Category: Violence

Freemasons to sue Met for forcing officers to declare membership | The Telegraph

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

The Freemasons are to sue the Metropolitan Police over Scotland Yard’s decision to force officers to declare they are members of the organisation.

The United Grand Lodge of England (UGLE) has written to Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, setting out its intention to seek a judicial review of the decision unless it is suspended immediately.

It has criticised the new rules forcing police officers to declare their membership as “unlawful, unfair and discriminatory”, warning that they will “cast an aura of mistrust” over all Freemasons.

Under the rules, announced last week, police officers and staff are now required to declare membership “past or present” of any organisation that is “hierarchical, has confidential membership and requires members to support and protect each other”.

Defending the decision, Met Commander Simon Messinger said: “Successive leaders of the Met have considered for many years whether we need to amend our declarable association policy, particularly in relation to Freemasonry.

“After such conclusive results from our consultation, we have decided now is the right time to address long-standing concerns and that public and staff confidence must take precedence over the secrecy of any membership organisation.

Source: Freemasons to sue Met for forcing officers to declare membership

Why can someone in suburban Sydney own 6 guns legally? New laws might change that | The Conversation

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

Australians have watched on in horror as more details have come to light about the shooters in the Bondi terror attacks.

As people grapple with the tragedy, many wonder how such a thing could have happened in a country that has long prided itself on its tough gun laws.

The 50-year-old father, Sajid Akram, and 24-year-old son, Naveed Akram, had six guns. Police confirmed all of them were registered firearms. The father, who was fatally shot by police, had a recreational hunting licence and was a member of a gun club.

National Cabinet has since committed to a raft of new gun laws, including renegotiating the National Firearms Agreement, caps on the amount of firearms any one person can own and limiting open-ended licensing.

Gun control laws vary slightly in each state and territory, but are broadly similar. We’ll look here at the laws in New South Wales.

The first step is to apply for a firearms licence. As part of this, authorities will conduct a background check to ensure there’s no criminal history, including mental health orders or domestic violence charges.

The applicant must also pass the “fit and proper person” test. NSW Police says this test checks someone is “of good character, law abiding, honest, and shows good judgement”.

If these standards are met, a firearms licence is granted.

But in order to actually buy a firearm, people must apply for a “permit to acquire”. This is linked to the specific firearm they’d like to purchase. Subsequent guns do not need a waiting period as long as it’s in the same category they already have approval to own.

They must also pass a safety course, with both practical and theoretical components, including a written test.

Firearms, once acquired, must be stored in a specific way. Guns cannot be stored while loaded, for instance, and ammunition must be kept in a separate safe.

Finally, someone must have a “genuine reason” to buy a firearm. These include working as a primary producer, or participating in recreational hunting, among others. They need to prove a genuine reason for each and every firearm purchase. Personal protection is not a a genuine reason.

Applicants need to prove their reason is truthful. This may be proof of membership to a gun club, or a letter with express permission from the landowner on whose property they intend to hunt.

Importantly, if someone holds a firearm licence for recreational purposes, they must compete in a certain amount of competitions each year. In NSW, it’s two to four.

It’s not uncommon for people to have more than one firearm. Licensed firearm owners in NSW have an average of about four, according to a 2025 report.

Source: Why can someone in suburban Sydney own 6 guns legally? New laws might change that

How boys get sucked into the manosphere

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

Let’s say a teenage boy is looking for some dating advice.

He’ll be served a typical dating coach video like this, which, at first glance, seems harmless enough.

But note how this influencer is already normalising the sexist claim that women are “not the same as men” because “men are logical”.

Some claim if you don’t make a woman feel inferior, she won’t believe she’s “dating up”.

Many manfluencers believe women are genetically hardwired to mate only with so-called “alpha males”.

This video peddles the manosphere belief that women don’t like good men because they are “naturally” attracted to “dark-triad” personalities (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism).

This tactic endorses and excuses toxic behaviours.

But it starts to get darker, suggesting women enjoy sexual aggression and violence.

And because of those earlier videos about female inferiority and male aggression, he’s been primed to accept what comes next.

The dating coach in this video uses language and concepts from evolutionary psychology.

This lends “scientific” legitimacy to his claims and recasts male sexual violence as motivated by a desire to protect women.

At this point, our teenager is also receiving videos about concepts like “the Red Pill”. This is the idea that by refusing to blindly accept the world as it is, they learn the “truth”: that men are at the whims of women’s power and desires.

This messaging reframes hypermasculinity as edgy and anti-establishment. But in reality, it’s about preserving the status quo, not disrupting it.

By now, we are quite deep in the manosphere.

