The Myth Of Gender
Update 484. Gender Dysphoria Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
Here is a summary of the main points from today’s Letter to the Terven from me: gender dysphoria doesn’t exist; don’t be fooled by the ‘reasonable transsexuals’; get your son ( or daughter - girls are already allowed in!!!) out of the Scouts; if you haven’t done so already, join the Free Speech Union. I don’t imagine many of my reader are currently contemplating buying a Jag but, if you are…DON’T!!!!
I was trying to find the best British film to fit with a medical condition that doesn’t really exist but which has resulted in thousands of people throughout the world undergoing disastrous and totally unnecessary medical and surgical procedures. I kept coming back to Whistle Down The Wind where the children come to believe that the wounded killer in the barn is actually Jesus Christ. If you can think of a more apposite one, please let me know. Here is the clip from it that I featured recently:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/jesus-in-the-barn
Thanks as ever to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall…or in the case of the Murdo Fraser story behind a Buy Me Treats Wall!!
Editorial Meeting
My assistant: Why not include the Murdo Fraser story, Dusty?
I’m not going to include a story, Puss, just because it features a cat!
Why not, everyone loves a cat!
Not everyone loves cats, Puss!
Terfs love cats.
Ummm….ok, fair point…I’ll put in a link.
The Irish General Election
Final results are still coming in and the question is clearly whether Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael can get enough seats to form a coalition without having to join with other parties. The good news is that Sinn Féin and the Greens have been knocked back significantly. I am deferring my detailed analysis until we know the final results and the structure of any coalition government. Here is a recent report on the up to date situation:
Free Speech
Lord Justice Sedley in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions [1999] EWHC Admin 733:
'Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having. What Speakers' Corner (where the law applies as fully as anywhere else) demonstrates is the tolerance which is both extended by the law to opinion of every kind and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear.
From the condemnation of Socrates to the persecution of modern writers and journalists, our world has seen too many examples of state control of unofficial ideas.'
I am taking three pieces from the latest Free Speech Union newsletter ( 02 December) and this is the first one.
Education Secretary faces court over shelving free speech laws
23rd January, 2025: that’s the date for our High Court judicial review of the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s shocking decision to halt the implementation of the Freedom of Speech Act – a vital piece of legislation designed to tackle cancel culture and uphold lawful free speech at English universities.
These proceedings are of the highest constitutional importance. For almost 350 years, the governance of Britain has rested on the premise that ministers may not set aside laws made by Parliament. The new government, flushed with power and ideological fervour, has now thrown that principle to the wind. We believe the legal position is clear: the right to free speech, as protected by our sovereign Parliament, cannot be treated with such contempt.
If possible, please donate to our legal fighting fund here.
Leave The Scouts
I was a patrol leader in the Scouts many moons ago. We used to play games like British Bulldog. If we had been asked to play Pronoun Pairs there would have been a mass rebellion! James Esses on Matt Goodwin’s substack details just how they have been captured and why you may need to consider taking your child out of the Scouts!
How Scouting went Woke
A Whistleblower reveals how radical gender ideology captured Scouts
Dec 02, 2024
Everybody reading this will know of somebody who was once a Scout —once part of the worldwide youth movement.
Here in Britain, the Scout Association of the United Kingdom is the largest national in the whole of Europe.
Formed in 1910, it runs activities for children aged 4 years old and over, helping them learn and develop as they progress through their formative years.
This year, Scouts provided activities to more than 400,000 children. That the Presidents of Scouts are the Princess of Wales and the Duke of Kent tells you just how much clout this organisation has.
But while Scouts talk much about putting “young people's safety and wellbeing first”, today, thanks to a brave whistleblower, I’m afraid to report that like many other organisations in our national life the Scouting movement has completely lost its way.
By pandering to regressive gender ideology, the Scouts now pose a threat to children’s safety and wellbeing.
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a renegade Scout leader. He asked to remain anonymous, for fear of reprisal if his identity is revealed.
Over the past few years, he has become increasingly concerned with the embracing of radical trans ideology. He felt that he simply had to speak out.
