Absolutely top notch roundup, once again. Thank you so much! Love your paragraph of commentary on compassion. I look forward to reading the article you link. I have watched the Channel 7 documentary and commend it. My own view is that it presented a solid case for the gender critical/detrans POV, though I felt one of the detransitioners was put in the spotlight too much. Her case is particularly sad, and even though she was willing, for example, to disrobe, I don’t think this was necessary and it felt exploitative. Other than that, I’d say very well done, and Hickie made a fool of himself. But I am weighing in from very far away and would be interested in the Aussie POV, too.
Re England: it is heartening to see such robust, varied activism, and that it truly is making such a difference. Sex Matters is pushing really hard on the school guidance issue. Their argument is no legislation is needed, just publish the guidance--and they’re aware this needs to happen before the next general election, as it is likely Labour will take over. Also, applause to the LGBAliiance, whose advocacy is credited with the win for Jenny’s lesbian speed-dating event. A sweet victory, and thanks for including it. PS: speaking of Labour, Rosie Duffield, the fearless Labour MP, has taken her leadership to task in no uncertain terms here: https://unherd.com/?p=484734 She is, as they say, completely out of f**ks. Cannot imagine something like this happening in the US.
Also want to encourage folks to write at least a brief comment in support of the citizen’s petition. As Kate rightly notes, it’s unlikely to succeed, but the key is to use it as a vehicle to demonstrate a LOT of concern about this, and those numbers, in turn, can be used in future advocacy. I’ve read through the petition: it’s well done, carefully argued, and the proposed actions are completely reasonable. You can also comment anonymously (which I have done). Ben Appel, BTW, is a proud early signatory. Here’s a link to the petition: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FDA-2023-P-3767-0001 If you choose to comment, the category to use from the drop down list appears to be "Category: Drug Industry C0022." You can also read the comments submitted so far to get a sense of what others have written.
OK, I have gone on too long once again, so just to say THANK YOU to Kate, for your wonderful work, and to Lisa for coming up with this idea and finding such a marvelous correspondent!
The De-transitioning program was really good. I just wish the interviewers would ask the pro transition proponents about the fact that no one can really become the opposite sex. We are lying to those with gender dysphoria. Removing breasts or a penis will not make the person the opposite sex. Wouldn’t it be healthier to help children to embrace the broad spectrum of temperament within each sex?
Of course this will only become feasible if the Conservatives win the election, but still it's something I was despairing of ever seeing in "more progressive than thou" Canada.
We are just women... not “TERF’s” not “cis” , not” transphobes” or any other ridiculous term... just WOMEN! Adult human females! Believers in truth above all! No man can become a woman ever! No woman can become a man ever!
Thank you Kate! The huge increase in coverage of gender issues in the US is no small victory. When I first fell down the rabbit hole (summer of 2020, Abigail Shrier, JK Rowling) one of the many things that shocked me was how self ID had been dominating the news in the UK without any mention of it in US media. When trying to discuss what I was learning with friends, I found myself ending my rants with "BUT NONE OF THIS IS BEING REPORTED IN THE US" like some QAnon freak. True, the media here are sticking stubbornly to the left vs. right narrative when it comes to legislation, but I've seen extremely "tolerant" friends draw the line when it came to Lia Thomas, and my gut tells me that parental notification in schools will be another line that many progressives-- especially parents-- won't cross.
Here is my Substack article on the very issue of whether we are being kind to young people by "affirming" them, both socially and medically, in case anyone is interested.
"cruel to be kind, kind to be cruel --in the right measure ... " 🎶 🙂
But very good article of yours -- nice to see that we had agreed on this comment of yours which deserves emphasizing, not least because it seems to provide a way of resolving the issue, a way forward:
Hippiesq: "As to your critique, I can indeed see a possible way for the term 'gender identity' to be useful. I suspect that it started out as a way of describing people's tendency toward femininity or masculinity and the specific levels of each (a bit masculine in this way, a bit feminine in this way, very masculine like this or very feminine like that). Those tendencies seem to be, more or less, ingrained."
