Sky West And Crooked Part 1
Update 550. Not So Open University Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
Once again the volume of news and analysis means I will split this into two parts, dear readers.
As we move into 2025 I am 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 Sky West and Crooked ( 1966).
In a small, isolated village in the West of England, seven-year-old Brydie White is running with a playmate, Julian, who trips and falls. He is accidentally killed by his father's loaded shotgun that he was playing with. Brydie is injured with a wound to her head causing her some mental disability.
Several years later, Brydie can remember the boy but cannot remember the accident. She regularly visits Julian's grave but is not sure why she does. She has an argument with the old gravedigger who aggressively tells her that her dog is not allowed in the graveyard. She is rescued by a young Gypsy man called Roibin.
The title derives from a West Country term for someone who is "not quite right in the head".
Hayley Mills is Brydie White
Ian McShane is Roibin Krisenki
Hamilton Dyce is the gravedigger.
Thanks to three wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
UK - The Not So Open University!
The Open University decided to implement a ‘Curriculum Liberation’ process in their law faculty ( Curriculum Liberation -doesn’t sound at all worrying , does it!!?). Law lecturer, Dr Almut Gadow put in several queries and objections to this process. Whenever she submitted something about gender ideology it was removed and not considered. Someone put in an 11 page complaint against her - the complainant had not actually seen any of Almut’s submissions! Eventually she was dismissed because of her views. She has recently settled her tribunal case. I reported on this here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/doctor-no?utm_source=publication-search
Here is an excellent interview by Matt Osborne with Almut Gadow.
The United Nations
A US delegation has made submissions to the United Nations against gender ideology as reported on the website for The Center for Family and Human Rights. Great to see this!!
U.S. Takes Strong Stand on Gender Ideology at UN Panel
By Austin Ruse | March 14, 2025
NEW YORK, March 14 (C-Fam) The U.S. Mission to the United Nations sponsored an event on the dangers of gender ideology this week. The event was co-sponsored by C-Fam, publisher of the Friday Fax, and the Heritage Foundation. The panel was significant because it was the first ever U.S. event against gender ideology at the UN.
“It is an honor to address this important gathering today on the critical issue of protecting women and families from the impact of gender ideology,” said the acting U.S. Representative to the Economic and Social Council, Jonathan Shrier. The career diplomat oversees the U.S. Mission’s work on social issues while Trump’s nominee as UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, awaits to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
In an official statement, Shrier emphasized that the Trump administration is committed to protecting “the great American values of family, truth, well-being, and freedom” and opposing policies that “seek to erase the category of sex and the unique characteristics that define women as female and men as male” including by “preserving the integrity of women’s spaces, from our schools to our sports, and ensuring that biological males do not infringe upon the rights of women and girls.”
He also said the U.S. will oppose “the promotion of gender ideology in educational settings.” Shrier described ongoing “tough negotiations” on gender ideology at the United Nation and pledged to vote against resolutions “if necessary, to advance President Trump’s America First foreign policy.”
Following the U.S. Statement, Jay Richards, Ph.D., of the Heritage Foundation described gender ideology as an unprecedented movement in human history that denies the category of sex as an “observable” characteristic. The Heritage Foundation also co-sponsored the event, which took place during the annual UN Commission on the Status of Women, the largest feminist gathering at UN headquarters in New York.
Detransitioner Maia Poet said she was shaken into confronting the reality of her womanhood by the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel. She lived as a boy from the age of 12 despite opposition from her parents. When the sirens started blaring during the attacks on October 7, 2023, Maia said she found herself with having to choose between binding her breasts or making it to safety. Now a passionate advocate to protect young people from harmful trans ideology Maia said, “What started as a medical experiment confined to a few European Hospitals nearly a century ago has morphed into a widespread ideological assault on reality.”
Erin Friday, a mother who successfully fought to rescue her daughter from transgender ideology, described how her daughter was drawn into the transgender movement by the public school system and the challenges she faced through her ordeal. Friday, president of a parent advocacy group “Our Duty”, said she discovered how her daughter had been exposed to transgender ideology and then affirmed by teachers without her ever knowing about it.
Stefano Gennarini, C-Fam’s Executive Vice President for Legal Studies spoke of the obligations of States to respect and uphold parental rights. He said parental rights must be an integral part of all international programs involving children. “This will be essential to eradicate gender ideology for good and to protect children from new and emerging threats,” he said.
Gennarini described how international human rights law assigns parents the “primary responsibility” of the development and wellbeing of their children and recognizes their right to direct the education of their children. This reflects international law’s special protections of the natural family as a pre-juridical entity, according to Gennarini. He explained that this is deliberate “to counter the possibility that state-run education systems may be used once again to control entire populations and indoctrinate them, pitting children against parents, and even denouncing them when they were not loyal to government-backed ideologies, as was the case under the Nazi and Communist regimes.”
https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/u-s-takes-strong-stand-on-gender-ideology-at-un-panel/
The States - Yale University
Ute Heggen on her substack has published an open letter to Yale University concerning their promotion of so called ‘gender affirming care.’
