Alice Dreger's spectacularly appalling article published in an issue of a journal edited by a known transphobe has IMO shown her up to be exactly what she claims she is not; a transphobe. I hope I am wrong about this but there are so many things wrong with this article that it is as difficult to draw any different conclusion as it is to know where to start.
So I will start at the beginning. Although she claims she does not intend it to be analogous to trans people, she uses a story of a very young boy who, we are told, believed he was a railway locomotive, using this story to suggest that children who believe they are the other gender are engaging in similar games or childish make-believe. This is an appalling start to a truly vicious and deliberately misleading article about trans children. The idea that a child who claims he is an inanimate object is equivalent to one who claims he or she is a different gender of the same species is simply not comparing like with like. A person who is assigned a gender at birth that is different from that with which they identify is asserting their right of self-identification as a human being, not playing engaging in harmless childish play. A train is not a person, therefore a person who says they are a train is not to be taken seriously because an inanimate object does not have the capacity for self-determination or the ability to express an identity of any kind. A girl trapped in a boy's body, on the other hand, does have this ability. As such her allusion fails, it is one which has been employed over and over again by transphobes, and one I regularly have to deal with. The fact that it is being used by someone who claims not to be a transphobe is neither here nor there.
However Dreger's argument is based on many more false premises and untruths than that. The first of which being her reliance on evidence which supposedly shows that gender variant children most often grow up not to be trans adults.
“Most transgender activists do not want to hear that most children with gender dysphoria end up nontransgender; they want transgender to be understood as a biological, permanent, unchangeable, acceptable, natural variation.”
She provides us with a link to the evidence. Unfortunately this link only sends us to another paper she has written which asserts this but provides us with no links or references to any empirical research that provides evidence to back up her claim. Now we have all been guilty of referencing our own work, but when I do that I link it to something which supports the assertion I am trying to make with empirical evidence, rather than simply me asserting the same thing with no supporting evidence. Indeed, if Dreger were writing this as an academic paper rather than a piece of journalism for an editor claimed by many in the trans community to be trans community to be a transphobe, she would be guilty of an academic crime.
The problem for Dreger is that the evidence that the majority of trans children grow up to be non-trans is weak to put it mildly, it is highly contested, mostly carried out by individuals who have a pecuniary interest in exaggerating the results, and my own research has suggested that it is based on skewed and unreliable sampling. This research is largely carried out by psychiatrists belonging to what Ansara & Hegarty (2011) describe as an “invisible college”, a group who cite each other in order to make their own work appear more important that it really is. The problem for this research is that it is carried out on a sample that probably comprises less than 5% of trans children. This is because they only study what I have termed “apparent” trans children, and do not account for the other 95% who do not make themselves known to any adult as trans (I have called them “non-apparent” trans children). Further, the sampling is likely to be further distorted by some parents deciding not to take their trans child to a psychiatrist, or who take them to one which is not known or suspected to practice “reparative” therapy (ie psychological torture) on these children. It is also likely that any child who is becomes a victim of “reparative” therapy will pretend to be cured in order to get the shrink in question out of their lives. Some sociologists are currently following up former patients (“victims” would be a more accurate description) of these “psychologists” to find out if this is the case. I look forward to their report.
We do not have to look far to find empirical evidence that young trans people are active agents in concealing their gender identities from adults, Shannon Wyss’s (2004) careful and detailed research confirms this.
One of the most serious inferences from this article is that trans people are trying to prevent children who might otherwise grow up or identify as “genderqueer” or some other non-transsexual variant, from expressing gender variant natures. Of course no evidence is put forward by Dreger to support this contention. Unfortunately for Dreger, there is evidence to suggest that those who force genderqueer kids into making a gender binaried choice are not trans people, but cisgender people. Brill and Pepper’s (2008) wonderful book about transgender children describes what happened to Marlow/Marla. Marlow was a boy who liked to have a female appearance, including wearing dresses, who played with “girls’” toys and engaged in “girls’” activities. However he was still very clear about the fact that he was a boy and went to school calling himself Marlow and insisting that male pronouns be used about him. He soon found that he was subject to the most severe bullying, mostly exclusion bullying, by the other children, and suffered greatly. He subsequently agreed, at the suggestion of his teachers, to adopt a female name and be called “she”. He didn’t like this but went along with it and the bullying was greatly reduced. In Marlow’s case no trans person was forcing him into the gender binary, the cisgender children and teachers in his school were.
So Dreger has produced no evidence that trans people are forcing gender variant children into a transsexual gender binary position, yet I have produced evidence to demonstrate that cisgender people do. The experience of Marlow is far from unique, I have recently spoken to the mother of a trans child in the UK who had a very similar experience.
Dreger’s reference to the Samoan Fa’fa’fine is particularly worrying. Although these people are permitted in Samoan culture they are subject to serious restrictions on their roles within society, as are many other third gender individuals, so for her to advocate this as a cultural model in the West would effectively mean allowing genderqueer/non-binary people to exist but to greatly restrict the jobs they can do and the roles they can play in society including restrictions on their sexuality and marriage rights. In the West we have trans academics, teachers, lawyers, pilots, musicians, etc. In fact we have trans people of many different sexualities and in any number of different jobs, including, in Poland, a member of parliament.
The whole tone of Dreger’s piece seems to me to position any outcome which involves transsexual surgery as worse than any which does not. In reality an outcome which includes surgery is a very good outcome if you are a transsexual. Ask any transsexual and they will tell you that the path to obtaining the surgery they need is a long one and one filled with obstacles. To suggest, as she does, that this is an outcome which is being forced onto children against their will is simply to ignore reality.