In other news, my apologies for not responding yet to your comment about your daughter in a recent post of mine ("Is Nothing Sacred?"). Though hope to do so shortly. But had wanted to read, in some depth, Mondegreen's very good post on the topic before doing so. Ducks now more or less in a row. 🙂
Bit late to the party but some "late breaking news" that y'all might be interested in. An upcoming conference in Santa Fe September 30 on "Sex/Gender Differences: The Big Conversation":
Seems rather important to define precisely what we mean by both "sex" and "gender", confusion over both being a proximate cause for much of the transgender clusterfuck. If we can't agree on what words mean then we haven't a hope in hell of resolving sticky social problems that turn on underlying facts. But may be of particular interest to Lisa given her "call for dialogue" some 15 months ago:
Lisa: "Which brings me to my plea: Could each side stop escalating and instead come to the table so we can talk about what’s best for these gender dysphoric kids?"
But looks like a solid group of participants, although one might raise an eyebrow at seeing Daphna Joel as one of them. No doubt she has some solid credentials, although some of her past views on "gender" may be seen as somewhat "problematic":
DJ: "It is time for a world with no gender. A world with no gender means that the form of one’s genitals, whether female, male or intersex, has no social meaning—just as being right- or left-handed has no inherent meaning.”
Not sure that that view is of much help to parents with "dysphoric" children who may be, quite reasonably, apprehensive that "gender non-conformance" in their kids is a pretext to calling for their sterilization, for turning them into sexless eunuchs. If we don't have words to define those atypical behaviours then we don't have any way of discussing them or how to deal with them.
👍🙂 My pleasure. Share the wealth; praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. So thanks muchly for doing likewise.
But you might also have some interest in a paper by one of the organizers of that event, Marco Del Giudice, on the "Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender":
Bit heavy going, but quite thorough and rather damning in many ways. And I really need to reread it myself, not least as a preparation for following that conference. But I've always found this bit to be a particularly cogent, succinct, and useful insight into some proximate causes of the whole problem of transgenderism:
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology."
Re the FDA Citizen’s Petition, I started in to read some of the comments. This one is absolutely excellent, and I thought would be appreciated by folks here:
My neurodivergent (Aspergers), highly gifted son spent an inordinate amount of time online right before and during the COVID lockdowns. This coincided with the changes of puberty. As a person with ASD, he can sometimes exhibit black-and-white thinking and he is behind his peers in social and emotional maturity. Combined with a body that felt out of control during the changes of puberty, he was ripe to become a victim of online influencers. Many video game influencers are either transgender and/or believers in the concept that humans can be born in the wrong body. When my son's body felt out of his control, and he saw online that many who feel uncomfortable in their bodies were 'born in the wrong body', this hit home for him. When the medical community, the school and society at large cheered on this belief, why would he question it? As a lifelong Democratic voter I affirmed his belief. But when I began to question how my son, who had never shown any gender confusion or stereotypical female behavior in his life could suddenly be so sure - to the point of asking for purberty blockers and wrong-sex hormones - I could find little good evidence for granting his request. Progressive European nations seemed to be backing away from the use of puberty blockers after systematic review of evidence. Meanwhile the USA and the pharmaceutical industry were going full steam ahead. At the same time this was happening in my home, I learned of several other boys at my son's charter school for gifted kids were also saying they were girls. These boys' parents were further along and their kids had started blockers and hormones after a couple of visits to a gender clinic. One of the boys -at age 16 - donated his own sperm because he's likely be infertile because of the treatment. The other decided - at age 15 - that he would never want kids, so declined the sperm storage. All of this combined began to scare me. Where are the safeguards? These kids are far from full maturity and being treated like adults who can ask for a treatment and get it. Puberty blockers are being used off-label for thousands of kids and from my understanding we have very little idea of what the long-term effects will be. Nearly all children started on blockers go on to wrong-sex hormones. This seems like mass brainwashing from a young age. As an American it has led me to question everything about my society, my government and my health care system. Please - at the very least conduct studies to show the safety of puberty blockers. It's insanity not to.
Here’s another, powerful, well informed comment on the FDA Citizen’s Petition. Bear in mind, this all becomes part of a durable public record on this site. FDA failure to take these comments seriously should be damning:
I am a CASA-- an officer of the court, sworn to uphold the best interests of children-- who is familiar with this issue due to the extremely high rate of Trans ID among Foster Youth.
