Back to the REAL issue; the NHS

The damp squib that was Ukip’s supposed political earthquake in the recent council elections has served the right-wing media and their political wing, the Tory Party well. It has served not only to portray the winners, Labour, as losers, but to conceal huge Tory losses in council elections less than a year before the general election.

However it goes way beyond this; the right-wing media has also been able to conceal from us the consequences of the government’s policy in the most important area, the one that will lose them the most votes; the NHS.

NHS privatisation is continuing apace, our health service is being privatised at breakneck speed as the wealthy make huge profits from services that used to be provided by the state. This extraction of public money from the NHS is probably the principal reason why it has deteriorated so rapidly since the Tories have taken power (and let us be clear here, their Lib Dem allies could have prevented this from happening but chose not to).

The companies buying up huge slices of the NHS are, in effect raking in taxpayers cash at little or no risk to themselves. Capitalism has always been presented by its cheerleaders as the entrepreneurial spirit; courageous risk-taking venturers risking all to make a success of their business, to benefit society from their proactive, frontier-spirit inventiveness. The reality of neoliberal capitalism is entirely different however. Today there is nothing entrepreneurial about capitalism..

What we are seeing is a new type of capitalism, probably best described as arse-capitalism; people with money invest it in low-risk or risk-free businesses and then sit on their arses and watch the cash roll in. About as entrepreneurial as a steaming pile of manure. This is not capitalism as risk, this new neoliberal model of capitalism is one of exploitation or tax. Neoliberal capitalism of the sort now exploiting our health service for profit needs to be viewed for what it really is; as tax on health paid only to the rich. The rich buy up already profitable and successful elements of the NHS, make no changes other than reducing efficiency (and thereby lengthening waiting lists) and ensuring that they can take out a regular income to assist them in their primary project; that of sitting on their fat arses and doing as little as possible. Of course it helps when you own a government that is prepared to sell it to you cheaply as well, that increases your profits and means you can tax the sick even more.

Yet all this taxation of the poor, the middle and the sick is projected as entrepreneurial spirit. Neoliberalism is an ideology that is designed to utilise the myth of the ingenious, entrepreneurial capitalist to justify a regime of capitalism that is little more than a Sheriff of Nottingham-style taxation of the work of doctors, nurses and NHS staff and the health needs of patients. The capitalists of the current era are simply middle-men (they are usually men) taking their cut out of essential services that were built up as a result of public investment by all of us.  In essence privatisation is the ultimate non-entrepreneurial taxation of by the 1% of the rest of us at no risk to themselves. The ideology of neoliberalism provides cover for this. 

Black is white, up is down, success is failure: the media in 2014.

Now that most of the local council election results are in it is time to take stock of the results, and the conclusions to draw are somewhat surprising if you have been reading any UK national newspaper. So let’s begin at the beginning…

All the Tory right-wing newspapers set Labour the usual high bar to achievement if it is to look like a contender; between 300 and 400 gains were said by them to be necessary if Ed Miliband is to become Prime Minister (although earlier they were suggesting the figure was 200). Well at the time of writing Labour has made 338 gains, so the usual media high bar has been easily met (it will probably be more than 338 by the time you read this.) So Ed Miliband has done enough to get an overall majority in the face of tooth-and-nail media opposition. 

Not that you would think so from the headlines; they tell a story of Labour "despair", with the target figure of last week conveniently forgotten. You would have thought from reading the Fail, the UkipBBC, the Torygraph or the Dependent that Labour is about to disappear as an electable force like the Lib Dems, Well I will settle for Ed Miliband as Prime Minister with a double-figures majority thanks. Obviously the media have been reporting on a different election from the one I cast my vote in on Thursday.

