Ghostbusters
Update 740. Gold's Gym Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
Onwards with 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:
Ghostbusters is a 1984 American film directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. It stars Bill Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis as Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Egon Spengler, three eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City.
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
Gold’s Gym and Tish Hyman
In case you have missed the now famous viral video, here it is. I have been pondering this for a while since it first happened and so has Karen Davis!
Tish Hyman is a rap singer. She uses Gold’s Gyms in California. She encountered larping men in the women’s changing room. On the last two occasions the man in question had previously been convicted of assaulting his wife and breaking her jaw. He has now declared that he is a woman and taken his wife’s name! On the third occasion, Tish complained about it vociferously in the reception area. Instead of the man getting banned, Tish got banned.
Following this she did a video where she said she believed that there were ‘true trans’ people. After getting a lot of kick back about that online, she re-thought her position on that.
She next attended an event where California State Senator Scott Wiener was speaking. Over to Meghan Kelly and Batya Ungar-Sargon. Interesting point from Batya about how differently this audience may have reacted if, for example, a white man had stood up and challenged Wiener ie. most of them are ‘woke’ and a little bit put on the back foot by a black lesbian making the point.
Well, I think Tish is doing a really great job but she is not, as some people are saying, the ( as Karen Davis puts it) ‘Terf Moses’!! She has just peaked and doubtless is on a steep learning curve hence perhaps the confusion over ‘true trans’. Our Moses figures are such as Kellie-Jay Keen, Riley Gaines, Meghan Kelly and Karen Davis ( to name just a few) who have been fighting this fight for a long time. Karen Davis has just released the first of (I think) several pieces on this and starts by addressing the ‘black lesbian’ angle ( and I agree with her take on that):
All thoughts gratefully encouraged.
British Boll***s Corporation
We have, of course, in recent updates been looking at the revelations about the BBC. On his substack, Andrew Doyle argues that the resignation of two senior figures does not fix the rot at the BBC. A lot of commentators who are on our side of the debate are determined to find a way of saving the BBC but I have come to the conclusion that it is beyond saving. You would have to gut it to save it. Insofar as we need a public service broadcaster ( do we?), you might as well start afresh I think! All thoughts gratefully received.
The BBC will not learn its lesson
Even with senior heads rolling, the state broadcaster remains unwilling to confront its deep-rooted institutional bias.
Nov 13, 2025
The culture war has produced innumerable masters in the art of doubling down. It’s an intuitive strategy; every bluebottle knows that if at first you fail to break through the window pane, it’s best to just keep colliding into it in the certainty that you’ll eventually achieve your goal.
So it is with the BBC. Last week I wrote about the corporation’s myriad failures when it comes to fulfilling its duty of impartiality. The revelations that the editors of Panorama spliced together two clips of Donald Trump to give the false impression that he was directly inciting violence at the Capitol on 6 January 2021 has now resulted in the resignation of the Director General, Tim Davie, and the Head of News, Deborah Turness. Perhaps this is due to concern about international relations. More likely it is Trump’s threat of a $1 billion lawsuit.
But in their resignation statements, neither Davie nor Turness appeared willing or able to acknowledge the broader problem of institutional bias, evidenced most strongly in the BBC’s continual censorship of news stories that raise questions about the potential harm of gender identity ideology. Specifically, activists on the ‘LGBT desk’ have been empowered to ‘keep other perspectives off air’. The leaked internal dossier that brought about this current crisis outlines a range of failures, including ‘a constant drip-feed of one-sided stories… celebrating the trans experience without adequate balance or objectivity’. (For an exhaustive overview of examples, take a look at this thread.)
In spite of the overwhelming evidence of partisanship, this was how Davie addressed the matter in his resignation letter:
‘Like all public organisations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent and accountable. While not being the only reason, the current debate around BBC News has understandably contributed to my decision. Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility.’
Turness was even more defiant:
‘In public life leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down. While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.’
This from the corporation that issued guidelines to encourage its staff to add pronouns to emails as a ‘small, proactive step that we can all take to help create a more inclusive workplace’. This from the corporation that insisted that a London protest in the wake of the death of George Floyd was ‘largely peaceful’, even though the headline of the article itself conceded that 27 police officers had been injured. This from the corporation that instructed staff to take a day’s paid leave following the Black Lives Matter hysteria to ‘educate’ themselves on diversity, inclusion and Critical Race Theory. The reading list that was provided included texts on ‘Whiteness’, ‘The End of Policing’ and ‘The Urgency of Intersectionality’.