It seems to me that on this point Dreger’s position is little different from that of Janice Raymond or Sheila Jeffries; two notorious “radical” feminist transphobes who have both advocated hate-crimes against transsexuals, whilst being less concerned about non-transsexual trans people. If this is the case Dreger appears to be advocating little more than a less unsubtle version of this “rad” fem hatred.
Her conclusion, to leave gender variant children alone and allow them to freely express their gender-variant nature is the correct one, however we should be clear about where the responsibility for pressure to conform to the gender binary is coming from, and it is not coming from any trans activists, it is coming from ordinary cisgender people.
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Trans People on the Pinklist 2011. Who are they?
It has been wonderful to see seven trans people appearing in the Independent On Sunday’s Pinklist of top LGBT people in the country. Firstly, it needs to be said that this increase has largely been due to the efforts of one young lady; Paris Lees, one of the leading lights in Trans Media Watch and editor of the imminent Meta Magazine. So the first thing is to give Paris a big mention. Although I do not know all of these people, I am acquainted to various extents with 5 of them; Sarah Brown, Christine Burns, Jay Stewart, Roz Kaveney and Bethany Black, so I thought I would write a little about them in hopefully not merely a dry factual account (if you want that Wikipedia is the place) but from the perspective of having known these people.
Sarah Brown
Sarah is only the second trans person in the UK to be openly elected as a trans person. She was elected Cambridge City Councilor in May 2010. She has survived and prospered despite initially coming in for a lot of criticism by many other trans people on the left (myself included) for her support for the coalition government. It is important not to underestimate Sarah’s achievement, although there have been other trans people elected to office, including the mayor of Cambridge, Sarah is the second openly trans person in the UK to be elected anywhere. This may not sound much of an achievement compared with other trans politicians that have been elected in other countries; New Zealand, Italy and most recently Poland have elected trans MPs in their national parliaments, and in Tokyo (more populous than many countries) Aya Kamikawa has been a city councilor since 2003.
The difference for Sarah, and to underline her achievement, is that all these people have been elected on list systems, not under systems where individual candidates represent individual wards or constituencies as in the UK. The UK system is dramatically harder for minorities like trans people to break into, since trans people can represent a significantly higher risk, from a party point of view, as people vote for individuals rather than parties. If trans people were truly represented in proportion to our numbers in the population there would be 200 councilors and 6 MPs who are trans.
Sarah’s emotional speech at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in 2010 about how she was forced to divorce her wife and remarry in a civil partnership after her gender reassignment may have been one of the contributory factors to current proposals to extend the right to marry to same-sex couples.
Christine Burns MBE
Christine is a grandmother, a diversity expert in matters relating to the NHS and now mentors younger trans human rights campaigners. She was instrumental in the successful campaign by Press For Change, to achieve legal recognition for transsexual people in 2004 and has contributed immeasurably to helping trans people in the UK and around the world in their struggles for the human rights which most other people take for granted. Although she is no longer engaged in frontline activism, she still does a great deal of work behind the scenes and her advice has helped younger trans activists achieve some of the subsequent gains for trans people. She was one of the prime movers behind Press For Change’s successful campaign to introduce the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, a landmark piece of legislation which has resulted in huge improvements in the lives of all trans people.
For me she was the main motivation to become a trans activist after I saw her speak in the summer of 2007, at the Trans With Pride conference in Bethnal Green. In her speech she noted how, despite the gains made for transsexuals in the Gender Recognition Act, those trans people who did not have gender reassignment surgery could still be lawfully discriminated against. Since then she has helped me and countless others with advice and contacts as we campaign to improve things for trans people. An example of this has been the recent decision by Charing Cross gender identity clinic, to allow referrals for young trans people 6 months before their 18th birthday to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in treatment for them and no interruption in support for them as they transfer from child to adult support services.
Christine’s blog, Just Plain Sense is one of the most popular and respected blogs about trans and diversity issues.
Jay Stewart
Jay is co-founder of Gendered Intelligence, a pioneering organization which has worked very successfully to improve the lives of young trans people and others. Recently he has become a father, which has added a great deal of pressure to his already very busy schedule. He organizes events through Gendered Intelligence, which often involve using creativity as a means of helping trans people express themselves and become more confident. Gendered Intelligence also provides diversity training in the area of gender variance with schools, colleges and universities and has collaborated with a number of other trans organisations.
Jay, currently completing a PhD in the department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, has campaigned for trans people’s rights and was a past chair of FTM London. As organizer of the annual Trans Community Conference Jay has contributed to a bringing together of the trans community in a way which has been inclusive of younger trans people and their parents, something which is particularly important given their virtual erasure from public view as they conceal their gender identities out of fear of bullying or victimization. Gendered Intelligence has also pioneered a trans youth group in London which, until recently was run by a full-time fully trained youth worker, who also provided outreach training to others running trans youth groups around the country. This is a huge, and particularly positive step and has doubtless improved the lives of many trans people, helping them at a particularly difficult point in their lives. It has been particularly heartening to see how Jay has kept this valuable resource going despite numerous challenges and setbacks, and at a time when he is also doing a PhD and has a young family. An example to many of us in the trans community for his dedication, tenacity and organizational skills, the only thing I do not understand is why he was not in the PinkList list earlier.
