A Gentleman Caller
Amended Update 457. Outflanking Special. #BeMorePorcupine
I forgot to add subscriber buttons to the update. Duhhhh! So here is the final version - apologies!!
Bizarrely the three Shorts I have recently done simultaneously with the Updates have had lower viewing figures than the accompanying update, so , with this update, I am reverting to just an update while trying to reduce the size of excerpts from other substacks or from articles. However, if you liked the Shorts, please let me know.
Today in the Irish Heroes season we have The Quiet Man. In the 1920s, Sean "Trooper Thorn" Thornton ( John Wayne), an Irish-born retired boxer, travels from Pittsburgh to his birthplace of Inisfree to purchase the old family farm. Shortly after arriving, he meets and falls in love with fiery, red-headed Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara), the sister of bullying Squire "Red" Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen). Barry Fitzgerald is the Matchmaker, Michaeleen Óge Flynn. And the rest of the plot is complex, so you’ll just have to watch it if you want to find out what happens 😎
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
The Cass Review
I first reported on the Cass Review here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/sunset-boulevard-part-1?utm_source=publication-search
I previously reported on just why clinical trials of puberty blockers on children cannot be ethically justified.
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/i-am-jk-rowling?utm_source=publication-search
I suppose it was a minor miracle that Dr Hilary Cass, or Baroness Cass as she now is, was interviewed by BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. However, this interview has caused understandable alarm amongst the Terf Resistance.
Dr Cass seems perfectly happy with the idea of clinical trials involving children and says that the numbers do not need to be limited. So any child who decides or is persuaded that he or she wants to ‘transition’ can then be put on a trial. Doesn’t this collapse the whole point of the ban on puberty blockers for children!? In a Times article ( see EDI Jester below), the Health Minister, Wes Streeting seems to say something similar!
Dr Cass also seems happy with the idea of cross sex hormones for older children!
Dr Cass also seems to feel that adults should definitely be given gender affirming care ( presumably on the NHS!?).
We already knew about the problem of Dr Cass using the language of the trans rights activists.
I join with EDI Jester and Kellie-Jay.
https://x.com/BBCWomansHour/status/1845131815373373671
We now wait to see what the Government will say about whether they feel that clinical trials are ethical! How on earth can they be?
Watch out, Terven, they are trying to outflank us!! Hold the line!
As usual, all thoughts gratefully received.
Liberal Authoritarians
Matt Goodwin on his substack discusses a new study about ‘liberal authoritarians.’
Rise of the Liberal Authoritarians - What a FASCINATING new study reveals about the psychology of the “liberal” elite class
Oct 18, 2024
Here’s a question. What do people like LBC commentator James O’Brien, Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, supposedly impartial journalists like Emily Maitlis, Lewis Goodall, Jon Sopel, and David Aaronovitch, BBC commentator Gary Lineker, and former radio presenter Caroline Vorderman all have in common?
They represent, some might say, a small but influential tribe of self-described “liberal progressives”, who share several characteristics.
They struggle to tolerate any challenge, however slight, to their narrow groupthink. They use their enormous platforms or taxpayer-funded positions in public institutions to dogmatically impose their beliefs on everybody else in society. They often insult, undermine, stigmatise and seek to silence people who hold different views —casually deriding them as “far-right”, “fascists”, “populists”, and “bigots”, while struggling to hide their thinly-disguised contempt toward these perceived dissenters. They show remarkably little, if any, serious interest in evidence or arguments that run counter to their own, dogmatic, and rigid worldview, reflected in how their podcasts and shows usually only feature guests who reinforce rather than challenge their views. And, deep down, I suspect that many of them think that society would just be better off if all those irritating and ignorant conservatives, Brexit voters, and Trump voters would just shut up and accept they’re inferior to this morally righteous, enlightened group.
Naturally, many of the people I just mentioned will scoff at this, much like they scoff at anybody and everybody who dares challenge their radically progressive beliefs. I’ve no doubt they’ll soon be on Twitter/X, denouncing me and this article. But as Luke Conway, a distinguished Professor of psychology and author of a fascinating new study makes clear, in reality all these things are the hallmarks of a clearly identifiable group of people in Western democracies who not only exist as a distinctive political tribe but are exerting growing influence over the direction of our societies and fuelling more of the polarisation and division in our world than right-wingers.
