Who Told You You Could Have My Rights?

Update 621. This Is Terf Month. Skrmetti Special. #BeMorePorcupine.

Dusty Masterson

Jun 18, 2025

Buy me a coffee

We are now in Terf Month ( to counteract Queer Month) and we are featuring great speeches on the theme of women’s rights. Please keep those suggestions coming in. Please send a link if you can. Thanks to those readers who have already sent in great suggestions.

This time not a speech but a powerful poem. Over to Aja The Empress! Aja attends many of the Let Women Speak events.

Thanks to three wonderful readers for suggested pieces.

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

THE STATES - MAJOR NEWS!!!!!

I last reported on the Skrmetti case here:

https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/dont-look-now?utm_source=publication-search

Amazing news, that Tennessee have won and their ban on puberty blockers and wrong sex hormones for children has been upheld! WELL DONE EVERYONE INVOLVED!!

Hopefully this will have major knock on effects including in Red (Democrat) States!

This report is from William Ferguson’s excellent substack and thanks to William for putting it out so quickly:

Trans Kids Are Not A Thing

The United States Supreme Court Ruled On Skrmetti Today

Jun 18, 2025

gray pillars — Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash

Today the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling in United States v. Skrmetti, upholding the constitutionality of Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1 (SB1), which bans gender-affirming medical care, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for transgender minors. The majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the Court’s conservative justices, held that the law satisfies rational basis review, the lowest tier of judicial scrutiny, and does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court rejected arguments that the ban constitutes sex discrimination, asserting that it regulates medical treatments based on age and purpose rather than sex or transgender status. This decision marks a significant moment, as it is the first time the Supreme Court has directly addressed the application of the Equal Protection Clause to gender-affirming care for minors, potentially entrenching similar bans in 25 other states.

The case originated from a challenge by three transgender teenagers, their families, and a Memphis-based physician, represented by the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and others, who argued that Tennessee’s law discriminates by allowing the same medical treatments for cisgender minors but prohibiting them for transgender youth. The plaintiffs, supported by the Biden administration, contended that the ban violates equal protection by classifying based on sex and transgender status, warranting heightened scrutiny. However, the majority opinion dismissed parallels to Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which linked gender identity discrimination to sex discrimination under Title VII, stating that equal protection analysis differs and that Tennessee’s law serves a legitimate state interest in regulating experimental medical interventions for minors.

Personally I would not refer to ‘transgender teenagers’ or ‘cisgender minors’. The full piece is here:

https://williamaferguson.substack.com/p/trans-kids-are-not-a-thing

The judgment is here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf

UK - Women Only Tower Block!

Women’s Pioneering Housing intend to build a tower block for women. But hold on? This will include men with gender recognition certificates and who meet the definition of ‘gender reassignment’ under the Equality Act 2010! It will also exclude women who meet the definition of ‘gender reassignment.’ Maybe not so ‘Pioneering’ after all!

Michael Foran on his substack, Knowing Ius explains why this would amount to direct sex discrimination.

Is the "women-only tower block" lawful?

Jun 18, 2025

The BBC has reported that a tower block is scheduled to open next summer catering exclusively to women. A look at the policies of Women’s Pioneering Housing raises questions about the lawfulness of this proposed practice:

Any provision of services which is not open to everyone is potentially unlawful. If the limitation of service is because of one or more protected characteristics, this will be discrimination contrary to the Equality Act 2010.

The full piece is here:

https://knowingius.org/p/is-the-women-only-tower-block-lawful?publication_id=2711221&post_id=166232528&isFreemail=false&r=20xc5g&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

UK - The Ministry of Justice

EDI Jester reports on the MoJ rowing back on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion! Excellent news!

The States - The New York Times

The NYT has done a podcast series on ‘gender affirming care’ which fails to address the details of why Donald Trump and the Republicans are opposed to this and are taking action against it at least with regard to children. Ute Heggen on her substack looks at a further report on the podcast series by Leor Sapir. The NYT series may be somewhat overshadowed by the Skrmetti case 😁

https://substack.com/inbox/post/166174213?publication_id=2927692&post_id=166174213&isFreemail=true&r=20xc5g&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

UK - The Green Party

Feminist Legal Clinic reports:

Green party trying to purge gender-critical voices, claims expelled former spokesperson (18 June)

The Green party is veering away from its founding culture towards a more leftwing authoritarianism, its former health spokesperson has claimed. [ Dusty - I think they veered rather a long time ago!!!]