Roz Kaveney
A feminist and a graduate of Oxford Roz transitioned from male to female in 1979, at a time when the prevailing received feminist wisdom was that being transsexual represented a false consciousness. This was the year that the famously hateful and misleading book by Janice Raymond, “The Transsexual Empire” was published which Roz reviewed in Gay News, a publication for which she was already working. Despite receiving for this what has now come to be a predictable volley of abuse from sections of the feminist community, Roz has always considered feminist scholarship an important part of her career. She was an advisory reader for Virago womens’ press and worked on numerous reference works such as the Cambridge Guide to Women Writing in English. She is still a thorn in the side of those feminists who despite describing themselves as “radical” harbour quite vicious hatred of trans people. Indeed her critiques of radical feminist transphobia have contributed to the marginalization of such views and raised the confidence of the trans community in the face of what has seems to have become an irrational and misguided hatred.
In a career which has also spanned journalism, as a reviewer for the Independent and the Times Literary Supplement and a commentator on Culture and Religion for the Guardian, she has also written for the New Statesman. Roz has also been very active in politics, becoming Deputy Chair of Liberty as a result of her work with Feminists Against Censorship, an organization she co-founded.
Roz has contributed to a great deal to the campaigns for trans human rights over the years. As a representative of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance she sat on the committee, with Christine Burns and Stephen Whittle, which negotiated the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.
Her belief in solidarity and respect in gender and sexuality reflected this in her scholarship in the area of pop culture in her insistence that the same levels of seriousness be applied to pop culture as “high” culture. It is most notable that throughout her diverse career her work has led to the normalization of the presence trans people in areas such as feminist scholarship, literary criticism and politics.
Bethany Black
Like many trans people Bethany struggled with life when she was young, and her attempts to commit suicide, her struggle with drug and alcohol addiction and having to come out to her family twice; as trans and as a lesbian, are sadly, things which many trans people will feel all too familiar. It seems however that these experiences gave her the strength and tenacity to make a career in the tough world of stand-up comedy where she is now the country’s only “Goth, lesbian, transsexual, stand-up comedian.” Despite the inevitable knock-backs and struggles to gain recognition and work on the stand-up circuit Bethany has thrived and forged a career in this challenging line of work since leaving university and undergoing gender reassignment surgery, describing her life as getting “better and better” since then. Her biggest influence in comedy was Josie Long, who demonstrated to her that not all comedians have to be older people. She started as a compere for a music club in Preston but the hostile reaction there did not prevent her from moving onto actual comedy clubs. She was eventually a finalist in the Funny Bones New Comedian of the Year Competition 2006 and the Chortle Student Comedy Awards 2007, and was nominated for “best debut” award in the Leicester Comedy Festival 2008.
Bethany is however also planning and looking forward to the future with a possible adaptation of her “Beth Becomes Her” show for TV and has co-founded Funny’s Funny, a group which plans to provide a free-entry comedy competition for female comedians.
It is good to see her active in promoting opportunities for women comedians since stand-up comedy, like most areas of the media and show-biz, is very male dominated. The only time I ever met Bethany was as a fellow panelist for a discussion organized by the first Bristol Pride committee. Her story about how she came out to her mother being particularly vivid. She described how her mother reacted, and how, despite having never been parted from her husband for more than a couple of days since they were married, she would have been prepared to leave him if necessary in order to support Bethany. Why other parents of trans people cannot give that level of unconditional love to their children is a mystery to me. An example of Bethany’s stand-up routine is available here. (look out for the joke about .pdf files, that had me rolling on the floor)
Finishing with Bethany Black represents the clearest example of why I believe these five people have made the 2011 Pinklist. Talent and quality. These people are good at what they do regardless of their gender identities. The right-wing media may describe the Pinklist as just “PCGM” (Political Correctness Gone Mad), but the PCGM brigade ignore the fact that these people are genuinely talented people who have made successful careers in their fields despite, not because, of their gender identities, unlike right-wing journalists who tend to have obtained employment because of their politics rather than their journalistic skill. This is why they are in the Pinklist and why they deserve to be there and deserve to be recognized as having made significant contributions to the life of the country as well as to raising awareness of trans people. Trans people are not just trans people, they are writers, diversity experts, politicians, scholars, parents, comedians, teachers, lawyers journalists, etc. Trans people are people and their inclusion on the Pinklist is a recognition of that and by proxy, a recognition of the entire trans coimmunity.
Sarah Brown
Sarah is only the second trans person in the UK to be openly elected as a trans person. She was elected Cambridge City Councilor in May 2010. She has survived and prospered despite initially coming in for a lot of criticism by many other trans people on the left (myself included) for her support for the coalition government. It is important not to underestimate Sarah’s achievement, although there have been other trans people elected to office, including the mayor of Cambridge, Sarah is the second openly trans person in the UK to be elected anywhere. This may not sound much of an achievement compared with other trans politicians that have been elected in other countries; New Zealand, Italy and most recently Poland have elected trans MPs in their national parliaments, and in Tokyo (more populous than many countries) Aya Kamikawa has been a city councilor since 2003.
The difference for Sarah, and to underline her achievement, is that all these people have been elected on list systems, not under systems where individual candidates represent individual wards or constituencies as in the UK. The UK system is dramatically harder for minorities like trans people to break into, since trans people can represent a significantly higher risk, from a party point of view, as people vote for individuals rather than parties. If trans people were truly represented in proportion to our numbers in the population there would be 200 councilors and 6 MPs who are trans.
