Prof Jenny Gamble

Professor of Midwifery, Monash University. Director, Transforming Maternity Care Collaborative. Views are my own.

[Karleen Gribble @DrKarleenG]

The Ebola outbreak in DRC and Uganda is of great concern. Consequences for mothers and babies will be significant- yet we know almost nothing about breastfeeding and Ebola viruses. Let this be the outbreak where this issue is taken seriously https://t.co/tVRwS86NMN

[Karleen Gribble @DrKarleenG]

In this Substack, Clive Hamilton discusses how desexed language in global maternal and child health is a colonial imposition. Gratifyingly, the article draws heavily from our 2022 paper on the importance of sexed language.

[Karleen Gribble @DrKarleenG]

Are newborns blank slates? Does it matter to them from whom the oocyte for their conception came or who gestated and birthed them? Using research from adoption, donor conception and surrogacy, this paper argues for consideration of the child's experience in surrogacy language.

[Sall Grover @salltweets]

As we approach the Giggle v Tickle decision, I’m remembering that

• I received an Australian Human Rights Commission complain citing “gender identity discrimination” when I was 14/15 weeks pregnant.

• The AHRC was, imo, never neutral. It was gender ideology capture from the very beginning. While they were talking about “assigned sex at birth” and “lived experience”, I was 20 weeks pregnant & found out I was having a girl.

• To settle the complaint in the AHRC - and not have it escalate to federal court - I had to • agree to let him on the woman only social networking app I created • a
let all men who claim to be women on the app • apologize • attend “sex & gender education classes • pay $20,000 • moderate all content on the woman only platform so men who claim to be women weren’t offended by it.

• The AHRC never meaningfully entertained my argument that woman only spaces were lawful. I always felt that their stance was, “you’re guilty, admit it, accept it.”

• While contemplating the magnitude of what I had to do, I thought about my daughter & that I would eventually be teaching her to stand up for herself & do what is right. How could I do that if I ran away when something seemed too hard?

• I said “NO” to what the AHRC was offering. Tickle filed in federal court 60 days later and “Tickle v Giggle” began.

• A federal court case + full appeal & my daughter is about to turn 4 years old. Giggle v Tickle has been in the background of her whole life. Any time the case has been incredibly stressful - and there have been many times, I was losing my hair at one point - I have just focused on my daughter & it instantly became easier. I want her to have rights & will do everything I can to ensure that she does.

• I want every woman & girl to be able to say “NO” to a man, no matter how he identifies, and not be punished for it.

• At no point in the past 4.5 years have I been even remotely convinced that men can be women. Not once. In fact, I’m more sure than ever that they’re not.

• Thank you everyone for the support. It would be impossible to have this fight without it.

https://t.co/5qxNEfrSVj 🩷

[Karleen Gribble @DrKarleenG]

My recent paper with @JuliePSmith1 and Melissa Bartick provides more detail on how mothers and babies are being failed by substitution of breast pumping for breastfeeding https://t.co/4Rdyaa1CPm

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

@stingerdelux Nobody I know on this side of the fight thinks all men are bad. Nobody I know on this side of the fight thinks all men rape, beat or abuse women and girls. We simply have incontrovertible proof that enough do to make safeguarding necessary - and a lot of men agree with us.

[Karleen Gribble @DrKarleenG]

This illustrates the reality of lack of sufficient maternity leave and inadequate workplace breastfeeding provisions. The author is incorrect, this is not what being a parent looks like, male parents do not have this experience. This is sexism experienced by women who are mothers

[Sonia Sodha @soniasodha]

And I remain of the view that it is deeply, deeply unethical to create a baby with the express intention of removing it from its birth mother.

[Sonya Douglas @SonyaDouglas]

Paul sees injustice but decides he can tolerate it as it doesn’t affect him

It affects Mara who finds it intolerable

Paul tolerates the injustice, but he just can’t tolerate Mara fighting the injustice

Paul fights against Mara

Mara still fights against injustice

Be more Mara

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Yes, the people who call themselves 'trans' exist and they deserve exactly the same rights as everyone else, which, fortunately, they already have in the UK. It would rightly be considered discrimination if a person was refused employment, housing or the vote because they identified as trans.

