Friday, May 20, 2022



The troubling story of how trans activists 'groomed' girl, 17, before she was helped to transition into a man after a ONE-HOUR 'gender clinic' consultation... and at 21 she wants to be FEMALE again

A troubled teenage girl who was provided drugs to transition into a man after an hour-long consultation at a 'gender clinic' is now fighting to reclaim her adult life as a woman.

Tanya, not her real name, changed genders at the age of 18 while dealing with bi-polar, autism, anxiety and depression.

Now aged 21, the still young woman struggles with suicidal thoughts every day as she works to reverse the transition process.

Ms Hunter told Daily Mail Australia her daughter was 'beguiled, groomed and kidnapped' by the transgender community.

'There will be a tsunami of kids like our daughter,' she warned. 'It is like being brainwashed in a cult and if you don't go along with it you are punished.'

Tanya took the hormone testosterone for 18 months and was later supported by the trans community with crowdfunding to raise money for breast removal.

Three years after her journey to manhood began, Tanya admitted herself into a mental hospital on the verge of suicide.

Ms Hunter said her daughter begged her to help save her from what she had become.

By then, the testosterone that had pumped through her veins had wrought irreversible effects on Tanya's body. Her voice had deepened, her hairline receded and she had a significant redistribution of body fat.

Tanya's female body had become masculine, including a massive increase of body and facial hair. She now suffered ongoing vaginal atrophy and dryness, causing her significant pain and requiring constant medication.

Ms Hunter claimed her daughter's story was not unique, with countless other parents sharing their horror stories with her.

'The parents who say, "no it's not the right thing to do" are (attacked) by the kids and the online sites tell them to turn their back on their family. "Get rid of your family. We are your family now",' she said.

When Ms Hunter discovered the myriad of transgender videos and websites Tanya had been viewing online, she was horrified.

Tanya's mobile phone was littered with text messages from a militant transgender activist. 'Snip, snip the motherf**kers. Get rid of them', one read - in reference to Tanya cutting off her parents.

When Judith Hunter's husband messaged back asking him to stop contacting his daughter, the activist laughed.

Determined to see the troubled teen transition, the activist contributed money to Tanya's GoFundMe page for her 'top surgery'.

'They are bold as brass. They behave like thugs,' Ms Hunter said. The activist admitted to Daily Mail Australia they had sent a meme. 'It was like an online manual, what to do, what to say, how to treat your parents and tell them you are suicidal, so you'll end up in hospital where you'll be affirmed by hospital staff who will turn on your parents and take your side,' she said.

The Newcastle mum, north of Sydney in New South Wales, said while her daughter had struggled for three years through high school after being diagnosed with bi-polar, autism, anxiety and depression, she had no history of gender dysphoria.

Tanya's trans nightmare began in year 11 when her mother was forced to take her to a psychiatrist after she threatened suicide. The doctor immediately told the worried mum to take Tanya straight to hospital, where she was admitted to the mental health ward.

'When I went to the hospital the next day and asked to see my daughter, I was told I had a son and there was a male name above her bed,' Ms Hunter said.

'I said 'this is ridiculous' and was then called a hateful parent, bigoted and transphobic. I was told I had a live son and a dead daughter.'

The hospital referred Tanya to the John Hunter Hospital and after just two short appointments, allegedly without her parent's consent, Tanya was put on testosterone.

Juiced-up on the drugs, Ms Hunter claimed Tanya became so abusive her 14-year-old brother would curl up in the foetal position on the floor begging for her to stop. 'It was like living in a war zone,' she said. 'It has decimated our family.'

Over the next three years Tanya lived in filthy student accommodation or with a group of transgender people.

In December last year, she contacted her mum and asked to come home.

'She was deeply suicidal. It was the realisation that even though she'd stopped testosterone for 18 months that things weren't going to go back to the way they were,' Ms Hunter said.

Even while back in the safety of her own home, Ms Hunter claimed the trans community refused to let her go and had continued to harass her family. 'People would have no idea what we have been through since she's been home,' she said.

'Tanya was suicidal because she didn't want to live with what she had done to her body. She deeply regrets it.'

Ms Hunter remains livid the Newcastle clinic that treated her daughter continued to ignore her concerns.

