steepholm

sovay mentioned her poem "Delenda", which got me to thinking a little about Cato the Censor - a man who is said to have learned Greek in his old age despite his hatred of all things Hellenic. Did Mrs Thatcher ever take seriously to learning French? Possibly, though I suspect she'd have found the idea somehow unpatriotic. The delenda bit, however, she clearly identified with, except that the state she had in mind was the welfare one - or rather the communitarian spirit of which that state was one of the fruits, for which I can find no better general name than the Happiness Project. It's memorialised in this melancholy object trouvé, which I happened across today amidst the pigeons and litter of Bristol's increasingly-seedy city centre.

The seediness is not exceptional, though today much of the state is being sown, as Carthage was, not with seed but with salt.

On which note, let me recommend to you this post by la_marquise_de_ - which has an excellent suggestion of a more positive way to mark the passing of the Ferrous One.

As I noted a couple of days ago, Mrs Thatcher's death didn't produce in me the delight it did in some, delight that I would undoubtedly have felt had it occurred fifteen years ago, and twenty-five years a fortiori. I don't know whether that's a loss to be regretted: I certainly don't begrudge others their pleasure - and if it's seasoned with vindictiveness, why so was the 11 year tyranny her premiership. What do people expect?

I think I spent much of my euphoria on that day in November 1990. I learned of her resignation when I was on top of a bus in Bristol city centre, from which vantage point I saw it blazoned on a newspaper hoarding. I was on my way to have lunch with a man from the Open University, that excellent Wilsonian institution, being on a half-time contract at that point and hoping to get some extra tutoring. It was a very happy lunch, even if no work resulted from it, and I floated round the covered market in the afternoon, thinking, "This must be what VE day was like." People couldn't stop smiling.

I hated Mrs Thatcher in a way I've never hated any other person I didn't know personally. With contempt, however, I am much more liberal, and these days there are many worthy candidates. Ed Miliband's insistence that Labour MPs attend today's session in Parliament devoted to "tributes", and his further insistence that they follow his "respectful" tone, qualifies him amply. Tony Blair, standing on the steps of St Albion's Parish Church to wag his blood-stained finger at those of his fellow citizens who had the "bad taste" to hold parties, perhaps escapes contempt by dint of being beneath it; but I'll certainly welcome all those mealy-mouthed politicians who hid their opinions beneath neutral phrases about Thatcher's "impact" and how she "shaped a generation" - the way the Luftwaffe shaped Coventry city centre. They're probably congratulating themselves on being "statesmanlike", but I think (as so often) of Henry Fielding:

This excellent method of conveying a falsehood with the heart only, without making the tongue guilty of an untruth, by the means of equivocation and imposture, hath quieted the conscience of many a notable deceiver; and yet, when we consider that it is Omniscience on which these endeavour to impose, it may possibly seem capable of affording only a very superficial comfort; and that this artful and refined distinction between communicating a lie, and telling one, is hardly worth the pains it costs them.

And so the work continues of airbrushing her victims from the picture, or obscuring them behind a swag of military cloth.

I see that the Telegraph has sacked Kelvin Mackenzie after just one column, because his appointment was offensive to those readers from Liverpool who remember his part in Hillsborough (i.e. all of them). Frightened of the financial consequences of a boycott, the paper raised the white flag almost before the pixels on Mackenzie's first column were dry. (The sad old hack hadn't even mentioned football or Liverpool.)

Surely this can't be the same Telegraph that waxed so eloquent on the sacred right to offend a few weeks ago, when it welcomed Julie Burchill's trans-bashing article to its website to the accompaniment of copious guff about St Crispin's Day, sceptred isles and fighting them on the beaches? At the time Toby Young was luminous in his indignation, castigating the Observer for its pusillanimity in pulling the article:

Why does he think the paper "got it wrong" on this occasion? Because the article caused "offence"? It cannot be said often enough that freedom of speech, if it means anything, must include the freedom to say things that some people find offensive.

Apparently this defence now requires a codicil. The freedom to offend extends only to those people who are too vulnerable to fight back.

Stay classy, Telegraph.

I won't link to the various places where the monstering of Lucy Meadows took place three months ago, devastating the life of this devoted teacher and, perhaps, ending it; nor to the places where it is happening right now, as the same prurient rags continue to misname, misgender and humiliate their victim in death - but no doubt you can work out which stones to look under.

