Gender Identity Confusion?

Editor's Notes:
For  those of us who are of mature years, can you believe that children are being taught "gender identity" in which they are taught that their gender may not coincide with their biological gender? Can you believe that a 6 year female student may be told that she may not be a "girl" in her gender identity?

In an effort to be "fair" to all children, does confusing those who already knew what gender they were born aid to enlightenment or stupidity?

This article is preserved here for the enlightenment, research, of those who may not have had the occasion to know about this article. 
 

Barbara Kay: When gender identity education and theory goes wrong

A family is asking a school board to ensure that lessons do 'not devalue, deny, or undermine … the female gender identity'

A family has lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario over the distress their six-year-old daughter experienced when informed by a teacher that gender is fluid and “girls are not real.”

In his recent commentary in these pages on the risks associated with the teaching of gender theories to elementary schoolchildren, Jordan Peterson referenced a column I wrote in another publication. The column concerned a human rights complaint, filed by Pamela and Jason Buffone on behalf of their daughter, “N,” against the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board for discrimination on the basis of gender and gender identity in contravention of the Human Rights Code.

Peterson faithfully summarized the story that led to the complaint, but readers may be interested in a few points about the complaint and the response from the school board’s lawyer that Peterson omitted as not directly salient to the thrust of his thesis.

To recap briefly: the Buffones’ daughter "N", six years old, and by their account a happy girl (comfortable in her skin, adored school), was abruptly plunged into considerable distress when informed by her teacher (young, three years experience) during a session on gender identity that gender is fluid and untethered to biology, and that “girls are not real” and “boys are not real.”

The lessons continued and so did N’s distress

The lessons continued and so did N’s distress, to the point of asking to see a doctor about her fears. The Buffones say in their claim that “they were concerned about the impact (on) N’s view of herself as a girl. Prior to (the teacher’s) discussions with the Grade One class, N had consistently identified as a girl and had not previously expressed uncertainty or discontent with her gender identity and biological sex.”

 The Buffones had asked the teacher to affirm N’s identity as a girl — that is, reassure her that her identity as female was “real” in order to relieve her anxiety. Nothing that the Buffones asserted was denied by the school or its officials, but their request was rebuffed out of hand, first by the teacher, who said her lessons reflected “a change within society,” then by the principal, and all the way up the ladder to the superintendent of the school board and the curriculum superintendent.

 They removed N to another school, where these gender theories are not taught, and where her mother told me she has recovered her wonted buoyancy.

In their Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario claim, the Buffones request as a remedy that the tribunal order the school board to ensure that classroom instruction does “not devalue, deny, or undermine in any way the female gender identity,” and that parents be informed “when lessons on gender identity will take place, including the teaching objectives and the materials that will be or have been used for such lessons.”

The response of the school board’s lawyers, who asked for dismissal of the complaint, state the claim has no reasonable basis for success. The lawyers note that teachers’ right to teach gender identity is endorsed by the minister of education, and that the “age-appropriateness of a classroom discussion does not engage a Code-protected prohibited ground.” That is to say, even if N was adversely affected by the teacher’s lessons — and they do not deny that this is the case — she has no grounds for redress according to the Human Rights Code.

If the school board is successful in its bid for dismissal, it means that the words “gender identity” and “gender expression” do not apply to everyone. They apply only to those whose gender identity does not synchronize with their biology — the protection of a biologically female child to identify as a girl would not be protected. Feelings of distress among the very small percentage of children whose gender identity differs from their biological sex must be alleviated at all cost. If that cost involves distress or confusion in the vast majority of other children like N, that is not “discrimination.”

The Buffones are not buying this (while acknowledging the human rights tribunal may well do so). The Ontario Human Rights Code takes a fairly broad view of discrimination. It states, for example, that a “poisoned environment” is a form of discrimination. The Buffones are “going to provide evidence that the manner in which (the teacher) was teaching the concept of gender identity resulted in a poisoned environment.”

It is clear that something is going terribly wrong with regard to gender teaching in Ontario classrooms.

I wish the Buffones well, and so do many other people. On social media many people applauded the Buffones’ courage in going public on behalf of other parents with similar stories who haven’t the confidence to take such a definitive step.

One respondent, who wishes anonymity, told me her son’s story, which bore similarities to N’s in that the child had never shown the slightest sign of gender confusion before lessons on gender theory began in school, with children being encouraged to identify along a spectrum rather than asserting they were either “girl” or “boy.” Out of the blue (I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard this phrase used in this connection), he came home one day and announced he was “pansexual” and a “demi-girl.”