Here’s what he told me:
“As a leader at our local scouting group, I am particularly shocked and concerned that the Scouts organisation has elected to use their privileged position to push radical gender ideology on to children, under the cloak of inclusivity. Children attend the various groups within Scouts to gain and apply useful practical knowledge, to develop their social skills and confidence, and to experience opportunities that might otherwise be unattainable. It’s entirely appropriate to teach compassion and tolerance, but to push the unscientific belief that you can be born in the wrong body, and can change your gender, is very dangerous, and tantamount to a safeguarding risk. Children should not be coerced into applying use of preferred pronouns, nor subject to confusion anxiety that will inevitably result from this activity, in order to appease a zealous fringe element of society. I fear the Scouts organisation is losing sight of what it was set up to do.”
My whistleblower shared with me a range of policy documents and activities to underline his growing concerns about what Scouts are doing to children.
The full piece is here:
NHS Trust Retreats!
Thanks as ever to Feminist Legal Clinic.
NHS trust that spread ‘misinformation’ with claim trans women could breastfeed as well as new mothers makes U-turn under pressure (01 December)
An NHS Trust that spread ‘misinformation’ by claiming transgender women could breastfeed as effectively as new mothers has performed a U-turn after outrage from campaigners.
A leaked letter this year from the medical director of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust had suggested that milk produced by trans women – who are born male – with the help of powerful drugs was ‘comparable to that produced [by women] following the birth of a baby’.
But amid mounting pressure to review the controversial policies, the Trust now insists its guidance was never intended to encourage trans women to ‘chestfeed’.
But last night Helen Joyce, of the campaign group Sex Matters, said it was ‘disturbing’ that it had taken the Trust so long ‘to reveal that staff at UH Sussex do, in fact, know that men can’t breastfeed’.
Emma Thomas, founder of Children of Transitioners, which supports people whose parents change gender and which initially complained about the guidance, said: ‘We have no idea how many CoT babies worldwide have been harmed as a result [of this].’
The States - Can Trump Save American Education?
Jacob Howland, Provost of the University of Austin, on Unherd writes:
How Trump can make education great again It's time to correct a century-old mistake
December 2
Linda McMahon’s nomination to head the Department of Education was a characteristic move from Donald Trump, host of The Apprentice, who ended every episode with the words “You’re fired!”. McMahon, who co-founded the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is no stranger to the roped ring, where she dished out slaps and once kicked her husband Vince in the balls. She has little experience in education but whatever one may think of her qualifications, to put her forward was an inspired act of populist political showmanship. It proclaimed Trump’s intention to body-slam the dysfunctional, ideologically captured bureaucracies that have brought American education to its knees.
Universities urgently need reform. Henry Adams, who graduated from tiny Harvard College in 1858, wrote that his alma mater left the mind “open”, “supple”, and “ready to receive knowledge”. Few would say that today about any elite American university or liberal arts college. The top schools, and many lower-ranked ones as well, have become grim centres of cancellation, progressivist indoctrination, and self-censorship.
He concludes:
Even with control of both house of Congress, how much Trump and McMahon can accomplish in the face of Democratic opposition and widespread hostility among federal employees remains to be seen. But if they want to Make Education Great Again, they need to make it easier to start new universities. Regulatory capture is the rule in higher education, even in red states. When the University of Austin (where I am provost) received state authorisation in 2023 to open its doors to students, it was the first new secular institution to do so in Texas in over 60 years. And although our first class of freshmen matriculated this September, these students can receive no federal financial aid until we are accredited, which cannot occur before they graduate. Nor can their parents use popular 529 education savings plans to pay their tuition.
Yet ours is a model whose time has come —as a CBS News feature makes clear. Like rowers, future builders, leaders, and founders need to look back to the past in order to move into the future. Our curriculum turns on the civilisationally productive tensions between tradition and innovation, reason and revelation, authority and freedom, the individual and society. We introduce students to the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors, compel them to apply those lessons to today’s pressing challenges, and equip them with the 21st-century skills they need in order to do so — all in an atmosphere of open inquiry and civil discourse. For the next four years, at least, institutions that want to try similar pedagogical experiments will have fresh wind in their sails.
The full piece is here:
The States - Is The Jig Up?
On Alpha News, Liz Collin interviews former Democrat operative Matt Osborne who explains why he thinks that the jig is up for gender identity. Here’s hoping!!!
Australia - Misinformation Bill Dropped
This is the second piece from the FSU newsletter and some great news (for a change) from Australia.
Australian government drops controversial misinformation bill amid Senate opposition
Australia’s illiberal misinformation bill will not now become law after the government conceded there is “no pathway” to getting it through the Senate.
This marks an important victory in the fight for free speech in the country – thanks in part to the FSU’s sister group, the Free Speech Union of Australia. Tens of thousands of Australians have used the group’s online campaigning tool to protest about the risk that the legislation posed to democracy.
Full details here.
The Harms of Wrong Sex Hormones
Thanks again to Feminist Legal Clinic and another important report into the damage caused by wrong sex hormones. Apologies for the incorrect terminology which stems from the original medical journal that is being quoted.
Research highlights long-term health effects of hormone therapy in transgender individuals (02 December)
New research from Karolinska Institutet shows that long-term sex hormone treatment in transgender individuals can lead to significant changes in body composition and risk factors for cardiovascular disease, particularly in transgender men. The study is published in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
“We saw that transgender men treated with testosterone increased their muscle volume by an average of 21 percent over six years, but also that the amount of abdominal fat increased by 70 percent. In addition, they had more liver fat and higher levels of ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol, which may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.”
Tommy Lundberg, docent at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet
“Previous studies in this area have been relatively short-term, up to two years,” explains Tommy Lundberg. “Our results show that it is important to continue monitoring the long-term health effects of hormone therapy in transgender individuals to prevent cardiovascular disease and other health issues.”
In transgender women receiving estrogen treatment, the changes were not as pronounced. Their muscle volume decreased by an average of seven percent after five years of treatment, whereas muscle strength remained unchanged. The transgender women increased their total fat volume but gained less abdominal fat.
Source: Research highlights long-term health effects of hormone therapy in transgender individuals
Girls’ Football
A final piece from the FSU Newsletter.
FSU appoints barrister to support teenage girl banned over transgender remark
With the FSU’s help, the 17-year-old female footballer banned for six matches after asking a bearded transgender opponent “Are you a man?” is to launch an appeal. As reported by the Telegraph, we’ve arranged for leading barrister John Joliffe to help her with the appeal.
In the latest case to raise serious questions about the Football Association’s failure to ban those born male from the women’s game, the girl was charged by her county FA after the opposition club lodged a complaint. She had no legal representation when found guilty by the FA’s National Serious Case Panel.
Another shocking feature of the story is that the girl has autism. It’s a good illustration of the iron rule that the more an organisation professes to care about the suffering of minorities, the more likely it is to inflict cruel and unusual punishments on them.
Full details here.
The Ruin of Jaguar
Another amazing piece of investigative journalism by Malcolm Clark on his susbstack, The Secret Gender Files looking at the risible Jaguar ad and the links between Jaguar and rabid transactivist and editor of LGBT WTF LOL Attitude magazine, Darren Styles.
How LGBTQ+ Activism Ruined Jaguar.
The roots of Jaguar's advertising disaster lie in its decade long partnership with one of the most toxic gay men in the entire LGBTQ+ lobby: the trans-obsessed publisher of 'Attitude' magazine.
Nov 30, 2024
Last week’s bizarre Jaguar advert ‘Copy Nothing’ has been almost universally panned. Marketing experts are no doubt right now trying to decide its ranking in the List of Worst Ads Ever.
Is it more ridiculous than Pepsi’s ad from 2017 where Kendall Jenner defuses a social justice riot by handing a cop a …can of Pepsi? Just about.
Is it creepier than Peloton’s ad from 2019 in which a guy gifts his apparently anorexic girlfriend an exercise bike so she can lose some weight?
Perhaps not. It’s a stinker nonetheless.
One reason the Jaguar ad was so widely mocked was the cast looked as if they had discharged themselves from some kind of “neurodivergent” institution. Then raided random bins for things to wear.
They exuded all the joy of a troupe of Uighur slave workers pressed into action to promote Xi Jinping’s latest Five Year Plan. But as waves of hysterical laughter rolled across the world there was one little chink of light for Jaguar.
Darren Styles, the MD and Publishing Editor of LGBTQ+ magazine Attitude was glowing in his praise. According to Darren the fact the likes of Elon Musk and Nigel Farage pilloried the ad was great news for Jaguar. Their “hate and homophobia made a genius of Jaguar’s rebrand,” he declared.
Mmm…
The rather obvious flaw in his argument is that just because these men loathe something doesn’t mean the thing they loathe is ….genius. Musk and Farage presumably also hate cholera, stink bombs and being slapped around the face with a frozen trout. That does not mean anyone else should seek out these experiences. Never mind that they equate to ….genius.
You probably assume Jaguar’s management could care less about the views of Darren Styles OBE (he refers to his gong so often he probably has it monogrammed on his slippers). After all this is a man who has become a byword for LGBTQ+ extremism, not least for spewing online insults about JK Rowling.
But it turns out….
For the full piece, see here:
The Myth of Gender Dysphoria
I have just caught up, thanks to a wonderful reader, with this brilliant deconstruction of the mythical condition of ‘gender dysphoria’ by Pamela Williams on her substack, Dr P’s Newsletter.
Why ‘Gender Dysphoria’ is a lie
Jul 04, 2024
Psychological distress and aberrant behaviours are always conceptualised through the lens of culture, and in any society, at any given time, we create medical and psychological narratives to best understand aspects of human behaviour based on these prevailing norms. These then go on to shape further behaviours. This is known as the ‘symptom pool’.
Anorexia was almost unknown in Hong Kong until a public awareness campaign was launched by Western psychiatrists in the 1990s. Within a few years there was a 2,500% increase in cases. Girls diagnosed with anorexia were treated sympathetically, they were taken out of school and given positive reinforcement for their illness. Unsurprisingly, more girls began restricting their eating, thus causing a growing feedback loop of youngsters developing anorexia. The awareness campaign in Hong Kong, had in effect, created and spread a novel mental illness (and its behavioural sequalae) into a population of receptive and suggestible adolescents.
In the 1980s and 90s ‘False Memory Syndrome’ led to families being torn apart by accusations of supposed childhood sexual abuse, particularly incest. Through guided imagery, hypnosis and simple suggestion, psychologists encouraged clients (mainly women) to ‘recover’ entirely factitious ‘memories’ of sexual abuse, some supposedly occurring as early as three months old!
After the 2004 Sri Lanka Tsunami, the unknown concept of PTSD was introduced into the general population of Sri Lanka by well-meaning foreign aid agencies.
In the 2000s, Japan saw a surge in the incidence of depression after GlaxoSmithKline released the antidepressant Paxil into the local market.
Even further back, the infamous case of the symptom pool in operation is Salem, Massachusetts, in the late 1600s, where mainly teenage girls (sounds familiar?), fell into the mass delusion that they were being ‘pricked’ (attacked/possessed) by the Devil. Adults ran with this idea. As more girls received positive attention and sympathy by showing symptoms of possession, the contagion spread. The rest, as they say, is history.
Currently the West is in the grip of an unprecedented medical scandal arising from a new entrant to the symptom pool, namely Gender Dysphoria.
Here is why from the perspective of being a nearly 30-year qualified clinical psychologist, I believe that Gender Dysphoria is a false construct. One that has caused, and if not stopped, will continue to cause immeasurable harm to innumerable numbers of people.
The addition of Gender Dysphoria to the symptom pool is fed by the concept of gender identity, an unprovable, metaphysical belief that we all have an innate sense of our ‘gender’. That our gender exists outside of our physical bodies.
Gender Dysphoria occurs when one’s gender identity does not match one’s sexed body.
Following from a diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria is the near inevitability of ‘gender affirming care’. This involves the highly unethical and entirely experimental use of synthetic cross-sex hormones and the surgical mutilation of physically healthy bodies in order to align with one’s supposed gender identity.
But Gender Dysphoria itself is not real. It has no clinical or evidentiary basis. It is a false construct, created ex nihilo and first published in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM), 5th edition, in October 2013. We psychologists should not be involved in any of it.
The full piece is here:
https://dionneinlondon.substack.com/p/why-gender-dysphoria-is-a-lie
Beware the ‘Reasonable Transsexual’!
Finally, Jennifer Bilek warns on her substack against being fooled by ‘reasonable transsexuals.’
Public Bathrooms and the Rising Political Class of the “Reasonable Transsexual”
Nov 29, 2024
The issue of men posing as women needing a place to pee in public institutions, is being renewed with fervor, and the rise of a political class of the “reasonable transsexual” is being fomented in America. Congresswoman, Nancy Mace, apparently hitting “peak tran$,” along with the rest of Americans who voted for a second Trump presidency, has created a media stir over her insistence that two-time Delaware Senator and U.S. Representative elect, Sarah (Tim) McBride must use the men’s bathroom in accordance with his sex, while at work.
Mace is unimpressed with McBride’s "Gender identity." She is not quite at the point of realizing that gender identity is more than a belief system, but she is getting warm.
Gender identity is the colonization of womanhood, specifically women’s capacities to reproduce the species. Gender ideology is the cult doctrine supporting this process of colonization. And, the gender industry is this process at industry scale, selling us all on the reasonableness of men’s colonization of womanhood.
There are no reasonable or good men posing as women. There are no reasonable or good men attempting to claim womanhood for themselves. There are no reasonable or good men wearing simulacrums of women’s anatomy, regardless of what bathroom they are using. Men taking what does not belong to them is not reasonable. These men breaching the barrier of women’s public bathrooms, will be the least of our problems soon enough, because men posing as women are a rising political class. These men are coming for womanhood itself, while getting off on performing our sexual subordination. They are no longer just speaking for us, but speaking as us in the ruling chambers of congress.
When we get to the point where we can understand this process thoroughly, the myth of the “transgender person,” a corporate construct that allows for this colonization of womanhood, will dissipate like morning dew in emerging sunlight, and we can begin to develop strong strategies to end it.
Every man posing as a woman is engaging in a process of colonization, whether they call themselves men, women, girls, transwomen, trans-identified males, or anything else. This process has become a global compulsion, as it is now industrialized. It is no longer reserved for a select group of men walking the red-light districts. It has now entered the halls of power. These men feel entitled to womanhood. They believe it is theirs for the taking, that they can create us from their own projections. They have been emboldened by legal policies created and financially solidified by other men with the paraphilia of transsexualism (autogynephilia), to publicly perform the sexual objectification, society reserves for women. Make no mistake, performing women’s sexually objectified social status is the paraphilia - not being women, but being men’s sexually objectified projection of women.
The full piece is here:
Endpiece by Liz
Taking her cue from Malcolm Clark:
#BeMorePorcupine
#LetWomenSpeak
#Grassroots Army
#GenderIdeologyIsEvil
#MenCantBeWomen
Hi readers
I have had an impromptu day out with the Boys from the Black Country ( where I live). I have been keeping an eye on developments! Next update tomorrow night.
Dusty
'Trans' anything makes me want to puke now. There, I've said it. I've come a long way since I was chill about it if they hurt no one, and naïvely believed the propaganda that taking artificial female hormones reduced a man to the same physical level of women in sports, for example. The last few years have taught me that the 'trans' community absolutely has a stratospherically higher level of the worst sort of men than men in general have. I'm not letting women off the hook for being capable of bad behaviour, but on the whole it's vastly different to men's. Men who say they're women have done nothing but advocate for themselves in a way that has been detrimental to women and girls, which they deny with piteous pleas about how hard life is for them and they're not taking anything away from women by taking places and spaces away from women. They are completely incapable, as a rule, of thinking of anyone but themselves. If we give even a millimetre to them, we might as well hold open every door to every women's and girls' space and sport to them, because once the door is open even the tiniest bit, they won't stop pushing for it to be wide open. There is no such thing as a reasonable 'trans' person. Having said all that, I really don't care in essence if some sick men want to pretend to be women, and vice versa, but, for the men, stay in your lane and stay out of women's - always and forever.