'We went and knocked on their door. Finally, two doctors came out. They said they are not an emergency service. It was like talking to a brick wall,' she said.

'The medical professionals who are telling teenage girls to have double mastectomies before they have reached adulthood are evil.

'Telling our girls that being uncomfortable in puberty is a 'medical condition' have lost their moral and ethical compass. A generation of young people are being harmed and failed.'

Ms Hunter compared sections of the transgender community to an 'online cult', which had infiltrated the medical profession. 'It is a horrific medical scandal.'

President of the National Association of Practicing Psychiatrists, Professor Philip Morris AM, told Daily Mail Australia there had been an explosion in presentations of rapid onset gender dysphoria in the past five years - especially among young women presenting to be trans males.

'The problem is many of the early adolescents don't have a long history of gender issues going back to their early childhood. Many of these young adolescents are coming forward without a history of gender issues,' Professor Morris said.

Professor Dianna Kenny - a psychologist specialising in children - said it was a 'negligent and irresponsible practice of medicine' to approve cross-sex hormones on young people after a brief assessment.

'You don't subject young people to life changing and irreversible treatment without exploring all possible ideologies and options before resorting to radical, off label treatment of young people,' she said.

Professor Kenny said there needed to be radical oversight of gender clinics and more gateways and protections for young people. 'It's a medical scandal aided and abetted by the family court and woke politicians too gutless to speak out,' she said.

'We are now seeing the long-term outcomes with tens of thousands of people wanting to de-transition who have had double mastectomies and cross sex hormones that have changed their body for the rest of their lives.'

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Is George Washington fit only for contempt?

Jeff Jacoby

"George Washington University needs a new name" was the eye-catching headline on an opinion column published by The Washington Post last week. The 750-word essay was written by Caleb Francois, a GW senior majoring in international relations who isn't happy with his alma mater. I read the column with particular interest: George Washington University is my alma mater.

Francois indicts GW for its "systemic racism, institutional inequality, and white supremacy," which he blames for such alleged shortcomings as the fact that the faculty is only 19 percent Black and that "no African languages are taught at GW." Although a majority of GW's students are nonwhite, Francois derides the admissions office for its failure "to ensure a student body with adequate minority representation."

Can GW be redeemed? Francois suggests four ways to achieve progress: "decolonizing" the curriculum, admitting more Black students, hiring a Black president, and — the marquee proposal — changing the university's name. Stripping all mention of George Washington from the university that Congress itself named in his honor "would cement the university's dedication to racial justice." Francois doesn't say whether Washington's name should also be stripped from the city where GW is located and the masthead of the prominent newspaper that featured his column.

You might expect a column calling for the cancellation of George Washington to offer a substantive critique of the man. But Francois mentions only one thing about him: that he was "an enslaver of men." About Washington the indispensable hero of the American Revolution, about the towering leader without whom independence would have failed, about the only American so highly regarded that he was unanimously chosen to be the nation's first president, about "the greatest man in the world," as George III called him when he learned that the general who had defeated the mightiest military power on earth intended to return to private life — about that Washington, the column says nothing.

Calls to strip Washington's name and image from the public square because he kept human beings in bondage have proliferated in recent years. Not all those calls have been peaceful. In one notorious incident, a statue of Washington was toppled by rioters in Portland, Ore., who wrapped its head in an American flag that they set on fire.

Is Washington's complicity in slavery the only detail of his life that 21st-century Americans should care about? Does nothing he accomplished matter more? If so, then no school should bear his name and no statue should honor his memory, or that of any of the Founding Fathers who enslaved Africans. But not even the most passionate foes of slavery doubted that men like Washington — despite that terrible blot on their records — were entitled to esteem and gratitude.

In his Post column, Francois recommends renaming GW for the renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass, to honor "his work for social reform and equal justice." Yet Douglass himself was not blind to the imperfections or the greatness of Washington and the other Founders.

