Through The Portals. Part 1
Update 652. Online Safety Act Special. #BeMorePorcupine.
Firstly, best of luck to the Lionesses. For those who haven’t been following it or don’t know what I’m talking about, England ( the Lionesses) are playing Spain tomorrow at 5pm in the final of the 2025 Women’s Football Euros.
The news and views are still pouring in to Dusty Towers, so this is another two parter, dear readers.
Part 2 is a Down Under Special - well, there are several reports from Australia and one report from New Zealand.
For information, I continue to work on two one offs:
(a) a piece on the US Brandenburg Test on incitement to violence - once completed this will only be available to paid subscribers.
(b) a piece on my suggestions as to amendments required to the UK Equality Act - once completed I will make this available to everyone.
Bear with me!!!
Now we are back with Dusty’s film series and the latest version of the list is here. Thanks to reader Moodieonroody for just providing loads of great suggestions which have been added in.
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/empire-of-light-dustys-film-series
Please let us have your suggestions for films but please check the list first to see if it is there already. I am updating the list as we go along. We are going through them alphabetically and have got to F.
Next up is Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank (2014) - which mainly takes place in Ireland and one of the members of the unpronounceable band is Irish actor, Domhnall Gleeson.
It is one of my all time favourite films!!
While walking along the beach in his hometown, aspiring songwriter Jon Burroughs (Gleeson) witnesses a man named Lucas trying to drown himself. As Lucas is taken to the hospital, Jon meets Don (Scoot McNairy), who explains that Lucas was the keyboardist for a band called The Soronprfbs, which Don manages. After mentioning that he plays keyboards, Jon is invited to perform with them that night. The Soronprfbs’ drummer Nana (Carla Azra), synthesizer and theremin player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhall), and guitarist Baraque (Francois Civil) are reluctant to accept Jon, but he is warmly welcomed by lead vocalist Frank (Michael Fassbender), who always wears a papier mâché mask over his head. Frank invites Jon to be part of a Soronprfbs project. He agrees and accompanies them to a remote cabin in Ireland, believing it would take a few days, only to realize they are set to stay there for a whole year while they work on their debut album.
Here is their (hoped for) hit single, Secure the Galactic Perimeter.
Through the portals
Comet tails
Screeching frequencies
Of pulsing infinities
Awake in the hive
Where the sap is collected
The process perfected
The galactic siren sounds
Thanks to two wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall
UK - Online Safety Act
The ‘child safety’ provisions of the Online Safety Act have been brought into force as of 25 July. EDI Jester is extremely concerned that this Act is a Trojan Horse aimed at those who are advancing arguments that are opposed to the establishment line - such as us Terfs, for example.
The Jester has done an essay and video on this on his substack (and on X). All thoughts gratefully received.
For The Good of the Children - The Ultimate Trojan Horse
Jul 26, 2025
"History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is."
Thomas Jefferson
Take the Poll Here
The Online Safety Act 2023, championed by both parties as a shield for the vulnerable, is a Trojan Horse, poised to strangle freedom under the guise of safety. Its vague mandates, censoring content deemed harmful or enforcing invasive age checks, equip Ofcom with sweeping powers to police speech and erode privacy.
…..
Labour’s woke Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI/DEI) agenda, finds a perfect weapon in this Act.
We betray the future whilst this exists.
The nebulous concept of “harmful” content risks branding dissent, on gender ideology, racial quotas, or other EDI/DEI dogmas, as dangerous, silencing open debate. Platforms, threatened with ruinous fines or executive prison time, will over-censor to appease Labour’s ideological bent, crushing satire, minority voices, or anything challenging the woke status quo.
Age verification normalises data collection, creating digital honeypots for state surveillance, while content-scanning mandates could gut encryption, exposing private beliefs to scrutiny. Ofcom’s unchecked authority to block services or dictate content standards hands Labour a censor’s gavel, potentially targeting platforms hosting anti-woke views.
