I am releasing this update a bit earlier than expected due to a build up of news and views!!
As we move into 2025 I will be featuring, to start with, and in alphabetical order, those Readers’ Choices for best film ever that did not make the top seven ( see Update 500 for the top seven).
Next up is The Blues Brothers (1980). Us Terfs don’t tend to like cults but I think you can’t help loving this cult movie.
Blues vocalist and petty criminal “Joliet” Jake Blues ( John Belushi) is paroled from prison after serving three years of a five year sentence for armed robbery and is picked up by his brother Elwood ( Dan Aykroyd) in his Bluesmobile, a battered former police car. The brothers visit the Catholic orphanage where they were raised, and learn from Sister Mary Stigmata that it will be closed unless it pays $5,000 in property taxes. During a sermon at the local church, Jake has an epiphany: they can reform their band, the Blues Brothers, which disbanded while Jake was in prison, and raise the money to save the orphanage.
With guest appearances from James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin.
We’re on a mission from God!
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
UK - A Laughing Stock?
Zoe Strimpel in The Telegraph makes this assertion and, though it pains me to say so, I have to agree with her. However I would stress that this is the Government that has made the country like this. Us in the Terf Resistance continue battling away as a proud Terf Island! EDI Jester covers this story. All thoughts gratefully received.
UK - NHS Butchers
As the National Health Service struggles to cope and is enveloped in rainbow flags, NHS Chelsea and Westminster prepare to carry out ‘gender surgeries’. Over to Kellie-Jay!
UK - Mixed Sex Toilets
I have previously discussed legal cases involving this issue. See, for example:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/samson-and-delilah?utm_source=publication-search
There are some tribunals looming about mixed sex toilets. Michael Foran on his substack, Knowing Ius does a detailed analysis and concludes that such toilets may be unlawful. Fingers crossed!
When are mixed-sex toilets unlawful?
Jan 13, 2025
In the next few months there will be a string of employment tribunal cases addressing the question of when, if ever, the provision of mixed-sex facilities such as toilets and changing rooms will be unlawfully discriminatory against women. In this post, I want to explore the legislative framework and background case law that will likely inform these cases.
The law in this area may be affected by the Supreme Court decision in For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers (No 2), which had not been published yet. I have written elsewhere about how that case might affect the law in this area. But so far as I am aware, none of the upcoming cases involve an employer or service provider operating female only toilets or changing rooms on the basis of GRC status, so we can leave those questions aside for now.
In this post I want to look at a different aspect of these kinds of cases: direct discrimination. It is usually assumed amongst discrimination lawyers that if there are claims to be advanced in relation to the lawfulness of trans inclusion policies which permit natal males to use female-only facilities, they will be in harassment or indirect discrimination. But recent case law from the Employment Appeal Tribunal suggests that a woman challenging the lawfulness of such policies can bring a successful claim in direct discrimination.
This is important because direct discrimination can only be justified expressly; if it is established there is no possibility of excusing the treatment or of balancing the interests of one group against the interests of another except where there is a statutory provision permitting discrimination.
The full piece is here:
https://knowingius.org/p/when-are-mixed-sex-toilets-unlawful
UK - The Grooming Gangs Scandal
I have started calling this matter the Grooming Gangs Scandal again after I listened to a survivor saying that it was important to emphasise that the process all begins with ‘grooming’.
Here are some references to interviews and one substack piece which I have found useful.
New Culture Forum discuss the matter.
Matt Goodwin looks at yet another poll.
Brilliant analysis by Ayaan Hirsi Ali including looking at a change of direction in Denmark and discussing the recent terrorist attack in New Orleans.
The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper has just said there will be five local inquiries. Charlie Peters of GB News, who has done so much to expose this scandal, explains why that is not sufficient and is not what most of the survivors want.
All thoughts gratefully received.
The United States - Women’s Sport
On his substack, Andrew Doyle discusses the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act which has just been passed in America.
The era of men in women’s sports will soon be over
The US House of Representatives has just passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. This is just the beginning.
