The Rapids
Update 501. Grooming Gangs Special. #BeMorePorcupine
There is a lot of looking back and also looking forward in this update! All thoughts from readers, as ever, gratefully received.
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).
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/empire-of-light-nominations-for-films
We start with The African Queen.
Katharine Hepburn is Rose Sayer and Humphrey Bogart is Charlie Allnut.
Samuel Sayer and his sister Rose are British missionaries in Kungdu in German East Africa in August 1914. Their post and supplies are delivered by a small steamboat named the African Queen, helmed by a rough-and-ready Canadian mechanic, Charlie Allnut.
When Charlie warns the Sayers that war has broken out between Germany and Britain, they choose to remain in Kungdu, only to witness German colonial troops burn down the village and herd the villagers away to be pressed into service. When Samuel protests, he is struck by a soldier and soon becomes delirious with fever, dying shortly afterwards. Charlie helps Rose bury her brother and they escape in the African Queen.
Charlie mentions to Rose that the British are unable to attack the Germans because of the presence of a large gunboat, the Königin Luise, patrolling a large lake downriver. Rose comes up with a plan to convert the African Queen into a torpedo boat and sink the Königin Luise. After some persuasion, Charlie goes along with the plan.
Thanks to three wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
2024 in the States
A nice short round up of 2024 in the States from Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans ( though they don’t mention Trump’s election for some reason!?).
https://www.pittparents.com/p/this-year-feels-different?publication_id=374402&r=1v403b
EDI Jester - Looking Forward to 2025
EDI Jester mentions two challenges being brought by brave students and looks forward to 2025 - he is especially concerned about the review of the national curriculum.
I wrote in the comments:
I agree that the curriculum review is crucial and very scary. Bits and pieces are coming out. Science should be diverse (?). Shakespeare is outdated(!!!???).
I think we also need to get on our armour for the Conversion Practices Bill that will be coming our way this year ( it was in the King's Speech so it is imminent).
I note that FSU's judicial review challenge to Phillipson over the Freedom of Speech Act is up for final hearing on 23 January.
We await the For Women Scotland judgment.
EHRC are getting stuck in on the single sex spaces guidance.
We await the finalised schools guidance.
Will clinical trials proceed re puberty blockers for children - how can they be assessed as ethical?
Apart from that it's really quite quiet 🤣
All comments gratefully received.
Andrew Doyle - Looking Forward to 2025
On his substack, Andrew Doyle also looks to the year ahead.
A wish list for 2025
My overview of what we could be doing better in this new year…
Jan 03, 2025
The year 2025 has a near-magical quality to it. Mathematicians will be eager to tell you that 2025 is the square of 45, and that this is the first square year since 1936 (which is 44²), and we won’t see another one in our lifetimes because the next will be in 2116 (46²). Moreover, apparently 2025 is the total sum of all the cubes of the numbers 1 to 9. For the nerds out there: 1³ + 2³ +3³ +4³ +5³ +6³ +7³ +8³ +9³ = 2025.
As one who was forced to drop my AS-level in Mathematics out of sheer incompetency, I have little interest in such trivia. For me, 2025 has another meaning. And at the risk of sounding hopelessly sanguine, I am going to make some predictions for what we might just achieve if we work hard enough and pray to our various gods.
A free speech fightback
In the wake of the summer riots, we saw draconian jail sentences meted out to citizens for posting offensive memes. The Labour government scotched the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act the day before parliament went into recess. Secretary of State Yvette Cooper has pledged to make the recording of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ more common. There are suggestions that the government will introduce measures against ‘Islamophobia’, a nonsense term designed to curb criticism of religion. There needs to be a concerted effort to restate the primacy of free speech. Our civilisation depends on it.
An end to two-tier policing
In spite of all the denials from the government and the law enforcement agencies, it is perfectly apparent that the police are operating with extreme ideological bias. Whether this involves turning a blind eye to criminality within certain communities, or persecuting gender-critical feminists for acknowledging that sex is real, the failures have become increasingly apparent. Rather than deny that the College of Policing – the body responsible for training police in England and Wales – is ideologically captured, there needs to be a serious effort to address the problem.
Kicking ideology out of the arts
So many of our creative industries are captured: publishing, comedy, theatre, television, film, music… just about everything. Most of us are sick of being preached at when we simply want to be entertained. And some of the most talented artists are squandering their potential by attempting to feed the insatiable beast of identity politics. I would like once again to be able to book tickets to a play confident in the knowledge that it won’t be an ideological sermon in disguise. One can but dream.
