Winter's Bone
Update 427 Free Speech Special #BeMorePorcupine
Given the current threats to free speech in the United Kingdom ( and, indeed, elsewhere in the world) I am going start each update from now on with the great quote from 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.'
Us Terfs need our heroes. Hence the Heroes Season. Thanks to the wonderful reader mentioned below for the latest in the Season.
Winter’s Bone stars Jennifer Lawrence as a poverty-stricken teenage girl named Ree Dolly in the rural Ozarks of Missouri who, to protect her family from eviction, must locate her missing father.
Thanks to a wonderful reader for suggested pieces. Liz, who normally also suggests pieces, is poorly. Get well soon, Liz.
Tickle v Giggle
We mentioned this awful judgment in the last update. Amy Sousa brings us the story of Brenda the Sheep … umm…hold on…
Sarah Phillimore picks up the thread of what she describes as ‘The Great Lie of Gender’ on her substack, Sarah’s Newsletter!
What is beyond the lie?
On 23 August 2024 the Australian courts confirmed that gender identity is more important than sex; any man can be a woman if he says so.
Aug 23, 2024
At 9am Australian time on 23 August 2024 judgment was delivered in the case of Tickle v Giggle. Much has already been written about this judgment and its implications - for example, Andrew Gold or Jo Bartosch. My aim here is not to attempt detailed legal analysis as frankly that is beyond me and much better brains will be available. I want to look at something broader - but I think just as important - how a lie takes hold and what lies beyond the lie.
In short, a man called ‘Roxy Tickle’ (not the name he was assigned at birth) [ Dusty - that’d be Jason ] decided that he was a woman and he wanted to join an app which was for women only, named Giggle. He was refused - because he is a man - and he took the app’s developer and owner Sall Grover to court, pleading discrimination. He won. The court declared that a transgender woman - i.e. a man - was just as much a woman as a ‘cisgender’ woman - i.e. a woman. The law in Australia has apparently held for 30 years that sex is ‘changeable’. Grover was ordered to pay damages and costs. I hope she will appeal. Because this ruling tells women in Australia that they may have nothing for their own sex. Their own sex in fact does not now exist, because any man may claim it for his own.
Amnesty International had its usual cloth eared take, which happily suffered significant push back on social media.
That’s not what Roxy Tickle looks like of course. He looks like this.
This got me thinking hard about truth and lies, and what we find beyond the lie. The astonishing speed and success of ‘gender identity ideology’ in capturing entire societies remains amazing and largely unexplained. We know that it is not possible to change sex, we know that women are uniquely prejudiced and at risk of harm because of their sexed bodies, we know that men and women are different in many significant ways.
We ALL know this. And yet, law and policy have been captured now by the idea that an assumed ‘gender identity’ is more important than, or even operates instead of, sex as an organising category. A man who says he is a woman, is a woman. End of. If you refuse to let him into female single sex spaces, you are guilty of unlawful discrimination.
How has this lie taken hold and what are its consequences? A big part of the how is the sheer impenetrability of the law around discrimination. As Levins Solicitors noted on X, both legal teams dropped the ball here and failed to notice that Tickle’s team had conflated direct and indirect discrimination.
Further than that comment, I cannot go as I don’t understand a word of this. And I am a person with a first class law degree from University College London, who has been a barrister for nearly 30 years. If this makes my brain ache, what will it do for the person who doesn’t have any legal training? And this I think is an important part of understanding how the lie took hold, because it is protected and scaffolded by a complicated specialist area of law which has been easy for others to twist and obfuscate; very few have the expertise to confidently challenge the lies told about the law.
So you tell people that they must ‘be kind’, that it is wrong and horrible and bigoted to say ‘no’ to men who were ‘born in the wrong body’ and you buttress the natural impulses of most people to be ‘nice’ and fair and ‘live and let live’ by telling them it is what the law also demands. So you cement the lie.
So what happens to the lie now? I think Susie Orbach said it best in 2019
‘Lying is not just a moral category, it has psychological import. It divides us from aspects of ourselves. To maintain a lie we have to scaffold it, to separate it off from doubt and questions. Then we become defensive and more insistent, as though by being more forceful, the deceit will hold us within it. What is on the other side of the lie becomes unreachable.'