This is a taste of the press Labour will be getting in the run-up to the next election, the sort of press it gets in the run-up to every election, biased, mendacious and loaded with personal attacks on its leader. The extent of its distortion is however greatly magnified this time. Why? Because they are scared that Labour will win; they know Labour are likely to win big, they know Labour has good, popular, intelligent policies that people can relate to and which will stop the current Tory gravy-tram for the fat-cat bankers and media moguls

In reality Labour has done very well in areas the media says we need to do well; in the south. For example Labour has picked up Redbridge, Hammersmith and Fulham and Crawley. Again something the media has conveniently "forgotten" after the election, what does the media focus on suddenly? The North. That is the nature of the Tory beast. But it is also the nature of the actual challenge Labour faces. The media constantly tells Ed Miliband that he is not getting his message across, while at the same time preventing him from getting his message across.

But what of everyone else? UKIP gained 128 seats, that is 200 fewer than Labour (as things stand now). This is clearly not the electoral "earthquake" the UkipBBC have told us it is. A "fart in a gale" would be more accurate to describe this dampest of squibs. The Ukip fox is not in the Westminster hensouse, indeed it is not even exercising any influence l in any town halls. It is not breaking through, its share of the vote has actually gone down (again not that you would know from looking at their media wing the UkipBBC), although you would think, from listening to the UkipBBC today that petty racist Nigel Farage is not only PM, but the Queen, President of the EU and the US, Pope and Secretary General of the United Nations. Yet he is none of this things, he is an ex-banker who happens to be an MEP. Period.

OK so what about the Lib Dems...? Who? Who? Who? Who?...

The Tories; how did they do? Well the media clamour to, wrongly paint Labour as losers and Ukip as winners has served its Tory friends well; no-one seems to have noticed that the Tories have lost 172 seats, most of them in areas that it needs to hold on to to remain the largest party at the next election. For a party trying to hold on to power, and desperate to avoid another coalition at the next election it has been an utter disaster. Remember the Tories did not win the 2010 general election, they did not get an overall majority, so they are extremely unlikely to get as many votes as last time. So the loss of so many councillors and key areas like Hammersmith and Fulham to Labour is a collapse that will put paid to any hopes of David Cameron remaining in Downing St. next May. Let’s be clear, the huge Labour gains and massive Tory losses mean that Cameron is now a ghost Prime Minister, a virtual PM, in office but not in power. A dead man walking.

The real loser in this election however is the truth. The media have taken it upon themselves to spin and spin anything and everything it possibly can against Labour, even a fucking burger, this is where the real battle lies for the next election and why Ed Miliband has brought in Alexrod to shore up his media presentation. The UK media has sunk to a new low on Friday, one not seen since the Murdoch media hacked a dead child’s mobile, or the Rothermere family’s rag bullied a transgender primary school teacher to death. The media has not reported this election, it has fabricated a narrative about it which is simply untrue.

According to the Mail, the UkipBBC, the Telegraph, the Times and the (in)Dependent and the rest black is now white, success is failure, more is less, less is more, up is down and tomorrow belongs to them.

Local elections: Fake-Maverick-Fatigue and UKIPBBC

The English local election results so far tell are revealing in a number of ways most of which will not be reported in the media; this is my take on them

1) We should no longer be considering the BBC and UKIP as separate entities. They are clearly the same organisation; the UKIP point of view, UKIP spin and positive stories about UKIP are obviously the BBC’s priority; stories are presented in a way that can only be described as favourable to UKIP and unfavourable to UKIP’s perceived enemies. “UKIPBBC” should be the genuine term from now on.

2) The Tories have done very badly, however this has been masked by the media’s focus on UKIP, see 1 above.

3) Labour has done well in London, and UKIP has done very badly there. This is probably due to a number of factors; it is the part of the UK most affected by immigration, so people there are not scared of immigrants in the way people who live in areas with few or no immigrants live. Of course in London many of those who are from 2nd or 3rd generation families that came here from other countries also vote. London also has a large LGBT population and we are concerned about the rise of UKIP. Extreme right parties are never good news for people like us.

