Dark Star - Let There Be Light!
Update 796. Ladies' Pond Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
Prior to Update 800 (approaching fast!), please submit your favourite detective film (one choice each). The submissions will all go in a hat and then I will pick out one submission.The winner will get a free paid subscription or, if s/he is already a paid subscriber, they can nominate someone to get a free paid subscription. Get your thinking caps on!! Thanks to those who have already sent in their choice.
After our Christmas film series, we are back to the Dusty, Nicola and Moodie Film Series. Please keep the suggestions for films 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:
I was joining in the comments to an EDI Jester piece when something sparked memory of an excellent old spoof sci-fi film, Dark Star (1974) produced, scored and directed by John Carpenter (yes, he of Halloween fame!) and co-written with Dan O’Bannon (who also stars in the film). It has now become a bit of a cult film. It follows the crew of the deteriorating starship Dark Star, twenty years into their mission to destroy unstable planets that might threaten future colonisation of other planets.
The three actors who appear in the opening, main-credits sequence — set to the song “Benson Arizona”—are:
Dan O’Bannon as Sgt. Pinback
Brian Narelle as Lt. Doolittle
Cal Kuniholm as Boiler
SPOILER ALERT: This is the last scene.
Andreijah "Dre" Pahich is Talby.
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
England - Hampstead Ladies’ Pond
We have been following this judicial review challenge for some time now. Basically, there are three ponds on Hampstead Heath in London designated for swimming and run by the City of London Corporation: a men’s pond; a unisex pond; and a ladies’ pond. However the City of London define ‘women’ to include larping men. Sex Matters asked them to confirm that, following the Supreme Court judgment in April last year, the ladies’ pond would just be for women. The best they did was to say they would carry out a consultation. So Sex Matters lodged a judicial review challenge in the High Court. The first stage of such a challenge is for a judge to decide whether to give the case permission to go through to a full hearing. Today, as explained in the Sex Matters letter to supporters below, permission has been refused.
Dear Dusty
Thank you so much for your donation last year, which together with thousands of others enabled us to bring this important case with a first-class legal team.
I am sorry to say that our application for permission for a judicial review of the City of London Corporation’s decision to allow men into the women’s bathing pond, and vice versa, has been refused.
The judgment, which was handed down this morning, was not what we wanted to hear. The judge took the City of London Corporation’s procedural arguments over ours. The court therefore refused to let the case go forward to allow the substantive arguments to be heard.
The City of London Corporation continues to allow men into the women’s ponds including the open showers and changing rooms. The High Court did not rule on whether this is lawful or not. It simply kicked the can down the road to another court or another claimant.
The City of London Corporation’s unwillingness to defend the lawfulness of its current policy in court, and the court’s reluctance to hear the legal arguments, are both deeply frustrating and unjust. They suggest that the risk and difficulty of taking legal cases to establish women’s (and men’s) rights to single-sex provision should rest with individuals.
Mrs Justice Lieven said: “The Corporation should be allowed to conduct a full consultation, with all options on the table and then to consider all those options. If it then adopts an option which is alleged to be unlawful, potentially on one or more of the grounds pleaded here, then that will be the time to challenge.”
The Corporation said that it intends to decide on its policy “relatively shortly and does not intend to await any further Guidance from the EHRC”. The court said: “The rule of law can be fully vindicated by an in-time challenge to a fresh decision, if so advised, when the Corporation has made such a decision.”
We are considering our legal next steps. We will update you again as soon as we can. We have other legal irons in the fire, and we will not give up on bringing cases to challenge the widespread unlawful practice of forcing, tricking or coercing women to undress with men, or to be excluded from services if they refuse to do so.
Thank you again for donating to this case. We couldn’t have got this far without you.
With best wishes
Maya and the Sex Matters team
As further detailed below by lawyer Michael Foran on his substack, permission was refused on two procedural grounds:
Timing. Since the City of London are carrying out a consultation this challenge was premature. I think this is wrong - the Supreme Court has stated what the law is - any consultation will not change the law!
