# Julie Burchill's attack on transsexuals...



## stuff_it (Jan 13, 2013)

This is pretty epic, some transsexuals had a go at Suzanne Moore on Twitter (there's the T-word again) and JB has 'defended' her with an all out attack on transgendered people in the Graun. 


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/julie-burchill-suzanne-moore-transsexuals


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## The39thStep (Jan 13, 2013)

already being discussed on the Callinicos/ Penny thread


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

It wasn't just trans-women and trans-men that tried to get Suzanne Moore to change two words in her article.

However, it was Moore who then went off on one and intentionally made it worse. And then wrote an article which wasn't so much mea culpa as mea, mea, mea. 

And now Burchill's defended her by crowbarring in every offensive label for trans people into one column.

She's quite the writer though,




			
				Burchill said:
			
		

> “a gaggle of transsexuals telling Suzanne Moore how to write looks a lot like how I’d imagine the Black and White Minstrels telling Usain Bolt how to run would look.”



Managing to be that offensive in one sentence is amazing.


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## Hocus Eye. (Jan 13, 2013)

What a horrible writing style that Julie Burchill has, with irrelevant anecdotes padding out her script. These included a plug for a book she has written. I think the link could be added to the "Guardian going down the pan" thread.


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## maomao (Jan 13, 2013)

Hocus Eye. said:


> What a horrible writing style that Julie Burchill has, with irrelevant anecdotes padding out her script. These included a plug for a book she has written. I think the link could be added to the "Guardian going down the pan" thread.


Burchill's been writing shit like that for The Guardian for decades and she's always been a fucking arsehole.


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## stuff_it (Jan 13, 2013)

Hocus Eye. said:


> What a horrible writing style that Julie Burchill has, with irrelevant anecdotes padding out her script. These included a plug for a book she has written. I think the link could be added to the "Guardian going down the pan" thread.


It would have been if I could have found the thread. 

Nice how she has to shoehorn on the bit about the lobster and champers as well.


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## bi0boy (Jan 13, 2013)

The Guardian has a record of being transphobic

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/1...dia-to-change-the-record-on-trans-healthcare/


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## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

I've always considered Burchill to be a sick lake of hate, full of spite of the least productive variety. She is the writer who has most wound me up over the years, her attitude is consistently abysmal, and in some senses I consider her to simply be a crap twist on the 'shock jock' form of attention seeking.


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## SpookyFrank (Jan 13, 2013)

Where did she get the idea that all transsexuals have PhD's?


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## Monkeygrinder's Organ (Jan 13, 2013)

elbows said:


> I've always considered Burchill to be a sick lake of hate, full of spite of the least productive variety. She is the writer who has most wound me up over the years, her attitude is consistently abysmal, and in some senses I consider her to simply be a crap twist on the 'shock jock' form of attention seeking.



That's exactly what she is. A troll, basically. She's quite good at it though, people still get wound up by her.


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## Hocus Eye. (Jan 13, 2013)

maomao said:


> Burchill's been writing shit like that for The Guardian for decades and she's always been a fucking arsehole.


I thought she was a Mail writer. Guess who doesn't read either paper.


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## peterkro (Jan 13, 2013)

I don't think I've ever seen an article get such a kicking in comments (I realise that maybe because a lot of the mad yanks are not up yet),it's vile to the point Guardian staff are pointing out it's an Observer article and not the Guardian.


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## mrsfran (Jan 13, 2013)

She's the Guardian version of Liz Jones (albeit she's been doing it a lot longer) and equally not worth paying the slightest bit of attention to.


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## Greebo (Jan 13, 2013)

Monkeygrinder's Organ said:


> That's exactly what she is. A troll, basically. She's quite good at it though, people still get wound up by her.


I've got a soft spot for Julie Burchill, it's full of pus.


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## KeeperofDragons (Jan 13, 2013)

As a working class woman I find her one enormous bigot, completely vile who wouldn't know what live & let live was if it jumped up & bit her on the arse


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## cesare (Jan 13, 2013)

Suzanne and Julie, earlier.


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## Puddy_Tat (Jan 13, 2013)

maomao said:


> Burchill's been writing shit like that for The Guardian for decades and she's always been a fucking arsehole.


 
^ that



elbows said:


> I've always considered Burchill to be a sick lake of hate, full of spite of the least productive variety. She is the writer who has most wound me up over the years, her attitude is consistently abysmal, and in some senses I consider her to simply be a crap twist on the 'shock jock' form of attention seeking.


 
and that ^

I did always used to wonder if the sole reason the grauniad let her write a column was simply to see how many people read the glossy saturday bit by judging how many letters / e-mails they got objecting to the shite she wrote.

one a few years back that was pretty much along the lines of "all gay men are kiddy fiddlers" led me to give up reading her shite...


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

The Alex Callicinos v Laurie Penny thread picked up on the new wave of identity politics, and shouted about the dangers of it and got told, in far more words, shut up by LP herself before christmas.


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## kavenism (Jan 13, 2013)

SpookyFrank said:


> Where did she get the idea that all transsexuals have PhD's?


 
Perhaps she thinks it stands for ‘Penis has Decided’? She’s always had a shitty attitude to higher education.


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## madamv (Jan 13, 2013)

Jb is 'off' and has been for some time imo.   I've also been watching the bunfight between.Patrick Strudwick and Azaelia Banks.   She seems.quite.the nasty piece of work even if.strud can be a bit precious at.times.


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## binka (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Managing to be that offensive in one sentence is amazing.


it was quite an achievement - she was obviously trying to think of a comparison but what on earth are black people good at? running fast of course! personally I'd have gone with the black and white minstrels telling michael jackson how to dance


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

Trans women are to women as black and white minstrels are to black people is the killer bit. It's the reversion to a trope to try and make a complex point simply. It's what Moore got called on as well.

It also hilariously implies Suzanne Moore is the Usain Bolt of feminist columnists.


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## toggle (Jan 13, 2013)

kavenism said:


> Perhaps she thinks it stands for ‘Penis has Decided’? She’s always had a shitty attitude to higher education.


 
she's not alone in that.


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## sunny jim (Jan 13, 2013)

Greebo said:


> I've got a soft spot for Julie Burchill, it's full of pus.


