One Second
Update 490. Clementine Breen Special. #BeMore Porcupine
Another long one, dear readers!
Last week my wife, a friend and I watched a Chinese film called One Second. I thought it was quite a remarkable film so I am briefly halting the Christmas season to feature this.
This is a 2020 film (ie. made under the Communist regime) directed by Zhang Yimou, about a man who escapes from a labour camp during the Cultural Revolution. He became estranged from his only daughter and he is seeking a newsreel which incudes her in it. When he tracks down the newsreel she is shown for just ‘one second’.
In the interview with Graham Linehan and Andrew Doyle that I feature below, Jordan Peterson says:
If a story is great it isn’t subservient to propaganda…There isn’t anything more destructive to propagandist totalitarianism than greatness.
Zhang Yi is the fugitive
Liu Haocun is orphan Liu
Fan Wei is Mr. Movie
Thanks as ever to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
Puberty Blockers
Following on the piece in the last update about the indefinite ban on puberty blockers I also stated that the proposed clinical trials should not proceed because they cannot be ethically or legally justified. Using an excellent document from the group Our Duty, EDI Jester reinforces that argument. I will be writing to Wes Streeting about this.
Free Speech
I reported on the Government deciding to proceed with the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act in the face of a judicial review by the Free Speech Union here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/she-is-lana-turner?utm_source=publication-search
Poppy Wood in The Telegraph (Free speech laws ‘toothless’ without compensation for victims, warn academics 11 December) reports:
Bridget Phillipson - Paul Grover
New free speech laws will be “toothless” without a compensation scheme for university staff and students who have been cancelled, academics have warned.
In an open letter to Bridget Phillipson, a group of academics from top universities said it was “wholly inappropriate” for the Education Secretary to have paused free speech legislation just days before it was set to come into force in August.
They urged Ms Phillipson to reinstate the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, which had been introduced by the previous Conservative government, “in full and without delay”, following reports that she is poised to bring back the legislation in a watered-down version.
Ministers are understood to be discussing the removal of the crucial “statutory tort” element within the legislation, which would allow academics and students to bring civil claims for damages if their freedom of speech was proven to have been stifled.
“The statutory tort provision is the only mechanism in the Act that provides for judicial enforcement of its duties. A law without a judicial enforcement mechanism is toothless,” the academics said.
The free speech legislation would also have rolled out a new complaints scheme run by the Office for Students (OfS), the universities regulator.
The open letter to Bridget Phillipson was organised by Edward Skidelsky, the director of the Committee for Academic Freedom - Jay Williams
Under the Act, the OfS would have been able to hand out fines and other sanctions to any university found to have breached free speech duties – although it is unclear if these would have been legally enforceable. Staff and students would only have been entitled to launch a court case if they had first exhausted the complaints scheme.
The full article is here:
Irish Kids sent to The Tavistock
Fatima Gunning in Gript News (Former Minister for Justice calls for investigation into Irish kids sent to Tavistock 12 December) reports:
Former Minister for Justice Charlie Flannagan has called on the incoming government to investigate the role of the HSE in sending Irish children to the now disgraced Tavistock gender clinic in the UK.
Responding to news that UK authorities have now put an indefinite ban on the use of puberty blockers for under 18s, Flanagan – who is also a former Minister for Children – posted on X saying, “Investigation in to the role of the @HSELive in the matter of hundreds of Irish children treated at the discredited Tavistock clinic in London needs to be on the agenda of the incoming Irish government.”
Gript previously reported figures released to Independent TD Carol Nolan which revealed that between 2012 and 2022 129 Irish children were referred to the now disgraced gender clinic.
The NHS announced in July 2022 that Tavistock – which facilitated sex-change therapies for children – would be closed down, after an independent review by Dr. Hilary Cass found the clinic’s approach was unsafe, that it overlooked other mental health problems in children, failed to collect data on the safety of puberty blockers, and did not subject the treatments administered to children to normal quality controls.
One of the findings of the Cass report was that staff felt under pressure to adopt an “unquestioning affirmative approach” to children who said they desired to change their sex: a life-changing, sometimes irreversible, set of therapies and procedures.
Yesterday UK authorities placed an indefinite ban on the use of puberty blockers for children under 18 after an expert panel found that there was insufficient evidence that the powerful drugs were safe for use.
The British Government said that, “The Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) has provided independent expert advice that there is currently an unacceptable safety risk in the continued prescription of puberty blockers to children. It recommends indefinite restrictions while work is done to ensure the safety of children and young people.”
Since 2015 238 Irish children were referred to Tavistock which operated a satellite gender clinic out of Crumlin Children’s Hospital in Dublin.
