RSA Daily

For atheists, rationalists and secular humanists in Australia

Thursday, May 16, 2024

Good morning ,

Below, I include links to 3 documentaries made about girls and boys experiencing gender dysphoria. I do believe the tide is finally turning but Australia is likely to be one of the last countries (in the Western world, it has to be said!) to acknowledge the damage that has been done to many children. There will be court cases. There will be a wringing of hands. We will look back and say, "How could we have fallen for this?" But it will pass. 

Lead stories

Where did money come from? A: "The theory that money emerged naturally in the private sector encourages people to believe that free markets are natural systems in which governments only interfere. But in truth, early governments invented the very institutions of money and markets, and the regulatory frameworks that determined how those markets work and in whose interests. Exchange economies have always depended on systems of law and they always will. The more pertinent question concerns who writes those laws – and in whose interests those regulations are applied."

Thoughts?

I'm always chuffed when you guys take the trouble to write to me. Here's a selection of your Letters to the Editor (from Robert Macklin, Mary Aerts, Colin Shepherd, Tanjil Wright, and Bill Westerbeek). Thanks!

This woman, Jennifer Lahl, has made 3 documentaries about the experiences of girls and boys experiencing gender dysphoria: Trans Mission: What's the Rush to Reassign Gender?, The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters, and now, The Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood. 

She says the Cass Report has had little coverage in the US but, "If we have any kind of success in the US, it's going to be parent-driven ... if you come after their children, it's parents who are going to push back." Let's hope that happens here too.

Other stories of interest

QLD education department claims not to know of discrimination in chaplaincy roles | Rationalist Society of Australia

A charitable view might be that the bureaucrats we wrote are new to the job and simply unaware what we've told them repeatedly in the past; a more realistic view might be they are doing what bureaucrats often do - ignore, ignore, ignore hoping we will go away.

Antisemitism: No echo of the past in current troubles - Rationale Magazine

A child of Holocaust survivors writes, "While it has troubling aspects, in the way all such moments of mass excitement usually do, the current outburst of emotion should not blind us to the difference between the past and now..."

The 'Sift' strategy: A four-step method for spotting misinformation

1. Stop (don't share, don't comment ...)
2. Investigate (the source)
3. Find (other coverage; use Google Fact Check)
4. Trace (to the orginal context - eg, is it just a lazy journo quoting from another source?

Faith groups want more say in secular Britain. Labour should tell them to go to hell

From the UK, Labour is taken to task, not for continuing to privilege Christians but for its failure to stand up for secular principles, thus encouraging "disaffected Muslims" to demand greater religious privileges.

Got a comment on any of these stories? 

Write to me at president@rationalist.com.au

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