Chariots of Fire - The Courtyard Race
Update 591. Holyrood Toilets Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
Parliament in using the words “man” and “woman” … referred to biological sex
For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16 para 265(ii).
Repeal the Gender Recognition Act 2004.
Remove ‘gender reassignment’ from the Equality Act 2010.
Get rid of DEI.
This is a long one, dear readers. However, before we start, you will note that we are approaching Update 600 😃🎉🎈 Additionally, since June is, of course, Pride Month ( which is really T & Q month since it will have nothing to do with the LGB), we will, as usual, be turning June here on the substack into Terf Month, pausing the film series, and featuring great Terfy speeches ( can include, for example, Suffragette or general women’s rights speeches) from the past and the present. Please get your suggested speeches in - I will select my favourite nominated speech for update 600 and feature other nominated speeches throughout June. Please provide a link to any speech you send me. Get your thinking caps on.
I explained the new Dusty’s Film Series here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/empire-of-light-dustys-film-series
Please let me have any suggested additions. I have been updating it with additions so this is the latest list for you to double check. Please bear in mind the original series of films.
Next up is Chariots of Fire. Good timing after my last update which featured the 4 Minute Mile!
Possibly the most famous film about running, this 1981 film directed by Hugh Hudson features two British athletes, with Ben Cross as Harold Abrahams and Ian Charleson as Eric Liddell. The film builds to them competing in the 1924 Paris Olympics.
OK, ok you want the Vangelis theme tune!!
Thanks to four wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
Scotland - Revenge Is Sweet
Trans women banned from female toilets in Holyrood
BBC 09 May
Trans women will no longer be able to use the women's toilets in the Scottish Parliament building.
Facilities designated as male or female-only would now be interpreted as meaning biological sex, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB) said.
Holyrood is installing new gender neutral toilets which will be open to anyone following the UK Supreme Court's landmark ruling over the definition of a woman.
Presiding officer Alison Johnstone said the move would ensure "confidence, privacy and dignity" for staff and visitors.
The full article is here:
Excellent piece (09 May) on, amongst other things, toilets and the Data Bill from Maya Forstater of Sex Matters who bravely went to the Stonewall conference on Thursday!
I went to the Stonewall conference on Thursday. I wanted to see what it was saying about the Equality Act and the Supreme Court judgment. It was a strange experience. The sessions were subdued and the attendees, who were mainly leads of LGBT network groups, were there because they had been paid to be there as part of their jobs. About a quarter left at 4pm, before the event ended, presumably because they had clocked up a working day and had no reason to stay. It had none of the jubilance, humour and spirit of resistance and camaraderie that characterises LGB Alliance conferences.
Stonewall had clearly allocated a minder to me. She was friendly enough and stepped in to de-escalate when a Gendered Intelligence stall-holder aggressively accused me of causing huge harm to transgender people.
Stonewall had performatively relabelled the men’s and women’s toilets in the main conference area as “gender neutral”. But most men and women voted with their feet when using the toilets previously known as men’s and women’s. My minder told me there were single-sex toilets on the floor above, which seemed an odd way of organising things since there were only a handful of trans people at the conference and it was clear that almost everyone, even among Stonewall LGBT network leads, was more comfortable with separate-sex facilities. There were many more men than women; and a few ventured into The Toilets Formerly Known As The Ladies’ (explaining to women surprised to see them that it was now gender-neutral), but I didn’t see any women going into The Toilets Formerly Known As The Gents’.
There was no Q&A after any of the plenary sessions and barely any mention of the Supreme Court judgment, other than oblique references to “challenges”. But I talked to the participants about it. One woman asked: “Why is everyone talking about toilets?”. Another said it was causing a huge practical problem at her workplace because some sites had no unisex toilets. I was surprised and asked whether there weren’t already unisex accessible facilities. “Oh yes,” she said with an expression of great sadness at the dilemma she had created in her own mind: “We do have those, but you can’t expect trans people to use them.”
