Colours, men, women, genders, choices of words and political football

Banning words

In the last five years, it sometimes becomes very difficult to know which words we can or cannot use. The banning of some words sometimes goes to the absurd.

Along one side, we are no longer allowed to talk about a negro or a black person, but we have to say a white person when talking about a white person, while we are not white at all, just as a coloured person does not always have to be an African as well as not always dark brown (although the latter should not be said either).

Nowadays, one has to watch so hard what word one uses or one can be called out as a racist, sexist or misogynist or accused of being against people who have changed their sex or are in favour of people of equal sex.

Superiority of a gender

Already in the 1970s one could easily be accused of being a chauvinist. Though one did not have to have a prejudiced belief in the superiority of one’s own gender, group, or kind, others assumed from your attitude to other people that one did. Yes, there was a time that a man treated women as a whole as being lesser in intelligence, talent, or competence in comparison to men. This still happens today; we can find men who put more value on a woman’s looks or abilities as a home-maker than as an equal member of society. But we can also find men who find other men lower than them because they have other feelings than what the majority expects from a man. Already some years, nobody thought something was wrong when seeing women walking hand in hand, but for men, this was not accepted.

Homo’s

I still remember the times when plain-clothes policemen walked everywhere at the public toilets in London to catch men making sweet nothings to other men. They were harshly arrested and detained.

As a kid going to ballet school and later also as a dancer, I and many of my colleagues had to endure mockery and were regularly called gay, ‘homo’ or ‘sissy’ on the streets in public transport. Many of us are even very fond of pretty girls and having to do ‘strong work’ a ‘sissy’ would not like or be able to do. Nothing pansy about carrying girls around the stage, throwing girls in the air and catching girls or making big jumps or playing big swords and other fights on stage.

Coloured people

Even in the time that I had a coloured girlfriend, we spoke of nigers, negro’s or black people, never looking for something bad behind it. But with the years, the community started calling certain words ‘ugly’ and ‘offensive’. Though we did not use those words as an affront or snub. At the end of the last century, it was decided we could not speak anymore of ‘Eskimo’s’, people living in an ‘igloo’ or in a ‘hut or ‘cabin’.

This century not yet running long, has brought new banned words on the list.

Words related to personality and sex

What is striking here is that people are most bothered by words related to their own personalities and people’s relationship with each other. In fact, it has now reached the point where people have started looking for neutral articles and giving recommendations to raise children using neutral terms. It is not bad that one wants to do away with the division of roles for certain sexes, but doing away of the sex, is in my eyes a step too far.

It is not at all bad to have differences in the way the sexes are treated to be removed. I myself promoted that men and women could equally do the same jobs, if they wanted and should as such also spoken about with a female or male word for that job position, though often there did not yet exist a special word for the female person being a director or doctor.

Issue of gender in childhood

In the last few years the issue of gender in childhood has become increasingly contentious

In 2016 Caroline Jordan, president of the Girls’ Schools Association, said teachers should consider using gender-neutral language, and many schools – such as the heavily criticised Highgate school in north London, which did so in June 2017 – introduced the last few years gender-neutral uniform policies. Though I doubt that nowhere one considered boys to wear skirts and as such thought to transfer girls to boys’ uniforms that this would solve the gender problem. It only indicates, in my eyes, how the focus is still on the male aspect and male superiority.

Gender-neutral or gender-free language

In 2018 the European Parliament released guidelines for a gender-neutral language and specific strategies for each of the European languages. For certain languages, like the Germanic languages, this might be trickier than others, them having the personal pronoun’s gender usually matching with the reference noun. The European Parliament recommends alternative approaches, such as feminisation and the replacement of the generic masculine with double forms for specific referents. Since most occupations are traditionally declined to the masculine, apart from typically female jobs, feminisation decreases discrimination by also using feminine correspondents of masculine terms.

In Great Britain, the chief executive of the Educate & Celebrate charity, Dr Elly Barnes told teachers that they should be moving toward a “gender-free model” in a 90-minute lecture organised by the National Education Union (NEU).

Coloured man in a non-traditional gendered occupation, as midwife with child in Oslo, Norway

She advised them to dispense with terms such as “boys”, “girls”, “son”, “father“, and “mother”, replacing them with the gender-neutral words “pupils”, “students”, “child” and “parent”. In Belgium they went a step further also to exclude the words stepmother and stepfather, them becoming a ‘plus parent’. [I wonder if they also would have a min-parent or a minus parent? 😉 ]

According to me, it becomes also very complicated when we may not speak anymore of “your mom”, “your dad”. Politicians may have decided that it’s no longer appropriate (in their mind) to call your parents “mother” or “father” because that would classify them as male or female. The same for the “brother” or “sister”, which now have to be called “sibling”. But are those mothers and fathers not male or female? Though I do agree that there are some children who have two fathers or two mothers.

Stereotyping

People may find it obvious for women to stand for their rights, but in which way are they willing to give men also equal rights?

For centuries stereotyping has been going on. It is not by just going one way, bringing the female site to the men’s place that it will be solved. Generally, one should come to terms to stop stereotyping any gender, be it male or female or even neutral, a group which is still far too much overlooked.
Stereotyping not only limits a human with a particular set of traits he or she can acquire but it also deteriorates the mental health of the person making it difficult to express one’s feelings and thoughts. Far too many people still encounter resistance when they want to go for a particular profession. They are then usually told that these are vocational skills for the opposite sex, but are not appropriate for their gender. It is not only career choices that are under threat. Much more difficult, in fact, is when people are uncomfortable with themselves and want to change their gender. On that front, one notices that we still fall a lot short of allowing own choices, even if they go against the general trend. Lots of people should think about what they want to understand under “Freedom of Expression” and what it really means.

Gender issues and Equalities Act

Gender symbols intertwined. The red (left) is the female Venus symbol. The blue (right) represents the male Mars symbol.

Back to Dr Barnes, who also told the webinar, called Getting the Language Right for 2022, that instead of gendered terms, staff should be referred to as “teacher” or “headteacher” followed by their surname. Ofsted has warned that Schools are using “overtly political materials” to teach children about gender issues.

It was said in 2021 that when it comes to teaching children about sex, sexual orientation and gender reassignment, some school staff are “confusing” their legal obligations under the Equality Act with the moral and the political, according to the school watchdog.

When the Equalities Act was introduced in 2010, it was “contentious from the outset”, according to Chris Jones, Ofsted’s director of corporate strategy, particularly in relation to characteristics relating to sex, sexual orientation and gender reassignment.

Far-right against equality

What we see in Europe is that there is an increasing political sensitivity in these areas that have made it harder for schools to handle equality well. Politicians also try to find a way out for the upcoming far-right groups which try to push the genders again in a straight jacket with specific roles for men and women. Another problem is that those far-right groups are obsessively against people with other sexual feelings than the one they find should be the normal case. From those (political) groups there are also people who are against first names which are too masculine for girls or too feminine for boys. In 2021 reports emerged of schools sanctioning the use of male names for girls as young as 13 without the consent of their parents.

Campaigners have accused teachers of misinterpreting equality regulations by allowing female pupils (who say they identify as boys) or the other way round, to use a different name. In many places, certainly in the East of Europe,  such “new” names used in the classroom, and on pupil registers and official communications from the school would be against the norms or values of the Christian nation.

Wishes of the individual and LGBT issues

One popular trans school kit, published by Brighton and Hove Council with the LGBT youth charity Allsorts, says:

“Care should be taken to ensure the wishes of the individual pupil or student are taken into account with a view to supporting them during potential transition.

Stonewall has advised schools that teachers should drop the terms boys and girls in favour of “learners” and mix up the sexes in PE classes.

The LGBT charity is urging teachers to ditch all gendered language and gendered uniforms and suggests that children should compete against the opposite sex in sport.

Members of the department’s Homeland Security Group, which leads work on Britain’s counter-terrorism response, attended a talk last week focused on “the right language” around LGBT issues.

On Monday, the Home Office moved to distance itself from its contents, which it said did not represent “departmental or government guidance”.

Across 12 slides on gender issues, first reported by Guido Fawkes, Whitehall staff were told:

“Be aware a person’s sex, gender identity, and gender expression may not correspond.

“Genderqueer is a blanket term for those who don’t define their gender in binary terms … It is not a modern invention. Each identity is valid and deserves respect.”

Sexual orientation

It is not because the majority of the population identifies itself as heterosexual that we do not have to take others into account. In Britain roughly 1.5 million people or 3.2 per cent, identified with an LGB+ orientation – “gay or lesbian”, “bisexual” or “other sexual orientation”.

Across England and Wales, more than one in 100 people identified as trans or other gender identities in just 21 local authorities.

A slide on language to avoid using included the terms homosexual and homosexuality, which it said is

“generally considered a medical term now. People tend to use gay instead. Can reduce the person to purely sexual terms”.

It also warned against the use of the word transsexual. But why is one so afraid to allow things or matters called by what it is? People whose gender identity varies from that traditionally associated with their apparent biological sex at birth, themselves are not afraid to call themselves transsexuals or transgenders.

In its original and narrower sense, transgender referred to males and females who respectively gender-identify as females and males.

In a later and broader sense, it has come to designate persons whose gender identities incorporate behaviours and traits traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transgender persons may thus include transsexuals, transgenderists (in one usage of the term, persons who gender-identify with the opposite sex but who choose not to undergo sex-reassignment surgery or hormone treatments), and androgynes (biologically or psychologically androgynous persons), among other groups. {Encyc. Britannica on Transgender}

Sex-change or medical transition

There are lots of debates going on in Great Britain about allowing children to decide to change sex.

Dr Susan Matthews, an honorary senior research fellow in creative writing at Roehampton University, analysed a series of books that are being circulated in British schools. She concluded that children were being put at risk by transgender books in primary schools that “misrepresent” medical knowledge on puberty blockers.

Her critique of children’s literature was published in the 2019 book Inventing Transgender Children and Young People.

Books and lesson plans that were designed to educate pupils about transgender issues

“fail child safeguarding and conflict with the law”,

she said.

Dr Matthews found that much of the information given about medical transition was “inaccurate”, adding that “potential harms are ignored, glossed over or falsified”.

Helen Joyce, an author and former Economist journalist, believes that men and women are being redefined by trans activists, with laws and policies

“reshaped to privilege self-identified gender identity over biological sex”.

Legal gender change

Most Dutch think an expert opinion is crucial when someone desires legal gender change, but quite a lot of people can understand that certain people would prefer to change sex. At the end of last year, there were some debates after some documentaries were shown where American kids younger than 10 years old got transformations. Two-thirds of the Dutch population say there must be a minimum age for legal gender reassignment on birth certificates. The study, carried out by the Dutch Christian patient association NPV, shows no support for the proposal among the general population. (That is reported by the NPV in a press release.)

Questioning own identity

In West Europe, we clearly see a move in the way how young girls and young boys question their own identities.

According to a study commissioned by NHS England, 10 years ago there were just under 250 referrals, most of them boys, to the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust in London. But in 2021/22 there were already over 5,000 referrals into the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS).

There has been a dramatic change in the case-mix of referrals from predominantly birth-registered males to predominantly birth-registered females presenting with gender incongruence in their early teen years. Additionally, a significant number of children are also presenting with neurodiversity and other mental health needs and risky behaviours which requires careful consideration and needs to be better understood.

