The Plural of Anecdote is not Data

If you met Saori Kimura you would immediately notice that she is a very tall girl. In fact at 6’1” she is the tallest player in the Japanese women’s volleyball team. In indeed she, and her team-mates were the only Japanese people you had ever met, you would think the Japanese were on average a very tall race.

The problem is that if you tried to generalise from Saori Kimura to the rest of the population of Japan in terms of height you would be wrong. Even without heels, when I travel on the Tokyo Metro at rush-hour, there are very few men or women who come to anything higher than chin level on me, and when I wear heels, they are mostly staring at my arm-pits. Indeed it is one of the most remarkable things about using the public transport system, compared to London; suddenly I am head and shoulders above almost everyone in the train. And I am only 5’7” tall.

So if you had met Saori and you went around telling everyone that the Japanese were very tall people you would be either lying or stupid.

Yet this is what Julie Bindel has been doing for a long time when it comes to trans people. On her Facebook page she refers to a blog in which an unknown women’s group is taken over by a small number on unknown transwomen, who, because of their supposedly louder voices and more aggressive nature, come to dominate and eventually exclude the other women. The implication from this is that all transwomen who join women’s-only spaces will dominate them and take over.

Julie is a unfortunately a serial offender when it comes to doing this; she finds one example of a trans person behaving in a way she disapproves and then appears to generalise it to the entire population of trans people. The problem is that, in the case of Saori Kimura it is very easy to show that anyone saying “because Saori is tall all Japanese people are tall”. You don’t have to travel very far from Narita Airport to realise that. When Julie Bindel stereotypes transwomen in this way; “All transwomen are more aggressive and take over women’s-only spaces.” It is much harder to prove her wrong.

As such the onus should be on her to provide accurate and reliable data on the extent of what she is implying happens. Of course she has not done this because the plural of anecdote is not data. You will always be able to find one or two examples of what you want to prove, whether it is tall Japanese women or short Kenyans. But generalising from a very small number of examples is either dishonest or stupid.

Coalition takes aim at Trans People

Christine Burns’ excellent blog post about the Equality Act demonstrated how the government is systematically undermining most aspects of it. Christine is an expert on equality legislation and has a particularly good understanding of how it relates to what actually goes on in the public sector – the NHS, schools, universities, etc. She quite clearly explains how the Tories and the Lib Dems are undermining it with a combination of different measures; reducing the ability of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and individuals (through a reduction in Legal Aid) to enforce the law, and reducing public sector bodies’ duty to tell the public what they are doing to reduce inequality.

Rather than come out honestly and openly and say that they disagree with equality for minorities such as black people, trans people, Muslims, women, gay men and lesbians, Theresa May, Lynne Featherstone and the rest of the government seem to have decided to make it appear that they agree with the Equality Act on the surface, whilst behind our backs they are chipping away making it an ineffective piece of legislation. This truly is a government which will say one thing and do the opposite.

However this matters much, much more for trans people than for other minorities. Trans people are one of the smallest minorities in the country. However we are also one of the least understood and most misrepresented. The fact that Trans Media Watch has had to work so hard to come up with its Memorandum of Understanding with Channel 4 and other progressive media is clear evidence of this. Do groups representing women, ethnic minorities, LGB people, Muslims and others have to agree MOUs with the media? The fact that Comic Relief can use a transphobic comedian to raise money for charity suggests that trans people have a very long way to go in the UK compared to other groups.

The experiences of trans children and their treatment in many schools, especially the lack of support they receive from school staff demonstrates the distance trans people still have to go to achieve the acceptance that, for example, ethnic minorities have. In most schools, incidents of racial bullying are dealt with firmly, logged, recorded and patterns analysed to see if there is anything the school can do. In short schools are pro-active when it comes to racism. Transphobic bullying is not taken seriously at all by all accounts.

The Equality Act would have placed a duty on all public bodies to actively plan to ensure that all minority groups are able to access their services. This is called the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) and it means that, all public bodies, especially schools, have to be pro-active and ensure their procedures, policies and activities mean that they consider the impact of everything they do on minority groups.

This is important because many organisations in the public sector already do this to ensure that members of ethnic minority groups are not disadvantaged. However, this does not happen for trans people in very many cases. In fact trans people are not often included in diversity policies for many public sector organisations, especially schools, where incidentally, diversity policies from an LGB perspective are also often lacking.

Relatively small adjustments could lead to substantial improvements in the quality of life and educational outcomes for trans children. Additionally, since trans children do not usually make themselves known to adults at all, schools need to take special measures to educate children that it is OK to be trans, even if they do not know if there are any trans children in the school. With 1% of the population being trans and the modal average age of children becoming aware of their gender variance at only 5 years old, the chances are that a school of 500 children has 5 transgender children. Teachers are told to have a dyslexia-friendly classroom even if they do not know whether or not they have any dyslexic children, the same needs to be the case for trans children.