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## binka (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Trans women are to women as black and white minstrels are to black people is the killer bit. It's the reversion to a trope to try and make a complex point simply. It's what Moore got called on as well.
> 
> It also hilariously implies Suzanne Moore is the Usain Bolt of feminist columnists.


 
i go the transphobia but it was the subtle racist undertones which really made it a standout line imo


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

binka said:


> i go the transphobia but it was the subtle racist undertones which really made it a standout line imo



It's just shit trope grabbing from fear of not having pop culture references to make complex arguments simple. Fear of complexity dooms us all.


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## rosecore (Jan 13, 2013)

binka said:


> i go the transphobia but it was the subtle racist undertones which really made it a standout line imo


 
Not to mention the line "The reaction of the trans lobby reminded me very much of those wretched inner-city kids who shoot another inner-city kid dead in a fast-food shop for not showing them enough "respect". Ignore the real enemy" She really means black inner-city kids. She just can't bring herself to say it.


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

You know what, in the torrent, I missed that one.


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## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

Help me on this one.  Is part of Suzanne Moore's sins the fact that she used the word 'transsexual'?


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## cesare (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> Help me on this one.  Is part of Suzanne Moore's sins the fact that she used the word 'transsexual'?


People are seizing on the original use of her language, when the actual problem is that she used a crude stereotype.


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> Help me on this one.  Is part of Suzanne Moore's sins the fact that she used the word 'transsexual'?



The initial challenge was the unintentional use of the phrase 'brazilian transsexual' as it's a crude stereotype. The challenge itself was clumsy and twittery, and provoked anger from Moore who went on to intentionally use transphobic language.

Then write an article about how she knows trans people, and the real enemy is the tories and that it was over the top to criticise her for two words. But by then it wasn't two unintentional words, it was that plus some intended to cause offence. Unsurprisingly she got savaged in the comments.

Then Bindel and Burchill complain of a 'transsexual mob/cabal/gaggle' bullying Moore off twitter, with Moran, Jones etc also supporting Moore. And then Burchill decided that to defuse it, she'd put as many offensive transphobic words in one place.


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## rosecore (Jan 13, 2013)

Moore's tweets were Storified

http://storify.com/leftytgirl/suzanne-moore-timeline-of-trans-misogynistic-twitt


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## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

cesare said:


> People are seizing on the use of language, when the actual problem is that she used a crude stereotype.


 
I think the Suzanne Moore role is just a piece of clumsiness by a person who has been part of the tranny scene and speaks loosely like a friend can.  Burchill, on the other hand, is just being downright nasty.


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

I love the internet, spotted this trending.


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## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

cesare said:


> People are seizing on the original use of her language, when the actual problem is that she used a crude stereotype.


A crude and somewhat offensive stereotype in my opinion.

Why do people say 'trans woman' anyway? Is it to try to highlight that they're 'not really' a woman? Is it to insult them?


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## cesare (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I think the Suzanne Moore role is just a piece of clumsiness by a person who has been part of the tranny scene and speaks loosely like a friend can.  Burchill, on the other hand, is just being downright nasty.


I'd agree, except that Moore then went on to being deliberately offensive. All this subsequent business of saying she had a problem with "trans" anything, and lopping dicks off etc.


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> A crude and somewhat offensive stereotype in my opinion.
> 
> Why do people say 'trans woman' anyway? Is it to try to highlight that they're 'not really' a woman? Is it to insult them?


 
Because liberals do love to pigeon hole.


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

Trans woman is, I think, the term used by trans people when discussing the specifics. It's the gender/sex thing. Because obviously trans women and trans men are different, and transsexual makes it seem like a sexual preference based thing. I may be mistaken though.


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

cesare said:


> I'd agree, except that Moore then went on to being deliberately offensive. All this subsequent business of saying she had a problem with "trans" anything, and lopping dicks off etc.


 
I honestly think she was drunk at the time, doing that "fuck it, i am going to go down in flames with guns blazing',"kind of thing people seem to do on the internet *cough*.


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## cesare (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Trans woman is, I think, the term used by trans people when discussing the specifics. It's the gender/sex thing. Because obviously trans women and trans men are different, and transsexual makes it seem like a sexual preference based thing. I may be mistaken though.


That's what I thought too. It's not demeaning/insulting.


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Trans woman is, I think, *the term used by trans people*


 
Precisely.

Outside of that it's a bit unnecessary.


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## rosecore (Jan 13, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> A crude and somewhat offensive stereotype in my opinion.
> 
> Why do people say 'trans woman' anyway? Is it to try to highlight that they're 'not really' a woman? Is it to insult them?


 
Because you have trans men also?


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## cesare (Jan 13, 2013)

firky said:


> I honestly think she was drunk at the time, doing that "fuck it, i am going to go down in flames with guns blazing',"kind of thing people seem to do on the internet *cough*.


Maybe. Or perhaps in vino veritas.


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## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

cesare said:


> I'd agree, except that Moore then went on to being deliberately offensive. All this subsequent business of saying she had a problem with "trans" anything, and lopping dicks off etc.


 
I think she went on to be offensive because she was being badgered by one person who may or may not represent anyone's opinion but their own.  I don't think the tranny community as a whole was attacking Moore.


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

Bit of both, whatever it was, she was a dick. But I think teh bigger dicks are some of those who defended her.



Why's my laptop not charging?


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

Well, they weren't. Now though, despite Burchill's human shield, it may be different


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## marty21 (Jan 13, 2013)

madamv said:


> Jb is 'off' and has been for some time imo. I've also been watching the bunfight between.Patrick Strudwick and Azaelia Banks. She seems.quite.the nasty piece of work even if.strud can be a bit precious at.times.


I've seen a bit of that - couldn't be bothered googling, but who is Azaelia Banks ?


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## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Trans woman is, I think, the term used by trans people when discussing the specifics. It's the gender/sex thing. Because obviously trans women and trans men are different, and transsexual makes it seem like a sexual preference based thing. I may be mistaken though.


 
The terms came from the political pressurising people in the tranny community in, probably the 80s. Transsexual was the commonly used word when the normal path was to identify, transition and, finally, to have corrective surgery. So there was an actual change of sexual characteristics.

But, in the 90s mainly, there was a big shift away from this either/or, male/female model, probably when the Asian trannies started arriving in Europe in numbers because their life-model allowed trannies to mooch happily on with their original sexual bits. And so the word 'transgender' became commoner (especially among politicos and commentators) because it was broader.