A complete ban on puberty blockers
Much to his credit, Wes Streeting, the current Health Secretary, has resisted pressure from activists within his own party and, in accordance with the recommendations of the Cass Review, implemented a full ban on puberty blockers. However, there will still be trials undertaken on the NHS into the efficacy of these drugs, even though nobody in the government can define ‘gender identity’. If this concept cannot be defined, let alone proven to exist, why should any children – on trials or otherwise – be denied the right to puberty? Ultimately, we need to stop basing public health policy on superstitious or pseudo-religious beliefs.
The full list is here:
https://www.andrewdoyle.org/p/a-wish-list-for-2025
New Zealand - Round Up of the Terf Year 2024
Excellent round up of the Terfy Kiwi year from Katrina Biggs on her substack, A B’Old Woman.
A round up of New Zealand’s year of gender ideology in 2024.
Jan 03, 2025
Either a lot more has happened this year around gender ideology here in New Zealand, or I’ve just written a lot more. I’ve published 85 blogpieces in all, including those which have been in the form of intros to YouTube videos, or articles written by others. I think a number of us terfs and terf-supporters increased our networking this year, which created more awareness of issues, as well as activity. Here’s a precis of the goings-on in 2024 taken from my blog, which admittedly isn’t a short read, but I’ve made headings on each section, so you can skip through and decide on what does and doesn’t take your interest.
1) The t-shirt which said “men are not women, even if you squint”. The year kicked off with a Māori woman elder, Phillippa, being kicked out of a smalltown supermarket for wearing a t-shirt which said “Men are not women, even if you squint”. The t-shirt agitated a male pretend-woman staff member behind the Lotto counter, and he was surly and rude towards Phillippa as she was buying a Lotto ticket on her way home from work. Phillippa, not unreasonably, made her objection to his behaviour known, whereby the staff member escalated his umbrage. This alerted the manager, as it was likely intended to, who brusquely evicted Phillippa and trespassed her from the store for two years. When the incident went public, he and the staff member spun a version of the story, which unsurprisingly, conflicted with Phillippa’s version. The manager’s behaviour does beg the question - has he ever evicted and trespassed a bloke from his store, for wearing what a female staff member deemed to be an offensive t-shirt? Phillipa’s t-shirt can’t possibly have been the first one worn in the store which was ever considered to have come into their category of ‘offensive’. Understandably, Phillippa was shaken by what had happened, but eventually began proceedings to get the trespass order lifted, so she didn’t have to travel another 30 mins to the next nearest supermarket. However, she was stonewalled, and unable to make progress with that. A couple of months later, Phillippa spoke about the incident on Reality Check Radio.
2) The challenge to the wording of the Midwifery Council’s Scope of Practice. We stepped up our challenge to NZ’s Midwifery Council* about them ditching the words ‘mother’, ‘woman’, and ‘baby’ from their initial revised Scope of Practice. They did this in favour of using what is commonly, but erroneously, called ‘inclusive language’. I prefer to call it ‘amorphous blob’ language, for its lack of definition. This amorphous blob language included liberally using Māori words in the English language version of the Scope of Practice, even though a Māori language version had also been created. Māori women’s group Mana Wāhine Kōrero rejected the way the Māori words were used in both Scopes, saying that many were used out of context, or were dodgy translations, and therefore didn’t make enough sense.
Midwife, Deb Hayes, started a Parliamentary Petition against the initial revised Scope of Practice, after the Midwifery Council ignored an overwhelming rejection of it via a public consultation process. The Council was determined to proceed with it in the form they liked, but which the public didn’t. The petition gained nearly 7,500 signatures – a lot for NZ – and was presented to Parliament by National MP James Meager. Written submissions were then made to the Parliament Petitions Committee, and from those submissions only Deb Hayes and Mana Wāhine Kōrero were invited to make oral presentations to the committee in September to state our case, as was the Midwifery Council. In an extraordinary and never explained move, the Petitions Committee decided to withhold the video of Mana Wāhine Kōrero’s presentation from public access. Reality Check Radio subsequently invited the presentation to be read on air with them.
Prior to making their oral presentation to the Petitions Committee, the Midwifery Council made what appeared to be some grudging last minute changes to the revised Scope of Practice. These were perfunctory at best, and the revised Scope remains unsatisfactory. No decision has yet been made by the Petitions Committee about the language used in the revised Scope, but the Midwifery Council is proceeding with its implementation, regardless. However, the challenge to it remains active, as well. Sarah Henderson talks with Paul Brennan on Reality Check Radio about it.
* The Midwifery Council is a different body to the College of Midwives.
3) Health NZ continues to be afraid of using the word ‘woman’. How many ways can a health body make their messaging about menstruation incomprehensible? Health NZ has mastered the art of that. It stays determined to not use the word ‘woman’ when gobbedlygook will do. Neither do they like using that icky word when talking about pregnancy, preferring the sanitised word ‘people’ instead. In effect, they and others who won’t give women definition, veil women with their amorphous blob language. They’re under some sad misapprehension, cleverly sold to them by overly influential TQ+ lobbyists, that it makes everyone happy. However, there is at least one (secret) place in NZ where the health provider either doesn’t know that the word ‘woman’ is forbidden, or doesn’t care 😊
Once again, the full list is here:
UK - The Grooming Gang Scandal
I know my readers will be shocked ( or perhaps I should say will continue to be shocked) by the grooming gang scandal which has been brought to the fore again by the release of the shocking transcripts of the judgments from the Oxford trials. This is outside the remit of this substack where, generally speaking, we concentrate on the Terf Resistance to ‘gender ideology’ and the fight for free speech, so I thought I would just direct readers to four pieces by people who I regularly go to for the purposes of Terf news.
Kellie-Jay Keen
EDI Jester
Matt Goodwin
John McGuirk, the editor of Gript News
https://gript.ie/uk-grooming-gang-galileo/?ct=t(EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_5_17_2022_13_19_COPY_01)
There is a clear analogy with the scandal that us Terfs have been highlighting for a long time namely the medicalisation and abuse of confused children suffering from so called ‘gender dysphoria’. Of course, the difference is that, apart from us, nobody has yet accepted that this is the biggest medical scandal of this century. Perhaps in 2025 we can get this fact finally accepted.
All thoughts gratefully received.
UK - EHRC Draft Code of Practice
The Equality and Human Rights Commission have had their latest Code of Practice on the Equality Act out for consultation ( the consultation concluded on 03 January). Michael Foran on his substack Knowing ius looks at the bits that pertain to gender ideology and his submissions to the consultation. This is long and complex and I haven’t fully got my head around it yet but he concludes:
In general the Code of Practice fails to recognise that those protected under the characteristic of gender reassignment will be either male or female. All statements or examples involving trans people treat them as a monolith. This does not accurately reflect the legal position and consequently fails to provide accurate, clear guidance in circumstances where legal rights and duties differ depending on the sex of the person in question. This guidance should accurately reflect the law first and foremost. Describing males with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment as "trans women" without any explanation that they are men for the purposes of the Equality Act (ignoring GRCs and FWS2) renders the guidance unworkable and positively contributes to misunderstanding of the law. Prioritise clear unambiguous explanation of the law above all else. That is what this guidance is supposed to do.
The full piece is here:
https://knowingius.org/p/response-to-ehrc-code-of-practice
Bye Bye DEI?
Vince Dao explains how American universities are beginning to get rid of DEI ( Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Departments. As we know, DEI is also the means by which the gender ideology madness is introduced into universities and other organisations.
Drew Augustine
As many of you will know, Party of Women candidate and therapist, Kelly Dougall now has a podcast. Here is an interesting discussion with author Drew Augustine who has published a Terfy crime thriller.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Twenty-Murders-Drew-Augustine/dp/B0D55QQ5LP
Education
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, will, doubtless, not take any notice of the wonderful results obtained in the Michaela School in London by Katharine Birbalsingh. Jordan Peterson takes notice though! And so do I! Great stuff! Once again, all thoughts gratefully received.
Surrogacy
We are doing a lot of stepping outside the remit in this update 😄 I think a lot of my readers will, as I am, be opposed to surrogacy , so you may want to send this letter to your MP about the current Law Commission proposals. Thanks to my friend Siobhan for bringing this to my attention.
Endpieces by Liz
For Petal
For Roy Larner ( the Lion of London Bridge)
For new readers who are wondering why we keep talking about Porcupines, here is the Gender Leopard being defeated by the Terfy Porcupine 😆
#BeMorePorcupine
#LetWomenSpeak
#Grassroots Army
#FightForFreeSpeech
#KeepOnTerfing
#GenderEnders
#WeWillWin
Surrogacy has no place in a civilised country. It has to end.
How on Earth is Wes Streeting managing to keep going? The pressure on him to relent must be intense!
There has to be more to come, TT. I'm originally from Rotherham (I think I've mentioned before), and know the South Yorkshire towns very well. Doncaster, Barnsley and Sheffield are all delighted that Rotherham is deflecting attention from them, because they are at least as bad. By extension, the West Yorkshire towns and cities are unlikely to be any different, and so on, in a widening radius. The ones we've seen so far could well be merely the tip of a very big iceberg.