A steady stream of narratives about male victimhood and “wokeism” make our boy feel both enlightened and aggrieved.

Videos will often start referencing the film The Matrix.

Manfluencers describe how the corporate world, liberal government and education conspire to keep “blue-pilled brokies” in a life of wage slavery.

Our teenager’s mindset has started to change.

He is now engaging with overt misogyny, as well as common far-right tropes, such as that single mothers produce murderers, drug dealers and criminals.

These ideas are probably manifesting in his behaviour at school, and in how he is treating girls and women both on and offline.

Not all boys exposed to this content will pursue it. Many get themselves out.

And while the social media ban may put a brake on younger boys accessing this material, it will not solve the problem. Misogyny is rife beyond the digital world, and male supremacists will inevitably find other platforms to reach younger audiences.

The challenge is to reach men and boys before the manosphere does, which given its power, is a significant challenge.

Source: How boys get sucked into the manosphere

Nazi Stirling Cooper is Andrew Tate’s right-hand man – and is recruiting teens to the NSN in Australia | SMH

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

A close friend of misogynist influencer Andrew Tate is part of an aggressive recruitment drive to draw rich and isolated teenagers into the ranks of Australia’s neo-Nazis.
An investigation by this masthead has found that a key member of the National Socialist Network (NSN) is one of Tate’s close associates – and that the Nazi organisation is now using Tate-style propaganda videos to target vulnerable young men.
Among the NSN recruits recently unmasked by this masthead is porn star-turned-sex coach Stirling Cooper, who has been spotted at neo-Nazi training camps alongside teens and posing with the group’s flag.
But the Australian (whose real name is Nigel Clifford) is also part of Tate’s inner circle. A close friend and staunch defender of both Andrew and his brother Tristan, Cooper has regularly been pictured with the pair – on private jets smoking cigars and partying in exotic locales.
Neo-Nazi leadership are now telling followers to buy Cooper’s “sexual domination” courses to learn “how to make a white woman submit”.
Part of Tate’s secret, police allege, was luring women into sex work online in order to bankroll men in the War Room, and Andrew and Tristan Tate now face charges across multiple countries of rape, sex trafficking, and forming a criminal gang to enslave women. The Tates deny any wrongdoing, and Cooper and other men in the War Room have not been charged.
Footage, photos and insider accounts place Cooper at key neo-Nazi meetings in Australia in recent months, including in Western Australia alongside NSN leader Thomas Sewell and white supremacist Blair Cottrell, and at the group’s “national conference” in Victoria.
Australia’s biggest neo-Nazi group is in recruiting overdrive. Analysis by this masthead and The White Rose Society suggests more than 100 new members have joined the NSN in the past year. “It’s more than we’ve seen before,” say White Rose researchers. “Some meet-ups have hit record numbers.”
Parents of young men in the NSN, who did not wish to be identified for safety reasons, said they felt Sewell had exploited their children’s mental health, social isolation, or underlying conditions to build what he has called his “army of autistics”.
Some families said their sons had found neo-Nazis on gaming platforms, or incel forums (which promote hatred of women). For others, it was at their local gym.
While the group has ties to proscribed international terror groups such as Combat 18, the Proud Boys, Atomwaffen Division and The Base, the NSN itself has not been banned in Australia.
Chat logs from a closed group within Tate’s War Room, first leaked to the BBC and obtained by this masthead, further reveal Cooper’s apparent involvement. As early as June 2021, Tristan Tate had named Cooper and a mutual friend as collaborators in his webcam “mission”. The group, the Tates made clear, was an elite “PHD – or Pimpin’ Hoes Degree” to help men make money by grooming women into online sex work on the site OnlyFans.
Later, when Tristan told the chat how he regularly culled women from his “harem” who weren’t providing cash or status, an account linked to Cooper agreed. “I’ve become more ruthless with cutting women off if I’m only getting sex and nothing else,” it stated.
Cooper went on to detail for the other men in the War Room how he trained women, whom the group refer to as dragons, to believe their value lay in their “servitude”.
In the same chat, among the sea of sexist memes and pictures of guns, one teenage member celebrated getting their learner’s driving permit.
Leaked chat-logs from closed neo-Nazi Telegram groups in Australia obtained by this masthead reveal the NSN has also used grooming tactics on women to “test” their tolerance for Nazism. In an NSN chat that ran until February, members shared tips for “training” their partners to accept more and more racist views. One wrote his “current testing with [girlfriend]” had taken her “from TV-multyculty enjoyer to ‘it’s OK to be white’ in three days”.
In a recent livestream, the NSN’s Joel Davis ranted about “race traitors” dating non-white women because they “don’t know how to make a white woman submit”, telling followers: “Watch your Stirling Cooper videos, get skills and get a white domestic slave if that’s your thing.”
Online, Cooper’s videos echo Tate’s focus on controlling and “disciplining” women, and he has blamed perceived societal ills on women getting the right to vote.
In leaked videos from inside Tate’s “university”, Cooper and Tate discuss how to isolate women from their family and friends. Cooper asks Tate to talk about “restrictions and the boundaries you put on a woman in terms of who she can talk to, where she can go”.
Yet, despite the NSN’s longstanding ban on women joining the group, neo-Nazis say they’re now “throwing [women] a bone”. In the spirit of their recent recruiting drive, Davis invited women to the October 19 seminars so they could get involved “beyond just breeding”.
“Sew us some Australian flags,” he suggested.