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

Butler, performativity etc


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## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

cesare said:


> That's what I thought too. It's not demeaning/insulting.


Except sometimes it does appear to be used as a perjorative term on occasion. 

It got me thinking, because I think if someone I knew said they were a transwoman, I'd still see them as a woman like me.

It's like firky says, liberals love pigeonholes and labels. And writing books about pigeonholes and labels. I'm looking at you, intersectionality.


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## madamv (Jan 13, 2013)

marty21 said:


> I've seen a bit of that - couldn't be bothered googling, but who is Azaelia Banks ?



From wiki.     Azealia Amanda Banks (born May 31, 1991) is an American rapper and singer.[/quote]


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## Belushi (Jan 13, 2013)

First thing I thought when i saw this thread this morning was 'Uh oh Julie's got a new book out' 

I see it's just a reissue of Ambition, but the article is classic Burchill attention seeking.


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## goldenecitrone (Jan 13, 2013)

Belushi said:


> I see it's just a reissue of Ambition, but the article is classic Burchill attention seeking.


 
At least she's not teamed up with Irvine Welsh for the reissue of Transpotting.


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> Except sometimes it does appear to be used as a perjorative term on occasion.
> 
> It got me thinking, because I think if someone I knew said they were a transwoman, I'd still see them as a woman like me.
> 
> It's like firky says, liberals love pigeonholes and labels. And writing books about pigeonholes and labels. I'm looking at you, intersectionality.



I wouldn't so much blame the theory of intersectionality, as much as I would point at it being decontextualised and used as a pokemon style collection of oppression, creating a hierarchy or kyriarchy of the oppressed.

Theory's all very good, but when you start trying to implement it, you've got to know it inside out and be able to communicate it effectively unless you're actively seeking a distorted, dangerous counter productive effect of that theory.

It's not that it's a bad theory, but its basis even states that it's incredibly difficult to implement because you must either aim to erase all identity labels and discrete support of oppression through linguistic stuff, categorise all identities and understand in detail how the society in which they exists treat those labels and observe the changing relationships, or sort of both at the same time kind of.

And here''s the big sticker - the word intersectionality has been taken to mean all encompassing feminism, that it's ultimately inclusivity for all and equality for all. Which is fine, until you work out that the theory doesn't mean that at all. And people saying "MY FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT" is just shouty catchphrase activism, and can be used to shut down debate. 

Or. Alternatively, this, http://thoughtsfromtheline.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/dodging-traffic-at-the-intersection/


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## marty21 (Jan 13, 2013)

madamv said:


> From wiki. Azealia Amanda Banks (born May 31, 1991) is an American rapper and singer.


[/quote]
none the wiser, burd or geezer?


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## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

none the wiser, burd or geezer?[/quote]
Young female rapper.


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## maomao (Jan 13, 2013)

My main beef with JB is that we share all the consonants in our surname but none of the vowels and people routinely miss-spell and mis-pronounce my name as hers.


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## rosecore (Jan 13, 2013)

Nick Cohen seems to think her article is fine



> I'm sorry mobish people scream abuse at a leftwing feminist and then complain when her friends reply in kind?


https://twitter.com/NickCohen4/status/290056331291926528


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## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> I wouldn't so much blame the theory of intersectionality, as much as I would point at it being decontextualised and used as a pokemon style collection of oppression, creating a hierarchy or kyriarchy of the oppressed.
> 
> Theory's all very good, but when you start trying to implement it, you've got to know it inside out and be able to communicate it effectively unless you're actively seeking a distorted, dangerous counter productive effect of that theory.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the explanation. I liked the blog too


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

Should put a warning, I have only been reading about this for two or three days, about five hours of reading total


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## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Should put a warning, I have only been reading about this for two or three days, about five hours of reading total


More than Birchill


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## captainmission (Jan 13, 2013)

marty21 said:


> none the wiser, burd or geezer?


 
She's a woman . She called perez hilton (gossip monger and annoying tit) a 'messy faggot'. She said this wasn't homophobic as it describes 'any man who acts like a woman'. 

Some one posted this hilarious article on the laurie penny thread - http://crunkfeministcollective.word...ealia-banks-and-white-gay-cis-male-privilege/

Its a great example of the end game of privilege politics - apparently calling him a faggots fine cos the real issue is white gay male stealing black women cultural bodies 9or some such


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

who the JSPRC is perez hilton?


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

That was me. It's a good crash course in the dialect.

firky - runs a blog like TMZ focusing on celebrity etc. Two sentences here: He's a nasty self promoting type and has employed misogyny, racial stereotypes etc when dealing with celebrities. He's Cuban American, and gay too. He's an annoying prick for the first sentence, not the second.


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## marty21 (Jan 13, 2013)

captainmission said:


> She's a woman . She called perez hilton (gossip monger and annoying tit) a 'messy faggot'. She said this wasn't homophobic as it describes 'any man who acts like a woman'.
> 
> Some one posted this hilarious article on the laurie penny thread - http://crunkfeministcollective.word...ealia-banks-and-white-gay-cis-male-privilege/
> 
> Its a great example of the end game of privilege politics - apparently calling him a faggots fine cos the real issue is white gay male stealing black women cultural bodies 9or some such


cheesus! read the article -


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## marty21 (Jan 13, 2013)

DP


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## marty21 (Jan 13, 2013)

captainmission said:


> She's a woman . She called perez hilton (gossip monger and annoying tit) a 'messy faggot'. She said this wasn't homophobic as it describes 'any man who acts like a woman'.
> 
> Some one posted this hilarious article on the laurie penny thread - http://crunkfeministcollective.word...ealia-banks-and-white-gay-cis-male-privilege/
> 
> Its a great example of the end game of privilege politics - apparently calling him a faggots fine cos the real issue is white gay male stealing black women cultural bodies 9or some such


cheesus! read the article - 


firky said:


> who the JSPRC is perez hilton?


gossip monger on the internets


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

@bindelj: @PennyRed @bindelj Not promoting, saying what is true, that it was a long time coming as a response after the hatred doled out by some trans

 For fucks sake Bindel. Radical feminist my smelly trainers.


