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Kids Get Schooled on Radical Politics (by Francesca Block)

Students at a public elementary school in Brooklyn are learning revolutionary theory from a Black Lives Matter coloring book.

 

Children at a Brooklyn public elementary school are being taught revolutionary politics and communist terms from a Black Lives Matter coloring book, The Free Press has learned. 

Last week, teachers at PS 321—the kindergarten through fifth grade school in Park Slope—supplied students with the coloring book, What We Believe, as part of a lesson for Black History Month. The book uses drawings and worksheets to promote the 13 tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement, under titles like “Queer Affirming,” “Transgender Affirming,” and “Restorative Justice.” Principle number 2, “Empathy,” is described as “engaging comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.”

The coloring book also lists Black Lives Matter’s “national demands,” including “mandate black history & ethnic studies,” “hire more black teachers,” and “fund counselors not cops.”

One parent of a PS 321 fourth grader, whose grandparents fled Communist China before moving to the U.S., said she and her husband were “shocked” that the book used the word comrade—and that it appeared to promote political propaganda.

“Using the word comrades comes from Communist times,” said the parent, whose 10-year-old daughter attends the school, also known as William Penn. “They are using words that I don’t think are appropriate for elementary school.”

She said she first discovered the coloring book on Tuesday, February 13, when a snow day forced her daughter to learn from home.

“This is classwork, not homework,” the parent said. “If it weren’t for the snow, we wouldn’t have known.” 

Lessons in the coloring book tell children to reflect on Black Lives Matter’s 13 principles. Some of the exercises, parents said, appear innocuous; a page about “Restorative Justice,” for example, asks students: “Why is it important to offer to forgive someone?” But another, entitled “Transgender Affirming,” instructs students to read the book When Aidan Became a Brother about a girl who transitions to a boy, and then answer questions on a worksheet like, “How do you feel when someone tells you what you can or can’t do based on your gender?”

Another principle, “Black Villages,” is described as “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.” Another, called “Intergenerational,” encourages a “communal network free from ageism.” 

The coloring book encourages kids to learn the 13 principles of Black Lives Matter, including “Queer Affirming,” “Transgender Affirming,” and “Restorative Justice.”

Another public school parent whose family left the Soviet Union when she was a teenager said the language in the book reminds her “of the songs we were made to sing as elementary school children. ‘Dismantling’ and ‘comrade’ and everything—it really reminds me of the word salad that was a part of those songs.”

She compared the Black Lives Matter movement to communism, saying: “same salad, different dressing.” 

Brandy Shufutinksy, the director of education at the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, who is black and holds a doctorate in international multicultural education, said she was “offended” that the curriculum “demonizes the nuclear family.” 

“They frame it as some form of white supremacy,” Shufutinksy said. “There are a number of people beside myself who are deeply offended by the idea that black Americans should not strive for something that was denied to our ancestors for so long.”

The educational materials used by PS 321 are created by Black Lives Matter at School, an organization founded in 2016 by a group of Seattle teachers to educate students from pre-K to 12th grade about BLM’s ideology. In 2018, Black Lives Matter at School launched a national Week of Action in February to teach “lessons on structural racism, Black history, intersectional Black identities, and anti-racist movements.” According to the group’s website, the curriculum is now taught at a total of 50 schools across 21 states and six countries.

When asked for comment from The Free Press, the NYC Department of Education said, “Anytime parents have a concern about resources used in school, we encourage them to share their concerns to the school principal or district superintendent.” The principal at PS 321 did not reply to an email seeking comment. Black Lives Matter at School did not respond to multiple emails asking for comment.

PS 321, also known as William Penn, educates children from kindergarten through fifth grade in Park Slope, Brooklyn. (Photo by David Grossman via Alamy Stock)

Several parents who spoke to The Free Press said they were upset that the coloring book failed to teach their children about black history.

One mother with two children at PS 321 said the coloring book doesn’t go “into enough detail and there is no mention of specific people. It just feels very vague.” 

