What’s Current: UK women’s rights campaigners take out full page newspaper ad about harms of self ID

  • UK feminist group, Fair Play For Women, took out a full page ad in the Metro, encouraging the public to consider the effect of sex self-ID on women. PinkNews quotes a trans-identified male describing the ad as “lies and hate.”
  • That viral video of a woman pouring “bleach” on manspreaders on public transit was a paid stunt. A Russian lawmaker had referred to the video as further reason to criminalize those who “propagate feminism.”
  • Amazon has scrapped a job candidate evaluation AI, after realizing that it was systematically downgrading all resumes that used the term, “women’s.”
  • A year after the #MeToo hashtag went viral, Tarana Burke reflects on 12 years of work and conversations since she started #MeToo:

“… On the one hand, there’s been a great shift in the way we talk about sexual violence. And the fact that we talk about it at all. The conversation about sexual violence, in general, is expanding. We have never really had a national conversation about this. I think that’s probably the biggest change. But on the flip side, there hasn’t been enough of the right kind of conversation, if you will. There hasn’t been enough conversation about the needs of survivors, of what people actually need. Solutions. It’s been mostly about perpetrators. That has been really difficult, I think.”

The movement has gone global, and is building strength across Asia, even though women in many countries in the region face significant reprisals for speaking out.

  • A Canadian doctor lost his license to practice medicine following complaints about his practice of prescribing hormones to teenagers who think they might be “trans” on a first visit, and failing to undertake mental health assessments of minor patients.
  • Hearings begin tomorrow to determine whether Bradley Barton will face a new trial in the death of Cindy Gladue, who he sexually abused and killed in 2011. Advocates from the Women’s Equality and Liberty Coalition gathered on Parliament Hill today to call for urgent action to stop vulnerable women from being forced into prostitution.
Natasha Chart

Natasha Chart is an online organizer and feminist living in the United States. She does not recant her heresy.