The full piece is here:
https://www.andrewdoyle.org/p/the-bbc-will-not-learn-its-lesson
Kellie-Jay celebrates President Trump’s threat of legal action.
Cath Leng of SEEN In Journalism interviews Julie Bindel and they revisit a forgotten moment in BBC history — the 2007 Hecklers debate — and ask whether such a programme could even be made today.
England - The Curriculum Review
We looked at EDI Jester’s concerns about the Curriculum Review here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-fly?utm_source=publication-search
On the Academy of Ideas substack, Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, education researcher and director of Don’t Divide Us, outlines her serious concerns.
Intersex
The larping men’s activists are forever trying to drag intersex people (or, more accurately, people with Disorders of Sexual Development) on to their side of the argument as if they were some kind of third sex!! Feminist Legal Clinic via The Guardian (!!) looks at a new documentary on the subject:
‘I don’t want anyone to suffer like I did’: the intersex campaigners fighting to limit surgery on children | Children | The Guardian (12 November)
All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
What should be done about the small proportion of babies born with genitals that are neither typically male nor typically female? Many of those affected believe parents and doctors are often too quick to schedule operations.
[T]he Secret of Me, a new documentary by British film-maker Grace Hughes-Hallett, . . .follows the life of Jim Ambrose, who was born in Louisiana in 1976. … Ambrose had genitals that, as he puts it in the film, “fall outside of an arbitrary acceptable norm”.
The course of action that his parents had been advised to follow brought Ambrose a great deal of misery – he never felt like a girl growing up, and it was a massive blow to learn that such huge decisions had been taken about his body before he could have a say in them.
The Secret of Me draws a direct link between the harmful way Ambrose was treated and the work of psychologist John Money, whose theories about gender informed medical guidance about children born with atypical genitalia. In the 1960s, Money studied a pair of Canadian twin boys, originally called Bruce and Brian Reimer. Bruce was left without a penis after a botched circumcision, and the academic encouraged the boys’ parents to raise him as a girl, Brenda. Money studied both children as they grew, with his research claiming the experiment was a total success. Brenda, according to him, was a stereotypical and happy little girl, showing that a child’s gender could be moulded by the adults raising them.
In fact, there were clear signs that Brenda was never happy as a girl, which Money simply left out of his papers. As an adult, he began living as a man, changing his name again, this time to David. The brothers were left traumatised by Money’s research (which involved having them inspect each other’s genitals as children and “rehearse” sexual acts) and their story has an incredibly sad end – both Brian and David killed themselves in their 30s. Money’s work was eventually debunked – but its impact on medical treatment for children born with ambiguous genitalia was felt for years. Richard Carter, the surgeon who operated on Ambrose as a baby, appears in The Secret of Me, and apologises to his former patient. He says when he was tasked with treating Ambrose, he “went back to [his] textbooks” – which featured Money’s work.
Shocking as this all now seems, Money’s offer of a straightforward “fix” to non-stereotypically sexed babies clearly had an appeal, and perhaps still does: we live in a world in which many parents want to know whether to put their newborn in a blue or a pink hat, and gender reconstruction surgery for babies born with differences in sex development (DSD) is still legal in most countries, including the UK and the US.
Australia - Re Jamie
We reported here on the notorious 2013 Re Jamie case and the judge, Diana Bryant, now saying she might have been wrong.
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-fly?utm_source=publication-search
On the Gender Clinic News substack, Bernard Lane reports on further information that expert evidence to challenge the ‘gender affirming’ expert in the court proceedings was not heard by the court. I find it extraordinary that, in a case which really all turns on the expert evidence, this evidence was not heard!!
What the judges didn’t hear
The little-known story of how inconvenient expert opinion was silenced in the legal campaign to free-up puberty blockers
Nov 13, 2025
Think again
Diana Bryant, who was Australia’s chief justice of the Family Court in the 2010s when the transgender idea took off here and abroad, says she now has doubts about the landmark ruling in the re Jamie case that liberalised access to puberty blockers.