Source: Nazi Stirling Cooper is Andrew Tate’s right-hand man – and is recruiting teens to the NSN in Australia

Trans-Identified Male Killer Who Savagely Beat Estranged Wife, Murdered Her Partner Loses Bid for State-Funded Surgery | Genevieve Gluck

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

A trans-identified male serving a life sentence for the murder of his estranged wife’s partner has failed in his legal attempt to have cosmetic transsexual surgeries on the taxpayer dime. Nicholas Clark, who changed his name to Veronica-May Clark in 2021, was sentenced to 75 years in prison for bludgeoning his former wife and her partner savagely with a metal pipe, resulting in the man’s death.

Source: Trans-Identified Male Killer Who Savagely Beat Estranged Wife, Murdered Her Partner Loses Bid for State-Funded Surgery

Trans-Identified Mass Shooters and Gender-Affirming Care

 

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

On the morning of 27 August, Robin Westman entered Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis armed with a pistol, a shotgun, and a revolver. He opened fire during the first Mass of the new school year, killing two young children and wounding many others before turning one of the guns on himself.

While Westman’s political ideology (insofar as he had one) is unknown, one thing we do know is that the killer was a biologically male 23-year-old who identified as transgender. Robert Westman became “Robin Westman” at the age of seventeen—a fact that many media outlets originally chose not to report. In keeping with the taboo against “deadnaming” trans-identified individuals—even murderers—they posthumously honoured Westman’s “gender identity”; and so gave Americans the false impression that the carnage at Annunciation Catholic School had been committed by a woman.

[R]ecent years have witnessed many horrifying crimes committed by trans-identified individuals. Some examples include:

  • In 2018, a biologically female drug-store worker named Snochia Mosley shot and killed three co-workers in Aberdeen, Maryland. Friends shared messages with the media indicating that Mosley felt “the world was against her,” and that she’d begun identifying as a transgender male (and discussing hormone treatments) two years earlier.
  • The following year, Maya McKinney—a biologically female student who asserted a male gender identity and had begun calling herself “Alec”—opened fire at a Colorado school, killing one and wounding eight, in retaliation for alleged transphobic bullying.
  • Last year, a girl identifying as a boy was expelled from Les Paul Middle School in Wisconsin after she was caught plotting a school shooting. A forensic search of her phone revealed chilling queries such as “trans kill hit list.”
  • In 2023, “Audrey” Hale, an emotionally disturbed woman who identified as male, killed three children and three staff members at The Covenant School in Nashville. In the months leading up to the attack, Hale wrote in her journal: “My penis exists in my head. I swear to god I’m male.” Other statements included, “So now in America, it makes one a criminal to have a gun or be transgender or non-binary,” “God I hate those sh*thead politicians,” and “I need a trans doctor… This female gender role makes me want to not exist.”

It goes without saying that the fact a killer—or attempted killer—is trans-identified does not necessarily mean his or her transgender identity is connected to his or her criminal motive. But it is alarming to observe how prevalent mentally unwell trans-identified individuals have become in many extremist movements and sects. This includes the Zizians—a self-described “rationalist” cult linked to at least six homicides. Its imprisoned leader, “Ziz” LaSota, is a biological male (originally named Jack Amadeus LaSota) who identifies as a woman. Most of his followers are also trans-identified (as well as autistic), including the late Ophelia Bauckholt, a biologically male German native originally named Felix.

Source: Trans-Identified Mass Shooters and Gender-Affirming Care

NSW records highest ever number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody in 2025 | SMH

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

The state’s top coroner has taken the rare step of issuing an open letter after NSW reached the “profoundly distressing milestone” of recording the highest-ever number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody in a single year.

Teresa O’Sullivan told The Sydney Morning Herald after her appointment in 2019 that preventing Indigenous deaths in custody was a priority for her court.