Puberty Blockers are a form of Endocrine disruption with many attendant health risks. They are used for a COSMETIC purpose: so that the secondary sex characteristics of the child's biological sex do not develop. Then, when cross sex hormones are initiated, the opposite sex characteristics are triggered to develop. Hence, this is manipulation/disruption of healthy children's natural puberty, so they will (possibly) LOOK more like the other sex in adulthood.
Prioritizing appearance so heavily, over function, is irresponsible-- and cannot qualify as "health" care.
The risks of Puberty blockers are serious-- first, they seem to lead inexorably to cross sex hormones (~99% go on to take them- not a 'pause'), and the combination of the two cause: lack of ability to orgasm, sterility, and lack of sexual function in adulthood, in addition to many other serious conditions (stroke, diabetes, cancer). For males, puberty blockers result in a micropenis. (Kids who were given Lupron for precocious puberty have experienced myriad health problems in adulthood.)
Pre-pubescent children are incapable of giving informed consent-- prioritizing the relative value of sexual fertility or the ability to orgasm, vs what sex they are assumed by strangers to be, in the future. It's far too abstract to a child. Further, they can't "change sex"-- though this is not clarified by those selling 'sex changes.' The blockers may not even "work" in that the child may ALWAYS be 'read' as the sex they are, regardless-- and yet they can wind up with many terrible side effects.
And this is no lifesaving measure, as is frequently claimed. The suicide risks of these kids are identical to any group that is matched in the number of mental health disorders-- 80% of trans ID kids have 2 or more MH disorders on top of gender distress. Mental health problems make informed consent even more difficult as impulsivity, scrambled thinking, and self hate are common in mental illness.
In the old days kids with gender dysphoria OUTGREW the problem at a very high rate (90%) VIA the very brain maturation of puberty. And where were the suicides?
Why treat GD by blocking the CURE, puberty? The "do nothing" option needs to be brought back on the table.
PLEASE consider that kids today are FREQUENTLY provided with puberty blockers as a matter of course at the first appointment. There is ZERO differential diagnosis being done. Any miserable child who says "I'm trans" is treated AS the opposite sex from the first minute. No adult is pushing back on the claimed ID of a very unhappy child with numerous psychological problems. They then intervene in the child's normal development. What could go wrong?
This is a conveyor belt and puberty blockers are the point of entry. Detransitioners present a cautionary tale. Some of them are now castrated gay boys with fake vaginas. Imagine that's where you find yourself at 20 because adults blocked your puberty at ten.
There is nothing benign about playing god with the entire life span, health, and sexuality of a miserable kid based on their *self concept at ten*. It's hubris and needs to be reined in.
This morning, the 8th, NPR carried an interview of Gov. Chris Christie, and the reporter asked him about being "the only Republican in the race who opposes bans on specialized (s𝘪𝘤) health care for transgender youth." He answered, "I'm a conservative Republican who doesn't want the government telling mothers and fathers how to treat their children." As a politically homeless voter, I agree with that general principle; but in this case, I have to think Christie's view are the result of inadequate information as to the consequences of the supposedly "specialized" care or the manipulative if not outright deceitful pressures put on parents. I'm not at all surprised by the NPR reporter's failure to push back the least bit on the governor's poorly informed view. NPR has been wholly in unquestioning agreement with the most extreme version of the radical trans ideology.
Coastal: not sure whether you were responding to me on this, though, if so, FYI, I was referring to something in the Australian documentary, not the Daily Mail piece. As to the latter, that story is really weird. It does make clear just how far gone the Canadian government is that it could not find a way to keep this guy from coming to school with his extreme fetish on full display. Then, all that waste of $$$ for police support just so he can bring his weird self to another school. This is one severely troubled individual who shouldn’t be anywhere near children IMHO.
Absolutely top notch roundup, once again. Thank you so much! Love your paragraph of commentary on compassion. I look forward to reading the article you link. I have watched the Channel 7 documentary and commend it. My own view is that it presented a solid case for the gender critical/detrans POV, though I felt one of the detransitioners was put in the spotlight too much. Her case is particularly sad, and even though she was willing, for example, to disrobe, I don’t think this was necessary and it felt exploitative. Other than that, I’d say very well done, and Hickie made a fool of himself. But I am weighing in from very far away and would be interested in the Aussie POV, too.