The fact is that the sort of pro-active measures essential if we are to see trans people treated equitably by public services and public bodies are not going to happen unless public sector bodies are forced to be pro-active. The problem is that, for most other minority groups their needs and problems have at least been acknowledged and actions taken which enable them to access the services provided by public bodies. As such, although the Equality Act is far from perfect from the point of view of trans people, trans people probably stood to gain most from it, and have most to lose from its undermining by the government.
Of course this now raises questions as to the position of Lynne Featherstone, Equalities minister in the current regime. She has been an outspoken and welcome supporter of trans people, however her silent acquiescence over the dilution of the Equality act suggests that she is either a willing collaborator or a pawn who is manipulated by a government that uses her as a cover for illiberal and oppressive policies. Time for her to show whose side she is really on.

Finally, one of the reasons for having a Public sector Equality Duty is because we are all taxpayers (OK except the very rich), and if we are paying our taxes we should expect that we are recieving service which is appropriate for our needs. Most services are appropriate for cisgender people by default. If however, public services are not catering to our needs, why should we pay our taxes?

Why Polly Toynbee is wrong.

As much as I enjoyed reading Polly Toynbee's article; "If the Facts Change - it's OK to Change your Mind." in the Guardian yesterday, I have to disagree with the implications behind it.

In this article she suggested that 'chancellor' George Osborne should change course in his economic policy because the economy is clearly tanking and his current economic policy is clearly not working. She suggested that there is nothing wrong with changing your mind and that Osborne needs to think seriously about doing this in order to save the economy from a deep recession.

I'm afraid I have to disagree with the basis upon which she makes this assumption. In my opinion Osborne is not at all concerned with maintaining economic performance and capability in the British economy, or avoiding economic catastrophe. He is concerned with destroying as much public provision. He wants to close as many libraries, as many Sure Start centres, universities, schools, hospitals, citizens advice bureaux, etc as he can possibly get away with. The economic crisis is just an excuse.

I have always maintained that the Tories don't have policies, they have excuses. Cameron has ruthlessly used the economic crisis manufactured by his friends in the City of London to force policies on the British people that they would not otherwise countenance. Their entire manifesto has been designed around cuts and it is the excuse for the systematic reduction in opportunities for the young with the removal of EMAs, the slashing of funds for schools, the £9000 a year barrier to higher education for students. They want to destroy the NHS and the destruction of public services and the removal of opportunities for those who are not wealthy is the main aim of Tory policy. It is what they want, that is their raison d'etre.

However, they know that they would never be able to implement policies like these unless they have an excuse to do so. This is clear from the farce over student fees for universities; the introduction of fees of £27000 for a degree will actualy mean a cost to the taxpayer of £1billion before the next election. Given that the Tory-led government has said it wants to "cut the deficit" by half before then, it is clear that their cuts to universities will not save any money, they will just result in the reduction of educational opportunities for ordinary people and further economic damage to the country.

So, to admit that the current economic policy isn't working and to change course would mean abandoning the central aim of the most important (for them) element of policy. I suspect that they would rather see mass unemployment, bankruptcies and people being made homeless in their hundreds of thousands than stop their take-down of public services. There is a reason they will not change course, and that is that they would effectively be abandoning any hope of having any, even slightly credible excuse to slash and burn public services, privatise to death the NHS and schools, and impose their narrow ideological doctrines of selfishness and bleak unrestrained capitalist dystopia.

Whose balance? GRS: There is an opposite of “regretter."

Balance is not a one-dimensional, black-and-white issue, it is complex and requires a good deal more thought by broadcasters, especially when dealing with marginalised groups such as trans people.

One of the issues raised over Channel 4’s inclusion of trans people in its 4thought slot was the decision to include a “regretter” (someone who regrets their Gender Reassignment Surgery, or GRS) in the line up, as their commitment to “balance” in reporting. Yet including someone who regrets his gender reassignment surgery in this context does not achieve balance. As Christine Burns quite rightly suggested in her blog recently, the idea of balance in reporting appears to have been considered a simplistic and unproblematic area from the point of view of those commissioning and creating television programmes and urgently needs rethinking.

Less than 1% of people who have had gender reassignment surgery have ever regretted it, a proportion which has declined significantly in recent years. So to include a regretter in this series feels very much like “balance” gone mad. This is akin to having a homophobic right-wing Christian to give “balance” in a programme about gays and lesbians. Should a programme about ethnic minorities need to include a racist in order to achieve balance? Should Songs of Praise also include input from the atheists? So why should an evangelical Christian have their say about trans people when we don’t routinely ask the BNP for their opinion on ethic minority issues? Why should one particular group be singled out for “balance” when other groups do not have representatives of people who question their very existence included?

