The Artist.
Update 698. Not Far Wrong Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
The news and views are flooding into Dusty Towers but, this evening, I have been diverted by the amazing victory of Canada over the Black Ferns ( New Zealand) in the women’s rugby world cup followed by Mr Menno’s long but excellent piece on the recent demo outside the Scottish Parliament. So I think I’ll have to come back with more tomorrow night. But, in the meantime…
Onwards with the Dusty, Nicola and Moodie Film Series. Please keep the suggestions for films coming in but please check the list first which I am updating as we go along. Please send suggestions in the comments here at this link:
The Artist is a 2011 French film in the style of a black and white silent film. It was written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius, and stars Jean Dujardin (as George Valentin) and Bérénice Bejo (as Peppy Miller). The story takes place in Hollywood, between 1927 and 1932, and focuses on the relationship between a rising young actress and an older silent film star as silent cinema falls out of fashion and is replaced by the "talkies".
In the clip below Penelope Ann Miller is Doris Valentin.
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
UK - Free Speech Under Attack
Black Belt Barrister (BBB) reports on his site on an American citizen and cancer patient living in the UK who was visited by a police officer for alleged hurty words in a Facebook post. Absolutely outrageous though the lady is brilliant in dealing with the officer. Importantly she is a member of the Free Speech Union! BBB explains why this was an abuse of power and that no criminal offence had been committed.
Andrew Doyle also focusses on this incident on his substack:
Britain is sleepwalking into a police state
A cancer patient has been harassed by police over an ‘offensive’ Facebook post. When will enough be enough?
Sep 18, 2025
At what point will something actually be done about the problem of police overreach in the UK? With disturbing regularity, viral clips are appearing online that show officers visiting people’s homes, or even arresting them, over social media posts that were deemed ‘offensive’. We all remember the case of army veteran Darren Brady, arrested for ‘causing anxiety’ by posting a meme about Pride Month. Or the footage of the autistic teenager who was dragged screaming into a police van because she remarked that one of the officers resembled her ‘lesbian nana’.
The latest viral clip features Deborah Anderson, an American citizen living in the UK (see footage posted below, shared online by the Free Speech Union). She’s an elderly cancer patient; hardly some kind of monstrous terrorist who poses an existential threat to society. In June, a Thames Valley officer visited her home because she had supposedly written a Facebook post that ‘upset someone’. Anderson’s response was entirely reasonable: ‘Are there no houses that have been burgled recently? No rapes? No murders?’ Her point is incontestable. This scouring for wrongthink is a complete waste of police time and resources.
Most shocking of all, the officer told her that unless she apologised to the complainant, she would be taken to the police station for an interview. That is nothing less than coercive control. She had broken no law. Yet here was a police officer pressuring her to modify her speech, threatening her with further action if she did not comply. This is intimidation, plain and simple. And as with so many of these cases, the process is the punishment.
The full piece is here:
https://www.andrewdoyle.org/p/britain-is-sleepwalking-into-a-police
We need to get rid of all hate speech laws and especially non-crime hate incidents. This is getting beyond a joke! All thoughts gratefully received.
What Does ‘Far Right’ Mean?
Us Terfs have become used to having gross insults and slurs thrown at us. One of those is that we are ‘far right’. It is bad enough when the trans rights activists and antifa do this…but when someone who is supposedly on our side does it!? In any event, what does ‘far right’ actually mean? In a recent post on her substack, What About Women Milli Hill characterises Kellie-Jay Keen, Aja the Empress and the Famous Artist Birdy Rose as far right for attending the recent Unite the Kingdom march:
Right or left, I want no part of extremism
And as a gender critical woman, I want to firmly distance myself from it
Sep 15, 2025
Being openly ‘gender critical’ is a choice I’ve made and I’m happy to defend my position to anyone who asks me. I don’t think male people can ‘literally’ become women, and I don’t think their declaring themselves as such should entitle them to be perceived as female in every situation - for example, sports, prisons, data collection, women-only panels and shortlists, women-only safe spaces like refuges. I find the idea that ‘woman’ is a costume you can put on a bit insulting, so while I support everyone’s right to dress however they like, I don’t support the idea that wearing a dress and lipstick magically makes you female.
