Welcome To The Party, Pal!

Update 508. Woman- Adult Human Female Special. #BeMorePorcupine

This is a long one mainly because I reproduce the entire Executive Order that we are all celebrating.

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).

I am skipping A Christmas Carol and The Darkest Hour since we have featured them recently. Our reader, Petal only voted for one film and that was Die Hard 1 (1988).

On Christmas Eve, NYPD Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) arrives in Los Angeles, hoping to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), at a party held by her employer, the Nakatomi Corporation. He is driven to Nakatomi Plaza by a limo driver, Argyle (De’voreaux White), who offers to wait for McClane in the garage. While McClane washes himself, the tower is seized by the German radical Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his heavily armed team. Everyone in the tower is taken hostage except for McClane, who slips away, and Argyle, who remains oblivious to events.

A NYPD cop (Reginald VelJohnson) arrives to check out a report of apparent gunfire. Concluding that everything is ok he prepares to leave. McClane needs to stop him leaving.

Thanks to three wonderful readers for suggested pieces.

Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.

The States - What A Start!

🎉 🎈🥳 😍 👍 💪 😍 🥳

Here is the full Executive Order. Well done the Terfs of America! ENJOY!!

DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

EXECUTIVE ORDER

January 20, 2025

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7301 of title 5, United States Code, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.

This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.

Accordingly, my Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.

Sec. 2. Policy and Definitions. It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality, and the following definitions shall govern all Executive interpretation of and application of Federal law and administration policy:

(a) “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. “Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.”

(b) “Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.

(c) “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.

(d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.

(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

(f) “Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.

(g) “Gender identity” reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.

Sec. 3. Recognizing Women Are Biologically Distinct From Men. (a) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall provide to the U.S. Government, external partners, and the public clear guidance expanding on the sex-based definitions set forth in this order.

(b) Each agency and all Federal employees shall enforce laws governing sex-based rights, protections, opportunities, and accommodations to protect men and women as biologically distinct sexes. Each agency should therefore give the terms “sex”, “male”, “female”, “men”, “women”, “boys” and “girls” the meanings set forth in section 2 of this order when interpreting or applying statutes, regulations, or guidance and in all other official agency business, documents, and communications.

(c) When administering or enforcing sex-based distinctions, every agency and all Federal employees acting in an official capacity on behalf of their agency shall use the term “sex” and not “gender” in all applicable Federal policies and documents.

(d) The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, shall implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex, as defined under section 2 of this order; and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management shall ensure that applicable personnel records accurately report Federal employees’ sex, as defined by section 2 of this order.

(e) Agencies shall remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages. Agency forms that require an individual’s sex shall list male or female, and shall not request gender identity. Agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology.

(f) The prior Administration argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which addressed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces under, for example, Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act. This position is legally untenable and has harmed women. The Attorney General shall therefore immediately issue guidance to agencies to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to sex-based distinctions in agency activities. In addition, the Attorney General shall issue guidance and assist agencies in protecting sex-based distinctions, which are explicitly permitted under Constitutional and statutory precedent.

(g) Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology. Each agency shall assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.

Sec. 4. Privacy in Intimate Spaces. (a) The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers, including through amendment, as necessary, of Part 115.41 of title 28, Code of Federal Regulations and interpretation guidance regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act.

(b) The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall prepare and submit for notice and comment rulemaking a policy to rescind the final rule entitled “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs” of September 21, 2016, 81 FR 64763, and shall submit for public comment a policy protecting women seeking single-sex rape shelters.

(c) The Attorney General shall ensure that the Bureau of Prisons revises its policies concerning medical care to be consistent with this order, and shall ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.

(d) Agencies shall effectuate this policy by taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not identity.

Sec. 5. Protecting Rights. The Attorney General shall issue guidance to ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex and the right to single-sex spaces in workplaces and federally funded entities covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In accordance with that guidance, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor, the General Counsel and Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and each other agency head with enforcement responsibilities under the Civil Rights Act shall prioritize investigations and litigation to enforce the rights and freedoms identified.

Sec. 6. Bill Text. Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs shall present to the President proposed bill text to codify the definitions in this order.

Sec. 7. Agency Implementation and Reporting. (a) Within 120 days of the date of this order, each agency head shall submit an update on implementation of this order to the President, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. That update shall address:

(i) changes to agency documents, including regulations, guidance, forms, and communications, made to comply with this order; and

(ii) agency-imposed requirements on federally funded entities, including contractors, to achieve the policy of this order.

(b) The requirements of this order supersede conflicting provisions in any previous Executive Orders or Presidential Memoranda, including but not limited to Executive Orders 13988 of January 20, 2021, 14004 of January 25, 2021, 14020 and 14021 of March 8, 2021, and 14075 of June 15, 2022. These Executive Orders are hereby rescinded, and the White House Gender Policy Council established by Executive Order 14020 is dissolved.

