Peaked

There is an ongoing effort in Ireland to get the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) incorporated into Irish national legislation. To that end, a series of meetings has been organised in the Irish parliament, and representatives from countries where the CRC has already been incorporated into domestic law (Scotland and Sweden) have been invited to explain to Irish lawmakers what it would involve and why it’s a good idea.

Last week, three NGOs held a conference to discuss the initiative; this time it was an invitation-only event sent out to a particular mailing list. This format — conference by email invitation only — seems to be an ever-more popular way for organisations to evade public scrutiny while pretending not to evade public scrutiny. The event did not appear on any of the websites or social media accounts of any of the organisers.

This tracks with other secretive NGO tendencies in our fraught political times: putting sensitive advocacy and communications materials behind members-only login wall, publishing almost nothing on public websites (or at least none of the controversial stuff), deleting social media accounts, cultivating very exclusive mailing lists, and only posting on LinkedIn where civil society professionals think nobody is paying attention except themselves.

It’s very complicated manufacturing consensus for your unpopular elite nonsense these days! But it’s not impossible to find out what they’re up to.

Anyway, Sandra Adams found out that there would be one of these special public-but-not-public meetings about the UN CRC and its incorporation into Irish law last week, so she signed up and went along.

The title of the conference left no room for ambiguity: “Standing up to Anti-Child Rights Movements”. Whatever the organisers have decided is a child’s right, you should be for it, and if you’re not — well they’ve got a mean name for you. There will be no discussion.

The term “anti-child-rights” is being popularised at the EU level by a Brussels-based NGO called Eurochild, (one of the co-organisers of the Dublin event last week) who used it in a 2022 report. It seems to have been inspired by Hungary and Poland vetoing an EU initiative on the rights of the child in 2021 (they rejected the initiative because it contained genderfaff).

Being anti-child-rights seems to involve having a non-extreme, non-woke opinion on all the hot-button issues: abortion, contraception, LGBTIQ+, gender identity ideology, gay men adopting babies, sexuality education in schools, disinformation, and even your opinion on immigration. Honestly it just seems like all the usual elite lib causes with a thick layer of “child rights” speak daubed on top of it.

That’s Eurochild, and they seem nuts as per. But the thing you need to know about the UN CRC is that the original text is not bad in and of itself. However, down through the years there have been various upgrades and addenda tacked onto it thanks to lobbying by various activists and in response to events and societal shifts.

And General comment number 20, which was added in 2015/2016, is all about that gendershite.

If the CRC and General comment number 20 are called into service in judicial decisions in Ireland, it might mean that a fight over puberty blockers will no longer be between a child and their parents and doctor; a judge could decide that the evolving capacities of an adolescent, their right to health, or their right to identity has been breached.

I had a chat with Sandra about it all. It’s a moving story; I just read that another committee meeting will take place next week, so I’ll be updating with any new developments.

Enjoy.

Follow Sandra on X

Send me your stories, I’m all (t)ears: [email protected]. I’m also on X/Twitter: https://x.com/RoisinMichaux

Do you think it matters that sex is being replaced by self-declaration of something called ‘gender identity’? I do, and I was fired for it. I made a bet that other people care about it too. So this newsletter is my new job. If you think my work is important, please take out a paid subscription.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.peaked.news/subscribe

I met Esmeralda, a small business owner based in Tirana, while I was walking alongside a fired-up crowd during the “Flamingo Revolution”, the name given to public protest sparked by the Albanian government’s selling-off of protected coastal land. I approached her for an interview after I spotted her intriguing flag in the Flamingo crowd. It read: “Europe is not a flag, it’s a standard.”

She sat down with me to explain what her message means, and we had a great chat about what she thinks about EU accession, democracy, corruption, women, Islam, identity, and patriotism.

Enjoy! And make sure to follow Esmeralda on Instagram

Show notes (AI generated)

In this episode of Peaked, Róisín speaks with Albanian writer, astrologer and entrepreneur Esmeralda Petrela, whom she met during the protests in Albania that became known as the “Flamingo Revolution.”

The conversation begins with Róisín’s impressions of Albania after visiting Tirana and travelling through the countryside, before moving into the protests surrounding development in Albania’s protected coastal areas and the flamingo symbolism that came to represent the movement.

Esmeralda explains the meaning behind the protest sign she carried, which combined the European Union flag and a flamingo to argue that European standards should also mean protecting nature. From there, the discussion expands into Albania’s EU accession process, protected-area legislation, the Strategic Investments Law, Edi Rama’s government and the European Commission.

Róisín and Esmeralda discuss why an environmental protest became a much wider expression of dissatisfaction with the Albanian government, touching on healthcare, pensions, policing, corruption, informal economic activity and Albanian national identity.

The conversation then moves into Albania’s communist and atheist past, religious identity, Islam, the hijab and changing attitudes towards religion.

The second half of the episode focuses heavily on LGBTQ visibility, Pride, transgender identity, transgender healthcare and the relationship between social change, public policy and EU accession.

The episode concludes with a discussion of women in Albania, female entrepreneurship, femicide, political representation, Albanian literature and Esmeralda’s own work as an astrologer, writer and entrepreneur, including her novel Ajlen and her planned astrology app, Tsunavi.

Featured Topics

* The Flamingo Revolution

* Vjosa-Narta Protected Area

* Sazan Island

* Jared Kushner and the proposed resort development

* Albania’s Strategic Investments Law

* Protected-area legislation

* Edi Rama

* Marta Kos and EU enlargement

* Albania’s EU accession process

* Corruption and informal economic activity

* Albanian nationalism and national identity

* Albania’s communist and atheist history

* Religion and religious identity

* Islam, the hijab and social pressure

* LGBTQ visibility and Pride

* Transgender healthcare in Albania

* 20,000 Species of Bees

* HIV and transgender women in Peru

* Women and feminism in Albania

* Andon Zako Çajupi’s Fshati im

* Esmeralda Petrela’s Ajlen

* Astrology and Harta Astrologjike

* Tsunavi

The Flamingo Revolution

The episode examines the protests that emerged around development in Albania’s protected coastal areas, particularly the Vjosa-Narta Protected Area and the proposed development connected to Sazan Island.

The flamingo became the central symbol of the demonstrations because of the flamingos and wider biodiversity found in the protected wetland environment. Esmeralda explains that the protest initially centred on protecting the area and repealing legislation that allowed strategic investment and construction in protected areas, before broader grievances against the government became part of the movement.

Róisín describes seeing the natural landscape and the bulldozers that became an important visual trigger for the protests.

Albania, the EU & Protected Areas

Róisín and Esmeralda discuss Albania’s EU accession process and the environmental standards that candidate countries are expected to meet.

They discuss the relationship between Albanian legislation, EU accession chapters and the role of the European Commission.

On 14 July 2026, European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said that environmental protection is part of the EU membership criteria and stated that before the protests began, the EU and Albania had already agreed that Albania would repeal the 2024 amendments to the protected-areas law and repeal the Strategic Investments Law. (Qeveria Shqiptare Keshilli i Ministrave)

Marta Kos / EU-Albania Intergovernmental Conference:https://www.kryeministria.al/en/newsroom/konference-e-perbashket-per-shtyp-e-kryeministri-edi-rama-ministrit-te-shtetit-per-ceshtjet-europiane-dhe-mbrojtjen-te-irlandes-thomas-byrne-dhe-komisioneres-europiane-per-zgjerimin-marta-kos-pas/

Edi Rama & Investment in Albania

The conversation looks at Edi Rama’s promotion of investment in Albania and the controversy surrounding the Strategic Investments Law.

In March 2025, Rama urged people planning to invest in Albania to do so, describing the country as a place with investment opportunities.

Edi Rama on investment:https://www.balkanweb.com/en/neser-do-te-jete-vone-rama-koha-qe-kushdo-qe-e-ka-ne-plan-te-investoje-ne-shqiperi-pjesa-me-e-mire-e-jona-malet/

Rama later discussed investment and the Kushner-linked project in a meeting with journalists from EU member states.

Edi Rama meeting with EU journalists:https://www.kryeministria.al/en/newsroom/takim-i-kryeministrit-rama-me-gazetare-dhe-perfaqesues-te-mediave-nga-vendet-e-bashkimit-europian/

Transgender Healthcare in Albania

In May 2026, Albania introduced guidance concerning hormonal treatment for transgender people through the public healthcare system. Euronews Albania reported that the guidance set out medical criteria, clinical procedures and monitoring for hormonal treatment. (Euronews)

A subsequent clarification from Deputy Health Minister Eugena Tomini said the guidance was intended for adults and was a clinical guidance document rather than a final therapeutic protocol. (Euronews)

Euronews Albania:https://euronews.al/urdhri-i-zv-ministres-se-shendetesise-terapia-hormonale-per-personat-transgjinore/

Clarification from Deputy Health Minister Eugena Tomini:https://euronews.al/terapia-hormonale-per-personat-transgjinore-zv-ministrja-tomini-sqaron-udhezuesi-referohet-vetem-te-rriturve/

The episode also discusses a separate March for Life protest in Tirana concerning transgender hormonal treatment and public healthcare.