4) However I suspect one of the reasons London has rejected Farage is because it has "Fake-Maverick-Fatigue” We have had a fake maverick mayor for too long now and people are getting to see through the mask. Public-school/Oxbridge educated wealthy former bankers are more widely regarded for what they really are; pillars of the establishment rather than mavericks challenging the system. For a party that claims to be anti-establishment to have the sycophantic support of the BBC makes them more establishment insiders than David Cameron.

5) However UKIP have also done badly in the North-West and the North East, failing to win a single seat in Sunderland for example. So the media’s claim that they are making inroads into Labour’s heartlands is somewhat wide of the mark. But hey the Tory-backed media needs to scrabble around to find something bad to say about Labour. Actually UKIP doing badly in Sunderland doesn’t surprise me at all. After London the North-East has the largest proportion of mixed-race marriages in the UK. This will never be fertile territory for racists.

6) Labour’s surprise gain in Hammersmith and Fulham shows that education is becoming a more important factor in electoral politics than perviously thought. Gove’s destruction of an outstanding school for ideological reasons has cost the Tories the council, this is something that could be replicated elsewhere that has “free” schools and chain academies imposed on it. Labour needs to prepare a strategy to capitalise on this in different places around the country.

7) The Lib Dems are doing very badly, worse than they expected in some areas like Harringay and Cambridge but better in Sutton. This suggests they will not be totally wiped out, but will be a much smaller force after the next election.

8) The Labour gain in Redbridge is spectacular. This shows how a good organisation on the ground coupled with a good social media presence can produce results. Redbridge has elected its first ever Labour council.

9) At the time of writing UKIP control no councils and have made fewer gains than Labour, yet it is a “good” result for UKIP according to UKIPBBC and a “bad" one for Labour. In other news Black has officially been designated White, the sky green, night day and truth lies.

QUIZ: WHAT KIND OF UKIP VOTER ARE YOU?

Time to take the latest quiz, what kind of UKiP voter are you. Simply read through the list and tick all that apply. You can tick as many as you want

A) Racist

B) Homophobic/transphobic

C) Misogynist Wanker

D) Stupid

E) So ignorant of politics I think UKIP are genuine mavericks

F) General hater/antisocial scumbag

G) Billionnaire who wants to distract from the crisis I have caused

H) Gullible moron

I) Still dumb enough to believe that the UK can be truly independent and not controlled by unelected multinational companies.

J) Multiple deludinoid

K) Old school fascist/Nazi

L) Islamophobe

M) Xenophobe (look it up!)

N) Former BNP supporter

O) So stupid that I think it is fun to vote for an idiot.

P) I don't care about the EU but I'm a racist, transphobic, sexist, homophobic bigot and will vote for similar people.
Q) I don't care about the EU but want to get rid of rights to strike, sick pay, maternity leave, equal pay for women, paid holidays, weekends, the NHS and basic human rights in the UK.

The Daily Mail prints lies about some of the most vulnerable people in society; trans children.

The Daily Mail’s headline article alleging that “children as young as 9 are being given sex-swap (sic) drugs” is one of a long line of headlines that the Mail has run which are purely and simply lies. There I’ve said it, lies. Let me say it again, in my opinion Sanchez Manning, Stephen Adams and Paul Dacre are liars. Their headline is a lie. The rest of the article is full of contradictions and mendacity and although it provides counter arguments, it is the headline that will do the damage. The counter argument by Susie Green of Mermaids was well put but will not repair the damage done by the headline. The headline is a lie and those three “journalists” are liars.

The hormone blocking drugs given to trans children are absolutely not “sex-swap” drugs, or in English; drugs for gender reassignment/conformation. They are drugs that put puberty on hold for that small number of  trans children who are becoming distressed and suicidal because their bodies are changing and developing into the gender with which they do not identify. They will not, no matter how many you take, for no matter what period of time, cause anyone to change their gender. I have witnessed the damage that puberty in the wrong body can do, and also how these drugs can relieve suffering in a way nothing else can.

