read the whole thing. My comment on it:

And then there is the logic that goes this way. The left is always wrong. The left is championing these people because it sees them as victims of oppression. Therefore they must be deserving of no sympathy.

-- Lloyd Flack

… it's the Left "feminists" who loathe transsexualism with a fierce passion, Lloyd, IMO because it conflicts with the narratives of social constructionism. Men and women are somewhat different psychologically, and it always seemed kind of obvious to me that there were neurological differences underlying that from the first time I seriously considered the issue from that point of view. Men and women don't "think" differently… but they do tend to relate to others in different ways. The irony here is that in terms of my beliefs about "gendered consciousness", I used to be a social constructionist of the Shulamith Firestone variety, and I wish that she had been right.

-- Bonze Anne Rose Blayk From PinkNews:

DJ Sheepiesheep Every transphobic slur creates another transphobic bigot. The more transphobic bigots there are, the greater the chance of an act of violence against a trans person. So yes, I personally think that Moore and Burchill and their ilk are in part responsible for an increase in transphobic violence.

Solent And every misogynistic slur reinforces the bigotry of non bigots

Thia Jones Every transphobic slur IS a misogynistic slur

Tellitlikeitis Every trans abomination is a misogynistic slur. You lot rape women just by existing.

From "The Transsexual Empire: the making of the She-Male" 1979, reprinted 1980,1994,2007 by Professor Janice Raymond, a standard Radical Feminist text used in many universities.

All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artefact, and appropriating this body for themselves.

Ibid.

I contend that the problem with transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence.

You can't understand this irrational hatred without examining the philosophical basis for it.

OK, on to the linky goodness. First the Telegraph, reprinting Burchill's original and utterly unique piece. A paragraph thereform:

She, the other JB and I are part of the tiny minority of women of working-class origin to make it in what used to be called Fleet Street and I think this partly contributes to the stand-off with the trannies. (I know that’s a wrong word, but having recently discovered that their lot describe born women as ‘Cis’ – sounds like syph, cyst, cistern; all nasty stuff – they’re lucky I’m not calling them shemales. Or shims.) We know that everything we have, we got for ourselves. We have no family money, no safety net. And we are damned if we are going to be accused of being privileged by a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs.

The Grauniad's Reader's editor, from back in 2004, the last time such foetid wording was used (though alas, not the last time overtly Transphobic articles appeared in that publication)

Dismay at the piece was registered not only by transsexual people but by doctors, therapists, academics and others involved in the field. One therapist wrote: "Transgendered people would like to go about their lives in peace and dignity." This column, which obscured any argument in discriminatory language, would not help them to do that. It abused an already abused minority that the Guardian might have been expected to protect.

Quite. And the language there was mild, in comparison with Burchill's piece.

Now for the non-apology apology that replaced the original.

We have decided to withdraw from publication the Julie Burchill comment piece 'Transsexuals should cut it out'. The piece was an attempt to explore contentious issues within what had become a highly-charged debate. The Observer is a paper which prides itself on ventilating difficult debates and airing challenging views. On this occasion we got it wrong and in light of the hurt and offence caused I apologise and have made the decision to withdraw the piece. The Observer Readers' Editor will report on these issues at greater length.

"Explore contentious issues" my Aunt Fanny. Just read it.

Onwards to the Interim Report from the Observer's Reader's Editor - the Observer is basically "the Guardian on Sunday", though there is independent editorial control.

It was "appalling", "vile", "hateful". It was "incredibly offensive". It was "rude, bigoted and downright insulting". In the 24 hours following the publication of Julie Burchill's Observer piece headlined "Transsexuals should cut it out", more than 1,000 emails arrived in my inbox and 2,952 comments were posted online, most of them highly critical of the decision to publish what one correspondent called "her bullying nonsense". The piece in question was a defence of her friend, the columnist Suzanne Moore, who claims she has been driven off Twitter by a vociferous campaign from transsexual people....

Sure it was.

The ensuing storm was notable both for its vociferous nature and for its individuality. A controversial issue will often bring a blizzard of identikit protest of apparently confected anger but while clearly this lobby was organised most of the emails and letters we received were personal and heartfelt. And they were not only from trans people. Concerned readers with no connection to the trans lobby felt hurt that a minority that could expect to be protected by a liberal publication was being attacked in an extremely insulting manner. "Would you have run the article if it had contained similar slurs regarding people of colour or people with disabilities?" was a typical question.

Exactly.

A collective failure of editing led to this piece appearing in the form that it did. "We will scrutinise further the manner in which this process needs improving," said the editor.

A Collective Failure of Editing. Just a bit, yes. The interior of the Sun is also moderately warm, and the sea not completely dry.

So how does the Observer move on from here? The editor says that discussions with representatives from the trans community will take place over the coming weeks. These discussions will be an opportunity to listen and also to debate the issues raised by this incident. A lesson has been learned.

My comment:

One thing that should be pointed out. The inaccuracy of referring to a "Trans Lobby" being involved here. The initial, very mild, critique on Twitter of Ms Moore came from... a fellow feminist. Not of the trans variety.

I loved your piece on anger - except for the shock transphobia ("a Brazilian transsexual") - why on earth did you include it?

That's it. You can see the record at http://storify.com/leftytgirl/suzanne-moore-timeline-of-trans-misogynistic-twitt

Moore replied with some increasingly nasty tweets.

Transphobia is your term. I have issues with trans anything actually... I dont prioritise this f***ing lopping bits of your body over all else that is happening to women Intersectional enough for you?... I dont even accept the word transphobia any more than Islamaphobia... People can just f*** off really. Cut their dicks off and be more feminist than me. Good for them.

That was the bit that was the insult direct. Transphobia, naked and unadorned. This caused a further Twitter-storm, 99+% of which did not involve Trans people.

