One of the things journalists frequently claim a right to do is to challenge people and express opinions which “offend” people. From Jan Moir to Rod Liddle to Julie Bindel and Bea Campbell, journalists regularly claim their right to offend. It is strange however, that this “right to offend” is almost never exercised by journalists representing a marginalised or relatively powerless group “offending” a group of interests in a position of relative power to them.
The problem is that articles by those journalists who claim the right to offend are all too often articles by someone from a group whose power and status is much greater than those they are trying to offend. In this sense this type of journalism takes advantage of the principle of freedom of expression to employ it as a tool of repression. So journalists, who are in positions of power anyway, who then write articles about groups of people who are in positions of powerlessness relative to the group to which they belong are engaged in an exercise of repressive power over a more marginalised group. They do this as journalists as well as members of a more powerful group.
This “right to offend” as such becomes little more than the exploitation of freedom of expression as a tool of repression. Now, of course I am not in any way advocating that freedom of expression is curtailed to prevent this sort of repression from happening, this is not something I would ever advocate, as it would surely become used to prevent the most powerless from speaking. However I think that it is time we became clear in ourselves and indeed acknowledged in our culture, that there is a difference between, for example, a cisgender journalist, Julie Bindel writing an offensive article about transgender people or indeed a straight, cisgender journalist writing an offensive piece about gay people, and someone like Thierry Schaffhauser writing an article about sex workers from the point of view of one of this most oppressed groups of people.
So, “Right to Offend” articles generally come in two types; those which are an exercise of repressive power on behalf of a more powerful group, examples being Julie Bindel’s articles about trans people or Jan Moir’s article about Stephen Gately, and articles which represent a challenge to current social and culturally accepted thinking. Thierry Schaffhauser’s articles about sex workers are a good example of this as is Natasha Curson’s article about the problems faced by transgender people who are not transsexual. As such we have repressive and liberation journalism.
What is important to remember is that, whilst both these types claim to be “radical” the former is little more than an act of repression by those in positions of power, whilst the latter is truly radical.
Of course one of the tools those who write repressive articles employ is to claim “victim” status. These horrible trans people are hounding me and trying to censor me and prevent me from exercising my right to free speech! As far as I know trans people have not hacked into the Guardian website or the Standpoint Magazine website to try and prevent her articles from being published. The response to this has to be that those who use the right to free speech as a repressive tool, cannot complain when those in positions of relative powerlessness oppose the repression being meted out from on high. Supporters of Jan Moir, astonishingly accused the 22,000 people who complained about her homophobic article about Stephen Gately via Twitter, of censorship! It would appear that those in these positions of power as journalists seem to think that freedom of speech is a one-way-street.
So, whilst repressive journalism will always be legally justified, it should never be morally acceptable. It should be viewed as a means of misrepresenting those in positions of marginality, misrepresenting their interests, misrepresenting their actions, misrepresenting their actions and building public support for measures which are counter to the interests of these people. Liberation journalism on the other hand, whilst much rarer than the repressive type, will always be the most interesting, valuable, challenging and valid form of expression in the media, seeking to remove repressive measures against marginal groups. It is this type of journalism which the principle of freedom of expression was created to protect. In repressive regimes the repressive type of journalism, such as Julie Bindel’s articles about trans people, intensify. In repressive regimes liberation journalism disappears, although it does not die, instead people risk their lives to create and distribute it.
We need to start developing a culture, essential for a free society, or at least a society which values freedom of speech, that distinguishes those repressive articles written by Moir, Bindel and others and the, often courageous articles, which are a genuine challenge to accepted thinking, which are iconoclastic, which seek to undermine repressive power structures and which permit those who are usually misrepresented through the exercise of power by repressive journalists like Bindel, to begin to speak for themselves.
Natacha Kennedy 26 march 2010
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Saturday, 30 January 2010
The consequences of QQT
As the dust settles from Julie Bindel's latest foray into Queer/trans friendly territory, we can see what a malign influence she is. Reports are still coming out from those who were inside the RVT, and no doubt recordings will be made available which underline what a mistake it was to invite someone like her to any kind of open public discussion. People like her provoke very strong reactions, which they then stir up and use for their own purposes. We must make the point, as loudly as we can, that the demo outside was peaceful and that we were not involved in any of the nastiness.
Doubtless Bindel will use this in another article in the Guardian or Standpoint to crap on trans people (even though it was not only trans people who have a problem with her). This is her stock-in-trade, she cannot win the argument so she provokes... classic tactics used by the morally dubious, from Goebbells to Palin, claiming to be the victim of bullying when she is the one with access to national media.
So what happens next? Let us be clear, we are at war. This is not just about an evil individual using her power over one of the most disenfranchised and downtrodden communities, in an attempt to define us in the way she would like to. It goes a whole lot further than that. Last night I spoke to one of the representatives of the sex worker community and he described how she had been instrumental in having the law changed to make life more difficult for sex workers. Life for these people is now apparently measurably worse.