Obviously, he eventually gets on to ‘gender ideology.’
It’s the same with gender. Liberal Authoritarians introduce radical new policies or measures designed to promote things like “gender self-identification”. They simultaneously claim this is either not happening or is merely about “being nice and tolerant” and has the backing of most people. When people point out this is not based in scientific evidence and has little public support they again cry: “culture wars!”
Bizarrely, as Conway notes, many Liberal Authoritarians see this behaviour as entirely normal —as a normal, non-authoritarian response to the perceived authoritarianism of their opponents. When, in fact, they are the ones who are presiding over a deeply authoritarian approach to education, gender, and much more besides.
So, what does all this mean?
It means, as Conway notes, that we have a very serious problem. While much of our public debate is focused solely and heavily on the supposed threat to democracy from the right, the evidence that’s emerging in social psychology points clearly to a major and growing problem on the left, from Liberal Authoritarians who are intellectually lazy, openly hostile to people with different views, obsessed with “misinformation” and managing the supply of information, exhibit a deeply tribal, simplistic, and divisive “us versus them” mentality, prone to black-and-white thinking and cognitive rigidity, and when all this is pointed out to them they deny it’s true at all or applies more to their opponents than themselves.
And, even worse, this outlook also appears to be especially visible among the very people who happen to dominate the most important and influential institutions in the country, who wield enormous influence over the public square and the national conversation, but who are simultaneously punitive, bullies, and intolerant of any disagreement.
The full piece is here and is behind a paywall:
Labour and Shakespeare
This is not about gender ideology, of course, but I think it says a lot about this Government we have to endure!
Craig Simpson in The Telegraph ( Starmer removes Shakespeare portrait from No 10 19 October) reports:
The Shakespeare portrait by Louis Francois Roubiliac has been removed from No 10 - Government Art Collection
Sir Keir Starmer has removed a portrait of William Shakespeare from No 10 – the latest painting of a great national figure to be taken down under the Prime Minister, The Telegraph understands.
The 18th-century portrait of the Bard has been taken down and placed in storage in a move that has prompted concerns about “philistinism”.
The Telegraph has revealed that portraits depicting Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Raleigh, William Ewart Gladstone and Margaret Thatcher have been taken down since the Labour Government took power, sparking a Conservative backlash.
Sir Oliver Dowden, a former Tory culture secretary, said: “The Prime Minister spent the election loudly proclaiming his patriotism, but now the election is over he’s succumbing to the usual Left-wing cringing embarrassment about our past.
“Not content with removing Thatcher, Gladstone, Raleigh and Elizabeth I, he’s now consigning Shakespeare to the dustbin.
“Downing Street receives thousands of distinguished visitors every year. He should be using it to proclaim the greatest writer in the English language, not engaging in this philistinism.”
The full article is here:
Irish Hate Speech Laws
I do hope that the Irish Government are completely misreading the feelings of ordinary Irish people in their insistence that they will bring in the full panoply of hate speech laws once they get ( they think) re-elected. Have they forgotten what happened with the Constitutional Referendum?
Helen McEntee
Ben Scallan in Gript News ( McEntee insists hate speech laws must be passed after election 17 October) reports:
Justice Minister Helen McEntee has told the Dáil that she “fundamentally believes” new hate speech laws must be passed after the upcoming General Election.
The Minister made the remarks while speaking in the Seanad yesterday evening, as the chamber debated amendments to the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022.
While the Bill originally intended to expand Ireland’s 1989 hate speech laws and legislate for “hate crime”, the hate speech element has been amended out of the Bill due to significant controversy and backlash, with critics arguing that it may impinge on freedom of speech.
However, commenting on the removal of the hate speech element from the law, Minister McEntee said: “I genuinely regret that this is where we are at now.”
She said that while a consensus was not able to be reached within this Dáil term, “The next Dáil and the next Seanad, whenever they come into being, will need to find a way forward because the 1989 Act needs to be updated.”