The discovery of these drugs enables some of the most distressed, dysphoric, marginalised and vulnerable children in our society to have the time to think whether or not they really want to go through with gender reassignment surgery once they reach 18, if they decide against it at any time they simply stop taking these drugs and puberty begins in the gender they were assigned at birth. In other words the effects of these drugs are entirely reversible. 100%. Completely. Totally. Not partially, not even 99%, they are reversible 100%.

So to claim that they are being prepared for GRS at 9 is a lie. That simply does not happen. The article quotes research that suggests that the majority of trans children aged under 12 do not ultimately transition to the other gender through surgery.  This research is, in my view highly questionable at best and outright misleading at worst. My own peer-reviewed research published in 2010 and updated in 2012 provides clear evidence that undermines claims that these studies make. My more recent paper published in December last year by the British Psychiatric Association also demonstrates that these claims regarding trans children cannot be warranted by the research.

But even if the research was correct, it is still not an argument against the use of blockers, nor does it mean that blockers are “sex-swap” drugs, quite the opposite.

The article also quotes ignorant Tory MP Andrew Percy who effectively says he wants to force trans children to go through puberty in their birth assigned genders against their will. In my opinion his man is either a danger to children or profoundly ignorant, or both. The damage that his ideology could inflict on trans children is immense, and can result in self-harm, substance abuse, loss of self-esteem with consequent problems in school performance, as well as suicide.

The reason I decided to become a trans activist was because of this child, who I wrote about in 2008 in the Guardian.  I am not about to allow the Mail to harm these children by spreading ignorance and lies like this. Trans people need to take action against the Mail for this, through the PCC, through TMW and AAT, and if necessary direct action in the street, once more outside their offices. This is also a very good example of how trans people in the UK need to come together to form a larger, better funded and more united group that can respond quickly and effectively to this kind of deliberate mendacity.

My article for Gender Week

Unfortunately Feminist Times didn't publish this article I wrote for gender week, it was not what they wanted. In the end they needed an article that suggested ways in which a kind of rapprochement between trans people and TERFs might happen. I could not find it in me to empathise with any TERFS after some of the things I have seen them do, so my article was not of that nature. However this is what I have written and it does in fact, suggest a way forward.

Meaningful dialogue; is it still possible between trans women and TERFs?

If you are not au fait with the perpetual war between a small group of trans-haters; Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) and trans women, much of what you read here is likely to be rather unfamiliar. 

I originally wanted to write a piece like the one Ruth Pearce wrote two years ago trying to understand the way TERFs’ feel, but there has been a great deal of poison under the bridge since then. Researching TERF arguments means wading through a barrage of abuse, harassment, disingenuousness and toytown essentialism for evidence-free assertions and unsupported assumptions. It also means viewing material published anonymously by TERFs who then ‘out’ trans people against their wishes, or about how they outed a 16-year-old trans schoolgirl who had been subject to online threats of violence.

They claim to want to ‘abolish gender’ (which mysteriously seems to begin and end with trans people) or that trans women are hyperfeminine ‘Stepford Wives’ manipulated by the patriarchy. Yet they police women’s spaces and trans women’s lives with accusations that trans women are ‘too masculine’. 

Space

So the apparent proposal by Finn Mackay that trans women should be allowed in most women’s spaces represents progress and is the kind of thing we should consider engaging with. An example has been of a feminist conference attended by trans women where trans women were included in all sessions other than one in which experiences of childhood sexual abuse of girls were discussed. I can understand this,  sexual abuse in childhood is appalling; I know I used to be a primary school teacher and have dealt with its harrowing consequences on many occasions. I would support anyone wishing to discuss such things to be able to ask particular individuals to leave the room if they are talking about something traumatic from their childhood. 

But why shouldn’t anyone a speaker feels uncomfortable talking in front of be asked to leave the room, why single out trans women? OK one of the rationales for this is that trans women did not experience growing up as girls, especially young girls. Yet this no longer the case, and it is likely that increasing numbers of trans women will not only have identified as but also, appeared and been treated as girls from quite young ages.