But the attempts to maintain the lie carry within it the seeds of its own destruction. It takes enormous effort to maintain a lie that attempts to deny material reality. And recent activities in the UK show me where hope lies; we have finally woken up to the medical abuse that is perpetrated on children to support the lie of medical transition. The Government has recently extended the ban on prescribing puberty blockers to children and the Court of Appeal has given leave to appeal a case that refused to recognise provision of hormones to 16 year olds as a special category of treatment.
It is no mystery that Australia was and is so ripe for capture. Its understanding of the harms of medical transition lags far behind the UK and other jurisdictions. Its courts have decided that provision of hormones to children is ‘therapeutic treatment’ thus making it more difficult to properly analyse issues of consent and capacity.
It is our flesh and blood that will defeat the lie. However much energy you expend to promote a lie, you will find it difficult to explain away the 15 year old girl given a near fatal dose of testosterone by Gender GP, or the young woman who died after complications with her phalloplasty operation, aged only 24.
Our bodies are wonderful, resilient and pliable things. But there are limits to the interventions our bodies will permit and we mess with that at our peril. There is no lie on earth that can give a man a vagina or a woman a penis. And so I still have hope that the so far intricate scaffolding around the Great Lie of Gender will fall, and as it does we will all see how brittle it has always been, and just a little gust of truth brought the whole sorry mess tumbling down.
On Spiked Online, Jo Bartosch looks at the potential abolition of womanhood.
Australia has abolished womanhood
Tickle vs Giggle has placed the delusions of trans activists over biological reality and women’s hard-won rights.
The courts Down Under have gone topsy-turvy. At 9am Sydney time, a judge handed down a ruling that eradicated the category of sex in law, finding in favour of a man who was denied access to a women-only app. Justice Robert Bromwich stated that according to Australian law, sex is ‘changeable and not necessarily binary’. The case, known as Tickle vs Giggle, has set a dangerous legal precedent that the world may now follow.
The legal row started when Tickle – an angry man in a frock who changed his name to Roxanne – saw some posts on social media that annoyed him. He is a trans activist who has gone to some lengths to ‘pass’ as female. He had so-called gender-affirmation surgery in 2019 and changed his birth certificate to obfuscate the fact that he was, to use his words, ‘assigned male at birth’. His sex obviously remains male, as perfectly illustrated in photos by his five o’clock shadow, even if on paper he is legally a ‘woman’.
The tweets that upset Tickle were posted by Sall Grover, founder of the women-only social-media app, Giggle for Girls. Giggle, a small tech start-up, used facial-recognition software to screen out men. Tickle put this to the test, and initially was accepted on to the app. But after seven months his picture was clocked, either by Grover or the screening function, and his access was restricted.
Tickle then responded in the way that unpleasant, petulant men do when they’re spurned. He huffed, puffed and sent numerous emails and made phone calls to Grover. When that failed to get him reinstated, he took her to court.
Tickle argued he had a right to use Giggle because he is a woman on paper. The judge agreed, noting ‘the imposed condition of needing to appear to be a cisgendered female in photos submitted to the Giggle app had the effect of disadvantaging transgender women who did not meet that condition’. (‘Cisgendered female’ is trans-speak for ‘real woman’, while ‘transgender women’ refers to men.)
For their part, Grover’s legal team agreed that Tickle had been discriminated against – but on the grounds of his male sex, not his claims to have a female gender identity.
The judge went on to explain that although the science of sex difference was not in dispute, ‘the issues in this case involve wider issues than biology’. He considered and then dismissed expert opinion from evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, author and philosopher Kathleen Stock, and campaigner Helen Joyce. Remarkably, he declared Joyce, author of a best-selling book on transgenderism, as having ‘no recognised expertise in any of the areas in which she expresses an opinion’.
Reading the ruling, it is clear that Justice Bromwich understands that blokes can’t become Sheilas; he just didn’t think that biology was relevant to the case. Instead, he stuck to a narrow, administrative understanding of sex and gender, stating that ‘Tickle is a legal female, as reflected in her updated birth certificate issued under Queensland law’ (sic).
Strip away the robes and legalese, law is supposed to uphold what we collectively agree as a society to be right. But trans activists have broken that covenant. They are twisting justice itself to meet the desire of an entitled few to be affirmed as something they are not. Perhaps Justice Bromwich ought to consider the words of the great Australian feminist, Germaine Greer: ‘Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a fucking woman. I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that doesn’t turn me into a fucking Cocker Spaniel.’