She added: “We can see that clearly, particularly in the changes we are experiencing in our society at the moment and the fact that a greater level of hatred is being displayed and communicated in every type of platform.”
The Minister went on to express her “fundamental” belief that Ireland’s hate speech laws need to be updated.
“I fundamentally believe we need to update our 1989 Act,” she said.
“I regret we are not doing it here and now, but I also fundamentally believe we need to have hate crime laws in place. We do not have them at the moment. We are the only country in Europe, and indeed probably the western world, that does not have hate crime legislation.”
These remarks constitute a doubling-down on comments made to Gript during Budget Week, when McEntee also made the same assertion.
The Countess has swung into action (18 October)
Dear Subscribers,
We are asking you to contact your TD today regarding the Hate Crime Bill.
This Bill is not fit for purpose. Yes, they have removed the hate speech element, but the big concern now is the collapse of the definition of gender. In Irish law, gender means whether someone is male or female. However, if the novel definition of gender in the hate crime Bill is introduced, the protections we have for single-sex spaces will be eroded overnight. We are facing a dystopian future, and we must prevent this from happening. The General Election is looming, email/phone your TD and tell them that they will not get your vote if the Hate Crime Bill is passed.
You can find a list of TD contact details here: https://oireachtas.ie/en/contact-us/
Below is a template letter you can use to contact your TD or assist you with your email or phone call.
le meas,
Laoise & The Countess Team
TEMPLATE LETTER
AN BILLE UM CHEARTAS COIRIÚIL (GRÍOSÚ CHUN FORÉIGIN NÓ FUATHA AGUS CIONTA FUATHA), 2022 CRIMINAL JUSTICE (INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE OR HATRED AND HATE OFFENCES) BILL 2022
Dear [TD NAME]
I am a voter in your constituency. I am writing to urge you to vote against this Bill in its current form.
It goes against every principle of justice to create a hierarchy of victims in law.
Furthermore, the nonsensical definition of gender and gender identity is designed to embed confusion into our legislation and will be harmful to women and LGB people.
Can you stand over this circular non-definition being added to our statute books? Will you be able to explain this when you are asking for my vote?
Part 1 Section 3 Subsection 2:
(d) “gender” means the gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female,
(f) references to sex characteristics shall be construed as references to the physical and biological features of a person relating to sex
I will not vote for a candidate or party that supports this Bill.
Kind Regards,
[YOUR NAME]
Australia - Angie Jones
Following the Let Women Speak Melbourne rally, Liberal Party leader John Pesutto described Moira Deeming MP, Kellie-Jay and also Angie Jones, an Aussie women’s rights activist, as being Nazis or linked to Nazis. I have been reporting recently on the ongoing defamation action by Moira Deeming. Jennifer Nabben on the Glinner Update reports on the continuing persecution of Angie Jones.
The Crucifixion of Angie Jones
How Australian media and politicians colluded to destroy a woman's reputation, by Jennifer Nabben.
Oct 18, 2024
Angie Jones is a 5’1” single mother of four children – three who have autism. She grew up in a working-class suburb in Melbourne with a younger brother who was bullied because he was mentally and physically disabled. Angie's early experiences on picket lines alongside her father, a committed union member and Labor voter, baked left-wing activism into her bones.
Angie was born standing up for other people’s rights.
Now, her good name is being shredded by a group of politicians whose stupidity and cowardice should become the stuff of Australian folk legend.
For Angie has been cast as the fall girl in the Deeming v Pesutto case currently being heard in Victoria’s Federal Court.
Angie is accused of being a ‘Nazi sympathiser and a transphobe’.
Oh, and another thing. Angie is Jewish.
A ‘rowdy’ rally
For those unfamiliar with the background, on the 18th of March, 2023, Angie attended the Let Women Speak (LWS) event in Melbourne along with Moira Deeming, a member of the Liberal Party. The event—organized by women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen—was designed to give everyday women a voice against the loss of their rights caused by the introduction of gender ideology into legal frameworks and policy decisions.
On the day, the Victorian police held back a group of trans rights activists yet somehow failed to stop another group from standing on the steps of Parliament and performing a Nazi salute.