Euronews Albania — March for Life:https://euronews.al/terapia-hormonale-per-transgjinoret-koalicioni-shqiptar-pro-familjes-dhe-jetes-marshim-me-rastin-e-1-qershorit/

20,000 Species of Bees

Esmeralda refers to the Spanish film 20,000 Species of Bees, directed by Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren and starring Sofía Otero.

The film follows an eight-year-old trans girl during a summer in the Basque Country and explores childhood, identity and self-discovery. Sofía Otero won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Film:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21113962/

Peru, HIV & Transgender Women

Róisín refers to research she had been watching concerning HIV, sex work and transgender women in Peru.

A 2024 study of 211 transgender women aged 16–24 in Lima reported an HIV prevalence of 41.5%. It also found that 50.7% reported sex work during the previous 30 days and 47.9% reported condomless anal sex during the previous six months. (PubMed)

Research:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39041820/

Women, Family & LGBTQ Rights in Albania

The episode discusses Albanian couple Alba Ahmetaj and Edlira Mara, who held an unofficial rooftop wedding in Tirana in 2024.

The couple have twin daughters and have faced legal difficulties obtaining recognition as joint parents. Reuters reported on the couple’s wedding, their fight for equal recognition and the online hostility and threats they faced. (Reuters)

Reuters:https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/loving-protest-albanian-lesbians-marry-unofficially-2024-05-20/

Women in Albanian Culture

The conversation turns to women, female employment, entrepreneurship, femicide and political representation in Albania.

Esmeralda describes a cultural history in which women could be breadwinners and refers to Albanian poetry that criticised men who left women to carry the burden of work.

She mentions Andon Zako Çajupi’s “Fshati im” (“My Village”), a poem contrasting women working in the fields and running the household with men sitting in the shade and living from their wives. (Albanian History)

Andon Zako Çajupi — “Fshati im”:https://albanianhistory.org/albanianliterature/authors_classical/cajupi_poetry.html

Esmeralda Petrela

Esmeralda Petrela is an Albanian writer and astrologer. Her astrology work and personalised astrology charts have been featured by Albanian media. (Top Channel)

She is also the author of the novel Ajlen, published by Botimet Dudaj in 2018.

Ajlen:https://www.shtepiaelibrit.com/store/en/fiction-literature/6218-ajlen-esmeralda-petrela-9789994305476.html

Harta Astrologjike:

https://hartastrologjike.carrd.co/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

https://top-channel.tv/2016/10/05/harta-astrologjike/

Tsunavi

At the end of the episode, Esmeralda discusses Tsunavi, an astrology app she was developing at the time of the interview. She describes it as a combination of Western and Vedic astrology, offering personalised timing and predictions relating to areas including love, career, money, travel and mood.

Esmeralda says the app was still in development and that she hoped to launch it in August 2026.

Guest Links

Esmeralda Petrela

Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/esmetrela/?hl=en

Host

Róisín Michaux

Xhttps://x.com/RoisinMichaux

Substack

Listen & Subscribe

🎧 Peaked is available on Substack and major podcast platforms.

Substack

Apple Podcasts

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.peaked.news/subscribe

Whatever the media decides is news, is news. This is one of the most significant revelations I’ve had as an adult trying to understand the world, and I’m embarrassed to say it came to me later than it should have.

I can’t even remember what I thought news was back before I had this earth-shattering epiphany. Did I imagine there was some kind of mineral-rich spring of Things That Happened, a bubbling geothermal pool of eternally-replenishing events and developments, into which editors and journalists daily lowered their buckets? There’s no point in everyone turning up at the courts, the car accidents, or the scenes of the sexual crimes and standing around asking W questions about it. The media fetches all the things that happened, and serve them up to us fresh so we can go about our daily lives. Don’t they?

As I was belatedly to learn, barring major events like tsunamis, deaths of celebrities, or elections, what’s ‘news’ is the decision of the people who work in a given news company. If there’s a gang-rape at a Galway train station, a reporter is just as likely to come back from a trip to the news well with a bucket full of story about an Irish language dispute concerning the same station, while side-stepping the arguably more important headline story. But what about the gang-rape!? cry the eyewitnesses and the locals and the independent politicians and the comments sections and the stubborn, swivel-eyed loons shouting on Twitter and YouTube street corners.

But those people are not official newsbringers. You can safely ignore them. We open the paper or zap on the Six O’Clock news on the day of the train station gang-rape and Lo! it didn’t happen. Phew, that’s a relief.

The absence of the story in the official newsbringer channels, sites, and pages does more than just keep people ignorant of a thing having happened, it does something far more insidious: surely… surely… if something so momentous, so consequential, so indicative of a larger societal issue had taken place, it would have been served to us? The fact that it hasn’t been reported says something about the people who are claiming it did happen, or claiming that it matters. It says either that the people bleating on about it are wrong, or that they are trying to make news of something that isn’t news. Either option points to a nefarious agenda on the part of the stubborn town criers insisting it’s important.

Millions of us lumber along under this cloud of received naïveté. I was only snapped out of it because something that I knew to be news happened, and then it happened again, and then it happened over and over and over again, and the media decided it didn’t happen. And only after much, much cajoling, they acknowledged begrudgingly that ok, maybe it happened, but it wasn’t news enough for it to qualify as having happened-happened.

In that sense, the recent running media coverage in Northern Ireland surrounding the scrubbing of the Women’s Rights Northern Ireland event from an annual cultural festival programme was incredible. It was treated as the newsworthy event that it was.

Northern Ireland’s media class (though not its political class) seems to have accepted and acknowledged that there is a conflict of rights between an existing policy (women can keep men away from us, sometimes) and a newer, more fashionable policy (women cannot keep men away from us because men are sometimes actually women themselves).

And though the NI media establishment has been just as conveniently craven as their counterparts in other jurisdictions, it may be harder to ignore the erasure of sex in law there, for a few different reasons.

First of all, Northern Ireland is affected by the UK Supreme Court pronouncement that woman has a biological meaning in law, so news editors can’t be accused of “obsessing over trans people” by reporting on it (a common trope on the activist side to deflect attention from their insane demands). The fact that there is a squabble brewing over which jurisdiction's laws apply in the courts in the context of male access to women’s spaces and services — the UK’s, the EU’s, or some domestically-derived third thing — has pushed the entire trans issue further into the ‘mentionable’ category of current affairs.

Secondly, the size of Northern Ireland, and the concentrated nature of its mainstream media offering, helps focus everyone’s attention more or less on the same time thing at the same time. Thanks to previous reporting on the issue, including some straight-reporting on Sara Morrison’s workplace tribunal dispute, the general public had a decent level of prior knowledge on the topic. Thirdly, there’s the fact that the BBC (which has a Northern Ireland channel) was embarrassed about revelations about its one-sided transactivist content last year. Editorial policy change might more quickly be felt on such a small terrain.

Also, as anyone who followed last week’s events will know, ur-TERF JK Rowling jumped into the fray, adding to the newsiness of the affair. And of course there’s always the sneaking suspicion that there’s a secret TERF working on the news desk.

All of this meant that the incident(s) got pretty good coverage overall. And coverage is pretty much all anyone ever expected or wanted: acknowledgement that a policy or legal development clashes with an already existing policy or law, and acknowledgement that the effort to sort it all out is leading to some drama. This allows the public to make up their own minds on the issue, which they are now free to do, despite some outlets’ best efforts to steer opinion in their preferred direction: Sex Matters have done a detailed autopsy of the local reporting of the incident and found a lot of it to be bad, biased, or incomplete. But one thing they cannot fault the media for is the fact that the coverage happened at all. And that, for TERFs, is major news in itself.

Nora Calder, one of the women behind Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland, who acted as spokeswoman during a number of media spots during the drama, told me that the establishment has perhaps underestimated the degree to which people in Northern Ireland have been knowin about this issue, and have come to their own conclusions about its newsworthiness. By continuing to ignore or downplay it, media companies risk further shitting all over their own credibility — something that (as I have been told by a number of journalists) editors in other countries are very much fretting about, but are unsure about how to resolve.

It’s a bit like the tax bill you thought would go away if you shoved it deep enough under the pile of instruction manuals for electrical appliances in the kitchen mess drawer (true story). This stubborn not-news about trans activism versus women’s rights just will not f**k off. The media is slowly and sourly putting their finger under the seal of the envelope and ripping it open.

