Insomnia Part 2
Update 775. National Willy Institute Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
Onwards with Part 2 and onwards with Insomnia.
Spoiler alert: this is virtually the last scene.
Al Pacino is Will Dormer
Robin Williams is Walter Finch
Hilary Swank is Ellie Burr
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
UK - The National Willy Institute
Following on from us covering a piece analysing the supposed change of direction by Girl Guiding, Women’s Institute Declaration on Third Sector Seen are not convinced by the change of heart by the WI. I hope they will forgive me for quoting the whole of their open letter since it is short.
An Open Letter from the Women’s Institute Declaration to the Women’s Institute Leaders
Now that the Women’s Institute has remembered who it was set up to serve - or rather, been made to.
Dec 21, 2025
Dear Melissa and Jeryl,
We are writing for a variety of reasons, the first to thank you for bringing the Women’s Institute back in line with the Equality Act 2010.
Although, it would have been preferable for this to have happened in April immediately after the Supreme Court Ruling, rather than waiting over seven months, leaving everyone in legal limbo. We also do not understand why the removal of membership privileges to men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment will not happen until April 2026, when you have all but admitted the current EDI policy is unlawful. Trustees of individual WIs are now in an invidious position of having to allow some men to be members, but not all men.
We are also concerned about the opaque language employed by the Natonal Federation of WI surrounding the Sisterhood Groups. It needs to be made clear that, to comply with the law, these groups will welcome all men, not just those with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. As you both know, it would be direct discrimination not to allow any man to join these groups. It seems to us that avoiding the word “men” and using “for all people” is a deliberate sleight of hand designed to hide that these are mixed sex groups.
Your statement “with the utmost regret and sadness” at having to follow the law sent a clear message where your bias sat. It was not a neutral statement and claiming that “transgender women are women” does not create an environment of mutual respect, and shows nothing but contempt for gender critical members. You also have not bothered to discuss any of this with gender critical members and only spoken to men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. Listening to them is what led the NFWI into enacting unlawful policies, resulting in spending members’ money on defending a lawsuit. Melissa has told us individually that we are lone voices, so it would not have been difficult to discuss this with us and ask for our opinions. Whether or not you chose to act on it would have been at your discretion.
We also look forward to “Brave Conversations” on the Learning Hub/Via and wonder if you will include talks by women such as Keira Bell and Sinead Watson, who have been irrevocably harmed by this ideology. You may also wish to include Audrey Ludwig, who is a specialist in equality law, and would give women a good understanding of their right to single sex spaces. The exclusion of gender critical voices will lead to accusations of promoting a contested ideology, whilst silencing dissent.
We are also concerned about the silencing and bullying of women in the Unofficial WI Facebook group. We know you will claim this has nothing to do with the NFWI, but the lack of action in a group, of which you are both members, is tacit approval. There are some in the WI who believe that shaming and silencing women who are sex realists is a legitimate course of action. You both claim to support gender critical members, however, not once have you publicly stated this and that our lawfully held beliefs should be respected.
We look forward to working with you in the future, to ensure that concerns raised by members are dealt with in a balanced and fair manner, one that befits a prestigious organisation with our heritage.
Yours in sisterhood,
The Women’s Institute Declaration
England - Trans Zombies
We reported here on Professor Alice Sullivan’s report on universities failing to protect gender critical staff:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/beautiful-thing-sweet-dreams?utm_source=publication-search
Now Professor Sullivan has faced the same treatment while trying to deliver a talk at the University of Bristol as reported by Feminist Legal Clinic via The Telegraph:
‘Trans activists turned my lecture into a zombie apocalypse’(23 December)
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 originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
Prof Alice Sullivan said the University of Bristol failed to protect her right to freedom of speech at a talk on sex, data and research in October.
The University College London academic, who led a government review earlier this year that demanded public bodies collect data on biological sex as well as gender identity, has also written to the Office for Students (OfS).
Prof Sullivan told The Telegraph that the event at Bristol’s School for Policy Studies on Oct 22 descended into chaos after demonstrators held up placards reading “Trans Lives Matters”, set off multiple fire alarms and shouted “shame on you” at her as she left the event.
Security staff at the university were forced to move the event to a higher floor in the building midway through to limit the disruption, and she was later “whisked into a car to get me off the campus”.
She told The Telegraph: “It was far, far worse than anything I could ever have anticipated. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It really felt like a zombie apocalypse, with these people banging on the windows and howling.
“People set off fire alarms in order to disrupt the talk. They were literally scaling the walls outside so that they could bang on the windows and shout through loudhailers.”
Prof Sullivan claims that the University of Bristol failed to accommodate her talk properly despite an 18-month lead time, during which the institution tried to move the event to take place online.
She told The Telegraph that only 60 ticket places were made available despite a 400-person capacity in the lecture hall where the event took place.
Lawyers for Prof Sullivan have now written to the university warning that she is willing to bring a legal challenge against it for failing to protect her right to academic freedom.
