I Put A Spell On You

Update 517. Free Speech Special. #BeMorePorcupine

As Donald Trump and his administration tear into gender ideology, for some reason the Screaming Jay Hawkins classic I Put A Spell On You has jumped to mind, so I am pausing the latest film series to bring you a version by one of my favourite bands, the Banditos.

Thanks to three wonderful readers for suggested pieces.

Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.

Free Speech

Two pieces from the latest Free Speech Union newsletter ( 03 February). Congratulations to FSU Director, Toby Young on becoming a member of the House of Lords 😀

Phillipson faces pressure to bring in Freedom of Speech Act following FSU legal action

I recently joined Josh Howie on GB News’s Free Speech Nation to discuss our campaign to rescue the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act (HEFSA). (You can watch a clip here.) Introduced by the Conservatives, HEFSA secured cross-party support and received Royal Assent in May 2023. It was designed to strengthen universities’ duties to uphold free speech on campus, with mechanisms such as a complaints scheme overseen by the Office for Students.

Despite this, one of Bridget Phillipson’s first acts as Education Secretary was to suspend HEFSA’s most critical clauses – those designed to hold universities accountable. Labour sources dismissed the Act as a “Tory hate charter” and Ms Phillipson signalled her intention to scrap it entirely. But thanks in part to the FSU’s High Court challenge, coupled with significant pushback from hundreds of academics, Ms Phillipson was forced to reconsider.

The legal pressure we applied ensured the government couldn’t quietly abandon these vital protections. In early January, Ms Phillipson announced that a diluted version of HEFSA will now be revived. Following her announcement, the High Court confirmed that legal proceedings would be paused until 1st July. This marks a significant victory: the adjournment keeps the government under pressure and ensures Ms Phillipson cannot simply kick the issue into the long grass.

With the clock ticking, Labour must act swiftly to implement meaningful free speech protections before the next academic year. To learn more about our legal fight, and to contribute towards our substantial costs, click here.

Petition against non-crime hate incidents

An FSU-supported petition to abolish Orwellian NCHIs has attained around 23,000 signatures – a testament to the strength of public support for free expression and against police overreach. But we’re not done yet. If it reaches 100,000 signatures, the petition will be considered for debate in Parliament, where I can weigh in as a member of the House of Lords.

The recording and retention of these ‘non-crimes’ runs afoul of a basic tenet of English Common Law, which is that unless something is explicitly prohibited it is permitted, and has got to stop.

Please sign the petition here and share it with friends and family.

UK - Mermaids

Following on from the good news about UK government departments leaving the Stonewall Diversity Champions Scheme, here is some good news about Mermaids:

https://x.com/Neverfallingfo1/status/1886394785914634241

UK - British Psychological Society

Though Critical Race Theory is not what we concentrate on on this substack, it is the next door neighbour of Critical Social Justice ( which encompasses gender ideology) so I am sure many readers will be interested in this piece from James Esses about CRT being embedded in the BPS!

https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/exclusive-i-just-exposed-how-the?publication_id=858965&post_id=153408765&isFreemail=false&r=20xc5g&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

DIE Must DIE

I agree with all that EDI Jester says here about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ( sounds very cuddly but it’s a Trojan Horse) except with regard to the Equality Act - see my posted comment below. All thoughts gratefully received.

Thanks, Barry.

I totally agree that we need to get rid of DIE and I love the idea of MITE.

However I do not agree that the Equality Act 'builds in' DIE ( as a separate issue we really need to get rid of 'gender reassignment as a protected characteristic) Maybe some of the gender ideologues attempt to interpret the EqA in that way but it is really there to stop clear and direct discrimination eg. sacking someone for having gender critical views ( Maya Forstater and many other cases). DIE is pro-active , changing policies and training etc and penalising or intimidating those who disagree.Generally speaking the EqA is not pro-active - and this has been a problem for us eg. you are allowed to set up single sex spaces ( subject to what 'sex' means - we await the For Women Scotland judgment) but you don't HAVE to do that - however there are some interesting direct sex discrimination cases rolling through at the moment eg. Ms Peggie in Fife.

Ireland - Some Good News

Wonderful JL published her last Good News Supplement on the Glinner Update this week. In case you missed it, here is my tribute to her:

https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/a-tribute-to-jl

JL included some good news from Ireland.

Wonderful News From Ireland

The Irish government has ditched its previous plan to follow WPATH guidelines and allow under-16s to legally ‘change their gender’.

In its approach to gender identity ideology, the Irish government’s new Programme for Government is a radical departure from that of 2020.

Most importantly, the new programme has scrapped its previous plan to base a gender health care model on WPATH’s guidelines and the government will no longer consider allowing children under-16s to legally ‘change genders’. Furthermore, it has also ditched a commitment that public bodies will use preferred pronouns.

