Things are calming down a little bit on the Terf news and views front so this is not quite so long as recent updates.
Thanks as ever to my paid subscribers and to those who buy me a coffee. These updates do take up an enormous amount of work, so please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Onwards with the Dusty,Nicola, Moodie and Rex Film Series 😀 Please keep the suggestions for films coming in but please check the list first which I am updating as we go along. Please send suggestions in the comments here at this link:
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/empire-of-light-dustys-film-series
Mona Lisa is a 1986 British film directed by Neil Jordan.
George ( Bob Hoskins), a working-class gangster recently released after seven years in prison, is given a job in London by his former boss, Denny Mortwell (Michael Caine), as the driver and bodyguard for an ‘up market’ prostitute named Simone (Cathy Tyson). Mortwell also wants George to gather information on one of Simone’s wealthy customers for blackmail purposes. Simone, who has worked hard to develop high-class manners and an elite clientele, initially dislikes the uncouth and outspoken George, and he regards her as putting on airs. But as George and Simone find out more about each other, they form a friendship, and George begins to fall in love with her. George agrees, at the risk of his own life, to help Simone find her teenage friend Cathy, who has disappeared, and who Simone fears is being abused by her violent former pimp, Anderson.
George increasingly finds himself torn between his feelings for Simone, his obligations to Mortwell, and his relationship with his teenage daughter Jeannie. And if you want to know more, you’ll just have to watch it. 😎
Thanks to four wonderful readers for suggested pieces.
Some of the linked pieces below may be behind a paywall.
While ‘Sophie fever’ ( see last update) rages in the States, Leo Varadkar has been preaching to the trans rights activists in Amsterdam.
According to the records from the Tavistock Clinic ( now closed down, of course) most of the children referred to the Gender Identity Service were same sex attracted. There was a dark joke in the Tavistock that soon there would be no gay people left. Now that he is no longer Taoiseach ( prime minister) Leo Varadkar is shilling for the Gender Borg. Mr Varadkar is gay… and apparently us Terfs are ‘authoritarians’ and influenced by Russian bots.
Jason Osborne reports in Gript News:
August 10, 2026
Those opposed to men in women’s sports are “authoritarians” according to former Taoiseach and longtime activist Leo Varadkar, who was preaching to the choir at an LGBT inclusion conference over the weekend and taking a good swing at those who disagree with him as he did so.
The 2026 Workplace Pride International Conference took place in Amsterdam on Friday, and that evening attendees were treated to a “fireside chat” between conference moderator Ikenna Azuike and esteemed guest, the former Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland.
As with all good fireside chats, there was much heat and much light. Unlike the majority of good fireside chats, though, the heat was generated by the divisive nature of the comments and the light was not so much shining on the topic being discussed – “inclusion” – as it was on the ugly views of those doing the discussing.
In a viral clip from the session… Varadkar offered advice to “activists and human rights defenders” regarding how they ought to go about picking their battles with the “authoritarians”.
“Authoritarians are very smart at what battles they pick,” he warned, adding that “there’s a reason why authoritarians are targeting trans participation in sport”.
According to Varadkar, it’s because “they’ve done the maths” [ Dusty - does he mean ‘done the science?’] and “they’ve done the polling”, and have come to the conclusion that this is one of the areas to go for. While he leaves it unstated, the reason they come to that conclusion, having “done the maths” and “done the polling”, is because even in 2026 allowing men access to women’s sports remains an unpopular proposition to the general public.
Faced with that pessimistic outlook, Varadkar suggested “defend our position on that, absolutely”, but “don’t let that be the only fight that’s happening”.
“Make sure they’re refining and pressing in other areas, for intersex recognition; for people being able to have their documents changed, their preferred gender,” he advised. Fighting on the authoritarians’ chosen battlefield is more likely to result in a loss, he said.
Predictably, he surmised that much of the opposition to Leo Varadkar’s positions on these things, at least online, is “contrived”, involving a “lot of bots”.
“Russia, others determined to divide our societies and weaken our democracies and are trying to create an environment online that is hateful towards lots of different groups,” he said, adding that he hoped wider society wised up to that reality.
