What’s Current: Rhodes Scholarship celebrates first ‘trans’ scholar

  • Canadian media celebrates the “first trans woman Rhodes Scholar,” 24-year-old Julia Levy. The self-described “trans woman” plans to pursue a master’s degree in computational chemistry next fall, explaining, “There’s something very powerful about coming into a scholarship that was not intended for you originally.” The Rhodes Scholarship, the oldest graduate scholarship in the world, was initially restricted to male applicants, but says now “selection is made without regard to gender or gender identity.”
  • A 19-year-old man, who was aged 17 at the time of his offending, was found guilty of raping a 16-year-old girl two years ago in New Zealand. Jack Arthur Prenter arrived at a birthday party, “felt up” several girls, then raped a 16-year-old who was passed out from drinking too much, and had been put to bed in a bedroom.
  • Skate Canada, the national governing body for figure skating in Canada, will allow pairs to compete outside the “male/female” binary, updating their definition of “team” from “one woman and one man,” to “two skaters.”

 

Meghan Murphy

Founder & Editor

Meghan Murphy is a freelance writer and journalist from Vancouver, BC. She has been podcasting and writing about feminism since 2010 and has published work in numerous national and international publications, including The Spectator, UnHerd, Quillette, the CBC, New Statesman, Vice, Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, and more. Meghan completed a Masters degree in the department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University in 2012 and is now exiled in Mexico with her very photogenic dog.