Standing. To take a judicial review you have to have standing. The Court felt that an individual ( or individuals) affected by the situation could have taken the case and that would be in the county court on grounds of discrimination. However, it is perfectly justifiable for an organisation which covers the issue in question to take the claim where an individual has not come forward.
I hope that Sex Matters appeal this decision. It seems wrong to me. I get the feeling that Michael Foran does not agree with me since he does not mention the possibility of appealing. Unfortunately, any appeal would be to the Court of Appeal which ramps up the pressure, cost and difficulty. Watch this space!
Stop The Clinical Trial
I am working through the session of the Parliamentary Women’s and Equalities Committee on the clinical trial and also working through the ‘advice to parents’ from the Pathways Trial and hope to report back on this in the next update.
Scotland - Men In Women’s Prisons
This is amazing following the clarity of the Supreme Court judgment last April, but heroic For Women Scotland are having to take the Scottish Government back to court over men in women’s prisons!!!! Beam me up, Scotty!!! EDI Jester reports on this.
Ireland - The Influence of TENI
We have been reporting recently on state funded Gender Woo organisations in Ireland spreading misinformation. John McGuirk in Gript News picks things up.
Photo credit: TENI
MCGUIRK: Why are TENI invited into Newsrooms?
January 26 2026
One of the more extraordinary admissions by a journalist in recent years was made, almost casually, by Mick Clifford in the Irish Examiner over the weekend. Writing about the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland, he noted the following:
‘TENI frequently sends people into media organisations to instruct how matters around gender dysphoria must be reported. Yet TENI has always refused to engage in any public discussion, claiming any such discussion questions the rights of trans people to exist. This is simply not the case.
‘It might well be posited that the approach of the organisation, and some others of a like mind, does little to elicit empathy among the general population for teenagers who are questioning their gender.’
With respect to Mick, I’d have to quibble a little with his phrasing. He says TENI “sends” people into media organisations. This is hardly perfect accuracy, conjuring up as it does the image of a phalanx of TENI officials marching past security at the front door of the Irish Times, commandeering the newsroom, and issuing commands to terrified staff.
What actually happens, so we’re completely clear, is that the newspapers and broadcasters invite TENI in to talk to their journalists. Over the years, a few people in the media have privately bristled to me about these sessions, but never quite been willing to go on the record about them. Journalists are assembled and told how to cover the trans issue “sensitively”, which usually includes some emotional blackmail about the damage that might be done to people by using their wrong pronouns and so forth. If you want to understand why the past decade has seen – on both sides of the Irish sea – an explosion in headlines like “woman charged with exposing her penis”, then you need look no further than these sessions.
One of the reasons that this sort of thing is so extraordinary is that there does of course already exist a code of practice for Irish journalists and media outlets on how to cover the news. It is the Press Council Code of practice, and this writer like every other here at Gript is obliged to comply with it. It demands that we be truthful, that we distinguish fact from comment, that we respect privacy, that we do not deliberately stir up hatred, and so on. Nowhere does it say that we must use a person’s chosen pronouns, or refer to male rapists as women. That voluntarily adopted extension to the journalistic code is one demanded by TENI and similar organisations. The question is why so many media organisations have voluntarily complied.
They would not, after all, dream of inviting in Republicans Abroad to tell them how to cover Donald Trump sensitively, or inviting the Russian Ambassador in to tell journalists what words to use whilst covering the reign of Tsar Vladimir the terrible.
The answer for why these media organisations voluntarily comply is, of course, fear. They are told by TENI and other groups that language is a form of violence, and that by using biologically and scientifically accurate language to describe people, they risk doing serious psychological harm to their subjects. They are fed a plethora of statistics about self-harm and suicide rates amongst trans people, and then they are told that the use of certain forms of language makes those rates worse. It is the basest level of moral blackmail: Speak as we tell you to, or people might die.
Forced to confront a choice between writing about the female penis on the one hand, or killing people on the other, journalists will generally choose the former.