A letter before action claims the University of Bristol failed to properly advertise the event, banned undergraduates from attending and neglected to take reasonable steps to ensure it was not disrupted.
Protesters also impeded the entrance to the venue and intimidated some of the 20 or so attendees that managed to gain access, the 42-page document added.
The University of Sussex was fined a record £585,000 earlier this year after the OfS ruled that it had failed to protect the philosophy lecturer from being hounded out of her job over her gender-critical views.
Source: ‘Trans activists turned my lecture into a zombie apocalypse’
https://feministlegal.org/trans-activists-turned-my-lecture-into-a-zombie-apocalypse/
Helen Joyce On ‘Gender Affirming Care’
Sex Matters have now compiled a complete version of Helen Joyce’s talks she gave when Down Under. She really hits the nail on the head for me: ‘gender identity’ is simply a belief system and has no factual basis; ‘gender affirming care’ is, therefore’ not really medicine at all. All thoughts gratefully received.
Germany - Why Self ID Is Mad!
Here is the logical extreme of Self ID as reported by FLC via The Telegraph:
Transgender neo-Nazi applies to become non-binary while on the run | The Telegraph (23 December)
A fugitive transgender neo-Nazi has applied to become non-binary while on the run.
In a case that has shone an uncomfortable light on Germany’s ultra-liberal gender laws, Marla-Svenja Liebich, who was convicted as a man for inciting hatred, registered as a woman to avoid being sent to a men’s prison, and now wants to be neither male or female.
In July 2023, the far-Right extremist was sentenced to 18 months for several offences, including incitement to hatred, defamation and insult. Liebich had been photographed at far-Right rallies wearing a Nazi-style uniform.
But Liebich made headlines around the world in late 2024 when he applied to change gender to become a woman ahead of sentencing, so that he would serve his time in a woman’s prison.
Liebich was due to go to the Chemnitz women’s prison in Saxony, but skipped bail and is on the run.
Liebich is supposed to appear in person at the registry office to change gender, but is arguing that his rights are being violated because he would presumably be arrested at the appointment and prevented from changing his gender again. An official technical supervisory complaint has been submitted.
Before changing his gender from man to woman, Liebich had referred to LGBT people as “parasites of society” and had disrupted a pride event in Halle, eastern Germany, leading to speculation that the gender transition was a political message or a way to get a lighter sentence.
Liebich’s case brought global attention to Germany’s “self-determination act”, which was brought in in 2023 by the centre-Left government of Olaf Scholz and made changing one’s name and gender a matter for the registry office, with no need for expert or medical opinion.
The law also allows citizens to change their gender twice a year and makes it a criminal offence to purposely refer to someone by the wrong pronouns.
Source: Transgender neo-Nazi applies to become non-binary while on the run
Sex Definitely Matters - David Hayton
David Hayton has written an essay arguing that we are all wrong and being a woman is all about ‘perception’. Janet Inglis goes about demolishing this argument on her substack.
Sex Definitely Matters
As Does Perception
Dec 12, 2025
SEX DEFINITELY MATTERS.
I read David Hayton’s recent essay, If Biological Sex Matters, So Must Our Perception of Sex, recently published in Queer Majority. A Link to that article is below for anybody interested.
I read it as a woman who knows sex does matter and why, and that men who call themselves ‘Transexuals’ are men. In the interests of placing all my cards on the table, I will also state upfront that I don’t like the author and that I have been branded an ‘Ultra Terf’ because of my refusal to use female pronouns for him or to call him by his current name.
My first impression of his essay, before I even read one word, was that this is his attempt to place himself above what he considers to be the petty day-to-day squabbles that happen between women, lesbians and gays in one corner, and the TQ+ in the other, and to establish himself as a serious ‘Trans Philosopher’. His use of the image of a beautiful Narcissus inspired man seeing his reflection in the mirror as a beautiful woman (after the liberal application of lippy, powder and blush) was possibly intended to associate David with great Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Plato in the mind of the reader, albeit it on the niche topic of men who have had themselves castrated and wear clothing traditionally associated with women.
So, in the spirit of setting the mood for my response, I have used an image that I hope conveys my intention. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find who to credit that image to so if anybody could assist with identifying them, I would be grateful.
David starts his essay with the question What is a woman? That time honoured call to likeminded men who, while women may know ourselves to be a unique subset of humanity apart from men with our own unique biology, know better because they’re, well… castrated men who wear clothing most traditionally associated with women.
“As a Transexual” David asserts his claim to redefine ‘Woman’ based on what he posits is the perception of sex, not sex itself, without first telling us what a transexual is. He so desperately wants his penchant for wearing skirts and bras, the physical separation from his penis and his acquisition of two silicon fun bags to take on deeper meaning, he thinks nothing of stripping all meaning from a word that has existed since the early 1600’s as easily as a committee of activists can rewrite a school curriculum. (See Dr Em’s thread linked below.)