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## marty21 (Jan 13, 2013)

right, read the Moore article - maybe as I'm not transexual I didn't see what was offensive in it - can someone point out the offending bits? Birchall was trolling - haven't read the Bindle stuff yet though


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## smokedout (Jan 13, 2013)

revealing this ain't it. as soon as one of their own clan is attacked the observer's only too happy to print a load of bigoted shit that probably even the daily mail wouldn't touch and alienate half their social worker readership - cronies before principles (even sacredly held ones) everytime


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

marty21 said:


> right, read the Moore article - maybe as I'm not transexual I didn't see what was offensive in it - can someone point out the offending bits? Birchall was trolling - haven't read the Bindle stuff yet though



http://storify.com/leftytgirl/suzanne-moore-timeline-of-trans-misogynistic-twitt

It's this, the intial 'brazilian transsexual' comment could have been sorted - the exploding intentional stuff, and refusal to recognise any of it or apologise is what caused the storm.


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

Read this, zoom in if you have to - tis worth it:

Viz of course have picked up on it 

They republished this from 1999


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## FridgeMagnet (Jan 13, 2013)

smokedout said:


> revealing this ain't it. as soon as one of their own clan is attacked the observer's only too happy to print a load of bigoted shit that probably even the daily mail wouldn't touch and alienate half their social worker readership - cronies before principles (even sacredly held ones) everytime


No no, they're just starting a debate!


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## maomao (Jan 13, 2013)

marty21 said:


> Birchall was trolling - haven't read the Bindle stuff yet though


 
Well done. That's the first time I've seen someone make that mistake the other way round. Her name is B*u*rch*i*ll and is thankfully no relation of mine.


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

Didn't spot this but the Guardian is already distancing it's self, from one of their web-team:



> Hi. I just wanted to say, in response to comments like this and others I've seen on Twitter, that should you wish to complain about the decision to publish this piece, it is an Observer column, not a Guardian one (though of course, we share a website, so it's understandable that online readers don't make this distinction).
> 
> The Observer has its own readers' editor:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/observer-readers-editor


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

firky said:


> Didn't spot this but the Guardian is already distancing it's self, from one of their web-team:



TBH, if you're the guardian readers editor and your inbox just got Helm's Deeped by furious e-mails, you'd want to direct it at the right person.


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## FridgeMagnet (Jan 13, 2013)

I saw Rusbridger making it very clear on Twitter that this was definitely the Observer of which he is definitely not the editor.


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> TBH, if you're the guardian readers editor and your inbox just got Helm's Deeped by furious e-mails, you'd want to direct it at the right person.


 
CTRL+A [select all] -> Foward -> "those wankers on the other side of the office". Jobs a goodun


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> I saw Rusbridger making it very clear on Twitter that this was definitely the Observer of which he is definitely not the editor.


 
Yeh, I saw that.

I wonder if this will be the first push of the snowball that leads to a separate website for the Observer.

There's not much between them. They are two different heads on the lernaen hydra.


How many cliches can I get into one post?


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## spanglechick (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> TBH, if you're the guardian readers editor and your inbox just got *Helm's Deeped* by furious e-mails, you'd want to direct it at the right person.


You geek!


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## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

firky said:


> Yeh, I saw that.
> 
> I wonder if this will be the first push of the snowball that leads to a separate website for the Observer.
> 
> ...


More than two you slacker


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## marty21 (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> http://storify.com/leftytgirl/suzanne-moore-timeline-of-trans-misogynistic-twitt
> 
> It's this, the intial 'brazilian transsexual' comment could have been sorted - the exploding intentional stuff, and refusal to recognise any of it or apologise is what caused the storm.


so twitter rage wasn't caused by the article, but by Moore's reaction on Twitter to the article, which made it worse - Moore did get arsey tbf -


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

marty21 said:


> so twitter rage wasn't caused by the article, but by Moore's reaction on Twitter to the article, which made it worse - Moore did get arsey tbf -



Then her guardian article defending only the brazilian transsexual comment without mentioning her arseyness.


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> More than two you slacker


 
What do you think I am a lazy journalist?


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## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

spanglechick said:


> You geek!



You get the reference, revealing your own geekyness.


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## marty21 (Jan 13, 2013)

maomao said:


> Well done. That's the first time I've seen someone make that mistake the other way round. Her name is B*u*rch*i*ll and is thankfully no relation of mine.


right - didn't look right when I wrote it but couldn't be bothered checking


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## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

I used to hate twitter but so many prominent people have hung themselves on it.

The only person who seems to realise how powerful it is is John Prescott and he uses it to great effect. Never thought I'd say anything like that but it is true.


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## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

firky said:


> I used to hate twitter but so many prominent people have hung themselves on it.
> 
> The only person who seems to realise how powerful it is is John Prescott and he uses it to great effect. Never thought I'd say anything like that but it is true.


 
Yes I have previously marvelled that someone like Prescott, so sneered at in the press and by some of his peers for his lack of fancy vocabulary, was able to harness twitter with such bruising effect. Twitter and other bits of the net gives us back a kind of heckling that was somewhat lost in the era where television replaced local meetings.


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## Greebo (Jan 13, 2013)

firky said:


> What do you think I am a lazy journalist?


That'd explain the typo.  BTW "clinches" - beautiful Freudian slip.


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## where to (Jan 13, 2013)

[QUOTE="elbows":::] Twitter and other bits of the net gives us back a kind of heckling that was somewhat lost in the era where television replaced local meetings.[/QUOTE]

Very interesting point that.


----------



## spanglechick (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> You get the reference, revealing your own geekyness.


nah - I'm a fan... takes a *geek* to put a battle form a children's sci fi programme into everyday writing...


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

spanglechick said:


> nah - I'm a fan... takes a *geek* to put a battle form a children's sci fi programme into everyday writing...



CHILDRENS SCI FI PROGRAMME?


----------



## cesare (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> CHILDRENS SCI FI PROGRAMME?


I thought it was an LOTR reference


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

cesare said:


> I thought it was an LOTR reference


It is


----------



## mentalchik (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> CHILDRENS SCI FI PROGRAMME?





cesare said:


> I thought it was an LOTR reference


 

it is a LOTR reference...............


----------



## cesare (Jan 13, 2013)




----------



## mentalchik (Jan 13, 2013)




----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

Proving, succintly, that geekery beats identity politics for derailing discussion hands down.


----------



## spanglechick (Jan 13, 2013)

hahahah - i though it was a doctor who thing.  there you go. i was right about the geek thing, though.