In a chapter of her investigative work Time to Think dedicated to Irish patients of the Tavistock clinic, BBC journalist Hanah Barnes interviewed Dr. Paul Moran and Professor Donal O’Shea of Ireland’s National Gender Service (NGS).
Both have expressed serious concern for the way in which children referred to the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) at theTavistock clinic in London were treated.
In a report published in the The Times UK, journalist Patrick O’Donoghue quoted Dr. Moran as saying,
“Endocrinologists started noticing that these people were experiencing a lot of problems. A lot of them weren’t ready for this.”
He continued, “Generally, what would happen is the endocrinologist would contact me saying, ‘Listen, I’ve got this kid here, we took him over from Crumlin and he looks very unwell, depressed, or he’s self-harming.’ That’s when we started to notice there’s a problem here with the assessments.”
Shockingly it was reported that in “many cases” Crumlin Children’s Hospital did not have the children’s medical files.
According to the report Prof. O’Shay said that “The social situation was so chaotic that the idea that you would just jump in with hormones and start treating, without social work input, without liaising with the school, the key worker, you know, it was clearly potty,”.
It was also reported that the Tavistock clinic was “peddling unscientific fiction” by advertising “infinite possibilities” in relation to so-called gender identity.
The clinic displayed a character called the “Genderbread person” with the Telegraph claiming that children were “signposted” to “activist group” Gendered Intelligence.
Moira Deeming
We featured Moira Deeming’s great win in the last update. Kellie-Jay celebrates and plays ‘that speech’ again ( I don’t know about you but it gets me every time!!). She also emphasises the importance of all the women who attended the Melbourne rally. Hear, hear!
Clementine Breen
I reported on the notorious American ‘gender’ clinician, Dr Olson-Kennedy being sued here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/st-happens-when-you-party-naked?utm_source=publication-search
The brave young woman who is suing her is Clementine Breen who is here interviewed by The Daily Signal. Amongst the shocking facts are: Olson-Kennedy did not even discover about the previous sexual abuse Ms Breen had suffered; Olson-Kennedy told Ms Breen’s parents that puberty blockers were ‘reversible’ and warned them of the risk of suicide ( Ms Breen only had suicidal thoughts after she went on to testosterone).
Glinner and Andrew Doyle in Phoenix
Great interview by Jordan Peterson with Glinner and Andrew Doyle now that they are both relocating to Phoenix. It is long but I recommend it.
New Zealand - Doctors Fight Back
Bernard Lane reports on his substack, Gender Clinic News about doctors in New Zealand fighting back against the continuing push towards ‘gender affirming care’ for children.
Blockers blocked
Wes Streeting's strictures; French trans activist triumph; Dr Olson-Kennedy sued for negligence; Kiwi ministers were warned; still waiting for Oz data; clinical trials and tribulations in the UK
Dec 14, 2024
GCN in brief
In May, one month after the release of the final report from the Cass review, New Zealand’s Health Minister Dr Shane Reti and Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey were urged by a group of 34 doctors to immediately suspend the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones with “gender-confused” minors, according to documents released under the Official Information Act.
“We are deeply concerned about the ongoing use of off-label medications given to our children to deter the natural process of puberty, without a proper understanding of the long-term physical, psychosexual and cognitive consequences,” said the emailed letter to the ministers signed by 34 doctors including senior paediatricians.
“The response in New Zealand from the supposed experts in the area of gender medicine was to assess the Cass review as harmful and irrelevant to New Zealand. This happened within less than a day and a half of its publication.”
The letter protested that the NZ gender-affirming lobby, the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA), had “published many still uncorrected misrepresentations about the review, including that it disregarded most of the available research.” The doctors, whose names have been redacted, noted PATHA’s “privileged relationship” with the government department Health NZ.
On April 11, an email to Dr Reti from a lone physician, whose name was redacted, deplored the “truly shocking response to Cass from PATHA, the group that advises [government] regarding transgender health in NZ.”
PATHA had dismissed the Cass review as “out of step with high-quality care provided” in NZ, where published data suggests puberty blocker use per-capita is higher than it was in England. PATHA also protested that the review did not involve “trans or non-binary experts,” but had relied on unnamed people who had “promoted non-affirming ‘gender exploratory therapy’, which is considered a conversion practice.”
In the email to Dr Reti, the physician said: “This [kind of response] is what happens when ideology infiltrates medicine. Absolute inability to think critically or accept responsibility. Full of denial and diversion. This group should have nothing to do with healthcare of young, vulnerable people. If doctors can’t accept criticism and change practice when evidence (or lack of evidence) is shown to them, that should be a matter for the [regulatory] Medical Council. First, do no harm.”