Language 

To the subject of language: it seems TERFs object to the term ‘cisgender’ claiming that it is an ‘insult’. Reflecting on the fact that a tiny fraction of an oppressed and disempowered 1.2% of the world’s population have used it to express their frustrations against a far larger and more powerful 98.8% demonstrates just how confected this argument is. Ultimately TERFs are oppressively trying to deny trans people the language with which to make sense of their situations.

It seems TERFs don’t like being called TERFs is because they regularly respond to criticism of their abuse, harassment and mendacity by calling it an ‘attack on women’ or an ‘attack on feminists’. This is of course profoundly disingenuous; our arguments are with TERFs not with other feminists or other women. Additionally TERFs often accuse trans people of trying to silence them. Yet TERFs who have made this accusation have also used legal threats to silence trans people.  So with this sort duplicity going on it seems impossible to imagine any meaningful dialogue between trans women and TERFs. 

However this does not mean trans feminists should not talk to other radical feminists; another reason for the acronym - radical feminists who are not anti-trans should not be lumped in with those who are. One radical feminist recently complained to me that TERFs’ actions had made her stop describing herself as a radical feminist. Nonetheless it is important that trans people engage in a meaningful dialogue with non-transphobic cisgender radical feminists. This is the optimistic way forward.

The Great Debate: Should Sarah Ditum Exist?

The debate over whether "Sarah Ditum" should exist has raged for a number of years, and has been central to watercooler talk at the New Statesman for a while now. Should we collude with her in her fantasy claims to be Sarah at all? As a socially constructed identity many feel that she does not really exist, after all anything socially constructed it cannot be real can it?

"Sarah" claims she has felt like Sarah Ditum since she was a child and has as much right to self define as any other person. However many doubt that a person claiming to be a "Sarah Ditum" should be entitled to an important job in such a prestigious national political magazine as NS. Her assertion that she is a "journalist" also appears to be based on dubious claims. Rudimentary knowledge of grammar and knowing how to use email and Word for Mac do not make you a journalist. After all real journalists like Polly Toynbee or Suzanne Moore clearly have very different skills to "Sarah Ditum".

"Sarah" of course insists she has as much right to be a "feminist" and a "journalist" as anyone else, but given that journalism and feminism are both socially constructed her claims can only be regarded as pure whimsy on her part, "feminism" and "journalism" clearly do not exist, they are pure constructs. She even uses a social construct itself derived from other social constructs; "English" to engage in this “journalism” and “feminism”, how ridiculous can you get?!

Young trans people.

Of course the above is ridiculous, but it is what Sarah Ditum is expecting young Trans people to go through on a regular basis as they come out, transition and find their feet, taking baby steps out on their own in our harsh and increasingly dysfunctional neoliberal world. Indeed maybe Sarah might like to imagine what life would be like if she had been brought up in a family that didn't accept her for who she was, in a small provincial town which also didn't accept her and went to schools that didn't allow her to be Sarah Ditum. Imagine that she had been brought up being told by all those around her that she was someone else, and that she had to be this other, completely different person, all the time by her parents, teachers, friends, relatives and the media.

Imagine then that, in spite of all this she made it to university and, with the modicum of independence that gave her, she then decided to come out as Sarah Ditum and transition to living full-time as Sarah.  Imagine her joy at finally being able to be herself and live an authentic and livable life.

But let’s also imagine that there exists a group of people who are opposed to Sarah Ditums, who speak regularly on campuses and in feminist socs, LGBT socs, journalism socs maybe and other student societies, who oppose her, that tell her that, as a socially constructed entity she has no legitimacy, is clearly fake and that, in fact she represents a threat to other groups on campus if she continues to maintain this, indeed she should not even have the right to use the appropriate toilet. Imagine that these people tell Sarah that they know more about her than she does and, because her lived experience doesn't fit in to their theories, she should be considered a fraud rather than their theories.