The cultural sector did not get get the memo, of course. The utterly mortifying grovelling of the Féile festival oragnisers to appease the online activist mob felt almost retro; their hastily-drafted Instagram knee-bend in which they announced that no TERF would darken their stage harked back to an earlier, sillier time. Those days are clearly over; requests to join Women’s Rights Network are through the roof, Nora told me.

Enjoy the interview.

Send me your stories, I’m all (t)ears: [email protected]. I’m also on X/Twitter: https://x.com/RoisinMichaux

Do you think it matters that sex is being replaced by self-declaration of something called ‘gender identity’? I do, and I was fired for it. I made a bet that other people care about it too. So this newsletter is my new job. If you think my work is important, please take out a paid subscription.

Show notes (AI generated)

In this episode of Peaked, Róisín Michaux speaks with Nora Calder, one of the women involved in running the Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland, about the extraordinary events surrounding the cancellation of the organisation’s planned panel at Féile an Phobail in Belfast.

The conversation traces the story from the original application for a panel on women’s rights, sex-based rights, single-sex spaces and women’s sport, through the panel’s acceptance, the subsequent social-media controversy, the cancellation by Féile, and the legal and political fallout that followed.

Nora explains what happened behind the scenes as the Women’s Rights Network sought to have the event reinstated, including the organisation’s attempts to engage with Féile, the legal process, the support that came from women around the world, and the decision ultimately to organise an alternative event.

The discussion then moves beyond Féile to the wider political situation in Northern Ireland, including the Equality Commission’s judicial review, the UK Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers, Sarah Morrison’s case, BBC coverage of the controversy, engagement with Justice Minister Naomi Long, and the forthcoming Northern Ireland election.

Featured Topics

* Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland

* Féile an Phobail

* The cancelled “Respect, Rights & Reality” panel

* The original Féile application

* Sex-based rights

* Single-sex spaces

* Women’s sport

* The UK Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling

* The online campaign surrounding the Féile panel

* The cancellation of the event

* J.K. Rowling’s offer of legal support

* The legal challenge against Féile

* The alternative event in Belfast

* Sex Matters

* Fiona McAnena

* Athena Forum

* Gaels for Fair Play

* Women’s rights activism in Northern Ireland

* The political divisions of Northern Ireland

* The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland

* Article 2 of the Windsor Framework

* Sarah Morrison

* BBC Spotlight

* Nolan Investigates

* Stonewall

* Naomi Long

* The Alliance Party

* Northern Ireland’s prisons and women’s services

* The March 2027 Northern Ireland election

The 2025 Féile event was titled “Whose Victory Is It Anyway? Why the UK Supreme Court Ruling Is Not a Victory for the Feminist Movement” and was organised by Féile’s Debates and Discussions Committee. The event argued that the Supreme Court ruling was regressive for feminism. (Féile an Phobail)

Féile 2025: Whose Victory Is It Anyway?

The Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland

The Women’s Rights Network is a UK-wide organisation campaigning around the rights and interests of women and girls.

Nora discusses the work of the Northern Ireland branch, including political engagement, campaigning, Freedom of Information requests, judicial reviews and public events. She explains that the Northern Ireland branch works both independently and with the wider WRN network, sharing information and research between regional groups.

Women’s Rights Network

Women’s Rights Network on YouTube

Women’s Rights Network YouTube channel

The Planned Panel

The planned event was titled:

Respect, Rights & Reality: Women’s Voices from Ireland and Europe

The panel was intended to bring together women from Northern Ireland, Ireland and Europe to discuss sex-based rights and the legal and political questions surrounding them.

Among the organisations and speakers discussed were:

* Women’s Rights Network

* Athena Forum

* Gaels for Fair Play

* Sex Matters

Fiona McAnena from Sex Matters subsequently agreed to participate. Nora describes the excitement among the organisers after the event was accepted and speakers began agreeing to take part.

Sex Matters

The Cancellation

On 21 July 2026, Féile an Phobail cancelled the WRN Northern Ireland event.

Féile said it had been unaware from the initial submission that the event would “promote campaigns against rights for the Transgender community” and said the event was being withdrawn from the programme.

WRN Northern Ireland responded that the event was explicitly a discussion about women’s sex-based rights and that this had been made clear in the original application. The organisation said it was shocked and disappointed by the cancellation. (Belfast Media Group)

The cancellation became the central controversy around the festival, with media coverage, political debate and an increasingly intense online response.

Gript: Rights group says ‘women will not be silenced’ as Féile cancels

BBC News NI: Organisation ‘shocked’ after Féile cancels event

J.K. Rowling & The Legal Challenge

J.K. Rowling’s X account

BBC Coverage of the Controversy

BBC Radio Ulster / BBC Audio coverage

Sex Matters: BBC Northern Ireland’s coverage of the cancellation of WRN NI’s panel

The Legal Dispute and the Alternative Event

Newsletter: Women’s Rights Network event goes ahead in Belfast after Féile cancellation

Video

A video connected with the Féile controversy and WRN Northern Ireland:

Watch the video

Women’s Rights Network & The Broader Political Picture

The conversation moves from the Féile controversy to the wider political landscape in Northern Ireland.

Nora discusses attempts to engage senior politicians and her meeting with Naomi Long, the Justice Minister and leader of the Alliance Party.

She describes repeatedly asking Long to meet with WRN before eventually securing a meeting, where they discussed prisons, policing, intimate searches and women’s services.

Naomi Long / Alliance Party

Further Reading & Listening

Féile Cancellation

Gript: Rights group says ‘women will not be silenced’ as Féile cancels

BBC News NI: Organisation ‘shocked’ after Féile cancels event

Sex Matters: BBC Northern Ireland’s coverage of the cancellation of WRN NI’s panel

The Replacement Event

Newsletter: Women’s Rights Network event goes ahead in Belfast after Féile cancellation

Féile

Féile an Phobail

2025 Féile panel on the Supreme Court ruling

BBC Audio

BBC Radio Ulster / BBC Audio

Video

Watch the Nora Calder / WRN-related video

Guest Links

Nora Calder

Instagram

X / Twitter

Women’s Rights Network

Official Website

YouTube Channel

Host

Róisín Michaux

X

https://x.com/RoisinMichaux

Substack

Listen & Subscribe

🎧 Peaked is available on Substack and major podcast platforms.

Substack

peaked.newsApple Podcasts

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.peaked.news/subscribe

There’s no weekly newsletter this week because I’ve been travelling to Belfast and Amsterdam for TERF-related activities (see below), so here’s an interview I did with one of Germany's fiercest warriors against the forces of gender irrationality, Rona Duwe.

Rona was sued by a psychotherapist called Sabine Maur because she shared a video in which Maur could be seen telling fellow mental health professionals how to fiddle with insurance forms so that ‘gender-affirming’ mastectomies get reimbursed for women claiming to be ‘non-binary’. While female-to-male breast removal is considered totally sane in Germany, breast removal for female-to-non-binary is not, which is bizarre, to be fair, because neither of these things is actually real.

The Maur video was not originally shared by Rona, but she did share it once it was already online. Rona also made comments on Maur’s dubious practices.

Because she is a known (and much-hated) entity in German feminist/queer circles, Rona was the one who was pursued in court for this already-public video. In the interview we get into the details of what went down during the legal proceedings, and we also talked about Rona’s strategy of being gloriously defiant. Like a growing number of women being hounded over this trans nonsense, Rona has decided to take on her detractors rather than slinking away in fear and silence.

You love to see it.

“Did you consider coming out in defence of those women?”

Meanwhile, I spent 24 hours in Belfast on Tuesday in order to cover the Women’s Rights Network Northern Ireland non-reinstated Féile and Phobail event. If you missed all that and you have no idea what I’m talking about, I recommend you read this article by Helen Joyce and my running thread of the conference content.

Bonus: enjoy this awkward confrontation between myself and Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, neo-Laundry Nun Ailbhe Smyth (prolific Irish prawn sandwich brigadier feminist), and even the brand new Lord Mayor of Belfast.

After a whirlwind few hours in Belfast, I had an hour or two’s worth of kip on Dublin Airport floor before heading to Amsterdam to attend (incognito) the World Pride Human Rights Conference 2026. The event confirmed all my priors: it was never about gays, and always about AIDS, and you can tell because thanks to funding cuts, gay activism is going back to being about public health. It will be less and less about the warm-and-fuzzy human rights as the funding pot shrinks. One UNDP attendee accused the Global Fund of abandoning ‘the community’ to become more like a “commodities fund” (the commodities being HIV drugs and medical infrastructure). This was inevitable.