Because of this, I’m aware I have one area upon which, if I sat down for a beer with Trump, the late Charlie Kirk, or maybe even Tommy Robinson, we would agree on.
Just one.
I very much doubt we would share any common ground whatsoever other than agreeing that people can’t change sex.
There would be many of their views that I would and do find abhorrent. I support their right to hold those views but I want to live in a world where it will always be safe for me and the people who come after me to disagree with them.
The reasons that we hold this one particular view about the reality of sex are also different. I am critical of 'gender’ because I can see, as a woman, that the socially constructed concept of ‘gender’ has and continues to be used as a means of restricting women’s rights. Strict gender roles - neatly symbolised by the high-heeled shoe so beloved of cross-dressing men - are a way of slowing women down and making it more difficult for us to live freely. I have raised my children, as far as I possibly could, in a ‘gender neutral’ way, in the sense that I have encouraged them to play with whichever toys they are drawn to, and to dress in whatever clothes they like.
When my daughters were very little I sometimes bought them ‘boys’ clothes and shoes because I thought they looked less restricting to their movement and more robust for messy play. My third child, a boy, wore dresses when he was pre-school age to play and dance in if he wanted, and nurtured dollies if that was part of his game. I never lied to my kids about their sex, but I also never said to them, “That’s only for boys” or “That’s a girls toy”. In fact, if they said anything like that to me, I would remind them that, not that long before they were born, women were told being a doctor or going to university was ‘only for boys’, so it was probably better if we didn’t think about things in that restrictive way any more.
I very much doubt that the men of the extreme right would agree with me on any of that.
Their reasons for reinforcing the reality of biological sex are, I suspect, mostly to do with their deeply conservative, and often religious ideas about the family, heterosexuality, and the kind of binary gender roles - ‘men adventuring out in the world’, ‘women in the home’ - that feminism has sought to challenge.
To be clear: there is a sex binary. There are two sexes, male and female.
But the gender binary beloved of the extreme right seeks to reinforce the oppression of women on the basis of this biology.
I don’t believe wearing a dress and lipstick makes you female, and they don’t either. Your sex is immutable, on that we can agree. But for the men of the far right, this immutability extends to gender too: they promote regressive notions of men and women’s roles, and restrictions on women’s reproductive rights, that I as a feminist want to deconstruct or smash.
Funny, isn’t it, that the trans flag offers up the same binary ‘pink and blue’ version of the world that I so despised when I pushed my trolley round Mothercare circa 2010 buying clothes and toys for my daughters.
Trans ideology - the extreme version - reinforces the exact same regressive ideas about gender that the far right adores: man = tough, short-haired, leader; women = weak, long-haired, nurturer; historic women who wore trousers and led battles can’t have been female at all; being a ‘woman’ is all about spinny skirts, lipstick, long hair and heels. Both trans and far right ideology seek to put men and women in regressive restrictive boxes: the prison of gender.
Men who want this reinforcement of the gender binary were out in force at Saturday’s Unite the Kingdom rally in London, led by Tommy Robinson. I say men because if you look at photos of the rally it seems like the crowds were predominantly male.
If you spoke to any of those men they would probably have something to say about trans people and they would agree that you can’t change sex. Would they also want to smash patriarchy and dismantle gender? That, I would say, is less likely.
The support of Robinson, Trump, Kirk and Musk from high profile gender critical women is worrying. I don’t understand why women would support far right extremists any more than I understand why women would support trans ideology extremists. Both want that gender binary reinforced; both undermine same-sex attracted people’s reality; both are a threat to women’s rights.
Kelly Jay Keen - a woman who I have stuck up for here on WHAT ABOUT WOMEN - was not only at Robinson’s rally but was shown in one of his tweets to be part of his inner circle.
Other high profile gender critical women, like ‘The Famous Artist Birdy Rose’ and ‘Aja the Empress’, seem to be going down the same route, their social media feeds full of Union Jacks and support of Robinson and the right.