The fourth-grade mother said her daughter’s teacher told her the coloring book was the only lesson planned for Black History Month, other than a schoolwide project to make a quilt honoring famous black figures. She added that, after the Week of Action, her daughter still had never heard of civil rights hero Rosa Parks and didn’t know what Martin Luther King Jr. had achieved to make him famous. 

Furthermore, she said, the coloring book presents controversial ideas “as fact.” But, “it’s not necessarily true. It’s not like every black person believes in these principles.” 

Shufutinsky agrees: “There is nothing in these principles that talks about honoring greats in black American history. There is nothing in here that is actual scholarship. It doesn’t speak to education. It speaks to ideology.” 

 

Kids Get Schooled on Radical Politics | The Free Press (thefp.com)

 

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Trans cyclist Emily Bridges: ‘elite sport is over for me’ (by Joan Smith)

 

Reality matters. No one is trying to ban trans women from sport at any level, from the Olympics to school sports days. All they’ve been told to do by some governing bodies is compete in the correct category for their sex. Yet trans athletes keep saying they’ve been excluded, claiming they’ve been banned from their chosen sport.

In the US, the male-bodied swimmer Lia Thomas is taking legal action in an attempt to be allowed to compete against women. In the UK, the cyclist Emily Bridges is threatening to do the same after British Cycling restricted entry to the female category to women. 

“Elite sport is over for me” is the headline ITV News has used for an interview with Bridges. “If we were allowed to compete, if I was allowed to compete, it would be a different conversation,” he claims, “but I can’t compete […] I can’t do something I used to love.’

Bridges is 6’2”, was born male and went through male puberty. Like Thomas, he towers over female athletes and his voice in interviews is that of a young man. He could go on racing for years if he were willing to compete in the male or “open” category, a point made by ITV’s sports editor, Steve Scott. 

Scott’s challenge goes to the heart of the matter, exposing the fact that there is no ban on trans athletes. But they want validation of their claimed gender identity, and they won’t get that in the “open” category. 

Unsurprisingly, Bridges has no answer to Scott’s question, appearing lost for words. “Would it be safe for me to compete in an open category?” he asks after a long pause. The answer is obviously yes, but trans athletes are not used to having their hyperbolic claims called out like this. 

The people who are at risk are girls and women who find themselves competing against individuals who are bigger, stronger and have greater muscle mass. Injuries have been reported in football and basketball after women found themselves playing against teams which included male-bodied trans women. Female athletes are also losing medals to trans-identified males. 

Bridges is now making even more absurd statements, however, such as the notion that protecting the female category in sport “has normalised the exclusion of trans people from public life”. He claims it’s made it “easier to ban us from toilets, easier to ban our healthcare […] and our ability to go out in public’. 

None of this is happening. Trans people are simply expected to observe boundaries put in place to protect women from men’s greater physical strength and male violence. These expectations are so reasonable that they weren’t even questioned until some men decided they were women, and started trying to take over single-sex spaces and categories. 

Obviously they don’t want to admit this, so they’ve played the victim card instead. “You leave the house and you’re thinking, am I going to come home?” Bridges suggests at the end of his latest interview.

It’s a thought most women have had at some point in their lives, with much greater justification. But women’s safety is the last thing on the minds of activists who think they should be able to do exactly what they like.

---

Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She has been Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board since 2013. Her book Homegrown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists was published in 2019.

Trans cyclist Emily Bridges: 'elite sport is over for me' - UnHerd

 

 

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The Insane Hypocrisy of Woke Activists - Peter Boghossian | heretics. 5

 

Germany weaponises new NGO bill against the Right (by Ralph Schoellhammer)

 

Who will defend democracy against democracy’s defenders? This might sound like a joke, but it should be taken seriously in Germany. For over a year the country’s Greens and Social Democrats have been pushing for a law that would create mandatory government support for NGOs that engage in “supporting democracy, creating diversity, preventing extremism, and enhancing political education”. 