While acknowledging the reality of bot-driven activity on the internet, it nevertheless remains an entirely unsatisfactory thesis from an experienced former senior politician of a western democracy that much of the opposition to progressive flourishes, propelled into the mainstream only in the last 10 years, comes from authoritarian warmongers.
Significant segments of the Irish population do not think as Leo Varadkar does. Almost 40 percent voted no in the 2015 marriage referendum; almost 35 percent voted no in the 2018 abortion referendum; and approximately 70 percent voted no to both modernising proposals in the Varadkar government’s 2024 referendums.[ Dusty - these were the proposals to remove the words ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ from the Irish Constitution]
No matter what way you slice it, there is much legitimate disagreement to be had in Ireland. Disagreement that anti-“authoritarian” Leo Varadkar committed himself in office to shutting down with measures like hate speech legislation and buffer zones, and continues to commit himself to now in the strange, activistic limbo that he’s currently occupying post-politics.
But in that limbo, he has shown himself to be a true believer in progressive causes, and especially those related to sex and gender. The tactics referenced in his fireside chat are, quite literally, part of the activist’s playbook, appearing in a 2019 document concerned with how to “advance rights and protections for trans people, and especially trans youth”.
Published in 2019 by Thomson Reuters Foundation, the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organisation (IGLYO), and Dentons, Only Adults? Good Practices in Legal Gender Recognition for Youth contains guidance for NGOs as to what makes for good advocacy on behalf of the transgender cause.[ Dusty - this is the famous or rather infamous ‘Dentons Document’]
Some of those points include: anonymising the narrative; getting ahead of the government agenda and the media story; tying a campaign “to more popular reform”; avoiding “excessive press coverage and exposure”; seizing political momentum; and being “wary of compromise”.
To quote the advice offered under just one of those headings, “tie your campaign to a more popular reform”:
“In Ireland, Denmark and Norway, changes to the law on legal gender recognition were put through at the same time as other more popular reforms such as marriage equality legislation. This provided a veil of protection, particularly in Ireland, where marriage equality was strongly supported, but gender identity remained a more difficult issue to win public support for.”
“Veil of protection” can be understood as “smuggled through” while the public was distracted by a social change it consented to. Indeed, consented to, in Ireland’s case, following an enormous influence campaign carried out by organisations such as Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies.
The lack of popularity for the gender agenda is almost universally acknowledged, left and right, but one side accepts that for what it is while the other views it as a reality to be subverted, justifying it with references to a lack of education about “trans issues” among the general public.
Varadkar’s latest excursion was a textbook example of the hubris bringing liberalism to its knees. A healthy democracy would expect disagreement and accommodate it; an ailing one views deviation as divisive, and tars those who step out of line with all manner of labels to discredit them. “Authoritarians” included.
As Varadkar’s longtime colleague, current Taoiseach Micheál Martin, said in a speech riddled with hypocrisy last week, “history shows us that demanding the enforcement of a single narrative about the past, whether it be nationalist or ideological, is always destructive”.
“The use of dismissive labels against those who come to different conclusions feeds division and undermines understanding,” he said.
Indeed.
Following the bringing into force of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance on the Supreme Court judgment in the For Women Scotland case, the lamestream are reporting how awful it is for larping men and women - obviously, it is not awful for them!! As reported by SEEN In Journalism:
Aug 10, 2026
The introduction of the new statutory EHRC Code on single-sex spaces last week felt like a test for journalists.
Following last year’s Supreme Court judgment, which clarified that the words “woman”, “man” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to biological sex, the long-awaited Code was intended to help organisations understand how to comply with the law.
Its introduction was fiercely contested. Some MPs sought to block it, while trans-rights campaigners described it as “unworkable” and warned of its impact on trans people.
The question for journalists was straightforward: would they explain what the law now requires, or focus instead on the political arguments surrounding it?
We monitored coverage across a range of broadcasters and publications and found a strikingly consistent pattern.
Compliance with the Code was repeatedly framed as a question of kindness, inclusion or personal preference, rather than legal obligation. The “lived experience” of trans-identifying people was often given greater prominence than explaining the legal position, while women directly affected by the changes were frequently absent from the discussion.
Here are some of the week’s most notable examples.
One email we received this week captured the problem with James O’Brien’s coverage of the new EHRC Code.
