All About Eve
Update 694. Free Speech Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
Onwards with the Dusty, Nicola and Moodie Film Series. Thanks to readers who have sent in suggestions. Please keep the suggestions coming in but please check the list first which I am updating as we go along. Please send suggestions in the comments here at this link:
Next up is All About Eve (1950).
The film stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star, and Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, an ambitious young fan who manoeuvres herself into Channing's life, ultimately threatening Channing's career and her personal relationships.
In the clip below, Thelma Ritter is Birdie Coonan.
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
Free Speech
Whatever you think about the opinions of Tommy Robinson or the opinions of any the speakers at today’s amazing Unite The Kingdom Rally in London, the especial importance for me was the standing up for freedom of speech in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk and in the wake of the arrest of Glinner last week.
Kellie-Jay and Steve (aka Edge of the Matrix) were livestreaming. Steve’s is very long so I suggest you skip your way through it.
A larping man called James has done a video celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk. Karen Davis does a wonderful dissection of it.
Talking of free speech, over to a great free speech champion, Harry Miller.
Martin Evans in The Telegraph ( Free-speech champion harassed by trans police officer is accused of hate crime 12 September) reports:
Harry Miller, a former police officer who now campaigns for free speech, was questioned under caution by Lincolnshire Police for a tweet welcoming the officer’s removal.
Mr Miller had been the victim of a sustained campaign of harassment by Lynsay Watson, a transgender constable with the Leicestershire force who was the complainant behind the arrest last week of Graham Linehan, the comedy writer.
Watson was sacked for gross misconduct in October 2023 after being found guilty of sending more than 1,200 messages to Mr Miller over an 18-month period, branding him a “Nazi”, a “bigot” and “wife beater”.
Mr Miller, who set up the Fair Cop campaign group to remove politics from policing, posted a tweet welcoming the decision. However, in November 2024, more than a year later, he was accused of having committed a criminal offence over the wording of the tweet and questioned under caution.
He was accused of having impersonated the Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police in his online remarks, seemingly because the offending tweet began: “Statement re the dismissal of PC Watson from @leicspolice”. The detective sergeant who interviewed him suggested the post read as though it was a statement being issued on behalf of Leicestershire Police.
The Online Safety Act gained Royal Assent on Oct 26, 2023, the day before Mr Miller posted the tweet, but did not become law until Jan 31 last year, so could not have been applied in this case.
Mr Miller was subsequently released with no further action.
However, earlier this year, he submitted a formal request to Lincolnshire Police to establish how the force had recorded the incident.
He said he was alarmed to discover it had been officially recorded as a stalking offence and a hate crime, which could show up on any enhanced DBS check.
The letter he received stated: “The occurrence … in which you were interviewed in relation to on 20 November 2024 has been recorded as a hate crime. The crime (stalking involving serious alarm or distress) has prejudice flags attached.”
‘A whole new level of insanity’
Mr Miller said that the whole sequence of events was extremely sinister and that he had now instructed lawyers to begin legal action to have the record expunged.
The full piece is here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/35f000da30346b69
Assisted Suicide Bill
As regular readers will know I occasionally report on this matter since I think it has links in with especially the ‘transitioning’ of children in terms of influence over a vulnerable group or vulnerable groups. All thoughts gratefully received.
The Spectator
12 September
Theresa May attacks assisted dying bill
By James Heale
Having made its way through the House of Commons, the assisted dying bill is now in the House of Lords. The debate on Kim Leadbeater’s legislation kicked off this morning, with some 95 peers scheduled to speak throughout the day. Of these, declared opponents outnumbered confirmed supporters by two to one: the inverse of the Commons at this stage of the legislation.
Critics were certainly louder this morning. Among the speeches that stood out was that made by Theresa May. The former prime minister quoted a friend who called the legislation ‘the “licence to kill” bill’. She told fellow peers the legislation ‘effectively says suicide is OK’ and warned: ‘There is a danger this could be used as a cover-up. A cover-up for mistakes made in hospital or for perhaps a hospital-acquired illness which has led to an increased likelihood of death.’ On the proponents’ side, it was left to Charles Falconer, the former lord chancellor, to cite the constitutional rights of the Commons. He warned it was not peers’ job to block the bill’s passage, saying: ‘We must do our job in this House. Our job is not to frustrate, it is to scrutinise.’