----------



## mentalchik (Jan 13, 2013)

spanglechick said:


> hahahah - i though it was a doctor who thing. there you go. i was right about the geek thing, though.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

MY GEEKERY WILL BE CLEARLY DEFINED OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

More VIz <3 

A reaction to the republished Julie Burchill article:



> Dear sirs,
> 
> I am a long time reader of your foul publication; indeed every fortnight sees a new low. However, I believe today's column is the last straw.
> 
> ...


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 13, 2013)

mrsfran said:


> She's the Guardian version of Liz Jones (albeit she's been doing it a lot longer) and equally not worth paying the slightest bit of attention to.


 
This is from page one, and apols for not catching up with all of this thread just yet, but in the interests of boring old media accuracy :

1. Julie Burchill (who I loathe btw, and always have) stopped contributing her drivel to the Saturday Guardian at least 3 years ago. Possibly 4.
2. This mea mea mea article (  ) was in today's Observer -- she's occasionally in that, but not every week.


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 13, 2013)

Just caught up. Fair dos to those making similar point earlier though.

Had not time for that Burchill article, pile of trolling shite as is her usual metier.

Agree with most people's comments here.


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

Oh William


----------



## stuff_it (Jan 13, 2013)

If anyone fancies it:

http://www.pcc.org.uk/complaints/form.html


----------



## TheHoodedClaw (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> CHILDRENS SCI FI PROGRAMME?


 
Check your geek privilege!


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

stuff_it said:


> If anyone fancies it:
> 
> http://www.pcc.org.uk/complaints/form.html


 
I am not going to complain because I want these cunts to expose themselves and not get caught in a safety net. Fuck them. Justice, trial and punishment by internets.


----------



## Jollity Farm (Jan 13, 2013)

I'm not reading the article, since Julie Burchill makes me physically sick, as does transphobia (and me a "natural-born woman" myself - am I doing it wrong?). I hope she gets as many complaints as Jan Moir did for her Stephen Gately shitpile in the Mail. Not that that made much difference to Jan Moir's career, but nevertheless.

As for Suzanne Moore, if she had said "I'm sorry, I didn't realise that would be offensive" and then just stayed quiet for a day or so, people would probably have found something else to occupy themselves and it would have blown over. But she had to go all "I have freedom of speech, you can't tell me what to do, I have my rights!" which may well be the fashionable way for journalists to respond to any criticism, but it doesn't really help.


----------



## Bakunin (Jan 13, 2013)

'Julie Burchill in calculated act of attention-seeking vileness' Shocker.

'Thousands shrug their shoulders and tune her out almost as soon as they realise it's just the usual schtick of a third-rate hack who lost little time in becoming the sort of 'celeb' hack that no self-respecting punk journo would have ever wanted to be and never possessed any great amount of talent to start off with.


----------



## nino_savatte (Jan 13, 2013)

maomao said:


> Burchill's been writing shit like that for The Guardian for decades and she's always been a fucking arsehole.


She was just as bad when she wrote for the NME in the late 70s, to be fair.


----------



## nino_savatte (Jan 13, 2013)

Apols if this has already been posted but here's one that Burchill made 12 years earlier.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2001/jan/20/weekend.julieburchill


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/julie-birchill-bullying-trans-community

ros kaveney wins all the prizes


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

nino_savatte said:


> Apols if this has already been posted but here's one that Burchill made 12 years earlier.
> http://m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2001/jan/20/weekend.julieburchill


That's some vitriolic bile-filled transphobic ranting, even by her standards. Incredibly offensive stuff.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

She's always been transphobic, so has julie bindel. they're part of the whole "radfem2012" group iirc. It's a fucking cesspool.


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/julie-birchill-bullying-trans-community
> 
> ros kaveney wins all the prizes


 
The only winners are the Guardian with tens of thousands of eyeballs on adverts in less than 24 hours.

Kaveney's final paragraph is by far the best.


----------



## nino_savatte (Jan 13, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> That's some vitriolic bile-filled transphobic ranting, even by her standards. Incredibly offensive stuff.


Yep _and_ desperately ignorant.


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 13, 2013)

Yes she seems to know what she's talking about. Liked that piece.

PS That was >> firky's post (#116)


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

Their argument is that transsexual women (sorry, i dont know the correct term) aren't really women but are merely imposters and probably perverts who just want to pretend to be women to get access to "women only spaces", they are not really oppressed (which is complete and utter bullshit, plenty of transphobic attacks have resulted in death, plenty of people are disowned by their families for wishing to become a different sex) and transsexual men are self-hating women who have been indoctrinated by a sexist culture so that they have become "traitors" to their sex. It is mental.


----------



## stuff_it (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> Their argument is that transsexual women (sorry, i dont know the correct term) aren't really women but are merely imposters and probably perverts who just want to pretend to be women to get access to "women only spaces", they are not really oppressed (which is complete and utter bullshit, plenty of transphobic attacks have resulted in death, plenty of people are disowned by their families for wishing to become a different sex) and transsexual men are self-hating women who have been indoctrinated by a sexist culture so that they have become "traitors" to their sex. It is mental.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

And some of the more mental ones also say that the whole growing acceptability of transsexuality is part of a conspiracy to stop people being lesbians.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

Greer's "man in a frock" comments come about now, rightz.


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> Their argument is that transsexual women (sorry, i dont know the correct term) aren't really women but are merely imposters and probably perverts who just want to pretend to be women to get access to "women only spaces", they are not really oppressed (which is complete and utter bullshit, plenty of transphobic attacks have resulted in death, plenty of people are disowned by their families for wishing to become a different sex) and transsexual men are self-hating women who have been indoctrinated by a sexist culture so that they have become "traitors" to their sex. It is mental.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Greer's "man in a frock" comments come about now, rightz.


 
Yeah that's what they go on, they argue that the modern feminist movement has abandoned "true feminism" as talked about by Greer, Dworkin etc (who iirc never even went this far), they also say that the fact that it's becoming acceptable for women to become men is part of a conspiracy to write lesbianism out of existence, by saying that the only true way you can be a lesbian is to become a man. It is frightening stuff.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

the fact that a lot of mtf transsexuals eventually marry men (trans or otherwise) never occurs to them, no they're all just perverts and probably rapists


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> And some of the more mental ones also say that the whole growing acceptability of transsexuality is part of a conspiracy to stop people being lesbians.