(c) Each agency head shall promptly rescind all guidance documents inconsistent with the requirements of this order or the Attorney General’s guidance issued pursuant to this order, or rescind such parts of such documents that are inconsistent in such manner. Such documents include, but are not limited to:

(i) “The White House Toolkit on Transgender Equality”;

(ii) the Department of Education’s guidance documents including:

(A) “2024 Title IX Regulations: Pointers for Implementation” (July 2024);

(B) “U.S. Department of Education Toolkit: Creating Inclusive and Nondiscriminatory School Environments for LGBTQI+ Students”;

(C) “U.S. Department of Education Supporting LGBTQI+ Youth and Families in School” (June 21, 2023);

(D) “Departamento de Educación de EE.UU. Apoyar a los jóvenes y familias LGBTQI+ en la escuela” (June 21, 2023);

(E) “Supporting Intersex Students: A Resource for Students, Families, and Educators” (October 2021);

(F) “Supporting Transgender Youth in School” (June 2021);

(G) “Letter to Educators on Title IX’s 49th Anniversary” (June 23, 2021);

(H) “Confronting Anti-LGBTQI+ Harassment in Schools: A Resource for Students and Families” (June 2021);

(I) “Enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 With Respect to Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Light of Bostock v. Clayton County” (June 22, 2021);

(J) “Education in a Pandemic: The Disparate Impacts of COVID-19 on America’s Students” (June 9, 2021); and

(K) “Back-to-School Message for Transgender Students from the U.S. Depts of Justice, Education, and HHS” (Aug. 17, 2021);

(iii) the Attorney General’s Memorandum of March 26, 2021 entitled “Application of Bostock v. Clayton County to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972″; and

(iv) the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace” (April 29, 2024).

Sec. 8. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(d) If any provision of this order, or the application of any provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this order and the application of its provisions to any other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

January 20, 2025.

EDI Jester and Kellie-Jay Keen celebrate this executive order from President Trump.

Hopefully you will have all caught up with reader, Siobhan Spencer’s wonderful musings from yesterday:

https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/musing

UK - The (Wo)Men’s March

Just one piece from the latest Women’s Rights Network newsletter (19 January) and, as they say, it’s a doozy!!

One Woman’s Amplified Marching Orders

A WRN member challenged UK Women’s March organisers for prioritising a violent male criminal over women’s safety, and the unfolding story made for educational reading.

Organisers of the UK Women’s March, scheduled for 18 January, said it is vital to ensure men can claim women’s rights on demand as, “inclusivity is at the core of the UK Women’s March”. “We acknowledge how race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability intersect. Women are exposed to racism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia, not just sexism and misogyny.” Dusty - spot the cuckoo in the nest 🤨

The event courted controversy when it decided to platform a convicted male criminal out on license for a life-sentence for attempted murder, who had gained notoriety for recent attempts at intimidating women’s rights advocates.

A WRN member in Sussex challenged the organisers about including Alan/Sarah-Jane Baker as a speaker and was removed from the conversation. Her local WRN group posted about the concerns that action raised and soon even the Women’s Institute made a statement withdrawing their participation.

WRN Sussex said they had been told that the member who had been thrown out of the #UKWomensMarch discussion had misunderstood, and violent criminal Sarah Jane Baker was just attending the march. Their thread of images of the exchanges include Baker’s messages that say the Women’s March “knew of my criminal history when you asked me to speak”.

So, before it even happened, this weekend’s Women’s March illustrated the value of individuals challenging hypocrisy and injustice, the role groups like WRN can play in supporting and amplifying those challenges, and social media’s often-overlooked role in revealing the truth and keeping vital records.

The Grooming Gang Scandal

My recommendation today is an interview by Peter Whittle of the New Culture Forum with former Rochdale Labour MP Simon Danczuk (now with the Reform Party) who tried to fight back against the grooming gangs. Aside from other things, he was advised to not mention who the perpetrators were by certain senior Labour figures.

New Zealand - Puberty Blockers Consultation

This consultation has now concluded and Katrina Biggs has sent in her excellent submission as reported on her substack, A B’Old Woman.

My written submission on the use of puberty blockers in NZ to the Ministry of Health.

Jan 19, 2025

This has been a hard one.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health finally wobbled on their heretofore intractable advocacy for the use of puberty blockers on young people experiencing ‘gender dysphoria’. In the end, even their hardline advocacy couldn’t continue to ignore the mounting evidence against the indiscriminate use of puberty blockers on kids in mental and emotional distress. So - in a move widely considered a bit weird - on 21st Nov last year they initiated a public consultation on the matter. The consultation closes on Mon 20th Jan this year.