This has led to a lack of clinical consensus and polarised opinion on what the best model of care for children and young people experiencing gender incongruence and dysphoria should be; and a lack of evidence to support families in making informed decisions about interventions that may have life-long consequences.

While some parents said they had embraced their child’s decision and welcomed the societal changes that had made this step possible, others felt confused by their child’s desire to change their body. The big question for many was how they could halt their child or how they could help their child choice to change sex. Several parents said they had been relaxed when their daughters initially began identifying as non-binary, but became uneasy when they said they wanted to take puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones and began binding their breasts. Some spoke of their anxiety and uncertainty about how to respond, particularly when their child was unhappy.

Often bigger problems arise when the parents get lesser control over the child. The uncertainty parents felt was compounded by the highly polarised debate – within the NHS, politics and the media – about how parents and professionals should respond to children who express distress about their gender.

“In the past few years it has become an explosion. Many of us feel confused by what has happened, and it’s often hard to talk about it to colleagues,”

said a London-based psychiatrist working in a child and adolescent mental health unit, who has been a consultant for the past 17 years.

Huge surge in young women wanting to become boys

Perhaps our society should question more how it comes that in the last five to 10 years we’ve seen a huge surge in young women who, at the age of around 12 or 13, want to become boys. We should wonder more about what brings those girls to change their name and press to have hormones or puberty blockers. How does it come that one group does feel inferior to an other and wants to be part of the other group?

Equality Act – Historic day for equality

On December 22 the Scottish government hailed what it called “a historic day for equality” after a vote on that Thursday afternoon in which MSPs overwhelmingly backed plans to make it easier and less intrusive for individuals to legally change their gender, and to extend the streamlined system for obtaining a gender recognition certificate (GRC) to 16- and 17-year-olds.

But immediately after the 86-39 vote, which followed three days of intense and at times emotional debate at Holyrood, the Scottish secretary, Alister Jack, said:

“We share the concerns that many people have regarding certain aspects of this bill, and in particular the safety issues for women and children.

“We will look closely at that, and also the ramifications for the 2010 Equality Act and other UK-wide legislation, in the coming weeks – up to and including a section 35 order stopping the bill going for royal assent if necessary.”

The women and equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, who met her Scottish government counterpart, Shona Robison, to discuss the bill, said following the vote that the Scottish government had

“not addressed the full implications of their bill – especially on the lives of women and girls”.

She added:

“The UK government is now looking at provisions that can prompt reconsideration and allow MSPs to address these issues.”

A Scottish government spokesperson said:

“The bill as passed is within legislative competence, and was backed by an overwhelming majority, with support from all parties. Any attempt by the UK government to undermine the democratic will of the Scottish parliament will be vigorously contested by the Scottish government.”

Scottish versus English parliament

But the English Government is not willing to accept it. Immediately after the vote, a spokesperson for the Equality and Human Rights Commission called on the UK government to provide clarity on whether Scottish GRCs would be recognised in the rest of the UK.

The Scottish Conservatives’ equalities spokesperson, Rachael Hamilton, told Robison that her government had not brought the people of Scotland with them, and that

“in the rush to make the process a little easier for trans people, the government is making it easier for criminal men to attack women”.

I do believe trans people across Scotland today will be feeling pleased and relieved that this bill has passed, after many years of difficult public debate. Though it is not finished yet. On January the 16th, Rishi Sunak’s government has blocked legislation passed by the Scottish parliament that would make Scotland the first part of the UK to introduce a self-identification system for people who want to change gender, them being concerned the bill will have an “adverse impact” on UK-wide equalities law.

UK government blocking the legislation

Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon said there were “no grounds” for the UK government to block the legislation, claiming that it did not affect the operation of the Equality Act. For her

“This is a full-frontal attack on our democratically elected Scottish parliament and it’s ability to make its own decisions on devolved matters. @scotgov will defend the legislation and stand up for Scotland’s parliament. If this Westminster veto succeeds, it will be first of many.”

Transgenders deserving respect

Conservatives and certain Christian groups should come to terms that people their wishes should be respected and that governments can not play the boss over their bodies. The Scottish secretary said

“Transgender people who are going through the process to change their legal sex deserve our respect, support and understanding. My decision today is about the legislation’s consequences for the operation of GB-wide equalities protections and other reserved matters.

The law, first proposed by Sturgeon six years ago, was passed by the Scottish parliament by 86 votes to 39, with the overwhelming support of the SNP, Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems in December, after years of consultation and debate.

The legislation would make it easier for transgender people to obtain official gender recognition certificates, including by reducing waiting times, removing the need for a medical diagnosis and bringing the minimum age down from 18 to 16.

The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said on Monday that 16-year-olds should not legally be able to change gender, putting him at odds with his party in Scotland.

The shadow Scottish secretary, Ian Murray, said the issue were

“too important to be reduced to the usual constitutional fight”,

and questioned why ministers at Westminster and Holyrood did not work together on an amended bill

“to avoid this unnecessary stand-off”.

Not fiting in the general box

The whole circus in Great Britain shows how politicians are using people who do not fit in the general box are used to be a hot potato in political debates. Nancy Kelley, chief executive of Stonewall, said:

“It is a matter of grave and profound regret that the prime minister has allowed trans people’s lives to be used as a political football. This is not governing with compassion.”

Beth, a queer activist, was watching the proceedings from the public gallery in Holyrood and described it as

“an amazing day for the queer rights movement in Scotland”.

Nevertheless, she also suggested that the toxicity around the reforms had

“allowed intolerance to grow”.

Gender recognition a frontline issue

Dylan Hamilton, a climate activist, like many trans-Scots also noted the extensive delays in the bill’s progress and said

“Gender recognition has become a frontline issue because of this bill but it’s not the most important thing for most trans people. It’s just an administrative issue to make life more dignified, but much more important are the horrifically long waiting lists, hate crime and the coming conversion ‘therapy’ bill [Scotland will include transgender people in its ban on the practice, while the UK government U-turned to exclude them earlier this year].”

The present bill still lets a lot of loopholes, leaving non-binary people excluded and unrecognised.

Boris Johnson had dropped plans to ban any conversion practice last year, only for his government to perform a partial U-turn hours later after a huge backlash.

In a written statement on Tuesday, January the 17th,  the culture secretary, Michelle Donelan, said:

“We recognise the strength of feeling on the issue of harmful conversion practices and remain committed to protecting people from these practices and making sure they can live their lives free from the threat of harm or abuse.”

She said it was right that the issue was tackled

“through a dedicated and tailored legislative approach”,

adding:

“The bill will protect everyone, including those targeted on the basis of their sexuality, or being transgender.”

Donelan said the draft bill, which will only ban conversion practices for over-18s

“who do not consent and who are coerced or forced to undergo”

the practice, would be scrutinised by MPs and peers to help ensure the legislation did not have “unintended consequences”.

Language to cope with Non-binary

A tthe moment it might well be that an increasing number of teenagers are identifying as non-binary, and education needs to respond to this – but the NEU does not believe that schools can or should adopt gender-neutral language across the board. We also should not try to exclude certain words because they would be too much connected by a woman or a man, or for some could sound offensive or would be a medical term. As such, there is no use to exclude homo, transgender, transsexual or other “right language” around LGBT issues, from our vocabulary use.

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Preceding

Do the concepts of male and female need to have a formal official definition

Trans extremism, trans ideology, genderless a.o. categories and TERFs

What is Racism??

Looking at an American nightmare

Mass Media’s Deception Causing Division

Every shade but white

From the old box: The case for Black English

3 Things Black People Wish White People Understood

Gender, genderless, androgyny, bisexuality, cisgender and transgender

Study says highlighting gender leads to stereotypes

Added commentary to the posting A Progressive Call to Arms

She!

Parenting in changing times

Enough with the Clothes Shaming of Muslim Women

Anti-Semitic pressure driving Jews out of Europe

The Catholic synod on the family and abortion

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Additional reading

1. 19th and 20th Century Shifts in bourgeoisie
2. Apartheid or Apartness #2 Up to 2nd part 20th Century
3. Migrants to the West #8 Welbeing
4. Happiness mapping and getting over gender mapping
5. Human relations 2013
6. 2014 Culture
7. 2014 Human Rights
8. 2014 Personalities and Obituary
9. Gender equality and women’s rights in the post-2015 agenda
10. 2015 Human rights
11. Growing rift between observant parents and their children
12. Massacre of Black people by a white supremacist is not an anomaly nor new phenomena in the United States
13. Does one have to be afraid of Christian nationalism
14. Apartheid South Africa and Israel’s Treatment of the Palestinians – Modern Parallels
15. A new decade, To open the eyes to get a right view
16. 2020 in view #1 The 45th president of the U.S.A.
17. For this week at the beginning of December 2021
18. Stories the Week brought to you from 2022 June 02 – June 08
19. The Week 2022 July 11- July 17
20. The Telegraph looking at the second week of August 2022
21. New York Times view for 2022 August 29 – September 04
22. Oppressive language of anti-Jehovah people does more than represent violence
23. Need to Embrace People Where They Are
24. To Heal the World? | Book Review
25. Overprotection and making youngsters drifting away
26. Intermarriage and Protecting the state of the Jewish and/or Jeshuaist family
27. Belonging to or being judged by
28. Time for the church to wake up and smell the coffee
29. Three pillars of sustainable development, young people and their rights
30. In Eastern Europe the Foundations of the European Union in danger
31. Prayer on this International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
32. Old and newer King James Versions and other translations #6 Revisions of revisions

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Related

1. A History of African American Policemen in Omaha
2. The Problem With Black People Part 1
3. Can Black People Be Racists?
4. Apology to the Black Race
5. Black People, We’ve Been Duped!
6. Reconciliation: A Black Love Song (?)
7. A Wish Sandwich
8. It’s a Man’s World
9. The World of ‘Men’?
10. Transphobia: a debate that is perhaps wisest to sit out.
11. ”Gender dysphoria and being trans” – A scientific explanation
12. Why is trans an issue?
13. Nothing is Binary
14. Gender-Flex
15. Input: Google AI no longer uses gender binary tags on images of people
16. Popsugar: Apple’s New Gender-Neutral Emoji Are Here to Make Your Keyboard More Inclusive
17. “Awoman”?
18. She/Her – They/Them – Person
19. Sexists are Not Always Misogynists
20. There is no gender neutral
21. The dilemma of gender neutrality
22. Ladies, Gentlemen and Others
23. The Concept of Gender Neutrality and You
24. Gender Neutrality in Rape.
25. Clothes, colours and makeup are gender-neutral – a personal opinion
26. Men: Masculinity or Masculinism. Do we get it right?
27. Does gender neutrality have a plausible future in the Italian language?
28. Guidelines for gender-sensitive language. Are the EU Parliament’s efforts enough?
29. More Thoughts on Gender Neutral Language: Pete’s Husband
30. We Need To Change How We’re Raising Boys
31. Are School Curriculums Promoting Gender Stereotypes?
32. Role of parents in teaching gender-neutrality
33. The importance of inclusive language
34. Parents, do your homework
35. Need for Gender-Neutral Rape Laws: Unheard Voice of the Male Victims
36. N.B. vintage clothing shop embraces gender neutrality and body positivity
37. Need of Gender Neutral Domestic Violence Laws
38. Practicing What You Preach
39. Horse by Chase Twichell
40. Classic kids toy Mr. Potato Head gets new, gender-neutral name
41. How To Decorate The Perfect Gender Neutral Nursery
42. Up In Space
43. Life on this gender neutral planet
44. Full of It
45. How can one discover ideas of gender through Zenne Dance?
46. Women are being Encouraged to Challenge Sexism in the West Mercia Police Force
47. Feminism in India is dying
48. On bisexuality
49. Street harassment, and silence
50. Boys and dolls
51. Have real respect

To Colour Or Not To Colour?