The full piece is here:

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-good-news-supplement-monday-27th-fb1

However we wait to see what the new Irish Government intend to do with the paused Hate Crime Bill.

Ireland - Surrogacy

I know, like me, many readers are concerned at what is happening with surrogacy.

I have just caught up with this alarming report from Shay Woulahan on Reduxx regarding Ireland (I am pleased to report that Senator Keogan has been re-elected to the Irish Seanad). All thoughts gratefully received.

Ireland’s Health Minister Rejects Proposed Amendment To Prohibit Pedophiles, Sex Offenders From Buying Children Via Surrogacy

June 22, 2024

The Health Minister of Ireland has rejected a proposed amendment to a recently passed Assisted Human Reproduction Bill which would have prohibited convicted sex offenders – including pedophiles – from purchasing babies from surrogate mothers, in Ireland or overseas.

Health Minister Stephen Donnell rejected a series of proposed changes during a debate in the Seanad on Thursday 20 June created by Senator Sharon Keogan, a critic of surrogacy.

The Assisted Human Reproduction Bill (2022) passed without vote at the end of May. The bill outlines a framework for surrogacy within Ireland, limiting a legal surrogacy arranged to couples and surrogate mothers who have lived in Ireland for at least 2 years. The couple would need to have “at least one genetic link to the child” and there is to be no commercial transaction involved. However, surrogate mothers will be compensated for “reasonable expenses.”

The bill also outlines requirements for international surrogacy arrangements, outlining that children born internationally via commercial surrogacy to Irish citizens can receive legal recognition in Ireland. Critics of the bill have argued that international commercial surrogacy will make up the vast majority of the arrangements due to the ban of commercial surrogacy transactions within Ireland.

Senator Keogan previously said in a committee meeting on surrogacy that she “wholeheartedly objects to the commercialization of the human child and the relegation of women to the status of simply incubator or wombs for hire.” She added that she believes surrogacy is “harmful, exploitative, and unethical,” noting that it was not a human right to have a child.

Keogan proposed 15 amendments in total to the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill (2022), all of which were rejected by Health Minister Donnell.

One amendment would have seen baby buyers face harsh penalties such as fines or prison if they ever abandon a child conceived through surrogacy. Keogan defended this amendment saying it would serve as a deterrent “against negligent and irresponsible behavior that could harm the child or the birth mother’s well-being.”

“By prohibiting such individuals from entering surrogacy services again, the legislation seeks to prevent further occurrences of child abandonment and to hold accountable those who fail to fulfill their responsibilities as parents,” Keogan explained.

Keogan advocated for the use of fines and imprisonment for offenders, saying this reflects “the seriousness of child abandonment in the context of surrogacy and underscores the legal consequences faced by individuals who violate these regulations.”

The full piece is here:

https://reduxx.info/irelands-health-minister-rejects-proposed-amendment-to-prohibit-pedophiles-sex-offenders-from-buying-children-via-surrogacy/

New Zealand - The Role Of Gender Critical Journalists

Excellent discussion between Katrina Biggs and experienced journalist, Yvonne van Dongen. They agree that the events at Albert Park, Auckland when Kellie-Jay Keen and others at the attempted Let Women Speak event were attacked, was a watershed moment in NZ. They also stress the importance of substacks to Terfs. I should coco!

A Parent’s Prayer

A very moving piece on the substack for Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans:

An ROGD parent's prayer

Feb 03, 2025

Oh, Dear Lord, let this be my death. If my eyes never open again, if I never see another day, let me dwell in this moment. Let this be my last and only vision, a long last look to carry me beyond. I am dreaming, and I know that I am dreaming. I see you, my beautiful daughter, with the sparkle in your eyes. This sparkle that I see before me now, before it dimmed, before the distressed face and darkened eyes took over. I am dreaming. I know that I am dreaming because I don’t feel the heaviness, the sadness, the tightness in my chest. All is light. All is you. All is now and forever.

I walk up a slight step and there you are. It is brightly lit. Are we in a store? Are we buying an apple juice on our way to the park? I see you. I see you. You, too, are brightly lit. You are dressed in a summer popsicle top and shorts, with bright neon socks you picked out yourself, now you are wearing your green sweater and skinny long blue jeans, and now your little brown coat and brown winter boots you called your “tough boots.” Your clothes change each time you turn. I know that I’m dreaming because you are young, small, smiling.