'Trans women are women' is a thought-terminating cliché. Men are not women. That doesn't mean they're not allowed to present themselves however they like, call themselves whatever they like and believe whatever they like about themselves. It means they haven't changed sex.

If we replace the objective, observable characteristic of sex with the unfalsifiable concept of gender identify, women and girls lose, among other things, their right to fair and safe sport and women-only spaces, including changing rooms, prison cells and rape crisis services.

Women and girls are provably more vulnerable to forms of abuse including sexual assault, harassment and voyeurism in mixed-sex spaces. There is no evidence that trans-identified men don't have exactly the same rates of criminal offending as all other men.

Trans people exist. I have no desire for them not to exist; indeed, I wish them safety, happiness and health. However, 'existence' does not, and should not, mean the violation of other people's right to privacy, dignity and freedom of speech, or the reconfiguration of society to indulge a fallacy.

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

UK history has been recorded since before the Domesday Book.

Men could be awarded university degrees in 1230. Cambridge finally capitulated and awarded degrees to women in 1948.

Men first took seats in Parliament in 1265. Women had to wait till 1918.

Men could vote in 1832. Women had to wait till 1918.

Men were legally persons in their own right. Women were chattels (the property of fathers or husbands) until coverture was finally knocked on the head in 1991. That’s not a typo. 1991.

It is true that one of us is certainly silly and historically illiterate. I leave it to serious historians to decide which…

[SayItForward.org 💙🤍💜 @SayItForwardNow]

💫Dr. Karleen Gribble, BRurSc, PhD is an Adjunct Professor in the School of #Nursing and #Midwifery at Western Sydney University. Her research focuses on #breastfeeding and communications in #WomenHealth

You can listen to @DrKarleenG here-> https://t.co/vLHi52DFnD #Australia

[Susanna Rustin @SusannaRustin]

In case you missed this interview last weekend: she is so extraordinary
https://t.co/AMFP6sGZg1

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I see Nicola Sturgeon is once again complaining that I posted a picture of myself wearing a T-shirt with her name on it and the legend 'Destroyer of Women's Rights.' Apparently this didn't 'elevate the debate.'

Is there a clinical term for an individual who has extreme thinness of skin when it comes to their own perceived hurts, coupled with a rhino-hide when it comes to the fear and suffering of others?

I'm thinking in particular of the two women Isla Bryson raped, who had to watch their First Minister squirm and smirk on TV as she tried to avoid admitting he was a man; of the five survivors of male violence who were ready to give evidence to Sturgeon's committee on gender self-ID, but were told to put their concerns in writing while seventeen trans-identified people appeared in person; of the mother of a young girl with a learning disability who campaigned against self-ID because she wanted her daughter to be guaranteed same sex intimate care, should she need it (the mother was presumably one of those female opponents Sturgeon calls 'shrill' and 'hysterical' in her memoir); of the ten-year-old girl sexually assaulted in a public bathroom by a 6'5" paedophile who served his jail sentence in a women's prison because he called himself 'Katie'; of Sandie Peggie, forced to discuss her own menstrual history in public to justify not wanting to undress in view of a 6ft straight cross-dresser in the nurses' changing room; of Marion Millar, dragged into court because she tweeted a picture of suffragette ribbons; of the Scottish rape crisis centres reliant on government funding who were pressured to admit trans-identified males into their services if they wanted funding to continue.

When Sturgeon refers to an 'elevated debate', she means a discussion that takes place within a tiny, smug bubble from which regular women suffering real life consequences of her policies are firmly excluded. These faceless ants are loftily dismissed as bigots, or, to be more precise: 'transphobic, misogynistic, homophobic, maybe racist as well.'

Nicola, you hated the T-shirt picture because you couldn't ignore it, as you'd ignored so many other women trying to make you understand their concerns. Appeals to your empathy, your intelligence and your compassion all failed. Apparently the only way to get through to you is through your vanity.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

Yes.