“Please, please, please listen to James O’Brien today. He had not one woman on to discuss the impact on women’s rights.”
The listener had no journalism training. Yet she instinctively recognised what was missing.
Yet throughout O’Brien’s programme, the discussion focused overwhelmingly on the impact of the new code on trans people. Every caller we heard advanced one of the familiar arguments: that the Code was unworkable, devastating for trans people or would exclude them from public life.
At one point, a trans-identifying caller described wetting themselves outside a public toilet because of the new rules. The obvious follow-up question - why not simply use the facilities corresponding to your biological sex, or a gender-neutral toilet where one was available? - was never asked. O’Brien - who is typically unafraid of challenging his guests - made sympathetic noises.
Our director Janet Murray, wrote about it for Spiked.
The full piece is here:
https://seeninjournalism.substack.com/p/why-are-journalists-still-afraid
Us Terfs are well aware of two tier policing in Great Britain as discussed by Baroness Claire Fox on the Academy of Ideas substack:
…………………….
A young colleague of mine recently took a police force in the North East to court. Linzi Smith is a lesbian who believes that replacing binary sex with gender identity undermines women’s rights and same sex attraction. She challenged the decision of Northumbria Police’s chief constable, Vanessa Jardine, authorising officers to participate in the Newcastle Pride demo in 2024. This included officers displaying Pride and Progress flags, rainbow lanyards and a police car carrying these symbols.
Linzi argued this amounted to political expression, inconsistent with the police duty of impartiality. The judge was scathing in criticising the police. Linzi won. But surely it shouldn’t have taken a court case to state the bleedin’ obvious. The police should police demonstrations, not send contingents on them. They should not be activists in uniform, take the knee, show political bias.
However, I have no doubt this was all well-intentioned – to show the LGBTQ+ community that the police were on their side against supposed transphobic hate. I fear such good intentions are fuelling the public perceptions about the police as unfair, taking sides, policing WITH fear and favour – and all this contributes to the ‘two-tier policing’ narrative.
I’m sure good intentions lurked somewhere in the Henry Nowak story to explain why police officers fell for a murderer’s lies when the now convicted perpetrator Vikram Digwa played the race card, as a victim of hate. Yet it perfectly encapsulates my concerns – that policing has become mired in identity politics. Tackling hate has become an unquestioned orthodoxy, with no room for discretion or common sense.
CULTURE OF CONFORMITY
Perhaps one reason why those officers who handcuffed Henry as he was dying were so easily misled by the false accusations of racism, is a culture of conformity – even fear – in the force: that individual officers dare not voice any opposition to prioritising hate crime over all else. Indeed, anecdotally, I keep hearing from rank-and-file officers – off the record – that those who query the hate agenda are told they are in need of re-education or know they will forfeit promotion or be driven out if they raise any objections. They are effectively told to put up or shut up.
In parliament, I raised the example of Rick Prior who, when head of the Met’s Police Federation, told a TV interview about a crisis of confidence within the ranks of policing, with officers withdrawing from any kind of pro-active front-line policing of ethnic-minority citizens for fear of falling foul of vexatious complaints about racism. You may agree or even vehemently disagree. But did it merit being suspended and locked out of his email / IT system, which led to Rick taking his case to a tribunal? He won.
Meanwhile, only last week, Luke Salmons won his appeal after being sacked as a police community support officer. The issue was a conversation about the war in Gaza with a Muslim officer at a training day on race, religion and culture. To note – the Muslim officer was not offended and did not complain, but the exchange was reported as Islamophobic hate by a senior officer.
The full piece is here:
https://www.academyofideas.uk/p/fear-favour-and-failure-the-crisis
William Ferguson reports on his substack that WPATH have accepted in an ongoing court case that their so called guidance is just opinion. What a shocker, eh?
Aug 11, 2026
In a federal court over the summer, there was a significant event - a momentous event that as of yet, has been under the radar in many circles of the broader culture who don’t closely follow developments in gender medicine.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has essentially admitted that their acclaimed “Standards of Care, Version 8” (SOC-8) is not the definitive standard of care that it is conventionally treated as in its motion to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s lawsuit - co-sponsored by a group of states - dated July 28, 2022. [ Dusty - I think this must refer to the original date of the standards of care] In WPATH’s own words, they have merely been presenting SOC-8 as their free-speech opinion: a source to reference in a field which they now characterize as “medical and scientific uncertainty.”
