Onwards with Part 2 and we are sticking, of course, with Hostiles.
Spoiler alert: OK, I’m a complete soppy bollocks, but this is one of my favourite endings ever. OK, you can take the p*** now!
Christian Bale is Captain Blocker
Rosamund Pike is Rosalee Quaid
Xavier Horsechief is Little Bear
Thanks to three wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
The States - This Never Happens - The Minneapolis Shootings
It transpires that the Minneapolis Monster is a larping man.
Robert aka Robin Westman attacked a Catholic Church service at the Annunciation Church and killed two children, aged 8 and 10, and injured 17 others. The injured included 14 children aged 6 to 15 and three adults in their 80s. Among the injured, one adult and five children were in critical condition, while one adult and three children had non-life-threatening injuries. Four patients required surgery. The shooter, armed with a rifle, shotgun, and pistol, fired through church windows, targeting worshippers. Westman died by suicide at the scene.
Karen Davis deals with this on her substack and takes issue with those who have blamed Westman’s mother (!!) - I totally agree.
The States - This Never Happens - Men In Women’s Prisons
We recently featured an excellent interview with Carol Dansereau:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/hobsons-choice-the-moon-in-a-puddle
Carol has now done an extensive investigation of the amazing number of larping men in women’s prisons in the States. In passing she mentions a legal case being taken in California by Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF). She also touches upon the situation in Canada and the UK.
Males Pour into Women's Prisons, as Progressives Look Away
Aug 03, 2024
Tomorrow a family camp we attended for decades, gets underway in Seabeck, Washington without me and my partner Bruce. As discussed in a prior article, we’ve been expelled for our gender critical views.
By excluding us, camp leaders exclude the pesky information we have in our heads. In our absence, camp goers will not be subjected to inconvenient truths about what is happening 30 miles away at the female prison in Purdy, Washington, for example. They won’t have to hear about males pouring into that facility and other women’s prisons across North America as a direct result of the gender identity policies they promote. They won’t have to think about the intense suffering that results.
Those who attend the Seabeck camp and other self-proclaimed progressives are eager to remain ignorant. Exchanges with various friends, family members, and acquaintances over the past year have made that commitment to ignorance quite clear.
We have had the same bizarre back and forth too many times to count, and we know from other gender critics that what we’re experiencing is typical. First, someone tells us that trans-identifying people have a right to live how they want as long as they don’t violate other people’s rights. We respond that we agree completely and explain that our concern is that others’ rights are being violated, citing incarcerated women as an example. At that point, the person reiterates their disgust with our failure to go along with gender identity’s self-ID mandate, and they say good-bye. They completely ignore what we have said about males in women’s prisons.
It’s as if we haven’t said what we’ve said. It’s as if women prisoners forced to cohabitate with male inmates don’t matter. It’s as if they don’t even exist.
But those incarcerated women do exist, and they do matter. And progressives everywhere who are steadfastly looking away will not be able to do so much longer. Incarcerated women are increasingly organized, and we, their allies on the outside, undeterred by banishments and the collective tut tutting of so-called progressives, are publicizing and supporting their efforts.
Come on, President Trump, deal with this!!!! The full piece is here:
https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/males-pour-into-womens-prisons-as
For Women Scotland
Feminist Legal Clinic reports via The Sunday Times:
We’re bloody-minded, not bigots: the women who changed gender law | The Sunday Times (from 19 April 2025)
When they met on Mumsnet these women thought they’d be talking about shopping. Instead they grew determined to prove that sex is biological.
Calder, Smith and Budge established the grassroots feminist group For Women Scotland (FWS) and . . . achieved an era-defining victory when the Supreme Court found unanimously in their favour. It ruled that, while the Gender Recognition Act 2004 protects trans people from discrimination, the Equality Act 2010 defines a woman as an adult female, not a man who wishes to identify as a woman, as the Scottish government repeatedly insisted.
The past decade of misogynistic magical thinking — when women, including Maya Forstater and Kathleen Stock, were driven from their jobs for refusing to believe that womanhood is a feeling rather than a biological fact — is now over, and it is thanks to these three utterly normal, extremely brave women.