The Supreme Court’s judgment is about much more than toilets, but toilets are important and first on the list for many employers and service providers considering its practical implications. The relevant law was already very clear, and the Supreme Court has made it clearer. Under the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, most workplaces must provide single-sex toilets for their employees, as well as changing rooms and washing facilities where required. They can provide a unisex fully enclosed room as well or instead, but separate-sex facilities are preferred by most people. Separate-sex means what it says, and if your employer refuses to enforce this you can complain to the regulator (the Health and Safety Executive or your local authority, depending where you work).
While Stonewall is wrongly advising employers to wait “to see how and in what way statutory guidance is changed, before making any changes to their policies”, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has put a warning label on its outdated statutory guidance and says employers and other duty-bearers must follow the law now.
My colleagues at Sex Matters have produced a brilliant, practical package of resources on the law on toilets at work to help you get the message through. Read our guide and use our template letter to write to your employer (and send them our factsheet) – see below. If they don’t respond by making it clear to everyone where you work that separate-sex facilities are based on biological sex, we also tell you how to contact the regulator.
The Data Bill is the next big fight. Despite the Supreme Court saying that no man is female for the purposes of the Equality Act or single-sex services, the government is set on enabling any man who wants to carry “proof” that he is female on his phone in the form of a government-endorsed app. He could even have two apps; one for “boy mode” and one for “girl mode”.
Thank you to everyone who wrote to their MPs about the Data Bill debate on Wednesday. The amendment to fix the sex data problem was voted down after a series of flimsy excuses from the Minister for data protection and telecoms, Chris Bryant. If you wrote to your MP last week, write again and send a link to our blog post. Say how disappointed you were at the poor standard of the debate.
The Data Bill is now going into the “ping pong” stage, when the Lords and Commons try to iron out their disagreements. The next debate is on Monday in the Lords. I hope peers will consider the issues with more seriousness than MPs did. We will be back with more actions after that.
The Sex Matters guidance on workplace toilets is here:
UK - The Importance Of Criminal Statistics
Richard Garside from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies explains why accurate criminal statistics in terms of sex and not gender are vital. This is from a year ago but has only just been brought to my attention.
Accuracy in criminal statistics matters (08 March 2024)
I have been concerned for some years about the implications of the preference for gender self-identification over birth-sex for criminal justice.
Much of this concern has been in relation to women’s prisons, where the desire of some male prisoners who identify as or claim to be women clashes with a perfectly reasonable expectation of privacy and dignity for female prisoners.
More recently, the case of Scarlet Blake – a male whose murder of Jorge Martin Carreno has been recorded as having been committed by a female – raises important questions about the accuracy and integrity of official statistics.
One of the few things that criminologists will agree on is birth-sex is the single most important determinant of whether a person will be prosecuted or convicted of a crime. Males account for 75 per cent of all convictions each year. They account for 93 per cent of all murder convictions and more than 99 per cent of all rape convictions.
So I was pleased to be asked by The Telegraph to write about why it matters that crimes committed by a male are recorded as having been committed by a female. Here’s a summary of what I wrote. You can read the full article here.
Some argue that criminal statistics should reflect how suspects see themselves: an exercise in recognition and respect. The problem here is that criminal statistics are compiled to inform, and to assist in the development of effective policies, not to affirm feelings.
The full piece is here:
https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/accuracy-criminal-statistics-matters
Ireland - The Teachers’ Union
So called ‘progressives’ are very fond about wittering on about the ‘far right’. But what about the ‘far left’ ( and I speak here as a former Labour Party supporter)?
Gript News reports on An open letter to the Teacher’s Union of Ireland (06 May).
Below is an open letter to the organisers of the TUI conference, written by Cork-based teacher Stephen Lynch. This letter was shared with Gript Media and we believe it to be in the public interest to publish it in full.
Dear Sirs,
Stephen Lynch, Chair of Cork C&C here, but presenting my own personal opinions.
I was deeply offended, shocked, and frustrated by the running of Congress this year. It was taken over (hijacked) by the far left.
For years now, I’ve been concerned with the direction the union has been going: too much focus on far-left ideology, too much involvement with political ideas (left-wing politics in particular), humanitarian issues, foreign policies, and climate activism. I am not arguing against these causes, but I pay my subs to the Teachers’ Union of Ireland for you to work to preserve, improve, and fight for the pay and conditions of teachers, here in Ireland! If members of the TUI, the Executive, and/or paid staff want to march for Palestine or be involved in climate activism, for example, they should do so on their own time, in a personal capacity. The TUI is not a political party.