The Trans contributions: Julia Serano tweeted on 8th January:

some cis feminists have a gambling problem Yet another cis feminist doubles down on trans misogyny

Suzannah (leftytgirl) tweeted on 11th January after the Burchill piece something more "robust and forthright", though moderate compared to Ms Moore's foul language

Suzanne Moore, trans-misogynist asshole extraordinaire ;)

The winking smiley emoticon rather diluting the effect. That's it. That's the sum and total involvement of this "Trans Lobby", this howling mob of Trans women.

Non-Trans feminists, vastly outnumbering the Trans contributions weighed in more forcefully. For example: F*ck you Suzanne Moore you c*nt as one cis Feminist wrote. Suzanne Moore is not a Feminist. Suzanne Moore is a piss stain on the pants of Fascism wrote another. Again, non-trans feminists here.

The really vile stuff, the threats and so on.... came from professional trolls, and a horde of 4chan anon accounts, "the usual suspects". None of them Trans. The infamous "lop off suzanne moore's spine imo" was by a well known social commentator, nominated for a "shorty" award. No connection to either trans or feminist groups at all.

However, the lede had to be different, so Burchill's unprintable (but alas, not unprinted) distilled hate wasn't self-contradictory.

Journalists - like yourself - are supposed to look behind the scenes, not take the words of anyone, politicians, businessmen, whoever at face value. You've screwed up here, even the editors trying to set things aright. Good luck in communicating with this "powerful trans lobby" Burchill blames. You'd be better off trying to find the Elders of Zion.

Or the International Communist Conspiracy to pollute our precious bodily fluids, for that matter.

A follow-up article will deal with second- and third- order effects. Links to articles in the Grauniad and Observer only though, rather than commentary by third parties. It's confusing enough as it is. The rest can wait. I have a life. I'd also like to blog about something else for a while, to cleanse my intellectual palate. Something humourous, but lingering. I'm not a bit angry at Ms Burchill.

Say... Gilbert and Sullivan's the Mikado.

MIK.: Ha! ha! ha! (To KATISHA) I forget the punishment for compassing the death of the Heir Apparent.

Ko, POOH, and PITTI: Punishment! (They drop down on their knees again.)

MIK.: Yes. Something lingering, with boiling oil in it, I fancy. Something of that sort. I think boiling oil occurs in it, but I'm not sure. I know it's something humorous, but lingering, with either boiling oil or melted lead. Come, come, don't fret, I'm not a bit angry.

Naughty Zoe! BAD Zoe!

An Interview with Mara Keisling

The complete set of videos and resources is at http://conversations.psu.edu/episodes/mara_keisling_

Is the Moon Blue?

For only the second time I can remember, I find myself (much to my astonishment) in agreement with George Monbiot. The original and archetypical logic- and fact- free Moonbat, the man whose articles coined the word.

But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I lampoon him not because of who or what he is, but because of his habitual careless disregard for fact and evidence.

When he has the facts on his side - not often - then it doesn't matter who expresses the idea, it only matters whether the idea is true or false. A genius can be wrong; an idiot can be right. Monbiot is neither genius nor idiot, just, um, a Moonbat.

Here he's right though. The facts are on his side.

Truth is the forgotten family value

Cultural conservatives' moral concerns about marriage are based on a view of history that is almost entirely false.

"Throughout history and in virtually all human societies marriage has always been the union of a man and a woman." So says the Coalition for Marriage, whose petition against same-sex unions in Britain has so far attracted 500,000 signatures. It's a familiar claim, and it is wrong. Dozens of societies, across many centuries, have recognised same-sex marriage. In a few cases, before the 14th century, it was even celebrated in church.

This is an example of a widespread phenomenon: myth-making by cultural conservatives about past relationships. Scarcely challenged, family values campaigners have been able to construct a history that is almost entirely false.

From The Early Church's View on Marriage:

The earliest form of Christian marriage was a simple blessing of the newly wedded pair, in facie ecclesiae - outside the church's closed doors - to keep the pollution of lust out of God's house.

Common-law marriages were often informal. Mere cohabitation could constitute a valid marriage. Temporary trial marriages were legal up to the early 17th century in England. The church displayed remarkable reluctance to deal with the matter of marriage at all. During the Middle Ages there was no ecclesiastical definition of a valid marriage nor of any contract to validate one. In 1753 Lord Harwidke's Act made clerical blessing a requirement for legal marriage in England but the Act didn't apply to Scotland nor the colonies (ie the USA to be). …

Origen declared: "Matrimony is impure and unholy, a means of sexual passion."

St. Jerome: "The primary purpose of a man of God was to "cut down with an ax of Virginity the wood of Marriage."

St. Ambrose: "Marriage was a crime against God, because it changed the state of virginity that God gave every man and woman at birth. Marriage was prostitution of the members of Christ."

Tertullian: "Marriage was a moral crime, more dreadful than any punishment or any death." It was "obscenity," or "filth."

St. Augustine: "Marriage is a sin." Augustine also expressed disgust at feminine sexual and maternal functions. He coined the saying that birth is demonstrably accursed because every child emerges "between feces and urine."

Church customs reflected many of the above views. There wasn't a Christian sacrament of marriage until the 16th century. Catholic scholars said the wedding ceremony was "imposed on" a reluctant church. …

The Council of Trent (1545-1563) decreed that a person who even hinted that the state matrimony might be more blessed than celibacy would be declared anathema - accursed and excommunicated.

From Wiki -

This view of marriage was reflected in the lack of any formal liturgy formulated for marriage in the early Church. No special ceremonial was devised to celebrate Christian marriage—despite the fact that the Church had produced liturgies to celebrate the Eucharist, Baptism and Confirmation. It was not important for a couple to have their nuptials blessed by a priest. People could marry by mutual agreement in the presence of witnesses.[36]

At first, the old Roman pagan rite was used by Christians, although modified superficially. The first detailed account of a Christian wedding in the West dates from the 9th century. This system, known as Spousals, persisted after the Reformation.[36]

[36] Armstrong, Karen. Gospel According to Women. Anchor Books, 1991. ISBN 978-0-385-24079-6

Ugly Secrets of 2nd Wave Feminism

The spoken word has more impact than turgid prose. Please listen to this J'Accuse! video.