Jan 15, 2025
Of all the absurdities of the culture war, perhaps the most egregious is the normalisation of the idea that men should be able to identify their way into women’s sports. We are living through a period of mania, so we cannot clearly see how this will look to future generations. But I have little doubt that all those photographs of hulking men towering over women on winners’ podiums will be the memes of the future. ‘Can you believe they let this happen?’ they’ll say, scratching their AI-enhanced cyborg heads.
Wherever one stands on Donald Trump, there can be little doubt that his imminent arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will act as a corrective to this problem. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act with its goal of preventing males who identify as female from participating in school sports. If passed into law, schools that attempt to defy the ban would have their federal funds withheld. The bill was introduced by Republican representative Greg Steube of Florida, and makes clear that it will be a violation of federal law ‘for a recipient of Federal financial assistance who operates, sponsors, or facilitates an athletic program or activity to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls’.
One of the most astonishing aspects of the passing of this bill was the voting outcome. 216 Republicans and only 2 Democrats (Vicente Gonzales and Henry Cueller) voted for the motion. Is it really that controversial that sex, as the bill puts it, ‘shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth’? You will recall the outcry back in November when Democratic politician Seth Moulton admitted that he objected to mixed-sex contact sports in schools. ‘I have two little girls,’ he said, ‘I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that’. For this he was branded a ‘transphobe’ and a ‘Nazi cooperator’, because we all know that one of the top priorities of the Third Reich was the preservation of women’s rights.
The full piece is here:
https://www.andrewdoyle.org/p/the-era-of-men-in-womens-sports-is
NBC Montana report on this.
Jennifer Sey on her substack explains why, though the above Act will hopefully resolve matters in many sports for girls in the States, there nevertheless remains a problem of men in women’s sport:
The Biden Administration's Title IX Re-write Has Been Vacated: Now What?
Because the fight to protect women's sports is far from over.
Jan 14, 2025
The recent decision by a federal court in Kentucky to vacate the Biden administration's re-write of Title IX doesn't spell the end of male athletes entering women's sports. Here’s why:
Males were entering women’s sports before the illegal Title IX re-write. Will/Lia Thomas competed and won in the women’s NCAA swimming finals in 2022. The re-write didn’t happen until April 2024. So, while the vacating of the re-write means that schools that receive federal funding are not required to accept males who claim to be females into their sports and spaces, they are still free to do so, if they choose. Arguably most Democratic led states will do so.
Twenty-four states have already embraced the Title IX re-write. Schools in those states spent significant resources to comply with the new rule. They are more likely to continue allowing males who claim to be women into women’s sports and spaces and defend those decisions than reverse course. Thus, still displacing hard-working female athletes from teams and podiums. And denying women safety and privacy on the court and in the locker room.
There is a ton of competition that happens outside of the reach of Title IX, arguably the majority. More dollars are spent in the private youth sports market in America today than all the professional sports combined. Analysts estimate its billions of dollars. Any athlete competing for a private club in the Olympic movement
,governed by the US Olympic Committee (USOPC) and individual sport governing bodies is untouched by Title IX. And currently, the USOPC has not weighed in to say all women’s sports must be for XX only. They have kicked it to the individual sport governing bodies like, for instance, USA Gymnastics (USAG). Here is their official policy.The full piece is here:
https://jennifersey.substack.com/p/the-biden-administrations-title-ix?r=7ogxh&triedRedirect=true
New Zealand - The Puberty Blockers Consultation
To, as it were, complement the piece above about the NHS, Garwhoungle on her substack, The Ministry has fallen looks at this consultation ( closing date for submissions 20 January).
Puberty blockers are ghoulish
In which I struggle to write a submission to the Ministry of Health
Jan 17, 2025
Note: my references to puberty blockers relate to their use in treating gender dysphoria and gender-related issues not for precocious puberty or other conditions.
The troubles
I’ve been having real trouble with my submission on puberty blockers. I feel despair as the pro-blocker lobby—well—lobbies hard. It’s crying genocide and suicide and anti-trans discrimination and bias and breach of human rights. Sometimes all in the same paragraph.
