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A school student who sparked soul searching nationwide over the treatment of queer students this morning rejected comments made by the education minister and revealed more details about her school experience since she went public.

Identified only as Ashlee, the transgender student returned to Reddit, where her original post drew wide attention, to refute Minister Lawrence Wong, saying that her desire to obtain hormone treatment would not have blown up or sparked culture wars in Singapore if her wish had simply been respected in the first place. Her new post came one day after Wong told parliament that while schools should show more flexibility, critics should not import what he described as Western LGBT issues.

I note that Mr Wong wishes to not import these culture wars into Singapore, or allow issues of gender identity to divide our society. My personal dressing, which would even conform to the female dress code, does not affect others in the classroom, Ashlee wrote. Had the MOE and the school respected proper medical advice and scientific research, this would not have happened to me.

She went on to disclose more details about what happened at her school, including her principal taking objection to cross-dressing as a result of her doctor-advised hormone treatment.

In his first public comments since the controversy erupted last month, Wong told parliament yesterday that schools can be more flexible with trans students needs where there are valid medical grounds. But he also called on the public to avoid igniting culture wars and allowing gender identity issues to divide the nation with what he dismissed as Western concerns.

Ashlees original complaint was focused on the intervention of her school and the ministry in thwarting her plans to undergo hormonal replacement therapy despite the advice of her doctor and consent of her parents, which is required since she is under 21. The ministry has denied it blocked her from receiving treatment.

A coalition of Singaporean LGBT groups identified the school as Millennia Institute on Bukit Batok West Avenue. Millennia has made no public statement on the issue and has not responded to messages seeking comment.

Ashlees case led to a protest outside the ministry that resulted in three being arrested. An online petition calling for clearer policies to support trans students has gotten over 500 signatories, including some teachers.

Reacting to Wongs statement on medical advice, Ashlee said he was being inconsistent.

You do not allow anti-maskers to go about without masking up due to the scientifically-accepted risks and dangers of Covid Why is the MOE contradicting and denying proper medical advice, treatment and quality education? she wrote.

The student also pointed out that the school was not flexible despite Wongs appeal. The ministry stirred the pot further last month by suggesting Ashlee no longer attend classes and study from home.

If Mr Wong thinks that home-based learning is as good as physical classroom lessons, why have physical classes in the first place? I come to this school to study in the classroom environment; if I wanted to do [home-based learning] Id sign up for online courses and do private A-levels instead, she said.

Since going public about her story, Ashlee said that the principal has denied any form of discrimination and continues to insist that Ashlee wanted to crossdress in school, which is not allowed.

The doctors letter already stated that I have a diagnosis and that I identify as female; cross-dressing would in this sense not only be an ignorant, but outright discriminatory way to put it, unless I was wearing the male uniform (i.e. dressing in boys uniform as I identify as female), she wrote.

[Rant] An update to Transgender Discrimination in Singapore Schools from r/SGExams

Other stories you should check out:

Singapores schools should show flexibility for trans students: minister

We are all well, say LGBT rights defenders nabbed for MOE protest

Writer, ally to Singapores trans youth, on why he protested the MOE

LGBT rights defenders arrested protesting Education Ministrys treatment of trans student

Singapores ed ministry suggests trans student learn at home, not school

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If there's any 'culture war,' system is to blame, trans student refutes minister - Coconuts Singapore

It was difficult watching Lisa Nandys difficulties earlier this month when she was caught facing in two opposite directions over a pamphlet produced by Labour Party members that called for a gender-balanced human security force to replace the British Army in overseas manoeuvres. In December, at the time of the launch, she welcomed the publication as inspirational and based on the beliefs I also share. But when challenged on this by Andrew Marr last week, the shadow foreign secretary chose to deny she had ever welcomed the pamphlet.

A video also emerged this week of Nandy being drawn into the Winston Churchill controversy. Following vandalism on the late prime ministers statue in Parliament Square during a Black Lives Matter demonstration, she declined to offer her opinion as to whether our wartime leader was a national hero or not.