At a press conference following the rally, the Premier, Dan Andrews said that the LWS rally was: “A nasty, hateful event, long before anyone offered up the Nazi salute… you could say that the Liberal Party are becoming a nasty, hateful, little rabble.”
For the Labor government that has dominated Victorian politics for three terms - this was an opportunity for Andrews to pounce on his political opponent John Pesutto, the newly elected leader of the opposition Liberal Party.
The LWS event provided political gold for Andrews, political risk for the Liberals and a disaster for the women wanting to highlight the erosion of women’s rights in Australia.
Australian media did their bit. The event was described as ‘anti-trans’, with the Nazis' attendance serving as supposed proof that the feminists' cause aligned with theirs.
Panic
John Pesutto panicked when he received early reports that one of his newly-elected female MPs Moira Deeming was prominently featured in many of the early press reports of the LWS rally.
Victorian Labor is ever-keen to present the Victorian state as the most socially progressive in Australia. Here, you can change your legal sex as easily as applying for a parking permit. The Labor government recently employed a Commissioner for LGBTQIA+ rights following another new position for a ‘Commissioner for Men’s Behaviour Change’.
But while Andrews’ government promotes Victoria as ‘big-hearted’, some would disagree.
In 2024, the outgoing Ombudsman, Deborah Glass produced a 230-page report on the Labor administration. Glass said in her report that, 'People were generally "shit scared" of upsetting the government… and if they were in any way identifiable as having done so, their careers would be finished.'
Illiberal liberals
It was in this political culture that John Pesutto made a series of decisions which are now the subject of a defamation case brought by his MP Moira Deeming.
The day after the LWS event, the Liberal Party’s communications team pulled together a dossier of evidence against Kellie-Jay Keen and Angie Jones.
Pesutto was considering his best course of action and firing Moira Deeming was top of the list. Negative media coverage of the rally presented Moira as ‘right-wing’ and stated that she associated with ‘known Nazi sympathisers’. This provided him with the cover he needed. His communications team sent selected bits of information to journalists even as the dossier was being compiled.
The dossier was assembled over the course of a day and included information from sources including Pink News, Wikipedia, social media and Twitter accounts from users including ‘@paulinepantsdown’.
The dossier had a copy of a single tweet from Angie Jones’s Twitter account which the media included in their coverage of the rally (and now their coverage of the court case). The tweet was:
“Nazis and women want to get rid of paedo filth. Why don’t you?”
Pesutto and the Liberal MPs on the stand have said they believe that the tweet does not need to be read in context but stands on its own.
But reading the tweet in context tells a different story.
The schoolboy dossier
Ms. Chrysanthou, Moira Deeming’s barrister, has been meticulous in exposing the dossier's contents as little more than a political hit job used to drive a narrative justifying any action taken against Moira Deeming.
Chrysanthou described the dossier in court as, ‘something that looked like it was pulled together by an eight-year-old’.
The shame game
In the days following the event, Mr Pesutto arranged press briefings, TV appearances and radio interviews where he repeated the false accusations in the dossier. Kellie-Jay Keen and Angie Jones threatened to sue Pesutto for defamation. He settled out of court, and as part of that settlement, Pesutto published the following statement on his website:
‘Kellie-Jay Keen and Angela Jones are passionate women's rights activists with long histories of advocacy in Australia and internationally. I agree with them that genuine community concerns regarding women's safety and access to single-sex spaces, services and sport warrant meaningful public discussion’.
By now, Pesutto was well aware that the charges against Jones and Keen were unsubstantiated, misleading and just plain false.
This did not stop him from proceeding to try to destroy Angie Jones’ reputation in court.
I wrote in the comments:
‘The LWS Melbourne event was great ( watching from a distance) including one of the best speeches I have heard at a LWS event . The so called Nazis clearly had nothing to do with the LWS people but strangely the TRAs didn’t seem to have a go at them and the Nazis left the TRAs alone. The Nazis were clearly chaperoned by the police. Talk about smell a rat!! Appalling that the MSM are avoiding all this.
Thanks for outlining the terrible treatment of poor Angie Jones.
Go, Moira!!’
All thoughts gratefully received.