Lobbyists are pulling out all the big stops. I can see why. The plain unsullied facts, evidence and research show that prescribing puberty blockers for gender dysphoria is problematic at every level. For those who have wholeheartedly given their hearts and souls and children up to the gods of gender identity and gender-affirming care, that is going to be a huge existential threat. The emerging evidence will be seen as an attack on them and their children. As such they have to buckle down and say more and more alarming things. They need to distract from the common sense, the scientific rigour, the compassion and the obvious decency of puberty blocker critics. It would break them to accept that, although largely well-intentioned, on closer inspection puberty blockers are a bad idea.
For readers who aren’t aware, in November, after months of delays, the New Zealand Ministry of Health released an Evidence Brief on the impact of puberty blockers in gender-dysphoric adolescents. It basically showed the same thing as the Cass Report: there is no good clinical evidence to support the prescription of puberty blockers for gender dysphoria. The Ministry also issued a Position Statement saying that puberty blockers should only be prescribed by a cross-disciplinary team, only by those who are familiar with gender-affirming care and that patients and families must be made aware of the risks and the evidence. The Ministry said these were the immediate safeguards that were being put in place. Pro-blocker lobbyists say that’s what we do anyway, the status quo remains and the current New Zealand approach is vindicated.
At the same time as issuing the Evidence Brief and Position Statement, the Ministry opened a consultation in which the public was invited to send in their ideas about whether there should be additional safeguards and what they should be. Everyone, on every side, is saying this is weird.
I think my difficulty in writing a submission is partly because the underlying premise of puberty blockers is so irrational. I can’t argue in the usual matter-of-fact ways about matter-of-fact things because there’s no shared acceptance of facts.
We’re in a weird situation where theory, speculation and denial of material reality is seen as having a legitimate place in the health sector. Policy-makers nod wisely and pull serious faces as they hear the testimonies of those who discount evidence, the Hippocratic Oath and biological fact as irrelevant. Government departments stack expert panels with people who believe in an invisible, unverifiable gender identity that is more significant than sex, who believe that by some mysterious force babies can be born in the wrong body, that people can change sex through uttering words, that gender is both fluid and may change multiple times in a lifetime but also, once declared, requires irreversible medication; people who believe that only children know who they truly are; people who believe that “leaving trans kids alone” means giving them drugs of which the full effects are unknown.
To counter the arguments made by the pro-blocker lobby you have to enter the spiritual realm, like coming into a darkened room of hushed voices and a Ouija board. It’s a space where spirit controls the body, where the mind can supposedly see beyond this simplistic, material world, where the physical must fall away for the truth to be revealed, where invisible, unknown forces are at play and nothing is what it seems. It’s not my world, I want to draw the curtains and open the windows, let the breeze come in, and reveal the fraudster in the corner pulling the wires.
How has our health policy come to this? Where is the clinical skepticism? Where are the standards? Where is the risk versus benefit analysis? Where is the observation of a threshold of evidence to be met before we make the radical choice to stop a kid growing up? How do we get out of this situation?
The full piece is here:
Endpiece by Liz
Red Panda Day of Visibility 😁
#BeMorePorcupine
#LetWomenSpeak
#GrassrootsArmy
#FightForFreeSpeech
#KeepOnTerfing
#GenderEnders
#NeverSurrender
I’m also working on my submission about puberty blockers in NZ, and not finding it easy. As Garwhoungle says, the lobbyists for puberty blockers are fat from govt funding, and will attempt to block any reform of how they’re prescribed with well-practised manoeuvres.
Thanks Dusty. I can’t believe that the NHS is carrying out barbaric cosmetic surgeries funded by the tax payer. How much more is it going to cost when the NHS is sued for the harm it has caused? It’s just one more reason for us to be called a disgrace…. not down to us as you say, purely down to the idiocy and ideological arrogance of people in power thinking they know best.
Another example is the Labour Party’s attempt to pull the wool over our eyes by granting five local inquiries into grooming gangs. What a joke. What we need is an inquiry into the corruption that has led to this issue being covered up by politicians and others for so long. This isn’t just a few people looking the other way, it goes much deeper and Labour doesn’t want it investigated.
Thanks for the red pandas Liz. We need something cuddly after all that stress. 😁