I support their right to hold such views but I see these views as extremist and I want no part of them.
Dusty - Milli repeats ‘far right’ endless times but never defines what it is. She doesn’t explain how the people she names are ‘far right’. She seems to think that Union Jacks are inevitably ‘far right’ symbols! Presumably Milli thinks that all of the vast numbers of people on the march were ‘far right’!! For what it’s worth there is no evidence that Kellie-Jay is part of Tommy Robinson’s ‘inner circle’!! This is vey lazy journalism from Milli, worthy of the BBC itself! The full piece is here:
https://millihill.substack.com/p/right-or-left-i-want-no-part-of-extremism
Kellie-Jay has responded on her substack:
Oh to lie on that Hill
My response to the Milli Hill substack.
Sep 18, 2025
I came across a Substack by Milli Hill in which, as I understand it, I was described as some sort of low-rent fangirl of far-right men, too stupid to keep my own mind. Reading through, I realised Hill had given me a perfect opportunity to address the very people whose attitude has created the need for the march they loathe so much. She positions herself as a respectable gender-critical voice, eager to insist that while she shares one belief with figures like Trump, Tommy Robinson, and Charlie Kirk, that men cannot become women, she is nothing like them. She recalls her gender-neutral parenting, caricatures the Unite the Kingdom rally as a mob of regressive men, and equates their outlook with trans activists’ fixation on stereotypes. She condemns “extremism” on both left and right, disowns other gender-critical women who attended the rally, and ties it all together with a reminder of feminist history to burnish her credentials. But at no point does she ever define what she means by the “far right,” nor does she explain why ordinary people waving Union Flags or marching about immigration, free speech, or grooming gangs should be lumped in with Nazis. The essay is less an argument than a performance of distance, written to reassure her own set that she is safe, respectable, and nothing like the people she smears.
The trouble with Hill’s essay is not that it disagrees with me, disagreement is healthy, but that it takes one of the most loaded labels in political history, “far right”, and hurls it at people without even pausing to define what it means. The result is sloppy at best and dishonest at worst. In Britain, when people hear far right, they think of actual Nazis. To equate working-class families marching about immigration, free speech, and the failure to prosecute grooming gangs with Hitler’s Germany is not only inaccurate, it trivialises the true horror of the past.
The reality of Nazism is clear. The German nation was defined in racial terms, with “Aryans” exalted and Jews, Roma, and others cast out as enemies. Citizenship and belonging were tied to bloodlines rather than civic participation. Democracy was abolished, opposition parties banned, dissent crushed, and a single man elevated as Führer while individual freedoms were sacrificed for the supposed good of the Volk. Liberal democracy, Marxism, and the rights of minorities were all rejected in favour of a politics that reduced everything to friend versus enemy, leaving no room for compromise or coexistence. Violence and conquest were glorified, with the doctrine of Lebensraum justifying the invasion and destruction of neighbouring nations. This is what the far right meant, and when British people think of it they think of swastikas, extermination camps, Jews hiding in attics, and nations flattened by tanks. That is the shadow we live with. To lazily apply the same label to people worried about the direction of their country today is to drain it of all meaning.
And here’s the truth, what I saw at the Unite the Kingdom rally wasn’t racist. It wasn’t anti-immigrant. It wasn’t fascist. It certainly wasn’t far right. In fact, many of the people marching were themselves the products of immigration.
Hill’s characterisation of the “extreme right”, people she never even names, may or may not be true in some abstract sense, but as I suspect she’s never spoken to the people she claims to know so well, I don’t know why she’s so certain. I have. I’ve fraternised with people who get their hands dirty at work, and, shock horror, some who drape the Union Flag over their shoulders, who know a football chant or two. And you know what? They often have more liberal views on what boys and girls should be free to do than many in the academic or activist class. They dislike the same suffocating stereotypes as I do.
Thank God they aren’t as tedious as the intellectual set when it comes to boys and girls. Frankly, I’m shocked anyone still puts faith in these ill-defined terms at all. But here we are.