When children first start to draw, we teach them to colour in between the lines. We reward accuracy rather than interpretation. Neatness, not expression. This says a lot about our own predispositions.

The problem with kids’ colouring is also that often their elders guide them not to use certain colours for certain objects and come to teach them that they have to colour skies in blue and not in green or red for example.

Last few years the publishers sought it also right to print colouring books for adults where they now also have to feel the restriction to colour between the lines.

Perhaps fine motor skills may be trained by colouring between the lines, but it does not give so much freedom to self-expression, and that is much more important to stimulate.

We even interfere with ” to hold a crayon correctly” as if we do know the best way to hold a pencil or pen. (This reminds me how we as children got a tick on our hands when we dared to write or draw with our left hand.)
How many of us did not get directives on how to fill in a blank piece of paper. Some of us got to learn we always had to keep a white border and should not have the drawing pass the paper.

We should give all children the liberty to express themselves freely. Why not present the sky to be green, mauve and not blue, the grass being red and not green, clouds being blue or orange?

Many people are so ingrained in calibrated settings and dare not allow ideas other than those as we perceive things in real life.

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Related

• Stop Conforming – Day 302 of 365 Days to a Better You

 

justabitfurther

The past few days at the start of 2022 has reminded me, that “putting away the crayon box and/or colouring between the lines” may actually be the most devastating move I could make at the moment. A strange opening, but hang in there with me.

Generally, most of us would agree that rules are necessary in a wide expanse of situations. You know – “stop at a red light”; “wear a life jacket when canoeing”; and the oldie but goodie “don’t eat yellow snow.” You get the idea.

Rules(real and imagined) can be a good thing, but they can also be the most restricting and strangling when it comes to who we are and should be as an individual.

Often family, society and/or our upbringing force; slot or “passive-agressively suggest” this is how we “should be or act or live our OWN lives.”

Conformity has it’s place. But, it…

View original post 1,043 more words

Gender, genderless, androgyny, bisexuality, cisgender and transgender

How many children between 10 and 14 are not going through a phase where they wonder who or what they are?

Photo by SLAYTINA on Pexels.com

In some countries, such as Belgium among others, there is a view that there are not two genders but that genderless people should be taken into account, i.e. people who feel neither male nor female and often have no need for a person ‘of the opposite sex’. In Belgium, they are given the designation X under their gender. The genderless, a grammatical category, often designated as male, female, or neuter, used in the classification of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and, in some languages, verbs that may be arbitrary or based on characteristics such as sex or animacy and that determines agreement with or selection of modifiers, referents, or grammatical forms.

Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

In other countries, such as the United States of America, then, people who feel genderless or feel that they are in a body of another gender are more likely to be regarded as “devilish” and are taunted and humiliated, as well as dismissed as perverts. For many citizens over there it is normal that the man should have the highest position and that the woman should be considered the lower one, and coloured people the lowest. Equality is out of the question, whilst in other countries, it is not the priority at the moment. Worse is it when there are people who admit they feel attracted to both sexes, male and female. From searching by whom they feel most at ease, some enjoy their being with both genders and enjoying sex with as well as male as female persons. such persons are often between two camps; for one group they are cowards, not gay enough, unfaithful, untrustworthy, indecisive, and confused, for others, they are doing it for attention, or just for sex and their own selfish physical satisfaction. In some cases it is also part of the experimenting, looking for their own particular favourite, on the way to gay or on the way to find out that they are sitting in a wrong appearance male or female body. For lots of people, their wondering and feelings, being afraid of what others would say, make them suppress their sexuality and their true inner feelings. For most Americans, it seems that only the “normal” (heterosexual) kind is valid, making it very difficult for those who feel differently, to express their feeling or to accept what they really are.

In the USA, there is a very dangerous development going on at the moment, with a certain grassroots group wishing to have all kinds of books removed from libraries and schools. Books for children and young adults containing themes of race, gender and sexual identity received an “unprecedented” number of challenges last year, the American Library Association (ALA) has said, reflecting a growing national trend of attempted censorship. The challenges came from conservative parent groups and others. In some cases, the group says, librarians and elected officials were threatened with violence by members of the Proud Boys and armed activists at school board and library board meetings. In April, Pen America, a non-profit organisation that works to protect freedom of expression in the US, reported that 1,586 bans were implemented in 86 school districts across 26 states in the nine months to the end of March. The challenges reported to ALA in 2021, it said, represented the highest number of attempted book bans since the list began more than 20 years ago.

Already two years ago Republican state Rep. Tony Randolph introduced a bill that would outlaw marriage equality, permanently legalise conversion therapy, ban changes to legal gender markers, and block the passage of LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections.

In February 2020 House Bill 1215 (prohibit the state from endorsing or enforcing certain policies regarding domestic relations) was the third in a trio of anti-LGBTQ bills brought to the state’s legislature, the House passed a bill that criminalised trans-affirming medical care for minors. The other, Senate Bill 88, would require mental health providers to out kids expressing gender dysphoria to their parents. Anti-LGBTQ lawmakers and organisers use the state as a test case for the nation, experts say.

Kara Ingelhart, a staff attorney at Lambda Legal, characterises HB 1215 in particular as one of the most comprehensive bills to date targeting LGBTQ people.

Such laws and attacks from thought-limiting groups are also happening also more in some countries of Eastern Europe, where one can see that people’s freedoms and rights are gradually becoming more and more restricted.

“We don’t allow children’s parents to decide whether or not they can drink underage, whether they can smoke underage, whether they marry underage, and we certainly should not allow a child to be disfigured in a horrible way, in an irreversible procedure before they’re 18 years of age,”

Rep. Williams Lamberth, R-Portland, said.

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) said they require parental consent to treat minors who are being seen for issues to those receiving gender-affirming care and never refuse parental involvement for those under 18. VUMC officials said they began their Transgender Health Clinic because

“transgender individuals are a high-risk population for mental and physical health issues and have been consistently underserved by the U.S. health system.”

“We have been and will continue to be committed to providing family-centered care to all adolescents in compliance with state law and in line with professional practice standards and guidance established by medical specialty societies,”

officials said in the statement.

In some countries, people go so far as to consider it plausible that those who dress or behave differently from their physical appearance may be freely harassed, humiliated in words but also in deeds, even raped.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Pexels.com

Countries already immersed in a civil — rather, uncivil —war between two distinct political ideologies, the last five years seem to have come into a #MeToo rage and starting another uncivil war between the two genders.

During childhood, it often happens that parents want to steer their children into certain role patterns that are traditionally constructed. The search for “being” and dealing with attraction towards others, be they persons of the opposite or same sex, is part of growing up and belongs to peculiarities of puberty and adolescence that most young people have to go through.

During the search for one’s own personality and sexual identity, it does happen more than once that a conflict situation arises between parents and child because the parent cannot enter the child’s own emotional world and feels hurt or feels a sense of failure because the child chooses a different sex than the parent has in mind.

In September of this year Tennessee lawmakers made their way into the discourse about providing gender-affirming care. Matt Walsh — a Daily Wire conservative commentator, who questions LGBTQ rights — said he considered the care to be that of castration and mutilation to minors and adults.

According NHS England most children who believe that they are transgender are just going through a “phase”, and therefore  it has announced plans for tightening controls on the treatment of under 18s questioning their gender, including a ban on prescribing puberty blockers, outside of strict clinical trials. The last few years in the states as well as in England we could see more clinics where such puberty inhibitors or hormone blockers, medicines used to postpone puberty in children.

Several campaign groups in Britain, receiving taxpayers’ money have told teachers to drop all gendered toilets and language – and not to tell parents if they change their child’s identity.

The Cass Review, commissioned by NHS England, has found

“there is a disproportionate number of children on the spectrum, in care, same-sex attracted or with trauma in their background who identify as trans.”

Victoria Atkins, who has responsibility for the Government’s gender equality policy, expressed concern that a rising number of teenagers were seeking “life-changing” medical interventions. Young people were undergoing treatment to change their gender because they regard it as

“an answer to questions they are not asking themselves”,

the minister said.

“It may simply be a case of greater awareness, it may be that for some they see it as an answer to questions they are perhaps not asking themselves. We need to be particularly alert to this with regard to young people. The treatments are so serious and life-changing, I’m a little cautious of the use of those treatments because of the potential for the rest of their lives.

“Lots of questions are rightly being asked about how we treat young people, people whose bodies perhaps haven’t developed yet.”

The NHS  services note that there is a need to change the services because there is currently

“scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision-making”.

NHS England says that the interim Cass Report has advised that even social transition, such as changing a young person’s name and pronouns or the way that they dress, is not a “neutral act” that could have “significant effects” in terms of “psychological functioning”.

Parent groups and professionals have long raised concerns that NHS medics have taken an “affirmative” approach to treating children, including using their preferred names and pronouns.

The proposals say that the new clinical approach will for younger children

“reflect evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence” and doctors should be mindful this might be a “transient phase”.

Instead of encouraging transition, medics should take “a watchful approach” to see how a young person’s conditions develop, the plans state.

When a prepubescent child has already socially transitioned,

“the clinical approach has to be mindful of the risks of an inappropriate gender transition and the difficulties that the child may experience in returning to the original gender role upon entering puberty if the gender incongruence does not persist”.

In March 2022 there were 5,500 children on an NHS waiting list for gender swap treatment at the Tavistock and Portman Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in London, after a “surge in demand”.

In 2010/11 this were only 138 children and in 2020/21 a 17-fold increase could be noted, that number had grown to 2,383 children.

Could the surge in demand for help and treatment possibly be linked to a global pandemic and the three lockdowns that left vulnerable youngsters imprisoned, isolated and glued to their screens?

By January 2021, a report compiled by the Care Quality Commission showed that the waiting list had already reached 4,600. In March, Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of campaign group Transgender Trend, explained that during those lockdowns,

“life stopped, really – so adolescents at that stage in their lives, where they’re really searching for their identity, turn online”.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Pexels.com

The public consultation documents say that change is necessary against a backdrop of a sharp rise in referrals to the gender identity service, from just under 250 in 2011-12 to over 5,000 last year.

In recent years there has also been a spike, with

“the number of referrals currently at 8.7 per 100,000 population per year in 2021-22 compared to four per 100,000 in 2020-21 and 4.5 per 100,000 in 2019-20”.

On the day that Tom Daley marched into the Commonwealth Games with a pride flag bearing trans colours, the health service announced in July that it would be closing the Tavistock and replacing it with two regional centres based in specialist children’s hospitals.

Trans-ideology according to some is the inevitable culmination of left-wingers deconstructing gender and sexuality in the 1960s cultural revolution. Several conservatives are asking for a serious look at the consequences of the previous era of free expression of opinion and free sex.

Gay activists discredited the notion of aberrant sexual activity. Feminists said gender was a construct and a prison. This coincided with a new take on children, insisting they weren’t miniature versions of their parents but autonomous human beings who should control their own destiny, even their education.

