The consequences of what happened to me have been profound: possible infertility, loss of my breasts and inability to breastfeed, atrophied genitals, a permanently changed voice, facial hair. When I was seen at the Tavistock clinic, I had so many issues that it was comforting to think I really had only one that needed solving: I was a male in a female body. But it was the job of the professionals to consider all my co-morbidities, not just to affirm my naïve hope that everything could be solved with hormones and surgery.
I wish Elliot Page all the best, but might even famous adults be casualties in this rush to affirm transition and lack of truly informed consent? As Levine writes, “There is much to suggest that the patient does not always know best — for example, post-transition depression, detransition, suicide rates both before and after surgery, and that researchers have concluded that postoperative patients need psychiatric care.”
Might a woman who experienced the constant spotlight on her body for the public gaze from girlhood have other motivations to remove her breasts and declare a male identity in a world where, as the Time article put it, “men’s bodies are less policed and scrutinized,” that at least deserve to be explored?
3. Melissa Chan: ‘I Never Thought China Could Ever Be This Dark’
Even when Uyghurs are free of China’s territory, they do not feel safe from its reach. Those who have left Xinjiang face imprisonment if they return home and persistent insecurity abroad. Some have been hounded and threatened with deportation by immigration officials of countries seeking to improve ties with Beijing.
Women—many of whom escape separately from their husbands—face particular difficulties when, as is often the case, their partners are caught fleeing. Even the most educated and highly skilled of these women, having grown up in a patriarchal society, are suddenly thrust into an unfamiliar position, becoming lonely migrants in new countries and tasked with heading households they had assumed would include husbands, fathers, uncles, and brothers. Muhammet, for example, had studied law in China and Arabic in Egypt. She had hoped to stay abroad for graduate school but, now a de facto single mother, has suspended those plans and instead tutors elementary-school students to pay the bills.
4.
“This is genocide. … Their aim is to erase Tigray.” Refugees and others say Ethiopia and its allies have mounted a bloody campaign against minority Tigrayans. ID cards are the latest evidence of the systematic drive to destroy the Tigrayan people. https://t.co/SGkImviC6J
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 7, 2021
5.
These women have taken on the risky task of demining the city of Basra, Iraq pic.twitter.com/CHRXZQsl65
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 31, 2021
6. Tragic Update on the Abducted Christian Teen Leah Sharibu in Nigeria
Leah was one of 110 innocent Christian school girls abducted at gunpoint from their village in Nigeria in February 2018. Most of her classmates were ultimately released – but five of the girls did not survive – and Leah remains a hostage because, according to the other girls, she refused to renounce her Christian faith.
. . .
It has now been reported that not only is Leah alive, but she has given birth to her second child in captivity. Rape and forced marriages are a common tactic used by evil jihadists as a means of eliminating Christianity and raising children with radicalized views of the world.
7.
Fetuses and embryos face the worst dehumanization, violence and discrimination in this country, more than any other people group.
They are hated and despised by many for their total dependency when they should loved and fought for.
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) April 7, 2021
8. Pope Francis urges Catholics to pray for people risking lives to fight for fundamental rights
“Often, in practice, fundamental human rights are not equal for all. There are first-, second-, and third-class people, and those who are disposable. No. They must be equal for all.”
He continued: “In some places, defending people’s dignity can mean going to prison, even without a trial. Or it might mean slander.”
“Every human being has the right to develop fully, and this fundamental right cannot be denied by any country.”
9. Gilad Erdan and Enes Kanter: As Racial Hatred Rises, Unity Is the Best Way Forward
We both believe that education, and getting to know and accept one another, are essential tools in this difficult fight. Over the past year, we have seen a shocking rise in the number of anti-Semitic and racially motivated attacks. Some of it has been prompted by the confusion and uncertainty of the pandemic. But some of it is always there—cheered on by certain nations and their leaders—and ultimately allowed to flourish unchallenged and unchecked by most of the world.
10. Jeff Jacoby: The problem with Holocaust education
It is bad enough that so many millennials and Gen Z-ers — and even some educators — still know so little about Nazi Germany’s industrial-scale murder of 6 million Jews. Worse by far is that a generation of Holocaust classes has apparently done nothing to stem the rise of anti-Jewish hatred. “In reality,” wrote Ruth Wisse in a recent essay in National Affairs, “anti-Semitism in the United States has spread in tandem with increased teaching about the Holocaust.” In America as in Europe, hostility toward Jews has been rising steadily. Anti-Semitism seethes on both the left and the right, and reported hate crimes against Jews have reached record levels. A majority of US Jews say they feel less safe than they used to. Even in schools with Holocaust-focused courses, anti-Jewish nastiness can be all too visible.