This is about Julie Bindel's campaign to have Gender Reassignment Surgery removed from NHS funding. This was the purpose of the incredibly badly written and distorted article in Standpoint Magazine, a hard-right wing organ apparently established to influence an incoming Tory government, which, despite the veneer and airbrushing, is going to be as nasty and right-wing as Thatcher's. This article was clearly intended to establish her credentials as an anti-trans journalist, who would be able to assist the Tories with making "cost savings" to the NHS budget by getting rid of GRS. It is worth noting that the Taxpayers Alliance, the Tory Party's alter ego, has been publishing costs of GRS in various NHS areas around the country.
Cometh the hour cometh the Bindel. Assisting the Tories to achieve these cost savings (at the cost of lives) will be just the boost her career needs. This woman clearly has ambitions along the lines of Melanie Phillips, yet she has one attribute which Mel P does not; she is a lesbian and as such will be seen as someone who can write about us with credibility. The value to the Tories of Julie Bindel in this situation will be immense. Trying to remove GRS from the NHS will generate a lot of negative publicity and some Tory MPs will come under pressure from constituents affected by the changes. Being able to find someone who, however dubiously, can give them some kind of justification for doing this will be God's gift to Cameron.
Julie Bindel's next career move is planned, her positioning ready to take advantage of a Tory government, the sky is the limit, she will achieve greatness over the dead bodies of transgender people.
Our reaction? This is something which needs to be set in train very quickly. We need a united national organisation which can speak for all, or pretty much all, transgender people, and their supporters. PfC has been very successful up to now in improving things for trans people, but they have achieved this success with a Labour government not a reactionary Tory one. What is required now is not a fight for more but a defence of what we have and that is going to be achieved not merely through rational considered argument and political lobbying, which PfC and others have done very well, we need a bigger voice, we need to be able to shout as loud as Bindel, so that when her campaign (no doubt coordinated with the Taxpayers Alliance and Central Office) to have GRS removed from the NHS starts in earnest we can make our voices heard.
We need a national organisation not merely because then we will have much better opportunities to get our voices heard in the media, but also will be able to show unity in the face of the inevitable provocation which Bindel will engage in. As a community we will need to be disciplined and well organised.
Back in November, I was at a conference in Sweden about trans issues and there I met a group of people from Ireland who had formed a national trans organisation there. In a country with a much greater degree of hostility to us than the UK they have been able to achieve much greater progress for trans people than anyone could have expected. A national trans organisation has also resulted in them being able to bid for funds from the EU which has helped their cause immensely and resulted in a greater unity amongst all trans people in Ireland. It is time we did the same. We need to establish a similar organisation in the UK, bid for funds and start to employ people to deal with the media and to put our points across more forcefully, countering Bindel's lies, provocations and disingenuous distortions. We will need a properly established constitution and democratic elections to an executive, but there are constitutions of other national organisations which we can borrow and adapt. We have people in our community who have experience in running trans organisations on a smaller scale, we need their expertise and experience to turn to something larger.
If the opinion polls are correct we could be operating in a much more hostile political environment soon, the brick wall we hit with the Equality Bill is just a small foretaste of what is to come. Make no mistake, over the next few years trans people will be under attack from all sides. Now is the time to get organised and make a fight of it.
Doubtless Bindel will use this in another article in the Guardian or Standpoint to crap on trans people (even though it was not only trans people who have a problem with her). This is her stock-in-trade, she cannot win the argument so she provokes... classic tactics used by the morally dubious, from Goebbells to Palin, claiming to be the victim of bullying when she is the one with access to national media.
So what happens next? Let us be clear, we are at war. This is not just about an evil individual using her power over one of the most disenfranchised and downtrodden communities, in an attempt to define us in the way she would like to. It goes a whole lot further than that. Last night I spoke to one of the representatives of the sex worker community and he described how she had been instrumental in having the law changed to make life more difficult for sex workers. Life for these people is now apparently measurably worse.
This is about Julie Bindel's campaign to have Gender Reassignment Surgery removed from NHS funding. This was the purpose of the incredibly badly written and distorted article in Standpoint Magazine, a hard-right wing organ apparently established to influence an incoming Tory government, which, despite the veneer and airbrushing, is going to be as nasty and right-wing as Thatcher's. This article was clearly intended to establish her credentials as an anti-trans journalist, who would be able to assist the Tories with making "cost savings" to the NHS budget by getting rid of GRS. It is worth noting that the Taxpayers Alliance, the Tory Party's alter ego, has been publishing costs of GRS in various NHS areas around the country.
Cometh the hour cometh the Bindel. Assisting the Tories to achieve these cost savings (at the cost of lives) will be just the boost her career needs. This woman clearly has ambitions along the lines of Melanie Phillips, yet she has one attribute which Mel P does not; she is a lesbian and as such will be seen as someone who can write about us with credibility. The value to the Tories of Julie Bindel in this situation will be immense. Trying to remove GRS from the NHS will generate a lot of negative publicity and some Tory MPs will come under pressure from constituents affected by the changes. Being able to find someone who, however dubiously, can give them some kind of justification for doing this will be God's gift to Cameron.
Julie Bindel's next career move is planned, her positioning ready to take advantage of a Tory government, the sky is the limit, she will achieve greatness over the dead bodies of transgender people.