The rally was about people’s real, concrete concerns. Immigration policy has been reckless and unsustainable. Hotels across Britain are filled with young men from cultures where women in public are treated as sexual prey. Grooming gangs operated for decades with the complicity of authorities who refused to act out of fear of being accused of racism. Free speech, once a proud British value, is now curtailed by laws that punish wrongthink while excusing open incitement if it comes from the “right” identity group. The government is so hostile to its own citizens it even appealed court decisions won in their favour.
You may not like these grievances. You may not agree with how they are expressed. But none of them has anything to do with extermination camps, swastikas, or Lebensraum. To smear them as “far right” is not analysis, it is cowardice.
And cowardice is exactly what Hill reveals in her writing. She never substantiates her claims. She never explains what she means by “far right” or why the label applies. She never engages with what people at the rally were actually saying. Instead, she paints with the vaguest of brushstrokes, so she can distance herself from women she doesn’t even know while remaining safely inside her own social circle.
The full piece is here:
I agree with Kellie-Jay but, of course, all thoughts, including in favour of Milli Hill or some other viewpoint, gratefully encouraged.
Charlie Kirk RIP
Excellent piece from Glinner on his substack. I’ve learnt a new word, namely ‘ouroburism’: pertaining to an ancient symbol of a snake or dragon eating its own tail in a circle, representing the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth, cyclical time, and the infinite nature of the universe.
The Town Criers and the Gooners
Another marriage made in hell.
Sep 18, 2025
In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's murder, false claims about him bubbled up from the internet's bowels, which were then dutifully parroted by certain legacy media figures in a process that now takes place about once every three days. The appearance after every occasion of note of near-identical, mendacious talking points across the pundit space—from Otto English to Matthew Stadlen to Stewart Lee— always reminds me of the anti-Israel placards that sprang up across London after October 7th. In no time at all, they were everywhere, thousands of them, like a field of black poppies, and people began saying “from the river to the sea” without the slightest speck of understanding of what that murderous phrase meant.
Before his killing, very few people in the UK knew who Charlie Kirk was, least of all its commentariat; now, a little over two weeks later, our anti-intellectual public intellectuals have decided he was definitely a fascist. In fact, Kirk was a Christian conservative who bravely (we now know) visited college campuses with a table, a microphone, and the Socratic method. It was how he persuaded people.
Meanwhile, the left in the UK has been channelling Mark E. Smith of The Fall in its approach. "The three Rs. Repetition, repetition, repetition." The left repeats phrases and tells you to repeat them. It doesn't matter if they’re stupid—in fact, the dumber the better. My favourite, of course, is the ouroboric "trans women are women," which the feminist academic Jane Clare Jones demolished quite handily by simply asking in reply, "How are males female, mate?"
Trans activism - the hill the left has decided to die on - has a ton of these dipshittisms. It has to have something, because the actual ideology is incoherent and cannot be defended. "Drag queens are just like pantomime dames!" "Why are you obsessed with genitals?" "Isn't your toilet at home gender neutral?" Leftists don't make arguments; they memorise them, and apparently, stupid, ugly things are easy to remember. They "win" these arguments because civilised people don't know how to engage on such a maliciously obtuse level. The dumbest talking points flood the internet through 10,000 anime accounts run by 1000 sticky-fingered nihilists. They are then laundered into respectability by people like Ash Sarkar, Alastair Campbell and James O'Brien.
The full piece is here:
UK - The Rainbow Laces Campaign
EDI Jester reports on some great news. Well done, yet again, to Linzi Smith and Fair Cop!
Australia - Pretend Medicine
On the substack, Gender Clinic News Sandra Pertot discusses how ‘gender affirming practitioners’ have been a ‘protected species’. How much longer can this continue?
Protected species
Why are gender-affirming practitioners not held to normal standards of healthcare?
Sep 17, 2025
Health professionals who practise any version of “gender-affirming” care have been a protected species for more than a decade, unlike those practitioners who express any concern about the medical and surgical treatment of young gender-questioning people or who acknowledge that transwomen are men.
