Friday, January 26, 2018



UK Schools Acting Too Swiftly to Change Kids' Gender; 11-Y-O Girls on Puberty Blockers, Expert Warns

And if they ever do want children, or change their minds, oh well...  No one to sue because now we convince people to do things to themselves

A psychologist at the only U.K. clinic for children seeking to change their gender has said that girls as young as 11 are being placed on puberty blockers and hormone treatment, and warned that schools act "within minutes" to register a child as the opposite sex.

Bernadette Wren, consultant clinical psychologist at the Gender Identity Development Service clinic in London, revealed in an interview with The Sunday Times that the youngest child receiving such treatment there is an 11-year-old girl who identifies as a boy.

Wren warned that schools in the U.K. are moving too fast in labeling a child as a member of the opposite sex.

"Schools might wait for the parents to approach them before changing things like names in the register, uniforms, pronouns, toilets, sports," she said.

"If a school just gets a whisper of a child who may be querying their gender and within minutes they are doing everything to make sure that child is regarded as a member of the opposite sex right from the word go — that may not be the best for that child," she added.

The psychologist revealed that about one in 10 of the children who are referred to the London clinic decide to opt out of the treatment.

GIDS says that GPs, schools, and support groups referred more than 2,000 children to its services in the space of nine months last year, which is a 20-fold increase from previous  years when in 2009 there were only 97 referrals.

Wren warned that future generations may not think that the current way of handling the issue has been wise, noting that young people sometimes regret their decision to undergo gender change, which creates serious problems later on in life.

"Perhaps the choices they make when they are 16 look different when they are 30," she said.

"You can accept their feeling about gender difference but you do have to say alongside that — and without being transphobic — that there are really difficult treatment choices to be made."

One of the main concerns she identified is infertility, with people who are born males losing their capacity to father children as a result of treatments.

Gender change issues concerning children have been highly controversial in the U.K. In December, shocked parents demanded that the National Health Service remove questions aimed at primary school children asking them if they "feel different" to the gender they were born with.

"At a time when children are growing up and having to deal with all sorts of challenges of the modern world, now they are being asked to confront their gender, which for many will be unsettling," Tim Loughton, a Conservative Party politician and former children's minister, said at the time.

"Clearly we need to be sensitive about the issue of gender and sexual orientation but forcing children to question whether they are the right gender so early on can be deeply destabilizing," he added.

The Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust said at the time in a response to the controversy that it will no longer be widely asking the question.

Debate also swirled around Girlguiding U.K., the country's leading organization for girls and young women, which in November announced that transgender members who are born male but identify as females will be allowed to use the same shower facilities as girls.

Feminist campaigner Julie Bindel said at the time: "This is not a moral panic. The concern that I and many feminists have about boys invading bedrooms, tents and showers, is that disproportionately the victims of sexual violence are girls and women, and overwhelmingly, the perpetrators are boys and men."

SOURCE





Public Barred From Ben Shapiro Lecture At University  of Connecticut

The University of Connecticut is barring the public from attending conservative author Ben Shapiro’s Wednesday speech at the school.

Young America’s Foundation (YAF), the group sponsoring Shapiro, said that the university is only allowing UConn students, faculty and pre-registered guests from attending, reported Campus Reform.

“Student safety may seem a noble cause for UConn to cherish, but why isn’t the same level of restraint imposed on speaking events by prominent leftists?” YAF spokesman Spencer Brown said. He noted that “just last week, Anita Hill spoke on campus at UConn in an event advertised as ‘free and open to the public,’ with ‘no tickets required for entry.'”

Brown said that UConn adopted the review policy after a November speech when a faculty member from a nearby school stole Gateway Pundit White House correspondent Lucian Wintrich’s presentation notes, and Wintrich used force to retrieve them.

“It seems odd that no such restrictions existed for Anita Hill,” Shapiro told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “While I’m sure the Left is more riotous than the right, I’m not sure why that’s an excuse to limit public access for the right. We’re creating a heckler’s veto on general public access to speeches.”

UConn previously offered counseling services to students offended by Shapiro’s visit, reported The Daily Wire.

“We understand that even the thought of an individual coming to campus with the views that Mr. Shapiro expresses can be concerning and even hurtful,” said Joelle Murchison, UConn chief diversity officer and associate vice president.

The UConn spokeswoman said that Hill and Shapiro both received the same review treatment, even though the College Republicans chapter invited Shapiro while the school, invited Hill, according to The Daily Campus.