I have two reasons for not enjoying this spectacle. The first is that Nandy is a formidable and talented politician. Had I been allowed a vote in last years leadership election, I would certainly have voted for her. She has a genuine connection with her own working class background and, unlike many of her Labour colleagues in the Commons, understands why so many people in the north voted to leave the European Union. She merits the ultimate accolade among Labour politicians of being sound.

The other reason I was sad to see this strange little story play out is that it is so utterly unnecessary. Clearly Nandy is trying to conform to her leaders orders not to inflame the culture wars; Keir Starmer has taken to heart advice he has received from those close to President Joe Biden not to get drawn into arguments about trans rights, critical race theory or free speech on campuses. And you can see why. There is nothing to be gained for Labour in fanning these particular flames, and potentially a great deal to lose.

The problem with refusing to be drawn into these debates, however, is that they continue anyway, with or without you. And that means that whenever journalists want a helpful quote from a parliamentarian about the latest expression of post-logic, anti-scientific wokeness, they know they will get nothing from a Labour MP. So inevitably, the voice of reason condemning a decision by a local council to name a street Equality Road or a university expunging the name of a great philosopher because he wasnt suitably anti-racist in the 1700s, comes from the political right. Eventually, voters are going to reach the conclusion that the only people making a stand for freedom of speech and against being entirely unhinged are Conservatives.

And yet I happen to know dozens well, okay, four or five, maybe Labour MPs who hold sensible, mainstream views on these issues but who fear expressing them. And no wonder. When Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield dared to express the heretical view that only women have a cervix, it brought down upon her the wrath of trans campaigners who view science and biological facts as hate speech. Instead of making a robust defence of Duffields right to express an opinion God forbid that politicians express an opinion! her party leadership chose to keep its head down, neither acceding to hysterical demands for her to be suspended from the Labour whip nor offering her solidarity.

Labour needs to take a step back and view this issue more dispassionately than it has up until now. What would happen if just a handful of Labour MPs were to break cover and say that trans rights and their impact on womens rights should be openly and freely debated? What would be the public reaction if one or two Labour MPs were quoted in the media as praising Churchill for what he was a national hero who deserves every honour he has received and who should be respected by every generation and every race? What would happen if a Labour MP scoffed at the very notion that a local council can fight racism by emulating the sitcom character David Brent?

Such views would not even have to represent the views of the entire party (which is a pity); but at last ordinary voters concerned about the woke-driven, mostly public funded campaigns against common sense would be able to identify allies in the main opposition party. Naturally, there would be the usual outrage, demands that they be deselected, de-whipped, defenestrated, humiliated and generally cast into the wilderness. Some party members would post videos of them resigning their membership, expressed as performative art.

But so what? I mean, seriously, so what?

There are too few such individuals to make a difference to the partys national support, Starmer would not have to change policy by as much as a comma, and the public might start to restore its confidence in Labour as a party that has not, after all, become a mere tool of minority interest, self-interested lobby groups.

And talented politicians like Lisa Nandy would no longer have to tie themselves in knots for fear of offending those who will in any case always find new ways to be offended anyway.

Continued here:
In the culture wars, Labour MPs must not be muzzled - Telegraph.co.uk

Minister for Education Lawrence Wong (Wong) was recently criticised for not having publicly dealt with mounting concerns over the potential invasive roll-out of the Device Management Application in the devices of students, the way the Ministry of Education (MOE) has woefully handled how it has dealt with a transgender student, Ashlee, and allegations that MOE had interfered with her hormone replacement therapy.

Ashlee has in fact, recently posted an update on the situation where she was concerned.

It is also noteworthy that Wongs lack of ownership and seeming disregard for the feelings of students on the transgender issue may have contributed to a peaceful protest outside MOE which led to three individuals (some of whom are students) being arrested.

Instead of dealing with criticism directly, Wong has only skirted the issue when answering questions levelled at him in Parliament. In other words, if he was not questioned about it in Parliament, he might not have dealt with it at all.

In responding to The Workers Party (WP) member of parliament (MP) for Sengkang Group Representative Constituency He Ting Rus questions about MOEs policies and guidelines on students with gender dysphoria, and how often such policies and approached are reviewed as well as the level of autonomy schools have over implementing them, Wong had this to say:

Issues of gender identity have become bitterly contested sources of division in the culture wars in some Western countries and societies. We should not import these culture wars into Singapore, or allow issues of gender identity to divide our society.