As a result of this Sarah finds herself constantly having to argue with other students who have been encouraged to question her legitimacy as a person, she finds that some students openly call her a fraud, use the wrong name and pronouns and subject her to other abusive behaviour. Her life would quickly become a nightmare.

This is the problem; once transphobic "feminists" have been allowed to delegitimise and dehumanise Trans people it does not stop there. This is what happens when Trans Exclusionary "Radical Feminists"(TERFs) decide to engage in “debate” about trans people. TERFs do not simply sit around and talk in a detached, academic manner about how awful trans people are, they engage in activities designed to harass, harm, silence and intimidate trans people. TERFs regularly ‘out’ Trans people against their wishes, abuse us online, subject to us to defamation, harassment and much worse.

So Sarah Ditum's New Statesman article (in a column called "politics for tired people." which maybe should be renamed "tired old argumenrts" or "lazy journalism") calling for an end to no-platforming for TERFs on campuses is actually just the most recent example of a long line of articles that have repeatedly accused trans people and their allies of censoring debate and silencing TERFs while conveniently turning a blind eye to the multiple activities of TERFs who persistently work hard to silence trans people. Indeed there have been so many of this type of one-sided article they have almost become a cliche.

Ditum's accusations of censorship would be considerably more credibile if she investigated TERF activity which threatens, abuses, harms and, in particular, silences trans people on a regular basis. 

• If she were genuinely that concerned about censorship or silencing she would have talked about the way TERFs in the US worked with an extreme right-wing "Christian" hate group to try and harm Trans children in schools in California….
• She would have talked about how these far right extremists made death threats to a 16 year-old Trans girl in Colorado and how TERFs then published her name online, with the result that she was forced to leave school and was put on suicide watch 
• She would have talked about how a prominent TERF academic tried to get a Trans woman sacked by outing her to her employer, or how other TERFs regularly ‘out’ Trans people to their employers to try and get them sacked…
• She would have talked about how Trans people who speak out against TERF Transphobia are regularly subjected to abuse, harassment and defamatory comments online from TERFs…
• She would have talked about how TERFs use anonymous blogs and Twitter accounts to harass, harm, abuse and defame trans people on a regular basis
• She would have mentioned about how TERFs have recently started sending solicitors’ letters to threaten and silence trans people who speak out against them.

I have been doing a lot of in-depth research into the lives of young trans people aged between 18 and 28 and from this it is clear that university is one of the key spaces where young trans people can come out and begin transition, it is usually a relatively safe social space for them. It contrasts dramatically with school, which remains largely a very transphobic place with all but one of my research participants being unable to come out in school - and he went to school in Denmark. This makes university even more important as a safe space for young trans people. No wonder the TERFs are targetting it with so much energy.

Sarah Ditum seems to think that our identities are up for discussion, and that a supposedly calm, reasoned, dispassionate, academic  ‘debate’ about trans people’s identities is actually possible. She is either living on a different planet from me or is totally unaware of her cisgender privilege.

Deliberate misinformation about treatment for trans children

Does she genuinely think that it is ever going to be possible for any debate in which any minority group’s identities are questioned, qua identities, to be anything other than intimidatory, harassing and regarded by those whose identities are attacked as anything other than abuse?  There is no fence to sit on here Sarah, you are either in favour of TERFs harassing young trans people or you are against it. Julie Bindel has plenty of opportunities to say what she wants elsewhere. In any case most of her opinions, while readily digestible by the uninitiated have been discredited comprehensively, often and for a long time. This is a plain and simple issue of the rights of young trans people to get on with their lives and education without harassment.

This is not a 'freedom of speech' issue, it is a right to exist issue. Julie Bindel has plenty of opportunities to publish her ideas, and indeed I have a lot of respect for much of her journalism, but on this issue, in my opinion young trans people's right to exist safely comes first.

I wonder if Sarah Ditum is in favour of that.