SOURCE





Home Schooling Is Not a Crime

It's elementary. Education control freaks will use any excuse to crack down on competition. With two million K-12 students now educated at home (including our 9th grade son), the temptation to exploit the most marginal cases of alleged child abuse by home-schoolers has proven irresistible to statist politicians and government apologists.

Take the case of David and Louise Turpin's 13 starving children, reportedly found tethered to their beds after one of the siblings escaped and contacted police. The Turpins' "house of horrors" in Riverside County, California, grabbed international headlines last week — and lured a parade of publicity hounds. Former neighbors in Texas claimed they suspected physical abuse by the parents but did nothing at the time. These thirsty fame-seekers will, however, be appearing on "Dr. Phil" later this week to slurp up their 15 minutes of leechdom.

Louise Turpin's half-sister, Teresa Robinette, who also sat on the sidelines for years, miraculously found the energy and motivation to wake up early for an interview on NBC's "Today Show," where she gregariously gossiped about family secrets.

Another of Louise Turpin's sisters, Elizabeth Flores, dry-cried and show-sniffled on ABC's "Good Morning America" about her "love" for the Turpin children whom she claims to have tried to Skype unsuccessfully "for 20 years." How heroic of her. Flores also confessed that David Turpin allegedly spied on her while she showered. For some reason, it was more urgent for Flores to report this information to "GMA" anchor Robin Roberts and millions of strangers tuned into the boob tube than it was to tell her sister. Or her nieces and nephews. Or authorities.

But instead of training tough scrutiny where it belongs — on the parents, relatives and acquaintances of the alleged victims — California legislators and narrative-shaping liberal journalists have instead directed their wrath at home schooling.

The Turpins had filed required paperwork with the state registering their supposed home school, the Sandcastle Day School, as a "private school." Several court cases in California have upheld the right to home school. Parents have the option to sign an affidavit establishing a home-based educational program, hire credentialed tutors or register with an independent study program.

The deep, wide and vast majority of home-schoolers nationwide are loving, excellent and responsible instructors and parents. Yet, public school lobbyists have marginalized them as amateurs, weirdos and menaces who don't have the intelligence to raise and educate their own children. Democratic legislators in California have sought to undermine home-schoolers' autonomy with intrusive legislation, such as a bill proposed last fall that would have required parents to allow inspectors to search their residential bathrooms for state-mandated feminine hygiene products for female students.

In New York City, incompetent nanny state bureaucrats have routinely harassed home-schooling families and falsely accused them of "educational neglect" after losing their paperwork. Home-schooling mom of two, Tanya Acevedo, who is suing the Big Apple, told my CRTV.com program how bureaucratic snafus that classified her son as a truant led to a Child Protective Services investigation.

"You start to question yourself as a parent when they come through those doors," Acevedo recounted. "My child he eats three meals a day, he's well taken care of, and I felt that there was no need for them to be knocking at my door. ... it was a really scary and really nerve-racking experience."

For her crime of exercising educational self-determination, Acevedo was treated as guilty of child abuse until proven innocent.

The idea that there is something especially sinister and crime-enabling about home schooling — The Week's Damon Linker warned darkly of the "sickening danger of home-schooling," for example, and NPR invoked the specter of a "cult" — betrays an all-too-common bias against parental autonomy that ignores the government's own gross misconduct. From coast to coast, child welfare agencies see parental negligence where none exists and conversely ignore abuse when it's under their employees' noses. Federal audits of state child welfare bureaucracies in California and Texas last year found rampant failures to detect abuse, investigate allegations and track referrals.

Moreover, sexual abuse scandals have rocked inner-city schools, suburban public school districts and wealthy private schools alike. "In 2014 alone," according to former federal education official Terry Abbott, "there were 781 reported cases of teachers and other school employees accused or convicted of sexual relationships with students."

Yet, the vultures of political opportunism are using the plight of the Turpin children to impose expanded control over all home-schoolers in the Golden State. California Assemblymember Jose Medina, D-Riverside, plans to introduce a bill requiring that "mandated reporters" designated by the state Department of Education conduct annual assessments in all home schools.

Echoing Medina's concern for "the lack of oversight the state of California currently has in monitoring private and home schools," liberal New Republic writer Sarah Jones decried how "lax homeschooling laws protect child abusers." She pivoted quickly from the Turpin tragedy to an attack on the home-school movement's academic achievements and opposition to mandatory kindergarten.

Fundamentally, the home-school crackdown caucus views the very freedom to educate one's own children as a threat to government authority. In the name of liberating the Turpin children, they seek to keep the rest of us home-schooling families in regulatory chains.

SOURCE




No comments: