The Dig. Part 2.
Update 638. Giggle v Tickle Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
Onwards with Part 2 and sticking with The Dig, of course.
Thanks to three wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
The Horrors of ‘Gender Surgery’
We touched on the horrors of phalloplasties just recently:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/beautiful-thing-sweet-dreams?utm_source=publication-search
EDI Jester brings us another very important and powerful warning from Mr Chrysostom, retired accident and emergency specialist and Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, who gave this warning recently to a group of parliamentarians in the UK.
Australia - Giggle v Tickle
This substack has been closely following Sall Grover’s battle. We last reported here:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/woman-is-our-word-brandubh?utm_source=publication-search
The appeal is to take place from 04 to 07 August and Jenny Nabben on the Glinner Update provides a useful reminder and update:
Giggle v Tickle: Buckle up
Sydney court case is a defining moment for Australian women’s rights.
Jul 09, 2025
A Defining Moment for Australian Women’s Rights
On August 4–7, 2025, the Full Federal Court in Sydney will hear a case that could reshape women’s rights to single-sex spaces. The Giggle v Tickle appeal is more than a legal dispute—it’s a battle over whether biological sex can still define womanhood in Australia.
Single-sex spaces, from apps to bathrooms to shelters, exist to protect women from male violence and harassment. Sall Grover, ex-Hollywood screenwriter, entrepreneur and mother, launched a women-only app, Giggle after being sexually harassed as a scriptwriter in Los Angeles.
For many women. having a protected female-only space reduces the risk of being cyberbullied, doxed or sexually harassed by men online. Every woman who’s used female-only services, requested a female healthcare worker for intimate care, joined a breastfeeding group, or changed in public facilities understands the importance of women-only spaces.
But since the Gillard Labor government amended Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) in 2013 to include ‘gender identity’ as a protected characteristic, Australian women’s rights have been dismantled.
The full piece is here:
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/giggle-v-tickle-buckle-up
UK - Labour Terf Wars
Looks like battle lines are drawn within the Labour Party between the gender critical group, ‘LGB Labour’ and the Woo Woo group, ‘Trans Rights Alliance’. The battle is over who should become women’s officer for Labour’s LGBT+ group. Guess who Trans Rights Alliance want in that post? Go on, you’ll never guess!
This report is from The Telegraph - even the sections of the UK Media who are sympathetic talk about ‘transwomen’ - very, very annoying - so I’ll just have to leave you to take that into account. You’re all used to it, I know!!
Daniel Martin in The Telegraph ( Trans woman stands to become women’s officer for Labour 08 July) reports:
Trans rights activists have put forward a biological man to be the women’s officer for Labour’s LGBT+ group.
The newly formed Trans Rights Alliance has put forward a slate of candidates for the group’s committee, which will be elected on July 19.
On Monday, Labour LGB, a gender-critical group in the party, accused the alliance of breaking party rules by “putting a man forward to be women’s officer”.
The issue highlights the way Labour is being torn apart by the trans rights issue in the light of April’s Supreme Court judgment that the word sex in the Equality Act means biological sex and not gender identity.
Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of flip-flopping on the issue, saying when he was opposition leader that he believed trans women were women and that 99.9 per cent of women do not have a penis.
Now he accepts the Supreme Court ruling, and has urged public bodies to comply with it “as soon as possible”.
The national Labour Party has agreed to scrap its annual women’s conference, warning of a “significant risk of a legal challenge” if self-identified women are allowed to attend.
But the row over the membership of the LGBT+ committee shows there are many in the party who have not accepted the judgment.
The Trans Rights Alliance has put forward Steph Richards, a transgender woman in possession of a gender recognition certificate, as its candidate for women’s officer.
In a post on X, Labour LGB said: “Many people say that trans ideology is a men’s rights movement.
“The ‘Trans Alliance’ (seeking to take over the once-great LGBT+ Labour) has set out to prove this. Also breaking party rules by putting a man forward to be women’s officer.”
Richards told website LabourList: “I am legally female, other than in regards to the Equality Act and the Act does not apply to the position within LGBT+ Labour so I am thoroughly within my legal right and my moral right to be able to stand for this position.”
The candidate said there was nothing in LGBT+ Labour’s rules which would prevent a transwoman from standing for women’s officer, adding: “For goodness sake, it is LGBT Labour.”
The alliance has put forward a group of candidates, including Georgia Meadows who is standing to be co-chair of LGBT+ Labour.
She said: “LGBT+ Labour is not working for trans members. We need a strong, member-led LGBT+ Labour that will stand united with the trans community and more accessible, democratic structures to allow members to have a say.”
A Trans Rights Alliance spokesperson said: “We’re a cross-factional group of trans and ally voices united by our wish to see LGBT+ Labour central to fighting for our rights in the Labour Party.”
The annual meeting of LGBT+ Labour is set for July 19 in north London.
Last year, Labour postponed its national women’s conference in the wake of the Supreme Court judgement that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex – not gender identity.
A paper discussed by the party’s National Executive Committee warned of a “significant risk of a legal challenge” – as well as “protests, direct action and heightened security risks” over the issue of self-identification of attendees if the conference went ahead.
The move was criticised at the time by both trans rights and gender critical groups alike.
The Labour Party has been approached for comment.
Dusty - why don’t LGB Labour try and get rid of the T+!!?? Or, perhaps, why don’t they just leave the Labour Party ? Set up your own party, guys or join the Party of Women!
United Nations - Off With The Woo!!!!
Feminist Legal Clinic reports:
WoPAI Addresses Concerns Ahead of UN Women Conference | Women’s Platform for Action International
As part of the lead-up to the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, taking place in Mexico on 11 August 2025, within the Beijing+30 review coordinated by UN Women, WoPAI has submitted a formal letter to both UN Women and ECLAC (CEPAL). This action was taken after learning that the organizers of the regional feminist forum, held in parallel to the conference, had issued a registration policy that does not align with the principles of the CEDAW Convention.
Specifically, the forum’s registration form stated that participation would be limited to “inclusive feminists who respect the demands of the sex worker movement and transgender people,” and made clear that attendance could be denied to individuals or organisations not meeting these terms.
WoPAI’s full letter outlining our concerns can be found here in English and in Spanish.
Source: WoPAI Addresses Concerns Ahead of UN Women Conference | Women’s Platform for Action International
New Zealand - Vanessa’s Story - The Use of Pronouns
We have recently been featuring the tragic story of Vanessa on this substack. For example, see here:
Fern Hickson on the Resist Gender Education substack provides some useful further information following another press report and discusses the use of pronouns.
Pronouns as weapons of deception
For Vanessa, using 'preferred pronouns' was not a harmless courtesy.
Jul 09, 2025
For the last month in New Zealand, the heartbreaking story of a teenager (pseudonym “Vanessa”) who starved to death, alone, in emergency accommodation has been the subject of commentary, both in mainstream media and online. The latest salvo, by journalist David Fisher, was published in the Herald on Saturday.
Refreshingly, Fisher’s article did not overtly blame the teen’s parents for her death as has previously been the response of those who defend transgender ideology. Instead, Fisher uncovered some new information that has corroborated the testimony of Vanessa’s parents: that whilst in the grip of a very serious mental illness, Vanessa had developed secretive, devious, and manipulative behaviours with the express purpose of preventing those around her from intervening in her ultimately fatal eating disorder.
The article has provided some key pieces to the puzzle of how such a horrific death could occur in the midst of so many and it is now up to the Coronial Inquest (date yet to be advised) to put the whole jigsaw together.
However, attention does need to be paid to the way Fisher has deftly deflected scrutiny from the role gender identity beliefs played in Vanessa’s decline. While painting an accurate picture of a very seriously unwell teenage girl, Fisher has nevertheless used male pronouns, thus validating one of the delusions that undoubtedly contributed to her death.
Perpetuating a myth
A footnote to the article cites the newspaper’s pronoun policy, as if a company policy can exonerate journalists from their responsibility to report objectively and truthfully.
‘The NZ Herald editorial code of conduct and ethics says a person who changes gender is transgender and should be referred to by the gender identity with which they identify.’
By using male pronouns, Fisher has endorsed all those who blithely affirmed a mentally unwell teen’s make believe that she had changed sex. He quotes an online friend of hers saying Vanessa was “deeply entrenched and trapped in his thinking”, yet Fisher has failed to join the dots and see that part of Vanessa’s illness was taking extreme measures to deflect attention from her eating.
One very effective method she discovered was to claim a ‘boy’ identity which had the double advantage of allowing her to hold at arm’s length anyone who didn’t agree with her and to wear baggy, androgenous clothing so that she could hide in plain sight.
As reported in our last substack, gender dysphoria and eating disorders are two sides of the same coin:
‘Both anorexia nervosa and gender dysphoria involve body image disorders where aggression is "turned against one’s own self, inward, but also outward, against important others.”’
Fisher uncovered messages that “reveal Alex didn’t want to take hormones or have gender-affirming surgery until he was in his 20s and possibly not even then.” Vanessa’s parents report that she expressed doubts about being a boy in their last phone conversations with her. These are hardly evidence of a fixed and irreversible determination to be trans.
No one can know what Vanessa’s final choices would have been because she didn’t get the chance to make them. It is highly presumptuous of the Herald to think it has the right to make those choices for her.
There is nothing solid on which the Herald can base its decision to use male pronouns for a seriously mentally unwell teenager. The newspaper’s policy perpetuates the myth that humans can change sex and, by playing along with that delusion, is entrenching malignant thinking patterns that are harming thousands of young people.
The full piece is here:
The States - Update from LGB Alliance USA
Good round up of events from Arianne and Jos of LGB Alliance USA on their podcast. They start with a clip of gay Republican California State representative, Carl De Maio trying to give a speech about men in women’s sport but getting continually and clearly deliberately interrupted by the Chair!!
They end up discussing the extremely important Supreme Court judgment in the case of Mahmood & ors v Taylor - judgment here:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-297_4f14.pdf
Montgomery County School Board had refused to allow certain religious parents to withdraw their children from LGBT+ reading sessions. The Supreme Court concluded that they should have been able to withdraw their children. Looks like an excellent judgment to me though I have not yet read the whole thing. All thoughts, especially from American readers, gratefully received.
Terf Island Discs
For how to send in your four choices for Terf Island Discs, please see Part 1.
Those who have already sent in their choices please note you can now have a fourth choice 😊
Next up!
Chosen by: Becca Shambles
‘Night After Night’ by Laura Marling
#BeMorePorcupine
#ThePorcupinesWillWin
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#JoinFreeSpeechUnion
#LeaveKidsAlone
#NoSelfID
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
Great round up as usual, friend.
The girl who starved while basking in trans joy in NZ is a particularly egregious and unnecessary death.
I #HoldtheLine though it's easier some days than others.