On multiple occasions, Washington spoke of his philosophical opposition to slavery. He wrote in 1786 "that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it." In his will he left instructions for the eventual emancipation of everyone enslaved by him and for those who had grown old or ill to be supported by his estate in perpetuity. That doesn't erase Washington's culpability in what he knew was an odious practice, but it earned Douglass's admiration. In his tremendous 1852 oration, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" Douglass reminded his audience that "Washington could not die till he had broken the chains of his slaves." More significantly, Douglass extolled the heroism of Washington and the other Founders:

"They were statesmen, patriots and heroes," he said. "For the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory." Like all of us, Washington and his peers were diminished by hypocrisy and moral flaws. Yet "with them, justice, liberty, and humanity were final — not slavery and oppression," Douglass emphasized. "You may well cherish the memory of such men."

Washington's enslavement of other people was a grievous failing, the worst thing he did on this earth. But only someone blinded by ideology would contend that it nullifies everything about Washington's legacy that was so extraordinarily positive. Without him there would have been no Revolution, no United States, no new nation conceived in liberty, no growing pressure on America to live up to the ideal that all men are created equal.

"Rename George Washington University" may be a catchy battle cry. But whatever ails my alma mater will not be healed by repudiating its namesake

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Hong Kong and the surprising truth about the British Empire

George Lai

What would the world be like if the British Empire had never existed? Critics of British colonialism say that the countries that fell under its rule would have been better off without it; the Empire’s supporters say it brought progress and prosperity in its wake.

So who’s right? The truth is hard to find. After all, one of the difficulties in assessing the legacy of British colonialism in many ex-colonies is the lack of a counterfactual. Put simply, we don’t know what a place would be like if it hadn’t been colonised. But Hong Kong is a special case. Since the bulk of China, except tiny bits like Hong Kong, were never colonised by Western powers, a counterfactual for Hong Kong exists: just look across the border to mainland China for an alternative to colonial rule.

Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers have made their way to Britain in recent years as China’s crackdown continues. The affection they feel for the UK is nothing new: in 1997, when British rule was coming to an end, pollsters asked people in Hong Kong their views on the empire. The result was decisive: three quarters said Hong Kong would have been ‘worse off’ and only 5 per cent said ‘better off’ without it. Another poll found that 65 per cent of people in Hong Kong thought that British rule is more good than bad; only 3 per cent thought that it was more bad than good.

Even before Britain pulled out of the peninsula, many people in Hong Kong knew from their own experience what the alternative was – and how little it appealed. The 1961 Hong Kong census found that of the more than 3.1 million people in Hong Kong, half were born in mainland China and only 47.7 per cent were born in Hong Kong itself. Many had fled the mainland as Mao’s terror took hold. They escaped oppression and misery in China; these people – my grandparents were among them – and their descendants, found a better life in the British colony. It’s a story you don’t hear all too often nowadays when discussion turns to the legacy of empire.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that British Hong Kong would compare well to Communist China. But comparisons between China and Hong Kong painted the British Empire in a favourable light long before Mao came to power.

The 1931 Hong Kong census found that of the more than 840,000 people in Hong Kong, 66.7 per cent were born in mainland China and only 32.9 per cent were born in Hong Kong (including those born in the New Territories). The border between Hong Kong and China was much more open before the communists took charge, so migration to Hong Kong was easier in this early period. Similar patterns were true even in the 19th century. Indeed, throughout almost the whole existence of British Hong Kong, it was a hotspot destination for mainland immigrants. These people had the choice of where to live, and in huge numbers they opted to live under the British flag, rather than in China.

Why did they choose to do so? The reality is that while the British Empire was flawed in many ways, it offered a brighter alternative. It is easy to forget that the freedom, human rights and democracy we enjoy in various degrees nowadays are relatively recent developments, only being established in the Western and Western-influenced world in the last century or two. It is tempting to imagine that, before the arrival of Western colonisers, people lived peacefully in harmony, free and happy, in a land with no oppression and discrimination, ruling themselves. But this just isn’t true. In reality, those in China often lived miserable, unfree and powerless lives, under the fist of an emperor who ruled like a brutal dictator, and who in many cases were not even of the same ethnicity as them. Indeed, discontent was ubiquitous and rebellions common throughout Chinese history. Even before the Opium War (1839–1842), the Chinese government was troubled by rebellions and uprisings; the White Lotus Rebellion (1796–1804) and Eight Trigrams uprising (1813), in which some hundreds of thousands were killed, are just two examples. The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) was far more violent still: it resulted in the deaths of millions.