I will however link to this interview with David Allen Green [25:20 minutes in], who's a good deal calmer and more articulate than I feel able to be at the moment.

Richard the Third - "beyond reasonable doubt".

Yay for science!

I was attending my aunt's funeral yesterday, so didn't get around to writing my promised second post on problematic tactics in the Moore-Burchill row. By now I imagine most people are sick of the subject, but for my own reference if for no one else's pleasure, here it is. Last time I was writing about the uses and abuses of analogy; today, I want to look at the term "community".

One tactic that has been repeatedly used by Moore, Burchill and others, is that of treating trans people as a monolithic group. Sometimes this group is characterized as a "mob" (the English elite's favourite word for unruly underlings since Shakespeare), but sometimes it mysteriously reverses its character and becomes a shadowy, moneyed "cabal", wielding huge power within the Establishment. (And really, this isn't surprising when you look at how many trans MPs and top civil servants there are, how many CEOs, judges, newspaper editors, TV pundits... Oh, right.) Whether in "howling mob" or "sinister cabal" mode, however, the community of trans people has one remarkable characteristic. Whatever any one of its members does, all the others turn out to be responsible for, both collectively and individually.

For example: some people were rude to Suzanne Moore on Twitter. Some people apparently even made threats. As it turns out, only two of the rude people and none of the threat-makers was trans, at least according to Zoe Brain, whose statements have a deserved reputation for being well-researched. Well, never mind - for the sake of argument, let's say some trans people stepped out of line. After all, some do, sometimes. In fairness, we should also note that many other trans people remained remarkably reasonable, even conciliatory, despite Moore's tweeting about "fucking lopping bits off your body" and Burchill's bile-belch in the Observer. I linked to some of their comments in earlier posts - feel free to go and read them. The majority of trans people, of course, said nothing at all, at least in public. Sadly, trans people are used to being abused, and a good proportion live in hiding.

Nevertheless, when Moore wrote about the affair in The Guardian on 17th January, she was able to affirm that "The wrath of the transgender community has been insane." This is Moore, note, not Burchill. She's meant to be the reasonable one, and she was certainly trying to strike a reasonable, more-in-sorrow-than-anger tone (her piece is called "It saddens me that supporting freedom makes me an opponent of equality"). She wasn't throwing swear words around, but look at what she's actually said here. For her "the transgender community" has reacted, as one, with an "insane" degree of anger. There is no attempt at qualification - no "some" transgender people, no acknowledgement that the majority of responses by transgender people have been anything but insane. She has, in effect, taken the voices of a couple of angry people on Twitter and attributed them to every transgender person in the country. (Given that trans people are regularly told that they have a mental illness, this was a unfortunate choice of adjective, by the way.)

Blaming whole groups of people for the perceived misdeeds of one or two, is of course - need I point it out? - the same reasoning that we normally associate with racism: "I was mugged by a Pole, so now I believe all Poles are muggers." If Moore was able to write it without blushing (or without other people blushing on her behalf), I think it has a lot to do with her use of that word "community", which is roomy and ambiguous enough to hide this reasoning, possibly from Moore herself. Quite possibly when she wrote "the transgender community" she had in mind something fairly organized and cabally, that sinister clique we spoke of before - or else its demotic counterpart, Shakespeare's "many-headed multitude" storming en masse into Fleet St to upturn laptops and lobster lunches. Neither of these hive-minded monsters actually exists, but as fictions they serve their purpose, which is to divert readers' (and perhaps Moore's) attention from the extremism of what she actually wrote.

I use the example of this phrase because its nastiness is not as explicit as Burchill's, but of course the same tactic was being used up and down Fleet St, often in less nuanced forms. Burchill's article was entirely predicated on the assumption that "My friend was insulted by some people who are trans, so I have carte blanche to abuse all trans people everywhere." Or, as one of the letters in this week's Observer put it, "nothing [Burchill] wrote was disproportionate to groundless death threats." Nor is the tactic an invention of the last week or so. Its past mistress is Julie Bindel: her MO is to write something vile about trans people, then trawl through the responses it provokes until she finds something offensive, before writing a follow-up article quoting that and only that, entitled "See what bullies trannies are!"