On its surface, the law appears to be designed to ensure long-term funding for institutions outside of the government sector, but a closer look reveals that in its current form it would primarily support “progressive” causes. Left-of-centre NGOs would have a permanent advantage, and their public funding would be secured even with a conservative federal government in charge. 

At this point, the initiative by Left-wing members of Germany’s ruling coalition to force taxpayers to finance Left-wing NGOs is only being kept at bay by the smallest partner in government, the Free Democrats. The party continues to point out that creating a law which targets Right-wing extremism but remains silent on other forms of radicalism, such as Islamism, is insufficient and demonstrably partisan. 

This anti-democratic new law is not just a financial issue, but an attempt by the government to tilt the political playing field against anyone with Right-of-centre politics. Despite their hopes to the contrary, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Greens know that banning the Alternative for Germany (AfD) — which would be the main target of this new law — is not going to happen. As a result, they are trying to outsource the suppression of their opponents to civil society — ideally via selective funding for government-approved NGOs. 

Germany’s Minister for the Interior, Nancy Faeser, makes no secret of the intentions behind the law, saying that “no stone will remain unturned” in finding out who supports the New Right and that “those who mock the German state will feel the strength of the state”. The idea of making mockery of the government punishable by law, all in the name of “defending democracy”, is, to lean on a cliché, pretty Orwellian. What is the point of a liberal democracy if citizens are no longer permitted to criticise their politicians? Having led Germany down a path of sustained economic decline, the ruling coalition now wants to silence its opponents.

Faeser hopes to “discourage” support for Right-wing parties rather than punish it — for now, at least. Not even 24 hours ago a German bank refused to process an individual donation to the AfD, sending a letter to the person in question stating that the bank “does not engage in such transactions”. After this incident became public, the bank apologised and attributed the mistake “to human error”.

Trying to exclude those who have different views from public life, by way of a thinly veiled threat of debanking, is not democratic. Instead, it represents abandoning democracy for something closer to totalitarianism.

 Germany weaponises new NGO bill against the Right - UnHerd

 

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When a STUDENT asks about JK ROWLING this happens

 

Why did three journals reject my puberty-blocker study? (By Sally Baxendale)

Trans children deserve to know the facts

What happens during puberty? And what happens if we try to stop it? It’s one of the most fraught questions of our time. Given its significance and the vulnerability of the people it involves, you might be surprised to learn that there have been more studies assessing the impact of puberty blockers on cognitive function in animals than humans. Of the 16 studies that have specifically examined the impact of puberty blockers on cognitive function, 11 have been conducted in animals. And most found some detrimental impact on cognitive function when the researchers gave these drugs to mice, sheep or monkeys.

The sheep studies were particularly interesting as they used twin lambs, administering the puberty blockers to only one in the pair. More than one year after stopping the medication, the sheep who had taken the puberty blockers had still not “caught up” with their untreated siblings in their ability to complete a test of spatial memory. It can, however, be fairly argued that we can only extrapolate so much from the abilities of sheep to remember the way through a maze of hay bales. It is really the studies in humans that are of most interest to those considering prescribing or taking these drugs.

Yet such studies are hard to come by. There are only five that have looked at the impact of puberty blockers on cognitive function in children, and only three of these have looked at these effects in adolescents given the medication for gender dysphoria. In one of these studies, the researchers didn’t measure how well the children were doing before they administered the drugs, so it is difficult to know whether the subsequent difficulties they had on a strategy task could be attributed to the medication. A second study established an excellent baseline, and the researchers employed a gold-standard measure to test the cognitive abilities of the children in the programme before they started the puberty blockers.

Unfortunately, they didn’t re-administer these tests to assess the impact of the medication, but chose instead to report how many of a subset of these children completed a vocational education and how many completed a higher vocational education years later. No outcomes at all were reported on 40% of the children who started out in the study. The final study, however, was beautifully designed: the researchers assessed IQ prior to the administration of puberty blockers and regularly monitored the impact of the treatment over 28 months on a comprehensive battery of cognitive tasks. The results were concerning and suggested an overall drop in IQ of 10 points which extended to 15 points in verbal comprehension. But regrettably, this was a single case study, and while alarming, the conclusions we can draw from one person’s experience are limited.