Back to Congress: this year, just like last year, there were many speeches and references to the rise and threat of the far right in Ireland. I too would be concerned about the rise of the far right, but what concerns me most is the stranglehold that the far left has on our union. In all my 16 years (and counting) of attending Congress, I’ve never encountered “the far right,” but I have increasingly been accosted by the far left.
Last year, I was scowled at by several members of our union at the entrance to the Congress hall because I handed back a leaflet that was given to me on entering — it was the Communist Party of Ireland’s leaflet. I have no interest in communism, and it has no place at Congress. This year, I had the same experience and reaction when refusing a leaflet from a Socialist Party member, and again when I declined an invite to a special meeting in aid of Palestine. I was made to feel like an outcast and faced derision and accusatory looks.
Also, last year, a member spoke from the podium about the need to rewrite our rulebook to make all pronouns gender-neutral. He received plenty of applause and support — far left again! I was offended by such a suggestion, as I believe there are only two genders, and gender-neutral pronouns offend me.
This year, again, I encountered the Communist Party at Congress, the Socialist Party, and People Before Profit — all very aggressive and intimidating.
There was far too much time spent on the war in Palestine and Israel during Congress this year and last year. There was a threatening air of antisemitism. Again, I am not arguing for or against either side, just highlighting that this isn’t the forum for it.
Our speaker spoke at length about the plight of the left in Turkey (we even watched a video shown to us in Turkish) and about the threat of the far right. Again, I have never felt the threat of the far right at Congress, in teaching, or in Ireland. But I am constantly accosted and threatened by the far left at Congress, in teaching, and in Ireland.
John spoke about how the far right are coming for us, for our children, and for our curriculum. Again, I see zero evidence of this, and I am at the frontline in school! What I do see is the far left infecting our curriculum through sex education and gender ideology, with conservative, concerned parents pushing back. That’s not the rise of the far right.
The biggest joke of this year’s Congress was that we ran out of time to discuss one full section with several motions put forward by paying members: Equality. It’s so ironic that our event was hijacked by the far left at the expense of equality. It seems equality for us paying members of the TUI isn’t as important or equal to the plight of others in society and abroad!
We have lots of issues here in Ireland: homelessness, a health crisis, a mental health services crisis, a housing crisis, immigration issues, and misuse of public funds in government. We also have many issues facing teachers: pension issues, Croke Park hours, certified and self-certified sick leave at austerity levels, the S&S scheme at austerity levels, maternity leave at austerity levels, an increase in workload, autocratic and authoritarian management in schools, senior cycle implementation — and many, many more. I advise we focus our time and effort on those matters, which you are being paid to do, and leave the politics outside!
I don’t want this email of complaint to go unanswered.
Thanking you,
Stephen Lynch
https://gript.ie/tui-congress-letter/?ct=t(EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_5_17_2022_13_19_COPY_02)
England - Hampstead Ladies’ Pond
The City of London Corporation seem to be having problems dealing with the Supreme Court judgment so some of the women donned moustaches and beards and tried to get in to the Men’s Pond 😃 Kevin O’Sullivan discusses this on Talk TV with Hannah Clarke:
Nicola Murray
Alexander Lawrie in the Scottish Sun ( Scots domestic abuse campaigner unmasked as paedo who abused children jailed for three years 08 May) reports:
A PROMINENT domestic abuse activist who was found guilty of physically and sexually assaulting four children has been jailed for three years.
Nicola Murray forced her tongue into the mouths of two children and made another youngster view an explicit image she had taken of a man she was dating.
Murray, 46, also spoke to the children about her sex life including describing the size of her lover’s manhood and indecently assaulted a further child after stripping them naked.
Murray - who ran the domestic abuse support group Brodie’s Trust - denied assaulting the children over a 20 year period but was found guilty by a jury following a trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last month.
The full article is here:
Let Women Speak have released a statement since they previously unwittingly gave a donation to Nicola Murray.