The move is aimed at taking a more “holistic” approach to treating children and looking at the reasons why they are questioning their gender.

It is expected that the regional centres will be operating by the spring, whilst long-term plans for the gender identity services for under 18s, based on the final recommendation of the Cass review, will come into effect in 2023-24.

Rather than being delivered by therapists and hormone specialists, the new clinical teams will include experts “in paediatric medicine, autism, neurodisability and mental health”.

The proposals note that a “significant proportion of children” who are referred for treatment have neuro-development issues or family of social problems.

The new treatment teams will be led by a medical doctor and the service will only take referrals from GPs and other NHS professionals.

NHS England will also “strongly discourage” young people from buying hormones from private clinicians and will not accept clinical responsibility for the treatment of those who have done so.

Is one prepared to bear the consequences that children with yet serious questions regarding their identities and gender have to resolve, and how?

How exactly does the NHS plan to clear up the mess and plan for the fallout of mental health issues that will emerge?

The consultation on the plans closes in December.

It is the task of the adults to help children to accept themselves as they are and to get them to feel happy in their own bodies, even when it is not fitting in the general traditional idea of the mainstream. Parents and health workers should not teach them that mutilating their genitals and living inside a skin costume of the opposite sex is the way to peace and contentment, because studies have shown this is not the case. A life lived in medicalised pretence is not a happy or healthy one.

But we should be open to helping those who have come into adult age, and even when for some that may look late, when they are in their twenties and then changing, there are still many years to come to live in a ‘renewed body’.

Let’s hope the tide is turning, for the sake of our children.

 

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Preceding

A Progressive Call to Arms

Added commentary to the posting A Progressive Call to Arms

Times of overcorrections

Who Am I That I Could Hinder God?

Do the concepts of male and female need to have a formal official definition

The Catholic synod on the family and abortion

Looking at an American nightmare

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Additional reading

1. What’s church for, anyway?
2. Anti-Semitic incidents in Australia in 2012 highest ever on record
3. Human relations 2013
4. Study says highlighting gender leads to stereotypes
5. 2014 Culture
6. Same sex realtionships and Open attitude mirroring Jesus (Our View) = Same sex relationships and Open attitude mirroring Jesus (Some View on the world)
7. Tony Campolo Calls for Full Inclusion of LGBT Into the Church
8. Two synods and life in the church community
9. 2015 Human rights
10. Cincinnati outlaws quoting the Bible
11. In Eastern Europe the Foundations of the European Union in danger
12. Right-wing fundamentalist Christians to dictate the U.S.A.
13. Rights of Polish people in danger
14. Living in this world and viewing it
15. Problems with church counseling for gay people
16. A selection of The Telegraph articles for Sunday 2022 October 23
17. The Telegraph Front Page for Monday 24 October 2022
18. Oppressive language of anti-Jehovah people does more than represent violence
19. Intermarriage and Protecting the state of the Jewish and/or Jeshuaist family
20. Belonging to or being judged by
21. Need to Embrace People Where They Are

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Related

1. The Celebration Will Not Be Televised
2. Stonewall Was Not Televised (a “missing” post)
3. FTWMI: Introducing….You
4. The Impossible Cornerstones of Liberty
5. FTWMI: Re-Introducing Sophie
6. We’re All Going to Die: Doctors
7. Shocking News from the White House!!!: EU, transgender peoples, bathrooms and disagreements.
8. Transphobia: a debate that is perhaps wisest to sit out.
9. Imprecise pronouns
10. Oh, come on, or: Srsly?
11. Gender-neutral, or: Girly
12. America’s (Two) Social Commandments
13. The Tail Of A Winner: A Ten Commandments’ Tale
14. The Conversation Starter: A Ten Commandments’ Tale
15. Woke-nochio: A Ten Commandments’ Tale
16. How The Australian has run a Holy War on transgender youth
17. Let them serve: Defence drops ban on transgender soldiers
18. Unprecedented South Dakota Bill Aims to Erase LGBTQ People From Public Life Entirely
19. When is the right time to reveal your gender identity?
20. A trans woman has been found beaten and strangled to death in her own home
21. Sediments – London Film Festival
22. Digital Inclusion (Transgender)
23. Modern Feminist Classics: “Sexist History at the Heart of the ‘Science’ on Transsexualism” by Dr. Em (Parts I and II)
24. ”Gender dysphoria and being trans” – A scientific explanation
25. Me And The Trans Community
26. Born in the Wrong Body
27. Self-Care Sunday: Learning to Accept & Embrace Who YOU Are Amid Familial & Social Obligations, & Why it’s so Bloody Important!
28. Androgyny
29. Non-binary genders
30. On bisexuality
31. College students are increasingly identifying in ways other than’she’ and ‘he.’
32. Queer: A Graphic History – Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele
33. Ask The Passengers, and coming out
34. Street harassment, and silence
35. No room for “gender fatigue”!
36. Boss Lady
37. Intro to sociology as cartoon
38. What we need to know as a #society as a #whole
39. Development projects: Urban research, informal settlements, migration, displacement, gender and the climate crisis
40. Kim Hye-soo Hyunta, son Yoo Seon-ho’s gender identity to change (Shrup) : Sports Dong-a
41. Equality
42. Mood 21: masculinity & self-care
43. A Peek into the #MeToo Purgatory Chamber
44. There Are No Cisgender Gods
45. The Hulk and Gender
46. Nashville: Thousands rally near State Capitol to end medical care for transgender kids
47. Is It Men Behaving Badly or Is It Us? Help-Hiding in Men
48. Nashville: Thousands rally near State Capitol to end medical care for transgender kids
49. I Just Want to Understand the Other Boys
50. US libraries face ‘unprecedented’ efforts to ban books on race and gender themes
51. Fig Leaf
52. Biblical Sexuality and Gender Bibliography
53. Biblical Sexuality and Gender, Part Two 1 Peter 3:16-17
54. What Would You Do if Your Dad Came Out to You?
55. Coming Out of “Love, Simon” with Gratitude
56. YOBcast 097: Scripture Stories, Part 2
57. YOBcast 098: Side B Resources, Part 1
58. Gay and Disabled – Just Like Me
59. Am I Actually in Touch with My Feelings as a Gay Man?
60. The First Relationship I Didn’t Know I Wanted
61. Wedding dreamers
62. Free the nipples
63. Women lost their jobs
64. Boys and dolls
65. The old witches
66. When I met The Ladyboys Of Bangkok…
67. Gender-Grusel und Werkzeug (2)
68. Exespía trans denunció que fue detenida en Moscú por llevar bandera de EEUU en su mochila
69. Mulher transexual tem direito a cirurgia plástica mamária feita pelo SUS
70. La verdad sobre el supuesto trío de Fernando Carrillo con una modelo transexual
71. Asesinaron a Alejandra Ironici, la primera mujer trans que cambió su género en el DNI sin ir a la Justicia
72. La insólita historia del transexual que denunció a un ginecólogo porque no lo atendió
73. Revictimización, discriminación e indiferencia: la realidad de las personas trans en Latinoamérica

Empathy..!!

My Diary Pages

In the quiet of the night,

silence of my heart,

hiding several storms,

with the shattered peace,

and the lost voice,

looking with my wondering eyes,

Grieving with my hurting soul..

Compassion, empathy, human connections are the jewels of authentic relations and the true essence of the human experience — which give meaning to our lives. Unfortunately in the growing digital culture, though we are more socially connected than ever, we are more isolated too, than ever. Human vulnerability is at stake today.

We are living in a culture of shame, blame, fear, and disconnection. People take not a moment to dishonour someone, and pushing him to suffer extreme depression and finally into complete isolation. Public shaming/online shaming can have the worst consequences.

Shame is universal and it triggers us all in different ways and forms. We all have our moments of imperfections but people forget it while targeting…

View original post 146 more words

Necessity of free press for Hong Kong

We are convinced there always has to be free independent press. We find that freedom of expression, speech, press, is essential for a community.

Since more than a year that freedom of thought has been brought in danger by silencing critical writers. With regret we have seen the many difficulties which inhabitants of Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR) have to face.

The highly developed territory and ranks fourth on the UN Human Development Index, its pictures show us a city that has the largest number of skyscrapers of any city in the world. Ranked 4th in the Global Financial Centres Index, one would think everything must go incredibly well in that city. But that is without regard to the overlooking and dominating power of the parliamentary communist apparatus.

What never should have happened, was presented by the agreement of the United Kingdom and China, Hong Kong being transferred to China on 1 July 1997, after 156 years of British rule. This instead of making Hong Kong an independent sovereign country.

Political debates after the transfer of sovereignty have centred around the region’s democratic development and the central government‘s adherence to the “one country, two systems” principle. After reversal of the last colonial era Legislative Council democratic reforms following the handover, the regional government unsuccessfully attempted to enact national security legislation pursuant to Article 23 of the Basic Law. {Wikipedia}

Before the British government handed over Hong Kong in 1997, China agreed to allow the region considerable political autonomy for fifty years under a framework known as “one country, two systems.” But probably they use another calendar than ours with very short years!  Soon they started to limit the inhabitants their movements and way of thinking.

From the central force in Beijing, everything was done to reduce the movements and influence of the Hongkongers. Beijing has cracked down on Hong Kong’s freedoms, stoking mass protests in the city and drawing international criticism.

In the wake of the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement as a non-profit outlet funded by Hongkongers, the newspaper Hong Kong Free Press was launched in 2015. Hong Kong Free Press is a non-profit, English-language news source seeking to unite critical voices on local and national affairs. Free of charge and completely independent, HKFP arrives amid rising concerns over declining press freedom in Hong Kong and during an important time in the city’s constitutional development.

In 2020, we got to hear how Beijing passed a controversial national security law and came to see how dozens of pro-democracy activists and lawmakers were arrested. We could also see the inappropriate violence coming from the government, and violence provoking actions of the police force, dimming hopes that Hong Kong will ever become a full-fledged democracy.

On 15 October 2015 a video shot by a TVB film crew appeared to show seven police officers haul off a handcuffed protester from a freshly cleared Lung Wo Road to a dark corner in nearby Tamar Park, Admiralty. As the officers circled the protester, some allegedly took turns kicking and punching him while others stood over him, keeping watch. Despite an effort by the station to downplay the footage and remove it from subsequent broadcasts, the video quickly took Hong Kong by storm, stirring public outrage and catapulting the victim of the apparent attack, Civic Party activist Ken Tsang, to the status of an instant icon. The Occupy protests were violently crushed without mercy, and up to today we regularly get new shots of press people and protesters being arrested by the police. From some people apprehended by the police a few months ago, nothing is heard any more.

No wonder the public lost their trust in the local police after the many secret missions of the forces and the many police interrogations, certainly after the 2015 blockage of the Hong Kong Free Press website in China. Any websites or apps that undermine Party rule, or have the potential to, are typically blocked. This consists largely of western news media, social networks, and sites built on user-generated content. Other content deemed vulgar, pornographic, paranormal, obscene, or violent is also blocked. Some western websites, apps, and services are blocked in order to prevent competition with domestic, homegrown alternatives.

(Find which sites are blocked in China by the Chinese Communist Party’s technological and legislative efforts to regulate the internet: >  censorship watchdog websites greatfirewallofchina.org and blockedinchina.net.)