Last year, I wrote a paper to summarise the results of these studies. The paper explained in relatively simple terms why we might think that blocking puberty in young people could impact their cognitive development. In a nutshell: puberty doesn’t just trigger the development of secondary sex characteristics; it is a really important time in the development of brain function and structure. My review of the medical literature highlighted that while there is a fairly solid scientific basis to suspect that any process that interrupts puberty will have an impact on brain development, nobody has really bothered to look at this properly in children with gender dysphoria.

I didn’t call for puberty blockers to be banned. Most medical treatments have some side effects and the choice of whether to take them depends on a careful analysis of the risk/benefit ratio for each patient. My paper didn’t conduct this kind of analysis, although others have and have judged the evidence to be so weak that these treatments can only be viewed as experimental. My summary merely provided one piece of the jigsaw. I concluded my manuscript with a list of outstanding questions and called for further research to answer these questions, as every review of the medical literature in any field always does.

As a scientific paper, it was not ground-breaking — reviews rarely are. But by summarising the research so far, I thought it would serve as a convenient resource for the numerous authorities currently examining the efficacy of these treatments. It also provided key information for parents and children currently considering medical options. Every patient needs to be aware of what doctors do and do not know about any elective treatment if they are going to make an informed decision about going ahead. Doctors have a duty of candour to provide this.

I was surprised at just how little, and how low quality, the evidence was in this field. I was also concerned that clinicians working in gender medicine continue to describe the impacts of puberty blockers as “completely physically reversible”, when it is clear that we just don’t know whether this is the case, at least with respect to the cognitive impact. But these were not the only troubling aspects of this project. The progress of this paper towards publication has been extraordinary, and unique in my three-decades-long experience of academic publishing.

The paper has now been accepted for publication in a well-respected, peer-reviewed journal. However, prior to this, the manuscript was submitted to three academic journals, all of whom rejected it. “Academic has paper rejected from journal” is not headline news. I have published many academic papers and have also served on the editorial boards of a number of high impact scientific journals. I have both delivered and received rejections. In high-quality journals, many more papers are rejected than accepted. The reasons for rejection are usually a variation on the themes that the paper isn’t telling us anything new or that the data is weak and doesn’t support the conclusions that the authors are trying to draw. In a paper that is reviewing other studies, reasons for rejection typically include criticisms of the ways the authors have looked for or selected the studies they have included in their review, with the implication that they may have missed a big chunk of evidence. Sometimes the subject of the review is too wide, too narrow or too niche to be of value to the wider readership.

While imperfect, anonymous peer review remains the foundation of scientific publishing. Theoretically, the anonymity releases reviewers from any inhibitions they may have in telling their esteemed colleagues that, on this occasion, they appear to have produced a pile of pants. When it works well, authors and editors receive a coherent critique of the submitted manuscript, with reviewers independently highlighting — and ideally converging — on the strengths and weaknesses of the paper. If done sloppily, or if the reviewers have been poorly selected, the author may be presented with a commentary on their work that is riddled with misunderstandings and inaccuracies. Requests for information already provided are common, as are suggestions that the author include reference to the anonymous reviewer’s own body of work, however tangential to the matter in hand. I have been on the receiving end of both the best and worst of these practices over the course of my career. However, I have never encountered the kinds of concerns that some of the reviewers expressed in response to my review of puberty blockers. In this case, it wasn’t the methods they objected to, it was the actual findings.

None of the reviewers identified any studies that I had missed that demonstrated safe and reversible impacts of puberty blockers on cognitive development, or presented any evidence contrary to my conclusions that the work just hasn’t been done. However, one suggested the evidence may be out there, it just hadn’t been published. They suggested that I trawl through non-peer reviewed conference presentations to look for unpublished studies that might tell a more positive story. The reviewer appeared to be under the naïve apprehension that studies proving that puberty blockers were safe and effective would have difficulty being published. The very low quality of studies in this field, and the positive spin on any results reported by gender clinicians suggest that this is unlikely to be the case.