The problem, of course, is that it is not actually the duty of the journalist to promote the mental health of transgender people. This is a category error that the media makes relentlessly: Assuming that they have a duty higher than accuracy and precision of language. This idea of a “higher duty” is the foundation of all journalistic bias: It underpins why, for example, the nationality of a serious criminal suspect may be obfuscated after a terrorist attack, or why when it comes to global warming, journalists use PR-driven terms like “climate change”. In all cases, the journalistic objective is not to inform but to protect.
What this does to journalism, of course, is to render it extinct. When the reporter is taking lessons from one party to a public issue of controversy in how to speak about that controversy, he or she is no longer a reporter, but a PR flack for one side. Thus the words of somebody like Graham Linehan are obfuscated, or described as controversial, by the journalist – not because they are, but because the journalist thinks the point of journalism is to protect TENI and trans people.
This entire farce is the fault of the newspaper editors and newsroom managers, who should have the basic integrity and confidence to tell lobby groups that their journalism is independent, and not subject to external influence.
But as Mick Clifford admitted over the weekend, this is not what happens. When you read about TENI or the transgender issue in an Irish Newspaper, you are essentially reading the words of TENI-trained PR agents. Maybe that doesn’t bother you, but I suspect it bothers enough people to substantially explain the continued fall in trust that the public expresses for the media.
Incidentally, and in case it needed saying, TENI won’t be “sending” people into Gript anytime soon to instruct us. Nor, for that matter, will their opponents on the other side of the debate.
Ireland - Misinformation continued…
And more on this subject from wonderful Gript….
Dept. of Education Doc: Wrong Pronouns are Harassment
C: Unsplash
January 27, 2026
Jason Osborne
In light of the controversy surrounding the Irish Council for Civil Liberties’ ‘Trans Rights Guide’ last week, I contacted the Department of Education to get their take on it all, inquiring additionally whether schools do, in fact, have an obligation to use students’ preferred names and pronouns, as the guide had suggested.
In their response, they essentially contradicted the State-backed guide, saying rather that there was nothing to “preclude” a school from using such in day-to-day interactions.
Interestingly, though, the Department repeatedly cited a 2016 document in explaining the going advice to schools in relation to matters of gender and sexuality, a resource that among other things recommends that parents should only be brought into the conversation about their child’s disclosures if school authorities have “legitimate cause for concern for the student’s safety”.
To whet your appetite, it also makes claims to the effect that using a student’s given name and actual pronoun, rather than their preferred name and pronoun, could constitute “name calling and harassment”; that not to affirm a student’s identity in every respect is not to respect the student; and that gender identity is, paradoxically considering the document’s purpose, “largely inflexible”.
The document, Being LGBT in School, was published by the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN), an organisation that received extensive State funding, as well as millions of euros in funding from Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies’ before shutting down in 2017 following allegations of serious financial mismanagement.
The then-Department of Education and Skills is also prominently noted as having provided its support in bringing the resource into being, in association with a host of educational bodies and organisations (the omnipresent Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) among them).
To say that it’s an ideologically compromised document – which, keep in mind, is still guiding the Department’s thinking on the matter, as evidenced by their response to this writer – would be an understatement. Throughout its 72 pages, it consistently conflates “affirming” students with respecting them, and is loaded with suggestions that to disagree with the gender ideology framework is to risk critically harming young people who might be grappling with their sexuality or experiencing gender dysphoria.
Take, for example, this statement on page 18 concerning the social transition in the school community of students who say that their gender doesn’t match their sex:
“Whilst the school community may find the transition of a transgender student initially challenging, it is critically important to the physical, psychological and emotional well-being of that young person that they are treated with dignity, respect and fairness for his or her preferred gender identity.”
Despite my years tuned into the conversations of those critical of gender ideology, I’ve yet to hear someone express the idea that it’s ok not to treat such young people with dignity, respect or fairness.
And yet, the document links treating students properly with conceding their “preferred gender identity”.
The States - Calling Yourselves Democrats
Democrats with an Informed Approach to Gender (DIAG Democrats) report on their substack that in Illinois non-profit organisations are barred from operating in the state if they mention either “democrats” or “republicans” in their title unless they go to the parties for permission. Hold on, isn’t there something called The First Amendment!!??