The parents took their son to see a psychologist. When she was told the name of the school and teacher, the therapist exclaimed, “You are the seventh set of parents from that class who have come to me with this problem!”

It is clear that something is going terribly wrong with regard to gender teaching in Ontario classrooms. Ontario must set up an investigative task force, composed of disinterested educators, disinterested gender researchers and parents, to objectively evaluate the teaching of gender identity in public schools.

• Email: kaybarb@gmail.com

Carbon Dioxide - The MORE the BETTER!

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not carbon – and the difference is more than just a matter of knowing enough chemistry to distinguish an element from a compound. It's a matter of distinguishing a black solid that, in the form of fine soot particles, can cause respiratory diseases from an odorless, colorless gas that is non-toxic at any concentration and non-dangerous at concentrations 20 times the current 400 parts per million (ppm) in our atmosphere.

To call CO2 "carbon pollution" is not only bad chemistry and toxicology but also bad biology.

Carbon dioxide is essential to plant growth. The higher its concentration, the better plants grow. A study by researchers at the Technische Universität München found forests around the world growing up to 70 percent faster today than 50 years ago because of increased CO2.

As thousands of empirical studies have found, on average, every doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes about a 35 percent increase in plant growth efficiency. Plants grow better in wetter and drier soils and in warmer and colder temperatures, widening their ranges and increasing their adaptability to climate changes, reducing the risk of biodiversity loss. They make better use of soil nutrients, resist diseases and pests better, and improve the ratio of fruit to fiber.

The consequence is more food for people and animals. Most important, it means more affordable food for the poor.

A review of refereed literature on the subject found the "monetary value of this benefit amount[ed] to a total sum of $3.2 trillion over the 50-year period 1961–2011. Projecting the monetary value … forward … reveals it will likely bestow an additional $9.8 trillion on crop production between now and 2050."

So any argument to reduce CO2 emissions must offset the fact that increasing CO2's concentration in the atmosphere enhances food production.

Advocates have their answer. It's all the negative "impacts" (note the pejorative) of the warming rising CO2 will cause. That takes us to the nub of the controversy: How much does added CO2 warm the atmosphere?

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests "climate sensitivity" (atmospheric warming in response to doubled CO2 concentration) of 1.5 C to 4.5 C.

That estimate of rests solely on the output of computer climate models. Their output is not data (raw observations of the external world) but hypotheses. So climate models' simulations aren't evidence of anything, they're guesses to be tested. And they fail.

On average, they simulate twice the warming observed over the relevant period. Over 95 percent simulate more warming than observed, so their errors are not random (evenly distributed above and below observations) but driven, intentionally or not, by bias. And none simulated the complete absence of warming over the last 18 years and 8 months.

Not surprisingly, top climate scientists have, as Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry has tracked on her blog, been reassessing "climate sensitivity," basing their estimates not on models but on empirical observation. They're tending, as the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation reported last year, toward estimates in the range of 0.3 C to 1.0 C (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) or 1.25 C to 3.0 C with a best estimate of 1.75˚ (Lewis and Crok). With those lower ranges, the "impacts" of "climate change" dwindle, and benefits might well outweigh costs.

So the models are wrong. Therefore they provide no rational basis for predicting future "global average temperature," or for calculating the "social cost of 'carbon' [dioxide]," or for any policy.

Reducing CO2 emissions would require less dependence on fossil fuels, which now provide over 85 percent of all the energy humans consume and are likely to continue to do so through probably the end of this century. But they are our best source for the abundant, affordable, reliable energy indispensable to any society's growing and staying out of poverty. Forcing the substitution of wind, solar and biofuels means raising the cost and reducing both the quantity and the reliability of energy available, which means slowing, stopping or reversing mankind's growth out of poverty.

It follows that we shouldn't embrace any such policy.

E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D.
Founder and National Spokesman
The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

Ancient Trees

“They studied giant redwoods, the tallest trees on earth in Humboldt County California to reach these conclusions. They hypothesized and verified experimentally that as trees reached the height of 425 they could pump less and less water and nutrients up to new growth at that level. No current tree in the world has reached this height.

In effect, maximum tree growth is limited by gravity and friction.

Scientist George Koch and colleagues believe that they have established the upper limit for tree height. In an article entitled “Study Limits Maximum Tree Height”, by Jonathan Amos, which appeared in the BBC News Online in April 2004, that maximum tree height is about 425 feet.