Not only does this not answer the question, but it is also an attempt to deflect from the issue. The crux of the matter is how a student has been treated. But instead of taking ownership, Wong is going off-piste, muddying the waters with culture wars and the PAPs favourite and boring excuse for everything that of western culture and western values.

As this issue is being played out in Parliament, another key issue is also being fleshed out that of the TraceTogether data.

Just to recap, the Parliamentary sitting in January 2021 generated a firestorm of controversy withrevelations that data collected by the TraceTogether system for COVID-19 contact tracing can be accessed by the police pursuant to the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC).

This information caused an uproar because the Government had previously assured Singaporeans that such data could not be used for any other purposes apart from COVID-19 contact tracing. In fact, Minister-in-charge of the smart nation initiative Vivian Balakrishnan (Balakrishnan) and Wong had assured the public of the same in a press conference last year.

As this news broke, a public furore ensued as questions were asked of whether or not the Government had deliberately concealed this information which could, in turn, lead to an erosion of trust. The criticism was so intense that Balakrishnanpublicly admitted to having made a mistake.

Likely as a result of this public outcry, Balakrishnanannounced that the Government would be introducing legislation to set out seven categories of serious offences for which TraceTogether data can be used for criminal investigations which would include offences related to terrorism, drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping, and serious sexual offences such as rape.

This brings us to the Parliamentary sitting this month where the law to formalise this commitment to limit the use of the data will be debated. Prima facie, this appears very positive.

So what we have in Parliament now is a one Minister (Wong) saying that we should not import western culture as an excuse for MOEs handling of Ashlee while another Minister (Vivian Balakrishnan) is saying that he takes full responsibility for his mistake despite not having actually said the words sorry or apologise

Why is this relevant?

It is relevant because the Government cannot have it both ways. If it wants to use the bogey man of western culture as a blanket excuse for errors, it must then be implying that Asian values trump.

However, if Asian values trump, how have our Government implemented or followed such superior Asian values?

As Shawn Lim (Lim), a multimedia reporter at The Drum, posted on Twitter, if Singapore does not want to import western culture, why is it not following Asian examples when it comes to ownership and responsibility?

Lim mentioned two examples that of Mongolians Prime Minister immediately standing down for the countrys handling of a heavily pregnant woman who was COVID-19 positive, and the Industry Minister of Japan resigning over the misspending of political donations.

Balakrishnan has made a colossal error in the TraceTogether data. Why has he not resigned then? By Wongs logic, surely he should? In fact, even Wong should! After all, wasnt he present at the same press conference where the assurances were made?

More here:
'We should not import Western culture wars', says Lawrence Wong in response to MOE's recent transgression; then why is the Govt not following Asian...

After five years covering Brexit, you'd think I'd be used to getting online abuse.

This week felt more sinister though.

I'd been covering a story about Sir Desmond Swayne, a Conservative MP who had given a series of online interviews in which he questioned the severity of the pandemic and the motives lying behind the government response.

The comments were condemned by ministers and opposition politicians alike.

But for many - including Sir Desmond - this was a classic media hatchet job. A smear campaign directed at an MP who was refusing to toe the line.

What was striking about a lot of the criticism (both the abuse and the more measured questioning) was how much it slotted into existing culture wars.

Some framed the story as an under-siege old media striking out at the new media platforms where these interviews were carried.

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Black Lives Matter was brought up as well as Brexit, despite no obvious connection to the issue at hand.

After starting off as a strikingly non-partisan issue (in the UK anyway), the pandemic is now politically red hot.

So what? You may ask. Don't extraordinary times call for extraordinary scrutiny?

Shouldn't there be more contrarian interventions that challenge the received wisdom, rather than fewer?

Yes and yes.

Government taking extreme and unprecedented measures to change the way we all live our lives requires the highest level of attention.

Sir Desmond Swayne and other MPs sceptical of lockdown have played a vital and valid role in that.