11. AP News: Holocaust survivors use social media to fight anti-Semitism
With short video messages recounting their stories, participants in the #ItStartedWithWords campaign hope to educate people about how the Nazis embarked on an insidious campaign to dehumanize and marginalize Jews — years before death camps were established to carry out murder on an industrial scale.
Six individual videos and a compilation were being released Thursday over Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, followed by one video per week. The posts include a link to a webpage with more testimonies and teaching materials.
12.
This statue in #Kobani honors martyr Arin Mirkin. During the siege of Kobani, she was cornered by #ISIS with fellow YPJ fighters. Instead of allowing them to be killed, she blew herself up killing ISIS fighters making a way for them to escape. #Hero pic.twitter.com/ZRL16rTkD4
— Nadine Maenza (@nadinemaenza) April 8, 2021
13. Michael Torres: Society of Woke
This staff-led indoctrination extends into Quaker classrooms throughout the Delaware Valley, infusing race and gender into every subject. In Bucks County’s George School, the new DEI director is implementing a DEI and Social Justice plan that targets every academic department. Germantown Friends School’s three-person DEI team has instituted a program where “[g]roups of faculty and administrators in Early Childhood through Upper School support diversity efforts and help to deepen the diversity conversation across the divisions.” And in Paoli, the Delaware Valley Friends School’s new DEI director is bolstering the involvement of its Black Students Union, Feminism Committee, Latinx Committee, Gay/Straight Alliance, A.S.A.F.E. Committee, and so on in every part of academic life.
14. Lewis M. Andrews: The Other Problem with Woke Schooling: It’s Psychological Child Abuse
Sadly, today’s woke curricula do far more to erode a child’s sense of intrinsic worth than to build it up. Indeed, one can hardly imagine a more effective way of grooming disorganized and incompetent adults. As one veteran teacher in the Buffalo Public School system recently put it, anti-racist classrooms have devolved into little more than a series of “scoldings, guilt-trips, and demands to demean oneself simply to make another feel empowered.”
15.
Asked why teachers are still not going back to school, president of the teachers union Randi Weingarten blamed Jews, calling them part of “the ownership class [who] want to take that ladder of opportunity away.” Just blatant anti-Semitism on full display.https://t.co/XZAAa4Xlr1 pic.twitter.com/TT7fYkDd9W
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) April 7, 2021
16. Mindy Belz: Courting Christians
Shadi Khalloul knows how to wait. The reserve captain in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for more than a decade has coaxed Israel to recognize its Aramean Christians as a distinct ethnic-religious group—separate from the country’s main non-Jewish group, Israeli Arabs, a term broadly defining the country’s Muslims.
Khalloul invited the main party leaders to visit northern Galilee, seeking their support (in exchange for his) to improve education and security, among other needs. Netanyahu, said Khalloul, was the first actually to come: “He is the only one who sees the importance of our vote. He did not neglect us.”
17. Vaccinate Your Children Against Brainworms
Teach your children to question authority and critically analyze everything they are taught. They are going to have to navigate a world in which the major sources of authority are compromised or collapsed. When my children were in first grade, I told them that one-third of everything their teachers would tell them is wrong, and their job was to figure out which third. At this point, that proportion might be highly optimistic.
She was able to beat the virus – but despite being vaccinated in February this year, Hernandez was diagnosed with Covid-19 for the second time in March.
19. Rescuing sacred music of the Renaissance
20. Arthur C. Brooks: The Best Friends Can Do Nothing for You
Expedient friendships might be a pleasant—and certainly useful—part of life, but they don’t usually bring lasting joy and comfort. If you find that your social life is leaving you feeling a little empty and unfulfilled, it might just be that you have too many deal friends, and not enough real friends.
21. Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan: It’s Time to Get Back to Mass!
We need medicine!
We need food for the soul!
We need vaccination from sin, Satan and eternal death!
We need herd immunity as sheep under Christ our Good Shepherd.
All this we behold at Mass!
How can we stay away?
Easter blessings!
See you at Mass!