Re England: it is heartening to see such robust, varied activism, and that it truly is making such a difference. Sex Matters is pushing really hard on the school guidance issue. Their argument is no legislation is needed, just publish the guidance--and they’re aware this needs to happen before the next general election, as it is likely Labour will take over. Also, applause to the LGBAliiance, whose advocacy is credited with the win for Jenny’s lesbian speed-dating event. A sweet victory, and thanks for including it. PS: speaking of Labour, Rosie Duffield, the fearless Labour MP, has taken her leadership to task in no uncertain terms here: https://unherd.com/?p=484734 She is, as they say, completely out of f**ks. Cannot imagine something like this happening in the US.
Also want to encourage folks to write at least a brief comment in support of the citizen’s petition. As Kate rightly notes, it’s unlikely to succeed, but the key is to use it as a vehicle to demonstrate a LOT of concern about this, and those numbers, in turn, can be used in future advocacy. I’ve read through the petition: it’s well done, carefully argued, and the proposed actions are completely reasonable. You can also comment anonymously (which I have done). Ben Appel, BTW, is a proud early signatory. Here’s a link to the petition: https://www.regulations.gov/document/FDA-2023-P-3767-0001 If you choose to comment, the category to use from the drop down list appears to be "Category: Drug Industry C0022." You can also read the comments submitted so far to get a sense of what others have written.
OK, I have gone on too long once again, so just to say THANK YOU to Kate, for your wonderful work, and to Lisa for coming up with this idea and finding such a marvelous correspondent!
The De-transitioning program was really good. I just wish the interviewers would ask the pro transition proponents about the fact that no one can really become the opposite sex. We are lying to those with gender dysphoria. Removing breasts or a penis will not make the person the opposite sex. Wouldn’t it be healthier to help children to embrace the broad spectrum of temperament within each sex?
Thank you for including Canada in your roundups! I am starting to get an bit of a hopeful spark because the Conservative party's convention just passed a resolution asking the prospective future government (we have an election coming up in a little while) to prohibit gender medicalization for minors: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/conservatives-close-convention-voting-on-policy-changes-stance-on-gender-issues
Of course this will only become feasible if the Conservatives win the election, but still it's something I was despairing of ever seeing in "more progressive than thou" Canada.
Great piece, thanks for sharing - keep up the good fight terfs,radfems, transphobes, WOMEN!
We are just women... not “TERF’s” not “cis” , not” transphobes” or any other ridiculous term... just WOMEN! Adult human females! Believers in truth above all! No man can become a woman ever! No woman can become a man ever!
Thank you Kate! The huge increase in coverage of gender issues in the US is no small victory. When I first fell down the rabbit hole (summer of 2020, Abigail Shrier, JK Rowling) one of the many things that shocked me was how self ID had been dominating the news in the UK without any mention of it in US media. When trying to discuss what I was learning with friends, I found myself ending my rants with "BUT NONE OF THIS IS BEING REPORTED IN THE US" like some QAnon freak. True, the media here are sticking stubbornly to the left vs. right narrative when it comes to legislation, but I've seen extremely "tolerant" friends draw the line when it came to Lia Thomas, and my gut tells me that parental notification in schools will be another line that many progressives-- especially parents-- won't cross.
Here is my Substack article on the very issue of whether we are being kind to young people by "affirming" them, both socially and medically, in case anyone is interested.
https://hippiesq.substack.com/p/teens-in-distress-gender-dysphoria
Great post, thanks for sharing it
"cruel to be kind, kind to be cruel --in the right measure ... " 🎶 🙂
But very good article of yours -- nice to see that we had agreed on this comment of yours which deserves emphasizing, not least because it seems to provide a way of resolving the issue, a way forward:
Hippiesq: "As to your critique, I can indeed see a possible way for the term 'gender identity' to be useful. I suspect that it started out as a way of describing people's tendency toward femininity or masculinity and the specific levels of each (a bit masculine in this way, a bit feminine in this way, very masculine like this or very feminine like that). Those tendencies seem to be, more or less, ingrained."
In other news, my apologies for not responding yet to your comment about your daughter in a recent post of mine ("Is Nothing Sacred?"). Though hope to do so shortly. But had wanted to read, in some depth, Mondegreen's very good post on the topic before doing so. Ducks now more or less in a row. 🙂
Take your time - no pressure! And I too thought of that song :)
No - you can't cut your mom! We have to change the world!