Yet, with hours of debate left today and 100 names down to speak next week, peers clearly feel they have the right to take their time and consider the issue carefully. With a series of major government bills up before the House in the coming weeks, there is a risk that the legislation will consume the rest of the session – with potential ramifications for Keir Starmer’s premiership at a time when Labour are struggling to deliver.
The Cult Of Gender Ideology
Do we think it’s a ‘cult’. I think the answer is ‘yes’. Feminist Legal Clinic reports on a piece by Catherine Monaghan - this is Part 3 - see the links to Parts 1 and 2.
Cultivating Compliance – The Cult Connection – Part 3 – by Catherine Monaghan
Jeffrey Marsh [ Dusty - Euughhhh!!!!]
The words cult and culture share a common Latin root, cultus, which means to tend or to worship.
This etymological link reminds us that what we call “cults” are not alien phenomena, but rather exaggerated or distorted forms of the same human impulse to belong, to share meaning and find purpose, and to build community.
In part one we looked at what a cult is – a group or movement with a shared commitment to a leader or an ideology, and which uses manipulative techniques of control and persuasion to isolate and dominate members. In part two we examined how information control is a critical and overarching aspect of cult control. Without accurate information we cannot think independently and our ability to make sensible decisions is completely undermined.
According to cult experts Robert Lifton, Janja Lalich, and Steve Hassan, there are several other defining features of cults, all of which bear consideration in the context of the trans movement.
Ideological Totalism and Belief Restructuring
The doctrine or sacred science of trans ideology is that man/woman/both/neither is determined by how you feel rather than by your actual biology; that it’s possible to be born in the wrong body – one that doesn’t match your feeling of maleness, femaleness or otherness (that is, your gender identity); and when this happens it’s possible to change sex.
Psychological Manipulation
Emotional dependence and fear are central to the maintenance of control within a cult. Members are manipulated through guilt, shame, fear, and reward. Love-bombing – described by Steve Hassan as “the use of excessive affection, attention, and flattery” – is a powerful recruitment and retention tool.
Behaviour Control
Behaviour control in this context takes the form of social and institutional pressure to use correct, affirmative language and preferred pronouns, and to display visible symbols of support such as badges or flags.
Bounded Choice
The cultic influence is not just external pressure, but internalised mental confinement, so people believe they are acting freely, but all choices are actually constrained by the group’s ideology.
Questioning medicalisation of gender dysphoria is seen as transphobic, and therapy to explore the underlying causes of distress is considered akin to conversion therapy.
What feels like a self-directed, autonomous decision – to transition – is in fact made within a bounded framework. The only option is the one that aligns with the prevailing ideology.
How Did We Get Here?
The digital landscape is fertile ground for modern cults – a massive audience of susceptible people combined with algorithms, targeted marketing, and manipulative online techniques similar to those used in traditional cults has created the perfect storm.
Source: Cultivating Compliance – by Catherine Monaghan
https://feministlegal.org/cultivating-compliance-the-cult-connection-part-3-by-catherine-monaghan/
New Zealand - The Law Commission Report
Resist Gender Education provide an extremely detailed analysis of the Law Commission report on the NZ Human Rights Act and how ‘gender identity’ is accepted throughout whereas arguments and evidence against this approach are discounted.
Wishful thinking to be elevated to a human right
Ideology overrules reality in the Law Commission report.
Sep 11, 2025
Many sex realists were left incredulous last week when the NZ Law Commission released its Ia Tangata report, recommending that ‘gender identity’ and ‘innate variations of sex characteristics’ be added to the list of characteristics protected from discrimination under the Human Rights Act. (HRA)
A ‘deeply held internal feeling’ that is subjective, ever-changing, and disconnected from reality has been declared by the Law Commission (LC) as deserving protection under human rights law. And, for the sake of affirming the wishful thinking of transgender and non-binary identities, every hard-won protection put in place in the HRA for the safety, dignity, and fairness of women and girls is to be sacrificed.