The easiest way to access censored websites in China is to use a VPN (Short for virtual private network) But because VPNs being not so cheap subscription services that encrypt internet traffic and route it through an intermediary server outside of China, this allows only a limited audience to use it to bypass the Great Firewall and freely access the web.

In 2020 Hong Kong Free Press has been shortlisted by the UK-based Index on Censorship for their annual Freedom of Expression Awards.

Hong Kong pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily continued its operations and printed 500,000 copies of Friday’s paper after its headquarters were raided by the police on Thursday 17 June 2021, and five senior executives were arrested on suspicion of violating the national security law.

Dozens of Hong Kong police enter Apple Daily’s headquarters in Tseung Kwan O on June 17, 2021. Photo: Apple Daily.

It was the second time in 10 months that the newspaper, founded by Jimmy Lai, had been raided. Police said the warrant used on Thursday was issued under the security legislation, and gave them power to search for and seize journalistic material.

Lai, 73, who was arrested during the first raid last August, is serving 20 months in prison for protest-related offences and also faces charges under the Beijing-imposed security law, which provides for penalties of up to life imprisonment.

According to local media, those arrested included Next Digital CEO Cheung Kim-hung and Chief Operating Officer Royston Chow, Apple Daily’s Editor-in-Chief Ryan Law, Associate Publisher Chan Pui-man and Cheung Chi-wai, who manages the newspaper’s online news platform. All were arrested in the early hours at their homes.

Police said their operation was not targeting the press, adding the force “had no choice” but to enforce the law inside a media company.

 

Please find to read:

1. Hong Kong justice chiefs accused of ‘shameless double standards’ for dropping charge against reporter from state-owned media outlet
2. Two senior execs at Hong Kong’s Apple Daily formally charged with national security ‘conspiracy’
3. ‘Very heartbreaking’: Hong Kong media reel as security law targets democracy paper’s reporting
4. Hong Kong police raid Apple Daily office, editor-in-chief among 5 arrested under national security law over articles
5. Hong Kong’s Apple Daily may halt publication this Sat, pending Fri board meeting
6. ‘#Hong Kong is very beautiful’ hashtag trends online after Watsons Water bottles taken off shelves
7. Taiwan pulls trade office staff over Hong Kong ultimatum
8. Embattled democracy coalition cancels Hong Kong’s annual July 1 march; will discuss disbanding

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Related

1. Two Hong Kong newspaper executives charged under security law: police
2. HK democracy supporters snap up Apple Daily copies
3. Apple Daily: Hong Kong police raid sparks rush on newspapers
4. Hong Kong’s RTHK fires popular pro-democracy radio host Tsang Chi-ho
5. Post-Work Life in Hong Kong
6. Blockchain could boost fintech in HK, but city is lagging
7. Hong Kong newspaper chiefs on trial for security charge
8. Pro-democratic executive of Hong Kong Media appears before court
9. This is the worst of times
10. Hong Kong court denies bail to Apple Daily’s editor, publisher
11. Sunday Morning: News From Zurich, London, Copenhagen & Hong Kong
12. Hong Kong seeks integration with mainland China, says Carrie Lam
13. Hong Kong’s Apple Daily paper to shut within days
14. John Ross: from Trotskyism to power-worship
15. Hong Kong’s Apple Daily may halt publication this Sat, pending Fri board meeting
16. Hong Kong pro-democracy paper Apple Daily says to decide on closure on Friday
17. UN rights chief eyes visit to China’s Xinjiang ‘this year’
18. Hong Kong’s Biggest Pro-Democracy Newspaper Likely to Shut Down This Week After National Security Law Raid
19. Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy newspaper may be forced to suspend operations after government crackdown

Looking at an Utopism which has not ended

Marcus Ampe wrote a few days ago on WordPress “Utopism has not ended” giving more clarification on his way of thinking and about his “Utopian Dreams“. In  a series of articles on his WordPress blog he continues to look at reasons why we should not give up hope for a better world and how some Christians and certain people are too much afraid for matters of social protection.

The Thousand-Year View from N.S. Palmer wants to apply time-tested ideas to the problems of our modern era and also took a look at Mr. Ampe‘s writing. N.S. Palmer preaches that we shouldn’t worry about things we can’t control, but it’s easier to say than to do. On that point we seem to differ. We cannot escape being in this system and having to live in this world at a certain time. But how we live and what we are willing to accept to happen plays an important role in our life. When people, living in this world, believe it could be very well possible to make it a better place for many, to some that might be an unreachable goal, to others it should be something to work at.

Trying to get a perfect society is something which we all should be doing. Though we agree only partly with Mr. Palmer who says

No society ever has been or ever will be perfect. {Utopia’s Biggest Problem}

him forgetting that one day Jesus Christ shall return and install the Kingdom of God here on earth. The Nazarene rabbi his government will be the most perfect governing body and shall give all its inhabitants the most perfect system to live in.

Mr Palmer further finds that

utopians waste their time and cause great harm by rejecting possible goals and pursuing an impossible goal. {Utopia’s Biggest Problem}

It is true that the goal set by utopians might be very unreachable, hence their name “utopists”, or followers of utopian dreams, thinking of utopia (1500-1600) being the imaginary perfect country in the book Utopia (1516) by the English humanist and statesman, chancellor of England (1529–32) Sir Thomas More, from Greek ou “not, no” + topos “place”.

Because their goal can never be achieved, nothing will ever be enough. They think we should keep doing the same things, just do them harder. Spend more money. Take away more freedom. Police more speech. {Utopia’s Biggest Problem}

Such an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens may be presented in several authors their stories. A utopia focuses on equality in such categories as economics, government and justice (a non-exhaustive list), and does not focus on “spending more money” like Mr. Palmer seems to give the impression. Neither do utopians want to take away the freedom of people. Just the opposite they want to secure that there is freedom on all sorts of levels: freedom of life, freedom of thought, freedom of expression, a.o. but most importantly also freedom of choice under the condition not to limit others. That utopians want to have more control on those freedoms and perhaps would want to see more control of having all people receiving the same liberties and same equalities, may demand a controlling apparatus or police, but does not have to mean we have to go to become a police-state or a state of repression. That is the wrong vision a lot of people who are against socialism, utopianism and communism want to send into the world.

There are many debates about what constitutes a utopia. Many who are against any social feeling, what they call part of the “left” consider utopians and their world or societies they want to build, “utopias” benign or dangerous. Concerning utopia fitting or not, or being essential to a Christian world lots of contradictory ideas go round. Many ask

Is the idea of utopianism essential to Christianity or heretical? What is the relationship between utopia and ideology?

One of the leading scholars in the field of utopian studies, Lyman Tower Sargent argues that utopia’s nature is inherently contradictory because societies are not homogeneous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied. Sargent notes that some thinkers see a trajectory from utopia to totalitarianism, with violence an inevitable part of the mix, and we have the impression Mr. Palmer might do so also.

According to Sargent:

There are socialist, capitalist, monarchical, democratic, anarchist, ecological, feminist, patriarchal, egalitarian, hierarchical, racist, left-wing, right-wing, reformist, free love, nuclear family, extended family, gay, lesbian and many more utopias [ Naturism, Nude Christians, …] Utopianism, some argue, is essential for the improvement of the human condition. But if used wrongly, it becomes dangerous. Utopia has an inherent contradictory nature here.

And that describes very well the difficulty of that utopian world for which Mr. Ampe puts his hand in the fire. He as several other Christians believes in the purity man can come to reach, in which innocence is in the heart of that person, enabling people to walk freely in nature naked, without others having bad ideas. In such a free world naturism would for example never be a problem, because all people would abstain from wrong thinking and wrong acts. In an utopian world there is no place for sexual offensive acts to the public sense of decency. There being no place for obscenity by people keeping themselves to pure thought the same as the first people in the Garden of Eden had. It was only after they had done wrong and came to know good and evil that they became afraid of the other and wanted to protect themselves by covering their body. Such covering in an ideal world would not be necessary, the same as it was not a matter to cover oneself in the 1970ies and hippies could share their places freely with others without having to fear something to go wrong. Nakedness was no problem at that time, whilst now we see again a lot of shyness and fear of nudity among many young people as well as some elderly people.

We do agree many of the boom children tried to create a perfect society in the 1960–70ies but failed terribly. Though we are not ashamed that we tried to stimulate others to step on the wagon with us (dreamers). Many of our generation might have betrayed their ideas, but Mr. Ampe like several others, as a follower of the Nazarene Jeshua (Jesus Christ) believes the teachings of that rebbe are still worth going for.

Utopians just ask people to take the responsibility for others and to respect everybody and everybody around them. They would never stimulate capitalism, like N.S. Palmer gives the impression.

 

At the moment we can grow unto more tolerance by learning to agree to disagree, as well by not being afraid to dare to engage in thoughtful political discussions. Though at the moment we still face the difficulty that not everyone involved is really interested in finding out the truth. An other problem these days is also that lots of people do not realise that disagreement does not imply evil. On that fact Mr. Palmer seems to agree and writes:

Calm, rational debate helps them see the underlying assumptions, strengths, and weaknesses of each person’s viewpoint. That helps everyone understand the issues better. It also helps them understand each other better. Screaming, hysteria, and emotional theatrics do not. {Dialogue Is Not Harmful}

We believe the Bible offers a way to live together peaceful and gives us a nice picture in the Book of Isaiah, what that world can and shall be. We might be utopians or dreamers for many, but Mr. Ampe with his brethren and sisters in Christ do believe those prophesies are going to become true, and as such shall their utopian dream once become a reality, though it still may take some time.

Mr. Ampe also believes we can be united and should try to convince those who hate certain people, to have them to accept them as co-living citizens with the same rights as them. It is for mutual benefit and the common good that people must be rational enough to set aside their differences and come closer to each other with full respect for each other and for other cultures.

Big problem today to come to such an utopian world is the egocentric and egoistic attitude of the present population.

We believe the Bible gives enough directions to come to a better world already now in our lifetime, even before the return of Christ. We do not have to wait until the wars to expect or the Big Battle or Armageddon, before we shall come to think about that better world. Already today, in our lifetime, we can show others fundamental truths of life.

Some might think utopians want all to become “puppets” handled by someone in charge of everything. But that is a wrong thought about the world envisioned by us. We are against any dictatorial system. It is a world whereby people freely agree to follow certain ethics and moral laws. We also do not say everybody has to do the same thing in the same manner. In our ‘utopian world’, there is enough freedom to act freely. Already now we can try to come to agreements to live a certain way, and this without any force or violence.