We Were Misled — Our Response to Nicola Murray’s Crimes
To our valued supporters and members of Let Women Speak,
We want to share with you the background and decisions surrounding past fundraising efforts, and address recent troubling developments involving Nicola Murray.
Some time ago, we raised a significant amount of money with the aim of funding a women-only refuge. We knew at the outset that there were very few — if any — genuinely female-only services left in the UK, and we wanted to explore whether we could help change that. Unfortunately, we soon realised that while the will was there, the amount we raised fell far short of what would be needed to establish and sustain a refuge from scratch.
So instead, we sought to donate the money to an existing service that centred women — one that did not admit men who self-identify as women into female-only spaces. This, too, proved nearly impossible. The overwhelming majority of services had already adopted gender self-ID policies, putting ideology above safeguarding and effectively removing the option of single-sex spaces for the women who need them most.
We offered the full amount to Aurora New Dawn, in the hope that they would stand for women. Instead, the CEO refused the donation on the grounds that I was associated with the funding. To make matters worse, this refusal was later posted on social media as if it were some kind of triumph. This same CEO has co-signed a letter about me authored by a man who has publicly likened me to Eva Braun. That women are turned away from help because of political tribalism is a disgrace — and one we will never accept.
Given the barriers we faced, we made the decision at that time to distribute most of the money to small, women-centred charities and grassroots initiatives. These organisations — few though they are — remain focused on biological women, and we were proud to support them.
Among the recipients of our support was Nicola Murray, who presented herself as a brave and principled advocate for women. Like many others, we believed her — and we now know we were wrong. We are deeply disturbed by the revelations surrounding her conduct. Her criminal acts, especially those involving the exploitation of women, are utterly inexcusable. Our thoughts and sympathies are with her victims.
We also want to be clear: we regret having supported Nicola Murray. While we acted in good faith, that does not lessen the responsibility we feel. We should have seen the signs, and we wish we had asked harder questions. We know that trust must be earned — and we take seriously the fact that some of you may now feel let down. We do too.
Nicola Murray has now been convicted and jailed for a sustained campaign of child cruelty and abuse, including physical violence, sexual violence and coercive control. Her crimes were not only a profound betrayal of the trust placed in her by our movement, but a grotesque exploitation of the very cause she claimed to champion.
After supporting those women-centred initiatives, we used the remainder of the funds to Let Women Speak — a campaign that gives women a voice in public when so many institutions have told us to sit down and shut up.
We are proud of what we’ve built — not despite these setbacks, but because of them. When the doors close, we make our own way. When the systems fail, we speak louder. Let Women Speak exists because women are being silenced, and we will not allow that to continue.
To everyone who has stood with us — thank you.
We remain transparent, principled, and unflinching in our defence of women and girls.
Kellie-Jay
The States - The Department of Health Report
I reported on this here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-ballad-of-lucy-jordan-the-states
On her substack, Ute Heggen is helpfully picking out extracts from this very important report. Here is an example:
New Zealand - Therapists Off With The Woo
On her substack, Yvonne van Dongen reports on two NZ associations that are betraying women and on one woman, Ann Elborn fighting back against this:
Mind Games
One therapist's experience opposing gender ideology
May 07, 2025
Of all the elites that betrayed the vulnerable in this ghastly war on women, perhaps the most reprehensible are those in the therapeutic professions, the very professions which should protect their clients.
Organisations that should have known better like the Association of Psychotherapists Aotearoa New Zealand and the New Zealand Association of Counsellors (NZAC) bowed to the demands and unsubstantiated claims of gender ideologues.
Both bought into the propaganda of vulnerable trans and gender diverse people. Both rejected the notion that believing you are born in the wrong body or have a fetish that requires you to dress as a woman is a mental illness. Both promoted gender affirming care and both sought to suppress discourse questioning the legitimacy of transgender and diverse identities.
The full piece is here:
https://yvonnevandongen.substack.com/p/mind-games
Australia - Pretend Medicine
On his substack, Gender Clinic News Bernard Lane looks at an open letter written by the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne praising their ‘gender affirming care’ and how that letter was ‘disappeared’. He also looks at the fact that this is not the only document in Australia that has been disappeared.