Trans advocates are so committed to their position that no comment or disagreement with any aspect of gender ideology is too mild to avoid accusations of bigotry or transphobia—even failure to state your own pronouns. Sometimes these accusations go no further, but often a trans advocate will take the complaint as far as possible, confident they can punish the offending colleague. It is easy to find cases online of health practitioners who have had their careers sabotaged by formal complaints to a professional body or regulating authority.
However, to my knowledge, it is rare for a gender-affirming practitioner to be the subject of a complaint at any level, certainly not one that has led to any disciplinary action. Hence the significance of the recent complaint to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency against the country’s most influential gender clinician, Dr Michelle Telfer, for “alleged breaches of professional standards, potential professional misconduct and failure to provide sufficient informed consent to patients”.
The complaint was lodged in June this year, and the decision to dismiss it came earlier this month. I find it difficult to reconcile the outcome with the seriousness of the complaint, which was based on findings and criticisms made by Family Court Justice Andrew Strum in a dispute over whether to prescribe puberty blockers for a child. The evidence before him, including Dr Telfer’s, was tested by cross-examination. It is unclear what process was followed by AHPRA to come to its view, what evidence was considered and rejected. To my mind, this leaves room for doubt whether AHPRA has a predisposition to minimise concerns about gender-affirming care.
By comparison, consider the treatment of the whistleblower psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer, who last week was sent a notice of termination by her government employer, Children’s Health Queensland. She had raised concerns about gender-affirming care at the Queensland Children’s Hospital and was suspended from clinical duties in 2023. In her frustration and distress, she talked openly in public about her treatment, which became a useful trigger to dismiss her from her job, but this seems minor compared to the issues raised against Dr Telfer.
It’s a mystery to me how health professionals whom I would otherwise regard as competent and ethical have become enthralled by an ideological treatment approach which explicitly denies biological reality.
The full piece is here:
https://www.genderclinicnews.com/p/protected-species?publication_id=627677&r=1v403b
Australia - Update on Moira Deeming’s case and other matters
On the Glinner Update, Jenny Nabben provides us with an update on Moira Deeming’s pursuit of Mr Pesutto, the former Liberal Party leader for costs following her successful defamation claim and deals also with other matters.
Down Under Update
The Chickens Come Home To Roost
Sep 18, 2025
Moira Deeming seeks Defamation Costs
Moira Deeming’s attendance at the Let Women Speak rally in March 2023 nearly ended her career as a Victorian Liberal MP. Accused of associating with neo-Nazis, she faced expulsion from the Liberal Party. Instead of backing down, Mrs Deeming sued party leader John Pesutto for defamation and won her case in the Federal Court.
Justice O’Callaghan awarded Deeming $300,000 in damages and noted that Pesutto’s actions were driven more by “fear of the political damage that would be inflicted upon his fledgling leadership,” than by genuine concern for the Liberal Party’s reputation.
Pesutto is currently doing the media rounds to resurrect his political fortunes while his backers set up an online fundraising site to help pay his eye-watering costs of $5m. Pesutto rejected an offer to settle with Moira Deeming for $99,000 before the trial, betting on a win and to position himself as a ‘progressive’ leader of the Liberal Party.
On a recent ABC panel show called Q+A, John Pesutto was asked by a female audience member:
“Do you think the Liberal Party is haemorrhaging votes due in large part, to the lack of empathy and tolerance for female dissenters within the party ranks. I’m talking specifically about the witch hunt against Moira Deeming and the lack of accountability you have demonstrated when dealing with female people within your own party?” Pesutto sidestepped the question to deliver this prepared speech;
“There are divided views over how we mediate between competing rights when it comes to gender identity and equality before the law…. I was trying to position the party as broad-based…. I was acting in good faith. I acknowledge that I could have handled that situation better. I don’t go by a day when I don’t think about what I could have done differently or better, and I’m better for the reflection. Not happy with the results. But I do accept that I could have handled things a bit better. I was always trying in the best of faith to make sure that the party can appeal broadly in the community.” Righto then.