Also, gay is trans in the places in the world where HIV is worst, which is why western countries who invest in AIDS work are so desperate to ‘affirm’ the homophobic ‘third genders’ in these places. If that’s confusing, listen to my interview about it with Stephanie Winn from a few weeks back.

I asked a Pakistani ‘trans woman’ point-blank: if it was ok to be a gay man in Pakistan, would there be fewer Hijras or whatever these men are called over there? Oh yeah, he said emphatically, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Then I asked a senior Dutch diplomat if he could see how reinforcing these ‘half man’ identities is just a different kind of homophobia, and that by celebrating all these third genders — as part of Western donors’ effort not to appear all colonial — they could perhaps be making things worse? He literally did a massive shrug and wished me a good day.

Finally, I spoke to Luke Sheehan for the Irish podcast Cassandra Voices a few weeks back and the episode has just gone online. I did a lot of hyperactive waffling about how the EU works, and we also talked about Irish culture generally and why we’re so susceptible to woke cultism.

Podcast: On Europe, Gender and Sh*tposting with Róisín Michaux

I’ll be publishing a backlog of podcast episodes over the next week or two, and some other bits and pieces. If you like/appreciate my work, I can only keep going with your support. Please share this newsletter with someone you think might like it, upgrade to a paid subscription if you’re on a gratos plan, or donate to my PayPal below. Every little helps. Thanks bud.

Show notes (AI generated)

In this episode of Peaked, Róisín Michaux speaks with German feminist activist Rona Duwe about Germany’s rapidly changing gender identity landscape, her legal battle involving psychotherapist Sabine Maur, and the wider implications for women’s rights, medical ethics, freedom of expression, and public policy.

The discussion examines Germany’s conversion therapy legislation, gender medicine for minors, the role of the German Psychotherapists Chamber, health insurance reimbursement for gender-related treatments, freedom of speech, investigative journalism, self-identification laws, prison policies, and feminist activism.

Rona also discusses her ongoing projects documenting gender-related cases across Germany, her legal victories, and how public support for gender-critical voices has evolved in recent years.

Featured Topics

* Germany’s Self-Determination Act

* Conversion Therapy Ban

* Sabine Maur legal case

* German Psychotherapists Chamber

* Gender medicine for minors

* Health insurance reimbursement

* Non-binary medical interventions

* Medical ethics

* Freedom of expression

* Investigative journalism

* Women’s rights under Article 3 of the German Constitution

* Women’s prisons

* Public activism in Germany

Sabine Maur

Former Vice President of the German Psychotherapists Chamber.Instagram

The episode centers on legal proceedings following Rona’s criticism of Maur’s role in developing treatment guidelines for minors and allegations relating to a webinar discussing insurance reimbursement for non-binary medical interventions.

Alice Schwarzer

Germany’s best-known feminist and founder of Emma Magazine.

Official Website

https://www.emma.de/

Genevieve Gluck

Investigative journalist for Reduxx, referenced during the discussion of Germany’s historical relationship with gender ideology.

Reduxx

https://reduxx.info/

Magnus Hirschfeld

German physician and sexologist whose early work on sexuality and transgender medicine is discussed in relation to Germany’s historical background.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld

Günter Wallraff

Germany’s most famous undercover investigative journalist.

Referenced when discussing how the court compared Rona’s reporting to investigative journalism conducted in the public interest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Wallraff

Marie-Luise Vollbrecht

German biologist referenced while discussing the changing public atmosphere surrounding gender-critical speech in Germany.https://cne.news/article/3976-conservative-biologist-wins-court-case-over-gender-view

Frauenheldinnen

Women’s rights organization supporting legal campaigns and crowdfunding related to Rona’s case.

https://frauenheldinnen.de/

Was ist eine Frau?

Campaign website documenting gender-related cases across Germany.

Website

https://was-ist-eine-frau.de/

Interactive Case Map

https://was-ist-eine-frau.de/nur-ein-einzelfall/

WPATH

World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

Referenced during discussion of international treatment guidelines.

https://www.wpath.org/

Emma Magazine

German feminist magazine founded by Alice Schwarzer.

https://www.emma.de/

Laws & Policies

German Self-Determination Act

Germany’s legislation allowing legal change of sex without previous legal requirements.

https://www.bmj.de/

German Conversion Therapy Ban

Discussed throughout the episode in relation to psychotherapy and gender identity treatment.

https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/

Article 3 — German Basic Law

The discussion covers proposals to include “sexual identity” alongside sex protections in Germany’s Constitution.

English text

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/

Medical Topics

Johns Hopkins – Metoidioplasty

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/metoidioplasty-for-gender-affirming-care

Cleveland Clinic – Phalloplasty

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/procedures/21585-phalloplasty

Companies Discussed

GenderGP

Referenced during discussion of cross-border hormone prescribing.

https://www.gendergp.com/

Imago

Referenced during discussion of online European hormone services.

https://imago.tg/

Guests

Rona Duwe

Website

https://was-ist-eine-frau.de/

Substack

Twitterhttps://x.com/ronalyze?lang=en

Host — Róisín Michaux

🔗 X (Twitter)https://x.com/RoisinMichaux

🔗 Apple Podcasts — Peaked

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.peaked.news/subscribe

Myself and Ashley had a conversation that went all over the shop: from the suffocating political consensus, to the roots of social contagions, to why autogynephiles want to wear the frilly apron but don’t want to do the cooking.

Listening back (don’t ever listen back) I can hear my brain desperately trying to connect synapses and failing, and I speak far too fast, so I apologise for all the brainfarts (especially to all the non-English speakers trying to keep up with me). Ashley is so interesting that all the questions I ever had came tumbling out all at once. An awesome woman.

Enjoy.

Do you think it matters that sex is being replaced by self-declaration of something called ‘gender identity’? I do, and I was fired for it. I made a bet that other people care about it too. So this newsletter is my new job. If you think my work is important, please take out a paid subscription.

Show notes (AI generated)

Episode Overview

In this episode of Peaked, Róisín Michaux speaks with sociologist, writer, and editor Ashley Frawley about therapeutic culture, social conformity, identity politics, family life, citizenship, and the social dynamics underlying contemporary gender ideology.

Drawing on her work in sociology, social problems theory, and the medicalisation of social life, Frawley examines how particular ideas become dominant within institutions and public culture, how social movements emerge and evolve, and why certain forms of identity and vulnerability have become culturally privileged in contemporary Western societies.

The conversation explores the “Brussels consensus” inside European institutions, the changing relationship between capitalism and family life, therapeutic models of citizenship, historical moral panics, social contagion, the rise of gender identity ideology, and the social conditions that make particular belief systems culturally persuasive.

Throughout the discussion, Frawley argues that contemporary social conflicts cannot be understood purely through biology or psychology, but must also be understood as products of wider historical, cultural, political, and institutional processes.

Ashley Frawley

Twitter

🔗https://x.com/AshleyAFrawley

Patreon

🔗 https://www.patreon.com/AshleyAFrawley

🔗 Compact Magazinehttps://www.compactmag.com/contributor/ashley-frawley/

Frawley serves as Senior Editor at Compact, a publication focused on politics, culture, economics, and contemporary social debates.

🔗 Bloomsbury Author Pagehttps://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/author/ashley-frawley/

Significant Emotions: Rhetoric and Social Problems in a Vulnerable Age

🔗 Bloomsburyhttps://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/significant-emotions-9781350026810/

🔗 Google Scholarhttps://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1q-G24wAAAAJ

Ashley Frawley is a sociologist, author, and editor whose work focuses on social problems, therapeutic culture, wellbeing discourse, family policy, emotions, and contemporary political culture.

She is Senior Editor at Compact Magazine, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Kent, and Visiting Research Fellow at MCC Brussels.

Organizations & Institutions

MCC Brussels

🔗 Official Website https://brussels.mcc.hu/

Jonathan Haidt

🔗 Official Website

https://jonathanhaidt.com/

Referenced during a discussion about social science, moral psychology, and the replication crisis.

Daniel Kahneman

🔗 Nobel Prize Biographyhttps://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2002/kahneman/facts/

Referenced in relation to behavioural science and contemporary psychology.

🔗 Michelle Remembershttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembershttps://www.amazon.com/Michelle-Remembers-Smith/dp/0722179588

The Replication Crisis

🔗 Nature Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembershttps://www.nature.com/articles/533452a

The discussion examines methodological and reproducibility problems affecting psychology and related social sciences.

The Communist Manifesto

🔗 Full Texthttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

Referenced during discussions about family structures, labour mobility, and capitalism.

David Goodhart — The Road to Somewhere

🔗 Publisher Pagehttps://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-road-to-somewhere/

Referenced during discussion of “Somewheres” and “Anywheres”, mobility, local attachment, and identity.