Sarah’s emotional speech at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in 2010 about how she was forced to divorce her wife and remarry in a civil partnership after her gender reassignment may have been one of the contributory factors to current proposals to extend the right to marry to same-sex couples.
Christine Burns MBE
Christine is a grandmother, a diversity expert in matters relating to the NHS and now mentors younger trans human rights campaigners. She was instrumental in the successful campaign by Press For Change, to achieve legal recognition for transsexual people in 2004 and has contributed immeasurably to helping trans people in the UK and around the world in their struggles for the human rights which most other people take for granted. Although she is no longer engaged in frontline activism, she still does a great deal of work behind the scenes and her advice has helped younger trans activists achieve some of the subsequent gains for trans people. She was one of the prime movers behind Press For Change’s successful campaign to introduce the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, a landmark piece of legislation which has resulted in huge improvements in the lives of all trans people.
For me she was the main motivation to become a trans activist after I saw her speak in the summer of 2007, at the Trans With Pride conference in Bethnal Green. In her speech she noted how, despite the gains made for transsexuals in the Gender Recognition Act, those trans people who did not have gender reassignment surgery could still be lawfully discriminated against. Since then she has helped me and countless others with advice and contacts as we campaign to improve things for trans people. An example of this has been the recent decision by Charing Cross gender identity clinic, to allow referrals for young trans people 6 months before their 18th birthday to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in treatment for them and no interruption in support for them as they transfer from child to adult support services.
Christine’s blog, Just Plain Sense is one of the most popular and respected blogs about trans and diversity issues.
Jay Stewart
Jay is co-founder of Gendered Intelligence, a pioneering organization which has worked very successfully to improve the lives of young trans people and others. Recently he has become a father, which has added a great deal of pressure to his already very busy schedule. He organizes events through Gendered Intelligence, which often involve using creativity as a means of helping trans people express themselves and become more confident. Gendered Intelligence also provides diversity training in the area of gender variance with schools, colleges and universities and has collaborated with a number of other trans organisations.
Jay, currently completing a PhD in the department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, has campaigned for trans people’s rights and was a past chair of FTM London. As organizer of the annual Trans Community Conference Jay has contributed to a bringing together of the trans community in a way which has been inclusive of younger trans people and their parents, something which is particularly important given their virtual erasure from public view as they conceal their gender identities out of fear of bullying or victimization. Gendered Intelligence has also pioneered a trans youth group in London which, until recently was run by a full-time fully trained youth worker, who also provided outreach training to others running trans youth groups around the country. This is a huge, and particularly positive step and has doubtless improved the lives of many trans people, helping them at a particularly difficult point in their lives. It has been particularly heartening to see how Jay has kept this valuable resource going despite numerous challenges and setbacks, and at a time when he is also doing a PhD and has a young family. An example to many of us in the trans community for his dedication, tenacity and organizational skills, the only thing I do not understand is why he was not in the PinkList list earlier.
Roz Kaveney
A feminist and a graduate of Oxford Roz transitioned from male to female in 1979, at a time when the prevailing received feminist wisdom was that being transsexual represented a false consciousness. This was the year that the famously hateful and misleading book by Janice Raymond, “The Transsexual Empire” was published which Roz reviewed in Gay News, a publication for which she was already working. Despite receiving for this what has now come to be a predictable volley of abuse from sections of the feminist community, Roz has always considered feminist scholarship an important part of her career. She was an advisory reader for Virago womens’ press and worked on numerous reference works such as the Cambridge Guide to Women Writing in English. She is still a thorn in the side of those feminists who despite describing themselves as “radical” harbour quite vicious hatred of trans people. Indeed her critiques of radical feminist transphobia have contributed to the marginalization of such views and raised the confidence of the trans community in the face of what has seems to have become an irrational and misguided hatred.
In a career which has also spanned journalism, as a reviewer for the Independent and the Times Literary Supplement and a commentator on Culture and Religion for the Guardian, she has also written for the New Statesman. Roz has also been very active in politics, becoming Deputy Chair of Liberty as a result of her work with Feminists Against Censorship, an organization she co-founded.
Roz has contributed to a great deal to the campaigns for trans human rights over the years. As a representative of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance she sat on the committee, with Christine Burns and Stephen Whittle, which negotiated the 2004 Gender Recognition Act.
Her belief in solidarity and respect in gender and sexuality reflected this in her scholarship in the area of pop culture in her insistence that the same levels of seriousness be applied to pop culture as “high” culture. It is most notable that throughout her diverse career her work has led to the normalization of the presence trans people in areas such as feminist scholarship, literary criticism and politics.
Bethany Black
Like many trans people Bethany struggled with life when she was young, and her attempts to commit suicide, her struggle with drug and alcohol addiction and having to come out to her family twice; as trans and as a lesbian, are sadly, things which many trans people will feel all too familiar. It seems however that these experiences gave her the strength and tenacity to make a career in the tough world of stand-up comedy where she is now the country’s only “Goth, lesbian, transsexual, stand-up comedian.” Despite the inevitable knock-backs and struggles to gain recognition and work on the stand-up circuit Bethany has thrived and forged a career in this challenging line of work since leaving university and undergoing gender reassignment surgery, describing her life as getting “better and better” since then. Her biggest influence in comedy was Josie Long, who demonstrated to her that not all comedians have to be older people. She started as a compere for a music club in Preston but the hostile reaction there did not prevent her from moving onto actual comedy clubs. She was eventually a finalist in the Funny Bones New Comedian of the Year Competition 2006 and the Chortle Student Comedy Awards 2007, and was nominated for “best debut” award in the Leicester Comedy Festival 2008.
