United Kingdom (UK)

I'm reading the book at the moment, and it's brilliant. I'd already been struck by the Utopian parallels between fascism and neoliberalism, but I confess I've only just started to get a grasp on contemporary Marxist economics this year, know little about Soviet history, and have never read any Marx. [Gasp!]

The book is also a very useful history of neoclassical economics, which I assumed was born more-or-less fully-formed in the late 19th century, but apparently many key components were still falling into place until well into the 20th century.

Also this:

Almost two dozen researchers at a top medical journal have published a scathing scientific takedown of the Cass Review. Experts found that the NHS-issued report—a non-peer reviewed publication authored by Dr. Hillary Cass, a pediatrician without clinical or research experience with trans patients—was marred by “unexplained protocol deviations,” “methodological flaws,” and “unsubstantiated claims.”

Published on May 10 in BMC Medical Research Methodology, the report identified critical flaws in the study. The Cass Review led to a ban on puberty blockers targeting trans children in the UK. However, puberty blockers remain readily available to cisgender children, who may need them for conditions like precocious puberty.

“These issues significantly undermine the validity of the Cass Review’s recommendations, such that the Review fails to fulfil its aims as commissioned and should not be used as the basis for policy making,” the researchers said in a statement to Erin in the Morning.

The Cass Review has been rejected by countless medical organizations across the globe which oversee aspects of trans health care—including the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the Endocrine Society, The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany, and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, to name just a few.

Nonetheless, it continues to act as the vanguard for anti-trans lawmakers and leaders grasping at straws for a scientific basis to further an extremist political agenda.

For Norway, it’s a consistently rosy picture. The top 10 per cent rank second for living standards among the top deciles in all countries; the median Norwegian household ranks second among all national averages, and all the way down at the other end, Norway’s poorest 5 per cent are the most prosperous bottom 5 per cent in the world. Norway is a good place to live, whether you are rich or poor.

Britain is a different story. While the top earners rank fifth, the average household ranks 12th and the poorest 5 per cent rank 15th. Far from simply losing touch with their western European peers, last year the lowest-earning bracket of British households had a standard of living that was 20 per cent weaker than their counterparts in Slovenia.

It’s a similar story in the middle. In 2007, the average UK household was 8 per cent worse off than its peers in north-western Europe, but the deficit has since ballooned to a record 20 per cent. On present trends, the average Slovenian household will be better off than its British counterpart by 2024, and the average Polish family will move ahead before the end of the decade. A country in desperate need of migrant labour may soon have to ask new arrivals to take a pay cut.

This is quite sweet…

… but what's really amusing is the response from fellow USians:

In the UK one can barely turn the page of a newspaper without coming across some article written about transgender people. Such articles rarely tend to be trans‐supportive. Sensational stories about trans women invading women's spaces, appropriating female “sex‐based rights”, and trans women dominating women's sports can be found in print, online, and on television. What is happening in the UK is somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, the country has strong protections for trans people, but, on the other, hostility toward trans people is becoming more common. We seek to find out why. By using an online survey of UK residents, we found that anti‐transgender views tended to be held most strongly by those people who scored highly on a scale of authoritarianism. What these results mean in a country currently in the grip of an anti‐trans moral panic has yet to be fully determined.

In the days since [Charlie Kirk's] killing, the US right wing has fallen over itself to blame trans people or, as Alex Jones put it to his almost 5 million followers, “the tranny death cult”. Similar formulations can be found across social media. Trans people are terrorists, a death cult, like the Taliban, need to be socially ostracised and banned from transitioning. And we all know there is only one type of trans person most of these people are imagining when they call for us to be electroshocked, shunned, and – let’s be real – beaten and killed. And that’s trans women.

It's over. There and here in the UK. Today I doubt I will see another progressive measure (either in legislation or healthcare policy) put in place for trans people in my lifetime. Who knows what may yet be taken away. In the UK, the terf campaign groups make their goals quite clear: they would like transition banned before the age of 25 and for trans women to be compelled to carry male government ID in all contexts. Once the EHRC guidance banning us from all women’s groups and spaces across society is in place, they intend to sue organisations and service providers that don’t exclude us. Right now, I think it’s best to assume all these things are a likely prospect in the next ten years.

In the community itself there’s been a definite shift in the way we speak about the future. The middle-class trans micro-economy that boomed in the 2010s: Pride month corporate sponsorship, jobs at LGBT charities, DEI talks and panels, diversity modelling and ad campaigns, progressive theatre, educational books about being trans etc, which some of us used to make a living, has gone. A friend and I used to riff on the old Susan Stryker joke that as a trans woman you must commodify yourself one way or another: it’s either escorting or the diversity and inclusion panel. The friend (a sex worker) always said she found more dignity (and better money) in the former.

Cycling in London has changed my life in more ways than I could have imagined. I really hope you like this one. It's been a passion project of mine to show just how incredible cycling in London really is. I really hope you get a chance to get out there and cycle sometime soon. 

Today the UK Supreme Court, the highest court, returned a verdict that a key piece of equalities legislation — the Equality Act (2010) — explicitly should not be taken to include trans women when referring to women. The judges were unanimous. They said that trans women were still protected under the protected characteristic of ‘gender reassignment’, but that we were not to be included in the category of ‘women’ for legal purposes.

The judges did not meet or consult a single trans person or trans-focussed organisation. It did meet and consult with single-issue pressure groups who exist solely to exclude trans people from public spaces: For Women Scotland, the LGB Alliance, The Lesbian Project (a splinter from LGBA led by Kathleen Stock and Julie Bindel) and others.

The Labour government welcomed the judgement, and recommitted itself to there being ‘sex-based’ rights and spaces. The Conservative opposition openly cheered, with leader Kemi Badenoch gleefully proclaiming common-sense has prevailed and that changing gender is impossible.

[…]

The ruling, which the judges optimistically advised should not be seen as a victory for one side or the other, is at direct odds with the Gender Recognition Act (2004) wherein trans people can legally, for all intents and purposes, be recognised as their correct gender. It is now open season on trans women in any female-coded space, and this will extend to any woman who looks a bit trans. Non-passing trans women, butch women and black women are all going to be harmed by this.

Housing Lawyer and author Nick Bano came by JOE Towers to chat about his new book Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis which is out now. In this conversation we chat about Britain's housing setup, how is set up to create winners and losers and how to end the age of the landlord.

Most of the UK challenges appear to come from individuals or small groups, unlike in the US, where 72% of demands to censor books last year were brought forward by organised groups, according to the American Library Association earlier this week.

However, evidence suggests that the work of US action groups is reaching UK libraries too. Alison Hicks, an associate professor in library and information studies at UCL, interviewed 10 UK-based school librarians who had experienced book challenges. One “spoke of finding propaganda from one of these groups left on her desk”, while another “was directly targeted by one of these groups”. Respondents “also spoke of being trolled by US pressure groups on social media, for example when responding to free book giveaways”.

[…] 

Censorship by pupils in UK schools, including “vandalising library material, annotating library books with racist and homophobic slurs”, and damaging posters and displays was identified in Hicks’ study, which she wrote about in the spring issue of the SLA’s journal, The School Librarian. Such censorship “is not something I have seen in the US”, she said.

The types of books targeted may also differ. “Almost all the UK attacks reported in my study centred on LGBTQ+ materials, while US attacks appear to target material related to race, ethnicity and social justice as well as LGBTQ+ issues,” said Hicks.