The Act’s false communications offence, with its loose “harm” threshold, could criminalise honest opinions or provocative speech, aligning with Labour’s push to tame “misinformation.” Small platforms, vital for free expression, face extinction under compliance costs, leaving only corporate giants echoing Labour’s narrative. In its darkest form, this Act births a dystopian internet: a surveillance state where every word is policed, every user tracked, and only EDI/DEI-approved ideas survive.
Labour’s vision, cloaked in child protection, risks forging a digital prison, where Britain’s online sphere, once a bastion of liberty, becomes a sterile echo chamber, suffocating truth and dissent in the name of safety.
The full piece is here:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-169285157
Sandie Peggie
As readers know, we have been following this tribunal since it resumed. On Friday, attention turned to certain phone notes of significant incidents made by Dr Upton. Two experts, one for each side, looked at these notes. Dr Upton had stated that these notes were ‘contemporaneous’. However, it was apparent that these notes had either been created or amended at later dates than the dates when they were said to have been made. To cut a long story short, the expert conclusion was that the only way this could be done was by someone manipulating the notes and….who might that be?
Rebecca McCurdy in The Herald ( Upton altered records to include Peggie patient concern 25 July) reports:
Sandie Peggie arrived at the Dundee Tribunal Hearing Centre. (Image: Iain Masterton)
The transgender medic at the centre of Sandie Peggie's employment tribunal against NHS Fife altered phone notes to include patient safety concerns after the Christmas Eve changing room dispute.
Evidence bundles seen exclusively by The Herald revealed that Dr Beth Upton kept a log of their interactions with Ms Peggie months before the incident.
Ms Peggie is suing her employer after she was suspended following an incident with Dr Upton on Christmas Eve in 2023, where she objected to the trans medic's use of the female changing room.
She also made reference to the situation being similar to men using the female prison estate, with Dr Upton lodging a formal complaint.
Ms Peggie was placed on special leave in December 2023 and suspended in January 2024. Patient safety concerns were then raised.
The nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy has been cleared of all misconduct allegations.
On Friday, the tribunal heard that Dr Upton first shared the phone notes with Peter Donaldson, an information security manager at NHS Fife over Microsoft Teams in May 2025.
He did not perform a forensic examination of the computer, not did he personally check the device.
IT forensic expert Jim Borthwick conducted an independent investigation at the request of Ms Peggie's legal team, where concerns over NHS Fife's investigation were revealed.
His investigation revealed that Dr Upton had logged an interaction with Ms Peggie on December 18, 2023.
It originally said: "Working nights. Won't make eye contact. Won't acknowledge my presence.
"Not had direct conversation yet but I can feel the dismissal/hostility."
There was no other information added from that evening, with the next log noting the Christmas Eve dispute.
However, Mr Borthwick's independent investigation revealed that the log from December 18 was then updated on Boxing Day 2023 at 1:51am.
The full article is here:
The case continues for three days next week though I would think that there are urgent discussions taking place amongst NHS Fife, Dr Upton and their legal team this weekend!!!!
You can follow the case with tribunal tweets:
https://x.com/tribunaltweets?lang=en
Michael Foran on his substack is doing an excellent rolling update but this is behind a paywall:
UK - British Broadcasting Corporation Gaslighting Children
One extract here from the latest Sex Matters newsletter ( 25 July):
Before pupils return in September, the government should direct schools that they are not to pretend that people can change sex, because they are not keeping children safe if they do so.
We have sent our updated model policy to the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson MP.
We have also taken the chance to alert her to the campaign being launched by BBC children’s presenter Dr Ronx to distribute “Safe With Me” badges to schools, hospitals and retailers. The badge, aimed at both children and adults, is a pledge that the wearer will “accompany trans+ people to their preferred facilities if asked”.
It should be obvious that handing out badges enabling people to self-identify as “safe” and telling children to accompany adult strangers to the toilet is utterly irresponsible. But then it should be obvious that pretending that men can be women is irresponsible too.