In such a charged atmosphere, the Chinese government routinely resorted to extreme measures to uphold its imperial authority. Summary executions without trial were routine. The summer of 1855 was one of the bloodiest: some 70,000 people – at least half of whom were probably innocent of the charge of rebellion – were beheaded in Guangzhou city alone.

This bloodshed was not unusual; such was the criminal justice system in China at that time. In contrast, in British Hong Kong in the same period, the most high-profile case was the Esing Bakery incident in 1857, where several hundred European residents were poisoned after eating bread from the Chinese-owned Esing Bakery in Hong Kong. The proprietor of the bakery, Cheong Ah-lum, was accused of plotting the poisoning. But he got a fair trial in the colonial court; due to lack of evidence, he was acquitted by the jury. The same is unlikely to have happened on the mainland.

If incidents like this serve as a comparison between the two respective justice systems, it is no wonder a large number of mainland Chinese migrated to Hong Kong in this period. Between 1841, the year the colony was established, and 1857, Hong Kong’s population rose from 7,500 to 77,100 (of whom 75,700 were Chinese). The relatively benign British legal system was one of the reasons that Hong Kong was so attractive to Chinese immigrants.

Of course, we shouldn’t forget the flaws in colonial rule in Hong Kong. Especially in the early period before World War II, racism and discrimination manifestly existed. For much of the time of British rule, the top level of government was dominated by white British except for a few ethnic Chinese appointed to the Legislative and Executive Council. In the 19th century, Chinese people were often treated differently and more harshly than Caucasians by the colonial law enforcement and justice system. And from 1904 to 1946, for ‘public health’ reasons (in response to the bubonic plague endemic that ran from 1894 to 1929, to protect Europeans from the ‘poor hygiene practices’ of the Chinese), ethnic Chinese people were banned by law from living in one area of Hong Kong. This was effectively a form of legalised segregation.

But how did life in China compare? The Chinese government was not democratic, so ordinary Chinese people hardly had more power in China. And while ordinary people in Hong Kong would not have seen their leadership as representative, the same was true on the mainland: up until 1912, Chinese people in China were not even ruled by people of the same ethnicity, nor were they treated equally.

Why? Because the Chinese government from which the British took Hong Kong was not, in fact, Chinese. Instead, it was Manchurian: a group of people who had conquered China in the 17th century. The Manchu ruled over China as alien conquerors, maintaining their power over the culturally different ethnic Chinese people with racist and discriminatory practices. The Manchus had set themselves up as a privileged minority separate from and superior to the Chinese people. Manchus dominated the top level of China’s government, despite only making up a little more than 1 per cent of China’s population. They received preferential treatment over Chinese people legally, politically and economically; they were dealt with more leniently under the law, had more opportunities to enter and advance in government service, and received stipends not available to the Chinese. What’s more, the Manchu and Chinese were administratively and residentially segregated, and they were banned from intermarrying. Indeed, imperialism and discrimination was not a European invention – it had been the norm throughout history until the arrival of modern Western ideals in the modern time.

Given the persistent flow of Chinese migration into British Hong Kong, what did those people who experienced both places at the time say? One of the most famous and respected figures in Chinese history, Sun Yat-sen, also known as the father of modern China, was someone who had such first hand experience. He moved to Hong Kong in 1883 in his youth to study; many years later he became the leader of the revolution which overthrew the Chinese monarchy in the mainland in 1912.

In 1923, he gave a speech at the University of Hong Kong, where he discussed the reason why he became a revolutionary. He recalled that when he came to study in Hong Kong more than thirty years before ‘Hong Kong impressed me a great deal’. He was struck by the order, safety and security in the peninsula, in contrast to the mainland where it was the opposite. And he noted how in Hong Kong, government corruption ‘was the exception’, while in China it ‘was the rule’. His time in Hong Kong led him to realise that a better way was possible – and ultimately took him on the path to seeking to implement a new government based on Western models. ‘We must carry this English example of good government to every part of China,’ he said.