When including someone who has regretted his gender reassignment surgery, in this series Channel 4 have failed to consider the implications for balance in more than one dimension, and as a result have revealed the shallowness of their thinking about balance which led to inclusion of Charles Kane. Balance is not a black-and-white issue, it is one which can be multi-dimensional and including a regretter raises many more complicated issues to do with balance.

A recent, unfortunately as yet unpublished, study in Holland is actually suggesting that the balance between the need to prevent people who will regret having GRS from obtaining surgery needs to be carefully struck, since there is an opposite of “regretter." One of the individuals in the study, who was refused GRS, committed suicide as a result. There are also reports of individuals who have self-harmed and become victims of substance abuse. In this study, the individual who killed herself would account, on her own, for well over double the proportion of regretters in the UK. If you also include in this proportion those whose lives have been rendered almost unliveable by this refusal there appears to be a greater danger from refusing people GRS than permitting GRS when one is not sure. Of course the difference is that those who commit suicide because they have been unable to access GRS are not around calling for changes, whereas Charles Kane is.

So, in my opinion, we should stop being so defensive in the face of people like Charles Kane who, as Christine rightly pointed out, arranged his own GRS privately. There is highly likely to be a consequence if Charles Kane, the religious right or anyone else makes it harder to obtain GRS; that consequence is likely to be a far greater number of suicides and troubled lives amongst those refused treatment. Let us be clear, refusing GRS where GRS is needed can, and does, kill. In one case; that of Cameron McWilliams, who committed suicide aged 10, it is possible that this resulted from the perception that changing gender was not possible. Let’s remember that whenever anyone publicises regretters, they are potentially harming “refusees”.

As such, next time a TV station includes Mr Kane in any of its programmes, balance can only be achieved if a relative or close friend of someone who has committed suicide as a result of being unable to obtain GRS, or someone who has self-harmed or abused drugs or alcohol, is also permitted to put the case against any further restrictions in the availability of GRS. In addition, the entire issue of “balance” needs to be reconsidered by broadcasters. In practical, semantic, philosophical, political and social terms “balance” is highly complex and not a one-size-fits-all issue that can be applied in the same way in every instance.

Power cuts in Northern Japan Demonstrate the idiocy of deregulated privatisation

From tomorrow there will be planned three-hour power outages in Tokyo and other areas of Northern Japan such as Chiba, Yokohama, Aomori, Sapporo and Niigata. This is partly because of the additional power needed to support rescue efforts in and around Sendai, but also because of the reduced power output from power stations now that the Fukushima nuclear reactors are offline.

Yet these power outages are actually entirely unnecessary. Japan has enough electricity generating capacity, except the south-west of the country, including in and around the major cities of Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Hiroshima, Nagoya, Kagoshima and Hakata. However, this works on a different frequency. The north of the country’s power system, supplied by Tepco, runs on a frequency of 50 Hertz, the rest of the country, south of Yokohama, runs on a 60 hertz system. As such sharing power from the south to the north of the country is extrememely difficult, even at the best of times, which this is not.

Of course engineers may be able to set something up given time which will enable power from the south to be diverted north, but with the bulk of the country’s power engineers working to restore power to tsunami-sticken areas, there are few such engineers available. As such it is likely that power cuts, especially in the Tokyo area, will continue for some time unnecessarily.

Of course the privatisation-mad David Cameron, Nick Clegg and right-wing media in the UK is likely to want to keep things like this quiet. but it is yet another nail in the coffin of arguments for deregulation and privatisation. But I doubt that it will stop the privatisation-mad idiots now in charge of our political establishment.

Cameron's Falklands

David Cameron’s failed military intervention in Libya is selfish, overtly political, and will hinder those who are trying to overthrow brutal dictatorships in the Middle East.

News is coming in that a British crack SAS unit has been “detained” by rebels in Libya, and some reports suggest that the “rebels” in question were actually a couple of goatherds with Kalashnikovs.

The extent to which UK forces are becoming involved in the Libyan uprising is of deep concern, not merely because the news that Western forces are supporting the rebels is likely to cause deep harm to the rebel cause itself, but also because it is likely to undermine rebels in other countries. Dictators all over the Middle East will now be able to present any potential uprising against them as a “Judeo-Christian plot” either against them or against Islam. The last resort of these scoundrels being to wrap themselves in their flag, and possibly in the crescent moon as well.

