April 2024
Newsletter
Have you signed our open letter?
As of today, 260+ people have signed RGE’s open letter to the Minister of Education that asks her to promptly rewrite the 2020 RSE Guide to remove all the discredited gender identity material with which it is riddled. Our letter also asks the Minister to remove the tag of “trusted organisation” from InsideOUT and any other organisations that dogmatically continue to support the Guide despite the irrefutable evidence from the Cass Review that the wishful thinking it promotes is harmful to children.
Please sign this letter to demonstrate to the Minister that it is not just a “small number of highly conservative people”, as the Mental Heath Foundation claims, who are alarmed by the unscientific content of the RSE Guide.
Read and sign the letter here. https://www.resistgendereducation.nz/rse-open-letter
The Cass Review
Dr Hilary Cass’s final report into gender identity services for children and young people will be well known to you. Here is our selection of the best responses to it in the media. Note that the report has barely been mentioned in legacy media in NZ except to defend the use of puberty blockers to over 400 NZ minors. The Ministry of Health has again delayed the release of its review into their use.
The British Medical Journal editorial: “An opportunity to unite behind evidence informed care in gender medicine.”
UK Health Secretary, Victoria Atkins speaks in Parliament. “This Review strikes hard and strikes sure at an area of public policy where fashionable cultural values have overtaken evidence, safety, and biological reality. This must now stop.”
Dr Hilary Cass in The Sunday Times rebuts the misinformation being spread by trans lobbyists.
Dr David Bell in The Guardian. Dr Bell was one of the first whistleblowers about the practices at GIDS - back in 2018.
Helen Joyce in an in-depth interview by John Anderson.
Sex Matters calls the Cass Review “a damning indictment of what the NHS has been doing to children.”
Transgender Trend provides a long list of links to responses by organisations and media to the Review.
Damian Grant in Stuff admits to cowardice in addressing the gender identity issue, concluding in his opinion piece,
“It is possible that we are looking at a major medical misadventure with a cohort of children having their lives compromised. And too many of us, those with the opportunity and a platform, stood by and said nothing. Because we were afraid of the consequences, because if we did we’d feel compelled to say something, and to say something would come at a cost. So we said nothing. Shame on us. Shame on me.”
Following the Cass Report, Sandyford, the gender identity clinic in Scotland, has joined NHS England in ceasing to prescribe puberty blockers to children. Another reported effect is more and more organisations distancing themselves from Stonewall, which has championed this treatment for decades using ‘no debate’ tactics and false suicide statistics to coerce compliance.
The Safe Schools Alliance UK is calling for a Public Inquiry into “current systemic child safeguarding failures in the whole of the UK.”
NZ poll shows 62% support a ban on puberty blockers
A poll of 1000 adults, commissioned by Family First and carried out by the market research company, Curia, from 17-21 April 2024 (after the release of the Cass Review), found that:
69% oppose gender ideology in primary schools, just 15% support
62% support ban on puberty blockers for children, only 19% opposed
53% support ban on gender affirmation treatment (puberty blockers, cross sex hormones & surgery for minors <18), 24% opposed
53% want primary focus on mental health treatment, 10% want focus on blockers/hormones
68% oppose taxpayers funding gender change surgery or hormone treatment, 16% support
Read more about the poll here.
Secret transition at school
Dr Cass strongly criticised the practice of schools transitioning children behind their parents’ back. Here is one testimonial in The Telegraph from a parent describing the consequences of this secret action taken by their autistic daughter’s school.
“Teachers said an official name change would silence our teenager’s bullies, but now we feel trapped by the gender ideology cult.”
Most kids grow out of it
Before the Cass review was published, another landmark study from the Netherlands confirmed that going through a natural puberty was the best way to help children resolve gender distress. The 15 year study tracked more than 2,700 children, asking them every three years about their feelings regarding their gender. At the start of the research, about 11% of children expressed distress over their gender but by the age of 25, only 4% still said they were discontented with their gender.
Meanwhile in Germany…
A law has just been passed for sex self-identification with no lower age limit. Even babies can have the sex marker on their birth certificate changed by their parents. From the age of five, name and sex changes are supposed to be by “mutual consent.”
Tickle vs Giggle
Most of you will be following this significant case in Australia that will determine the definition of ‘woman’ and which protection - ‘gender identity’ or ‘sex’ - the judge will give precedence to. Both of these have been named as protected characteristics against discrimination in the HRA in Australia since 2013. This interview of Sall Grover and Katherine Deves by Megyn Kelly sums up the case very well and its implications for all women. Watch from 1 hour 16 mins.
Rainbow Storytime tour cancelled
RGE welcomes the cancellation of this inappropriate nationwide tour that was planned for September although, of course, we do not condone any threats made to the performers. We note again that Rainbow Storytime is a business, paid in the thousands by ratepayer-funded libraries to read to pre-schoolers while the performers wear costumes that are demeaning to women. Read more about RGE’s position on drag queens reading to children in our March substack Libraries go astray.
I must admit that I remain dubious about the death threats drag queen, Sunita Torrance, claims she has received. I don't discount the possibility entirely, knowing what people can do, but I think that if the police can guard a rainbow crossing, they would guard a rainbow storyteller, too. I'm sure she'd be pushing for that before giving up the lucrative library gig too quickly. I think the more likely story is that her partner is loving London too much to come back here to NZ to carry on the library gig with her.