Given all this, should we ditch the word "community", since it offers such ample cover for abuse, and since trans people are in fact anything but monolithic in their views on gender or any other topic?

Of course, it's not so simple. "Community", to begin with, is used in a number of different ways, to imply different kinds of association. For example, I think it's obvious that the deaf community isn't a community in quite the same way that the birdwatching or environmentalist communities are. We might say that membership of some communities is an accident of birth or circumstance, while others are based on a shared set of interests, values, beliefs. From this perspective, part of the problem with Moore's (and others') use of the word is that they are writing about trans people (an accidental community, as it were) as if they were an ideological community. Not of course that it would be okay for Moore to blame all environmentalists for the sins of one or two, either - but I don't think I'd jib if she wrote "The environmentalist community is concerned about climate change". It's probably not true of every environmentalist, but as a generalization it's true enough for the newspapers.

It's not even as simple as that, though - because shared circumstances beget cultural identities. There is no reason that deaf people should have anything particularly in common beyond the fact of being deaf, yet by all accounts there is a thriving deaf culture. Their shared experiences shape a collective identity - a community, if you like. Finding oneself at a systematic disadvantage because the world is designed with another kind of person in mind is always likely to engender some kind of esprit. (Where there is no disadvantage, you tend not to get communities: there is no people-without-earlobes community, to my knowledge.) Now, it seems clear that trans people are a community in much the same sense deaf people are. They share certain experiences not fully understood by many other people; they are frequently isolated, and appreciate mutual support and advice; and they face a degree of systematic disadvantage in a world designed for people who are not trans. All these are bonding experiences, but it doesn't make them a "lobby" (to use Burchill's favourite word) any more than deaf people are a lobby.

Okay, I think that's more or less where I've got to in my cogitations on the question. I still think "community" is a dangerous word that can be abused far too easily; but I hesitate to discard it because there really is a kind of trans community - just not the type that Moore and Burchill write about.

Okay, this story is getting beyond bizarre now. For those of you who have not been following the affair that closely, a quick recap...

When Julie Burchill's now-notorious rant about trans people ("bedwetters in bad wigs", etc) was pulled by the Observer after thousands of their readers - cis and trans - expressed their disgust at the newspaper for publishing it, the White Knights of Fleet Street queued around the block to write articles about how awful it was, how free speech was being threatened, and how trans people should grow a thicker skin. Here are a few members of this Round Table:

• Tom Peck in The Independent, "Julie Burchill should be free to offend": "You’d think the trannies could take it really, their shoulders are broad enough. "


• Terence Blacker in The Independent, "The world has gone mad if Julie Burchill can’t stir things up and cause offence": "The offensiveness police are ever more powerful and vigilant, demanding views with which they disagree to be silenced, and individuals of whom they disapprove to be punished. We should be on our guard."


• Simon Kelner, again in The Independent, "Airing controversial views is the great skill of Julie Burchill's career - and something the Observer should never shy away from": "Does the Twitter mob now set the rules on fair comment?"


• William Henderson in The Telegraph, In trying to 'unpublish' Julie Burchill, The Observer displays its ignorance of the internet: "The notion that a journalist’s thoughts can be bludgeoned out of existence following their appearance just because they are politically incorrect, unpalatable, or offensive is as much censorship as it is shameful."


• And, of course, Toby Young in The Telegraph, "The Observer's decision to censor Julie Burchill is a disgrace": "It cannot be said often enough that freedom of speech, if it means anything, must include the freedom to say things that some people find offensive."

ETA: A latecomer to the party: Allison Pearson in The Telegraph: "Why taking offence is Britain's new national sport": "Two small words of advice to all the transsexuals “offended” by Suzanne Moore: man up!"

That's pretty clear, isn't it? Everyone must be free to offend, no matter how vulnerable their victims, no matter how much it will increase the amount of abuse and discrimination they receive. Anything else is a gross violation of the sacred rights won in Magna Carta, etc. etc. Okay, we get it.

And then came the story that I posted about yesterday, concerning the murder of Cecilia Marahouse. The Pink News published their own report, which is clearly based on the same source. Like me, they make reference to Suzanne Moore's "Brazlian transsexual" line, as you would expect any journalist to do, since it brought the plight of Brazilian trans women to wider pubilc attention within the last week. Otherwise, it is a simple, unemotive transmission of the facts.