The full piece is here:
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-crucifixion-of-angle-jones
Australia - New South Wales Gender Madness
Thanks as ever to Feminist Legal Clinic for the next piece. Bad news from New South Wales care of the evil Alex Greenwich and Penny Sharpe.
NSW parliament passes equality bill, allowing transgender people to change their birth certificates without surgery – ABC News (18 October)
The Equality Bill passed through NSW parliament’s upper house on Thursday night.
It will allow transgender people to change their birth certificates without having to undergo surgery.
The bill makes threatening to “out” an LGBTIQA+ person an offence.
The leader of the government in the upper house, Penny Sharpe, said the bill was the “next stop in a journey” towards improving the lives of LGBTQI+ people.
Ms Sharpe told parliament that schools, sporting teams or any other single-sex spaces would not be affected by the bill.
“This bill does not impact on women’s rights,” she said.
“There is nothing to be scared of here.”
Ms Sharpe said sporting teams were already given some exemptions to allow the lawful exclusion of transgender people.
And she dismissed suggestions a trans woman would enter a female bathroom and try to cause trouble.
“People who know women’s toilets know there’s not any open space there,” she said.
She said existing laws would continue to protect women if somebody entered a single-sex space with malicious intent.
The bill also makes threatening to “out” an LGBTIQA+ person an offence.
And it makes parentage orders available for children born via commercial surrogacy, if it’s deemed to be in the best interests of the child.
The opposition argued the change would encourage commercial surrogacy, which is illegal in NSW, and facilitate human trafficking.
Ms Sharpe acknowledged there were “serious issues” surrounding modern slavery and commercial surrogacy, but said the bill would protect children born via commercial surrogates who were already living in NSW.
[ED: I suggest those adversely impacted by these amendments, many of which have already been made in other states, write directly to Penny Sharpe outlining their experiences. For example, it is true that there are currently still exemptions for sport but thanks to the misleading AHRC sporting guidelines, they are not being relied upon to exclude males identifying as trans women. As a result women are being injured and disadvantaged in sport. There are also many cases demonstrating how women are harmed as a result of changes which mandate the inclusion of males who identify as women in women’s spaces. Those who are victims of the sexual and reproductive exploitation should also write directly to Ms Sharpe to educate her about these realities. Although this shocking Bill has already passed, Mr Greenwich has further amendments planned for the Anti-discrimination Act and other legislation. It is not too late to stop these from being passed.]
The States - Texas Sues Doctor
Good news from Texas! We need more of this type of legal action in the UK (though perhaps taken by the victims of so called ‘gender affirming care’) especially in light of my report about the Cass Review above!
Jamie Stengle in The Independent (Texas sues doctor and accuses her of violating ban on gender-affirming care 18 October) reports:
Ken Paxton © Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Texas has sued a Dallas doctor over accusations of providing gender-affirming care to youths, marking one of the first times a state has sought to enforce recent bans driven by Republicans.
The lawsuit announced by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday alleges that Dr. May Lau, a physician in the Dallas area, provided hormones to over 20 minors in violation of a Texas ban that took effect last year.
…
“Today, enforcement begins against those who have violated the law,” Paxton's office said in the lawsuit, which was filed in suburban Collin County.
The Texas law prevents transgender people under 18 from accessing hormone therapies, puberty blockers and transition surgeries, though surgical procedures are rarely performed on children.
The full article is here:
Endpiece by Liz
#BeMorePorcupine
#LetWomenSpeak
#GrassrootsArmy
Dear readers
Just a heads up, in case you don't spot it, that there is a new video from Mr Menno tonight at 20.30 GMT.
See some of you there!
Dusty
I always distrusted Cass, her language was concerning and there were too many loopholes. I’m glad that she’s had some affect around the world but now we see why she spoke as she did. It was nothing to do with ‘appeasement’ and speaking their language. I’m afraid she’ll now be used for justification for a return to dishing out puberty blockers under the cloak of ‘trials’. 🤬
Those nazis were clearly a put up job. They reminded me of Spode in Jeeves and Wooster.
I wonder how many paedophiles are managing to evade the law by changing their identity?
Thanks Dusty, I think you’ve cracked it. Much shorter and more manageable whilst still tons of information and the usual entertainment. 👏