John Stuart Mill — The Subjection of Women

🔗 Full Texthttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27083

Referenced during discussion of women’s citizenship, reason, education, and public life.

Historical Parallels & Social Contagion

The Satanic Panic

🔗 Encyclopaedia Britannicahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic

🔗 Repressed Memoryhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8935987/

Ian Hacking

🔗 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Gender, Citizenship & Vulnerability

How Society Got a Sex Change

🔗 Compact Magazinehttps://www.compactmag.com/article/how-society-got-a-sex-change/

Frawley references her essay examining changing social ideals surrounding sex, gender, citizenship, and identity.

Topics discussed include:

• stereotypical femininity• vulnerability as a social ideal• masculinity and socialization• changing gender norms• citizenship and identity

The “Women Are Wonderful” Effect

🔗 APA Recordhttps://psycnet.apa.org/record/1994-33384-001

Discussed in relation to cultural expectations surrounding femininity, morality, accommodation, and vulnerability.

Host

Róisín Michaux

🔗 X (Twitter)https://x.com/RoisinMichaux

🔗 Apple Podcasts — Peaked

Listen & Subscribe

🎧 Peaked is available on Substack and major podcast platforms.

🔗

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.peaked.news/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.peaked.news

I spoke to Dora right after she was found by a Paris tribunal to have committed a grave offense against transvestites simply for stating something all female mammals have taught their young since the rise of mammalia: “as women, we are obliged to be wary of people with penises”.

Interestingly, her condemnation revealed not just that the Paris judiciary …

Why do so many heterosexual women have AIDS? Or do they?

And why is the Irish government (as in, the Irish public) paying for young women’s trans self-harm adventures abroad?

Myself and veteran journalist Paddy O’Gorman touch on our era’s most untouchable media taboos. Plus: prisons, perverts, and general institutional capture.

Enjoy.

Show notes (AI generated)

Host: Róisín MichauxGuest: Paddy O’Gorman

Episode Overview

In this episode of Peaked, Róisín Michaux speaks with veteran Irish journalist and podcaster Paddy O’Gorman about journalism, Irish gender medicine, trans medical tourism, HIV/AIDS history, public health messaging, institutional incentives, and the role of international organisations in shaping domestic policy.

Rather than serving as a fact-check, these notes function as a forensic reference guide to the people, reports, court cases, studies, speeches, and media coverage directly referenced throughout the discussion.

Paddy O’Gorman

Former RTÉ journalist with approximately 40 years of experience.

Current affiliations:

🔗 Paddy’s Podcast

https://paddyspodcast.ie/

🔗 GRIPT

https://gript.ie/

🔗 Genspect

https://genspect.org/

Paddy’s reporting philosophy:

“Stand at a place. And listen.”

Journalism, Courts & Vulnerable Services

Shauna Kavanagh (Limerick Prison / Rathmines Refuge)

Referenced during discussions about domestic violence refuges and safeguarding.

Rathmines Refuge Assault

🔗 Irish ExaminerNo jail for hairdresser who pulled clumps of hair in attack on homeless womanhttps://www.irishexaminer.com/news/courtandcrime/arid-41222173.html

Previous Assault Conviction

🔗 Irish TimesWoman jailed for assaulting a family friend who was trying to break up a fighthttps://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/criminal-court/woman-jailed-for-assaulting-a-family-friend-who-was-trying-to-break-up-a-fight-1.4498193

Barbie Kardashian

Referenced as another example of controversy involving placement, violence, and media reporting.

Threats to Kill Sentence

🔗 Irish Timeshttps://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2023/03/16/barbie-kardashian-jailed-for-five-and-a-half-years-for-threats-to-kill-mother/

Acquittal

🔗 RTÉhttps://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2024/1025/1477497-barbie-kardashian-verdict/

Commentary Referenced

🔗 Genspecthttps://genspect.org/barbie-kardashian-and-the-gaslighting-of-the-irish-public/

Graham Linehan

Referenced in relation to Irish media framing.

Sophia Brooks Incident

🔗 BBCFather Ted creator denies harassing trans womanhttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx2vk4zx3xo

🔗 Associated Presshttps://apnews.com/article/1f00e523d76c4ca3b54d0b5908c2d693

Irish Trans Medical Tourism

Kenneth O’Flynn

Independent Ireland TD Kenneth O’Flynn submitted parliamentary questions examining public expenditure on overseas gender procedures.

🔗 Oireachtas Parliamentary Question (7 May 2026)https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2026-05-07/510/

Treatment Abroad Scheme

🔗 HSEhttps://www.hse.ie/eng/services/list/1/schemes/treatment-abroad-scheme/

EU Cross-Border Healthcare Directive

🔗 Directive 2011/24/EUhttps://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32011L0024

Mary Butler

Referenced extensively due to the contrast Paddy draws between youth body modification policies.

Under-18 Tattoo Bill

🔗 Oireachtas Billhttps://www.oireachtas.ie/en/bills/bill/2018/125/

🔗 Irish Timeshttps://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/oireachtas/ban-on-tattoos-and-intimate-body-piercings-for-under-18s-proposed-in-new-bill-1.3699118

🔗 The Journalhttps://www.thejournal.ie/tattoo-piercing-ban-under-18-4342497-Nov2018/

“Behind the Scenes” Comments

🔗 Fianna Fáil Videohttps://www.facebook.com/fiannafail/videos/all-theyre-looking-for-is-respect-and-support-and-theyre-not-harming-anyoneas-a-/1529474904915445/

Mary Lou McDonald

Referenced during discussions around lived experience and Sinn Féin’s evolving position.

Supporting Her Trans Sibling

🔗 GCNhttps://gcn.ie/mary-lou-mcdonald-support-trans-sibling/

Late Late Show Discussion

🔗 The Journalhttps://www.thejournal.ie/sinn-fein-trans-healthcare-trans-policy-6687580-Apr2025/

“People Need to Cop On”

🔗 The Timeshttps://www.thetimes.com/world/ireland-world/article/mary-lou-mcdonald-interview-trans-rights-sinn-fein-policy-ffxvf2666

Dr Sidhbh Gallagher

Irish plastic surgeon practising in Miami.

Irish Times Profile Criticised by Paddy

🔗 Irish TimesMeet the Irish surgeon changing lives for transgender Americanshttps://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/working-abroad/meet-the-irish-surgeon-changing-lives-for-transgender-americans-1.3561668

Response Referenced

🔗 GRIPThttps://gript.ie/what-the-irish-times-didnt-tell-you-about-dr-sidhbh-gallagher/

Simon Harris Connection

The GRIPT article notes Gallagher’s previous engagement with Simon Harris regarding trans healthcare discussions.

Cass Review

Referenced as a major international reassessment.

🔗 Cass Review

https://cass.independent-review.uk/

HIV / AIDS History

UNAIDS Global Report 2012

One of the central reports repeatedly referenced.

🔗 PDFhttps://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/20121120_UNAIDS_Global_Report_2012_with_annexes_en_1.pdf

Key themes:

• concentrated epidemics• generalised epidemics• key populations

PrEP

🔗 Sexual Wellbeing Irelandhttps://www.sexualwellbeing.ie/sexual-health/prep/

HPSC

🔗 Health Protection Surveillance Centre

https://www.hpsc.ie/

HIV Criminalisation

🔗 UNAIDS Factsheethttps://www.unaids.org/en/resources/documents/2024/01-hiv-human-rights-factsheet-criminalization

Drug Decriminalisation

🔗 UNAIDShttps://www.unaids.org/en/resources/documents/2026/20260310_Decriminalization-drug-use-HIV

Sex Work Guidance

🔗 UNAIDS PDFhttps://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/JC2306_UNAIDS-guidance-note-HIV-sex-work_en_0.pdf

MSM & Key Populations

🔗 WHOhttps://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241500129

🔗 UNAIDShttps://www.unaids.org/en/topic/key-populations

Southeast Asia HIV Study

Referenced when discussing transmission patterns.

🔗 PubMedhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23260128/

🔗 Full Texthttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3956879/

Important correction:

The study reported approximately 49 times higher odds, not 49%.

Bridge Populations

🔗 PubMedhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11287870/

Ryan White

Referenced as an example of public perception and stigma during the AIDS epidemic.

🔗 Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program

https://ryanwhite.hrsa.gov/

Peter Piot

Likely the “Ebola Peter” referenced.

Belgian microbiologist involved in the discovery of Ebola and later Executive Director of UNAIDS.