Back in 1938, some scientists were speculating that the earth was shrinking and gravity along with it because of a huge petrified pine tree, well over three hundred feet tall found in the Rainbow Petrified Forest in Arizona.

In article sub-titled “Recent Discoveries in Petrified Forest Leads to Belief This Old Globe Is Gradually Contracting” (The Ogden Standard-Examiner, February 13. 1938) various scientists discussed the idea that at the time this petrified tree with its huge root system lived on the earth, its circumference was approximately 30,000 miles rather than the current 25,000. The larger earth would have exerted an attenuated (weaker) gravitational force on the trees and animals of that time.

According to the scientists quoted in the article,

“Since the newly discovered petrified tree Is of the Araucarias species, a form of pine which, when its sap is running, is of considerable weight, it probably weighed per lineal foot as much as modern-day smaller trees, and therefore seems to indicate that the magnetism and force of gravity of the earth at the’ time it grew were more dissipated, an indication that the earth itself possessed a greater diameter.”

These petrified trees had been transformed into onyx, jasper, agate, carnelian and chalcedony. Today, the giant redwoods are the growth champions. The various varieties of Araucarias would not have been expected to reach the same exalted heights.

The discovery that caused this scientific introspection occurred in 1938.

What the authors had overlooked in finding a petrified 300 foot plus tree of the Araucarias variety and finding themselves perplexed by it, is that a much larger tree had already been discovered in —Texas by federal geologists.

had been discovered in a petrified forest in Texas. According to an article in the Sunday, January 23, 1927 Port Arthur News, a petrified tree of the

Based on common sense, experience and the scientific article quoted herein establishing 425 feet as the upper limit for tree height, clearly something anomalous was going on in the distant past. Perhaps, more properly the earth’s current gravity is the anomaly.

According to the article, the forest is situated in a virtually inaccessible region in a valley of the Big Bend, nearly 100 miles from the nearest railroad spur at that time.

The forest was immodestly referred to as the greatest Petrified Forest known to man.

Mere stumps of trees rose 100 to 150 feet into the air. A thick covering of volcanic ash and pumice stone is said to have covered the trees and it is thought by the geologists/discoverers to have come from a volcano in the nearby Chisos mountains.

“One tree trunk measured 896 feet in length and the upright trunks are so large that they appear from a distance to be great symmetrical columns of natural rock. These federal geologists tell the -story. They have visited this distant valley, which is split by a deep arroyo leading into the Rio Grande.”

Clearly, if what this 1927 story reports is true, that 900 foot tree is more than twice that was projected by some scientists working in that field, as the maximum tree size obtainable in today’s gravity conditions. This means that gravity was somehow attenuated in the “distant” past.”

(I won’t rest until all of the greater-ancestors are found. Side Note: I was given a short list by an evolutionist during a debate and Redwood trees was on his list, previously it was on my difficulty-list along with rabbits, blue whales, as well as animals with giant in front of their name.) Chris L Lesley

Ooparts & Ancient High Technology website: http://s8int.com/-

by Greater Ancestors World Museum on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 10:35pm

Parent's Dilemma: I Hesitated to Vaccinate my Children - Mike Lake

[Editor: We publish this information for education, research, to benefit other parents who may have had the same problem as Mike Lake and his family. We take no credit for this information but wish to have it archived here for future reference of parents.]

Parents Dilemma

I hesitated to vaccinate my children. I know better now!

Mike Lake: Like all parents, we wanted to do the right thing. But one study, still thought to be credible at the time, made it harder to decide

 The last week of April marks an interesting intersection in time. April is World Autism Month. The last week of April is also World Immunization Week. For many years now, there’s been a raging debate over the link between autism and vaccinations.


Robust, healthy debate is a core element of any strong society, but lately, this particular debate has become decidedly unhealthy. Though the evidence weighs strongly in favour of vaccines, the anti-vaccination movement uses compelling emotional arguments and the power of social media very well. The results are alarming, with parents increasingly opting out of safe and effective immunization for their children, fearing they might develop autism.

For context, in February of 1998, a British researcher named Andrew Wakefield co-authored a paper in The Lancet claiming to find a connection between autism and the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine commonly used around the world.