What ought to send a shiver down the spine of all right-thinking people is that this ruling could have huge ramifications for those in other countries across the globe. The Convention to Eliminate All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an international treaty adopted in 1979 by the UN. It is an agreement that recognises the specific needs of women. Giggle’s defence argued that Australia’s ratification of CEDAW obliges the state to protect women’s rights, including single-sex spaces. That Justice Bromwich rejected this will have ramifications for the 186 countries that have ratified CEDAW, as judges across the world look to landmark rulings like this to inform domestic decisions.
The real cost of Justice Bromwich deciding that ‘female’ is a legal identity rather than a biological reality is likely to be felt by those in CEDAW signatory countries where violence against women is highest. Judges in countries including Pakistan, El Salvador (the femicide capital of the world) and South Africa (which has the highest reported rate of rape in the world) are now likely to take their lead on the interpretation of CEDAW from Australia. Even if misogynist imans in Pakistan, woman-killers in El Salvador and rapists in South Africa all know which sex they are targeting, there is now a real risk their nations’ judges will follow in the heavy tread of Australia in abolishing the category of woman.
The human rights of the most marginalised women in the world have been put at further risk – all because an angry man in Australia wasn’t allowed to play with the girls on a social-media app. Despite the comical name, there is really nothing funny about Tickle vs Giggle.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/23/australia-has-abolished-womanhood/
Let’s hope Sall Grover appeals. Watch this space!
Sall appeared tonight on The Mess
And Sall was also on Free Speech Nation:
Free Speech
In recent updates we have been discussing how the UK Government and the Courts have responded to the recent riots by clamping down on free speech.
Baroness Claire Fox has been very busy seeking to protect free speech - as explained on the Academy of Ideas substack:
After the riots: why we need free speech more than ever
With the post-riots crackdown threatening our right to speak openly, read Claire Fox on why you should join us at the UK's premier free-speech festival.
Aug 23, 2024
As the weeks go by since riots seemed to take over in towns and cities across the UK, the fallout becomes clearer in terms of attacks on free speech - arrests have been made not just for violence or destruction, but for online messages, too. In response, we at the Academy of Ideas have become all the more determined to ensure that free speech - this cornerstone of democracy - is not sacrificed under the auspices of restoring order.
While sending people to prison for violent disorder, attacking the police or burning buildings seems reasonable to most people, there is widespread, even international, disquiet and alarm at the numbers being jailed for speech-related ‘crimes’. This includes not just chants used on the streets but unpleasant memes or sentiments shared online by people nowhere near the riots themselves.
The notion of incitement seems to have been expanded, while contentious concepts such as mis-and-disinformation, and stirring up hatred, have become a catch-all for rounding up and prosecuting a wide range of people. That so many have pleaded guilty, allegedly to avoid being remanded in custody and longer sentences, is in danger of discrediting the forces of law and order. Keir Starmer’s promise to bring in even more expansive censorship tools via amending the Online Safety Act to include legal but harmful material, looms large. And, ironically, the use of social media by official bodies, whether the CPS or police - posting theatrical, slick films of individual arrests (with dramatic music), sombre public-sentencing clips and videos with stark warnings in bold capital letters ‘think before you post’ - create a worrying Big Brother vibe to the moment.
In that context, I have been taking any opportunity I can to explain what is going on in the UK. I was interviewed by newspapers in Brazil and Italy in the past week (don’t worry – lots in English below):
It is interesting to talk to people outside the UK. In the below podcast from the US, Vance Crowe started with his reading of events, and it became apparent that he had picked up a real mixture of half-facts and misinformation. I corrected this, and had a really fascinating and long conversation that went way beyond the immediate issues on the streets. But it is telling how nervous I was initially, imagining that a malicious clipping of the conversation could lead to the police turning up at my door. You can listen here:
I was on BBC 2’s Newsnight , where the focus started with the idea of EU as hero and Elon Musk as villain - hmmm - while I tried to explain the dangers of using prison sentences to send a political message.
I was a guest on the Spectator Podcast, alongside Cindy Yu and Katy Balls.
I joined Alex Phillips on Talk to ask: What is going on with our police?
I joined the IEA podcast: The Battle for Truth: social media, riots, and freedom of expression.
And last, but not least, I was honoured to co-host this week’s Planet Normal for the Telegraph with Liam Halligan, which started with a discussion about the aftermath of the riots and the Labour government’s response:
What’s really exciting is that Liam and Allison Pearson will be recording a special edition of Planet Normal at this year’s Battle of Ideas festival (19-20 October) as part of a special Podcasts Live strand each day of the festival.