🔗 Stanfordhttps://healthpolicy.fsi.stanford.edu/news/virus-hunter-peter-piot-how-chance-encounter-sparked-his-life-mission

🔗 Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/25/peter-piot-scientist-ebola-congo

🔗 Britannicahttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Piot

Thabo Mbeki

Referenced during broader discussions of AIDS policy controversies.

🔗 Britannicahttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Thabo-Mbeki

Róisín Murphy

Referenced as an example of backlash following comments on puberty blockers.

🔗 Pitchforkhttps://pitchfork.com/news/roisin-murphy-shares-statement-after-inflammatory-comment-on-trans-rights

🔗 Entertainment Weeklyhttps://ew.com/celebrity/roisin-murphy-apology-fire-brimstone-trans-rights-comments/

Maya Forstater

Referenced by Róisín.

Let Toys Be Toys

🔗 Hiyamayahttps://hiyamaya.net/2012/12/05/let-toys-be-toys/?ref=forstater.com

Patrick Kavanagh

Referenced quotation:

“Because the wise men have not spoken, I speak as a fool.”

🔗 Poetry Foundationhttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/patrick-kavanagh

Pádraig Pearse

🔗 Oration at the Graveside of O’Donovan Rossahttps://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Oration_at_the_Graveside_of_O%27Donovan_Rossa

UNICEF / Liam Neeson

Referenced during discussions around messaging.

🔗 UNICEF Appealhttps://help.unicef.org/en/special-appeal-from-Liam-Neeson

Host

Róisín Michaux

🔗 Xhttps://x.com/RoisinMichaux

🔗 Peaked Substack

🔗 Apple Podcasts

Guest

Paddy O’Gorman

🔗 Paddy’s Podcast

https://paddyspodcast.ie/

🔗 GRIPT

https://gript.ie/

🔗 Genspecthttps://genspect.org/paddy-ogormans-letter-from-ireland/

Listen & Subscribe

🎧 Peaked is available on Substack and major podcast platforms.

🔗

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peaked.substack.com/subscribe

Alexa Faucher is a former chief of staff to a Communist mayor in a town in the Paris suburbs (Chevilly-Larue) who lost her job for sharing her gender-critical views online. A bleeding-heart lefty, an atheist, and a feminist — but none of that counted for anything, ultimately, because she also knows that humans come in two sexes, regardless of what anyone’s legal document says.

Enjoy our mutual outpouring of woe.

By the way, Alexa can’t get a job despite her decades of experience in politics. As you can hear, she is a brilliant, smart, hard-nosed b***h. If you need someone like that, please let me know and I will pass on the message.

Send me your stories, I’m all (t)ears: [email protected]. I’m also on X/Twitter: https://x.com/RoisinMichaux

Do you think it matters that sex is being replaced by self-declaration of something called ‘gender identity’? I do, and I was fired for it. I made a bet that other people care about it too. So this newsletter is my new job. If you think my work is important, please take out a paid subscription.

Show notes (AI generated)

Episode overview

In this episode of Peaked, Róisín Michaux speaks with Alexa, a former chief of staff to a Communist mayor in the Paris suburbs who says she lost her political role following her public feminist and gender-critical views online.

The conversation explores ideological conformity within left-wing political culture, institutional responses to gender-critical speech, tensions between feminism and gender identity ideology, and the psychological experience of becoming socially and professionally ostracized as a “TERF.”

Drawing from experiences in French municipal politics, feminism, psychiatry, Covid-era social compliance, and online political culture, the discussion examines broader themes including class politics, secularism, postmodernism, collective rights versus individual identity, institutional capture, social conformity, and the cultural influence of American identity politics on Europe.

Alexa also reflects on French republican secularism, anti-racism politics, feminism, social welfare, and the contradictions she sees within contemporary left-wing movements around religion, sex-based rights, and gender ideology.

Key Topics Discussed

* Alexa Faucher’s dismissal from Chevilly-Larue

* Jérôme Martin’s online denunciation campaign

* French public-sector contracts and “devoir de réserve”

* “Fired TERFs” and institutional retaliation

* Helen Joyce and UK legal developments

* Covid-era conformity and institutional obedience

* Didier Raoult and anti-establishment scientific dissent

* Finland’s reassessment of youth gender medicine

* Keira Bell and the Tavistock case

* French secular feminism and laïcité

* Planning Familial and “men can get pregnant” activism

* Marguerite Stern, Dora Moutot, and French feminist fracture

* Identity politics vs materialist feminism

* “Women with penises” and compelled language

* Surrogacy and commodification of women’s bodies

* National gender-critical figures across Europe

French Political & Institutional Context

Stéphanie Daumin — PCF Mayor of Chevilly-Larue

Website: ville-chevilly-larue.fr

Alexa explains that she served as directrice de cabinet for Stéphanie Daumin, the Communist mayor of Chevilly-Larue, a historically left-wing suburb in the Paris “Red Belt.”

The political context matters because the episode repeatedly contrasts:

* older class-based Communist politics,with:

* newer activist and identity-centered ideological frameworks inside the contemporary left.

Jérôme Martin’s denunciation campaign against Alexa Faucher

Website: x.com

Referenced in relation to the activist campaign that followed Alexa Faucher’s tweet asserting the immutability of biological sex.

Jérôme Martin publicly denounced Faucher online, helping escalate the controversy surrounding her employment.

Follow-up thread:

The episode repeatedly returns to:

* online activist escalation,

* public denunciation,

* and institutional pressure campaigns following ideological dissent.

Chevilly-Larue cabinet dismissal controversy

Website: frontieresmedia.fr

One of the primary French-language reports documenting the controversy surrounding Alexa Faucher’s dismissal after her tweet regarding biological sex.

The Tweet Referenced in the Episode

The controversy centered around Alexa Faucher’s reply concerning biological sex and legal identity changes:

« Votre sexe n’a jamais été, n’est pas, et ne sera jamais féminin. Les stéréotypes de genre que vous choisissez, et qui nous sont imposés, si. Bisous. »

The tweet became widely circulated in activist and political networks following Jérôme Martin’s denunciation campaign.

UK Gender Politics & Institutional Conflict

Helen Joyce discussing the UK Supreme Court ruling

Website: youtube.com

Referenced when Róisín discusses listening to Helen Joyce following the UK Supreme Court ruling on sex-based legal protections.

The ruling is discussed less as a narrow legal issue and more as:

* a test of institutional compliance,

* ideological capture,

* and whether public bodies will obey legal definitions of biological sex.

Keira Bell and the Tavistock case

Website: wikipedia.org

Referenced during discussion of safeguarding concerns surrounding youth medical transition.

The Bell case became internationally significant because it challenged whether minors could meaningfully consent to puberty blockers and medical transition pathways.

The Cass Review

Website: cass.independent-review.uk

Referenced in broader discussion of:

* evidence standards,

* youth gender medicine,

* and institutional reassessment of pediatric transition pathways.

The review became internationally influential after concluding that the evidence base for pediatric medical transition remained weak and underdeveloped.

Finnish study on psychiatric morbidity and youth gender services

Website: onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Referenced during discussion of the “Finnish study” mentioned by the speakers.

The April 2026 Finnish register study:

Psychiatric Morbidity Among Adolescents and Young Adults Who Contacted Specialised Gender Identity Services in Finland in 1996–2019

was discussed as evidence of increasing institutional doubt emerging from inside youth gender medicine systems themselves.

The speakers specifically emphasize that skepticism is now increasingly coming from:

* clinicians,

* researchers,

* and medical systems previously aligned with affirmation-based treatment models.

Covid, Conformity & Institutional Trust

Didier Raoult and France’s Covid divide

Website: france24.com

Referenced during discussion of:

* conformity,

* institutional trust,

* and scientific dissent during Covid.

For many French listeners, Didier Raoult became symbolic of:

* anti-establishment scientific dissent,

* distrust of centralized expertise,

* and collapse of institutional legitimacy during the pandemic.

The speakers use Covid primarily as:

* a psychological analogy for ideological compliance.

Retracted hydroxychloroquine study associated with Didier Raoult

Website: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Referenced indirectly during discussion of:

* early contradictory Covid messaging,

* institutional confusion,

* and scientific authority.

The Raoult controversy became one of France’s defining symbolic conflicts over:

* expertise,

* media trust,

* and anti-establishment dissent.

National Gender-Critical Figures Referenced

The episode repeatedly returns to the idea that:

“every country has one”

meaning a nationally recognizable gender-critical feminist figure or activist.

Ireland — Laoise de Brún/Countess

Website: laoisedebrun

UK — Kelly-Jay Keen / Standing For Women

Website: x.com

UK — J.K. Rowling

Website: x.com

Germany — Rona Duwe

Website: ronalyze.de

Austria — Faika El-Nagashi

Website: substack.com

France — Marguerite Stern

Website: wikipedia.org

France — Dora Moutot

Website: wikipedia.org

These figures are discussed as examples of:

* feminist opposition to gender ideology,

* online harassment campaigns,

* institutional retaliation,

* and ideological fracture across Europe.