Gone, but not forgotten
The gender-affirming model requires the erasure of inconvenient claims and data
May 09, 2025
Comment
Our gender clinic is “one of the world’s best” and our interventions to help children with gender dysphoria “adhere to strict clinical governance standards.”
Our treatment guideline has been “peer reviewed at the highest level, published in the Medical Journal of Australia [MJA] and adopted by healthcare providers across Australia and the globe.”
“As a public institution we expect and welcome public scrutiny that is fair, objective and factual.”
Such was the tone of the open letter issued by the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) Melbourne on 13 December 2019, the year in which international concern about experimental, “gender-affirming” medicine for minors reached Australia.
But RCH Melbourne has shown little sign of welcoming scrutiny and now, sometime after April 18 this year, its open letter was taken down from the hospital website.
Why?
Was it because psychiatrist Alison Clayton began to ask difficult questions last year about a seeming lack of clinical governance oversight of the RCH gender clinic?
Was it because just two months before this open letter, a hospital governance committee—responsible for ensuring the efficacy and safety of new clinical practice—decided not to approve the radical new treatment model enshrined in the gender clinic’s treatment guideline? (We know this only now because of Dr Clayton’s inquiries.)
Was it because a startling admission in the version of the RCH guideline published by the MJA led a pioneer of evidence-based medicine, McMaster University’s Professor Gordon Guyatt, to declare the document an “untrustworthy” guide for clinicians?
Was it because that 2018 RCH guideline, misleadingly badged as “Australian standards of care,” has suffered other blows to its credibility, the most recent being a decision by Australia’s Health Minister Mark Butler to send it off for “a comprehensive review.”
Was it because, unlike the low-quality RCH document, the new guidelines to be developed by the National Health and Medical Research Council will be required to inform clinicians of the (low) quality of the evidence for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones?
Was it because the best-known global health provider to adopt the RCH guideline is the unguarded activist, Helen Webberley, who is the British co-founder of the online clinic GenderGP?
Who knows?
Yesterday, I emailed RCH asking if the hospital still stood by its December 2019 open letter. No response, as usual.
The full piece is here:
https://www.genderclinicnews.com/p/gone-but-not-forgotten?r=7ogxh&triedRedirect=true
I Kissed A Boy
This Sunday the next series of the above ‘gay dating’ show starts on BBC 3 with a new twist - it includes a larping woman!! I already reported on Barry Wall’s take on this:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-4-minute-mile
Mr Menno has also now done a very strong piece about this. I have complained to the BBC. Please also complain. https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint%20Summary
I believe that LGB Alliance and the Gay Men’s Network will be sending a letter and I will publicise that when I get hold of it.
Barry Wall has further followed it up:
UK - Surrogacy and Assisted Suicide
This is strictly speaking outside the scope of this substack but I know that a lot of my readers are very concerned about this issue so I have previously indicated that I will provide links to useful pieces when I come across them. Here is some small good news from Surrogacy Now UK that a proposed loosening of the law in the UK will not now proceed.
https://stopsurrogacynowuk.org/2025/05/08/law-reform-will-not-proceed/
I am taking the same approach with the Assisted Suicide Bill currently passing through Parliament and Christian Concern report here on the protest outside Parliament on 16 May ( and they also report on other matters of interest):
Endpieces
From Liz
From Tenaciously
TERF? Tired of Explaining Reality to Fools!
Where can you get all your Terf News from the UK, Ireland and from around the world?
From the Mainstream News Media? No chance!
You need to sign up to Dusty’s Substack, the only reliable source of worldwide Terf News!
The medicalisation and mutilation of children, education, free speech, women’s single sex spaces, women’s sports and much, much more.
Also film clips, comedy clips, songs ….
Thanks for the mention, Dusty! I'm very pleased with the caliber and quality of the information in the US Dept. of Health and Human Services' Report on Gender Dysphoria. I hope the way I've distilled chapters and given comments is helpful. Ute Heggen
Curious, is it unusual to think surrogacy should be allowed, assisted suicide is a damn good idea and also that people can't change sex.....I assumed they kind of went together in terms of common sense but libertarian views.....