Dr Pallavi Devulapalli said trans rights had become an obvious totem in the new climate, and accused the party of trying to purge anyone with gender-critical views.

Devulapalli, a GP and member of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council, was expelled from the party for a rules breach that she has said was due to her beliefs on gender. Her expulsion this month, she said, has exposed a rift in the party’s leadership on transgender issues that threatens to widen during this summer’s leadership election.

The party’s current co-leader Adrian Ramsay, who has argued that members should not be thrown out for saying trans women are not women, is pressing internally for Devulapalli’s expulsion to be reviewed.

Devulapalli is now one of 25 “Greens in Exile” – former party members who have been suspended or expelled largely for their gender critical views. Last year a court found the party had removed Dr Shahrar Ali as a party spokesperson in a procedurally unfair way that discriminated against him because of his gender critical belief.

Following April’s supreme court ruling that a “woman” in the Equality Act refers only to a biological woman, the Greens’ policy has come under strain. In interviews since, Ramsay, who is standing again as co-leader with fellow MP Ellie Chowns, has refused to commit to an answer, but Carla Denyer, who is standing down as co-leader, has said that “trans women are women [and] trans men are men”. Zack Polanski, a leadership challenger, is campaigning on the slogan “trans rights are human rights”.

Source: Green party trying to purge gender-critical voices, claims expelled former spokesperson

Ireland - The Tricolour

With apologies, though this is not about ‘gender ideology’, as an Irish citizen (albeit living in England), I felt I had to report on this ( plus it is about freedom of expression which is very important to us Terfs, of course). All thoughts gratefully received.

Niamh Uí Bhriain in Gript News ( Flying the national flag indicates a ‘racist’ house? 17 June) reports:

On Easter Monday in 1916, two flags were hoisted above the GPO as the Rising began: Eamon Bulfin, born in Argentina to Irish parents and a former pupil of St Enda’s, raised the Green flag of the Republic, while a cousin of Michael Collins, Gearóid O’Sullivan, hoisted the Tri-Colour.

As most schoolchildren will know, the Tricolour was first “proudly borne” and presented by the Irish nationalist and leader of the Young Irelanders, Thomas Francis Meagher in 1848 when he said: “I present it to my native land, and I trust that the old country will not refuse this symbol of a new life from one of her youngest children.”

“The white in the centre signifies a lasting truce between the ‘orange’ and the ‘green’ — and I trust that beneath its folds, the hands of the Irish Protestant and the Irish Catholic may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood,” he said.

At the time Meagher presented the Tricolour, a number of types of flags were being used by the Irish nationalist movement. Though my own preference would have been the green flag with the harp, the Tricolour had been building in significance – featuring prominently at the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa – and flown over several of the buildings seized in the Rising. It was adopted as the official flag of the Irish Republic in 1919.

Flags, of course, have particular meaning and have done so even prior to the idea of the nation state when they signified clan and allegiance, brought to battle as banners not just of identity but of loyalty. As nationalism rises across Europe, the flag remains a powerful symbol of a shared history and culture, representing pride, belonging, and meaning. Most of us have no allegiance to the EU flag, for example. We’re not really, in any meaningful way, citizens of Europe or the world. We’re Irish: that’s the significant identity, much as the bureaucrats in Brussels might wish otherwise.

It was pretty astonishing then, to hear the claim being made yesterday on Newstalk that a house flying a tricolour is more likely to be a “racist house”. Although I’m clearly wrong, I thought the media had moved – or rather been dragged – away from the narrative that people who are nationalistic or opposed to uncontrolled immigration are racist.

“When you pass a house now that has a tricolour outside it, certainly I’m much more likely to think ‘that’s probably a racist house’, rather than think there’s any sort of national pride,” political correspondent Seán Defoe said, claiming that the flag had been taken over by “far-right agitators”. Sounding like a prissy schoolmarm in an appeal to respectability he said that most people wouldn’t want to be associated with said scruffy flag wavers – and that he was upset that the flag had been “taken away from us”.