Now, here's a question for you. What do you think crusading journalist Suzanne "If you want to be offended it your prerogative" Moore tweeted when she saw the Pink News article (for yes, having been "hounded off Twitter" she is now courageously back on)?

Was it:

a) This has really brought home to me the grisly reality behind my flip remark about "Brazilian transsexuals". Thank you, Pink News!
b) This is uncomfortable for me to read, but Cecilia Marahouse deserves to have her murder reported.
c) I am offended by the Pink News mentioning my name in this report, but I will defend to the death their right to do it. And so will Tom, Terence, Simon, William and Toby.
d) Read this piece of shit and Pink News will hear from my lawyers in the morning

If you guessed d), give yourself a cookie.

2012 just missed out on being the wettest on record, but the British press are keen to make up for it by ensuring that 2013 contains a record amount of transphobia. They're off to a flying start. If I've been largely absent from LJ just recently, it's partly because of work but partly because I've been trying to keep up with the papers' apparent decision to adopt "Let's Kick a Tranny" as its collective motto. Most of my thoughts on the issue have been anticipated in one place or another, so I'm tempted to give a few links to people who said what I would have liked to. There are many, but here's a selection:

C N Lester. (And if you like their writing, try their music.)

Paris Lees' Open Letter to Suzanne Moore.

Christine Burns on mending fences.

Sarah Brown, earlier today.

Some of these are out of date, because the situation has moved rapidly. In the last day, the Gobserver (Julie Burchill's article was an Observer piece but appeared on the Guardian website: the portmanteau seems appropriate for her publishers) thought better of publishing hate speech, and deleted it along with the 2000+ comments (mostly by people shocked at Burchill's bigotry). Her article, though not of course the comments, which are lost for ever, was reprinted within hours by Toby Young at the Telegraph, in the name of "free speech". In Fleet Street this phrase is apparently synonymous with "the inalienable right to have your words published in a national newspaper". So, if you happen to have written an article called "Why Uppity Coons should Learn their Place if they Know What's Good for Them", and the Observer inexplicably refuse to publish it, don't worry - Toby will see you right.

But, as long as I've got your attention, here are two more links. The first is to the real trans-related news story of the week, i.e. the one with some actual news content, but also (since it doesn't paint trans people as a) freaks whose genitals are up for public dissection, b) a sinister and powerful 'cabal', c) pathetic victims, d) a po-mo intelligentsia living on inherited wealth or e) sex workers) the one that the national press studiously ignored. This is the story of routine neglect, obstruction and humiliation of trans people by health workers, collected in #TransDocFail, and selected for your reading pleasure here.

In a different part of the forest, I'll finish by linking to this piece by Dean Burnett. It's only tangentially related to the Burchill row, but I think it does something quite necessary, which is to turn the focus away from trans people, away even from Burchill or the Gobserver, to the general public.

Imagine, if you will, someone poking a dog with a stick. Most of the time the dog whimpers and cowers, but occasionally it will growl. Sometimes it may even bite, but then several other people will pile on with sticks until it's chastened, with cries of "Vicious brute!" A crowd gathers. Some are tutting, some are laughing and applauding, but all slip money into the Dog Poker's hat when it comes around. They come back the next day, and the next. The Dog Poker makes quite a good living at it.

Whose behaviour needs explanation? Not that of the dog. Not that of the Dog Poker.

It's the crowd that needs analysis.

Can someone explain this to me? I'm genuinely puzzled.

First - okay, so the CofE has come out with a position on gay bishops that I don't like: there's no surprise there. However, if you accept their premise - namely that gay sex is a sin - then I can see why they'd want bishops to refrain from gay sex and repent any gay sex in their past. For the sake of argument, let's take that as a given.

What I want to know is - given all that, on what grounds is anyone still objecting to gay men becoming bishops? If they remain celibate for the future and repent the sins of their past, what exactly is the problem? Can someone please spell it out, or point me to a link that does?

What better occasion than Christmas to compare gay marriage to Nazism? Thanks to the Bishop of Shrewsbury for that, not forgetting the festive contributions of the Archbishop of Westminster and, of course, the Pope. Really feeling the love there, lads. You're a wonderful advertisement for your faith.

To any actual Christians out there, Merry Christmas!