But the number of Aboriginal people in custody has increased by almost 20 per cent in the past five years, while the non-Aboriginal prison population declined in the same period.

“Twelve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have died in custody in NSW so far in 2025 – the highest number ever recorded in a single year, with more than two months remaining in the calendar,” O’Sullivan wrote in the letter, released on Wednesday.

O’Sullivan said the number of Aboriginal people in custody had increased by 18.9 per cent over the past five years, while the non-Aboriginal prison population had declined by 12.5 per cent.

“Nearly half of Aboriginal adults in custody (45.6 per cent) were on remand or refused bail awaiting further court outcomes. The number of Aboriginal people on remand has surged by 63 per cent over the same five-year period,” she wrote.

“These figures reflect the entrenched over-representation of First Nations peoples in the criminal justice system – a systemic issue that compounds the risks and vulnerabilities contributing to the rising number of deaths in custody.”

[Ed: Indigenous people make up only 3.3% of Australian population but 29% of male prison population and 34% of indigenous female prison population.]

Source: NSW records highest ever number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody in 2025

Charlie Kirk Assassination Suspect Lived With Transgender Partner, Discord Denies Use | ZeroHedge

While the left oscillates between celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder and insisting the suspect, Tyler Robinson, is a conservative, today we learn that Robinson was living with a transgender partner who was in the process of transitioning from male to female, Fox News‘ Brooke Singman first reported. 

Transtifa Problem

As we noted last month following the horrific attack on a Christian school by a transgender mass shooter, America has a “Transtifa” problem.

Andy Ngo, senior editor at The Post Millennial, has covered in-depth for quite some time about the disturbing rise of “trans militancy” across America.

Ngo’s recent report, titled “The Violent Ideology and Lies Fueling Trans Militancy,” warns that the transgender mass shooter attack on Christians in Minneapolis last week “wasn’t an isolated attack.”

In the last five years alone, several mass shootings have been committed by transgenders or pronoun people:

  • November 19, 2022 – Club Q Nightclub, Colorado Springs, CO

    • Perpetrator: Anderson Lee Aldrich

    • Gender Identity: Non-binary (they/them pronouns, per court documents)

    • Casualties: 5 killed, 19 injured

    • Details: The shooter targeted an LGBTQ+ nightclub. Non-binary identification was stated post-arrest and accepted in legal proceedings.

  • March 27, 2023 – The Covenant School, Nashville, TN

    • Perpetrator: Audrey Hale

    • Gender Identity: Transgender (he/him pronouns, identified as male)

    • Casualties: 6 killed (3 children, 3 adults), shooter killed by police

    • Details: The shooter attacked a Christian elementary school, leaving a manifesto referencing gender identity and hormones.

  • January 4, 2024 – Perry High School, Perry, IA

    • Perpetrator: Dylan Butler

    • Gender Identity: Alleged genderfluid (he/they pronouns, posted LGBTQ+ symbols)

    • Casualties: 2 killed, 6 injured, shooter died by suicide

    • Details: Friends described Butler as genderfluid, but authorities did not confirm transgender identity.

  • February 11, 2024 – Lakewood Church, Houston, TX

    • Perpetrator: Genesse Moreno

    • Gender Identity: Alleged transgender (used male aliases but identified as female)

    • Casualties: 0 killed, 2 injured, shooter killed by police

    • Details: Claims of transgender identity were debunked by authorities.

  • August 27, 2025 – Annunciation Catholic School, Minneapolis, MN

    • Perpetrator: Robin Westman

    • Gender Identity: Transgender (she/her pronouns, name changed from Robert to Robin in 2020)

    • Casualties: 2 killed (both children), 18 injured (14 children, 4 adults), shooter died by suicide

    • Details: The shooter expressed admiration for other mass killers and had a documented interest in school shootings.

Earlier this month we carried an article from Jason Curtis Anderson of One City Rising detailing the ‘socialist NRA’ and the alarming rise of far-left militancy following the Minneapolis shooting.

In the aftermath, investigators uncovered the shooter’s personal journal. On it, a sticker of a gay pride flag emblazoned with an assault rifle and the words “defend equality.” That very same flag is also displayed by the Minneapolis chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), a self-proclaimed left-wing gun club that advocates armed struggle. Andy Ngo shared the images here.

Say what you will about America’s increasingly bitter culture wars, but we cannot ignore the fact that much of the rhetoric surrounding the modern trans movement isn’t just about self-defense, but about “fighting back,” like this flyer, advocating for a trans day of vengeance.