The ever-reliable Mick Clifford said all the usual guff about ‘hate’ and ‘intolerance’ and complained about people misappropriating the flag (as if he had been appointed Chief Adjudicator in the use of tricolours), while Shane Coleman said that we didn’t do enough in schools to engender a love of the country’s flag. Clifford added that seeing the national flag flying outside a home would indicate, at the very least, that those who lived there were “anti-immigrant”.

Newstalk have now taken the video down from X, most likely because of the backlash it was receiving, or maybe because these were such vapid yet pernicious statements to make in the first place, or maybe because the notion that journalists could decide who can and can’t wave an Irish flag is fundamentally undemocratic.

But what is a “racist household” exactly? In the narrative being sold by the Irish media, is it simply people who feel that immigration is out of control in Ireland, given that at least 22% of the people living here are foreign-born?

In that case, are the 72% of Irish people polled who said they wanted strict limits on immigration and felt the government had lost control on the issue likely to be living in a racist household?

Immigration is now an issue around which there is broad public support – for limiting the numbers coming to the country and questioning the government’s handling of those arriving both legally and illegally. That public consensus has happened despite the media’s persistent attempts to shut down debate and depict ordinary communities as hateful and racist.

Their narrative broke down precisely because this issue began to negatively impact so many communities: from East Wall to Carna; from Ballyvaughan to Coolock; from Rosslare to Carrickmacross. In towns and villages across the country, packed meetings were attended by local people who then began daily protests which were maintained by dint of sheer commitment to their community and very often in the face of nasty media hostility.

Were they all living in racist households? Or were they simply people who were practising their Constitutional right to protest and to oppose harmful and dangerous government policies.

The Tricolour began to appear at these protests precisely because local people weren’t being listened to by their government, so they looked to something greater, more enduring, more inspirational and meaningful than those sitting in the Dáil spouting platitudes – they looked to what the Proclamation described as the old tradition of nationhood, to what the flag actually represents, not the empty promise of globalism, but the ancient call of belonging to a people who have been rooted in this land for thousands of years.

The talking heads in the Irish media generally don’t like nationalism, mostly because it’s a strong and powerful instinct they can’t control, and also because they wanted Irish people to buy into the idea that there was nothing more to the nation and the country than to be a hub for global investment and profiteers seeking to drive down wages while house prices soared, our young people emigrated, and the cost of living made actual living almost impossible.

Shane Coleman was right about one thing – the state has never done enough to encourage national pride or to engender a love of the flag – just as they have always dragged their heels on the language and on traditional music, and even in some cases seemed reluctant to support Gaelic games. Something to do with what Micheál Martin decries as “backward-looking sovereignty”, perhaps.

In the past month, a sea of tricolours has accompanied huge numbers of protesters opposing out of control immigration in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, and will likely be seen again on June 22nd when another march is planned. People at those marches and elsewhere are free to wave whatever flag they like. They are Irish, proud to be Irish, proud of their flag, and proud of their collective identify as an Irish nation. Nothing about that is “racist” or a “misappropriation”.

The pearl-clutchers must be left regretting that the hate-speech bill has been scrapped (for now): if it had passed perhaps the great and good could have troubled an Garda Síochána to deliver severe warnings to a select number of household for their suspicious and hateful flag waving; issuing stern cautions against feelings of national pride, and watching out for any signs of questioning the establishment on immigration or any other issue. As it is, they are left with the usual name-calling and vilification which isn’t working any longer, as people fly their flags in defiance and pride.

https://gript.ie/flying-the-national-flag-means-a-racist-house/?ct=t(EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_5_17_2022_13_19_COPY_01)

Stop Press - Conversion Practices Bill

After starting with great news, I am afraid I am ending with some very bad news that the Government have confirmed they will be introducing this Bill ( following the Supreme Court judgment I had hoped they would kick this into the long grass). As most readers will know, such a Bill will simply, amongst other things, prevent therapists from using talking therapy for confused and distressed children who have so called ‘gender dysphoria.’ The recent very important report from the US Department of Health and Human Services is directly opposed to any conversion practices legislation:

https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/the-ballad-of-lucy-jordan-the-states?utm_source=publication-search

The Commons statement by the Equalities Minister, Dame Nia Griffith is here:

https://x.com/JournalismSEEN/status/1935320188032815419

Gird your armour on, Terven!! And watch this space!