The studio host, Patricia Karvelas failed to ask Pesutto a single clarifying question on what this word salad meant and instead, turned to the Liberal MP Dave Sharma to ask him;
“Obviously that’s the situation that played out in Victoria, on those issues where there’s a tension, very deeply, inside the party - what are the lessons about how to manage those sorts of tensions?
The exchange between Karvelas and Pesutto and redirection to Sharma prevented any further discussion of the substantive issues covered in the case - Deeming’s sex-realist views, Justice O’Callaghan’s criticism of Pesutto’s behaviour and the harms of gender medicine.
Karvales’ role as the host of the publicly-funded ABC show enabled her to frame the issues as little more than procedural and of “managing tensions” within the Liberal Party itself.
The ABC, like much of the Australian media frame gender identity ideology as ‘progressive’ and fail to investigative the growing medical scandal and loss of women’s sex-based rights in Australia.
Following the ABC show and media coverage of Pesutto’s financial woes, Moira Deeming posted on X:
Pesutto failed to come up with the money by the court-ruled deadline of Friday 30 May and will now enter bankruptcy. Deeming’s legal team will subpoena the communications between Pesutto and his donors and pursue payment of Pesutto’s costs from party colleagues and former premiers Jeff Kennett, Ted Baillieu, and Denis Napthine. Stay tuned.
The full piece is here:
Update 700 🎈🥳🍾🥂
Readers may have noted we are approaching Update 700!!!!!!
So…..we started the current film series (with The Banshees of Inisherin ) in Update 564. Please have a scroll through updates since then up to update 697 and vote for your three favourite films that we have shown so far. The easiest way to scroll is to go to Archive and then scroll. I will then work out what the favourite film is and feature three clips from that film in Update 700. In fact, Update 700 will just be about that film. Thanks 😊 Get voting 🥳
Hard At Work At Dusty Towers
My assistant waiting for the Terf post to arrive
Terf Island Discs
Thanks to an excellent suggestion from Tenaciously Terfin, we have paused Endpieces for the time being and we are giving Tenaciously and Liz a well earned rest from their hard work. So , since 07 July, we have been running Terf Island Discs.
Several readers have chosen up to 4 songs or pieces of music each and we are going through those one at a time in each update. This is going so well that I am going to continue it a bit further and you can now choose up to 6 songs or pieces of music each. They need to be reasonably short. We can’t expect to have readers listening to the whole of Tchaikovsky's piano concerto in B flat minor, albeit it is magnificent.
They don’t have to be from Terf Island BTW - anywhere in the world 😊
Please send links as well if you can.
So for those who have already chosen 4, please choose 2 more and, if you have not yet taken part, please choose 6!! If you repeat a song or piece of music that has already been chosen, I’ll let you know and you can choose another one. Please let me know your choices in the comments at this link:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/beware-of-the-flowers-terf-island
Next up!
Chosen by: Laurie Winogrand
‘Datemi Un Martello’ by Rita Pavone
#BeMorePorcupine
#KeepBuggeringOn
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#KeepOnTerfing
#LeaveKidsAlone
#BeMoreQuestioning
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
I think KJK's assessment of Milli Hill's piece could be applied to many women who remain 'fraidy cats about taking more than a moderate line. Milli Hill has suffered at the hands of the 'cancellation cabal', and I wonder if this makes her a bit desperate to ensure they don't come after her again?
Thanks Dusty, some really good pieces here (great by KJK and good advice from the Black Belt Barrister) apart from the Milli Hill. Not only did she smear an entire march of probably a million ordinary people with valid concerns as being far right, she claimed to know that they’d agree with gender stereotypes. Naming KJK and others was just nasty and vindictive. In the light of the increasing violence on the hard left and from some transactivists, this was irresponsible. It’s as if the Charlie Kirk murder had never happened. So many on the left need to come down from their self constructed ivory towers and actually listen to what the majority is saying.
I’m pretty sure that the Labour Party I joined in the 1970s would have been on that march. I haven’t changed, the left has gone insane.