Yes, that is what was said and written. That is what is in textbooks today. That is what is still being taught in some places, including the Australian National University, in courses on Feminism.

The antidote to such hatred is not suppression - it's exposure.

Jane's Bonds

Today is International Womens Day.

Here's why such a day is necessary.



I never wanted to be a girl when I was young. But it's not something you want to be, it's something you are.
My male privilege got revoked - but you know what? It was worth it, not to have to pretend.
Now all I can do is work to see that all women get a fairer shake. Including me.

Putting a veil on Egypt

From Phyllis Chessler at Pyjamas Media:

Cairo University Class of 1959

Cairo University Class of 1978

Cairo University Class of 1995

Cairo University Class of 2004

Cairo University Class of 2015

Females not permitted on campus by order of the Muslim Brotherhood

"Islam is dogma and worship, a fatherland and nationality, religion and state, spirituality and action, the Qur'an and the sword"

For a guide to what's happening in Egypt, see the events of 93 years ago.

I don't subscribe to this

I don't follow this flowchart. First of all, it's arrogant, disrespectful of opponents. OK, they may deserve to be disrespected, but that's not the point: they're human.

Second, and most importantly, few such interactions occur in a vacuum. No, I don't mean in Low Earth Orbit, I mean without a social context. For every writer, there may be many readers. For every participant, many sitting by and observing the interchange, undecided on the issue. When one side is the soul of sweet reason, one of the most convincing things they can do is to suffer insults, invective, irrationality and so on, calmly refuting fantasy and unsubstantiated assertions with facts and logic.




Case in point: an interchange on the MichFest Forum. OK, they're not "Christian" fundamentalists, but they are fanatics committed to a dogmatic religious/ideological view. The Raymondite view that Trans and Intersexed women are actually men out to pollute their previous bodily fluids, or something like that.

Jumping Through Hoops

A little window into my world.

Transition - the process of changing one's social role from one sex to the other - is something that the medical profession only helps with conditionally. Contrary to popular belief, it's not something just anyone is allowed to do.

Note the word "allowed".

Someone can get plastic surgery to enlarge or reduce breast size just by paying for it. Someone can get a hysterectomy on demand, or even have testes removed. But to get legal access to hormones, and later, surgery, that's a different matter. The medical profession insists on having a "gatekeeper" role (for the patient's own good of course), treating them as being incompetent to make their own decisions.

The situation is self-contradictory; on one hand, any psychiatric illness that would affect the patient's competence to make their own decisions is an immediate disqualifier. That's the first thing that's checked. So they have to be competent, or they can't proceed. But then they're treated as if they're not.

When the "gatekeeper" is reasonable, rational, and competent themselves, this is no big deal. But not all are. Some insist on unreasonable conditions, and unless the patient acts in accordance with their stereotyped beliefs, they will withhold treatment, refuse it.

This has led many feminists to label trans women as fakes, as men who denigrate women by acting some Doris-Day stereotypical role, presumably for some kind of sexual thrill. They don't know, or don't care, that this act is just one more humiliating indignity forced upon trans women in order to be authorised necessary medical treatment.

This was almost universal in the past. But it still happens. Here's an article detailing one patient's experience, not in the 50s, but in 2009.

In early 2009 I was finally given my assessment for suitability to go on the waiting list for sex reassignment surgery. Yes, that’s right, I would be assessed as to whether or not I was suitable to wait in line for further assessment.
...
I wear black. I like wearing black. I was told that women do not wear black....The woman doing the assessment was wearing black. Nothing but black. She told me that women wear bright colours. Pink was the only colour she could name.

The psychologist actually assumed I had short hair – either she was blind, or stupid – and said that women have long hair. On having it pointed out to her that I have long hair, and was wearing it tied back due to the wind, she said that women never wear their hair like that. She certainly didn’t, since her hair was about an inch long...

I was wearing a skirt. It’s hard to miss this on anyone, more so when someone is sitting cross-legged. She assumed I was wearing trousers. In her strange view of the world, women never wear trousers: they only wear skirts – and not long skirts, not even when it’s cold out. They wear short skirts. Knee length is still a long skirt. Mid-thigh is apparently the universal dress code for women. Unless they wear dresses, of course. No woman ever wears trousers. I’m sure the astute reader will see where this is going… Yes, she was wearing trousers.

The ever more ridiculous and outdated stereotypes continued: Women all wear make-up. But not subtle make-up. They trowel it on, so that it is clearly visible. It must be noticeable, or they’re not wearing make-up. No, she wasn’t wearing make-up either. I personally don’t. I’m very poor and could not afford any make-up if I wanted to wear it. Since I was raised by parents who were both feminist enough to think that make-up is something that women are not required or expected to do, I certainly don’t feel any pressure to bother. But the notion that maybe it’s sexist to require women to wear make-up was flatly disavowed by the psychologist. She said that all women wear the stuff, all the time. Except her, of course.

Then there was my lack of high heels. You see, all women wear high heels (except for certain psychologists)....I was told I should wear high heels. Even though I often cannot find any that actually fit.

On hearing that I’m attracted exclusively to women (there was a flat demand to know my sexual orientation) she said that only men are attracted to women. I asked her if she had not heard the term lesbian. She repeated what she said, so I think the answer was “no”. I guess lesbians are just too cutting edge.