Bit late to the party but some "late breaking news" that y'all might be interested in. An upcoming conference in Santa Fe September 30 on "Sex/Gender Differences: The Big Conversation":
https://santafeboys.org/participants-in-the-big-conversation/
Seems rather important to define precisely what we mean by both "sex" and "gender", confusion over both being a proximate cause for much of the transgender clusterfuck. If we can't agree on what words mean then we haven't a hope in hell of resolving sticky social problems that turn on underlying facts. But may be of particular interest to Lisa given her "call for dialogue" some 15 months ago:
Lisa: "Which brings me to my plea: Could each side stop escalating and instead come to the table so we can talk about what’s best for these gender dysphoric kids?"
https://lisaselindavis.substack.com/p/both-sides-now
But looks like a solid group of participants, although one might raise an eyebrow at seeing Daphna Joel as one of them. No doubt she has some solid credentials, although some of her past views on "gender" may be seen as somewhat "problematic":
DJ: "It is time for a world with no gender. A world with no gender means that the form of one’s genitals, whether female, male or intersex, has no social meaning—just as being right- or left-handed has no inherent meaning.”
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/its-time-for-a-world-without-gender/#
Not sure that that view is of much help to parents with "dysphoric" children who may be, quite reasonably, apprehensive that "gender non-conformance" in their kids is a pretext to calling for their sterilization, for turning them into sexless eunuchs. If we don't have words to define those atypical behaviours then we don't have any way of discussing them or how to deal with them.
Still, maybe a hopeful sign.
Wow! What an interesting mix of participants! Thank you so much for sharing--I'll be sure the info is in the next In Brief
👍🙂 My pleasure. Share the wealth; praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. So thanks muchly for doing likewise.
But you might also have some interest in a paper by one of the organizers of that event, Marco Del Giudice, on the "Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender":
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
Bit heavy going, but quite thorough and rather damning in many ways. And I really need to reread it myself, not least as a preparation for following that conference. But I've always found this bit to be a particularly cogent, succinct, and useful insight into some proximate causes of the whole problem of transgenderism:
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology."
"Two Cultures", indeed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
Re the FDA Citizen’s Petition, I started in to read some of the comments. This one is absolutely excellent, and I thought would be appreciated by folks here:
My neurodivergent (Aspergers), highly gifted son spent an inordinate amount of time online right before and during the COVID lockdowns. This coincided with the changes of puberty. As a person with ASD, he can sometimes exhibit black-and-white thinking and he is behind his peers in social and emotional maturity. Combined with a body that felt out of control during the changes of puberty, he was ripe to become a victim of online influencers. Many video game influencers are either transgender and/or believers in the concept that humans can be born in the wrong body. When my son's body felt out of his control, and he saw online that many who feel uncomfortable in their bodies were 'born in the wrong body', this hit home for him. When the medical community, the school and society at large cheered on this belief, why would he question it? As a lifelong Democratic voter I affirmed his belief. But when I began to question how my son, who had never shown any gender confusion or stereotypical female behavior in his life could suddenly be so sure - to the point of asking for purberty blockers and wrong-sex hormones - I could find little good evidence for granting his request. Progressive European nations seemed to be backing away from the use of puberty blockers after systematic review of evidence. Meanwhile the USA and the pharmaceutical industry were going full steam ahead. At the same time this was happening in my home, I learned of several other boys at my son's charter school for gifted kids were also saying they were girls. These boys' parents were further along and their kids had started blockers and hormones after a couple of visits to a gender clinic. One of the boys -at age 16 - donated his own sperm because he's likely be infertile because of the treatment. The other decided - at age 15 - that he would never want kids, so declined the sperm storage. All of this combined began to scare me. Where are the safeguards? These kids are far from full maturity and being treated like adults who can ask for a treatment and get it. Puberty blockers are being used off-label for thousands of kids and from my understanding we have very little idea of what the long-term effects will be. Nearly all children started on blockers go on to wrong-sex hormones. This seems like mass brainwashing from a young age. As an American it has led me to question everything about my society, my government and my health care system. Please - at the very least conduct studies to show the safety of puberty blockers. It's insanity not to.