Where to begin with writing such a submission? There is so much that could be said, some struggled to formulate all they would like to say in a succinct way in the short time allocated. Much of that time allocation was over the Southern Hemisphere’s Christmas, New Year, and summer holiday period, when many of us wind down for the year, and take some much-needed time away from our labours. Others, like Ani O’Brien, have nevertheless written a brilliant and erudite submission.

I must admit that I was amongst the strugglers. In the end, I decided to just let my fingers do the talking, and whatever travelled from my brain to them would be what I submitted. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but the fear of not submitting anything due to ‘analysis paralysis’ galvanised me to go with it.

Despite the Ministry of Health saying that “In particular, the Ministry seeks input from organisations that represent people who may be affected by safety measures or that may be involved in how safety measures are used in practice.” they’re getting my two-cents worth, as well. It might not be as sophisticated as some submissions, but they’ve got it now :-)

The full submission is here:

https://aboldwoman.substack.com/p/my-written-submission-on-the-use?publication_id=1177996&post_id=155124645&isFreemail=true&r=20xc5g&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Testosterone

Lucy Leader on her substack, Bodies get in the way… looks at the harms caused to girls’ and women’s bodies by testosterone. She concentrates on the doping regime undertaken in East Germany to dramatically improve the results in women’s sport. Sharron Davies also looks at this, from first hand experience, in her book Unfair Play. Sharron ended up with a silver medal in the 1980 Olympics when she was beaten by an East German swimmer.

Does Testosterone Maketh the Man? (A Riff on Shakespeare)

Um, nope sorry, it just wrecks your female body

Lucy Leader

Jan 19, 2025

The GDR women's team sets the year record in the 4x100m final of the European Cup in Gateshead, UK, 5 August 1989. (Bundesarchiv) The GDR doping program ended with the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989.

In April last year (2024), a new study was published about the effects of testosterone on the pelvic floor health of trans “men” (who are women choosing to present as a male identity), called Pelvic Floor Dysfunction in Transgender Men on Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study.

It got off to a rocky start with me with this sentence, “Gender-affirming hormone therapy is safe and effective…”. This sentence is printed right under the abstract which concludes that, “Transgender men on hormone therapy have a high incidence of PFD (94.1%) and experience a greater occurrence of urinary symptoms (86.7%).” PFD is Pelvic Floor Dysfunction.

Elaine Miller, a Scottish pelvic health physiotherapist and member of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, said: “A lot of women are absolutely fine until the menopause and then they start to get leaky.” She is working with young detransitioners who have the same (or even worse) problems with urinary and/or bowel incontinence and loss of sexual function that would not be happening but for the inappropriate use of testosterone for “gender affirming care”. Because their bodies have undergone menopause, decades earlier than they would be in the absence of excessive doses of testosterone.

Excessive levels of testosterone in women also cause cardiac and liver problems, infertility, weight gains, osteoporosis, blood sugar and cholesterol disruptions, mood disorders and depression. This should not come as a surprise to anyone because in the same way that every cell in our bodies is sexed to be either female or male, every substance we eat, sniff, inject, infuse or apply affects every cell of our bodies.

What other therapy, treatment or procedure would pass muster as “safe and effective” by taking healthy bodies and turning them into unwell simulacrums of the opposite sex?

There are absolutely no surprises here; the East Germans built a sporting powerhouse out of androgens

Following the German defeat of WWII, the East Germans were looking for a way to rebuild their self-esteem and their place on the world stage. They decided to do this via the international sporting arena, including the Olympics. Starting in the 1950s, they systematically embarked on a program to produce the athletic results they needed to consistently win medal after medal, while simultaneously using the same labs that produced massive quantities of testosterone to constantly refine these to avoid detection as the anti-doping movement grew.

The tell all book Faust’s Gold details exactly how this happened, who was responsible and the effects on women who, living under a totalitarian system, were forced to comply, beginning as prepubescent children, to submit to a drug regimen that enabled them to win gold medals galore, but at the cost of their bodily integrity, their health and in some cases, the health of their children.

The full piece is here:

https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/does-testosterone-maketh-the-man?publication_id=1056660&post_id=151357331&isFreemail=true&r=20xc5g&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Endpieces by Liz and Dusty

To celebrate the Executive Order.

#BeMorePorcupine

#AdultHumanFemale

#LetWomenSpeak

#LandOfThe Free

#GrassrootsArmy

#FightForFreeSpeech

#KeepOnTerfing

#GenderEnders

#NeverSurrender

The next piece will probably be on either Thursday or Friday, Terven.

If you like this update, please send to a friend. Until next time, Terven. This isn’t over yet! Please subscribe for free or paid or buy me a coffee, like and comment.