Last month, the NZ Ministry of Health published its evidence brief acknowledging the scarcity and poor quality of evidence for puberty blockers. These drugs remain available as routine treatment, although there is a suggestion the government may impose tighter regulation next year. Meanwhile, the ministry has issued a new position statement that appears to endorse the contentious gender-affirming treatment model. Health NZ has a 2023 contract with PATHA to update that lobby’s 2018 gender-affirming treatment guideline, which was rated 12/100 for the rigour of its development during an evaluation of international treatment guidelines commissioned as part of the Cass review.
In the rest of his report, Bernard Lane covers the indefinite ban on puberty blockers for children in the UK but the grave concerns over the proposed clinical trials, alarming news from France, worrying news from Australia and more on Olson-Kennedy being sued.
https://www.genderclinicnews.com/p/blockers-blocked
New Zealand - The Veiling of Language
Katrina Biggs on her substack, A B’Old Woman continues a theme of hers, namely the erasure of women’s language.
Veiling women the West way.
Dec 12, 2024
The Taliban in Afghanistan doesn’t muck around. When it wants to veil and suppress women, it just demands it. Everyone knows who the women are and aren’t - there are no “what is a woman” questions. If women in Afghanistan had the luxury of identifying out of being women, possibly they’d be doing it in their droves right now. Conversely, I’d say that these days there are very few men in Afghanistan identifying into being a woman. Perhaps some elite degenerates get away with it in secret, but elite degenerates tend to get away with many things.
The West has now created its own version of veiling women. Unlike the Taliban, and other similarly repressive regimes, the West is being more covert about it. Rather than a physical veil, it’s a veil of obscurity via the erasure of women’s words in our language. Words create pictures in our mind’s eye, so when the words used for women are obscure and unclear, the pictures of us in the mind’s eye become the same. How can women and girls be fully seen if we’re veiled by linguistic obscurity? If you think I’m wrong, try and picture something you don’t have a clear word for, and see how easy that is.
New Zealand’s public service liberally uses variations of the below few examples of veiled references to women and girls, simply because men who claim to be women, and vice versa, desire it -
Bodies with vaginas
Menstruating individuals/people
Bodies that bleed
Uterus havers
Pregnant people
Birthing parent
Breastfeeding families – yep, this is how mothers who breastfeed can be referred to.
People who experience menopause
Whānau - Māori word for family (as used by NZ’s Midwifery Council in their revised Scope of Practice, because families now get pregnant, apparently). Whānau has a broader meaning in Māori language than in English.
The absurdity extends far beyond the mere handful above, though. UK midwife, Milli Hill, has written 54 blogpieces on the nonsense terms with which women and girls are referred to. Her blog is for paid subscribers only, but the record is there, and much of it applies to NZ as well.
Recently, Health NZ issued a media release titled “Health New Zealand offers increased community-based maternity services in Southern district”, in which they managed to not say the word ‘woman’ once, but instead referred to people, pregnant people, and whānau. For what? To appease the ridiculously minuscule number of women who claim to be men and become pregnant, as well as appeasing men who claim to be women, but don’t like being reminded they can’t have babies. Health NZ’s solution is to pander to the minority (and they’re not alone) and slap a woke-fix on those clashes with reality by veiling women with the word ‘people’.
Midwife Deb Hayes, who has been at the forefront of challenging the NZ Midwifery Council’s attempts to erase the words ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ from their revised Scope of Practice, says that when she reads the term ‘uterus haver’ she sees in her mind’s eye a uterus suspended in isolation, not a woman. I daresay that’s exactly how many of us see it, too. Neither should the mistake be made of thinking that phrases like “women and people with a uterus” are okay, because the term “people with a uterus” only serves to make the word ‘woman’ a tag-on.
It’s beyond rational explanation why the Midwifery Council is determined to veil women and mothers with indirect references to them, instead of making them front and centre with clear language. This issue has gone all the way to Parliament, and although the Midwifery Council has made some small grudging changes to the wording of the Scope, the issue is ongoing and not done with yet.
The full piece is here:
Nancy Mace Assaulted
Sex Matters in their latest newsletter (13 December) report.
Congresswoman assaulted by transactivist
American congresswoman Nancy Mace has said she was “physically accosted” on Tuesday by a transactivist who was later arrested by Capitol police.
“One new brace for my wrist and some ice for my arm and it’ll heal just fine,” Mace posted on X, suggesting she suffered minor injuries as a result of the incident. “All the violence and threats keep proving our point. Women deserve to be safe. Your threats will not stop my fight for women!”