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Find also to read:

1. Misleading world, stress, technique, superficiality, past, future and positivism
2. Subcutaneous power for humanity 2 1950-2010 Post war generations
3. Are people willing to take the responsibility for others
4. Baby Boomers reaching retirement age, Demographic trends and New blood from abroad
5. Lower and middle-class youth becoming tiny cogs in a larger whole that they cannot control
6. Intellectual servility a curse of mankind
7. the Bible – God’s guide for life #3 Fast food or staple diet
8. the Bible – God’s guide for life #4 Not to get the best from our diet– or from ourselves
9. Determine the drive
10. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #4 Transitoriness #3 Rejoicing in the insistence
11. The Scensual World – Mission & Vision
12. Are Christianity and Capitalism Compatible?
13. Francis Fukuyama and ‘The End of History?’
14. The Upbringing of Ideas and the Extrapolation of Capitalism
15. Utopism has not ended
16. A famous individual by the name of Jesus of Nazareth

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Further related

1. Utopia! 
   Utopia basically means paradise. And, in these times of social, political and ecological upheaval, to dream of a utopian world in which these problems cease to exist is completely natural.
2. Utopia – Thomas More ****
3. Broaden the Narratives: Mistaken Orders<
4. Humanities Retribution
5. Anarchy, State and Utopia
6. Leon Trotzky
7. Globalism: a Letter
8. Money-Free World
9. Alternative Earth
10. The Citizen’s Convention on Climate: utopia or step towards change?
11. Utopia….State of bliss!
12. Technology, Utopia, and Horizon Zero Dawn
13. Are We There, Yet?
14. History Bends Toward Chaos
15. “How will i get a cappuccino in your political utopia?”
16. Why Common Sense Is So Uncommon
17. Nothing Learned
18. We Can Have Unity Without Unanimity
19. How to Get a Healthy Society
20. Rebecca Solnit on Hope
21. The Blank Slate of Outer Space
22. The Climate Crisis and the Need for Utopian Thinking
23. And The Greatest Of These…Is Love
24. An Ode Of Utopia

It’s Time real lovers of God to Stand and Speak Out!

On one article we reblogged over here (and as such did not write it ourselves) and in which there were used popular words by youngsters, somebody felt offended. It looks like she could not feel any empathy with the generation we and the author of the original article were talking about and brought herself calling us stupid people, though missing the whole point of that article and the discussion around it.

Extended Coloured family from South Africa showing some spectrum of human skin colouration

In our world we see still too many people who want to differentiate between skin colour and race. They continue to demand that there would be called or named the differences between people who live at the same place, instead of accepting everybody who lives there for what he is and for how he looks like. They insist that people who live already for many generations in a certain country or area would still have a referral to that long ago place of origin as if that place of origin of so many generations ago brought a blemish on that person. It looks like many do want that lots of people keep running around with the stain of their past and long death ancestors.

Today we see again a movement going on to put on all people labels, like Moroco, Turkish,  Arabic, Berber, Afro-American, etc.. Though those people may already live here for the 3rd, 4th or even 5th generation. As we spoke about the trend the Dutch Press requesting not to use the word ‘blank’ (fair) but now to use ‘wit’ (white) opposite ‘zwart’ (black) instead of ‘kleurling (coloured). Whilst certain newspapers still shall continue words as ‘blank’ and ‘kleurling’ (coloured) not looking at the different skin colour as something negative. Clearly the colour of the skin has become again a point of discussion and we are back to the way of return and pre-Martin Luther King-times, or the time of racial segregation with Apartheid.

Iranian-Belgian human rights activist Darya Safai playtoy of the rightwing political parties trying to limit the freedom of expression and freedom of religion

Several politicians are doing their best to come back to such a time and many migrants are helping them without them having a proper knowledge of what is happening. As such we may find the Iranian dentist Darya Safai who is used as a plaything by the Flemish Nationalists and/or right-wing political parties. The Iranian-Belgian human rights activist grew up in the Islamic Republic of Iran after the revolution of 1979. We can clearly see how she got traumatised with her experiences in Iran. There she experienced at first hand how it was to live as an oppressed woman in a religious dictatorship. But now she thinks this would also be so in Belgium or the countries around us. She insist that parents would have no say on the religious education they want to give at home and want to prohibit any person in our country to wear religious symbols or to have traditional attire.  She finds the schools must prohibit any religious dress-code. By doing so she wants the freedom of religion, the freedom of expression and the freedom of clothing restricted. By doing so see also endangers our democratic freedom.

After she was temporarily released on bail, she decided to flee Iran together with husband via Turkey to Belgium.  Instead of seeing that we want to be a free country where everybody should be able to live next to each other she now wants to create an other Iran where she shall be on the side of the dictators or decision makers. Though she says she wants to fight against discrimination she tries to bring in discriminating  measures, having children nor their parents the right to choose their own religion and how they want to be religious.

In December 2016, Darya Safai was awarded the title ‘Women Of Peace’ by the Belgian Secretary of State for Equal Opportunities at the Belgian Senate, for her fight for women’s rights, though at that time it was already clear she had a more unpleasant agenda.

Last week when  a state school was ordered to let 11 young girls (age 12) to wear their hijab to school inspite their ban on all religious symbols Safai went into heavy reaction again helping to have a growing stir in the debate

because when a judge rules that specific people can ignore a rule that counts for everyone, it will cause more division.

It is true that now other Muslim, Sikh, Jewish parents can go to court and achieve the same override for their kid. On the other hand by Safai her actions to forbid head-covering we now have Sikh kids in Sint-Truiden (Haspengouw Hesbaye), who cannot go any more to a state- or to a Catholic school because they are not allowed in with their head covering. For them and for those who want to wear a head-covering the only solution is to go to a private school. Safai forgets that this would cost the parents a lot more and that such private schools of a certain religion endangers our society more, because than there is no control by the school directorate and then the way to indoctrination is totally free and would be unnoticed. We also could see what happened already in one of the Antwerp Jewish schools a few weeks ago. We must be very careful with an overprotection and giving the opportunity to have youngsters drifting away.

Safai seems to think the same rules count over here as in her birthplace. She argues that the choice to wear a headscarf is not made by girls themselves. By this she underestimate the strong will of many Belgian girls. She says

“It’s not a free choice, when I see six-year-old girls wearing headscarves, I really wonder how they could decide that for themselves-it’s imposed on you and you live with them.”

For Safai the girls their head-covering is indeed a symbol of oppression.

“Men do not wear headscarves, that’s the best proof,”

Orthodox Christian pilgrim

said Safai, to which Vanhecke replied

“With Jews, only the men wear a yarmulke, and that is not seen as a symbol of oppression,”

Safai also forgets or probably does not know that in West Europe all kids from the 1940ies to 1960ies have had to cover their head as girls and we as boys had to cover (like the girls also) our limbs. No bare arms or are knees where to be seen and women at to sit on the left side of the church.  It is all still clear in our head also, how our parents and when we went swimming in the sea we had to cover most of our body. (Later, as hippies we went against those restrictions and ran even naked in nature.) And now a few years later what had to happen then suddenly should not be allowed any more. She also does it as if the head-covering is only a Muslim matter, forgetting that still today many religious Christian groups prescribe head-covering for their members.

Roman Catholic nuns – Roman Catholic nuns singing in choir. – Smith2006

Throughout the centuries of Church history, women have worn head coverings during the meetings of the church – that is, when “praying or prophesying” take place. In Europe the wearing of fabric head coverings in worship was also universally the practice of Christian women until the twentieth century and in several Reformed churches, Baptists, Christadelphian, Brethren and various Mennonites it is still the custom for young and old. In the South of Europe we may find lots of nuns of the Roman Catholic churches with a covering of their heads, whilst many women in the South (like Spain and Italy) still often have the head covering by means of a headscarf. In Eastern Orthodox churches, all women still cover their heads. With the old believers this may only be a headscarf, with the other Eastern Orthodox it may also be a veil.

Vanhecke, with good reason, thinks girls are also oppressed if they are not allowed to wear the headscarf.

“A religion obliges the headscarf, a society forbids it, that is the same principle.”

“You interfere in a fundamental right of parents to make choices for their children,”

says Vanhecke.

That what Safai tries to avoid she helps to create. One should avoid that we get such private religious schools as only possibility for religious people to give their kids an education. When we would have such specific Jewish, Hindu and/or Islam schools we make it much easier to have them a specific religious education or indoctrination and creating a generation which would be less adapted in our culture than those who grow up together with all sorts of kids from different nationalities and different religions. Instead of integrating them in a multicultural society Safai shall help to create a divided society with lots of racism.

So needless to say this situation actually causes the very religious division that the ban on head-covering tries to avoid.

Mieke Vanhecke (CD & V), ex-top woman of Catholic education, pleaded in Terzake for the right to wear a headscarf at school. Darya Safai (N-VA) continues to see it as a symbol of oppression. Vanhecke argues that not only Muslims are victims of the headscarf debate.

“A ban on headgear not only affects Muslims,”

says Vanhecke.

“In Sint-Truiden there were never any problems, the Sikh boys came to school with a turban, because of the ban they no longer have access to our school.”

Safia is convinced that children and young women can not make up their own mind what to wear. For her children nor women who wear the hijab impossibly can do that of their own will and impossibly can be happy clothing themself that way. Many like her she see misogyny and are convinced that they must be under dictation of a male dictator or male bully. Often we hear voices like

‘Her husband must have forced her’

‘Poor girl, she may not dress like she wants’

Safia like many right wing people can only think of suppression, seeing men’s orders and their power over women. Others love to shout

‘Unveil yourself’,

‘Hide not yourself”

‘Let us see your beauty’

Why should they have such a need to see the beauty of that woman? Why can they not respect that woman like she wants to dress herself?

Those people thinking women or girls who like to wear a head scarf of hijab are pushed by their family, do forget that there are enough strong women in Belgium who can make up their mind themselves. They do not need their fathers or their male partner to dictate what they should wear but even less should they have others to dictate what they should wear or may not wear. That last bit is what Darya Safai and many Nationalists and Neo-Nazis love to do.

Lots of those who call themselves Christian but oppose the freedom of other lovers of God, do forget that by doing so they go in against the Law of God. Their strong actions against Muslims and Jews also clearly show that they do not bear Jesus his teachings of love in their heart. Lots of them also do not understand that wearing a covering on the head may represent an ordainment from God and a submitting to the Most High. There are enough places in Scriptures which talk about such covering and reasons why and when to do it.

Those who are an atheist or do not believe in the One True God should not try to put their law above the Laws of God nor should they urge all others to live like them and to dress like them.

Many also do forget the use of a head-covering can just mean those women liberated themselves from the world and its attitudes. For many believers in the One True God it can mean just empowerment, liberation and freedom. Too many underestimate the European female and think they would be like the women in the Middle East used as slaves by the male figures around them. But we can see strong women who have made up their own mind and by their own choice and by their own intentions they dare to show their faith to others and are not afraid to be mocked at or to be looked at as of ‘not of this world’. They do not want to be of this world but of the world of God. For them that is more important than being a slave of this world where every body assumes he or she is free when they can have sex with as many as they can or drink as much as they want to do all the funniest things one can think of.

Mrs. Safai does as if those girls, when they would wear a head dress, never would be able to integrate in our society or would never be able to get work. When they would not get work because they wear a head covering, does that not tell more about the party who does not want to give her work? And does that not show how certain people do not want others to integrate in our community?

By the way, lots of right wing people do as if those Muslim girls who want to cover their head are foreigners, but a lot are girls and ladies who were before ‘white Belgian citizens’ and even belonging to Catholic families.

That many people are so much afraid that there would be so many converts to Mohammedanism tells also a lot about the weakness of most members of that faith. Lots of Roman Catholics and Protestants even not knowing the Name of God and never having read the Bible. If they would be standing strong in the faith we see no reason why they and others should be so afraid. The other way, Christians should come out and proclaim their faith to those who are no Christian. They should show people that Jesus is the way and show that Jesus his teaching is one of love and of comprehension and compassion. But most Belgians, Dutch and French people just show the opposite, showing their hate against immigrants and people who are different than they or who think differently than they.