Clinicians and systems who adhere to it - and treat it as the status quo - will “assume independent responsibility,” claims the filing.
It’s a big step back.
For many years, WPATH had its Standards of Care Version 8 (SOC-8) the 2022 report that served as the de facto gospel and consensus opinion document outlining care for gender dysphoric minors and adults for the major medical institutions, hospitals, and clinics of the US. Express any doubts and you risked your career. In contrast, European systematic reviews – most importantly the Cass Review in the UK - concluded that the evidence base for the blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgeries in minors was woefully inadequate.
Those reviews were a driving force for restriction in several nations while the United States has remained deeply divided on the question.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), joined by Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas, has filed suit against WPATH in June 2026, citing that it provided the apparatus for health care providers to peddle misinformation and falsehoods about safety and efficacy, necessity of the procedure and scientific consensus to the patients and parents.
According to the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine’s detailed reading of the motion (the document is publicly available):
WPATH now acknowledges two sides to the scientific debate over care for gender-dysphoric youth: the gender-affirming model it promotes, and the Cass Review / Cass-aligned approaches that restrict or ban puberty blockers and hormones for minors.
It describes pediatric transgender medicine as marked by medical and scientific uncertainty.
It frames SOC-8 recommendations as an expression of WPATH’s free speech rather than an established standard of care.
But, most telling of all, WPATH argues that physicians and organizations relying on SOC-8 as the standard take on all the liabilities and responsibility for that reliance.
Essentially: buyer beware. The document marketed for many years as a gold-standard treatment has, by WPATH’s current legal interpretation, devolved more into an act of First Amendment advocacy.
The full piece is here:
https://williamaferguson.substack.com/p/wpath-just-told-a-court-its-standards
Good round up as ever from Kara Dansky on The Terf Report. The main piece is:
Thanks to the LGB Courage Coalition’s Weekly News Roundup from Friday, I now know about a class action lawsuit recently filed on behalf of four federal employees who call themselves “trans” and/or nonbinary and one federal employee parent of a kid who calls himself “trans.” The plaintiffs are arguing that they have a right to federal (taxpayer-funded) coverage of so-called “gender-affirming care.” I’ll discuss the complaint below the paywall.
The full piece is here:
https://karadansky.substack.com/p/a-new-class-action-to-make-us-taxpayers
Bernard Lane discusses the RCH Guidelines re ‘gender affirming care’ which were rated by the Cass Review as poor quality and reports on the conflicting role of a certain Professor Kilpatrick:
Aug 09, 2026
Comment | Professor Christine Kilpatrick, who trained in neurology, occupies two positions that might make any thoughtful person somewhat nervous.
Since 2024, she has chaired the board of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. And she became chair of the board at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) Melbourne on July 1 last year.
The Commission is a health sector watchdog agency. RCH Melbourne gives minors puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and sometimes enables a referral to a private surgeon willing to perform a mastectomy on a teenage girl’s healthy breasts. All this in the name of gender. How can it be reconciled with safety and quality?
Do Professor Kilpatrick’s two hats give rise to a conflict of interest? Asking via RCH’s media handlers produced no answer. The Commission cited its policy on disclosure of interests, and told me that Professor Kilpatrick’s RCH role “has been declared”.
I’m not suggesting any wrongdoing, but there are questions and perceptions that warrant discussion.
Professor Kilpatrick has a history with RCH, having served as chief executive officer of the hospital from 2008-17. In 2012, when paediatrician Dr Michelle Telfer took charge at the RCH gender clinic, there were 18 new referrals. In 2017, Professor Kilpatrick’s last year as CEO, the gender clinic had 253 new referrals. That’s an increase of 1,305 per cent.
On the hospital’s website, you can find a 2018 talk by Dr Telfer on “Legal reform in transgender adolescents”. Hers is a story of children in distress, clinicians championing their cause, the obstacle to reform represented by Prime Minister Tony Abbott and others from the “dominant right faction”, “clever” lawyers nudging the Family Court to wind back its supervision of gender dysphoria treatment for minors, and the ultimate humiliation of those who did not see all this as progress.