I had very little of this. Mostly because I was in the hands of a competent medical team, but also because I didn't quite fit the usual Transsexual situation. Had I been confronted with these kinds of demands, I would have sought another psych, because I'd have no confidence in the professional competence of anyone who behaved like that. And if there'd been none available, I would have proceeded anyway, via less formal means if available, otherwise by playing the sub in their little sublimated BDSM game if need be. "Single minded" doesn't really cover it, "implacably determined" does.

It was pointed out to me by the psychs that there were options now I hadn't considered before. That I could wear makeup if I wanted to. Or heels, or frills, or whatever. But... that's not really me, and never was. Maybe it should be, a bit. Having 47 years of hiding, of being deathly afraid that someone would find out my Dark Secret, that's left me with some psychological hangups in this area. But nothing major, and nothing I can't fix myself, in time. I enjoy wearing ear-rings, having long nails, and have discovered the joys of a little Chanel No 5. If my body looked more attractive, maybe I'd do more... but it doesn't. The point is, that's not exactly a dominating concern in my life, I'm more involved in writing up my PhD thesis and preparing the courses I'll be teaching next year. Bringing up my son is more important still.

I wasn't called on to play the performing seal, to jump through hoops on command. If I had to, if there was no other alternative, I would have. You can only be humiliated by someone if you give them permission though, and I would have withheld that.

It's not the Crime, it's the Cover-Up

Why I don't like Wikileaks.



The hypocrisy. Privacy is for them, not others.

And this is why I really, really, REALLY don't like the extra-judicial persecution of their founder (who I find an unpleasant man - but that's beside the point).

Naomi Wolf's article on Huffpo :

How do I know that Interpol, Britain and Sweden's treatment of Julian Assange is a form of theater? Because I know what happens in rape accusations against men that don't involve the embarrassing of powerful governments.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in solitary confinement in Wandsworth prison in advance of questioning on state charges of sexual molestation. Lots of people have opinions about the charges. But I increasingly believe that only those of us who have spent years working with rape and sexual assault survivors worldwide, and know the standard legal response to sex crime accusations, fully understand what a travesty this situation is against those who have to live through how sex crime charges are ordinarily handled -- and what a deep, even nauseating insult this situation is to survivors of rape and sexual assault worldwide.

Here is what I mean: men are pretty much never treated the way Assange is being treated in the face of sex crime charges.

I started working as a counselor in a UK center for victims of sexual assault in my mid-twenties. I also worked as a counselor in a battered women's shelter in the US, where sexual violence was often part of the pattern of abuse. I have since spent two decades traveling the world reporting on and interviewing survivors of sexual assault, and their advocates, in countries as diverse as Sierra Leone and Morocco, Norway and Holland, Israel and Jordan and the Occupied Territories, Bosnia and Croatia, Britain, Ireland and the united States.
...
In the Western countries such as Britain and Sweden, who are uniting to hold Assange without bail, if you actually interviewed women working in rape crisis centers, you will hear this: it is desperately hard to get a conviction for a sex crime, or even a serious hearing. Workers in rape crisis centers in the UK and Sweden will tell you that they have deep backlogs of women raped for years by fathers or stepfathers -- who can't get justice. Women raped by groups of young men who have been drinking, and thrown out of the backs of cars, or abandoned after a gang-rape in an alley -- who can't get justice. Women raped by acquaintances who can't get a serious hearing.
...
In other words: Never in twenty-three years of reporting on and supporting victims of sexual assault around the world have I ever heard of a case of a man sought by two nations, and held in solitary confinement without bail in advance of being questioned -- for any alleged rape, even the most brutal or easily proven. In terms of a case involving the kinds of ambiguities and complexities of the alleged victims' complaints -- sex that began consensually that allegedly became non-consensual when dispute arose around a condom -- please find me, anywhere in the world, another man in prison today without bail on charges of anything comparable.

One of the greatest threats to civil liberties is selective enforcement. A complex web of laws is woven, so that no-one can possibly escape breaking at least one. Everyone's a criminal.

Then you only actually enforce the laws against a select few. Those who you wish to target, using laws most people don't even know are on the books, because in all other cases, they are only applied with reason and common-sense.

Intel Software NetworkTV - Teach Parallel At SC10

Video

It's 100MB long, so I won't embed it.

Gosh I need to lose weight.... WAHHH. On the other hand, I am 52. What a Proboscis though! Doubt if there's a plastic surgeon courageous enough to tackle a schnozz like that one. Especially since it was broken in 3 places as a child. And a facelift to get rid of the middle-aged jowls.... and liposuction, and a tummy-tuck, and...

I know, "Vanity, thy name is Woman". But it's true. Meh, it's me, unadorned, no makeup. Not much of an advertisement for young girls to get into InfoTech though.

Subhuman in Afghanistan

From the New York Times, the obverse view of the parlous situation regarding women in Afghanistan, which I'd blogged about in a previous post. As I said then, this is "what happens when a Patriarchal society become Pathological".

Six-year-old Mehran Rafaat is like many girls her age. She likes to be the center of attention. She is often frustrated when things do not go her way. Like her three older sisters, she is eager to discover the world outside the family’s apartment in their middle-class neighborhood of Kabul.

But when their mother, Azita Rafaat, a member of Parliament, dresses the children for school in the morning, there is one important difference. Mehran’s sisters put on black dresses and head scarves, tied tightly over their ponytails. For Mehran, it’s green pants, a white shirt and a necktie, then a pat from her mother over her spiky, short black hair. After that, her daughter is out the door — as an Afghan boy.

There are no statistics about how many Afghan girls masquerade as boys. But when asked, Afghans of several generations can often tell a story of a female relative, friend, neighbor or co-worker who grew up disguised as a boy. To those who know, these children are often referred to as neither “daughter” nor “son” in conversation, but as “bacha posh,” which literally means “dressed up as a boy” in Dari.

It's an old tradition, you see.