Dora Moutot 🔗

X/Twitter: https://x.com/doramoutot

🔗 Co-author page / Book: Search “Transmania” on Éditions Magnus or Amazon.fr

🔗 Femelliste YouTube (joint): https://www.youtube.com/@femelliste

Marguerite Stern 🔗 Personal website:

https://www.margueritestern.com/

🔗 X/Twitter: https://x.com/MargueriteStern

🔗 English Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Stern

🔗 French Wikipedia: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Stern

Joint Work

🔗 Femelliste official:

https://www.femelliste.com/

🔗 Transmania (book): Widely covered; see Wikipedia entry for details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmania

Organizations & Activism

Act Up-Paris

Website: actupparis.org

Referenced because Jérôme Martin previously served as president of Act Up-Paris between 2003 and 2006.

The discussion repeatedly returns to:

* activist pressure,

* public denunciation,

* direct-action political culture,

* and ideological enforcement mechanisms.

Planning Familial’s “inclusive sexual health” campaign

Website: planning-familial.org

Referenced during discussion of ideological changes inside French feminist and reproductive-rights organizations.

The campaign became controversial among some French feminists because it adopted:

* gender-neutral reproductive language,

* “inclusive” terminology,

* and messaging interpreted by critics as replacing sex-based language around women’s bodies.

Alexa contrasts this with earlier feminist traditions centered on:

* abortion rights,

* material sex differences,

* and secular feminism.

Guest — Alexa Faucher

🔗 X (Twitter)https://x.com/alexafaucher

🔗 LinkedInhttps://fr.linkedin.com/in/alexafaucher

🔗 Novel — Puisqu’on a marché sur la lunehttps://www.amazon.fr/PUISQUON-MARCHE-LUNE-Alexa-Faucher/dp/2367951535

Alexa Faucher is a French law graduate, political communications professional, author, and materialist feminist.

She served as directrice de cabinet for the Communist mayor of Chevilly-Larue until July 2025 following controversy surrounding her tweet about biological sex.

The episode also references her:

* public-sector communications background,

* strategic political work,

* feminist activism,

* and experience inside French municipal political structures.

(Her X/Twitter account was reportedly made private following the controversy.)

Host — Róisín Michaux

🔗 Substack / Podcast Home

🔗 X (Twitter)https://x.com/RoisinMichaux

🔗 Apple Podcasts — Peaked

🔗 Newsletter

Listen & Subscribe

🎧 Peaked is available on Substack and major podcast platforms.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peaked.substack.com/subscribe

In order to capture what it’s been like for female homosexuals in the era of gendercultism, Tonje Gjevjon (Norway) and Alison Ellis (UK) collected the stories of 19 lesbians from around the world and not only is their book, Kindred in Chaos, an insightful read, it’s also extremely valuable as receipts, which we TERFs never tire of collecting.

Here’s one of the women describing what it’s been like watching young butches try to turn themselves into men:

“I have seen many handsome butch women destroy their bodies with levels of testosterone their system was never meant to accommodate. These changes cannot be undone. I have watched healthy young women decimate their cardiac systems with these drugs… all in pursuit of something impossible.”

Another one writes:

“Because (lesbian spaces) don’t exist, it's much harder for lesbians today to accept their homosexuality. Many force themselves to date trans-identifying males and don’t call themselves lesbians because it’s a «TERF dog whistle». The trans movement has been incredibly effective in erasing women and lesbians, making us believe who we are is wrong and needs changing. It is wide spread conversion therapy essentially.”

And another one describes the moment the AGP penny dropped:

“…I connected one idea after another: cross-dressing serial killers, exhibitionism, true crime, paraphiliacs, autogynephilia, men who harass lesbians with the «I’m a lesbian in a man’s body» joke, men who deliberately try to get lesbians to talk about sex for their sexual titillation, men who harass lesbians by talking about porn... I peaked in rage and disgust… every major gay rights organisation had betrayed homosexual people. It was like the world was collapsing.”

You can read all the stories by buying the book here

Professional lesbianswithanasterisk-ism

Meanwhile, if you’re a European taxpayer, you should know that you are paying a lot of money for a big party currently taking place on the Greek island of Lesbos, organised by the professional LGTBIQ+ class to celebrate a group of people called lesbians-with-an-asterisk.

The word “lesbian” has a meaning. It means women who are sexually attracted to other women. The Official Meaning of lesbian*, however, has evolved to include straight men who wish they could be lesbians. It also includes women who claim to be men, and women who claim to be something called “non-binary”.

I strongly suspect that most of the women working for EL*C (Eurocentralasian Lesbian Community), the ones hosting this week’s island get-together, and who claim to represent European lesbianswithanasterisk, know that it’s all nonsense. But it’s lucrative nonsense. They get more and more money each year from the EU to keep the charade in perpetual motion. “LBQ women”, we’re told, are under attack by the “anti-gender movement” (it me, and proudly so) but what’s really under attack is the ability to name reality.

Lesbians, meanwhile, the TERFY ones, are completely unmoored from the money machine, and the parades, and the DEI panels, and the projects, and the boards, etc. And they are monstered. If you’re a young woman who is attracted to women, the current scene — the one that women fought hard to build — is an absolute landmine. If you say you don’t like “girldick”, or that you don’t identify as a woman (but that you just are one) you’ll quickly find yourself on the wrong side of the aggressive autogynephilic men who the EL*C now represent.

You can follow the asteriskas and their publicly-funded jolly by going to their Facebook account (link in caption) where I’m sure they’ll be posting about their hard work on Lesbos. It’s not easy stroking your master’s balls in the hot sun all day.

Show notes (AI generated)

Tonje Gjevjon is a Norwegian lesbian activist and artist and Alison Ellis is a British lesbian commentator. Kindred in Chaos is a collection of first-person testimonies from 19 young lesbians navigating contemporary gender identity politics.

The discussion explores lesbian identity, youth alienation, puberty, online trans-identification, institutional LGBT culture, social conformity, detransition narratives, online radicalization, lesbian erasure, activist networks, puberty dysphoria, and the broader political and psychological dynamics surrounding gender identity ideology in Europe. Drawing from personal experience, online activism, lesbian organizing, Scandinavian politics, youth LGBT groups, social media culture, feminism, and gender-critical organizing, the conversation examines why some young lesbians resist trans-identification pathways while others become absorbed into them. The episode also situates Kindred in Chaos within a wider international network of lesbian, feminist, and gender-critical activism across the UK and Europe.

Julie Bindel

Tonje Gjevjon references feminist writer and activist Julie Bindel as one of the earliest figures who alerted her to ideological shifts inside progressive politics.

🔗 Official Website

🔗 X/Twitterhttps://x.com/bindelj

🔗 Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Bindel

Magdalen Berns

🔗 YouTube Archivehttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=magdalen+berns

🔗 Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalen_Berns

Magdalen Berns is repeatedly referenced as a major influence on Alison Ellis.

Ellis describes discovering Berns’ videos after searching online for the term “TERF” and realizing:

* she was not alone in her views

* other lesbians shared similar concerns

* factual/direct language resonated more strongly than identity-centered discourse

The episode frames Berns as an important early online gender-critical voice, particularly among young lesbians.

Organizations & Activist Networks

LGB Alliance

🔗 Official Website

https://lgballiance.org.uk/

🔗 Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGB_Alliance

Women’s Declaration International

🔗 Official Website

https://www.womensdeclaration.com/

Let Women Speak

🔗 Standing For Women / Let Women Speak

https://www.standingforwomen.com/

Norway Legal Gender Recognition

🔗 Norwegian Government Informationhttps://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/families-and-children/equality-and-social-inclusion/innsiktsartikler/legal-gender-recognition/id2481746/

Norway’s legal gender recognition framework allows individuals to legally change gender without surgical sterilization requirements.

The law became an important reference point in broader European debates surrounding:

* self-identification

* youth transition

* administrative gender policy

* legal sex classification

Gender-Neutral Pronouns & Inclusive Language

🔗 Gender-Neutral Language Overviewhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_language

🔗 Norwegian Language / “Hen” Pronoun Contexthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language

The discussion references institutional language shifts including:

* gender-neutral terminology

* pronoun normalization

* “parent 1 / parent 2” style frameworks

* avoidance of sexed language in some institutional settings

The speakers frame these changes as examples of top-down ideological restructuring.