David brings up the example of the Olympic boxers, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting and posits that everybody who either opposed their participation in the women’s event or supported it did so based on misconceived reasoning. But not David. He knew all along it was just a matter of perception and not really about their sex at all. Which is undoubtedly male, but that’s not important right now because the colour yellow on our computer screen is a mix of red and green light. So, we’re not seeing yellow, we’re just perceiving yellow. And that’s why when I called those boxers men, it’s just because I perceived them as men and not because they are men, even though they are undoubtedly men. Deep, hey?
But I have to say that in the same way humans are not clownfish, neither are we light rays of colour blended on our computer screens. I do see yellow, because that’s the colour that has been created by mixing red and green light (rods and cones in my eye and all that). I don’t see a woman when I look at David and men like him, because a woman was not created when he had himself castrated.
And it just gets more awkward from there, because David then tells us he presents himself the way he does and made those surgical changes to his body because he wants us all to perceive him in a certain way. He’s a bit coy about what he wants our perception of him to be, but he does tell us it’s very brave of him to admit it, nonetheless.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume he wants to be perceived by us as a woman. That creature nobody who calls themselves trans-anything seems to be able to define. Or perhaps he wants us to perceive him as that other undefinable being. A ‘transexual’?
The full piece is here:
STOP PRESS - Living As A Woman
Flowing nicely from the above piece, taking her cue from the bonkers judgment in the Sandie Peggie case ( which we have been featuring a lot recently), Sarah Phillimore on her substack looks at the concept of ‘living as a woman’ that arises from Judge Kemp’s misapplication of the Supreme Court judgment ( and the exchange between Carla Denyer and Tom Swarbrick is priceless!!):
I’m Every Woman
The new thought terminating cliché has arrived and it is ‘living as a woman’. If this means ‘successfully passing’ then what are the implications for the (majority) of trans identifying men who don’t?
Dec 26, 2025
The 57 second exchange above between Tom Swarbrick and Carla Denyer of the Green Party is a useful summary of where we are at if you do not have time to read this Substack or plough through the many depressing exchanges on my ‘X’ timeline. And listening with sound off, to be guided by the facial expressions of Tom Swarbrick, will also give you a great deal of information. I transcribe the conversation below:
TS: But living as a woman doesn’t make you a woman
CD: I trust people to be an expert in their own gender. If someone has been living as a woman for fifteen years -
TS: <puzzled> But what does it mean, ‘living as a woman’
CD: Well, it means what I said <chuckles>
TS: But what does it mean, ‘to live as a woman?’
CD: <pause> I don’t really know how I can answer the question again <nervous laugh> If a transwoman has -
TS: If you wear dresses? You read certain books, you like certain… what does it mean? I mean, not every woman lives wearing a dress, not every woman wears makeup?
CD: No indeed, and that’s a much larger question about about, about, kind of, <splutters> gender discourse and feminism more widely, but my point is that if someone is a woman, has lived as a woman for many years, needs support because they’ve experienced misogynistic abuse I want them to be able to access that support, it’s as simple as that.
Because I am obviously on the Naughty List this year, I spent much of the festive period pondering the phrase ‘living as a woman’. This was prompted by the judgment in the Sandy Peggie case, which Peggie’s solicitors announced on December 11 will be appealed, and as as of December 23 2025 is subject to its third ‘certificate of corrections’ for inaccurate case citations and mangled quotes which many suspect must be a result of incautious reliance on AI.
But the judgment managed to be even worse than this, apparently ignoring the clear reasoning of the Supreme Court that sex was a biological and hence material reality, to assert that ‘being a woman’ was no more than a performance centring around clothes and hair and soft lilting voices. The judgment expressed great sympathy for Dr Upton who was found to have been ‘presenting in a feminine style’ since January 2022. Para 60 of the judgment is a very interesting read:
‘…The second respondent since 2022 has used the female names of Elizabeth and Beth, and female pronouns, has sought to have an appearance as a female; has worn clothing that is consistent with what is generally regarded as feminine in style and has worn makeup in what is generally regarded as feminine in style. The second respondent presents in what is generally regarded as feminine in style and pitch and tone of voice consistent with that for a female…’
Bad news then for Robin White and other trans identifying men with voices in the basso profundo range! And not a hint at who has determined what is ‘generally regarded’ as feminine when it comes to clothes and make up, and how they publish their findings. I worry that my traditional dog walking attire might see me designated male or at least non binary by the casual observer.
The full piece is here:
STOP PRESS 2 - Pride and Predator
Excellent first episode of Julie Bindel’s investigation into Pride in Surrey and Stephen Ireland.
https://juliebindel.substack.com/p/pride-and-predator
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: Rex Landy
‘Longer Boats’ by Cat Stevens
#BeMorePorcupine
#HaveATerfyNewYear
#StandWithSandiePeggie
#PubertyIsAHumanRight
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#StopLyingLabour
#HoldTheLine
#KeepGoingSomehowInTheFaceOfTyranny
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
Love Janet Inglis' teardown of David Hayton's ridiculous assertion.