Mrs. Rafaat had grown up in Kabul, where she was a top student, speaking six languages and nurturing high-flying dreams of becoming a doctor. But once her father forced her to become the second wife of her first cousin, she had to submit to being an illiterate farmer’s wife, in a rural house without running water and electricity, where the widowed mother-in-law ruled, and where she was expected to help care for the cows, sheep and chickens. She did not do well.

And neither will Afghanistan while they do that.

In an effort to preserve her job and placate her husband, as well as fending off the threat of his getting a third wife, she proposed to her husband that they make their youngest daughter look like a son.

“People came into our home feeling pity for us that we don’t have a son,” she recalled reasoning. “And the girls — we can’t send them outside. And if we changed Mehran to a boy we would get more space and freedom in society for her. And we can send her outside for shopping and to help the father.”

That's what you get when you treat half of humanity as worse than cattle, morally depraved and filthy by definition. Some have to "scrub up" to appear human; and others, real human children, have to behave and be used as sexual objects, ones that can be used without incurring the moral pollution of femininity.

Some cultures need culturally genociding.

Scary

Sometimes you find the most terrifying comments in the most unassuming places on the Net. For example a blog on Buddhism, and a post called Buddhism & Bhikshuni Ordination: Why are Religions Scared of the Vagina?. A post on female ordination of Buddhist nuns, basically. I'll quote from Wiki:

The Vinaya (a word in Pāli as well as in Sanskrit, with literal meaning 'leading out', 'education', 'discipline') is the regulatory framework for the Buddhist monastic community, or sangha, based in the canonical texts called Vinaya Pitaka. The teachings of the Buddha, or Buddhadharma can be divided into two broad categories: 'Dharma' or doctrine, and 'Vinaya', or discipline. Another term for Buddhism is dharmavinaya.

At the heart of the Vinaya is a set of rules known as Patimokkha (Pāli), or Pratimoksha (Sanskrit). The Vinaya was orally passed down from the Buddha to his disciples. Eventually, numerous different Vinayas arose in Buddhism, based upon geographical or cultural differences and the different Buddhist schools that developed. Three of these are still in use. The Vinayas are the same in substance and have only minor differences. Buddhists in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, and Thailand follow the Theravadin Vinaya, which has 227 rules[1] for the bhikkhus (male monastics) and 311[2] for the bhikkhunis (female monastics, though the female order died out centuries ago and recent attempts to restore it are controversial). Buddhists in China, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam follow the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya [3][4] which has 250 rules[5] for the bhikkhus and 348 rules[6] for the bhikkhunis. Japan technically follows this, but as many "monks" in Japan are married, they are more rightly considered "priests" (ie specialists in performing ceremonies). Other Japanese monks follow the Bodhisattva Precepts only. Buddhists in Tibet and Mongolia follow the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, which has 253 rules for the bhikshus and 364 rules for bhikshunis (in theory, as the female order was never introduced in Tibet). However, the Dalai Lama has authorized followers of the Tibetan tradition to be ordained as nuns in traditions that have such ordination.)

It would take considerable imagination to see how such a thing could be associated in any way with something terrifying. But here's a comment on the post:

Just an opinion from East Europe.

The majority of Ukrainian society still cherishes traditional values on gender, marriage, sexuality. Some of them are, indeed, outdated, but others must remain, I believe.

Most of people I know (college, university graduates, other well-read people with close to Buddhist outlooks) view the coming of modern gender, feminist, gay-positive, transsexual as a destructive propaganda, which is promoted by certain circles aiming to corrupt and delude young peoples' minds.

Everywhere in the media they create an image of sexually deviant people as being "cool", advanced, romantic heroes (which they are not, of course). What a young, unsophisticated mind has to counter this? Nothing. It just takes on the cool gay image. I've seen this everywhere in Kyiv and major ukrainian cities. That looks disgusting, even to my Ukrainian Theravadin eye. I start missing a bit of Hitler, you know:)

The same story happened for all developed Western countries, sooner or later. And those at the wheel(Jews, Masons, Maras or whoever they are) with immense propaganda and brainwashing resources surely succeeded in changing European peoples' values.

Well, that's the worldly part of it. Where I'm heading to is that the quest for bhikkhuni ordination started perfectly in line with all this gay equality movement. Some see it as a just struggle for equality, but the forces behind the movement are undoubtedly trying to corrupt the Theravadin Sangha.

When|if they succeed, they will proceed with promoting ordination for transsexuals and hermaphrodites) (which was, in fact, prohibited by the Buddha in the Vinaya).

Later on they will demand the same for sexless aliens, for animals (why not - they are sentient beings, how can we deny them ordination!) Al of this will be done under the excuse: "The times are changing, so are the Vinaya rules. The Buddha surely wouldn't mind:))"

In part, I am a Theravadin due to this school's clutching to the Tradition and Buddha's original message. Whoever likes flexible new-age values, can switch to Mahayana at will.

Let Theravada remain a sanctuary for traditionally-minded people!

A bit about myself. My name is Yuriy. I am 34, half Ukrainian and half-Lithuanian, well-traveled, two bachelor's degrees, Theravada Buddhist|Nazi-Socialist, in 1999-2001 ordained and practiced as bhikkhu for 2 years.

And yes, I am scared of the vagina too, as is every unenlightened dick-possessing heterosexual:))

He seems an intelligent, educated and ethical individual, possessed of an unassuming wit. Quite a nice guy. But should he ever attempt to put into practice his views, it would be vital to prevent that, by whatever means necessary.

Theravada Buddhist|Nazi-Socialist. Good Grief.

The Pimps Take 5%

From Planet Iran, concerning the "comfort women" provided by the Mosque for the use of pilgrims:

In order to elevate the spiritual atmosphere, create proper psychological conditions and tranquility of mind, the Province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan has created centers for temporary marriage (just next door to the shrine) for those brothers who are on pilgrimage to the shrine of our eighth Imam, Imam Reza, and who are far away from their spouses.