Bethany is however also planning and looking forward to the future with a possible adaptation of her “Beth Becomes Her” show for TV and has co-founded Funny’s Funny, a group which plans to provide a free-entry comedy competition for female comedians.
It is good to see her active in promoting opportunities for women comedians since stand-up comedy, like most areas of the media and show-biz, is very male dominated. The only time I ever met Bethany was as a fellow panelist for a discussion organized by the first Bristol Pride committee. Her story about how she came out to her mother being particularly vivid. She described how her mother reacted, and how, despite having never been parted from her husband for more than a couple of days since they were married, she would have been prepared to leave him if necessary in order to support Bethany. Why other parents of trans people cannot give that level of unconditional love to their children is a mystery to me. An example of Bethany’s stand-up routine is available here. (look out for the joke about .pdf files, that had me rolling on the floor)
Finishing with Bethany Black represents the clearest example of why I believe these five people have made the 2011 Pinklist. Talent and quality. These people are good at what they do regardless of their gender identities. The right-wing media may describe the Pinklist as just “PCGM” (Political Correctness Gone Mad), but the PCGM brigade ignore the fact that these people are genuinely talented people who have made successful careers in their fields despite, not because, of their gender identities, unlike right-wing journalists who tend to have obtained employment because of their politics rather than their journalistic skill. This is why they are in the Pinklist and why they deserve to be there and deserve to be recognized as having made significant contributions to the life of the country as well as to raising awareness of trans people. Trans people are not just trans people, they are writers, diversity experts, politicians, scholars, parents, comedians, teachers, lawyers journalists, etc. Trans people are people and their inclusion on the Pinklist is a recognition of that and by proxy, a recognition of the entire trans coimmunity.
Friday, 14 October 2011
Getting trans people elected….
The UK is supposed to have one of the most trans-friendly legal systems in the world these days, yet we seem to be a long way behind the rest of the world in terms of having trans people elected. We represent 1% of the population and so there should therefore be at least 6 trans MPs in the House of Commons, one trans MEP some of the time in the UK section of the European Parliament, and a massive 200 trans local councillors across the country.The current total representation of trans people in elected positions is however, way below that; we have just one local councillor; the wonderful Sarah Brown, who sits as a Lib Dem on Cambridge City Council.
Sarah’s achievement is particularly good when the treatment of trans people generally is considered, however as a country we are doing much less well than many other countries. The news that Poland elected its first trans MP was particularly pleasing since there appears to have been trouble with homophobia and transphobia in the recent past in Poland. However there have also been trans people elected to national governments in Italy and New Zealand, there has been a senior trans politician elected in Hawaii, and there is a long-serving Tokyo City councillor for Setagaya ward in Tokyo; a city with a population greater than that of Holland. Indeed Aya Kamikawa, is currently the longest serving elected trans official, having been first elected in 2003, and subsequently re-elected, something which no trans politician has ever achieved to date.
So how why is our representation on elected bodies so low in the UK when trans people in other countries are being elected to more senior political positions? The answer lies, I believe, in the electoral systems. The UK mostly relies on First-Past-The-Post for elections, which means that people vote for individuals rather than parties. With the exception of Hawaii (where trans people are accepted to a much greater extent than most countries) Poland, Italy and Japan all use party list systems. This means that people vote for parties rather than individuals. The problem with voting for individuals is that, especially in closely-fought electoral contests, where the result really matters parties are reluctant to put forward candidates who might alienate enough voters to give the seat to a competitor. Parties are therefore likely to be much less willing to have a trans candidate where a cisgender candidate is available. Where a contest is likely to be personalised, where people are voting for a candidate as much as a party, the personal becomes more important, and even if only a relatively small number of people change their votes as a result of transphobia, that would be enough to make a difference in a large number of cases.
The personalisation of politics also results in the media taking a greater interest in individual candidates rather then their policies and party lines, which could mean that electoral contests attract unwelcome attention from the Daily Mail, the Express, the Sun and other sensationalist right-wing media, which could have implications for the party across the country.
The solution then, to getting more trans people into elected positions in the UK, is to concentrate them in the small number of elections where party lists, or top-up lists are in operation; the London Assembly and the European elections, here total party votes count and the direct link between a candidate and a particular seat extends through their party rather than a particular geographical area.
The First-Past-The-Post system has not only saddled the country with a corrupt, incompetent, dishonest and destructive government, but also has the effect of reducing diversity in elected positions; this is particularly the case for minorities, like LGBT people, who tend not to be concentrated in particular geographical areas in the same way that ethnic minority populations are. The result is a government drawn mostly from wealthy male privately-educated Oxbridge graduates, and the disastrous policies which have flowed from such an out-of-touch group of people.
Monday, 26 September 2011
Facebook: a manipulation too far.
If you go to "Help" on Facebook and "Basics" and "News Feed Basics" you will find the following piece of information in their FAQ;
"How does News Feed determine which content is most interesting?
The News Feed algorithm bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is..."
The key word here is "determined"; a euphemism for "Decided."
In other words, a computer somewhere in Facebookland, controlled by Mark Zuckerberg, is deciding what appears in your news feed.
Not you.
Zuckerberg.
If the government decided that only phone calls, letters, newspaper reports, TV programmes, songs and radio news reports which were vetted by a computer algorithm it controlled could be seen by you, it would be described as Orwellian, and it would be; by the time it happened we would have already been taken over by a totalitarian state.