Here’s another, powerful, well informed comment on the FDA Citizen’s Petition. Bear in mind, this all becomes part of a durable public record on this site. FDA failure to take these comments seriously should be damning:
I am a CASA-- an officer of the court, sworn to uphold the best interests of children-- who is familiar with this issue due to the extremely high rate of Trans ID among Foster Youth.
Puberty Blockers are a form of Endocrine disruption with many attendant health risks. They are used for a COSMETIC purpose: so that the secondary sex characteristics of the child's biological sex do not develop. Then, when cross sex hormones are initiated, the opposite sex characteristics are triggered to develop. Hence, this is manipulation/disruption of healthy children's natural puberty, so they will (possibly) LOOK more like the other sex in adulthood.
Prioritizing appearance so heavily, over function, is irresponsible-- and cannot qualify as "health" care.
The risks of Puberty blockers are serious-- first, they seem to lead inexorably to cross sex hormones (~99% go on to take them- not a 'pause'), and the combination of the two cause: lack of ability to orgasm, sterility, and lack of sexual function in adulthood, in addition to many other serious conditions (stroke, diabetes, cancer). For males, puberty blockers result in a micropenis. (Kids who were given Lupron for precocious puberty have experienced myriad health problems in adulthood.)
Pre-pubescent children are incapable of giving informed consent-- prioritizing the relative value of sexual fertility or the ability to orgasm, vs what sex they are assumed by strangers to be, in the future. It's far too abstract to a child. Further, they can't "change sex"-- though this is not clarified by those selling 'sex changes.' The blockers may not even "work" in that the child may ALWAYS be 'read' as the sex they are, regardless-- and yet they can wind up with many terrible side effects.
And this is no lifesaving measure, as is frequently claimed. The suicide risks of these kids are identical to any group that is matched in the number of mental health disorders-- 80% of trans ID kids have 2 or more MH disorders on top of gender distress. Mental health problems make informed consent even more difficult as impulsivity, scrambled thinking, and self hate are common in mental illness.
In the old days kids with gender dysphoria OUTGREW the problem at a very high rate (90%) VIA the very brain maturation of puberty. And where were the suicides?
Why treat GD by blocking the CURE, puberty? The "do nothing" option needs to be brought back on the table.
PLEASE consider that kids today are FREQUENTLY provided with puberty blockers as a matter of course at the first appointment. There is ZERO differential diagnosis being done. Any miserable child who says "I'm trans" is treated AS the opposite sex from the first minute. No adult is pushing back on the claimed ID of a very unhappy child with numerous psychological problems. They then intervene in the child's normal development. What could go wrong?
This is a conveyor belt and puberty blockers are the point of entry. Detransitioners present a cautionary tale. Some of them are now castrated gay boys with fake vaginas. Imagine that's where you find yourself at 20 because adults blocked your puberty at ten.
There is nothing benign about playing god with the entire life span, health, and sexuality of a miserable kid based on their *self concept at ten*. It's hubris and needs to be reined in.
Thank you tor sharing these amazing comments.
This morning, the 8th, NPR carried an interview of Gov. Chris Christie, and the reporter asked him about being "the only Republican in the race who opposes bans on specialized (s𝘪𝘤) health care for transgender youth." He answered, "I'm a conservative Republican who doesn't want the government telling mothers and fathers how to treat their children." As a politically homeless voter, I agree with that general principle; but in this case, I have to think Christie's view are the result of inadequate information as to the consequences of the supposedly "specialized" care or the manipulative if not outright deceitful pressures put on parents. I'm not at all surprised by the NPR reporter's failure to push back the least bit on the governor's poorly informed view. NPR has been wholly in unquestioning agreement with the most extreme version of the radical trans ideology.
I like what one of the young people said in the “De-Transitioning” show, "Puberty is a human right."
Coastal: not sure whether you were responding to me on this, though, if so, FYI, I was referring to something in the Australian documentary, not the Daily Mail piece. As to the latter, that story is really weird. It does make clear just how far gone the Canadian government is that it could not find a way to keep this guy from coming to school with his extreme fetish on full display. Then, all that waste of $$$ for police support just so he can bring his weird self to another school. This is one severely troubled individual who shouldn’t be anywhere near children IMHO.
Silly me!