Download our updated model policy:
Our friend, Nutmeg who does the weekly update on the Glinner Update has also reported on this:
A 'non-binary' BBC presenter has launched a project in which she distributes badges, saying 'Safe With Me', in schools, for children to wear in public places. They will signify to any 'trans people' nearby that the child will escort them to a toilet.
https://x.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1948270400888082704
Ireland - Enoch Burke
I last reported on Enoch’s case here:
Órla O’Donnell on RTE ( Enoch Burke granted injunction over composition of appeals panel 25 July) reports:
Secondary school teacher Enoch Burke has been granted an injunction stopping the general secretary of secondary school teachers' union, the ASTI, from being part of a panel to hear an appeal against his dismissal from the school where he taught.
The Court of Appeal overturned the High Court’s refusal to stop the holding of the disciplinary hearing with a panel including ASTI General Secretary Kieran Christie.
Mr Burke had sought an injunction restraining the holding the appeal due to the composition of the panel.
He made claims of objective bias against Mr Christie.
Mr Burke claimed Mr Christie was a "promoter of transgenderism". And he raised comments made by the union’s deputy general secretary in a Sunday newspaper, to the effect that the union did not have a written policy on students’ pronouns, but that they would "advise schools to use the pronoun a child wishes to be used".
His case was rejected by the High Court in December 2023.
But in its ruling, the Court of Appeal found Mr Burke had made out a fair issue to be tried and had a strong case, that there would be a reasonable apprehension of bias if Mr Christie remained on the appeal panel.
Dispute
The dispute between Mr Burke and Wilson’s Hospital School began when the then principal of the school sent an email to staff in May 2022, telling them a student wanted to transition and would become known by a different name and use "they/them" pronouns.
Mr Burke objected, raising the matter at a staff meeting, at a meeting with the principal as well as during and after a church service in June 2022.
The school says Mr Burke acted wholly inappropriately in the way he objected to the principal’s instruction.
Mr Burke says he acted appropriately and was punished for his religious beliefs.
Mr Burke was suspended in August 2022, and spent several periods in Mountjoy Prison for breaching court orders directing him to stay away from the school. He was dismissed in January 2023.
Mr Burke appealed the dismissal by the Board of Management to the Disciplinary Appeals Panel, but subsequently objected to the composition of the panel.
He claimed Mr Christie was "a promoter of transgenderism in the ASTI, had awarded those who advance transgenderism in schools and had worked closely with Transgender Equality Network Ireland over many years." He said it was not appropriate that he be a panel member.
Judge's ruling
Giving the Appeal Court’s ruling, Judge Mary Faherty said the primary focus of Mr Burke’s appeal was a statement made by the ASTI’s Deputy General Secretary Diarmaid de Paor in the Sunday Independent in September 2022.
In the article, Mr De Paor said the ASTI did not have a written policy on students’ pronouns but would generally advise schools to use the pronoun that a child wished to be used.
Judge Faherty said Mr Christie, as general secretary of the ASTI, would be perceived by the reasonable observer as being associated with this statement, which was in effect, she said, the ASTI position.
She said Mr Burke had made out a fair issue to be tried and had also established a strong case that there would be a reasonable apprehension of objective bias if he remained on the panel due to hear Mr Burke’s appeal.
She said this was because of the nature of Mr Christie’s role, and the fact that the ASTI’s position was likely to be adhered to by schools and appeared to have been adhered to by Wilson’s Hospital School.
She pointed out that the ASTI’s position was counter to Mr Burke’s position.
Judge Faherty said she did not believe the same issue would arise with any other person nominated by the ASTI to sit on the appeal board, instead of Mr Christie.
The judge also said she did not agree with the High Court’s finding that the concerns which led to Mr Burke’s suspension and subsequent dismissal related solely to the public way in which he expressed his opinion.
She said there was merit in Mr Burke’s submission that the principal was also concerned about the substance of his objections to calling the student a new name and using they/them pronouns.
'Spectre of unfairness'
Judge Faherty said what led to the disciplinary process was both the manner in which Mr Burke expressed his objections and his likely conduct going forward.
She said a reasonably informed observer would consider that the Disciplinary Appeals Panel would have to engage in analysis of the legitimacy of the principal’s instruction, which mirrored the advice given by the ASTI to schools.
The judge said, in deciding whether or not to grant Mr Burke the injunction he sought, she had considered his history of contempt of court.