To that end, we call on all our sisters who are virgins, who are between the ages of 12 and 35 to cooperate with us. Each of our sisters who signs up will be bound by a two year contract with the province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan and will be required to spend at least 25 days of each month temporarily married to those brothers who are on pilgrimage. The period of the contract will be considered as a part of the employment experience of the applicant. The period of each temporary marriage can be anywhere between 5 hours to 10 days. The prices are as follows:

5 hour temporary marriage – 50,000 Tomans ($50 US)

One day temporary marriage – 75,000 Tomans ($75 US)

Two day temporary marriage – 100,000 Tomans ($100 US)

Three day temporary marriage – 150,000 Tomans ($150 US)

Between 4 and 10 day temporary marriage – 300,000 Tomans ($300 US)

Our sisters who are virgins will receive a bonus of 100,000 Tomans ($100 US) for the removal of their hymen.

An image of the original document is available on their website.

Of course it's voluntary.... except this is what happens to females who don't do what the menfolk tell them to do.



From Time :

The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Aisha's brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose.

This didn't happen 10 years ago, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. It happened last year. Now hidden in a secret women's shelter in Kabul, Aisha listens obsessively to the news. Talk that the Afghan government is considering some kind of political accommodation with the Taliban frightens her. "They are the people that did this to me," she says, touching her damaged face. "How can we reconcile with them?"

Dexamethasone

As a follow-up to a previous post in March concerning CAH - congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

From TIME :

Langford and her husband learned they were silent carriers of the genetic variation that causes CAH when their son was diagnosed with the condition after birth. Their son — like the 1 in 16,000 babies born with CAH each year in the U.S. — faces a lifetime of taking powerful steroid medications to compensate for his faulty adrenal glands. When Langford contacted New about her second pregnancy, New, who was not Langford's regular doctor, called a local pediatric endocrinologist. That doctor prescribed Langford a commonly used medication for CAH. "Dr. New told me I had to start taking dexamethasone immediately," says Langford, 30, who lives in Tampa. "We felt very confident in someone of her stature and that what she was telling us was the right thing to do."
...
The early prenatal use of dexamethasone, or dex, has been shown to prevent some of the symptoms of CAH in girls, namely ambiguous genitalia. Because the condition causes overproduction of male hormones in the womb, girls who are affected tend to have genitals that look more male than female, though internal sex organs are normal.
...
Langford says also that neither New nor her prescribing physician mentioned that prenatal dexamethasone treatment is an off-label use of the drug (an application for which it was not specifically approved by the government) or that the medical community is sharply divided over whether dexamethasone should be used during pregnancy at all.

And now a series of articles from Bioethics. First, Preventing Homosexuality (and Uppity Women) in the Womb?:

The majority of researchers and clinicians interested in the use of prenatal “dex” focus on preventing development of ambiguous genitalia in girls with CAH. CAH results in an excess of androgens prenatally, and this can lead to a “masculinizing” of a female fetus’s genitals. One group of researchers, however, seems to be suggesting that prenatal dex also might prevent affected girls from turning out to be homosexual or bisexual.

Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University, and her long-time collaborator, psychologist Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, of Columbia University, have been tracing evidence for the influence of prenatal androgens in sexual orientation. In a paper entitled “Sexual Orientation in Women with Classical or Non-Classical Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia as a Function of Degree of Prenatal Androgen Excess” published in 2008 in Archives of Sexual Behavior, Meyer-Bahlburg and New (with two others) gather evidence of “a dose-response relationship of androgens with sexual orientation” through a study of women with various forms of CAH.

They specifically point to reasons to believe that it is prenatal androgens that have an impact on the development of sexual orientation. The authors write,

"Most women were heterosexual, but the rates of bisexual and homosexual orientation were increased above controls . . . and correlated with the degree of prenatal androgenization.”

They go on to suggest that the work might offer some insight into the influence of prenatal hormones on the development of sexual orientation in general. “That this may apply also to sexual orientation in at least a subgroup of women is suggested by the fact that earlier research has repeatedly shown that about one-third of homosexual women have (modestly) increased levels of androgens.” They “conclude that the findings support a sexual-differentiation perspective involving prenatal androgens on the development of sexual orientation.”

And it isn’t just that many women with CAH have a lower interest, compared to other women, in having sex with men. In another paper entitled “What Causes Low Rates of Child-Bearing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?” Meyer-Bahlburg writes that “CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.”

In a paper published just this year in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, New and her colleague, pediatric endocrinologist Saroj Nimkarn of Weill Cornell Medical College, go further, constructing low interest in babies and men – and even interest in what they consider to be men’s occupations and games – as “abnormal,” and potentially preventable with prenatal dex:

“Gender-related behaviors, namely childhood play, peer association, career and leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood, maternalism, aggression, and sexual orientation become masculinized in 46,XX girls and women with 21OHD deficiency [CAH]. These abnormalities have been attributed to the effects of excessive prenatal androgen levels on the sexual differentiation of the brain and later on behavior.” Nimkarn and New continue: “We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization . . .”

Now, from Prenatal Dex: Update and Omnibus Reply :

It appears that in the vast majority of cases, New did not enroll these women in an IRB-approved treatment trial of prenatal dex. Indeed, in spite of many admonitions from colleagues to undertake this risky, experimental treatment only under IRB oversight (if at all), New seems for many years to have promoted the off-label use of this Class C drug to pregnant women as safe and effective, and to have simultaneously sought and obtained NIH funding to study these women and children after birth to see if the drug was, in fact, safe and effective. (The follow-up studies have had IRB approval, but those overseeing the follow-up studies should have been asking where all these exposed subjects were coming from.) The American Academy of Pediatrics, the European Society for Pediatric Endocrinology, and the Lawson Wilkins Pediatrics Endocrine Society have been among those specifically arguing that this powerful steroid should not be employed for this use outside IRB-approved prospective studies.