I originally posted this at my wordpress blog. The references here present the case for helping patients with cross-sex ideation by reconnecting mind and body, not "affirmative care."
Mar 20, 2025
Please use this framework to send the truth about the failure of puberty blockers, hormones and sex trait modification surgeries for healing a psychiatric illness.
Dear President Maurie McInnes,
You have a group, Integrity Project, publishing pseudo-science at Yale, using Yale’s reputation to cause the public to believe their claims are peer reviewed and “settled science.” Dr. McNamara’s career depends on the continuance of “gender affirming care” despite the growing change of direction in all of Scandinavia, the UK, and France. She and her colleagues have a conflict of interest. Their continued publication of pseudo-science will eventually damage Yale’s reputation. Their practices have damaged many youth already.
Dr. Miriam Grossman, child psychiatrist, testified before Congress at the same hearing as Dr. McNamara in 2023. Dr. Grossman presented peer reviewed and scientifically grounded, factual information regarding the ever-present controversies in the history of transgender diagnoses, treatment through “affirmative care” with gonadatrophin agonists, as a block to normal human puberty in confused and psychiatrically ill children.
I am a trans widow (the ex-wife of a “transitioned” husband) and collect the only data in the world on our experiences; unfortunately, most commonly, the domestic abuse of coercive control, by husbands who drift into “female identification.” Not reported is the fact that many of them detransition a few years later, after their families are split and children of these men have been traumatized. Again, I collect the only data in the world on these sons and daughters of men who “transitioned.” Dr. McNamara’s reliance on captured language and an indoctrinated mindset prevents these facts from coming out.
The full piece is here:
New Zealand - The Midwifery Council
I have been regularly reporting on Mana Wāhine Kōrero’s submissions to the Midwifery Council for some time. See, for example, Katrina Biggs’ summing up of 2024 Terfiness in NZ here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-rapids?utm_source=publication-search
On their substack, Mana Wāhine Kōrero bring us up to date.
The Midwifery Council Scores an Own Goal
(We had to change the header - previously MC Strikes Back)
Mar 20, 2025
Kia ora tātou,[ Greetings, everyone]
There’s good news and bad on the Midwifery Council Vs. Wāhine in New Zealand.
On the upside, we’re very happy that we poked the bear in the eye when we refused to be silenced by the Petitions Committee in September ‘24, and read out our oral submission on air with Paul Brennan from Reality Check Radio - because the Midwifery Council turned around and went back to the Petitions Committee in October, wanting a do-over, and they shot themselves right in the foot in response - on video.
On the downside, the ideological capture and injustice continues.
This is us below, reading out our submission on RCR with Paul, if you haven’t heard it.
It seems we upset the Politicians, the Midwifery Council and the Secretary of WPATH.
Good.
We knew the Council had written another submission aimed at us to the Committee, and we're sure they're all feeling very smug that we didn’t know they got the last word on the video submission as well.
But we get the last laugh, because we’ve been working on our response to the letter version, and now, we can say what we like, and stop worrying about whether this word or that will be acceptable to the Committee so they will let us be seen and be heard. We know they won't, now.
The full piece is here:
Australia - Guidelines
On his substack, Gender Clinic News Bernard Lane reports on the development of new guidelines on so called ‘gender dysphoria’ and holds out hope that the current flawed guidelines will be a thing of the past. But the battle continues!!
Brand new?
Australia is promised a new treatment guideline, not a mere update of the existing contentious document, and detransitioners are to get a say
Mar 20, 2025
Make it new
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) says it has been asked to develop a new guideline for youth gender dysphoria rather than an update of the low-quality 2018 document from the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) Melbourne.
“NHMRC, as an independent statutory agency, has been tasked with developing new independent, evidence-based guidelines. It is not an update of existing guidelines,” a senior NHMRC official, Alan Singh, said in a March 18 email to the group Parents of Adolescents with Gender Distress-Victoria (PAGD Vic), which had expressed concern about the integrity of the project.
“We will be following our best practice processes and procedures to develop new guidelines,” Mr Singh said.
He said the NHMRC would seek advice from governance experts on recruitment for committees involved in developing the new guideline. “We will be ensuring voices from varied lived experiences are represented, such as those who have discontinued treatment or detransitioned,” he told PAGD Vic.
Talk of the NHMRC assignment as a mere update of the flawed RCH Melbourne guideline—and one driven by the gender medicine lobby—had aroused fears of a political fix to shield the besieged “gender-affirming” treatment model from international pressure for greater caution.
The 2018 document from the RCH gender clinic—the Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines For Trans and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents, to give it its full title—has been pivotal in entrenching in Australia the “gender-affirming” model with its puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and, in some cases, double mastectomies for minors.
The full piece is here:
Telling Your Story
Two great pieces on the substack for Parents With Inconvenient Truths About Trans. Here’s the first one.
Do I Tell my Story?