Our reaction? This is something which needs to be set in train very quickly. We need a united national organisation which can speak for all, or pretty much all, transgender people, and their supporters. PfC has been very successful up to now in improving things for trans people, but they have achieved this success with a Labour government not a reactionary Tory one. What is required now is not a fight for more but a defence of what we have and that is going to be achieved not merely through rational considered argument and political lobbying, which PfC and others have done very well, we need a bigger voice, we need to be able to shout as loud as Bindel, so that when her campaign (no doubt coordinated with the Taxpayers Alliance and Central Office) to have GRS removed from the NHS starts in earnest we can make our voices heard.
We need a national organisation not merely because then we will have much better opportunities to get our voices heard in the media, but also will be able to show unity in the face of the inevitable provocation which Bindel will engage in. As a community we will need to be disciplined and well organised.
Back in November, I was at a conference in Sweden about trans issues and there I met a group of people from Ireland who had formed a national trans organisation there. In a country with a much greater degree of hostility to us than the UK they have been able to achieve much greater progress for trans people than anyone could have expected. A national trans organisation has also resulted in them being able to bid for funds from the EU which has helped their cause immensely and resulted in a greater unity amongst all trans people in Ireland. It is time we did the same. We need to establish a similar organisation in the UK, bid for funds and start to employ people to deal with the media and to put our points across more forcefully, countering Bindel's lies, provocations and disingenuous distortions. We will need a properly established constitution and democratic elections to an executive, but there are constitutions of other national organisations which we can borrow and adapt. We have people in our community who have experience in running trans organisations on a smaller scale, we need their expertise and experience to turn to something larger.
If the opinion polls are correct we could be operating in a much more hostile political environment soon, the brick wall we hit with the Equality Bill is just a small foretaste of what is to come. Make no mistake, over the next few years trans people will be under attack from all sides. Now is the time to get organised and make a fight of it.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
The Pied Piper of Male Domination
“Can the Subaltern Speak?” asked Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak. Are those in the lowest and most oppressed positions permitted any kind of true expression of their true feelings? The media by which all of us express ourselves in the era of mass communication remains in the hands of those for whom the preservation of the existing hegemonic order has always been the priority. I hear you cry, there are plenty of underclass who speak out, who make us aware of the plight of subalterns of every kind; women, black people, Asians, Muslims, lesbians, disabled people…!
So let us examine someone who speaks for two of these groups; a lesbian feminist.
“There is a false power which masculine society offers to a few women who “think like men” on condition that they use it to maintain things as they are. This is the meaning of female tokenism: that power withheld from the vast majority of women is offered to a few…”
...said Adrienne Rich in 1979. She might have been describing the sad life story of the Lesbian Feminist Separatist of the 21st century, reduced to the status of hired assasin. With calculated duplicity, she decides that being able to bring to the attention of broadsheet-readers the problems of rape and domestic violence is worth the sacrifice of the lives of transgender people. Access to the media, to write about the ultimate act of violent masculine hegemony, the violation of women’s bodies, is worth the sacrifice of the lives of transgender people. If I join with the oppressors, show my colours, demonstrate to them that I am one of them, that I am willing to exercise the same power of hegemony as a cisgendered member of the gender binary, they will permit me to write about those within their ranks who take male hegemony a step too far (and in doing so undermine the cause of male dominance).
It was her decision, yet it was not a decision which was hers to make.
She will make a healthy career from pretending to speak for the subaltern, but they can be sure she is one of them, as Margaret Thatcher would say. In the final analysis she will maintain the order of things, their order. She will shit on those below her just as they shit on her, and this can be used against her, if she ever tries to cross the line, to really challenge their dominance, just as the dictator forces those around him to commit crimes from which there is no way back. As Spivak said;
So let us examine someone who speaks for two of these groups; a lesbian feminist.
“There is a false power which masculine society offers to a few women who “think like men” on condition that they use it to maintain things as they are. This is the meaning of female tokenism: that power withheld from the vast majority of women is offered to a few…”
...said Adrienne Rich in 1979. She might have been describing the sad life story of the Lesbian Feminist Separatist of the 21st century, reduced to the status of hired assasin. With calculated duplicity, she decides that being able to bring to the attention of broadsheet-readers the problems of rape and domestic violence is worth the sacrifice of the lives of transgender people. Access to the media, to write about the ultimate act of violent masculine hegemony, the violation of women’s bodies, is worth the sacrifice of the lives of transgender people. If I join with the oppressors, show my colours, demonstrate to them that I am one of them, that I am willing to exercise the same power of hegemony as a cisgendered member of the gender binary, they will permit me to write about those within their ranks who take male hegemony a step too far (and in doing so undermine the cause of male dominance).
It was her decision, yet it was not a decision which was hers to make.
She will make a healthy career from pretending to speak for the subaltern, but they can be sure she is one of them, as Margaret Thatcher would say. In the final analysis she will maintain the order of things, their order. She will shit on those below her just as they shit on her, and this can be used against her, if she ever tries to cross the line, to really challenge their dominance, just as the dictator forces those around him to commit crimes from which there is no way back. As Spivak said;
“The putative center welcomes selective inhabitants of the margin in order better to exclude the margin.”