In February, 32 researchers in bioethics and allied disciplines signed letters of concern to New’s institutions, to the FDA Office of Pediatric Therapeutics, and to the HHS Office for Human Research Protections.
...
Studies of prenatal dexamethasone give us substantial reason for concern for these mothers' and children's physical and mental well-being, particularly given that this usage is aimed at preventing a cosmetic issue (one not shown to increase psychosocial risk) and that 87.5% of the mothers started on prenatal dexamethasone will not even be carrying a fetus that is 46,XX 21-hydroxylase deficient. Studies have already shown some adverse effects on exposed children.[5,24,25] In addition, some researchers have raised concerns about possible epigenetic effects that might even impact these children's children's well-being.[25]

We do not find evidence that animal studies have shown that prenatal dexamethasone is likely to be safe in humans; on the contrary, studies showing harm to animals exposed prenatally to dexamethasone have been used by the teams associated with New to try to figure out what defects they might find in the exposed children.[9] This certainly looks to us like an improper move to human experimentation on pregnant women of a Class C steroid without satisfactory establishment of safety in animal studies. That this human experimentation may even be done without IRB oversight astonishes us.

References:
[5]Trautman PD, Meyer-Bahlburg HF, Postelnek J, New MI. Effects of early prenatal dexamethasone on the cognitive and behavioral development of young children: results of a pilot study. Psychoneuroendocrinology 1995;20:439-49.
[9]Meyer-Bahlburg HF, Dolezal C, Baker SW, Carlson AD, Obeid JS, New MI. Cognitive and motor development of children with and without congenital adrenal hyperplasia after early-prenatal dexamethasone. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2004;89:610-4.
[24]Hirvikoski T, Nordenstrom A, Lindholm T, et al. Cognitive functions in children at risk for congenital adrenal hyperplasia treated prenatally with dexamethasone. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2007;92:542-8.
[25]Lajic S NA, Hirvikoski T. Long-term outcome of prenatal treatment of Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. In: WL FCaM, ed. Disorders of the Human Adrenal Cortex. Endocrine Development ed. Basel: Karger; 2008:82-98.

From the letter to Lawson Wilson Pediatric Endocrine Society mentioned above:

By 1999, through the Cornell-affiliated group lead by Dr. New, it appears there were at least 403 instances of diagnosis and treatment by 2001, at least 532 by 2003, at least 600.

Treatment to prevent physical Intersex symptoms which can cause serious problems such as vaginal fistulae is, absent any side-effects, a worthy goal. From BigThink :

An enlarged clitoris is one common feature of masculinization. However, the effects can be far more serious and affect not merely the girl's appearance, or even her gender presentation, but the health and functionality of her entire genitourinary tract.

In severe cases, the vagina and the urethra may open into a common sinus, instead of being separate tubes. Surgery may be required to create separate vaginal and urethral openings. Otherwise, urine can flow into the vagina, which creates an indirect kind of incontinence when it dribbles out again. Urine in the vagina can also cause chronic irritation and increase the risk of vaginal infections.

Sometimes the vaginal canal isn't wide enough to carry menstrual blood out of the body, in which case, surgery is required. Unfortunately, reconstructed vaginas tend to narrow over time. So, the patient may have to undergo still more surgery and/or months of painful training with dilators to stretch her vagina enough to have intercourse.

Treatment to "normalise" functional genitalia is more controversial, but I think most would approve of it, again absent any side effects. Some Intersexed people may differ on that, just the way many hearing-impaired people might not see congenital deafness as an undesirable defect, but a mere variation, a difference. I think though that this is a distinctly minority view, and that informed parental choice should have a role here, rather than a directive from those not personally involved. There is an argument against such therapy, and even if I personally think it's weak, I see no great harm in not having treatment should Society be moderately sane about it.

Treatment to prevent Transsexuality, again if it had no side effects, is something I would consider even more strongly justified though. Even if Society was sane. Because there could be a substantial mismatch between body-image and somatic form, which can cause immense suffering.

Treatment to make girls bidable, demure, maternal, and above all straight on the other hand... now we're getting into ethically dubious territory. We have to look at the rights of the parent. Are they unfettered? Do we have a right to prevent a parent from having a gay child? Or educating them to be racist, bigoted, even sadistic and sociopathic?

I don't think the rights of a parent should be unfettered. But I also see a distinction between the two cases above. In the second, there is harm not (just) to the child, but to those who they will interact with in their lives. In the first, as medical technology improves and society hopefully gets saner, they will have the same reproductive abilities regardless of whether gay or straight. Choosing sexual orientation for a child is no worse - and no better - than choosing eye colour, or handedness.

Of course the GLB advocacy groups who have remained silent when only Intersexed and Trans kids were experimented on this way, are now having a large economy-sized cow over the subject. Human Nature of course, but still Ironic.

The ethical issues are moot though. Because all of the above is predicated on there being no adverse consequences. And that is something that we are not only not sure of, we have reason to believe is not true.

From a comment by Faith over at Joe.My.God:

The risks are common risks of corticosteroid therapy, and, in some cases the benefits outweigh the risks, such as in the case of underdeveloped lungs -- however, if the risk is that the child will be less likely to play with dolls or want to make babies the risk/benefit ratio does not pan out. No IRB in their right mind would approve this study and she is not doing it under the purview of an IRB. Incredible.

Otero L, Conlon C, Reynolds P, Duval-Arnould B, Golden SM. Neonatal leukocytosis associated with prenatal administration of dexamethasone. Pediatrics 1981;68:77880.

Avery ME. The argument for prenatal administration of dexamethasone to prevent respiratory distress syndrome. J Pediatr 1984;104:240.