Broadcasters and newspapers alike have extensively covered their arguments, alongside the analysis of academics like Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta, scientists who depart from the government view.

But at such a perilous point in the pandemic, with thousands still dying every week, it's incumbent on anyone entering the debate - especially those in positions of power - to think carefully about what they say and the impact it could have.

That is why Sir Desmond's comments warranted interrogation.

Put bluntly, they went beyond reasoned factual analysis and strayed into the realms of unfounded insinuation.

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There were suggestions of nefarious motives behind the COVID restrictions - hidden agendas, manipulated data and social control, as the former minister put it.

There is no hard evidence to back up any of this.

Claims were made that the UK was now a police state and a totalitarian country, with little acknowledgement of the utterly abnormal world we are all living in.

Existing debunked theories were also advanced; such as suggestions that COVID-19 deaths rates were comparable to a "bad flu season" or that hospitals were not as busy as the NHS was making out.

Then consider the dangerous flames of misinformation Sir Desmond was potentially fanning.

His first interview was with Save Our Rights UK, a group that claims the COVID vaccine may be harmful. There is no evidence to back this up.

His second was with Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist, who tweeted last month that the COVID jab could be the "greatest scientific blunder in the history of mankind". Given any remotely reasonable reading, this is not true.

Yes, Sir Desmond did not speak about vaccines in the interviews.

But references to sinister shady motives within the state, made by a former minister and ex-Number 10 aide, are cat nip to the conspiracy theorists and malicious actors that populate these online spaces.

They provide ammunition to those who are trying to tear down public health policy not on the basis of facts, but on the basis of fury.

Sir Desmond Swayne is a fiercely independent voice in Westminster, cut from a non-tribal cloth rarely seen in modern politics.

But old fashioned eccentricity and an unapologetic lust for liberty is no defence when lives are at risk.

The battlefield of the culture war is no place for pandemic policy to play out on.

Over three nights, Sky News will host a series of special programmes examining the UK's response to the pandemic.

Watch COVID Crisis: Learning the Lessons at 8pm on 9, 10 and 11 February.

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COVID-19: The culture war battlefield is no place for pandemic policy to play out on - Sky News

Since shortly after the outbreak of Covid-19, two theories about the pandemics likely impact have been circulating. One lets call it the bread thesis maintains that the crisis will reinstate respect for seriousness and competence. It will remind everyone that the nations of the world are interdependent and that the politics of expertise puts food on the table and keeps the diners alive.

The other lets call it the circuses thesis suggests that, with borders tightening, economic and social turmoil exacerbating old inequalities and anger over lockdowns rising and being directed at elites, the pandemic will benefit populists stirring culture wars.

The big political question this decade will be which thesis is more accurate. Enter Michael Burleigh, a British historian and recently the inaugural Engelsberg Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics. From his lectures in that post, Burleigh has composed Populism: Before and After the Pandemic. This slim book ranges across many of the subjects of his previous works 20th-century Germany, decolonisation and the Cold War, the decline of the West, the uses and abuses of history but concludes with reflections on Covid-19 and what comes next.

It sits at the juncture of three current publishing trends: globetrotting think-pieces on Covid-19 (Ivan Krastevs Is It Tomorrow Yet?, Fareed Zakarias Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, Slavoj ieks Pandemic!), populism explainers (Anne Applebaums Twilight of Democracy, Michael Sandels The Tyranny of Merit) and explorations of post-imperial identity (Sathnam Sangheras Empireland, Robert Tombss This Sovereign Isle). Readers looking to understand the transformations brought about by the virus should start with Krastevs effort, but Burleighs book is a spirited, readable and thought-provoking tour through the forces defining our age. Populism only gets to the pandemic in its pessimistic conclusion, a short epilogue that follows three discrete but interlocking essays.

[see also:The fall of the Roman republic is a warning about todays degenerate populists]

Burleigh begins with an account of the recent populist wave and how elite interests have ultimately become the progenitors and beneficiaries of movements purporting to rally the masses against the rich and powerful. The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde has written that populism is a thin ideology which can bind itself on to other political traditions (nationalism, socialism, conservatism, even liberalism) and Burleigh examines its many different international forms in that spirit, neither demonising populist support nor wrapping it up in sentimental odes to real people.