The real enemy are those who would threaten the very atoms of male domination by removing its foundations at a molecular level, if men can become women and women men and other genders, our naturally assumed power is but a chimera, a trick of history. But who can take on this threat, who can rid us of these troublesome trannies? By criticising them we become open to easy accusations of gayness, which would never do!
Up to the mark steps The Lesbian Feminist Separatist. The doer of men’s dirty work. The men watch silently and smile, the foundations of their castle safe from disintegration, the power of the Phallic maintained and defended at two removes, they don’t even need to fire a shot.
But what will this Pied Piper of masculine domination want in return? The rapists, the pervs, the scumbags they would rather do without anyway, throw to the lions this sacrifice, a punishment for humiliating us by raping our sisters, wives, daughters or mothers. Payback time.
The calculation by her? Much simpler. I hate rapists. If I do your dirty work and take on the trannies, will you let me crush the rapists, pervs and associated male scumbags? After all these trannies’ lives must be so miserable that they are happier dead anyway…
Deal, a calculated betrayal, an esprit fasciste and a token woman and lesbian is admitted to the inner circle at once defending it and legitimising it. A win-win situation. For some.
But who pays and who wins? The transgendered pay, the male hegemonists win, and they don’t even have to play. Feminism’s soul is sold and it becomes protector of that which it once sought to change. As the trans people seek to explain their apparently complex lives to those who take rigid gender assignations as given as gravity or the air that we breathe, the defender of the status quo, the protector of the hegemony drowns out their voices with loud, shrill, distorted one liners and externally imposed misdescriptions of who we are, located in Daily Mail “commonsense” and expounded Jan Moir style with innuendo in place of fact and insinuation in place of understanding. She does her duty well.
To explain oneself is to exist, to be-in-the-world, to deny a people the possibility of explaining themselves is to deny their existence, to nullify and vaporise, a cultural genocide which threatens to become a real genocide.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
The Most Dishonest Politician
To be given the title "Most Dishonest Politician" is quite a feat these days; there is a lot of serious competition out there, however sometimes a particular politician rises to the occasion with levels of dishonesty which would shame Geoffrey Archer.
The posters sealed it for him; an airbrushed David Cameron, Photoshopped to look younger, slimmer, more athletic and less dodgy. However, this is only the tip of an iceberg of dishonesty which forms the basis of his own personal, and his party's fundamental existence.
Apart from the obvious visual dishonesty, Cameron's less than candid approach to his own financial situation was revealed in his interview during the Tory Party conference in the Autumn. When asked about his fortune, he was evasive, and claimed that he was unable to tell exactly. Pressed several times on this, he has never given a correct answer. This is perhaps understandable since he is reported to be worth something like £30 million pounds, most of which was unearned. This attempt to conceal his riches, subject to zero scrutiny by a supine and Tory-supporting media, stands in stark contrast to the way he presented himself as the politician who would 'clean up' politics. Perhaps his desire to conceal his wealth stems from the mortgage he is getting the taxpayer (us) to pay on his house in his constituency. Why does a man with 30 million pounds need to get the taxpayer to fund a huge mortgage on a house for him in Oxfordshire?
Using the opportunity, during the MP's expenses row, as cover for a not-so-subtle attempt to rig the voting system for the election after next (if he is elected), his "proposal" to reduce the number of MPs to 500, disguised as a "cleaning up" of politics is actually nothing to do with honesty and everything to do with disingenuous lies. His new system would simply deliver a built-in Tory majority, so that he could win any subsequent election with fewer votes than Labour. This is not a new broom, as he falsely trumpets, this is dirty, dishonest, underhand politics as usual.
Europe is where the Tories are the weakest and Cameron's "Cast Iron Guarantee" to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty has turned out to be forged from paper-mache; his consorting with racists and homophobes in Eastern Europe who celebrate atrocities committed by their own Quisling collaborators with the Nazis during world war two are an insult to people such as my grandfather, who fought and died fighting the Nazis. To claim that this bunch of fascists will help Cameron achieve any kind of influence in the EU is akin to claiming that black is white. The dishonesty goes on.
Cameron's "apology" to the LGBT community for his party's promoting of the notoriously homophobic "Section 28" needs to be seen in this light, consorting with homophobes behind our backs while telling the gay community that their votes are safe with them...
The dishonesty reached its zenith in recent months when Cameron deliberately tried to talk down the country's economic prospects. Although the UK is in no danger whatsoever of losing its AAA credit rating, Cameron has done all he can to try and give that impression. If anyone with any sense had believed him this could have seriously damaged the recovery the country is now experiencing. He is prepared to damage the UK's interests, such is his desperation to become Prime Minister. However it goes deeper than this; he is still perpetuating the lie to use as an excuse to slash public spending if he is elected. In fact his party is ideologically opposed to public spending (except defence) and this is just being used as a pretext to cut the police, schools, hospitals, universities, welfare, pensions and anything which helps the poor. The dishonesty runs deep in the Conservative Party. It is part of its DNA.