[Darlington Nursing Union @DarlingtonUnion]

Bethany's full comment in the media today:

"I never imagined that a frontline NHS nurse from the original Washington, a town in the north‑east of England, would one day find herself flying to Washington D.C. to speak on an international stage.

Yet this week, that is exactly where I am headed, alongside Andrea Williams of the Christian Legal Centre who has supported our case from the beginning, following the landmark legal ruling that vindicated eight ordinary nurses who simply asked not to have to undress in front of a male colleague.

Our story has travelled far beyond Darlington Memorial Hospital. It has become a warning, not just to Britain, but now to America, of what happens when ideology overtakes common sense, safeguarding, and basic human dignity.

For more than two-and-a-half years my colleagues and I asked our NHS Trust (County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust) for something that should never have been up for debate: the right for women to have a female‑only changing room. Instead, we were told to “broaden our mindset,” get “educated,” and accept a biological male in our private space, or else.

Some of my colleagues, including survivors of abuse, were re-traumatised. All of us were ignored, intimidated and put at further risk.

When the employment tribunal ruled earlier this month that what happened to us was unlawful harassment, that our dignity had been violated, it should never have felt like a groundbreaking victory. But it did. And that fact alone is alarming to say the least.

As I prepare to address the She Leads conference in Washington, I go not as a campaigner, but as an ordinary nurse who was pushed into extraordinary circumstances along with my courageous colleagues who I could not do this without.

If this can happen in the UK, a country once known for its robust safeguarding, its clear understanding of biological reality and as the home of freedom of speech, then no nation is immune.

My message to America is simple: do not wait until your institutions are captured before you start fighting back. Women should never have to go to court to defend biological reality or their right to single‑sex spaces.

That is why our story matters internationally.

This is not a British problem. It is a Western problem. It is a cultural problem. It is a truth problem. And it demands a response.

https://t.co/d6GbzSKZwK

[Prof Jenny Gamble @ProfJennyGamble]

@TerfyMcTerfy @roseveniceallan @MForstater It looks more like a whistle. Or a cigar!

[Venice Allan @roseveniceallan]

One hundred years ago in 1925 women finally won the fight to have their own, single sex swimming pond on Hampstead Heath.
Please can we have it back now?

[Professor Alice Sullivan @ProfAliceS]

Isn't it interesting that desexed language was brought in to healthcare without any research on the consequences?
https://t.co/nPofywmYnb

[Darlington Nursing Union @DarlingtonUnion]

Bethany said: "For more than a year, my colleagues and I have been fighting for something so simple, so basic, that it should never have required a court case: the right for women to have safe, single‑sex spaces at work.

Today, a tribunal has confirmed what we knew from the start, that what happened to us was unlawful, and that the NHS Trust failed in its duty to protect our dignity and our safety.

This case was never about ideology for us. It was about truth, biology, fairness, and the basic protections the Equality Act was designed to uphold.

We never asked for special treatment. We asked only to be able to undress for work without a man being present.

Instead, we were told to “broaden our mindset,” to “be inclusive,” and to accept that a biological male could use the women’s changing rooms simply because he said he was a woman.

When we raised safeguarding concerns, concerns no reasonable person could dismiss, we were the ones pushed aside, belittled, and forced into a makeshift “temporary” space that was unsafe and dehumanising.

The tribunal’s ruling affirms that women’s rights cannot be overwritten by internal policies or political pressure. It affirms that our concerns were legitimate, and that the trust’s treatment of us was discriminatory and unlawful.

But this judgment must also serve as a warning.

Across the NHS, there are countless women who feel they cannot speak, who fear being labelled or punished simply for wanting the privacy and safety they are entitled to.

The Government has still not published the lawful guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. NHS leadership continues to prioritise ideological policies over the real needs of frontline staff.

Our victory today is a step forward, not just for us, but for every woman in the NHS.

We hope it gives others the courage to speak, and we urge those in authority to finally listen. Women deserve better. And we will keep standing up until they get it."

Comment from President of the Darlington Nursing Union, Bethany Hutchison, in today's Daily Express, following their landmark legal win supported by the Christian Legal Centre👇

https://t.co/SKMa5ugMex