Carmichael SL, Shaw GM. Maternal corticosteroid use and risk of selected congenital anomalies. Am J Med Genet 1999;86:2424.

And from Kirstin:

So I found and read the list of side effects. And, while reading them I kept in mind that this drug was being or going to be delivered to developing fetuses... These side effects have been reported and are happening to already born humans. Can you imagine submitting a developing fetus to something that can and has caused anything off the list below?

Dexamethasone Side Effects - for the Professional:
The following adverse reactions have been reported with Dexamethasone or other corticosteroids:

Cardiovascular
Bradycardia, cardiac arrest, cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac enlargement, circulatory collapse, congestive heart failure, fat embolism, hypertension, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in premature infants, myocardial rupture following recent myocardial infarction, edema, pulmonary edema, syncope, tachycardia, thromboembolism, thrombophlebitis, vasculitis.

Dermatologic
Acne, allergic dermatitis, dry scaly skin, ecchymoses and petechiae, erythema, impaired wound healing, increased sweating, rash, striae, suppression of reactions to skin tests, thin fragile skin, thinning scalp hair, urticaria.

Endocrine
Decreased carbohydrate and glucose tolerance, development of cushingoid state, hyperglycemia, glycosuria, hirsutism, hypertrichosis, increased requirements for insulin or oral hypoglycemic agents in diabetes, manifestations of latent diabetes mellitus, menstrual irregularities, secondary adrenocortical and pituitary unresponsiveness (particularly in times of stress, as in trauma, surgery, or illness), suppression of growth in pediatric patients.

Fluid and Electrolyte Disturbances
Congestive heart failure in susceptible patients, fluid retention, hypokalemic alkalosis, potassium loss, sodium retention.

Gastrointestinal
Abdominal distention, elevation in serum liver enzyme levels (usually reversible upon discontinuation), hepatomegaly, increased appetite, nausea, pancreatitis, peptic ulcer with possible perforation and hemorrhage, perforation of the small and large intestine (particularly in patients with inflammatory bowel disease), ulcerative esophagitis.

Metabolic
Negative nitrogen balance due to protein catabolism.

Musculoskeletal
Aseptic necrosis of femoral and humeral heads, loss of muscle mass, muscle weakness, osteoporosis, pathologic fracture of long bones, steroid myopathy, tendon rupture, vertebral compression fractures.

Neurological/Psychiatric
Convulsions, depression, emotional instability, euphoria, headache, increased intracranial pressure with papilledema (pseudotumor cerebri) usually following discontinuation of treatment, insomnia, mood swings, neuritis, neuropathy, paresthesia, personality changes, psychic disorders, vertigo.

There's rather more, at Psychology Today, at ScienceBlogs and elsewhere. Including this comment:

Aaaargh.

Some things about me fit into stereotypical gender roles. (I'm a cisgendered, heterosexual woman.) Some don't.

I'm happily married to a man and do eventually want kids. I have good verbal and emotional skills, I prefer collaboration to argument, I like to cook and bake, I like to knit, I like kittens, and sometimes I enjoy putting on femme costume (dresses, heels, makeup, jewelry).

But: I proposed to my now-husband. I majored in physics (where I was the only woman), I have an M.S. and am working on a Ph.D in biomedical engineering (so I also have good logical/mathematical skills), and deferred kids to prioritize that education. In fact, I wasn't sure I wanted kids at all until recently. I'm very good at coding, I dislike and avoid cleaning, I like using power tools of all kinds, I like building things, I like comic books, I like lifting weights, and I usually dress in non-ornamental t-shirts and jeans without makeup -- I'd be miserable having to dress and groom super-femme all the time, though I have fun with doing it occasionally. I particularly enjoy doing coded-masculine things while dressed/groomed in a more-femme way, just to mess with people.

In short, I'm a human being, with varied skills, interests, likes and dislikes. Gender essentialism is a load of BS.

Well, sort of. One possible effect of this therapy is to make women like her extinct. Whether deliberately, a bug or a feature, I think it likely that it would.

I don't think that would be a good thing. Some do.

The worst thing from a scientific viewpoint - after doing the Mengele act, telling pregnant women - and not just a few, but hundreds - that the drug was proven safe (when we have good reason to believe that is not the case) - the follow-up on the effects has been slipshod too. So much so that it's possible the findings were not to their liking, and they concealed them to avoid lawsuits.

It's been six years since Dr New last prescribed this drug. The first patients - though it's possible that the word "victims" might be accurate, and "experimental subjects" more accurate still - will be 11 years old now. Old enough for us to see many of the effects on psychology, and virtually all on non-neurological anatomy. I hope we're lucky, and my fears groundless.

Because she's playing with fire in an explosives factory. As Alice Dreger said in her article in Psychology Today:

This drug is unequivocally experimental and risky. That's why, back in February, I organized interested members of the Bioethics community to fight to make sure every woman offered dex for CAH knows the truth about its experimental and risky nature. (You can read about our efforts in Time magazine. And you can about the medical establishment's resultant mad scampering to make sure everyone knows this is experimental here.) Make no mistake: In spite of Dr. Maria New's outrageous FDA-regulation-flaunting claims that this off-label drug use "has been found safe for mother and child," it ain't been. New is a rogue pediatrician whom medical societies have been nudging (and sometimes yelling at) for years. Because she apparently wouldn't stop experimenting on these women and children without ethics oversight, in January I got called in to help by a few freaked-out clinicians. And I called in my colleagues to call out the feds. New just looks and sounds safe for mothers and children. Which is why she's really dangerous.

It's the height of Irony that Ms Dreger is one of the greatest supporters of Michael Bailey. Someone infamous for ignoring neuro-anatomy as a factor in transsexuality, and who insists that all trans women are actually deceptive gay or sexually perverse men. And someone who thinks it just fine and dandy that "teh gay" be prevented by pre-natal intervention.