The second essay compares the post-imperial experiences of Britain and Russia. While Burleigh does not labour the parallels, he notes an important similarity. In both countries the carapace of empire obscured the nation underneath the Russian Soviet republic had no formal capital nor a communist party of its own, as England today has no parliament of its own and the retreat of empire is prompting new reckonings with that underlying identity.

The third essay takes in Poland, Hungary, China, South Africa, Britain and the US to show how history is being politicised in order to unify populations, or to divide them into rooted patriots wedded to myths versus elite cosmopolitan subversives. All of which resonates in the wake of the statue wars in 2020 and the storming of the Capitol in Washington, DC where the Confederate flag was held aloft within its walls for the first time ever.

Populism displays Burleighs eye for enlivening and memorable aperus, anecdotes and factoids. He compares the similarities between different forms of populism to the Habsburg jaw in portraiture, and Norman Englands supranational, Francophone aristocrats to Davos man in armour. The Chinese Communist Party, he informs us, once produced a boxed DVD set for its cadres on what Mikhail Gorbachev did wrong in the last days of the Soviet Union. By 2007, 20 years after Ronald Reagan abolished balanced reporting rules for broadcasters, 91 per cent of US radio stations had a conservative bias. Emmanuel Macron based his listening tour following the yellow vests protests of 2019 on a similar exercise by Pierre Poujade, the original French populist.

This mastery of the past helps with predicting the future. Burleigh sees Vladimir Putin, who, after a referendum last summer, can now stay in office until 2036, adopting a form of back-seat power akin to that of Deng Xiaoping in 1980s China. In the shortening of global supply chains due to the pandemic he sees similarities to the breakdown of large-scale tile and glass production in the late Roman empire. And in Brexit and the quandaries about Englishness he sees a risk that Britain will follow Russia in resolving its post-imperial identity by forging a new one defined sharply and antagonistically in opposition to Europe. That a bureaucratic dispute over vaccines between the EU and a post-Brexit Britain has so quickly degenerated into a culture war and merged with emotive debates about the future of the union lends weight to that argument.

[see also:The Big Squeeze: How financial populism sent the stock market on a wild ride]

All of which brings him out at the pandemic-era epilogue. Burleigh gives the case for the bread thesis ample space, citing the chaotic scenes after Indias populist prime minister Narendra Modi announced a national curfew with four hours notice, forcing millions of Indians to travel back to their home villages in scenes that resembled the chaos of partition in 1947. Such misgovernment, he notes, naming instances in Italy, Brazil, Britain, Russia and elsewhere, shows the limits of populist rule Donald Trumps election defeat being a prime example.

Yet the books conclusion sides with the circuses thesis. Culture wars are bubbling even during lockdowns. Protracted economic downturns will come when emergency fiscal support is pulled and bankruptcies and unemployment soar. Unlike after the financial crisis of 2008, there will be no popular patience with further austerity, writes Burleigh. Any signs that economic inequalities are not being addressed this time will not be so passively received He cites France, where a combination of previous socio-economic grievances, the economic blow of the pandemic, waning patience with lockdowns and a search for scapegoats could put Marine Le Pen back on track to attack Macron as the incarnated representative of the global rich exploiting the couches populaires. Recent events support this. The storming of the Capitol spoke to the enduring disruptiveness of Trumpism. The vaccine nationalism rising in Europe hardly augurs a new age of enlightened international cooperation. In France, a recent poll put a Macron-Le Pen run-off in next years presidential election at 52 per cent to 48.

The message of Populism is not entirely pessimistic. Burleigh argues for a more robust defence of liberal democracy, a confrontation with the forces of inequality and division, and a scepticism about the notion that we are slaves to historical precedent. But, as his compelling book argues on its detours through time and space, there is also a case for realism about what the coming period of turmoil might bring. Bread does not always beat circuses.

Populism: Before and After the PandemicMichael BurleighHurst, 10.99, 152pp

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Populism in the pandemic age - New Statesman