She said he had an established history of not obeying court orders made against him in the proceedings taken by the school.
She said granting him the injunction he sought should not be seen as the Appeal Court condoning his "egregious contempt".
But she said a "spectre of unfairness" would hover over his appeal process if he had to face the panel as presently constituted, given that he had made out a case of a reasonable apprehension of objective bias.
She said in normal course, Mr Burke should be granted the costs of this appeal. But she said they were "not in normal territory" due to Mr Burke’s contempt of court.
She set aside an order for costs against him made in the High Court but did not award costs in his favour.
https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2025/0725/1525399-enoch-burke-court/
International Coalition
Daily Telegraph NZ report ( 25 July):
International coalition launches to protect children from W.H.O. sexualization agenda
Let Kids Be Kids is proud to be part of this new international alliance.
An unprecedented global alliance of parental rights and child protection organizations from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and beyond has been formed to counter the World Health Organization’s Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) framework, which members argue threatens the innocence and healthy development of children worldwide.
The newly launched International Coalition4Children brings together grassroots leaders, educators, and advocates united in a common mission: to protect childhood, uphold parental rights, and restore the role of the natural family in raising and educating the next generation.
“Children only get one childhood — it’s their human right to grow, go through puberty, accept themselves as they were born, and enter adulthood with their fertility intact. Schools must educate minds, not sexualize children or indoctrinate beliefs,” said Jana Lunden, spokesperson for the Natural Women’s Council in Ireland.
The World Health Organization and aligned UN agencies have promoted a model of education that critics say undermines biological reality, parental authority, and moral frameworks by introducing sexual concepts to children at increasingly younger ages.
“Children face unprecedented challenges to their healthy development,” said Kimberley Isherwood of Child Protection Wales.
“Our international coalition provides a unified response and protective framework for children everywhere. It is fair to say, it’s been a long time coming!”
The coalition rejects the WHO’s global Comprehensive Sexuality Education guidelines and instead promotes policies rooted in biology, parental rights, national sovereignty, and traditional moral values.
The full article is here:
Elective Amputation and ‘Gender Surgery’
In another forensic examination, Malcolm Clark on his substack, The Secret Gender Files looks at the links between ‘elective amputation’ and ‘gender surgery’ and the question of sexual fetishism.
Wannabe Amputees Explain Trans Identity.
Neil Hopper is alleged to have planned the amputation of his healthy legs. When I filmed someone who did just that I uncovered the ghastly sadomasochism that drives the trans movement.
Jul 26, 2025
As a surgeon Neil Hopper amputated limbs for a living. So when he had to have his own legs amputated in 2019 the tragic irony triggered an outpouring of sympathy. He was named as one of the bravest people in the UK in the BBC’s Bravest Britons of 2022 Awards. If only he’d been a drag queen he’d surely have won.
Now it turns out all this sympathy might have been misplaced. Earlier this week the aptly named Mr Hopper appeared before Cornwall Magistrates’ Court in Bodmin charged with fraud. It’s alleged he lied when he told insurers the injuries that required his legs to be amputated were due to sepsis. The police argue his injuries were self-inflicted.
This is the latest case to emerge as the result of the raid on a bizarre mutilation cult based in Finsbury Park in London. In Febuary 2022 seven men were arrested amid claims they were screening pay per view live castrations and ….amputations. At his trial in 2024 it was revealed the cult’s ringleader Marius Gustavson had screened his own castration. He kept his penis in a drawer. As opposed to his drawers.
Gustavson, who was known to his fellow cult members as the Eunuch Maker, also organised the amputation of one of his legs. He then claimed over £18,000 in disability benefits. The story of the Eunuch Maker and his fellow mutilators was portrayed by the media as so freaky it might as well inhabit the Twilight Zone. Understandably. No one wants to think men like these move among us. Even if they’re hobbling.
The charges against Neil Hopper are a clue there may be something more significant going on here than appeared at first sight. For one thing Hopper was not a random low-life like Gustavson. He was paid to amputate the limbs of hundreds of people who could never have imagined he was simultaneously nursing a powerful sexual fetish….about amputation….as it’s now alleged.
If he’s found guilty Hopper will be a reminder surgery has always exerted a dark sadomasochistic fascination for some people, including a small minority of surgeons. Nowhere is this clearer than in so-called “gender affirming healthcare” where men and women elect to have not their limbs amputated but their genitals.
Trans activists assure us there is absolutely no connection between apotemnophiles, who sexually fantasise about having their limbs removed, and transsexuals who want to have their healthy genitals sliced and diced. The truth is though the two groups share a common DNA. As I discovered for myself when I filmed a man who dreamed of having a healthy leg removed. And succeeded.
He would be considered crazy by most people. The media affect to be shocked by the very idea. Why though aren’t those who choose to get their healthy genitals mutilated viewed in the same way? Let me tell you why it’s long past time our society saw everyone involved in so-called “gender affirming healthcare” as no different ethically from Marius Gustavson who paid a 16 year old boy to amputate his penis.
The full piece is here:
The End Of Genderism
I think Kathleen Stock may be being a bit too optimistic but it is fascinating to see her analysis of her previous discipline, philosophy!
On Unherd she writes:
Is this the end of genderism?We are reaching trans tipping point
July 25, 2025
Sometimes, I wonder how I will know when the reign of genderism is definitively over. As philosophers say, I like to consider various possible worlds. Will it be when a national inquiry is held into child transition? Or when a whole month goes by without a drag queen story on the BBC website? Or when the head of MI6 finally takes the pronouns out of his X bio? “Gradually, then suddenly” is how Hemingway described going bankrupt. One hopes this applies to the morally bankrupt too.
Despite the recent Supreme Court ruling, some parts of the UK seem more stuck in transactivist delusions than ever. But this week, tantalisingly, I discerned signs of imminent collapse. The Scottish media appears gripped by the Sandy Peggie tribunal, with daily revelations of unsympathetic NHS managers defending the presence of a male doctor in the nurses’ female-only changing room. One newspaper even referred to the man at the heart of the case as “he”. Down south, the NHS has announced the terms of reference for a rapid investigation into a Brighton GP practice that prescribed puberty blockers to minors, and it sounds like it is not messing about. And in academia, Oxford philosophers Daniel Kodsi and John Maier just published an excoriating takedown of the Yale philosophy department’s own attempt to prop up child transition.
I am obviously particularly fascinated about what is happening in my former discipline. For years, I watched as a small number of philosophers, on both sides of the Atlantic, took a barely comprehensible proposition from the internet — “trans women are women and trans men are men” — and tried to build a system around it. The central proposition was treated as non-negotiable; any datum that didn’t fit would have to be jettisoned. Those who objected were either insufficiently well-read, too stupid to understand complexity, or simply bad actors. Quiet lifers across the Anglosphere quickly read the seminar room and went along with things.
The full piece is here:
India
Very interesting and comprehensive piece on her substack from Dr Janhavi Nilekani who set up the Aastrika Midwifery Centre in India. A few small points from me. Her piece about gender identity and gender dysphoria is a bit confusing but she does conclude that no medical interventions are required. So called ‘transgender people’ already have all the same human rights as the rest of us and I am not clear what further rights they might be owed! She says that Muslim clients might need female intimate care but I would have thought that any woman should be able to request such care. She is very strong on pronouns and wrong sex language. An excellent contribution to the Terf cause! I love the initial story!!
All thoughts gratefully received.
Inclusivity In Healthcare Should Not Be Valued Above Our Paramount Mandate: First, Do No Harm.
Jul 24, 2025
In the spring of 2022, a 50-year-old grandfather in North Carolina decided that he wanted his daughter’s newborn to suckle at his nipple.
Rather than keep this thought to himself, he opted to confide in his doctor.
You may wonder what happened next. Was the doctor a mandated reporter? Did Child Protective Services show up at his house to investigate a possibility of child sexual abuse? After all, the CPS is so vigilant that they investigate 37% of American children. Or perhaps he was referred to a therapist?
Well, no. Because this particular man identified as a transgender woman, doctors and academics from Duke University wholeheartedly supported his “unique desire”. Indeed, they published a research paper in Breastfeeding Medicine, providing details of the cocktail of hormones and drugs they used. With these, he was able to produce secretions, that were administered to his grandchild. The paper does not have a single sentence about the potential impact on the grandchild.
It is an unimaginable breach of ethics. An adult male’s desire to be affirmed as a woman should never be met by feeding an experimental drug-infused substance to newborns with no capacity to consent. Compelling one individual to undergo medical treatment to benefit another is an ethical minefield, especially in the case of minors. Most societies are strongly averse; market-based solutions for blood and organ donations are routinely banned, even if many lives would be saved.
This is not an isolated instance. There are several research papers on inducing lactation in males, sometimes called ‘chestfeeding’. To secrete fluid from the nipples, these males consume high doses of hormones like progesterone and oestradiol, along with drugs with known side effects for infants, like domperidone.
Nor is it an edge case confined to academic hospitals. Supporting chestfeeding is the official position of La Leche League - the world’s oldest and most famous international breastfeeding organization. Trustees who objected were suspended. Directors resigned. And their 94 year old founder, Marian Thomas, walked out over it, 68 years after its founding.
Experimenting on newborns, just to affirm adult identities, is egregious. Such experiments are possible only because medicine, in the push towards inclusivity, is forgetting our own core value: first, do no harm.
I work in maternal and newborn health. In 2019, I founded Aastrika, a public health organization in India whose mission is to increase access to high quality, respectful, ethical, and evidence-based maternity care.
Aastrika’s private maternity hospital, Aastrika Midwifery Centre, aspires to be a centre of excellence in evidence-based obstetrics, women’s healthcare, reproductive care, and paediatrics.
Our non-profit arm, Aastrika Foundation, focuses on capacity-building and on advocacy. We conduct multi-year training programs for professional midwives in Karnataka, along with short-duration courses for over 150,000 frontline healthcare workers in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Aastrika was inspired by my own experiences. In 2016, I was a Public Policy PhD student in the US, conducting a randomized controlled trial in south India. I was also pregnant and toggling between Indian and American hospitals for maternity care.
The full piece is here:
https://substack.com/@janhavinilekani/p-169091935
World Round Up
Excellent round up from around the world ( obviously including many pieces we have already reported on) from Georgia O’Keefe on the substack, Woman: Adult Human Female:
Let Women Speak
The next LWS event is tomorrow at Reformers’ Tree in Hyde Park at 1pm. My wife and I will not be at that. Other dates are below. We are working out which is the next one we will go to and will let readers know 😊
https://www.letwomenspeak.org/events
Terf Island Discs
Thanks to an excellent suggestion from Tenaciously Terfin, we are pausing Endpieces for the time being and giving Tenaciously and Liz a well earned rest from their hard work. So welcome to Terf Island Discs. Please let us have four of your favourite songs or pieces of music and provide a link if possible. 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. Obviously, the choices don’t actually have to be from Terf Island - anywhere in the world! We will feature one piece of music in each general update. Thanks to all those readers who have already sent in their choices.
Please send in your choices via the comments section at this link: https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/terf-island-discs
Next up!
Chosen by: my wife
‘This woman’s work’ by Kate Bush.
#BeMorePorcupine
#TerfIsTheNewPunk
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#JoinFreeSpeechUnion
#LeaveKidsAlone
#StandWithSandiePeggie
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
Oh my days, the “Safe With Me” badges!!! I’m past the point where I give people the benefit of doubt that they might just be ignorant of safeguarding. The amount of effort being put into dismantling child protection is not accidental!
Great stuff, Dusty. Thanks for the round-up.
Careful of Gender Jeebus/Penny Marie from 'Let Kids Be Kids' in NZ. Disingenuous, steals people's work, doesn't credit anyone, steps over people to get fame like the power-hungry whore she is.
Not a fan.
She asked a member of MWK to ask my sister for photos of our children/grandchildren FOR HER PROMOTIONAL WORK. What a cunt. It's ok, I've already told her that.