Indeed, the Academy of Ideas team are busy building the programme for this year’s Battle of Ideas – the very embodiment of free speech in action. Our new slogan seems crucial: Conversations for the public, with the public, in public. This motivation for this year’s festival from co-convenors Alastair Donald and Ella Whelan is spot on: Why the Battle of Ideas festival 2024?
Tony Blair said ‘Things can only get better’.
Keir Starmer says: ‘Things can only get worse’.
I’m not going to enter into the economics though I can’t quite square an alleged ‘economic black hole’ and giving enormous pay rises to the train drivers and public sector workers!?
However I am worried about what he thinks he might do about the alleged ‘societal black hole.’ What even is that!?
Camilla Turner in The Telegraph ( Starmer: Things will get worse before they get better 24 August) reports:
Sir Keir Starmer will warn this week that things will get worse before they get better, claiming that there is “rot deep in the heart” of Britain.
In what will be seen as an attempt to lay the groundwork for sweeping tax rises and spending cuts, the Prime Minister will claim to have inherited “not just an economic black hole but a societal black hole”.
The full article is here:
David Young on Belfast Live ( Prominent Loyalist Dee Stitt allegedly made social media post calling for NI to “stop the spread of evil Islam” 23 August) reports:
Prominent Northern Ireland loyalist David ‘Dee’ Stitt has been refused bail after appearing in court charged with publishing material with the intent of stirring up hatred.
Stitt, 53, from Bangor, was arrested at Belfast City Airport after arriving on a flight on Thursday evening.
Appearing in the dock of Belfast Magistrates’ Court on Friday dressed in a grey sweater, Stitt, from Lord Warden’s Court, said “not guilty” after he confirmed that he understood the charge.
PSNI detective constable told district judge Steven Keown that he could connect the accused to the single charge of publishing written material which was threatening, abusive or insulting with the intent of stirring up hatred or arousing fear.
The charge relates to a single post on Facebook on July 31 where Stitt shared a copy-and-pasted call for protests across Northern Ireland in response to the murder of three young girls in Southport.
The court heard that the post urged people to bring the country to a “standstill” and listed several protest times and venues in Northern Ireland and advised demonstrators to ensure women and children were at the front of the events.
It also referred to the “Christian west” being “under siege” and claimed that people had “one chance” to “stop the spread of evil Islam”.
Refusing Stitt’s bail application, Judge Keown said, “We have seen over the last number of weeks the consequences of words such as this”.
The judge said there was “no hierarchy” of individuals within the community and said there was a “fundamental problem” with regard to people who viewed some religions as evil.
“People who hold that view are the ones who are a threat to our society, not the hard-working people from whatever community who increasingly contribute to our society,” he added.
The full article is here:
https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/belfast-news/prominent-loyalist-dee-stitt-allegedly-29799097
This Labour Government don’t even need the excuse of riots to seek to suppress free speech.
Martin Beckford in The Mail Online ( Labour blasted for scrapping University freedom of speech law: More than 500 academics join forces to call on Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson to rethink her decision 24 August) reports:
More than 500 academics have condemned Labour for scrapping a law aimed at protecting freedom of speech on campuses.
The experts - including evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and historian Niall Ferguson - say the act brought in by the Conservatives was 'vitally important' after university staff and students were 'hounded, censured, silenced or even sacked' for expressing their opinions.
And they dismiss concerns raised by the Government that the legislation could put minority groups including Jewish students at risk by protecting 'hate speech', pointing out that harassment laws already trump free speech.
In an open letter to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, they urge her to implement the outstanding provisions of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act (HEFOSA).
They were due to come into force at the start of August until the minister announced in July that she was halting the introduction of the power for the Office for Students watchdog to fine institutions or student unions if they failed to uphold freedom of speech.
Richard Dawkins
The letter, also signed by director of the Committee for Academic Freedom Edward Skidelsky, states: 'The decision to halt HEFOSA appears to reflect the view, widespread among opponents of the Act, that there is no 'free speech problem' in UK universities, that the very idea of such a problem is a fiction put about to divert attention from bigger issues.
'Nothing could be more false. Hundreds of academics and students have been hounded, censured, silenced or even sacked over the last 20 years for the expression of legal opinions.' It says that documented cases are 'only the tip of the iceberg' and the 'widespread silencing of viewpoints is incalculable'.