The suspect is now facing a charge for assaulting a government official.
Mace has made the protection of women’s rights central to her political campaigning. Last week she introduced a new bill aimed at banning men from using women’s spaces in all federally funded facilities. This includes public schools and universities, national parks, government buildings, healthcare facilities such as hospitals and clinics, public housing and shelters, and transportation hubs such as airports, train stations and bus terminals.[ Dusty - WOW!]
“We’ve worked too hard for safe spaces, and we’re not going to allow them to be erased by unhinged, loud, and far-Left extremists,” Mace said. “Men in women’s private spaces is not normal, and it never will be.”
Ruth Hunt
Ruth (now Baroness) Hunt was the CEO of Stonewall when they took their decision in 2014/2015 to switch from gay rights to ‘trans rights’. In another exhaustive piece of investigative journalism, Malcolm Clark on his substack, The Secret Gender Files examines Hunt’s problems with telling the truth and the giving of a vital research contract to her partner by Stonewall.
Ruth Hunt: Very Queer Indeed.
Stonewall's ex-CEO championed the myth of gender identity so it's ironic the story she tells about herself is full of fabrications. It also skates over some rather curious financial transactions.
Dec 10, 2024
“Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried.”
Ruth 1:16–17
The Ruth of the Bible is an emblem of loyalty. I had to remind myself of that last week as I watched two lesbians called Ruth compete to sell out their gay brothers and sisters along with women in general….and children.
The only loyalty on offer seemed to be that between the two lesbians.
Ruth Hunt and Ruth Davidson were speaking at my alma mater: the University of Glasgow. The occasion? The tenth anniversary of Equal Marriage. I had never seen either woman in person and went to the event to try to solve two mysteries. The first was about Davidson, former leader of the Scottish Conservatives.
She’s the jowly one.
As opposed to the tweedy one.
It has always baffled me Davidson said not a word, to my knowledge, about Gender Recognition Reform, the issue that dominated Scottish politics for years. I wrote to her in early 2020 and got no reply. Many others say the same. The campaign group For Women Scotland tried many times to have a meeting with her apparently. None was forthcoming.
From the personal chemistry that fairly bubbled between the two Ruths on the evening I think I now know why. As they lavished praise on each other, between in-jokes and affectionate asides, I would not have been surprised if someone told me they were an item. Or had once been. What a lovely couple they would have made.
Jowly-dum and Tweedle-dee.
I commented:
WOW! Malcolm, you are the Philip Marlowe of the Terf movement! Do you ever write:
'It was so late it was early.'
I bet you don't write:' She was the kind of woman men leave home for.'
OK I'll get off Raymond Chandler!!
This is such an important piece of work especially because that, as you put it, 'pivot' by Stonewall has proved so disastrous to LGB people and especially, of course, to children (not to mention women and their rights). And hey - turns out it was all a grift!! Who would have thought it. And she is still in the House of Lords!!
The full piece is here:
https://malcolmrichardclark.substack.com/p/ruth-hunt-very-queer-indeed
Nonsense Research
Nick Gutteridge in The Telegraph (Taxpayers foot £6bn bill for ‘nonsense’ research despite Reeves crackdown on waste 14 December) reports:
Rachel Reeves has vowed to wield an ‘iron fist’ on government spending - Tolga Akmen/Shutterstock
Taxpayers are footing a £6 billion bill for “nonsense” research projects despite Rachel Reeves pledging a crackdown on government waste.
Public cash will be spent on studies about the “literary decolonisation” of Africa, LGBT rights in China and the marketing of vegan meat products. The amount spent on such projects has soared by 25 per cent in the past four years, according to analysis by the Taxpayers’ Alliance.
The full article is here:
Endpiece by Liz
#BeMorePorcupine
#LetWomenSpeak
#Grassroots Army
#GenderIdeologyIsEvil
#GetRidOfStonewall
Yes, I do have a favourite subject, don't I? Lol! Just as a fyi, although I'm very happy that you cross-post my blogpieces, if you feel they're repetitive, or not of much interest, feel free to give them a miss :-)
I don't know how you felt about Jordan Peterson's interview of Graham Linehan and Andrew Doyle, but I found that after about an hour, I'd had enough of hearing him constantly interrupting and talking over the other two, so I didn't watch the next hour of it. It was very frustrating not to be able to hear them talk for any length of time, for a lot of it, without Jordan having to jump in and say stuff.
That One Second film looks interesting and I love the haggises. Can I adopt one?
I keep thinking about the parents who’ve been bamboozled into harming their children with puberty blockers. How must they be feeling now?
Thanks Dusty, lots to digest as ever.