So how come no-one minds when a private company does this? State censorship is state censorship, private censorship is "just business..."
In fact on other websites people are used to being able to control what they see and how it functions, being able to control all sorts of settings. This control has largely been removed by Facebook, it is now a much more centralised, top-down, regimented outfit than it was in the past. Doubtless this controlling centralisation will be refined further until you only see posts which mention certain brands or which contain no political (or politically left-wing) content. This is something which will start to become frustrating for Facebook users, especially now those randon, throw-away one-liner conversations which made social networking a pleasure now seem to have become a thing of the past.
I'm starting to migrate onto Google+ for the moment, which at least isn't trying to impose its own thought control on me, I suspect someone with a bit of technical skill and an element of opportunist entrepreneurship will find the niche in the market for a social networking site that lets users control what they see, when how and in what order...
Zuckerberg has ended up destroying the goose that layed the golden egg; he will end up with a meaningless, over commercialised sanitised social network which bores more and more people until only the mindless use it, the rest of us will have gone elsewhere...
"How does News Feed determine which content is most interesting?
The News Feed algorithm bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is..."
The key word here is "determined"; a euphemism for "Decided."
In other words, a computer somewhere in Facebookland, controlled by Mark Zuckerberg, is deciding what appears in your news feed.
Not you.
Zuckerberg.
If the government decided that only phone calls, letters, newspaper reports, TV programmes, songs and radio news reports which were vetted by a computer algorithm it controlled could be seen by you, it would be described as Orwellian, and it would be; by the time it happened we would have already been taken over by a totalitarian state.
So how come no-one minds when a private company does this? State censorship is state censorship, private censorship is "just business..."
In fact on other websites people are used to being able to control what they see and how it functions, being able to control all sorts of settings. This control has largely been removed by Facebook, it is now a much more centralised, top-down, regimented outfit than it was in the past. Doubtless this controlling centralisation will be refined further until you only see posts which mention certain brands or which contain no political (or politically left-wing) content. This is something which will start to become frustrating for Facebook users, especially now those randon, throw-away one-liner conversations which made social networking a pleasure now seem to have become a thing of the past.
I'm starting to migrate onto Google+ for the moment, which at least isn't trying to impose its own thought control on me, I suspect someone with a bit of technical skill and an element of opportunist entrepreneurship will find the niche in the market for a social networking site that lets users control what they see, when how and in what order...
Zuckerberg has ended up destroying the goose that layed the golden egg; he will end up with a meaningless, over commercialised sanitised social network which bores more and more people until only the mindless use it, the rest of us will have gone elsewhere...
Monday, 29 August 2011
Breakdown of who has set up the first "free" schools.
• Religious 9
• “charitable” trust in chains with academies 3
• Ex private school 3
• Private company 2
• No information 2
• Community 2
• Teacher 1
• “journalist” 1
• “Asian Trade Link” 1*
* Asian Trade Link claims to be a 'community organisation' It is suggested by local press that it will not have any premises available by the start of the school year
Propaganda in the media asserts that they are being "set up by teachers, charities, education experts and parents." yet only one is set up by a teacher, three by parents three by companies describing themselves as "charitable trusts" and none at all by education experts. This makes a total of seven out of 24 which are set up by the groups the propaganda machine is telling us are setting them up.
In contrast to the propaganda three are simply former private schools getting taxpayers' funding, two are being run by private companies and a whopping nine are religious. Despite the fact that these three groups of schools make up more than half of the total number of "free" schools they are not included in the headline description. (In fact the three set up by "charitable trusts" are effectively run by private companies in all but name). I know I have worked for one of them in the past.
Once again the media has (willingly?) allowed itself to be duped into making it look like "free" schools are riding a wave of parental activism, when in fact only three out of 24 are. It is time for the media to stop swallowing press releases about education without doing some proper journalism first.
• “charitable” trust in chains with academies 3
• Ex private school 3
• Private company 2
• No information 2
• Community 2
• Teacher 1
• “journalist” 1
• “Asian Trade Link” 1*
* Asian Trade Link claims to be a 'community organisation' It is suggested by local press that it will not have any premises available by the start of the school year
Propaganda in the media asserts that they are being "set up by teachers, charities, education experts and parents." yet only one is set up by a teacher, three by parents three by companies describing themselves as "charitable trusts" and none at all by education experts. This makes a total of seven out of 24 which are set up by the groups the propaganda machine is telling us are setting them up.
In contrast to the propaganda three are simply former private schools getting taxpayers' funding, two are being run by private companies and a whopping nine are religious. Despite the fact that these three groups of schools make up more than half of the total number of "free" schools they are not included in the headline description. (In fact the three set up by "charitable trusts" are effectively run by private companies in all but name). I know I have worked for one of them in the past.
Once again the media has (willingly?) allowed itself to be duped into making it look like "free" schools are riding a wave of parental activism, when in fact only three out of 24 are. It is time for the media to stop swallowing press releases about education without doing some proper journalism first.
Ed Media Watch's first engagement with the press over biased educational journalism - in the Guardian!
Dear Chris Elliott,
I am writing as founder member of Education Media Watch, a new group forming to respond to the high level of misrepresentation and one-sidedness about education issues in the media. We are a group of educationists, teachers and parents who are working to challenge reports in the media which present one-sided stories about the education system. I have to admit I did not expect to have to write to you about a Guardian article so soon.