Of course no analysis of dishonesty in the Conservative Party would be complete without mention of their claims to represent newness, freshness and "change". In contrast to these claims, frequently made, and frequently glossed over by his friends in the media, any examination of their policies, especially their economic ones, shows that they are little more than recycled Thatcherism; a return to the policies which caused our social services to be run down, which resulted in mass unemployment, poverty wages and a very high crime rate. If the Tories get in this is what the next decade will have in store for the United Kingdom, a re-run of the 1980s. For David Cameron to claim that his policies represent a new start when one of his main ones is to repeal the ban on bloodsports beggars belief.
This list of his dishonesty is in fact too long to detail here but include the way he publicised the death of his son (note how Gordon Brown sought no publicity over his similar misfortune; this speaks volumes about the relative morals of these two people). Suffice to say that, in a field of intense competition, David Cameron, the politician with no principles, no substance and lots of PR wins by a furlong. Maybe the only thing worse than the dishonesty manifest by David Cameron is the free ride he has been given by the media. One expects the sycophantic treatment of him by the Daily Mail (although this is still not justified and effectively amounts to propaganda) but the lack of scrutiny given to him by the TV stations, most notably the BBC, amounts to collusion in his deception. God help us if he becomes Prime Minister.
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Transphobia in the (Tory)Taxpayer's Alliance
The "Taxpayers Alliance", or should I say the "Torypayers Alliance" is made up of very rich people who pay a lower proportion of their incomes in tax than I do and in some cases no tax at all in the UK, but who donate a large proportion of their surplus cash to the Tory party.
Fiona McEvoy, of the West Midlands Taxpayers Alliance, has been complaining about the use of £1,000 of taxpayers' money to fund a training day for civil servants in Wolverhampton about transsexuals, as part of diversity training. I very much doubt that she would have complained if taxpayers money had been spent on diversity training for civil servants in dealing with black people, Asians or gay and lesbian people. So why is she getting her knickers in a twist about trans people?
I am a taxpayer, most of you are taxpayers. Including indirect taxation I probably pay over £10,000 a year in tax. Someone on average earnings will pay around £6,000 a year in direct and indirect taxes, depending on how much they drink, whether they smoke, if they drive a gas-guzzler, etc.
So the £30,000 transsexuals in the country should be paying around £180 million in tax every year. Include the non-transsexual trans people and you probably have a couple of Billion at least being contributed to the exchequer in tax by transgender people in the UK.
And the Torypayers Alliance is worried about £1000. I suspect that there is more to it than this and the Torypayers Alliance is deeply transphobic. I also suspect that they are campaigning to have Gender Reassignment Surgery removed from NHS funding since they seem to be digging up figures about the cost of GRS all over the place. If the Tories get in expect to have no access to GRS if you are poor...
However, Press For Change have done their maths for them. The cost of GRS to the NHS is, on average £9600. Sounds a lot but I pay for that every year (and, although I am not intending to have any surgery myeslf, I am happy to contribute to the funding of others' surgery). Once again, if you add up the £6,000 the average trans person is going to contribute to the exchequer over a 40-year working lifespan, you have nearly a quarter of a million pounds, more if they buy a house and pay stamp duty for example. Since a substantial proportion of transsexuals who are refused surgery either bcommitt suicide or are too traumatised to live useful working lives and as such become a greater burden on the NHS/social services, the £9600 suddenly looks like a really good investment. Just 2.5% of transsexuals' taxes will cover the cost of all GRS operations on the NHS.
The Torypayers Alliance will make a big deal of this, or their puppets in the Tory Party will, if the Tories are elected in May. The trans community needs to be ready to fight their transphobic hatred, bigotry and desire to rid this country of the diversity which we represent. These people are narrow-minded, bigoted bean-counters who hate people like us.
You have been warned.
Either the Torypayers Alliance is innumerate or they are a bunch of transphobic bigots who will use any excuse to attack trans people.
Fiona McEvoy, of the West Midlands Taxpayers Alliance, has been complaining about the use of £1,000 of taxpayers' money to fund a training day for civil servants in Wolverhampton about transsexuals, as part of diversity training. I very much doubt that she would have complained if taxpayers money had been spent on diversity training for civil servants in dealing with black people, Asians or gay and lesbian people. So why is she getting her knickers in a twist about trans people?
I am a taxpayer, most of you are taxpayers. Including indirect taxation I probably pay over £10,000 a year in tax. Someone on average earnings will pay around £6,000 a year in direct and indirect taxes, depending on how much they drink, whether they smoke, if they drive a gas-guzzler, etc.
So the £30,000 transsexuals in the country should be paying around £180 million in tax every year. Include the non-transsexual trans people and you probably have a couple of Billion at least being contributed to the exchequer in tax by transgender people in the UK.
And the Torypayers Alliance is worried about £1000. I suspect that there is more to it than this and the Torypayers Alliance is deeply transphobic. I also suspect that they are campaigning to have Gender Reassignment Surgery removed from NHS funding since they seem to be digging up figures about the cost of GRS all over the place. If the Tories get in expect to have no access to GRS if you are poor...