 
I had to read that three times and it still made no fucking sense. So I read it upside down in the mirror and now it makes much more sense.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

firky said:


> I had to read that three times and it still made no fucking sense. So I read it upside down in the mirror and now it makes much more sense.


 
Their argument is that they're (the conspiracy) trying to make it unacceptable for a woman to be gay unless they've turned themselves into a man first.


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

I know what their argument is, it's totally fucking hat stand and it makes no sense.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

Yes but you're a man so you would say that. Surprised they haven't come up with their own version of the Protocols tbh.


----------



## stuff_it (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> And some of the more mental ones also say that the whole growing acceptability of transsexuality is part of a conspiracy to stop people being lesbians.


Please tell me you have a link.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

If you google "radfemhub" or "bug*brennan" the more mental stuff is there. Dont want to entice them here though because they have been known to stalk and harass people on the internet.


----------



## bi0boy (Jan 13, 2013)

You know how the fash have Redwatch to name and shame commies and trade unionists?

RadFems now have Gender Identity Watch to "monitor organizations that push gender identity and thus engage in the erasure of female reality"


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> Yes but you're a man so you would say that. Surprised they haven't come up with their own version of the Protocols tbh.


 
STFU or I'll oppress you.

etc.


----------



## stuff_it (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> If you google "radfemhub" or "bug*brennan" the more mental stuff is there. Dont want to entice them here though because they have been known to stalk and harass people on the internet.


I don't have time to look through any of that properly, but it's enough to make me never claim to be a feminist lest someone get the wrong end of the stick and think I'm in with them lot. Lol.

You couldn't make it up.


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

bi0boy said:


> You know how the fash have Redwatch to name and shame commies and trade unionists?
> 
> RadFems now have Gender Identity Watch to "monitor organizations that push gender identity and thus engage in the erasure of female reality"


 
We know but we don't link to such places like that because they come here. Don't you remember the board wars back when all we had was dialup to fire our arsenal from?

Link... edit


----------



## stuff_it (Jan 13, 2013)

firky said:


> We know but we don't link to such places like that because they come here. Don't you remember the board wars back when all we had was dialup to fire our arsenal from?
> 
> Link... edit


Ah, but now we have broadband and a large contingent of unemployed. Muahahahah.


----------



## sunny jim (Jan 13, 2013)

firky said:


> The only winners are the Guardian with tens of thousands of eyeballs on adverts in less than 24 hours.


 
How many of them have Adblock though?


----------



## FridgeMagnet (Jan 13, 2013)

It's a pretty fringe position and everybody I know is embarrassed by it.

What's new to me is newspaper columnists claiming to be oppressed by the trans lobby who all have it really easy and if they were real working class women they'd know what being oppressed really meant.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

How the fuck do trans people have it easy though? It's pretty much one of the last acceptable prejudices. You hear that shit about "trannies" all the time there's even somebody going on about it on this thread.


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

sunny jim said:


> How many of them have Adblock though?


 
The advert is still requested from the website but is blocked client side. If it didn't do that then the likes of Chrome would not support it as it would be counterproductive.


----------



## LiamO (Jan 13, 2013)

binka said:


> i go the transphobia but it was the *subtle racist undertones* which really made it a standout line imo


 
Wtf?

Surely her point is that the black & white minstrels are not really black and transexuals are not really women. Whether you find that insightful or inciteful... are you seriously suggesting it is racist?


----------



## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> How the fuck do trans people have it easy though? It's pretty much one of the last acceptable prejudices. You hear that shit about "trannies" all the time there's even somebody going on about it on this thread.


 
Yep, and because of this wider phenomenon I'd actually expected more stupid comments in this thread by now. 

Just days ago we were able to happily explore the downsides of identity politics in a rewarding and entertaining way, including Moore pointing out its rectal destination. But trans issues point rather starkly to the limitations of how and how far people should push against the identity shit, vulnerable groups can be trampled on in the process and vile agendas served if this stuff is done wrong. For example I am suspicious about people I am now seeing on twitter complaining about the priorities of people complaining about the Burchill article, when just the other day I was able to go on about priorities myself. I hope something positive can come out of the stinky depths beast that suddenly evolved out of the commentariat privilege checkings of mass destruction.


----------



## binka (Jan 13, 2013)

LiamO said:


> Wtf?
> 
> Surely her point is that the black & white minstrels are not really black and transexuals are not really women. Whether you find that insightful or inciteful... are you seriously suggesting it is racist?


no it was that they aren't really black so what could they possibly tell usain bolt about running


----------



## stuff_it (Jan 13, 2013)

binka said:


> no it was that they aren't really black so what could they possibly tell usain bolt about running


That doesn't even make any sense.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> How the fuck do trans people have it easy though? It's pretty much one of the last acceptable prejudices. You hear that shit about "trannies" all the time there's even somebody going on about it on this thread.


 
That was me, probably.  But if you know a few trannies, you'll know trannies are happy to use the word tranny.


----------



## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> That was me, probably. But if you know a few trannies, you'll know trannies are happy to use the word tranny.


 
Shedding light on an issue by putting your foot right in it is what that sounds like to me.

As if I should need to explain the difference between some people choosing to reclaim a label or use it in a certain safe context themselves, and other people still using it in an old, bigoted context.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

elbows said:


> Shedding light on an issue by putting your foot right in it is what that sounds like to me.
> 
> As if I should need to explain the difference between some people choosing to reclaim a label or use it in a certain safe context themselves, and other people still using it in an old, bigoted context.


 
Whatever.  But it is interesting that all this Julie Burchill poison should come up only a few weeks after the great role model for all trannies (or 'trans-women' as no-one calls them) April Ashley deservedly got an MBE for her campaigning work over the decades

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-20708017


----------



## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

Whatever me if you like, it doesnt change the fact that people ignore the difference between relaxed, personal, safe, warm use of language and labels and the use of the same labels in a wider, cold, public generalised way at their peril.


----------



## bi0boy (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> That was me, probably. But if you know a few trannies, you'll know trannies are happy to use the word tranny.


 
The fact is the majority of trans people find it offensive.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

bi0boy said:


> The fact is the majority of trans people find it offensive.