The article in question is this;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/aug/28/first-24-free-schools
This is an article which represents exactly the kind of thing Ed Media watch is being set up to deal with; it presents 'Free' schools effectively from Michael Gove's perspective as though they are not controversial. It appears to have been 'churnalised' from AP and includes figures in support of the idea by the government but nothing from those opposed to free schools (a considerable number of people, particularly teachers).
In fact the figures quotes by the government at the end of the article referring to Charter Schools in New York, which are what 'free' schools are modelled on, are highly misleading and mask a high degree of selectivity in New York schools in relation to non-charter schools.
For example; although they tout an 86% catch-up with "schools in the wealthiest suburbs" in Maths and a 66% catchup in English these statistics appear to have been manipulated Chuchillian-style to be highly misleading. In fact although just over half (51%) produced gains in maths, only 29% produced gains in reading. In other words nearly half produced no significant improvements in maths and 71% no gains in reading. Nationally in the US, only 14% of charter schools have better results than local schools compared with 37% doing worse than local schools and 46% the same.
These phantom 'improvements' in school results in New York have come about despite huge funding imbalances which Joel Klein (now working for Rupert Murdoch) managed to engineer which has also resulted in resources being taken away from local schools and given to charters, this has resulted in smaller class sizes and other material advantages for children in charters. In addition charters take a lower percentage of children with special needs, a lower percentage of children for whom English is an additional language, and a lower percentage of hispanic and immigrant children, when compared with New York City averages. The imbalance in these figures is even higher when compared to local schools situated near the charters.
I could quote more data about charter schools in the US and in NYC in particular which provide substantial evidence that on average charter schools are failing in the US and failing despite being given huge increases in resources, money which, if it had been invested in normal local schools, would almost certainly have produced significant gains accross the board. For data supporting the figures I have presented here, and further information demonstrating that the assumptions implicit and explicit in the article are neither uncontraversial nor correct please refer to the links below;
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/01/13/2010-01-13_new_york_city_charter_schools_need_to_focus_on_the_neediest.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/09/27/2009-09-27_the_charter_school_problem_results_are_much_less_positive_than_a_new_study_sugge.html
I feel that the publication of this article (I don't know whether this was just online or in the print version) displayed a high degree of bias, largely by omission, but also presented the issue of 'free' schools as uncontroversial, when it is, in fact highly controversial. I also feel that this article represented the worst type of churnalism, which is something I have come to expect the Guardian not to indulge in.
I would like to ask that someone is given the space to respond to this article. I know it sounds odd to say 'respond' in relation to an article which is a report rather than an opinion piece but education news reports have become so one-sided and selective in their content (and here I am referring to the media as a whole, not just the Guardian) that articles like this are effectively opinion pieces in that they promote on particular view of the events to which they refer. In addition I would like to know why comments were not enabled for this article, and the contact details of the journalist or member of editorial staff who included the article. The article has no byline, merely saying it came from PA. It is Education Media Watch's policy to engage in a dialogue with journalists and editors when reports like this appear, to point out errors such as those apparent in this article and suggest how they might improve their own and their organisation's coverage of education issues in future. As such I would also like to ask for contact details of the individual responsible for the appearance of this piece such that we can ensure he/she is aware of the issues and able to make better journalistic decisions in the future.
Kind regards,
Natacha Kennedy
I am writing as founder member of Education Media Watch, a new group forming to respond to the high level of misrepresentation and one-sidedness about education issues in the media. We are a group of educationists, teachers and parents who are working to challenge reports in the media which present one-sided stories about the education system. I have to admit I did not expect to have to write to you about a Guardian article so soon.
The article in question is this;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/aug/28/first-24-free-schools
This is an article which represents exactly the kind of thing Ed Media watch is being set up to deal with; it presents 'Free' schools effectively from Michael Gove's perspective as though they are not controversial. It appears to have been 'churnalised' from AP and includes figures in support of the idea by the government but nothing from those opposed to free schools (a considerable number of people, particularly teachers).
In fact the figures quotes by the government at the end of the article referring to Charter Schools in New York, which are what 'free' schools are modelled on, are highly misleading and mask a high degree of selectivity in New York schools in relation to non-charter schools.
For example; although they tout an 86% catch-up with "schools in the wealthiest suburbs" in Maths and a 66% catchup in English these statistics appear to have been manipulated Chuchillian-style to be highly misleading. In fact although just over half (51%) produced gains in maths, only 29% produced gains in reading. In other words nearly half produced no significant improvements in maths and 71% no gains in reading. Nationally in the US, only 14% of charter schools have better results than local schools compared with 37% doing worse than local schools and 46% the same.
These phantom 'improvements' in school results in New York have come about despite huge funding imbalances which Joel Klein (now working for Rupert Murdoch) managed to engineer which has also resulted in resources being taken away from local schools and given to charters, this has resulted in smaller class sizes and other material advantages for children in charters. In addition charters take a lower percentage of children with special needs, a lower percentage of children for whom English is an additional language, and a lower percentage of hispanic and immigrant children, when compared with New York City averages. The imbalance in these figures is even higher when compared to local schools situated near the charters.