The European Lesbian Conference (EL*C)

🔗 Official Website

https://europeanlesbianconference.org/

Phalloplasty & Metoidioplasty

Cleveland Clinic — Phalloplasty

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/procedures/21585-phalloplasty

UCSF Gender Care

https://transcare.ucsf.edu/guidelines/phalloplasty

Johns Hopkins — Metoidioplasty

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/treatment-tests-and-therapies/metoidioplasty-for-gender-affirming-care

The speakers reference two forms of gender-affirming genital surgery:

Phalloplasty

Construction of a penis using tissue grafts, often from the forearm, thigh, or abdomen.

Metoidioplasty

A procedure using hormonally enlarged clitoral tissue to construct male genitalia.

Róisín Michaux specifically references observing extensive discussion around these surgeries inside online trans-masc communities, particularly in Belgium.

The conversation frames breast removal as a central fixation among many young female transitioners.

Belgium & European Gender Clinics

Ghent University Hospital Gender Team

https://www.uzgent.be/patient/zoek-een-arts-of-dienst/centrum-voor-seksuologie-en-gender

Ghent University Hospital is one of Europe’s most recognized gender clinics and research centers. The speakers reference Belgium as an example of broader European gender medicine infrastructure.

The Swedish Documentary — The Trans Train

Genspect Overview

https://genspect.org/swedish-documentary-stopping-the-trans-train/

YouTube Playlist / Documentary Uploads

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvATEhXWd8uF7dT3g-jXBmYY7PPfSQZSs

GB News Appearance

GB News

https://www.gbnews.com/

Tonje Gjevjon and Alison Ellis reference appearing on GB News to discuss Kindred in Chaos following their appearance at the LGB Alliance conference.

Guests

Tonje Gjevjon

🔗 X/Twitter: https://x.com/tonjegjevjon🔗 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonjegjevjon/🔗 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kjendisgjevjon

Alison Ellis

🔗 TikTok: Alison Ellis

Listen & Subscribe

🎧 Peaked is available on Substack and major podcast platforms.

🔗

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.peaked.news/subscribe

For legal/safety reasons, it wasn’t possible to release this recorded interview before last week’s EU announcement about banning ‘conversion therapy’ in the EU.

It’s an interview with an anon paediatric psychiatrist who practices/practiced in Belgium, a country that has already enacted a ban on conversion therapy — despite having found almost no evidence it is happening.

Conversion therapy bans make it legally risky to try to talk a kid out of their wrong-body distress. At the very least, it makes doctors scared to try it. But some therapists, like ‘Sarah’, are braving it anyway. Unfortunately they are few and far between.

While activists — across Europe — failed to find much evidence of pray-away-the-gay type torture (which is the image your brain is intended to conjure up when it hears the term ‘conversion therapy’) there is plenty of trans skepticism about, and criminalising this skepticism is the intended effect of conversion therapy bans. Such legislation essentially performs the same function as hate speech laws that make it very legally dangerous to refute transgender core beliefs. However, this one has a particularly chilling influence on the psycho-medical profession.

Conversion therapy bans are about coercion, because transgender wrongbodyism does not have popular support. Making non-compliance illegal is how its advocates get around the unpopularity problem.

The soft-power machinery non-ban ban

I had been hoping to get this doctor’s experience out there before the decision was made by the EU as to whether or not to make a law against conversion therapy enforceable in all EU countries, but she is under (stalled) criminal investigation for conversion therapy herself (she refuses to affirm the gender delusions of her young patients) and as we spoke, she was literally trying to keep a low cover as she escaped the country.

Ultimately, last week, the European Commission decided not to issue a legally binding directive telling EU countries to ban conversion therapy.

But the outcome was hard to decipher based on the mixed reactions to the announcement. Messaging from activists was schizophrenically lopsided. At first, both sides — the activists making demands of the legislature, and the legislature itself — seemed to be celebrating their joint victory. But then a lot of people on the activist side decided that, in fact, there was nothing to celebrate, and that they had lost the fight. That’s because the EU’s self-trumpeted proposal, in the end, was non-binding. It was just vibes. Or soft power machinery, as Athena Forum called it.

Things got weird online: on the one hand, members of the NGO that had organised the campaign — which amassed 1 million citizen signatures — were filmed smiling and laughing in photos with EU officials. At the same time, their allies were posting Instagram reels about how disappointed they were.

So what happened?

The EU concluded that it can’t legislate in this area. But the fact that the petition even happened in the first place is evidence that they were chancing their arm, as we say back home.

Getting caught mid mission-creep

It’s not an ‘EU competence’ to get involved in criminalising talk therapy for genderfeelz. However, what is considered an EU competence has been subject to extreme mission creep in recent years*, and issues that you would imagine should remain national have become Brussels’ business.

The whole conversion therapy thing was born out of a petition launched in 2024 that was actually an EU-branded, EU-supported ‘citizens initiative’. This bit is important: this petition would not have been possible — it would not have been allowed to go ahead — if what it was asking for was not considered part of the EU’s mandate.

So why did it go ahead? How did it get this far?

A few years ago when I noticed the petition campaign getting off the ground, I wanted to know how the organisers — a couple of skinny young gay chaps from France — were paying for the legal advice that they would need to determine whether or not what they were asking for was even something the EU can legislate on. So I contacted the official EU petition people to ask about their funding declarations, but there were none. So how did they pay for the legal advice? Surely they got legal advice?

These details are boring and finnicky but they’re kind of important: it turns out that the legal experts in the EU Commission itself have to decide whether or not the subject of your demand is something the EU can make binding legislation on, before anything else can happen. (No doubt the vast EU network of NGOs are ready to help out with free legal consults, but it’s the Commission that decides on the legal basis for your request, if there is one).

Let me spell it out: the EU told the activists they could make a binding law banning conversion therapy. They said: go ahead and get your signatures, we can legislate on this. But they have since decided that they cannot make such a law. What changed between 2024 and now? (Awaiting a response from the press contact, will update).

I suspect that the EU bureaucracy was creeping the mission, and got caught mid-creep.

Time was, anything gender-y was waved through the EU bodies — because who cares amiright — but those days are over. The reality is that everyone’s on high alert for social issues in a way they might not have been before. Turns out people do care about what constitutes reality and about keeping their kids out of the hands of state-mandated ideologues. Shocking.

A legally-binding ban on sex-swap talk therapy would never “get past the Council” which is eurospeak for “it would fail to be approved by the more conservative countries’ leaders”, who are growing wiser and wiser to the social engineering schtick by the day. This is none of your business, the heads of state would have told the Commission, and they would have been right.

I’m not a specialist so I’m just spitballing here, but I think that something that has been until now a bit of a grey area has just been shoved firmly into the black.

So the Commission came out and told the gathering of disappointed youngsters last week that nope sorry, no law, we can’t actually do that, but here’s a non-binding vibes-setting document instead (I don’t think the lads should worry, it still looks great on their CVs. I’m proud of them in a twisted maternal way).

The NGOcracy and their buds in-state just got too brazen, got some backlash full-force in the face, and knew such a law would never get anywhere. Officials were forced to (sort of) concede: nobody wants this, so it’s shelved.

One of the ILGA-Europe enbies was clear-eyed about it. She said the decision “accounts for the limitations of the EU legislative process’“. She also described the setup as a “tyranny of the majority”, which is apparently not the same thing as a democracy? I also think ILGA-Europe, who astro-turfed the whole petition thing in the first place, lost interest, and have shifted their energy and focus towards rule-of-law stuff. Enforcing case law is where it’s at, because nobody can do much about stopping that.

There’s always the possibility that Commissioner Hadja Lahbib (with whom the conversion therapy buck stopped) and her friends realised that they will one day be the hook for the inevitable fallout of the trans scandal. I guess we’ll find out eventually, whether it be via tell-alls or tribunals. Looking forward to it.

*(I am trying hard to ignore the fact that the EU now wants to govern that extremely intimate part of a sexual encounter where you and someone else decide whether or not you want to shag each other. The EU parliament wants you to make a contractual agreement before you f**k, and if the deal’s not inked in the way the EU wants it inked by the f*****s, one of the two fuckees could go to jail. Yeah I know that rape is a problem. Yeah I know consent is important. That doesn’t mean either will be fixed by making sexual foreplay sessions subject to EU legislation. I mean what the everloving christ? The Heavy Petting Regulation? The Sustainable Dry Humping Act? The Third Base Protection Directive? I oppose this solution to the problem. I do not deny there is a problem — just to make it clear for the anti-gender movement academitards out there compiling lists of my crimes against the Borg.)

If you appreciate my work, please take out a paid subscription or share this newsletter with your contacts. Please get in touch if you have any feedback, or corrections, or if you just want to call me a c**t. roisinmichaux at gmail dot com

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.peaked.news/subscribe