 
Then your experience (I trust you have a wide experience of the subject...?) is different to mine.  If you look at the Way Out website (probably the main tranny night-out in London), you will note that organiser Vicky Lee, who is incidentally a friend of mine, is happy to use the word.


----------



## Das Uberdog (Jan 13, 2013)

i think if the issue is over the contextual use of the word, then having clarified that Sirena is not using it derogatorily, it's probably alright to just get on with things..?


----------



## goldenecitrone (Jan 13, 2013)

bi0boy said:


> The fact is the majority of trans people find it offensive.


 
I does sound a bit derogatory. I think it's the 'i' ending, like Paki, or fanny.


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

binka said:


> no it was that they aren't really black so what could they possibly tell usain bolt about running


 
Binka


----------



## rosecore (Jan 13, 2013)

From Trans Media Watch:


> Guidance for the Media - Terminology to Avoid
> Sex Change
> Tranny
> She Male
> ...


http://www.transmediawatch.org/guidance_terminology.html


----------



## stuff_it (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> Then your experience (I trust you have a wide experience of the subject...?) is different to mine. If you look at the Way Out website (probably the main tranny night-out in London), you will note that organiser Vicky Lee, who is incidentally a friend of mine, is happy to use the word.


That's one person who makes a big thing out of it as a career. Most trangendered people just feel a need to be a different sex than they were born with, my friend was in tears because the benefits agency wouldn't change their claim to female while they were recovering from their surgery and on ESA. Their passport, bank, hospital records etc were all changed but it took a lot of arsing about to get the benefits people to change it and it was implied that any job they got after they would have to fill in the form as Mr X as well. All while they were recovering from painful surgery. Left her properly in bits. I seriously doubt it would have been a good time to call her a tranny.


----------



## Athos (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:
			
		

> That was me, probably.  But if you know a few trannies, you'll know trannies are happy to use the word tranny.



Some don't mind. Some find it offensive. Nor least of all because of the way the term is frequently used by bigots to abuse trans people. Notwithstanding your right to free speech, now that you know that, will you stop using it?


----------



## TheHoodedClaw (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> Whatever. But it is interesting that all this Julie Burchill poison should come up only a few weeks after the great role model for all trannies (or 'trans-women' as no-one calls them) April Ashley deservedly got an MBE for her campaigning work over the decades
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-20708017


 
There's a wee fragment in that story that demonstrates the commitment, certainty and courage that must be needed in order to fit your body's outward sexual characteristics to match the sex that is your inner being:



> She underwent experimental gender reassignment surgery in 1960 in Casablanca, despite being told by the doctor there was only a 50/50 chance of survival.


 
Obviously the odds of surgical death are different nowadays, but that doesn't reduce the need for commitment, courage and certainty much.


----------



## goldenecitrone (Jan 13, 2013)

Wasn't Boy George a gender-bender rather than a transexual? Although, that was the eighties.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

"lopping bits off", "cutting their cocks off"


----------



## bi0boy (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> Then your experience (I trust you have a wide experience of the subject...?) is different to mine. If you look at the Way Out website (probably the main tranny night-out in London), you will note that organiser Vicky Lee, who is incidentally a friend of mine, is happy to use the word.


 
You realise most transsexuals regard themselves as men or women and generally live as 'stealth'? The word "tranny" generally has a specific meaning associated with women who are out as trans and also with transvestites, drag queens and the club scene you allude to. To use it to refer to all trans people as you did is not appropriate.


----------



## Jollity Farm (Jan 13, 2013)

How very odd to say "no-one" calls trans women "trans women". Lots of people do. And, as I suggested in my previous post, if one has been told that a term is offensive, the decent person thing to do would be to say "I'm sorry, I didn't realise" and not to say it around the people who don't like it.

In other news, I am happy to call myself queer, but I know a number of other gay/bi/generally not-straight folk who don't like the term, finding it offensive and derogatory. So, because they are my friends and I don't wish to upset them, I don't use the term towards them or in front of them. It's not so hard.


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> That was me, probably. But if you know a few trannies, you'll know trannies are happy to use the word tranny.


 
Oh ffs.

This is just another, "but they use that word in rap songs, so why can't i?"


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

TheHoodedClaw said:


> There's a wee fragment in that story that demonstrates the commitment, certainty and courage that must be needed in order to fit your body's outward sexual characteristics to match the sex that is your inner being:
> 
> 
> 
> Obviously the odds of surgical death are different nowadays, but that doesn't reduce the need for commitment, courage and certainty much.


 
I agree with that. She was only the second British transsexual and, possibly, in the first 5 or 6 in the world to go through that process. In the 1930s, Lili Elbe died from experimental sex-change surgery. But April Ashley was lucky in that her surgeon had devised the technique that is still used today.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

firky said:


> Oh ffs.
> 
> This is just another, "but they use that word in rap songs, so why can't i?"


 
No it isn't.


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

Jollity Farm said:


> How very odd to say "no-one" calls trans women "trans women". Lots of people do. And, as I suggested in my previous post, if one has been told that a term is offensive, the decent person thing to do would be to say "I'm sorry, I didn't realise" and not to say it around the people who don't like it.
> 
> In other news, I am happy to call myself queer, but I know a number of other gay/bi/generally not-straight folk who don't like the term, finding it offensive and derogatory. So, because they are my friends and I don't wish to upset them, I don't use the term towards them or in front of them. It's not so hard.


 
Stop being so bloody sensible


----------



## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

I would hazard a guess that the mistake being made is to confuse the scene that is happy to identify with the term tranny with the entire trans spectrum and those who find themselves touched by gender issues in some way. It doesnt help that this sort of mistake stumbles directly into the historical bigotry, prejudice, misconceptions etc that still plague a decent understanding of gender issues to this day. It can cause friction within the trans community, and one way to stand a chance of retaining solidarity within that group, let alone beyond it, is for people to accept that they should retreat to the safest, most widely acceptable and all-encompassing labels available. People can call themselves whatever they like, but they have to be careful before calling anyone else anything, a similar problem to the commentariat soiling themselves when claiming to speak on behalf of an entire, broad group.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

I hereby vow not to use the word tranny again (on these boards), since it offends so many people (on these boards).


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

So, please, don't let us fall out.....


----------



## goldenecitrone (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I hereby vow not to use the word tranny again (on these boards), since it offends so many people (on these boards).


 
You said it again!