Click here for a list of the LC’s 27 recommendations and to access a two-page summary or the 30-page Executive Summary of the report. [Numbers in brackets below relate to the paragraphs in the full report.]
Read on for RGE’s deeper dive into what the LC has recommended and what we can do about it. (Apologies… it is l-o-n-g.)
The full piece is here:
New Zealand - The Suffragette Flag
Our friend, Katrina Biggs on her substack, A B’Old Woman has been trying to persuade the NZ Government to fly the Suffragette flag on 19 September, the anniversary of women getting the vote in NZ - the first nation state to allow this! Despite the fact that they frequently fly the T & Q flags they have declined. Katrina is not giving up.
Women’s Suffrage flag rejected by NZ’s Speaker of the House of Representatives to fly outside Parliament, whilst multiple LGBTQIA+ flags fly there.
Why are flags which symbolise sexual identities more worthy than a flag which symbolises a historical achievement?
Sep 13, 2025
It seemed like a simple and uncontroversial request. I asked if the violet, green, and white striped Women’s Suffrage flag could please be flown at Parliament on the 19th September each year. That day in 1893 was when New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world to enshrine the right for women to vote in legislation. It was kind of a big deal, and worth a fluttering flag in commemoration at the place it happened, I thought. So, I emailed the Speaker of the House at the Speaker’s Office, which is the place to send these requests, to ask for it.
Technically, NZ’s Suffragists didn’t have a flag, and the white camellia is used as a symbol here for their achievement instead. However, the UK’s Suffragettes’ violet, white, and green flag has been widely adopted in many places outside the UK as the flag which not only embodies Women’s Suffrage, but the spirit of determination, struggle, and achievement.
Previous to asking the Speaker’s Office directly if the Women’s Suffrage flag could be flown, I’d begun a Parliamentary petition for the same thing. The Petitions Committee required evidence that it was a legitimate request, which I provided, and I included that in my email to the Speaker’s Office. Of course, if the Speaker agreed to fly the Women’s Suffrage flag, I could withdraw the petition.
To put things into perspective about my request to fly the Women’s Suffrage flag, here’s a bit of context - between 2016 to 2021 the Rainbow flag was flown at Parliament to commemorate the passing of the Homosexual Law Reform Act in 1986. Why it stopped being flown on its own after that, I don’t know. Perhaps it was because since 2018 it had been included with the Trans, Bisexual, and Intersex flags flown for ‘International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia’ – i.e. IDAHOBIT Day. The Pride flag has also been added to that array since then, and is one of the four of those five flags which is flown for no notable achievement whatsoever.
Dusty - if you have not already done so, please sign Katrina’s petition. You don’t have to live in NZ to sign it:
https://petitions.parliament.nz/cdf04ac7-4867-4973-78be-08dd9ca8e7ab
The full piece is here:
On Being Silent
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder this piece by Lucy Leader on her substack, Bodies get in the way… is very apposite I think. All thoughts gratefully received.
“We Knew Nothing About It”
Said Germans who watched their neighbors being taken away because they were Jewish
Sep 13, 2025
Following World War II, many Germans used the phrase "Davon haben wir nichts gewusst" (“We knew nothing about it”) to claim ignorance of the Nazi regime's atrocities, including even the existence of the many concentration camps (which were all located adjacent to populated areas) and its murderous campaign against the Jewish population, even though no attempts were made to hide this from the citizenry. Many historians now assert that the so-called “final solution” was an open secret from at least 1943, but probably much earlier than this.
This article outlines how prisoners were herded through the village of Ohrdruf twice daily on their work patrols:
“The prisoners in the camp are usually led through the town in the morning and evening. Seeing the columns of prisoners is not exactly pleasant for the population,” wrote Albert Schneider, mayor of Ohrdruf, to the Gotha district authority in January 1945.Emphasis added.