The full piece is here:

https://www.pittparents.com/p/an-rogd-parents-prayer?r=7ogxh&triedRedirect=true

Virtue Signalling

Inspired by Sadiq Khan momentarily removing his pronouns from his bio, Andrew Doyle has posted an excellent piece on his substack about ‘virtue signalling’. Andrew hopes that the woke movement is on the way out - hmm, maybe a bit early to say that?

The trouble with virtue signalling

Sadiq Khan temporarily removed his pronouns from his social media profile. Is the era of performative virtue almost at an end?

Feb 04, 2025

Like many of the new clichés, ‘virtue signalling’ has its pros and cons. On the one hand, it neatly encapsulates a tendency - particularly common among politicians - to endorse ideas solely for publicity purposes. On the other hand, when we accuse our opponents of virtue signalling, are we not guilty of arrogantly claiming a kind of telepathic insight?

But how else can we account for the behaviour of Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, whose every gesture appears to be an advertisement of his own moral worth? During London’s New Year’s Eve firework display in 2021, Khan had lit the bridges over the Thames in the EU’s yellow and blue colouring as a protest against Brexit. Also during that year’s celebrations, drones took to the skies to form the raised fist of the Black Lives Matter movement. Khan may as well have ‘right side of history’ tattooed on his forehead.

This is why nobody was surprised when, a number of years ago, Khan added pronouns to his social media profile.

This is the very definition of virtue signalling, given that the declaration of pronouns is typically a display of allegiance to an ideological tribe. After all, it is unlikely that anyone was under the impression that Khan might be a ‘she’. Yet for all his posturing, a few days ago the ‘he/him’ pronouns magically disappeared.

One might have been tempted to assume that he never really believed in the cause of genderism at all, except that by yesterday the pronouns had returned. One of Khan’s spokespeople claimed that it had been a ‘technical error’, but many remain suspicious. What kind of ‘technical error’ deletes words at random from Twitter bios? A far more plausible explanation is that Khan was hoping that his pronoun removal would go unnoticed, but then the backlash forced him to revert.

We saw a similar drama play out last November when the Democratic politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez removed her pronouns from X. She later claimed that she did this ‘for reasons of space’, but this kind of excuse naturally invites our scepticism. At least Pete Buttigieg, the US secretary of transportation, has removed his pronouns without reinstating them or trying to shift the blame.

One of the chief features of virtue signalling is that it is laughably easy to spot. Perhaps the most egregious example was the campaign which began after the Brexit referendum in which people were invited to show solidarity with ethnic minorities by wearing safety pins, usually on lapels or somewhere similarly prominent. This trend never caught on and was widely mocked at the time, even by those who supported the cause of anti-racism.

After Donald Trump’s victory a few months later, an attempt to resurrect the trend occurred in America, and the response was likewise contemptuous. Activist Christopher Keelty wrote a piece for The Huffington Post entitled ‘Dear white people, your safety pins are embarrassing’, and offered numerous other suggestions of how to be ‘a better ally’. Although himself white, Keelty could not see racial groups as anything other than homogenous monoliths of identical tendencies and collective responsibility. ‘Let me explain something, white people,’ he wrote, with all the certainty and dogmatism we have come to expect from identitarian homilists. ‘We just fucked up. Bad. We elected a racist demagogue who has promised to do serious harm to almost every person who isn’t a straight white male, and whose rhetoric has already stirred up hate crimes nationwide.’ That many ethnic minority individuals supported Trump and many white people opposed him seems to have escaped his notice.

So much for virtue signalling through the medium of safety pins. More recently, we’ve seen the appearance of rainbow lanyards and badges as a method of displaying one’s tolerance for sexual minorities. In 2018, the Evelina Children’s Hospital in London implemented the NHS ‘rainbow badge’ scheme, by which staff who wished to show their support for the ‘LGBT+’ patients could be more visible. By 2019, the scheme had been rolled out to sixty-one per cent of NHS trusts. Of course, very few of those who wore the badges will have done so out of a genuine faith in genderism. Rather than acting as a symbol of solidarity, it was more likely to be an apotropaic gesture to keep angry activists at bay.

For those like me who haven’t come across ‘apotropaic’ before, it means ‘turning aside’ 😃

The full piece is here:

https://www.andrewdoyle.org/p/the-trouble-with-virtue-signalling

Endpieces by Liz and JL

From JL’s last Good News Supplement ( what a great choice, JL!)

#BeMorePorcupine

#EndGenderAffirmingCare

#AdultHumanFemale

#LetWomenSpeak

#GrassrootsArmy

#FightForFreeSpeech

#ByeByeStonewall

#GenderEnders

#NeverSurrender

The next update will probably be on Friday, Terven.

If you like this update, please send to a friend. Until next time, Terven. This isn’t over yet! Please subscribe for free or paid or buy me a coffee, like and comment.