Transploitation

[steepholm]

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Some of these are out of date, because the situation has moved rapidly.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.

Comments

[kalypso]

You probably know, but the Burchill row is being discussed on The Media Show on Radio Four - Roz has just been on, Toby Young is talking now.

[cmcmck]

Hmmmm

Toby Young has somewhat to explain away........

[steepholm]

I've only just got back from work. Dare I listen, or will I end shouting at iPlayer?

[cmcmck]

I suspect you might just, but listen anyway..........

[kalypso]

Well, Roz came across well... there was a lot of talk about "but any minority might get offended about something and where would it all end?"

I've been thinking over the past few days that there is something about the case being advanced by certain Christians - that they're being oppressed by not being able to demonstrate their personal faith at work - that is curiously similar to the gay argument that it's not enough to be legal if you have to hide who you are in public. I trust they will show a greater understanding of their gay brethren in future.

[steepholm]

I never understood the objection to the air stewardess wearing a cross, any more than people's objection to the hijab - but I somehow doubt they will see the cases as comparable.

The answer to the first question is of course, "in court" - as would certainly have happened had Burchill said similar things about an ethnic group (and almost did, when she wrote a racist column about the Irish). Having said that, I'd have slightly more respect for their position if they practised what they preached. In fact, Julie Burchill's whole column was about how terrible it was for trans people and their allies to dare criticize Suzanne Moore on Twitter; while the Telegraph has been censoring comments on Young's trumpet blast for free speech like the Lord Chamberlain with cholic.

[cmcmck]

'oppressed by not being able to demonstrate their personal faith at work'

I have an interesting take on this being both a trans woman and a practicing Quaker.

Some Christians seems to think that demonstrating personal faith at work is the right to ram it down the throats of others whether they will or nay, which is not quite the same as a Muslim or Jew nipping off somewhere quiet with prayerful intent or fasting as their faith requires. That does not effect anyone else.

As to symbols, it was always wrong that other faiths could demonstrate their faith in the way of symbols (the turban and the five K's for Sikhs, a headscarf for Muslim women) while Christians were being forbidden to wear the crucifix (not that I do, as I don't feel the need to demonstrate my faith in that way any more than my trans-ness.)

It's the 'I'll pray for you' approach that bugs me. People are welcome to my prayers if they want them!

My faith was a personal choice, whilst my physiological condition was not.

[kalypso]

I may be mixing this case up with another one, but wasn't the original rule not about religious symbols but about not wearing jewellery unless it was concealed under the uniform? And they subsequently relaxed the rule to permit discreet religious jewellery.

I sometimes wonder whether some Christians are familiar with Jesus's advice on prayer in Matthew 6.

[steepholm]

As long as people are able to perform their job properly and are not harrassing or intimidating others, I can't see the problem with their wearing a religious (or any other kind of) symbol. It's their life.

Having said that, I used to be disconcerted by the way some Aer Lingus stewardesses would cross themselves on take off when I travelled to the States in the early '90s. I wondered if they knew something I didn't!

[cmcmck]

Not to mention Luke on hypocrisy.......

[steepholm]

I was out, and haven't had a chance to hear it yet. Should I?

[sheenaghpugh]

All this. And I love your portmanteau word....

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

"Beware, when they are let loose" as Friedrich said on the topic of The Crowd only to then be proven all too right and have them use his words as best they can.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

I saw the Burchill one when it came out, so have no intention of adding to the Telegraph's hit count by looking again. Besides, it was pretty horrible--really just 'here are all the nasty things I can think of to say', rather than any kind of actual argument or art or anything. It falls under free speech the same way as does the drunken fresher in the town centre last week who was just screaming 'cunt' over and over again at the top of his lungs, presumably to see if anybody would react--technically not actionable, but nobody's listening and you look like a moron.

Those other links are interesting reading--I'm glad the Burnett piece came at the end, because after all the rest of that awfulness, someone straightforwardly calling out 'this is stupid' was well-needed!

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Nothing Ms Burchill says surprises me any more, alas.
I've been following #transdocfail, in sadness and horror.

[sovay]

It's the crowd that needs analysis.

Yes.

Thank you for the other links.

[sheenaghpugh]

Torygraph rather redeems itself with this article

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent article (and by the way I've enjoyed what I've heard of her series on anonymity on Radio 4 recently), though it appeared before Toby Young white-knighted Burchill, so if it redeems the Telegraph it must do so retrospectively. (Or do I mean prospectively? I'm confused, now!)

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. Thanks for a) through e), for that skewering summation.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Until the equality act is corrected so that trans folks are not the only minority now without explicit protection, this kind of hatespeech is likely to continue.

The journos from back in my younger days of transition in the late seventies could teach these amateurs a thing or two! :oS

[jemck.livejournal.com]

I've been pondering on whether Guardian Media Group taking the article down is good or bad. For myself, I've concluded it's a good thing - to show that those of us* who wrote formal complaints to The Observer's Readers' Editor weren't wasting our time. While this has seen the regrettable loss of that comment thread, all the other reporting on the furore has made the point that the overwhelming reaction was against Burchill's bile.

The Torygraph reprinting it? Also problematic, but again, I've concluded that's no bad thing, so those coming late to the story can see just how repellent some people's attitudes and behaviour are, in the piece and in the comments. Hopefully some readers will go away better informed about gender issues outside their own experience and also more thoughtful about the rights and responsibilities of free speech.

*I only mention this because it's directly relevant here. I have a particular dislike of people seeing An Internet Thing and leaping up to show how It's All About Them!

Indeed, the PCC wouldn't consider I have any right to an opinion here, being a cis woman not directly involved. Well, as I said (inter alia) to The Gobserver, I am entitled to a say, raising two teenage sons to be open-minded, tolerant and with a responsibility to inform themselves about issues beyond their own comfortably life experience. I often direct them to the Guardian Media Group to find responsible and balanced journalism to counter the special pleading of the Murdoch Press, the Mail's skewed world view or the callous bigotry of lads' mag culture. So I don't expect them to find hateful and hate-filled tirades which don't remotely qualify as fair comment.

Not indulging in attention-seeking responses is not the same as a shake of the head and clicking on through, obviously. I did remark on Twitter and FB that personally I find what's in people's heads & hearts more interesting/relevant than what's in their underwear & how or why that might be so. All the responses have been in agreement.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'm ambivalent about the take-down. On the one hand, it was clearly hate speech, and to leave it up would suggest that we don't take hate speech against trans people as as seriously as other varieties. On the other, there is a tendency for history to be rewritten very quickly: a strong but not intemperate criticism of Suzanne Moore by a cis woman became "Moore hounded from Twitter by transgender cabal" within 24 hours of it happening, after all. The outpouring of disgust at Burchill's article has already been dismissed as "manufactured online outrage" by Tom Peck in the Independent - now where's the evidence to prove him wrong?

I think the ideal solution would have been to issue an apology dissociating the Gobserver from the words they'd published, but leaving it and the comments up as a kind of monument, a historical document, in the same way that certain other vile documents are still published for the edification of scholars of bigotry.

On the whole - well, I can't say I'm glad the whole thing's happened, but it's certainly shown a lot of people in their true colours, good and bad. Hearteningly, the ones who don't work for national newspapers seem pretty uniformly shocked.

[jemck.livejournal.com]

Quite so - it's a complex matter. As indeed is real life, something the likes of Burchill are too dense and self-absorbed to realise...