However, Press For Change have done their maths for them. The cost of GRS to the NHS is, on average £9600. Sounds a lot but I pay for that every year (and, although I am not intending to have any surgery myeslf, I am happy to contribute to the funding of others' surgery). Once again, if you add up the £6,000 the average trans person is going to contribute to the exchequer over a 40-year working lifespan, you have nearly a quarter of a million pounds, more if they buy a house and pay stamp duty for example. Since a substantial proportion of transsexuals who are refused surgery either bcommitt suicide or are too traumatised to live useful working lives and as such become a greater burden on the NHS/social services, the £9600 suddenly looks like a really good investment. Just 2.5% of transsexuals' taxes will cover the cost of all GRS operations on the NHS.
The Torypayers Alliance will make a big deal of this, or their puppets in the Tory Party will, if the Tories are elected in May. The trans community needs to be ready to fight their transphobic hatred, bigotry and desire to rid this country of the diversity which we represent. These people are narrow-minded, bigoted bean-counters who hate people like us.
You have been warned.
Either the Torypayers Alliance is innumerate or they are a bunch of transphobic bigots who will use any excuse to attack trans people.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Out and About
The great thing about being trans is that fairly ordinary things can become a little more adventurous when you are dressed. The recent open house evening at the V&A was a good example of how going girlie makes the evening just that little bit more interesting, and it also gets people talking to you in a way which wouldn't happen if you were going in drab.
However my recent sojourn to a small town in Sweden for a conference was definitely a little more adventurous. Linkoping is a small town about 70 miles south-west of Stockholm and it is where they make Saabs. Small provincial industrial town, kinda like Derby...
Fashion note; For the outward journey I wore a denim mini skirt, blue T-shirt and a dark grey angora jumper over the top with 3" heeled boots and black tights. Pretty passable until you got very close.
I flew there on Ryanair to Stockholm Skavsta airport, and decided that, since the conference was about trans issues I would go as Natacha all the way there and back. It didn't start well, Ryanair at Stansted were chaotic and I barely made the check-in time, then I forgot to take off my bangles when going through the metal detector and had to be searched. But by who?! The female searcher was coming towards me and I didn't want any trouble so I decided, on the spur of the moment to turn to the male one instead. A little surprised, he realised I was trans when I got close and searched me, taking my bangles from me and giving the once-over with his magic detector wand thingy. After that however, everything went swimmingly. The flight was comfortable and arrived on time. I spent about an hour of it talking to a lovely young Swedish girl in the seat next to me. She came from the north of Sweden and wasn't looking forward to the 8-hour bus journey ahead of her.
When I got to Skavsta (which is actually a hut with a runway) getting through customs/immigration was achieved with a smile and a "Welcome to Sweden". I had brought a big puffy jacket with me in the expectation that it was going to be cold there but it was no different from London, quite warm for November. The bus ride to Linkoping was about an hour and a half and very pleasant, but it dumped me at the Fjarrbusterminal, the long-distance bus terminal, which entailed walking through a small industrial estate to get to the town centre. I thought this must be a bit scary but it wasn't as there were plenty of other airport bus passengers walking through it as well. I found my hotel easily; a lively traditional Swedish house painted...wait for it...bright pink!
The owner was there and was happy to speak to me in Swedish, which I urgently needed to practice, but eventually I ended up needing to ask for stuff I didn't know the word for such as an iron and the wifi code. His English was excellent of course and he was very helpful and welcoming, as was everyone that I met there.
The people I met in the conference were fantastic and it was great to be able to discuss trans issues in a context with others who were interested in trans issues. Loads of people were interested in the paper I presented about transgender children. There were some very interesting people there, including Stephen Whittle, Maria Sundin, a Lawyer called Lukas Romson, a transman from Denmark called Tobias, Del LaGrace Volcano and many more, Del gave an amazing presentation about intersex people. Linkoping was a great place, the university was wonderful and the conference has set up a new network of people interested in gender issues and I am looking forward to collaborating with people from all over Europe on research in trans issues.
Again, there were no probs on the way back despite the fact that I had been up all day and was coming back late, so my make-up wasn't as fresh as it might have been. The only downside was that I heard an English woman saying, as I passed, "Look at that..." If I hadn't been in a departure lounge, she would have got a very large dose of pure unadulterated vitriol. The whole time I spent in Linkoping, a provincial town in Sweden, near Stockholm, I had no hassle or harrassment at all. A couple of days ago I was hassled by some religious nutter here on the tube in London, he followed me all the way from West Hampstead to Green Park muttering some religious mumbo-jumbo, and came close to getting a stiletto in the face (in the end I ignored him so much that it really pissed him off).
Just goes to show what an inclusive, tolerant society we have here.
However my recent sojourn to a small town in Sweden for a conference was definitely a little more adventurous. Linkoping is a small town about 70 miles south-west of Stockholm and it is where they make Saabs. Small provincial industrial town, kinda like Derby...
Fashion note; For the outward journey I wore a denim mini skirt, blue T-shirt and a dark grey angora jumper over the top with 3" heeled boots and black tights. Pretty passable until you got very close.