I could quote more data about charter schools in the US and in NYC in particular which provide substantial evidence that on average charter schools are failing in the US and failing despite being given huge increases in resources, money which, if it had been invested in normal local schools, would almost certainly have produced significant gains accross the board. For data supporting the figures I have presented here, and further information demonstrating that the assumptions implicit and explicit in the article are neither uncontraversial nor correct please refer to the links below;
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/01/13/2010-01-13_new_york_city_charter_schools_need_to_focus_on_the_neediest.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/09/27/2009-09-27_the_charter_school_problem_results_are_much_less_positive_than_a_new_study_sugge.html
I feel that the publication of this article (I don't know whether this was just online or in the print version) displayed a high degree of bias, largely by omission, but also presented the issue of 'free' schools as uncontroversial, when it is, in fact highly controversial. I also feel that this article represented the worst type of churnalism, which is something I have come to expect the Guardian not to indulge in.
I would like to ask that someone is given the space to respond to this article. I know it sounds odd to say 'respond' in relation to an article which is a report rather than an opinion piece but education news reports have become so one-sided and selective in their content (and here I am referring to the media as a whole, not just the Guardian) that articles like this are effectively opinion pieces in that they promote on particular view of the events to which they refer. In addition I would like to know why comments were not enabled for this article, and the contact details of the journalist or member of editorial staff who included the article. The article has no byline, merely saying it came from PA. It is Education Media Watch's policy to engage in a dialogue with journalists and editors when reports like this appear, to point out errors such as those apparent in this article and suggest how they might improve their own and their organisation's coverage of education issues in future. As such I would also like to ask for contact details of the individual responsible for the appearance of this piece such that we can ensure he/she is aware of the issues and able to make better journalistic decisions in the future.
Kind regards,
Natacha Kennedy
Saturday, 13 August 2011
The Conservative Party Descends into Barbarism.
Possibly the most illiberal jurisdictions in the world are now North Korea and Wandsworth, south London. Why? They both impose punishments on the families of lawbreakers.
It has been well documented that the world’s only remaining Stalinist government punishes the relatives of those convicted of any crime, imposing terrible hardships and penalties on innocent people. Now Conservative-controlled Wandsworth council has joined Pyongyang in adopting the same approach to unconvicted relatives of criminals. The decision demonstrates how rapidly the Tories have descended into barbarism following the riots earlier this week.
Not only does the imposition of collective punishments go against every pillar of every civilised democracy in the world, but collective punishments have, in the past been shown to have incalculable negative consequences, particularly or those who impose them. For example most historians agree that Hitler’s rise to power was facilitated to a significant extent by the collective punishment imposed on the German people following the first world war.
However the knee-jerk lashing out at the mother of a young boy accused of involvement in the riots by Tory council leader Ravi Govindia is most worrying because it shows how the depth of anger revealed by the rioters is equalled by the viciousness of the Tories as they aim to extract retribution from anyone, for riots which have shown up their government’s policies for the charade they really are.
It is also likely that Mr Govindia is not merely engaging in a rabble-rousing persecution of innocent people however, but is doing what Tories around the country have attempted to criticise everyone else for; playing politics with the situation. It became clear very quickly, following the disturbances, that, other than David Cameron, who has played a bad hand appallingly, the person who has come out of this worst is Boris Johnson. Having gone from looking like a shoe-in for a second term as London Mayor, his appearance on the streets of Clapham has looked like the end of his political career. Here is a man you cannot rely on in a crisis, here is a man who hasn’t got a clue. The race for London Mayor has been thrown wide open once more, it is going to be a great deal closer than expected, it really isn’t looking good for the Tory candidate.
As such Govindia’s plan to evict council tenants who are relatives of people convicted of involvement in the riots does not merely represent a level of barbarity that even the fanatics of the Tea Party have dared to sink to, it represents a cynical attempt to rid London of a few potential Labour voters as his party tries to hold onto the office of Mayor using any dirty tricks it can.
It has been well documented that the world’s only remaining Stalinist government punishes the relatives of those convicted of any crime, imposing terrible hardships and penalties on innocent people. Now Conservative-controlled Wandsworth council has joined Pyongyang in adopting the same approach to unconvicted relatives of criminals. The decision demonstrates how rapidly the Tories have descended into barbarism following the riots earlier this week.
Not only does the imposition of collective punishments go against every pillar of every civilised democracy in the world, but collective punishments have, in the past been shown to have incalculable negative consequences, particularly or those who impose them. For example most historians agree that Hitler’s rise to power was facilitated to a significant extent by the collective punishment imposed on the German people following the first world war.
However the knee-jerk lashing out at the mother of a young boy accused of involvement in the riots by Tory council leader Ravi Govindia is most worrying because it shows how the depth of anger revealed by the rioters is equalled by the viciousness of the Tories as they aim to extract retribution from anyone, for riots which have shown up their government’s policies for the charade they really are.
It is also likely that Mr Govindia is not merely engaging in a rabble-rousing persecution of innocent people however, but is doing what Tories around the country have attempted to criticise everyone else for; playing politics with the situation. It became clear very quickly, following the disturbances, that, other than David Cameron, who has played a bad hand appallingly, the person who has come out of this worst is Boris Johnson. Having gone from looking like a shoe-in for a second term as London Mayor, his appearance on the streets of Clapham has looked like the end of his political career. Here is a man you cannot rely on in a crisis, here is a man who hasn’t got a clue. The race for London Mayor has been thrown wide open once more, it is going to be a great deal closer than expected, it really isn’t looking good for the Tory candidate.
As such Govindia’s plan to evict council tenants who are relatives of people convicted of involvement in the riots does not merely represent a level of barbarity that even the fanatics of the Tea Party have dared to sink to, it represents a cynical attempt to rid London of a few potential Labour voters as his party tries to hold onto the office of Mayor using any dirty tricks it can.
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