National News Update

I've Saved the Best for Last

Happy Anniversary, Seneca Falls!

From the Library of Congress:

On July 19, 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention convened. Heralded as the first American women’s rights convention, the two day event was held in the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York. The convention had been advertised on July 11, 1848 in the Seneca County Courier. Despite the minimal amount of publicity there were an estimated 300 attendees at the inaugural meeting. It is not surprising that many of the convention attendees lived locally, as there were a number of abolitionists living nearby. Many women and men working in the anti-slavery movement eventually became a part of the struggle to obtain equal rights for women. Convention organizer Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her husband Henry B. Stanton were both well-known and active abolitionists. In fact, all five women credited with organizing the Seneca Falls Convention were also active in the abolitionist movement.

Women’s history is USA history. Women’s history is human history.

Herstory shows us that feminism is good. As Meghan Murphy at Fairer Disputations writes (please read the entire excellent article):

I, too, have had a lot to say about the misguided positions adopted under the umbrella of “feminism” in recent decades. These include everything from mantras like “sex work is work” and “trans women are women” to the elevation of “intersectionality” as the true purpose of feminism, which led to identity politics overtaking the movement. Yet I believe that it is essential to distinguish between the failures of a particular form of contemporary feminism and the history of the feminist movement as a whole.

Ms Murphy is correct. Feminism has emancipated women. Thanks to feminism, women can vote, own our own property, keep our own wages from paid employment, have bank accounts and credit cards in our own names, attend college and graduate/professional schools, participate in women-only sports, have women-only services and facilities, (YMMV) have a right to contraception and (again, YMMV) abortion, divorce and keep/share custody of our children… The list goes on. Women now have choices. We have independent agency over our own lives.

Thanks to feminism, sexual harassment at work and school is illegal. So is rape, including marital rape, abuse from male spouses/partners/family members (euphemistically called “domestic violence”), stalking, institutionalizing us against our will… The list goes on.

Do any women readers want to return to those times? No? Then thank our feminist foremothers who fought for us. Herstory shows us that, unless we remain vigilant, women’s rights will never advance, only regress.

We owe our daughters to continue the fight.

Sad News

Wally Funk, trailblazing pilot and astronaut, dies at 87.

Wally Funk, who flew to space at 82 after a lifetime of flying and fighting for women in aviation and aerospace, has passed away at age 87.

Born in Texas in 1939, Funk was determined to take to the skies, flying as a teenager and becoming a professional aviator at the tender age of 20. Her dreams extended even beyond Earth, and in 1961 she joined the “Mercury 13“ [why the scare quotes?] group of women who completed the testing given to NASA’s male astronauts. But Funk was the only Mercury 13 alum to ever reach space. After a lifetime of flying, in July 2021, the then 82-year-old Funk launched to suborbital space aboard a Blue Origin New Shepard vehicle, a trip that she described as “incredible.”

RIP, Wally. You will always inspire women and girls everywhere.

Science News

Two articles recently published reveal the state of sex realism in some parts of academia. First, The Atlantic has an article called “Explaining Sex to an Anthropologist.” And not just ANY anthropologist — the president of the American Anthropological Association and a tenured professor at Princeton. Let that sink in. Dr Carolyn Rouse denies that biological sex is real, binary, and immutable, plus she finds the whole issue just too confusing. Atlantic’s article is a response to a disastrous interview that Dr Rouse gave to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Please read both articles; they’re free.

In good news, the peer-reviewed scientific journal Ecology Letters explains that biological sex is real, binary, and immutable:

The recognition that biological sex is rooted in anisogamy has been longstanding in biology (Minot 1888; Geddes and Thomson 1889), and there have been several recent accounts illuminating its foundations and explanatory power (e.g., Goymann et al. 2023; Hilton and Wright 2023; Griffiths and Spencer 2025; Wright 2025). Our aim here, without claiming novelty on this well-documented topic, is to (i) explain and support the gametic definition of sex, (ii) take a stand on its most prominent criticisms and (iii) elucidate the association between biological sex and sexual dimorphism beyond anisogamy, as this issue appears to lie at the heart of recent debates.

This article is also free to read. Dr Rouse should read it. Or maybe it will just confuse her more.

Heterodox STEM Substack has an article called “Trans Protestors: I Don’t Care What the Science Says.” If NOTHING changes your mind, if you adamantly refuse to think, then congratulations, you’re in a cult.

The student declared an unwillingness to find common ground with anyone who questions transgender identity, asserted that the existence of transgender and nonbinary people is proven by the student’s own existence, and stated plainly: no piece of research or discussion of brain chemistry or societal development would change that.

…

What makes the student’s rejection of chemistry and science so revealing is that it is not a statement about transgender identity. It reflects a relationship to evidence itself. Science is not a body of settled conclusions. Science is a process, structured to examine ideas by testing them against evidence, then accepting the results even when they contradict your beliefs. A claim that cannot be proven wrong is not a scientific claim. It may be a belief, a value, or an identity commitment, but it’s not science. Science demands a level of humility that must be learned through experience.

Of course, the student filed a “bias” complaint against his professor. Read the free article for the entire sordid story.

The Best is Last

At The Distance Mag, Matt Osborne tells us about a man calling himself “Ashley J Webb” who is running for US Senate in Maine. Definitely read this article and watch the short video. Notice how the other three candidates onstage act towards Webb.

Webb claims to be intersex as well as transgender. I don’t believe him. I also don’t believe Democrats when they say they really believe this man is a woman. They know he is not. Lying about that is required to be a Democrat, however, which means the party is already seen as Ashley Webb by half the country. He might as well be its national face, at this point. And let’s be honest, if it was this guy or Susan Collins, the Democrats of Maine would vote for this guy.

…

Democrats were disappointed that Graham Platner turned out to be a rapey sort of guy. They have a chance to redeem themselves by running a woman. Ashley Webb, however, is the superior ‘woman’ because he has had to ‘become’ a woman rather than being born female, like Paige Loud, who has cisprivilege [sic]. This is how transgender ideology works, Maine Democrats. I don’t make the rules.

But wait! There’s more!

Personally, Your Humble Author loves the vacant yet deranged look on Webb’s face. That’s what every US Senator needs. It inspires confidence, don’t you think?

After reading Mr Osborne’s post, a PA4SBR subscriber wrote that she (the subscriber) thinks it’s good that Democrats can see a “hulking” man in a dress run for office and have the Democratic Party insist that he is a woman. Average Dems need to see that sex-realists are neither exaggerating nor parroting right-wing propaganda about men who think they’re women. Webb is obviously a man, and here is the brainwashed Party denying the evidence of their own eyes and ears to the masses.

Webb should probably get his rectal bleeding checked out, assuming he’s telling the truth about it, because it could be a serious medical problem.