………………………………
It is a little-known fact of the re Jamie proceedings that an unnamed “public authority”, concerned about the interests of other children with disabilities, was not allowed to show the judges a report that might have disrupted the gender medicine groupthink.
That report, the court was told in 2012, covered—
“the nature of the controversies currently in the medico-scientific literature in respect of this [gender identity] disorder, the ethical issues in respect of the attitude of the child, and the controversies and issues which arise in respect of treatment for a child which may span a significant number of years, between [puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones]”.
Sounds like potentially useful information.
The public authority wanted the court to have the benefit of a psychiatrist’s affidavit on “the state of the medical evidence on childhood gender identity disorder”, which the authority described as a “controversial and complex psychiatric disorder”.
Introduction of this competing evidence was “strongly opposed” by the lawyers for Jamie’s parents, who claimed that a thorough exploration of the issues did not require the involvement of “someone who simply disagrees” with their own argument that judicial oversight of puberty blockers could safely be relaxed.
They would say that, wouldn’t they? As things stood, the evidence before the court was Dr G and the human rights commission singing from the same song sheet.
The parents’ lawyers also complained of the procedural difficulty and costs involved in calling contested evidence during an appeal.
But that was a function of the parents having failed to challenge the “judge must approve blockers” rule when Jamie’s case first came before the court in 2011—when Justice Linda Dessau’s approval of treatment was sought and given.
The public authority had been invited to get involved at this trial stage—the stage where competing evidence is supposed to be weighed and assessed.
Had the parents flagged their challenge to Ms Dessau’s jurisdiction, the authority said it would indeed have intervened to defend this judicial oversight of puberty blockers; perhaps its evidence would have effectively challenged Dr G’s.
But, at the appeal level before the full court with Ms Bryant presiding in 2013, the public authority was allowed to intervene but only on the proviso that it not call evidence; so, no competing psychiatric opinion for the potential illumination of the judges.
The full piece is here:
Cancel Culture
In a second interview, Kelly Dougall continues the conversation about cancel culture with Janet Murray who was herself cancelled.
The States - Roundup
Jos and Arianne of LGB Alliance USA bring us a good roundup of news ( including from Iceland where gay campaigner Eldur Kristinsson has lost his case against the Icelandic Broadcasting Company - bad luck, Eldur!). They also give their take on the Tish Hyman matter.
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.
We have decided to extend that one last time and then return to Endpieces.
Before we detail the extension, 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 definitely be going into the new year 😊
Back to Terf Island Discs. Several readers have chosen up to 8 songs or pieces of music each and we are going through those one at a time in each update. We are going to continue it one further time before returning to Endpieces and you can now choose up to 10 songs or pieces of music each. They need to be reasonably short. We can’t expect to have readers listening to the whole of Holst’s The Planets, albeit it is magnificent.
They don’t have to be from Terf Island BTW - anywhere in the world 😊
So for those who have already chosen 8, please choose 2 more and, if you have not yet taken part, please choose 10!! And if you have chosen from 1 to 7 so far, please top that up to 10. 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 us have a link if you can.
Please send your choices to the comments section here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/money-terf-island-discs
Next up!
Chosen by: Peedacanio
‘Bound For Glory’ by Tedeschi Trucks Band
#BeMorePorcupine
#WordsMatter
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#KeepFighting
#HoldTheLine
#BeMoreDissident
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
Thanks Dusty, there’s a lot to digest here. I agree with you about Tish. She’s on a learning curve and although there may be many people like this, we should welcome them to the Terf Resistance whilst at the same time, making sure they understand all the nuances of sex realism. We can always say ‘I told you so’ in private. 😁
I’m bewildered at the lefties defending the BBC…actually, not bewildered at all. The hypocrisy is off the scale; they are the masters of offence taking and cancel culture. Imagine if GB News had done all those things. Whatever happens with Trump he’ll be doing us a favour if it results in a mass clear out of garbage reporters and managers at the BBC. It’s become a bloated monster and the very epitome of a smug, sneering, offence taking, leftie bubble dwelling club. Just the sight of the likes of Emily Maitlis is enough to sour the milk. (I know she’s no longer employed there).
#DefundTheBBC