Mar 18, 2025
My religious denomination is voting on whether to add “gender-identity” to a list of “protected characteristics.” I am working to have it voted down. Someone is encouraging me to “tell my story.” I have shared my story here on PITT. It is one of many which form a mosaic illustrating the effects the concept of “trans” has on parents. These essays tell a deep and nuanced tale, with many differences and similarities among the writers and their situations. Many of the parents show great hope and strength, but the mosaic as a whole is tragic, and many of its parts are heartbreaking.
I don’t want to tell my story to the commissioners who will be voting, I want to speak about the victims who suffer more than I do. It is difficult to talk about, but there are women who are being housed in prisons with men who rape them. If they complain, they are threatened with what they fear most, an extension of their time in jail. There have been pregnancies among this population.
When men compete in women’s sports, the girls on college teams are put into a situation which can be is demeaning, unfair or even dangerous. When they complain they have been threatened with the loss of their scholarship. This can mean they do not get their degree and cannot enter their planned career. People who are already established in a career fear that speaking up will cause them to lose their livelihood due to “cancelation,” being fired, or being in a hostile work environment. Some who have spoken up have suffered career loss.
The full piece is here:
Passing The Contagion On!
Here is the second piece, a heartrending story!
Will the Contagion Pass on to the Next Generation?
Mar 19, 2025
I have been engrossed for over eight years in my son’s transgender identity. The pain is very real for us parents. Many words have flowed from me, other parents, mental health professionals and allies who get it. Words like loss, grief, mourning, confusion, sadness, isolation, distress, etc. Like many of the parents with which I share this misery, the pain remains for years. It never goes away. It just gets commonplace in life. The heavy sadness becomes your shadow. You learn ways to numb the pain in order to function and go on with routines of life.
As I continue to struggle, I face a new act in this melodrama. I was recently blessed with grandchildren. My trans identifying son’s older siblings now have children. How will all this be handled with them? Will their uncle be referred to as their aunt? How will this be explained to their young impressionable minds? Will the gender ideology virus be passed to another generation in my family? This thought terrifies me.
The full piece is here:
https://www.pittparents.com/p/will-the-contagion-pass-on-to-the?publication_id=374402&r=1v403b
The Men’s Is Right Over There!
Many moons ago, when I was at a restaurant and a little bit….ahem….tiddly, I walked into the Ladies. Luckily there were no women in there. My first thought as I opened the door was: ‘Gosh, this is a very clean toilet!’ This was immediately followed by the realisation that there were no urinals and I beat a hasty retreat, thankfully before anyone saw me. So I enjoyed the similar story from Steve QJ on his substack The Commentary.
Virtually all women (there are some exceptions it seems - I hope they are getting psychiatric help) can tell you that the overwhelming majority of crimes of violence and sex offences ( including child sex offences) are committed by men. The fact that some of these men identify as women makes no difference to this statistic ( indeed it may well make the percentage higher!!). Predatory men do not wear warning signs around their necks. Ted Bundy was young, handsome and debonair…and killed over 30 women: https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-logic-trap-or-the-scottish-lesson?utm_source=publication-search ( gosh, that was update 26!!!! Sorry, I digress!).
Aside from all that, and in any event, women are entitled to privacy and dignity when they visit the Ladies!! All men out of all women’s spaces. Seemples!
I am increasingly thinking that men deliberately ( Steve QJ and me need a defence for our mistakes!) entering women’s spaces should be made an offence, plain and simple. All thoughts gratefully received.
OK, over to Steve QJ :
How TERFs Became Such Terrible, Hateful, Evil, Bigots
Feb 28, 2025
A few weeks ago, while visiting a wine museum, I got an unexpected insight into the trans experience.
I'd eaten light that day and had drunk such uncharacteristic amounts of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo that I needed to use the toilet, which might explain why, when I pushed open the door, I found a woman standing on the other side.
She looked at me, horrified, I looked back, even more horrified, and it was only when she realised that my stumbling into the women's bathroom was accidental that the tension drained from her face.
She smiled, pointed to a door across the lobby, and said:
‘The men's is right over there.’
But as I walked away, relieved to be relieving myself in the appropriate location, it occurred to me that every trans woman [ Dusty - I would try here, Steve, ‘man who identifies as a woman’] has experienced, or at least feared, a moment like this; when they opened the bathroom door and found a horrified-looking woman looking back at them. And they feared it precisely because they wouldn't be happy to walk away.
The full piece is here:
https://commentary.steveqj.com/p/how-terfs-became-such-hateful-evil
Endpieces
I am splitting these between the two parts.
From Tenaciously
#BeMorePorcupine
#EndGenderAffirmingCare
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#GrassrootsArmy
#FightForFreeSpeech
#ByeByeStonewall
#XYYouAreAGuy
#LarpersKeepOut
Good news about the UN submission; we need someone with a bit of clout to counter their capture. Thanks, Dusty.
This looks a really good film. I'm a fan of Hayley Mills but have never come across it. Thanks!