On the subject of scoundrels desperate to wrap themselves in the flag, it appears quite clear than David Cameron has decided that the Libyan people’s uprising represents an opportunity for him. His Falklands. Even the most ostrich-headed members of the Tory-led coalition government realise that the next election is likely to be a bloodbath despite their blatant attempts at gerrymandering constituency boundaries. Cameron’s coalition partners have already been reduced to a zombie party, the walking dead. His damaging cuts to the NHS, the imminent steep rise in unemployment, the incoherent melee which will soon replace the education system and the million-plus young people wasting their lives neither in work nor in education or training, will take his government well beyond the point of no return.

So he realises that he desperately needs a Falklands; a jingoistic military adventure abroad which would mask the destruction his policies are causing to the infrastructure and economy of the country and revive his electoral prospects. The problem is that Cameron’s desperation to revive his government’s electoral hopes appears to be leading to a huge military failure, almost on a par with the one that brought down President Jimmy Carter in Iran. Worse than that however, his selfish desire to continue in office and to impose more suffering on the British people, is likely to result in lasting damage to the ability of Arab people to rise up an overthrow their governments.

Maybe this is what he wants, things are starting to look far too uncomfortable for him at home as people here take heart and inspiration from the events in Egypt and Tunisia…

UKuncut: big business begins the fightback.

When the Spanish conquistadores defeated the Mayan civilization, they wiped out their whole society in just one day. They simply struck at its centre and, because it was a very highly centralised, hierarchical nation it meant that attacking the top of this hierarchy, “decapitation” in today’s military language, brought the entire Maya nation to its knees overnight.
Yet the same conquistadores fought the Apaches for 300 years and failed to defeat them.

The reason for this is that the Apache nation had a very flat, egalitarian social structure; there was no centralised leadership to decapitate. Each tribe or village was mobile, agile and could react autonomously to any attack. If anyone developed in a leadership role and was killed, another person emerged instantly and took his or her place.

This is the same situation big business finds itself in when facing UKuncut. UKuncut is flat, non-hierarchical organisation; there is no leadership to decapitate, no person to smear, to bribe, to threaten or to undermine. If they stop one lot of protests from happening, another autonomous group will start other actions. It would be like trying to catch a whole shoal of fish with one hand.

So the large multinational companies which have been targeted by UKuncut have, desperately decided to employ PR agents to undermine UKuncut. There is clearly a great deal of money to be made, and prestige to be gained by the PR companies that can do the impossible and stop UKuncut. There are only three known ways to stop the shoal of fish of UKuncut and those are;

Extreme violence. In this case not an option because the reaction is likely to be counterproductive in the extreme. Would work in China or Iran but not here.

Working to change the UKuncut organisation from a horizontal one to a hierarchical one. Again pretty much impossible because everyone involved is very wary of anyone being turned into a leader, and such a move would also be highly counterproductive.

So the only way left for these the PR agents to stop this shoal of fish getting bigger and landing hits on both big business and the government they have hired is to “poison the water they swim in”.

What we saw on ITV1’s “Tonight” programme this evening was the first phase of this. Very subtly, the arguments of the big corporations were put across (with words fading in and out on screen to help persuade), in simple terms by people specially employed to put the case for the rich not to pay their fair share of tax.

In contrast the arguments of the expert were put across as complex and the UKuncut protestors talked mainly about practical issues and described what they were doing in their actions but their arguments about why these companies should be held to account were not properly put forward, at least not in a coherent way (and not with subtle words fading in and out as professional PR people cleverly and concisely put their arguments that black is white). Round two to Big Business.
The water that UKuncut swims in is public anger at the scale of tax avoidance in relation to the huge cuts in public services which are affecting everything from the NHS to education. This water was gently poisoned tonight. Not enough, but seeds of doubt were planted, this will be just the beginning, these arguments will be repeated relentlessly over the coming months – Gobbels style – in the knowledge that if you repeat a lie often enough, eventually people will think it is true. Their fightback, organised by shady characters operating behind everyone’s back, through ‘contacts’, clandestine phone calls and closed meetings, has begun in earnest.

So what can UKuncut do about this? My suggestion is that we play to our strengths. We need good arguments, good counter-arguments and easily-understood ways of communicating with everyone through traditional media as well as social media. Yet we don’t need highly-paid, shady PR men to develop and hone our ideas into concise arguments, we have our own people, a resource of thousands. I would propose crowdsourcing our ideas and arguments, inviting the public to find effective and creative ways of presenting our case and communicating our rebuttals of the propaganda now seeping out of the darkest shadows of the business machine.

Let’s put our heads together, let’s get good honest arguments marshalled and distributed to all who are involved in actions in banks, mobile companies, fashion stores and other places, let’s get our collective intelligence to work on counter arguments to the nasty right-wing glibness which will subtly start creeping its way into the national consciousness through the mainstream media. If they try to poison our water we need to purify it, or slowly our movement will die.