What’s Current: JK Rowling faces backlash for challenging the phrase ‘people who menstruate’

  • Harry Potter actor, Daniel Radcliffe, responds to JK Rowling’s tweets questioning the erasure of the concept of sex and the choice to refer to women as “people who menstruate,” writing:

“Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.”

  • The UK’s National Health Service has changed its guidance on offering hormone prescriptions to trans-identifying minors to reflect medical uncertainty about long-term side effects, and to acknowledge that some of the changes caused are irreversible.
  • Canada’s highest court in Ontario has struck down a law forbidding those charged with a crime from using the defense that they were too intoxicated to know what they were doing, which victim’s advocates have said will encourage offenders to think they can evade responsibility for their actions.
  • Women’s health needs are particularly at risk in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as the country fights outbreaks of COVID-19, measles, and Ebola, all at the same time.
  • A 35-year-old Singaporean married man has been sentenced to two years and three months in jail for taking over 1,400 indecent videos of women and girls, including family, friends, and fellow church parishioners.
Natasha Chart

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