Wakefield’s claims have since been thoroughly debunked by researchers worldwide. The paper was retracted by The Lancet, and Wakefield banned by the U.K.’s General Medical Council (GMC) from practicing medicine. The GMC report ruled that Wakefield was “dishonest, irresponsible and showed callous disregard” for children.

For me, this issue is very personal. In April 1998, just a couple of months after the publication of Wakefield’s study, my son Jaden was diagnosed with autism at age two-and-a-half. Like many parents receiving the news, his mother and I were desperate for answers. Jaden’s challenges were profound and seemed to have arisen suddenly. We wanted an explanation, and Wakefield’s research provided one, especially since Jaden had experienced a persistent fever in the hours after his first MMR shot a year earlier.

When our daughter, Jenae, was born in 1999, we were divided on how to deal with vaccines for both kids. Their mom wanted to wait. I disagreed, but still had my own questions. Like all parents, we wanted to do the right thing, and the Wakefield study, still thought to be credible then, made it harder to know just what that right thing was.



Luke Hendry/The Intelligencer/QMI Agency

In the end, we delayed vaccinations for both kids. Jenae received hers five years ago. And, as a happy result of conversations about my research for this article, we’ve looked into Jaden’s measles immunity and discovered that he needs one more shot, which he’ll get in the coming weeks.
We must understand some crucial facts about the life-saving benefits of vaccines.

We’re sharing our story now because it needs to be told. The significant noise created by a vocal minority is drowning out actual evidence that parents need as they sincerely try to make the best decisions they can for their kids.

Experts are united on this. The Canadian Paediatric Society states that “the MMR vaccine does not cause autism. There is no scientific evidence to support this claim.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. has an entire page on its website under the unequivocal headline “Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism.”

There’s a rock-solid evidence base of major studies from around the world, involving millions of children. One 2015 study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at over 95,000 children with older siblings, concluding that there is “no harmful association between MMR vaccine receipt and ASD.”

This week, the world’s top autism researchers are in Montreal for the 2019 International Society for Autism Research meeting. The meeting chair is Dr. Evdokia Anagnostou from Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto. Regarding autism, Dr. Anagnostou says, “There are many areas where we don’t have all the answers yet. However, this is not such an area. There is a very large body of research that has found no link between vaccines and autism.”

She continues, emphatically, “We’ve spent a lot of time and money researching a question we already know the answer to, because the public is worried. Research funding is limited. It’s important that we focus now on the many questions that still need answering.”

See Also

• As one anti-vaccination sympathizer is voted off Ontario’s chiropractic regulatory body, another is voted on
• New York declares public health emergency, orders mandatory measles vaccinations after Brooklyn outbreak
• Arbitrator sides with Ontario parent who refuses to immunize children, cites anti-vaccination ‘expert’

We must also understand some crucial facts about the life-saving benefits of vaccines.

Consider smallpox, thankfully something we don’t worry about today. Yet in 1966, there were more than 10 million cases worldwide and two million deaths in 43 countries. Just 11 years later, in 1977, the last known natural case of smallpox appeared in Somalia. It was eradicated, thanks to the systematic implementation of a science-based, global vaccination program.

Another tremendous success story is that of the fight against polio. In 1988, there were an estimated 350,000 cases in more than 125 countries. That year, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was formed. Thirty-one years later, over three billion children have been vaccinated and polio is nearly wiped out, endemic in only three countries — Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2018, there were just 33 cases worldwide, with advocates like Rotary International and Global Citizen (who encouraged me to write this piece) working with international leaders to finish the job.

In the case of measles, widespread immunization has driven a dramatic decrease in global mortality, down 80 per cent from approximately 545,000 deaths, mostly children, in 2000. It’s estimated that measles vaccination has saved more than 20 million lives in the past 20 years. However, this month, the World Health Organization reported that measles cases worldwide have quadrupled in 2019, with experts underscoring that this is partly due to the concerning spread of misinformation.

The next time you feel anxious about the state of our global health systems based on something you saw online, remember this fact: in 1955, global life expectancy was under 50 years. Today, it’s over 70 years. We must never stop striving to improve global health outcomes, but the data shows we are doing a lot of things right.

Finally, to parents, if you’ve heard or read things that have made you hesitant to vaccinate your kids, I totally understand. I’ve been there. But I’ve taken a hard look at the facts. I’ve spoken to the experts. And I no longer have those doubts. Vaccines do not cause autism. They have, however, saved hundreds of millions of lives worldwide. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear.

Mike Lake is the member of Parliament for Edmonton-Wetaskiwin.