The professors say the dire state of affairs, with the UK a lowly 66th in the global league of academic freedom, has 'serious consequences for us all'.
The full article is here:
EDI Jester addresses this here:
EDI also reports that some universities are saying that the Freedom of Speech Act should be repealed because it might adversely affect their campuses they have abroad, for example in China. I don’t even understand this because the Act clearly only applies to the UK. Campuses in China will be subject to (repressive) Chinese laws!
Two Tier Policing
https://youtu.be/-KsIwc2gx4o?t=500
Another theme since the riots has been two tier policing which women’s rights groups have often experienced.
Patrick Sawer and Genevieve Holl-Allen in The Telegraph ( Notting Hill Carnival is ‘ultimate example of two-tier policing’, says ex-inspector 24 August) report:
The Notting Hill Carnival has been the scene of violence in the past - Chris Strickland
The Notting Hill Carnival is the “ultimate in two-tier policing”, a former Scotland Yard inspector has claimed.
Some 7,000 Metropolitan Police officers will be on duty over the annual two day event this weekend, as more than a million people are expected to descend on Notting Hill.
Last year there were 275 arrests for a range of offences over the course of the carnival, with eight people stabbed and around 80 officers assaulted.
However, Mike Neville, a retired Scotland Yard detective chief inspector, alleged that officers are hesitant to make arrests for fear of being called racist.
The Notting Hill Carnival is a celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture that has grown since its launch in 1966 to become Europe’s biggest street party.
Branding the carnival “the ultimate in two-tier policing”, Mr Neville said: “If the behaviour of the Notting Hill Carnival was replicated at football matches or any other event it would be banned.”
He added: “You see people openly smoking drugs, abuse of police officers, dancing with female officers to the point of sexual assault. I challenge anybody to do the same thing on the way to a Millwall football game.”
Workmen attach boards to a property as preparations continue ahead of this year's Notting Hill Carnival - PA/Aaron Chown
Mr Neville claimed that police at the carnival “are told only to arrest in the most extreme circumstances” because of community sensitivities.
Scotland Yard strongly rejects claims it applies two-tier policing to the event, saying its officers will intervene to make arrests whenever necessary.
The full article is here:
Let Women Speak
Lots of discussion about all of the above and more at today’s LWS at Reformer’s Tree.
Ban on Puberty Blockers
The UK Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has extended the temporary ban on prescription of puberty blockers by private clinics until 24 November and also extended it to cover Northern Ireland thus thwarting the plan of Susie Green, former CEO of Mermaids, to get puberty blockers sent to Northern Ireland where parents could pick them up! What a delightful person she is, eh?
Well done, Mr Streeting, currently the only person in the Cabinet that I have any time for!
https://x.com/Transgendertrd/status/1826721712811246009
Women’s Declaration International
Two reports from WDI ( 23 August).
Firstly, a new documentary.
Vaishnavi Sundar's long awaited documentary that was three years in the making, is having a worldwide premiere on the 30th of August, 7pm UK time.
Behind The Looking Glass is a feature-length film about the lives of women whose partners have/want to medically transition.
To watch and know more about the film, visit https://limesodafilms.com/btlg/ where the premiere link will appear in a few days.
Secondly, an open letter to the United Nations that anyone can sign. Please sign it.
Please sign this Open Letter to UN Women from United Women for Women's Rights
https://www.womenforwomensrights.org/open-letter-un-women/
It can be signed by individuals and by organizations who wish to have their logo on the webpage too.
there is also an instagram account (https://www.instagram.com/unitedwomenforwomensrights?igsh=M245Yngxd3duZHkw) and an X one (https://x.com/UNWomenRights?s=09).
Endpieces by Dusty and Liz
While drafting this update I have been listening to the great Fats Domino who I have seen many times live, including once at the New Orleans Jazz Festival.
And now, over to Liz:
#BeMorePorcupine
#XX
#SaveWomensSport
Get well soon Liz. 💜🤍💚
Fantastic round up, thanks Dusty.
Great Mess with discussion of some far reaching consequences of the ideology. Loved Arty’s idea of taking the fight into male spaces.
The free speech issue is so relevant to the gender debate as well as being fundamental across many different areas. We don’t have democracy without it. But there’s so much to report on with gender ideology, im sure you’ll have to put that on the back burner a bit….. or do two updates a day! 😂