Calder and Budge saw each other’s posts on Mumsnet and messaged each other about starting a feminist group, along with Calder’s friend, Magdalen Berns, a computer programmer who made increasingly popular videos on YouTube about the absurdities of gender ideology. “We’re all straight,” says Calder, referring to herself, Budge and Smith. “And Magdalen represented the lesbian contingent.”
The women started making plans to launch FWS, but in 2017 Berns was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. She died in 2019, at the age of only 36. In her short life, Berns made a huge impact on the then nascent gender-critical movement, and one feminist in Scotland in particular. Shortly before Berns died, JK Rowling contacted her and later described her as “an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian”.
Trans activists have accused FWS of being funded by far-right American groups, which makes the women hoot with laughter: “Unless the American far right has set up hundreds of PayPal accounts that give us £2.50 a month, it’s not true,” says Smith.
By 2020, the Scottish government and Sturgeon was increasingly focused on passing the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which would usher in self-ID, and lower the legal age when young people can transition to 16.
That same year, Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a single mastectomy. Ten days after her surgery, she gave a speech in front of the Scottish parliament, a pillow clamped under her arm. “Having gone through a mastectomy myself, which I needed to save my life, I am disgusted by people who celebrate giving mastectomies to healthy young women as a ‘gender-confirming’ surgery. I think it is genuinely wicked,” she says.
In February last year, the women were given permission to appeal to the Supreme Court after the Court of Session ruled against them. FWS crowdsourced donations to fund their legal challenge; Rowling donated £70,000.
In the 24 hours since its win, FWS has been inundated with abuse by gender activists, much of it consisting of grossly obscene personal insults.
They’re used to this by now, but it never fails to amaze: “It would never occur to us to send messages like this, or to call our opponents ugly. But we get this every day,” says Smith.
But for now, the mood is jubilant — they finally got an answer to the question that has stumped politicians for years: what is a woman? A woman is officially a woman. “So there’s only one thing to do now,” says Calder happily. “Have a gigantic party.”
Source: We’re bloody-minded, not bigots: the women who changed gender law
The British Broadcasting Corporation
SEEN In Journalism have been pursuing the BBC who are re-writing their ‘transgender’ policy. This is a short piece so I trust they will forgive me for quoting the whole lot:
The BBC and 'preferred pronouns' - it's not over yet
Aug 28, 2025
We are doing everything we can to help the BBC understand that maintaining an editorial policy of self-identification of sex is untenable.
There is urgency. A review is underway, that will set new sex and gender guidance in stone. The BBC is not like other news outlets, which are more fluid, whose processes are less public, which can move a few steps forward, a few steps back: and can wait a a few months to see how the wind blows, before making a commitment.
The BBC’s public remit means the pressure is different. It owes us more, and is on a deadline - it has to respond to the Supreme Court judgement. Very soon, the updated EHRC code will be published, the Sandie Peggie case will be concluded and any reasons for delay will have evaporated. And whatever the BBC decides, everyone will know about it.
This will have been brought home very clearly this week to those writing the new guidance, when the Telegraph headlined the BBC's continued defence of the use of inaccurate pronouns in the case of Joanna Rowland-Stuart.
The BBC originally headlined Rowland-Stuart as a wife and a woman. After an outcry, the piece was edited to call him a ‘trans woman’. This happened before the Complaints unit formally had time to respond, so it’s an indication of an internal acknowledgement that calling him a wife and a woman was a step too far, and that some of the public anger was justified. But it still used female pronouns, and did not explicitly state that he’s a man.
It seemed this could be the BBC’s planned solution to its decade-old problem with self-identification of sex. Always tell the audience if a person is trans - but don't require information about their sex, and keep pronoun self-identification in place. That was never going to be good enough, and the BBC has just had a taste of exactly how the public will respond. We predict it will lead to a significant uptick in 'defunding' along with global embarrassment.
But there’s inconsistency. The BBC has decided that nappy fetishist Abi Taylor doesn't deserve the respect of preferred pronouns, but violent offender Zoe Watts and killer Joanna Rowland-Stuart do. It starts to look like a ‘sliding scale’ - not only a deeply unpleasant and counter-factual approach, but also completely unworkable.
Let’s briefly clear up two points: the defence of ‘court language’ and the reference to the condition of ‘gender dysphoria’.
Firstly, no legal obligation exists. There is no risk of contempt. Secondly, just as a man with a GRC is a man with a GRC - a man with ‘gender dysphoria’ is a man with ‘gender dysphoria’. Not a woman.