“Allied forces reached the first concentration camp on Reich territory on April 4, 1945 – the Ohrdruf sub-camp of Buchenwald. The US soldiers found piles of charred corpses. There were barely any survivors. Just a few hours earlier, the last prisoners had been herded towards Buchenwald. Twelve thousand completely emaciated bodies had trudged through the villages in the days before, past the houses of the Germans, many of whom would later claim that they had known nothing.”
To their credit the American armed forces who liberated the Buchenwald camp forced the citizens of the town to inspect the camp, witness the conditions firsthand and to help with the clean-up and reburial of the many thousands of prisoners tortured and killed by their Nazi masters. Similar events occurred at many of the other camps liberated by the Americans.
Lucy concludes:
Historians of the future may picture a courtroom full of mutilated “trans” victims, peppering physicians and mental health practitioners and educators:
“What did you know, and when did you know it, and why didn’t you speak up sooner?”
We grew up with a smug sense that, unlike the Germans in Nazi Germany, WE would not have knuckled under to propaganda and oppression. But many have now demonstrated cowardice, and proof that they valued their own jobs, status and reputation far more than the well-being of children being brainwashed and mutilated. Alongside delusional adults who clearly have mental health problems they have left unaddressed as they desperately hope that adopting a trans identity will fix everything that is troubling them.
The tide may very well be turning, albeit slowly. But one thing that will be left behind from this sordid episode is a stench of cowardice and lack of integrity of the many who willingly peddled lies that have led to the permanent damage of so many children, the erasure of the hard fought-for rights of women and the warping of society that in the end, harms everyone living there.
The full piece is here:
Update 700 🎈🥳🍾🥂
Readers may have noted we are approaching Update 700!!!!!!
So…..we started the current film series (with The Banshees of Inisherin ) in Update 564. Please have a scroll through updates since then up to today’s update and vote for your three favourite films that we have shown so far. Please order them 1,2 and 3. I will then work out what the favourite film is and feature three clips from that film in Update 700. Thanks 😊
Terf Island Discs
Thanks to an excellent suggestion from Tenaciously Terfin, we have paused Endpieces for the time being and we are giving Tenaciously and Liz a well earned rest from their hard work. So , since 07 July, we have been running Terf Island Discs.
Several readers have chosen up to 4 songs or pieces of music each and we are going through those one at a time in each update. This is going so well that I am going to continue it a bit further and you can now choose up to 6 songs or pieces of music each. They need to be reasonably short. We can’t expect to have readers listening to the whole of Tchaikovsky's piano concerto in B flat minor, albeit it is magnificent.
They don’t have to be from Terf Island BTW - anywhere in the world 😊
Please send links as well if you can.
So for those who have already chosen 4, please choose 2 more and, if you have not yet taken part, please choose 6!! If you repeat a song or piece of music that has already been chosen, I’ll let you know and you can choose another one. Please let me know your choices in the comments at this link:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/beware-of-the-flowers-terf-island
Next up!
Chosen by: Jeremy Wickins
‘Albatross’ by Fleetwood Mac
#BeMorePorcupine
#BeMoreHobbit
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#KeepOnTerfing
#LeaveKidsAlone
#JustSayMen
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
The MSM- Notting Hill carnival, 423 arrests ‘a triumph of diversity’.
The TR March, 25 arrests, a display of right wing thuggery.
Tommy Robinson had been smeared for years, he’s never been racist. Anyone interested in a discussion focusing on free speech could listen to the Jordan Peterson podcast with him called ‘Crime and Punishment’.
The left today displays all the characteristics of a cult.
Thanks Dusty, apart from the photo of Jeffery Marsh 🤮
#BeMoreQuestioning
O dear I hadn’t read this before I posted on another thread about going to dignitas , a bit tactless , hey ho wouldn’t be me otherwise !
Say what you like about TR but he’s never been racist and I would suggest those who say so read ‘enemy of the state ‘
And I do wish the rags would stop reminding us he has two names - we f*cking know - it’s Sunday I’m being polite 😂