At the time, Dr Telfer told her audience of RCH alumni, she “was being targeted personally online”.
The health professional regulator AHPRA [ Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency ] had “received a letter from an unnamed group, notifying them that I was a child abuser due to the nature of my work”.
“As instructed by AHPRA I made an appointment with [CEO] Christine Kilpatrick to inform her of the notification. Christine said, ‘Show me that letter’ and then went [on] to say she’d been sent the same one, but had thrown it in the bin. Fortunately, the Medical Board also dismissed it as being politically motivated.”
More reason to fear a conflict of interest for Professor Kilpatrick? I cannot know if that letter of complaint was accurately characterised by RCH, but it’s a hallmark of the “gender-affirming” worldview to dismiss even evidence-based criticism as right-wing politics or religious conservatism.
Not our problem
The gender-affirming treatment model has been the subject of heightened scrutiny for several years now. Citing weak evidence and the risk of harm, health authorities in the UK, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia’s state of Queensland have adopted policies to restrict the hormonal interventions still given as routine at most public children’s hospitals in Australia.
Any role in this for Professor Kilpatrick’s Commission? I was told it “has not undertaken work, or been asked to conduct any work, on the issue of youth gender dysphoria”.
I asked if the commission had a duty or power to inquire into the safety or quality of the gender dysphoria/incongruence interventions offered by providers such as state children’s hospital gender clinics, other public health services or providers in receipt of public funds such as Orygen/headspace or ACON?
The response: “The Commission is a national co-ordinating body for improvements in the delivery of safe and high-quality health care. It is not a regulatory agency or complaints body, and does not directly regulate healthcare facilities.
“The Commission’s planned activities are shaped by our strategic priorities and align with the functions of the Commission set out in the National Health Reform Act (2011).”
The full piece is here:
https://www.genderclinicnews.com/p/two-hats
While ‘Sophie fever’ rages in the States ( see last update), the Adelaide Football League are allowing a giant larping man to play in the women’s game!!!
Three women murdered a seven year old boy in their care. No, hold on, that should be one woman and two larping men! As reported by Feminist Legal Clinic via Andy Ngo:
A woman and two men who identify as trans have been charged in Cincinnati, Ohio in the brutal torture and murder of a young special-needs boy. A Ngo Comment investigation found that the group, which included at least three men who identify as trans, had groomed the child into trans ideology from a very young age and appeared to have plans to transition him before police found him unresponsive in a closet, bound with duct tape and showing signs of torture.
William Michael Evans-Ellis, 7, was recovered from an apartment in the Oakley neighborhood in Cincinnati on Aug. 6. He suffered injuries consistent with being choked and held underwater, beaten and burned. A detective testified in court that it was one of the most disturbing child abuse cases he had ever investigated.
The child was found with “a number of injuries that would indicate physical beatings, blunt force injuries,” he said.
Kaitlin Elizabeth Evans, 38, who is charged, is the child’s biological mother. The two other suspects are biological men who identify as women: “Kirby” Rankin (prior name: Nathan Rankin), 33, and “Nessa” Keaney (prior name: Adamhnán Judaydon Caoilte Lugh Keaney), 23. The three lived together as a polycule and “co-parented” the child to death.
They are charged with murder and child endangerment.
Liberal and legacy media have repeatedly reported that “three women” were charged. This follows a pattern of media outlets obscuring or omitting the trans identities of accused killers and convicted killers in an effort to protect transgenderism. The same pattern occurred in the news media coverage of the Zizian trans death cult.
Source: Another Trans Cult? 7-Year-Old Victim Was Groomed to Be Trans Before He Was Found Tortured to Death
Given today’s film choice…here is Nat King Cole:
#BeMorePorcupine
#KeepTerfing
#BringDownAmnesty
#KeepFighting
#RepealTheGRA
#AdultHumanFemale
#LetWomenSpeak
#LGB✂️TQ
#FreeSpeechNotSilencedSpeech
#HoldTheLine
#StopTheBlockersTrial
#NeverSurrender
#NeverForget
#TruthWillTriumph
#WeWillWin
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