The furious reaction to the BBC’s decision to defend self-identification of sex in defiance of April’s Supreme Court judgement was entirely natural and predictable,. And this is just one story, and one newspaper reporting one response to one complaint. Imagine the public contempt if the BBC announces that this will be editorial policy for the foreseeable future, approved at the highest levels of BBC leadership. In effect, that the BBC decides it knows better than the Supreme Court.
There's one further point: the anger did not just come from campaigners who understand sexed reality. Transgender activists were enraged that the headlines were altered to insert the word 'trans'. Unfortunately for us, the bar the BBC hopes to clear on ‘balance’ often consists merely of generating the same levels of opprobrium from both sides, however irrational one side is.
When it comes to accuracy, however, it must not be balanced by inaccuracy. Truth is binary. We are currently doing everything we can to help the BBC understand that defaulting to sexed language is not not just defensible, it's the only way forward.
Credit - always - to those members of the public and those organisations which complained.
Surrogacy
All thoughts on this gratefully received.
Image: UN Women via Flickr CC BY 4.0
Maria Maynes in Gript News ( UN expert calls for worldwide ban on surrogacy 25 August) reports:
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, has called for all member states to ban the practice of surrogacy. The UN expert made the recommendation in a new report examining the different “manifestations of violence against women and girls in the context of surrogacy,” with the document also raising concerns about the practice of egg donation.
Surrogacy is legal and regulated in Ireland under the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction, AHR) Act 2024, and whilst commercial surrogacy remains illegal, Irish citizens can enter into legal surrogacy arrangements in countries where it is legal. However, provisions of the AHR Act, passed last July, have yet to come into force after human trafficking concerns were raised earlier this year.
Campaigners in favour of surrogacy laws have said there are over 1,000 children in Ireland born through surrogacy where both parents do not have legal rights to their children until new laws come into effect.
The report from the UN expert will be formally presented to the UN General Assembly in mid-October, but has been made available in advance.
The report states: “The practice of surrogacy is characterised by exploitation and violence against women and children, including girls. It reinforces patriarchal norms by commodifying and objectifying women’s bodies and exposing surrogate mothers and children to serious human rights violations.”
It highlighted how the worldwide surrogacy market was worth an estimated $14.95 billion in 2023, and its value is projected to grow to $99.75 billion by 2033. The report also highlights how surrogate mothers often only receive a small fraction of the overall payment made by commissioning parents, with the majority of the fee going to surrogacy agencies or intermediaries.
The document makes a number of findings and recommendations related to surrogacy and egg donation. A consultation prior to the report received some 120 global submissions, including from women’s rights groups in the UK, and included online consultation sessions with 78 stakeholders, including with surrogate mothers.
Key recommendations include calling for a total end to all forms of surrogacy at the international level, as well as the adoption of a binding international treaty banning surrogacy.
The report also calls for the implementation of a legal framework inspired by the Nordic model of prostitution law: penalising buyers, agencies and clinics, while decriminalising women. Ms Alsalem further calls for a prohibition on advertising and surrogacy agencies. In the report, she also advises strengthening international cooperation to combat the trafficking of women and children linked to surrogacy.
The Casablanca Declaration, an international coalition of more than 150 experts and associations from across political and cultural backgrounds, said the report reinforced its commitment to the universal abolition of surrogacy.
“This is an unprecedented recognition at the highest international level: surrogacy is not an act of love but a form of violence and exploitation. This historic report paves the way towards its global prohibition,” Olivia Maurel, spokesperson of the Casablanca Declaration, said.
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: Bob
‘Doom and Gloom’ by the Rolling Stones
#BeMorePorcupine
#DontFollowTheHerd
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#KeepSpeaking
#LeaveKidsAlone
#JustSayMen
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
Even though I have my name on a paper which advocates for surrogacy rights for gay men, I have become, through further reading, absolutely against the practice. I agree with Reem Alsaleem that there must be a complete ban, with heavy penalties for people who commission it (I'm undecided about the women who carry the child). I do worry how people will get around it - for example, there is the recent claim by Chinese researchers that there will be robot gestators in a few years. Whilst I think it is nonsense, any attempts will not proceed from the interests of the child.