I flew there on Ryanair to Stockholm Skavsta airport, and decided that, since the conference was about trans issues I would go as Natacha all the way there and back. It didn't start well, Ryanair at Stansted were chaotic and I barely made the check-in time, then I forgot to take off my bangles when going through the metal detector and had to be searched. But by who?! The female searcher was coming towards me and I didn't want any trouble so I decided, on the spur of the moment to turn to the male one instead. A little surprised, he realised I was trans when I got close and searched me, taking my bangles from me and giving the once-over with his magic detector wand thingy. After that however, everything went swimmingly. The flight was comfortable and arrived on time. I spent about an hour of it talking to a lovely young Swedish girl in the seat next to me. She came from the north of Sweden and wasn't looking forward to the 8-hour bus journey ahead of her.
When I got to Skavsta (which is actually a hut with a runway) getting through customs/immigration was achieved with a smile and a "Welcome to Sweden". I had brought a big puffy jacket with me in the expectation that it was going to be cold there but it was no different from London, quite warm for November. The bus ride to Linkoping was about an hour and a half and very pleasant, but it dumped me at the Fjarrbusterminal, the long-distance bus terminal, which entailed walking through a small industrial estate to get to the town centre. I thought this must be a bit scary but it wasn't as there were plenty of other airport bus passengers walking through it as well. I found my hotel easily; a lively traditional Swedish house painted...wait for it...bright pink!
The owner was there and was happy to speak to me in Swedish, which I urgently needed to practice, but eventually I ended up needing to ask for stuff I didn't know the word for such as an iron and the wifi code. His English was excellent of course and he was very helpful and welcoming, as was everyone that I met there.
The people I met in the conference were fantastic and it was great to be able to discuss trans issues in a context with others who were interested in trans issues. Loads of people were interested in the paper I presented about transgender children. There were some very interesting people there, including Stephen Whittle, Maria Sundin, a Lawyer called Lukas Romson, a transman from Denmark called Tobias, Del LaGrace Volcano and many more, Del gave an amazing presentation about intersex people. Linkoping was a great place, the university was wonderful and the conference has set up a new network of people interested in gender issues and I am looking forward to collaborating with people from all over Europe on research in trans issues.
Again, there were no probs on the way back despite the fact that I had been up all day and was coming back late, so my make-up wasn't as fresh as it might have been. The only downside was that I heard an English woman saying, as I passed, "Look at that..." If I hadn't been in a departure lounge, she would have got a very large dose of pure unadulterated vitriol. The whole time I spent in Linkoping, a provincial town in Sweden, near Stockholm, I had no hassle or harrassment at all. A couple of days ago I was hassled by some religious nutter here on the tube in London, he followed me all the way from West Hampstead to Green Park muttering some religious mumbo-jumbo, and came close to getting a stiletto in the face (in the end I ignored him so much that it really pissed him off).
Just goes to show what an inclusive, tolerant society we have here.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Surreal but predictable; trans people excluded again.
It was almost surreal; at a meeting of the "Cutting Edge Consortium" in the house of Commons on Tuesday night, Andrew Copston, representing the Humanist Society, right at the end of the meeting when there was no opportunity for us to argue back, suggested that it wouldn't matter if there were no transgender comissioners on the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) because other commissioners could just as well do the work of a trans commissioner if they have good enough knowledge of trans issues.
And whaddaya know but the next day the EHRC announces new commissioners, and guess what...? Yup you got it in one, there are no trans commissioners. Guess what II... the other commissioners are not people with any understanding of trans issues.
Predictable as this is likely to sound to transgendered people, it is not something which should go without either comment or protest. This is a deliberate snub to the trans community, make no mistake. It is like saying that we don't count, or that our problems with equal rights do not have to be taken seriously. Despite all its warm and supportive words, when it comes down to it the EHRC is all mouth and no trousers. This is not the first time either, when words have flowed freely but action has been conspicuous by its absence. The Moving Wallpaper affair earlier this year, demonstrated how it is unwilling to take any action on any trans issues. No wonder the Equality Bill is such a big step backwards for transgender people, it will mean that they will legally be able to ignore us in favour of less underpriviledged groups, encompassing larger numbers of people.
So let's call a spade a spade shall we? This is all about numbers. Transgender people in the UK make up such a small proportion of the population that we do not merit the attention of the EHRC. After all race and sex discrimination can potentially affect everyone in the country, whereas transphobic discrimination affects maybe only 1% of the population. We are too small a minority to merit inclusion in the hierarchy of discrimination, the bottom rung is still to be kept out of reach as everyone else pulls up the drawbridge.
Of course there are other reasons for our exclusion; it would not do to shake the cosy worldviews of Daily Mail reading 'normal', Barratt Homes, Mondeo Man with 2.35 chilren... they might start to question other aspects of their lives if the most basic concepts of 'male' and 'female' are suddenly revealed to be not the only options. My goodness, the thought that the lovely, pretty, blonde-haired daughter they assiduously cultivated with pink t-shirts and Barbie dolls might grow up into a MAN! Or worse, a genderqueer butch dyke with attitude and a pair of DMs...