Lots of people seem to have forgotten how we and our parents had to cover our body a few decades ago. Lots of them also forget that just because their western values don’t fit with a woman covering her hair and beauty, it still could be a personal choice for that person covering herself. Many do forget that their Western values are way out from our Christian Western values and norms.

Today so many oppose people who have an other opinion. We also see the right wing people wanting so much that every body would dance to their will.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said,

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

These days we are going backwards because several people want to push their will unto others. They want an exclusive white state for themselves with only believers in that what they believe and in that what they call Christian values, but are not at all Christian values.

In Belgium we can find  more and more Muslim children in community education, especially with regard to other educational networks we may find a larger influx of students from other cultures in general in the state schools. When these children want to show their own faith in the form of clothing, they often do so out of their own convictions, but because these young people are not yet adults, they often take over the prevailing morality of their immediate environment and of society. If we compare this with the Flemish youths of indigenous origin, we notice a big difference, but according to us that is easy to explain. After all, with many Flemish young people there is a great ignorance of the church, while the Muslim children are more often socialized in their ideology.
The total banning of religious signs would thus be a violation of religious freedom. We should resist such a thing.
That a lot of inhabitants of Belgium, Holland and France do not want to stand open for other cultures we should try to avoid in the next generations by introducing the various cultures from the early years in childhood.

Dyab Abou Jahjah in 2008.

The Belgian-Lebanese Arab political activist and writer Dyab Abou Jahjah, claims that

‘hatred in Flanders is mainstream’

and

‘racism determines the agenda’.

When you follow certain reactions and talks it gives the impression not enough people want to react against that dangerous trend.

Christian people should let others know that all people have the same value because we are created by the same One True God. We all are being allowed to live on this globe and are given talents which can be used to help others. All people in a community have to complement each other.
Each person should know that racism devalues people. Non believers should come to see that Christ has broken down racial doors and overcomes divisive thinking by creating for himself a new nation through his death and resurrection. Every Christian should help to build a loving world by showing his love for others, be them of no believe or any other believe than Christianity.
When the politicians are not doing their job properly to build a multicultural peaceful state, the Christians needs to lead the way.
When you are a Christian do not wait until it is too late!

Let your voice be heard and speak up for the weaker ones in our society and for those who humiliated and shut out.

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Preceding articles

What is important?

Enough with the Clothes Shaming of Muslim Women

Anti-Semitic pressure driving Jews out of Europe

The Mountain: Radical Love

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Additional reading

1. Vliegend spaghettimonster en Gelijke behandeling voor elke overtuiging
2. Parenthood made more difficult
3. Uncertainty, shame and no time for vacillation
4. Migrants to the West #2
5. On French beach French police forces woman to undress in public
6. Pew Research: How People in Muslim Countries Believe Women Should Dress
7. Allowing dress code according liberty of religion
8. Coverings Worn by Muslim Women
9. The Dress Code for Women in the Quran
10. Meditating Muslimah on “hijab to be a religious obligation”
11. French showing to the whole world their fear and weakness
12. Christians, secularism, morals and values
13. Trusting present youngsters who are not necessary evil
14. Overprotection and making youngsters drifting away
15. Today’s thought “And he counted it to him for righteousness” (January 12)
16. Listening to the lessons of the Bible and looking for ways to please God

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Related

1. Hijab 1
2. Hijab 2
3. The Meaning of Hijab
4. I Tried Wearing a Hijab (sort of)
5. The hijab of ignorance
6. Cultural Bias
7. An Imagined Offence
8. The Irony of Hijabs!!
9. Transition: My Hijab Story
10. Hijab: Oppression or Freedom?
11. Hijab in Islam and other religions
12. Hijab | Zanzibar, Tanzania
13. Women unite for World Hijab Day, which is Today
14. Happy World Hijab Day 2018!
15. Pearls and swines – loose priorities – the hijab-saga in perspective
16. Hidden Pearl Hijab Review
17. Hijab ‘Attack’ Condemned By Canada’s Prime Minister Was A Hoax
18. My Hijab Story
19. The Secret Hijabi
20. What My Hijab Means To Me
21. Perspective: Hijab is Oppression or Freedom?Newspeak and the politics of fear

Turkey: A dictatorship by any other name

I could not resist to reblog this nice overview by the musician Philip Lee, of what a dictatorship implies or means. I would have loved it to be placed on my private blog Marcus Ampe’s Space, but at the moment I am very far behind by posting my personal visions and non-religious articles. Not fitting yet in the series nor in my other blogspot “Our World” I am publishing it here in the hope you may enjoy it too.

In his article the writer looks at how a dictatorship gives total power to its ruler and its hallmark which is often a cult of personality. In Turkey Erdogan managed to built up his personal ‘cultus’ very cleverly, being patient enough to get his goal. As the the 12th President of Turkey since 2014 Erdogan has done all he could to bring the country back to 80 years ago concerning the way of life but this time in an economically much improved country, that must be said. though he handy made use of war to divert attention from domestic problems.

Today we not only see a dictatorship in Russia and Turkey, soon there is one looming around the corner with Trump and some other nationalists, who get the citizens in their trap by telling them lots of lies and making them cross against those who were before them so that attention on any default of them is taken away by diversion.

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Remember

• current State of Emergency rule = wide net targetting coup conspirators + Erdoğan’s opponents => After 2016 coup, thousands arrested + thousands of civil servants (supporters of the many secular-oriented officials who opposed Erdoğan in the past) ousted from their jobs => eliminating any criticism or opposition.
• President Erdoğan targeting anyone who doesn’t support him > silence anyone who is critical of the ruling AKP party >by ongoing state of emergency
• Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) >  breakdown of a peace process + escalating conflict between Turkish security forces + armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party => mounting civilian deaths + multiple human rights violations.
• Freedom of expression + freedom of the press curtailed or drastically censored > shutdown of newspapers + magazines

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Related articles

1. Erdogan warns Europeans’ risk being ‘unsafe’ as feud rages with EU — Unless this stops “no European, no Westerner will be able to take steps on the street safely and peacefully.”
2. Erdogan Turkey Germany – CWEB.com
3. Did President Erdogan Threaten Europe Amid London Terror Attack?
4. Turkey: The Unholy Clash of Interests, Terrorism and Politics, Islam and Islamists
5. Video: Erdogan Treatens Europe Hours Before UK Terrorist Attack
6. Turkey’s Move to Lead the European Caliphate
7. Is it not time to call a halt to Erdogan’s fascism? Video Turkey’s President Erdogan: Soon Europeans ‘Will Not Walk Safely on Their Streets’ — The Muslim Issue
8. Turkey: The Return of the Sultan
9. Trumpocalypse 2017: At least we’re not Turkey
10. Erdoğan Threatens Europe
11. Erdoğan: Turks Must Outbreed Whites
12. Is Turkey’s President Erdogan Working Directly With ISIS to Bring Terror
13. Turkey, NATO: Getting Closer to Divorce

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Further related articles

• UN accuses Turkey of ‘massive destruction, killings and numerous other serious human rights violations’ in Kurdish southeast
• Turkey shuts down US aid group Mercy Corps as relations with Washington deteriorate
• U.N. experts seek international court ruling on North Korean human rights violations
• Russia ‘to train US-allied Kurds in Syria’
• Austrian bishops slam human rights abuses in PH
• Investigate Attack On Amnesty International, SERAP Tells Buhari, Osinbajo
• Interior ministry dismisses HRW’s Mosul minors detention accusations
• Rights group urges Libyan general to probe killings
• SERAP to Buhari, Osinbajo: Investigate mob attack on Amnesty International

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Quintessentialruminations

A dictatorship gives total power to its ruler and its hallmark is often a cult of personality.

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Women in France running with naked bosom all right but with covered bosom penalised

Prudish people having put away their shame by causing shame to others

Years ago people had to fight hard against the prudish Catholic minds who opposed any naked flesh to be shown. Today the so called Catholic countries in West Europe seem to have chosen to have the women their tits out and finding it not okay to cover them up.

In the previous century there were many French and Belgians who did find it inappropriate to have some natural flesh of certain body parts to be shown in public. It was considered not done to have dresses which did not come under the knees. (We where brought up like that and got penalties when we had dared to show our bare/naked legs or upper arms.) Last century it was said we all had to listen to God and could not run naked in this world because God opposed such a thing.

Today their god must have changed idea and has come to prefer naked flesh, because in the present time the French seem not to look at those who want to cover their body as unworthy believers and even as people who are a danger for society.

Covering up for the Almighty

When we were young our Catholic mothers had to wear headscarf or hats when coming in public. In church they had to sit at the left hand site with their faces hidden behind a veil. In the previous century most people in Europe thought it was appropriate to dress decently and not having too much bare or naked. Mots parts of the body had to be covered with clothing or tissue.

Only around the turn of the century  less people came to make objections when some parts of the body were not covered. Today it looks like the world has got upside down. What for centuries was thought to be the moral way and according to Judeo Christian values, suddenly seems to be not acceptable any more.

People, like female Muslims, who now choose to cover up for God, are not allowed to do so by the French governement. Europeans should question such a decision taken by a governement in West Europe and see how human rights (freedoms established by custom or international agreement that impose standards of conduct on all nations) are  trespassed. Today we can see in France that many specific human rights are ignored. What happened to the the right to personal or individual liberty and Due Process of Law; to freedom of thought, clothing, expression, religion, organization, and movement; to freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, religion, age, language, and sex?

Restrictions imposed

In West Europe we encounter more that certain social groups are confined to menial and despised jobs or even get no opportunity on the work-market. When somebody is called Mohammed he may be sure it will be much more difficult to get a job than when he would be called Jef. Arabic looking people shall find it more difficult to be able to rent a place or to buy property.

In Europe they say there does not exist a cast system (or caste) but if they are not careful it will come in existence or (better said) it will grow (because it is already here but denied). In our 21st century ‘Untouchability‘ and ‘Speciesism‘ have become a reality also in Western Europe. We can clearly see that more and more different values, rights, or special consideration is given to individuals solely on the basis of their species membership, origin and faith. There are many who are not minding positive discrimination and taking it up for one particular religious group (the Roman catholics). Today we may find the atheist caste wanting to direct the Christian-caste, Islamic-caste, and may we find different rejections of castes or groups of people.

It seems that France and Belgium are limiting the human rights laws for some groups in their population, which should give us the idea they are discriminating. By singling out a type of person or thing for special negative treatment or denial of equal treatment and to act in a prejudicial manner against someone or something, they have chosen the way of deprivation of individual liberty.

Oppression

Lots of Caucasians seem to think that all those women are oppressed, but is it not they who know bring oppression and take away those women’s freedom to cloth themselves like they want? Clearly we could see several women being downtrodden, maltreated, henpecked, browbeaten and subjugated or abused and tyrannized.

The country

which prides itself for liberté, égalité, fraternité, has unfortunately fallen short in recent times, with more social division and social prejudice arising within the country, due to the public suppression and rejection of religion; the consequent of which has led to violent eruptions.
It is also precisely through the social persecution of the wider Islamic community in such acts which aim to strip them of their beliefs, that it seems that the French government are validating individuals’ fears, rather than attempting to diffuse them. {France’s banning of the ‘Burqini’ is the rejection of its founding principles}

Swimwear

Forbidden: a burkini-clad woman on the beach

This iconic image of Peggy Moffitt modelling Gernreich’s monokini, which got a lot of controversy, was initially published in Women’s Wear Daily on June 3, 1964 and shows how one was still afraid to show a naked tummy.