Another reviewer expressed concerns that publishing the conclusions from these studies risked stigmatising an already stigmatised group. A third suggested that I should focus on the positive things that puberty blockers could do, while a fourth suggested there was no point in publishing a review when there wasn’t enough literature to review. Another sought to diminish an entire field of neuroscience that has established puberty as a critical period of brain development as “my view”.

In a rather telling response, one of the reviewers used religious language to criticise the paper. They argued that the sex-based terms I had employed to describe the children in the studies — natal sex, male-to-female, female-to-male — indicated a pre-existing scepticism about the use of blockers. They suggested that the very presence of these terms would cause people who prescribe these medications to “outright dismiss the article”, and went on to say that by using these terms the paper was “preaching to the choir” and would do a “poor job of attracting new members to the fold”. However, the most astonishing response I received was from a reviewer who was concerned that I appeared to be approaching the topic from a “bias” of heavy caution. This reviewer argued that lots of things needed to be sorted out before a clear case for the “riskiness” of puberty blockers could be made, even circumstantially. Indeed, they appeared to be advocating for a default position of assuming medical treatments are safe, until proven otherwise.

Yet “safe and fully reversible” can never be the default position for any medical intervention, never mind a treatment that is now deemed experimental by authorities in Europe and the UK. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and the only extraordinary evidence here is the gaping chasm of knowledge, or even apparent curiosity, of the clinicians who continue to chant “safe and completely reversible” as they prescribe these medications to the children in their care. It is not the job of a scientific paper to “bring people into the fold”; it is the job of clinicians to understand the evidence base of the treatments they offer and communicate this to the patients they are treating.

I sincerely hope that any arrest in brain development associated with puberty blockers is recoverable for young trans and gender diverse people, who are already facing significant challenges in their lives. I would welcome any research that indicates that this is the case, not least for the significant insights that would present to our current understanding of puberty as a critical window of neurodevelopment in adolescence. Puberty blockers almost invariably set young people on a course of lifetime medicalisation with high personal, physical and social costs. At present we cannot guarantee that cognitive costs are not added to this burden. Any clinician claiming their treatments are “safe and reversible” without evidence to back it up is failing in their fundamental duty of candour to their patients. Such an approach is unacceptable in any branch of medicine, not least that dealing with highly complex and vulnerable young people.

---

Sallie Baxendale is a consultant clinical neuropsychologist and a professor of clinical neuropsychology at University College London.

Why did three journals reject my puberty-blocker study? - UnHerd

 

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WHO quietly announces controversial gender guidance

The organisation used the Christmas period to slip out the news

 

A few days before Christmas, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it would be developing guidelines on “the health of trans and gender diverse people”, with a focus on access to hormones and surgeries (what it calls “gender-inclusive care”) and legal recognition of gender self-identification. 

The WHO also announced the formation of a guideline development group. This panel of experts is heavily stocked with apparatchiks from the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), including two former presidents; trans activists employed by the Global Action for Trans Equality network, or GATE; the parent of a trans-identifying child; and at least one member with strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry. 

A few of the panellists have especially colourful public profiles, none more so than Florence Ashley, a “transfeminine jurist and bioethicist” whose preferred pronouns are “They/Them/That Bitch”. Ashley believes that “puberty blockers ought to be treated as the default option” for all youth, as opposed to “letting puberty runs its course”. The activist argues that letting this stage of human development progress uninterrupted “strongly favours cis embodiment by raising the psychological and medical toll of transitioning”. Thus: 

 

… Puberty blockers structurally place transgender and cisgender hormonal futures in approximate symmetry. Youth who take puberty blockers have their options wide open, their bodies unaltered by either testosterone or oestrogen. Although much remains unknown about the long-term effects of puberty blockers, limited empirical evidence and clinical experience make us more than justified in assuming that whatever risks puberty blockers have do not foreclose future life paths as much as undergoing puberty does. 