Of course there is hypocrisy by the truckload, and of course trans people are used to that as well, indeed we start to get nervous at its absence such is the regularity with which we have had to deal with double standards being applied to us. One of the biggest voices against the full inclusion of trans people in the Equality Bill came from religious groups. (Incidentally 99.9% of their responses which call for our exclusion did not refer to religious grounds or religious texts in support of their 'arguments' but that is another story.) Leaving asside the obvious question as to why transgender people do not get consulted about issues involving religious freedom this makes manfest one of the most spectacular and monumental instances of hypocrisy and double standards of modern times. This is Hypocrisy of planet sized proportions...
One of the main arguments which the Equalities Office deployed to justify excluding the majority of transgender people from the scope of the bill was that people who are transgender but not transsexual represent a "Lifestyle Choice". The fact that this is clearly complete nonsense is neither here nor there. The same people, including those on the EHRC, argue for religious discrimination to be a protected characteristic in the Equality Bill, so that people cannot be discriminated on the grounds of religious belief. Yet what is religion? One is not born a Muslim, a Catholic or a Protestant, therefore religion is a Lifestyle Choice.
The irony is of course that people who argue that they should not be discriminated against because of a lifestyle choice then turn round and argue that the majority of the transgender community should be unprotected from discrimination because they represent a "Lifestyle Choice".
The reality is, of course, that being transgendered, whether transsexual or not, is something you are born with and nothing to do with any choices you might make. My own research has shown that around 80% of transgender people realise that their gender identity is different before they leave primary school. with only around 3% becoming aware they are trans after their 18th birthday. With a mean average age of realisation at around 7-8 years old, and a modal average age at only 5 years old, the suggestion that any trans person is trans out of a lifestyle choice is quite clearly ridiculous.
And whaddaya know but the next day the EHRC announces new commissioners, and guess what...? Yup you got it in one, there are no trans commissioners. Guess what II... the other commissioners are not people with any understanding of trans issues.
Predictable as this is likely to sound to transgendered people, it is not something which should go without either comment or protest. This is a deliberate snub to the trans community, make no mistake. It is like saying that we don't count, or that our problems with equal rights do not have to be taken seriously. Despite all its warm and supportive words, when it comes down to it the EHRC is all mouth and no trousers. This is not the first time either, when words have flowed freely but action has been conspicuous by its absence. The Moving Wallpaper affair earlier this year, demonstrated how it is unwilling to take any action on any trans issues. No wonder the Equality Bill is such a big step backwards for transgender people, it will mean that they will legally be able to ignore us in favour of less underpriviledged groups, encompassing larger numbers of people.
So let's call a spade a spade shall we? This is all about numbers. Transgender people in the UK make up such a small proportion of the population that we do not merit the attention of the EHRC. After all race and sex discrimination can potentially affect everyone in the country, whereas transphobic discrimination affects maybe only 1% of the population. We are too small a minority to merit inclusion in the hierarchy of discrimination, the bottom rung is still to be kept out of reach as everyone else pulls up the drawbridge.
Of course there are other reasons for our exclusion; it would not do to shake the cosy worldviews of Daily Mail reading 'normal', Barratt Homes, Mondeo Man with 2.35 chilren... they might start to question other aspects of their lives if the most basic concepts of 'male' and 'female' are suddenly revealed to be not the only options. My goodness, the thought that the lovely, pretty, blonde-haired daughter they assiduously cultivated with pink t-shirts and Barbie dolls might grow up into a MAN! Or worse, a genderqueer butch dyke with attitude and a pair of DMs...
Of course there is hypocrisy by the truckload, and of course trans people are used to that as well, indeed we start to get nervous at its absence such is the regularity with which we have had to deal with double standards being applied to us. One of the biggest voices against the full inclusion of trans people in the Equality Bill came from religious groups. (Incidentally 99.9% of their responses which call for our exclusion did not refer to religious grounds or religious texts in support of their 'arguments' but that is another story.) Leaving asside the obvious question as to why transgender people do not get consulted about issues involving religious freedom this makes manfest one of the most spectacular and monumental instances of hypocrisy and double standards of modern times. This is Hypocrisy of planet sized proportions...
One of the main arguments which the Equalities Office deployed to justify excluding the majority of transgender people from the scope of the bill was that people who are transgender but not transsexual represent a "Lifestyle Choice". The fact that this is clearly complete nonsense is neither here nor there. The same people, including those on the EHRC, argue for religious discrimination to be a protected characteristic in the Equality Bill, so that people cannot be discriminated on the grounds of religious belief. Yet what is religion? One is not born a Muslim, a Catholic or a Protestant, therefore religion is a Lifestyle Choice.
The irony is of course that people who argue that they should not be discriminated against because of a lifestyle choice then turn round and argue that the majority of the transgender community should be unprotected from discrimination because they represent a "Lifestyle Choice".
The reality is, of course, that being transgendered, whether transsexual or not, is something you are born with and nothing to do with any choices you might make. My own research has shown that around 80% of transgender people realise that their gender identity is different before they leave primary school. with only around 3% becoming aware they are trans after their 18th birthday. With a mean average age of realisation at around 7-8 years old, and a modal average age at only 5 years old, the suggestion that any trans person is trans out of a lifestyle choice is quite clearly ridiculous.
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