Of course, Sun Yat-sen was no fan of colonialism. As one of the early proponents of democracy in China, he believed that the Chinese people should rule themselves. But the main target of his anti-imperialism was not the British leadership in Hong Kong, but the Manchu in mainland China.

His aim – to free China from the Manchus – ultimately came true. Yet he would have been sorely disappointed by what followed: a civil war between warlords; the Japanese invasion of China; and after that the communists seizing power only to carry out countless atrocities. For decades, waves and waves of Chinese migrants and refugees continued to flee to Hong Kong to find safe haven in the British colony. Now that China imposes its will on the peninsular once more, many now seek a new life in Britain itself.

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UK: A bonfire of the quangos should start with the College of Policing

Toby Young

I welcome Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recent announcement that he intends to reignite David Cameron’s ‘bonfire of the quangos’ in his capacity as minister for government efficiency. I’m sure many Spectatorreaders will have a particular quango, or arm’s-length body, they’d like to incinerate and I hope they write to him with their suggestions. I’d like to nominate the College of Policing, which is responsible for overseeing the police in England and Wales.

The college made headlines last weekend when it emerged that it had urged the 43 different forces to ‘decolonise’ their training materials in order to recruit a more diverse workforce. It also advised them to ‘consider introducing gender neutral facilities’ and become ‘Stonewall Champions’ to make themselves more attractive to transgender applicants. In addition, training staff were warned that ‘not giving individuals the time to reflect on unconscious bias training may lead to unconscious bias’.

If you think chief constables will have the good sense to ignore this gobbledegook, think again. In 2014, the college issued its infamous Hate Crime Operational Guidance which introduced the novel concept of a ‘non-crime hate incident’ (NCHI). This is defined as ‘any non-crime incident which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice’ towards one or more of the victim’s ‘protected’ characteristics, i.e., their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity. The College advised chief constables that any reports their officers received of these ‘non-crimes’ being committed must be investigated and recorded – and the chief constables duly obliged.

According to the Telegraph, 34 police forces in England and Wales recorded 119,934 NCHIs in the five-year period following the introduction of the guidance, which by my reckoning is an average of 65 a day. If you assume the other nine forces have been recording them at a similar rate – and it’s continued at the same frenetic pace since – that brings the total to nearly a quarter of a million. This is an extraordinary number of man hours devoted to investigating ‘non-crimes’, particularly when you consider the police solved just over 5 per cent of burglaries in England and Wales last year. Such are the priorities of the College of Policing.

Rees-Mogg has written to his cabinet colleagues asking them to consider whether the arm’s-length bodies in their departments are offering good value for money, and by that yardstick the college isn’t faring very well. According to its latest annual report and accounts, available at Companies House, its total expenditure in the year ending 31 March 2021 was £71,078,000. In the same period it brought in £24,285,000 from contracts with customers for training police, meaning it made a net loss of £46,793,000. (The previous year it lost £41,642,000.) Fortunately, that’s a rounding error in quango-world.

‘The directors have a reasonable expectation that the college has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future,’ the report says. ‘The basis of this is continued support from the Home Office.’ Sure enough, in the same year the college lost £46,793,000 it received £49 million in grant-in-aid from the Home Office. Incidentally, one telling detail I noticed in the report is that only 2 per cent of the college’s employees, contractors and secondees in 2020-21 were black. Yet this is the organisation that presumes to lecture the police on how to diversify its workforce.

The accounts reveal that the highest–paid director of the college is on a salary of £207,500, which is a good deal more than the Prime Minister. Presumably, this is the genius who decided to fight tooth and nail when an ex-policeman called Harry Miller challenged the legality of the college’s guidance on NCHIs in the courts and won. (He was miffed when an NCHI was recorded against him for retweeting a comic verse about transgender people.)

The Court of Appeal ruled last December that insisting that police forces record all NCHIs, regardless of how serious they are, is an unlawful interference in the right to freedom of expression, given that they can show up on people’s records when prospective employers carry out Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service checks. Miller estimates that the College of Policing has run up legal fees in excess of £350,000 fighting and losing his case.

Needless to say, the unlawful guidance is still on its website and I expect police officers are still dutifully recording NCHIs to this day.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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