Breaking news!
Lawyers at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression are representing DIAG pro bono in the kind of case the ACLU was formed to prosecute: remember free speech?
Jan 28, 2026
From FIRE’s press release:
CHICAGO, Jan. 27, 2026—Like most Americans, you’ve probably criticized the Democrats or the Republicans at some point. But imagine that the next day, state officials told you to go down to party headquarters and request a permission slip to continue speaking out.
What seems like an absurd hypothetical is the reality in Illinois, where nonprofits are barred from operating in the state if they mention either “democrats” or “republicans” in their title unless they go to the parties for permission. Now, with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, one group of dissident Democrats is suing to strike down Illinois’ unconstitutional law—permanently.
“Illinois can’t get around the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to party bosses,” said FIRE attorney Daniel Zahn. “No American—Republican, Democrat, or independent—should have to bend the knee before a political party to participate in the political system.”
Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender is a charitable organization composed of current and former Democrats who disagree with the party’s stance on transgender issues. The all-volunteer organization believes it offers a unique perspective by voicing their belief that the current Democratic Party consensus is contrary to “core liberal values,” such as “promoting evidence-based medical care,” “protecting vulnerable children and adults,” and “upholding the rights of women and girls.”
“The Illinois Democratic Party doesn’t get to decide whether we can call ourselves ‘Democrats,’” said DIAG Board Secretary Jenny Poyer Ackerman. “DIAG was founded on our belief in open inquiry, challenging ideological conformity, and above all, the freedom to speak out. Backing down would go against everything we believe in.”
The States - Scott Wiener
In the last update we reported on Senator Wiener avoiding meeting with a concerned parents’ group. Hmm, let’s think of a good way of protesting about that!
https://x.com/womenarereals/status/1982809861219037439?s=46&t=9T7qsS_O4nqXrhIuNjY1AA
BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!
Answering a ‘Trans Rights Activist’
Amy Sousa aka The Known Heretic does a response video here to a young ‘trans rights activist’. I know that regular readers will know all these arguments by heart but this would be very useful for someone new to Terfing or who is sitting on the fence.
https://www.theknownheretic.com/p/trans-solipsism?publication_id=1303673&r=1v403b
Terf Island Discs
Thanks to all readers ( and me 😀) who have made suggestions and we still have lots of songs to go that will take us well into 2026. It’s been great (I think anyway 😊).
We will then be reverting to Endpieces.
Endpieces, as regular readers will know, consisted of comic pieces, animal videos, songs etc to provide a bit of relief after some of the horror stories we detail on this substack. Endpieces was run by Tenaciously Terfin, Liz Parker and myself and we are delighted to now have been joined by Becca Shambles, Petal and Jeremy Wickins. Please let us know if you want to join the Endpieces Club 😊
I have an Endpieces folder so Endpieces suggestions can be sent to me at any time from now even though Terf Island Discs will be continuing for the moment as explained above 😊
Onwards with Terf Island Discs.
Next up!
Chosen by: Peedacanio
‘All The Trouble’ by Lee Ann Womack
#BeMorePorcupine
#KeepTerfing
#StandWithJenniferMelle
#PubertyIsAHumanRight
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#KeepBoppingTerfs
#HoldTheLine
#NoBlockersTrial
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
Sadly, the Sex Matters attempt at Judicial Review went the way I expected it to. The rules around JR are very well established, and very strict. The timing issue was a big issue - you can't apply for JR years after a decision has been made. I know SM tried to argue that there had been a new policy created in the recent past, but it was always going to be difficult to sustain. The rules of standing for groups are also fairly iron-clad - basically, a group will only get standing if there is no way an individual who has been affected can be found (usually decisions about the environment). SM would have done better to find a woman or two to stand as complainants.
I don't know why the judge wandered off into the consultation, unless it was a way of giving hints as to how to proceed - which does happen.
I had been trying to remember the name of the film 'Dark Star'! Thank you. Such a great film.