What should people have against a full body swimsuit for any sort of woman, being Catholic or Muslim? (When we were child our parents had to wear full swimsuits or where fined.) Shall people, who went diving, have to take off their wetsuit before they come onto the beach? If they may walk on the beach with a wetsuit why not women in a full swimsuit?
Why are so many against wearing a swimming costume which covers the whole body with the exception of the face, hands, and feet, suitable for wear by Muslim women, which got the name bourkini/burkini/burqini, but has nothing to do with a bourka/burka/burqa or with the rider’s burka/burqa, which is long, thickpiled, nor with the traditional man’s coat made from felt or karakul, or with the Ukrainian traditional garment or Kobeniak, or with a two-piece bathing costume called bikini (or close-fitting bathing suit worn by men) and even less with a monokini, being just the opposite of it?

Women their freedom taken away

Are so many West Europeans so afraid women cannot stand up for themselves? And certain feminists do they not see there is much more at hand than just sexism?

We must be aware that there is so much more going on in our deranged world where Jihadi terrorist managed to get the fear burning hard over here in our regions that nobody seems to feel at ease when they see something that smells to Islamism. The politicians fell in the trap by creating laws in a hurry which limits the freedom of many women who have nothing to do at all with the faith of those terrorists, because they have chosen the path of God and a religion of peace or salam, hence the name Islam.

The Mayor of Cannes has prohibited access to the beach for those wearing clothing that disrespects secularism Reuters

By prohibiting the burkini the French state limits even more those they say would be oppressed. It is strange that lots of people do not understand those women wearing a burkini get just the freedom to go into the water or to lie on the beach like so many other women do.  By banning the burkini those women their freedom to enjoy a good day at the beach is taken away. By the ban also their children are targeted, because they also shall not be able to come to the beach and to go into the water to play with their mother.

The justification for the burkini ban is no longer about ‘liberating’ women, ….. but Arundhati Roy’s remarks about France’s earlier ban on the burka are still apt:

Suzanna Arundhati Roy , Indian author who is best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997

When, as happened recently in France, an attempt is made to coerce women out of the burka rather than creating a situation in which a woman can choose what she wishes to do, it’s not about liberating her but about unclothing her. It becomes an act of humiliation and cultural imperialism. Coercing a woman out of her burka is as bad as coercing her into one. It’s not about the burka. It’s about the coercion.

Arundhati Roy Capitalism: A Ghost Story, p. 37.

Armed police forcing women to remove their clothes on the beach is nothing other than an act of humiliation – humiliating women to punish a minority group for the actions of a few individuals. {France and the Burkini}

Huda Jawad, Community Coordinator at Standing Together Against Domestic Violence, wrote

Choosing to conflate a cultural and religiously inspired mode of attire – which women choose to wear to feel safe from the sexual gaze of society while partaking in a very ordinary pastime – with a terrorist group is a convenient ‘othering’ of fellow citizens in times of national crisis. {The burkini ban is misogynistic – and Western feminists are turning a blind eye}

Secularism, good attitude and proper values

You may wonder why those women in burkini would not wear appropriate swimwear and would not “respect good customs and secularism” whilst others with their bare poo and bare bosom would be an example how women should be clothed and are respecting the western values.

There exist already a lot of discriminatory treatment towards physically unattractive people. Now to that ‘Lookism‘ we have the discriminatory view of men who can not see enough naked flesh are can not find enough to look at by a woman.

Today people not only make judgements of others based on their physical appearance that influence how they respond to those people, when their clothes are not liked by French men such men may now demand those clothes to be taken off.

The announcement by David Lisnard, UMP Mayor of Cannes, that he is prohibiting access to the beach to anyone not wearing what the French would consider suitable bathing suits, did not make many French question, what right he had, to decide a woman had to wear on the beach and why he choose the more naked version of the feminine, instead of a more clothed, and what believers in God would call a more decent one.

Victims of ISIS, the scapegoat of the French nation

Lots of people consider themselves victim of ISIS but forget that the worst victims are Islamists or ordinary Muslim people all over the world. Europeans and Americans may not be blind and should see that the greatest causalities of Isis have been Muslims, and the banning of the burkini illustrates the extent to which France’s fundamentalist secularism is singling out the most visible and vulnerable group in society for blame.

The governement is giving in and has found its scapegoat and used the local Muslims to blame for the terror the security forces of the country could not avoid or obstruct. Like the Fascist in the past liked Scapegoating many Europeans and Americans now blame the refugees and Muslims for the many problems they have in their country. In the past Jews and immigrants were prominent among the groups that were demonized. In France the Jews got a sibling now in the Muslim community. Today it is not a “Judeo-Masonic-bolshevik” conspiraciy or left-wing agitation, but the presence of immigrants and the amount of active Muslims.

As in the past the governement points the finger to those ‘outcasts’ and originators of all sin. They go with the people and hope to gain popularity by taking measures against the Ummah or Muslim community, making their life so difficult that they hope those other believers will soon leave. Implication was that depriving these demons of their power and influence would cause the nation’s major problems to go away.

Lots of people are afraid that those Muslims would be able to convert many French and that the nation by those converts would be more and more becoming an Islamic state.

Limiting the liberty of Muslims and other believers

Now by limiting the liberty of the Muslims in their own country the governement hopes to please the rest of the population and to take the attention away from their own weakness and the blame they have it not in control.

The governement, because of all the discussions going on about the burkini’s and religious clothing, decided that when the schools will open again, no religious dress or symbol shall be allowed, and as such no head covering for Jews and Muslims or necklaces with religious symbols.

Education minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, a former government spokesperson who is politically more to the left than former interior minister Valls and disagrees with the burqini ban could not stop the measures.

For the start of the debate, concerning the burqini Huda Jawad  also questioned in the Daily Independent

Since when did wearing a burkini, in most cases a loose fitting nylon version of a wetsuit, become an act of allegiance to terrorist movements? Do Marks & Spencer or House of Fraser know that their attempt to raise profits and exploit a gap in the over-saturated clothing market is selling and promoting allegiance to Isis? {The burkini ban is misogynistic – and Western feminists are turning a blind eye}

She also remarks

What is it about French secularism’s blindspot to its own racism and misogyny? The obsession to the point of fetishism with Muslim women’s mode of dress and covering curtails the most basic of human rights – that of self-determination and freedom of expression. As Arundhati Roy so eloquently put it, coercing a woman out of the burka instead of enabling her to choose is an act of violence, humiliation and cultural imperialism. Instead of extending the hand of fraternité, Mr Lisnard and his supporters are excluding Muslims, if not pushing them into the arms of radicalisers. {The burkini ban is misogynistic – and Western feminists are turning a blind eye}

Making the Muslims stigmatised as the bogeyman, that scarecrow seems already frightening lots of French people. They are pushing the golliwog in the corner or throwing in front of the swines that in the end they shall have to defend themselves so strongly and make their faith and stance even stronger, so that a new religious revolt can take place. Perhaps than the French shall get their eyes opened and shall be awakened from their cauchemard (their nightmare) they are afraid of.

Today, Friday 26 August 2016, France’s highest administrative court has suspended a ban on the burkini in a test case brought by human rights groups, pending a definitive ruling.

The ruling from the state council suspends a single ban in the southern town of Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice, but is likely to set a precedent for other towns that have prohibited the full-body swimwear on their beaches.

According to a senior politician in Norway’s right-wing Progress Party (FrP) Norway also has to follow the lead of a number of French towns and ban the burkini. Third deputy, Aina Stenersen, claims the full-body swimsuits worn by some Muslim women are “a symbol of radical Islam” and is convinced that French cities did right to ban the burqini from their beaches. The Progress Party is in the process of formulating a new party manifesto, and the burkini ban is expected to be included.

The FrP does, however, believe the fine faced by those who wear burkinis in France is too lenient. Ms Stenersen intends to double the charge to around 500 kroner, which is equivalent to £57.

A story to be continued and démarche or kick-off to be followed up .

To welcome women wearing burqini’s and coming into public spaces

Marcel Michelson for Forbes writes

Yes, wearing a burkini on the beach, as wearing a burka in town, is an ostentatious sign of religious adherence, as is the wearing of full robes by priests and nuns in public or the traditional garments and hairstyles of orthodox Jews.

Yet a burkini is also a means of emancipation for Muslim women, allowing them to bathe despite the strict, male-dominated, rules under which they have to lead their lives.

In a way, we should welcome burkini’s and encourage Muslims to integrate more in French, or European, society. {Burkini Debate In France Shows Lack Of Tolerance And Understanding Out Of Fear For Strangers}

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Please come to read:

1. On French beach French police forces woman to undress in public
2. Is Europe going to become a dictatorial bastion
3. France and the Burkini
4. Islamophobia or nah?
5. Bitches, Puhleeeeze….
6. The Burkini
7. The Burkini Ban
8. France’s top court to rule on burkini ban
9. My Burkini and I
10. Universal concern: not naked enough
11. This gif sums up the whole ‘debate’ on #BurkiniBan
12. Burkini must be banned, France’s Sarkozy says as he launches election campaign
13. France’s War on the Burqini
14. Dear white people of France: being forced to undress wasn’t exactly the liberation I was longing for
15. Thoughts on Burqini
16. Modest Swimwear: The Burkini
17. Burkini and French Secularism
18. France’s banning of the ‘Burqini’ is the rejection of its founding principles.
19. 7 facts about France’s burkini ban that make outsiders very uncomfortable
20. Planned ‘Burqini Day’ irks French far-rights
21. The Swimsuit War of 2009: Year In Review 2009 (swimming)
22. France’s highest court suspends burkini ban in test case
23. Burkini ban: Norway’s right-wing Progress Party calls for full-body swimsuit to be outlawed

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Further related articles

1. French Web Round-Up: 5 Things That Made Me Smarter This Week
2. Sea Water, Sweat and Tears
3. Please exit calmly and quietly.
4. Is EU discriminating against Israel by labeling settlement goods?
5. Landlords Will Face Tougher Consequences For Discriminating Against (Most) Renters With Criminal Records: Gothamist
6. U.S. House of Representatives’ Chaplain Accused of Discriminating Against Atheism, Judaism and other Minority Religions
7. 3 Helpful Hints on Dismantling Racial Boundaries in the Classroom
8. On My Mind (Vol. 4)
9. I’m Gonna Dress Like a Charlie Brown Ghost Next Time I Go Swimming
10. What does it mean to cover?
11. Ban The Burka
12. What women need is security
13. Breaking News: France requesting to Saudi Arabia’s ‘Morality Police’ for training their police force!
14. Islam, France, Burkini: A chit chat on FB
15. Third French burqini ban after Corsica clashes
16. Beach Party Outside French Embassy Protests The Burkini Ban On French Beaches
17. East Essence: Shop Islamic Clothes For Your Whole Family!
18. True life story- Two plastic sacks
19. Waitress
20. Yttrandefriheten: Opinion live?
21. Di burkini e di diritti
22. Burqini dan Islamophobia Prancis
23. Τα Marks&Spencer, έβγαλαν και μπουργκίνι, μαγιό για μουσουλμάνες
24. Τη θέση του μπικίνι παίρνει το … μπουρκίνι

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