 - FLORENCE ASHLEY

 

Besides being absurd, this proposal discounts the possible effects of puberty blockers on adolescent brain development. We don’t yet know how suppressing the sex hormones that spur cognitive development during puberty affects factors like impulse control, emotional regulation, critical thinking, and decision-making. What’s more, evidence suggests that blocking puberty may “lock” children into a trans identity, rather than buying time and space to think. 

Ashley has argued elsewhere that clinical assessment does not predict or prevent regret (so why bother?) and dismissed concerns about the rapid increase in adolescent and young adult females seeking transition. Ashley concludes on an odd note, first denying, then embracing the possible role of social influence: “If the rise in transgender identities evidences social contagion — a claim I have shown to be unsubstantiated — it may yet be a healthy contagion.” This comes from the philosopher who once mused: “What is your main motivation in life, and why is it getting railed in a sundress by a hot dyke?”

Another panellist, Teddy Cook, described the “actual side effects of gender-affirming medical care” as “a significantly improved quality of life, significantly better health and wellbeing outcomes, a dramatic decrease in distress, depression and anxiety and a substantial increase of gender euphoria and trans joy”, concluding that “we are not at risk of harm by affirming our gender.” 

Panellists with WPATH-heavy résumés oversaw the controversial inclusion of eunuchs, as well as the exclusion of a draft chapter on medical ethics, from that organisation’s most recent standards of care. In short, many of them have significant personal, intellectual, and professional conflicts of interest that may interfere with their ability to evaluate and follow the evidence when that evidence leads to uncomfortable places. 

Conflicts of interest are unavoidable, but balance matters. One won’t find any critics, concerned clinicians, experts in child and adolescent development, specialists in neurodevelopment, or desisters and detransitioners in the WHO’s guideline development group. 

The organisation also opened a brief window for public comment over the Christmas holidays — a window that closes just two days after Epiphany. If Friday afternoons are the best time of the week to dump bad news, the quiet stretch around Christmas and New Year is the ideal time to solicit public comment — if one wants as few people as possible to weigh in, that is. 

The World Health Organization has a responsibility to facilitate — not preempt — an open, transparent, and scientific dialogue about the risks, benefits, and unknowns surrounding the most effective and ethical treatments for gender-dysphoric patients. At this point, such a process would require starting from scratch.

WHO quietly announces controversial gender guidance - The Post (unherd.com)

 

 

 

 

Eschatology (by Eve L. Ewing)

 

i’m confident that the absolute dregs of possibility for this society,
the sugary coffee mound at the bottom of this cup,
our last best hope that when our little bit of assigned plasma implodes 
it won’t go down as a green mark in the cosmic ledger,
lies in the moment when you say hello to a bus driver 
and they say it back—

when someone holds the door open for you 
and you do a little jog to meet them where they are—

walking my dog, i used to see this older man 
and whenever I said good morning, 
he replied ‘GREAT morning’—

in fact, all the creative ways our people greet each other
may be the icing on this flaming trash cake hurtling through the ether. 

when the clerk says how are you 
and i say ‘i’m blessed and highly favored’ 

i mean my toes have met sand, and wiggled in it, a lot. 
i mean i have laughed until i choked and a friend slapped my back.
i mean my niece wrote me a note: ‘you are so smart + intellajet’

i mean when we do go careening into the sun, 

i’ll miss crossing guards ushering the grown folks too, like ducklings 
and the lifeguards at the community pool and
men who yelled out the window that they’d fix the dent in my car, 
right now! it’d just take a second—

and actually everyone who tried to keep me alive, keep me afloat, 
and if not unblemished, suitably repaired.

but I won’t feel too sad about it,
becoming a star 

Copyright © 2024 by Eve L. Ewing. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 6, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

eschatology by Eve L. Ewing - Poems | Academy of American Poets

 