The Socialist Rifle Association has more than 50 chapters nationwide, with several states hosting multiple chapters. We’ve been told for decades that America’s great domestic terror threat comes from far-right militias in camo gear. But there is obviously a militant movement on the other side of the spectrum: a growing network of far-left militias preparing for what they themselves call “the revolution.”

Source: Charlie Kirk Assassination Suspect Lived With Transgender Partner, Discord Denies Use | ZeroHedge

Charlie Kirk murder: Gender-critical feminist tells GB News she fears for her life at upcoming campaign event after shooting: ‘I’m terrified’

A gender-critical Democrat has told GB News that she is “terrified” for her life following the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

Speaking to host Martin Daubney, the President of the US branch of Women’s Declaration International expressed her fears for further political violence following the incident.

Discussing the impact of Charlie Kirk’s death on campaigners of all sides of the political spectrum, Ms Dansky said: “The afternoon of the 10th was very difficult for many of us here, including people who agreed with Charlie Kirk and including people including myself, who were diametrically opposed to pretty much everything Charlie Kirk had to say about everything except our shared views on so-called gender identity.

“I do think it is absolutely essential, as the Governor said, that people across the political spectrum come together and denounce political violence, it’s just not okay.”

Reflecting on her gender-critical beliefs and her platform, Ms Dansky admitted she is now “terrified” of becoming a victim of political violence in light of Mr Kirk’s murder.

“The US chapter is scheduled to meet in approximately one week and I will acknowledge I am quite terrified of the possibility for gun violence.

“But I am very afraid of myself potentially being a victim of political violence. I have in the past I have been assaulted, had things thrown at me when I have simply stood up for women and girls as a sex class, and I’ve been afraid of gun violence, but I’m especially afraid of it now.”

Source: Charlie Kirk murder: Gender-critical feminist tells GB News she fears for her life at upcoming campaign event after shooting: ‘I’m terrified’

When Free Speech Meets a Full metal Jacket | Fraser Anderson

Women give life, and men take it. This is the fundamental societal binary that can never be ignored. Some academics and intellectuals use this to draw together a very coherent picture of what feminists call the patriarchy. Male power, and therefore male dominance, is embedded in society as a whole. Much as I would love to deny this fact, or at least argue that it can be dismantled, I believe one clear truth has emerged from the so-called “gender wars”. Feminists are correct that there is a patriarchy, but they are wrong that it can be overthrown. It is not a cultural invention that can be willed away, it is innate, biological, and as immutable as our sex itself.

So where does that leave us? The answer is that I do not know. I have always stood with women and argued for equality of opportunity, but the debate is far from settled. Should young, childless men be placed in charge of infants in child care? Should small young women be placed on battlefields where they cannot possibly drag larger wounded men to safety? These are serious questions that demand honest reckoning, not the self-indulgent gibberish of postmodernism, nor the ideological snake oil of Critical Race Theory, Critical Social Justice or Gender Identity Theory. While we should have been debating real and urgent matters, we have instead wasted years and have been forced into an endless circus of lies, distortions and the intellectual bankruptcy of activists who mistake slogans for ideas.

On 10 September 2025, Charlie Kirk, a thirty one year old husband and father of two young children, gunned down mercilessly at a free speech event on a US college campus.

Whether his killers were motivated by his stance on transgenderism, his arguments on abortion, his criticisms of DEI or simply his refusal to bow to the orthodoxies of the age, the result is the same. A family man who stood on the principle of free speech across every contentious subject of our time has been silenced with a bullet to the jugular. He chose argument, persuasion and engagement. His opponents chose censorship, intimidation and, finally, violence. That is the moral line, and it could not be starker.

And let us be blunt about who is responsible. It is not only the man with the gun. It is the activists, senators, congressmen and women and MPs who peddle the myth of hate speech. It is the vice chancellors and principals who persecute dissenting academics. It is the journalists who write their smug columns, applauding censorship and jeering at those who refuse to bow to orthodoxy. It is the celebrities who trade in platitudes while lending cover to bullies, thugs and tyrants. Their fingerprints are on the trigger as surely as the killer’s.

Women give life, men take it. The patriarchy is real, and that does need to be addressed but now is not the time because without the freedom to speak so many stakeholders are being excluded from the most important debate society must have, honestly, frankly and in all likelihood quite acrimoniously. Until we can guarantee free speech for all and exclude the men so enfeebled that their only answer to words is the gun. We are just screaming into the void.

We either choose to loudly proclaim our freedom to speak uncomfortable truths and unpopular opinions or we slowly slide further into the putrid cesspit where speech itself is punishable by death.

Source: When Free Speech Meets a Full metal Jacket