 

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 Women protest Network Rail’s capitulation to Stonewall

The railway company has been mocked for its seasonal 'Pride Pillar'

London Bridge Station

Calling women “sluts”, “bimbos”, “bitches” and “cows” is the sort of sexism that might prompt London’s Mayor to say “Maaate”. It’s certainly not the sort of language one might expect from a champion of inclusion and diversity, nor of a man dubbed a role model in his industry. Yet Shane Andrews MBE — chair of Archway, Network Rail’s employee network for promoting LGBT inclusion — has been accused of using these very words to denigrate women on social media.

Today a large poster with screenshots of now-deleted posts apparently made by Andrews was displayed as part of a protest at London Bridge Station. At around 11am, scores of supporters of Let Women Speak (LWS) converged at the base of the newly erected “Pride Pillar”, described by Network Rail as “an art installation aimed at educating people about LGBT+ flags and communities”.

The LWS activists aimed not only to bring attention to Andrews’s sexist comments, but to make a broader point about his employer, Network Rail. The infrastructure giant’s decision to plant a (literal) flag on the trans activist side of the national debate around women’s rights has angered many.

It was there, with a backdrop of flags celebrating “pansexual”, “polyamorous” and “demisexual” identities, that the female activists burst into song before giving speeches about the heavy irony of feeling excluded by measures which purport to champion inclusion.  

A LWS organiser told me after the event that “this headache of a display doesn’t represent women who do not believe in gender ideology — in other words, women who believe in biological reality, and in particular lesbians who are branded bigots for not wanting to date men who pretend to be lesbians.”

Yet it seems Network Rail has failed to pick up on signal changes around sex and gender, though the company has had plenty of opportunities to educate itself over the years.

In 2020, when Let Women Speak founder Kellie-Jay Keen paid for a billboard at Edinburgh Waverley station reading “I ♥ JK Rowling”, it was removed following online complaints of transphobia. At the time, Network Rail Scotland said on X, “We do not allow advertising that is likely to support or promote one viewpoint over another.” This hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed in the recent commentary provoked by the Pride Pillar.

In the years since the removal of the Rowling poster, numerous court cases have confirmed that people have the right to publicly disagree with the Stonewall-approved line that “transwomen are women”. Yet Network Rail, (listed within the top 100 Stonewall Equality Workplace Index of 2023) has failed to recognise that displaying flags promoting transgender ideology and identities is inherently political.

While Network Rail hasn’t moved, vast swathes of the public have now woken up to the threats from transgender ideology as promoted by lobby groups like Stonewall. Findings from the most recent British Social Attitudes survey show that the proportion thinking someone who identifies as the opposite sex should be allowed to change their birth certificate has fallen by 23 percentage points — from 53% to 30% — since 2019. 

Grisly accounts of male rapists being placed in women’s prisons, and of children with gender confusion being put on experimental drugs, have made many question whether accepting someone’s identity above the reality of their sex really is the “be kind” option. What’s more, thanks to recent legal rulings, human resources departments are beginning to recognise that employees and indeed service users have the right to reject trans ideology. While this is framed as a gender-critical belief, it might more accurately be described as “trans atheism”.

It would be comforting to imagine the people who oversee Britain’s rail infrastructure would be adept at spotting such signs and signals. But it seems Network Rail runs on a single track: what Stonewall says goes.

In its corporate bumf celebrating the “Pride Pillar”, Network Rail said:

We hope displaying the flags will help prevent confusion and misunderstanding about identity. We also hope it will act as a discussion point to tackle LBGT issues, promote conversation and serve an educational focal point. 

- NETWORK RAIL

In this regard, the display has been effective. No doubt as time passes and the importance of material reality reasserts itself, the Pride Pillar will be looked upon as a monument to institutional stupidity, a gaudy reminder of a time when women’s rights were dismissed as an impediment to the identities of men.

Women protest Network Rail's capitulation to Stonewall - The Post (unherd.com)

 

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