----------



## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I hereby vow not to use the word tranny again (on these boards), since it offends so many people (on these boards).


 
Trying to make out that its just a few wacky sensitive non-transsexuals on these boards that could possibly have a problem with the term is not the best way to get me to leave it alone.


----------



## Das Uberdog (Jan 13, 2013)

Jollity Farm said:


> How very odd to say "no-one" calls trans women "trans women". Lots of people do. And, as I suggested in my previous post, if one has been told that a term is offensive, the decent person thing to do would be to say "I'm sorry, I didn't realise" and not to say it around the people who don't like it.
> 
> In other news, I am happy to call myself queer, but I know a number of other gay/bi/generally not-straight folk who don't like the term, finding it offensive and derogatory. So, because they are my friends and I don't wish to upset them, I don't use the term towards them or in front of them. It's not so hard.


 
i don't necessarily agree. personally i think that all manner of people place too much importance on linguistical labels which essentially don't mean anything, and in practice placing that importance on words makes for awkward conversations which dart around the issues and focus on style rather than content. this is a bad trend on the whole and actually, i think it needs to be challenged.

i can understand stuff_it's friend's problem with the benefits agency as that's a legal institution refusing to recognize their gender, rather than just generally a word which is sometimes used in a well-intentioned way and sometimes not.


----------



## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

You cant blame people for thinking that words actually do mean something important when those words have previously been used against them in anger, or to attempt to dehumanise them.


----------



## Das Uberdog (Jan 13, 2013)

it's not about blame, it's about disagreeing with them

ETA

i should clarify that i'm not in favour of just using words people don't like in principle, just to prove a point - just that 'offence' is part of an increasing overrall trend by which masses of innocuous words are being 'proscribed' or labelled risque... it not only ignores the fundamental nature of language (in that its fluid, ever-changing and basically an incredibly crude tool by which to generally express the abstract concepts floating around in our heads) but also engages in a battle which can't be won.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

elbows said:


> Trying to make out that its just a few wacky sensitive non-transsexuals on these boards that could possibly have a problem with the term is not the best way to get me to leave it alone.


 
I thought I had given an illustration that, in a broadly supportive context, the use of the word I have vowed not to use is acceptable.  It may not be acceptable in a confrontational context or where it is obviously being used in a derogatory way, but the community is not so politicised that it has gone totally into greyspeak.  Some will obviously prefer the formal 'transgender' or 'transsexual' (I have never heard anyone refer to themselves as a 'trans-woman' - i think that term is used by commentators) but, as I say, I do not wish to fall out with anyone.


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Jan 13, 2013)

If I was Ms Moore I think I'd be less than pleased about the way Julie B has waded in on my behalf. Seems to me that her meddling has made everything a whole lot worse.


----------



## Athos (Jan 13, 2013)

Edit


----------



## bi0boy (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I thought I had given an illustration that, in a broadly supportive context, the use of the word I have vowed not to use is acceptable.


 
It's not though. It's only acceptable in the very specific circumstance you appear to be familiar with.


----------



## peterkro (Jan 13, 2013)

Mrs Magpie said:


> If I was Ms Moore I think I'd be less than pleased about the way Julie B has waded in on my behalf. Seems to me that her meddling has made everything a whole lot worse.


Moores picture disappeared from Burchills article half way through the day,possibly from a complaint by Moore.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

bi0boy said:


> It's not though. It's only acceptable in the very specific circumstance you appear to be familiar with.


 
I like to think my experience of the subject is broad and deep.  You would obviously like wikipedia links (for without such, nothing can be true...) but I can only offer that you hang out with me one weekend or another.....


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 13, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> It's a pretty fringe position and everybody I know is embarrassed by it.
> 
> What's new to me is newspaper columnists claiming to be oppressed by the trans lobby who all have it really easy and if they were real working class women they'd know what being oppressed really meant.


 
Although one would doubtless need to question what knowledge many newspaper columnists have of the lives of working class women beyond talking to their cleaner.


----------



## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I do not wish to fall out with anyone.


 

Dont worry, I dont want to fall out with you either. I have exhausted my point, although a lingering one remains that I dont want people to edit themselves on u75 specially. I want whats acceptable here to be whats commonly considered acceptable in a broader context, and that any challenges to things people say here be a way to explore this stuff rather than an overzealous attempt to enforce a standard that has nothing to do with how anyone actually talks about stuff in real life or how we think society should be.

Its certainly not your fault that labels are a mess these days, something of a prison has been made of language as a side-effect of fighting against a lot of shit terms were used for in the past. Many terms have been soiled in a manner that makes recycling them less than trivial to achieve, since the stench of their old meanings is not easy to completely wash away.


----------



## TheHoodedClaw (Jan 13, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> Although one would doubtless need to question what knowledge many newspaper columnists have of the lives of working class women beyond talking to their cleaner.


 
Someone needs to start compiling a list.


----------



## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I like to think my experience of the subject is broad and deep.


 
Yes its very obvious that you would like to think that. However what you've actually demonstrated are the limitations of your experience.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

cleanersplaining


----------



## purenarcotic (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> And some of the more mental ones also say that the whole growing acceptability of transsexuality is part of a conspiracy to stop people being lesbians.


 
What the fuck?!


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 13, 2013)

TheHoodedClaw said:


> Someone needs to start compiling a list.


 
Start? 

(lists TheHoodedClaw as a fellow-traveller of liberals and other people who haven't been keeping lists since the rise of Thatcherism)


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 13, 2013)

elbows said:


> Yes its very obvious that you would like to think that. However what you've actually demonstrated are the limitations of your experience.


 
Meowwwwwwww!


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

purenarcotic said:


> What the fuck?!


 
yes i wish i was joking but i am not. go and look for yourself


----------



## purenarcotic (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> yes i wish i was joking but i am not. go and look for yourself


 
I just cannot compute it.  It makes no sense!


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

purenarcotic said:


> I just cannot compute it. It makes no sense!


 
these are the people who have their womens festival with inspections at the gate to nab any imposters


----------



## elbows (Jan 13, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> Meowwwwwwww!


 
Indeed. Sorry about that, I really am done on that point now, I hope!


----------



## purenarcotic (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> these are the people who have their womens festival with inspections at the gate to nab any imposters


 
I find it so depressing.  So utterly depressing.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

purenarcotic said:


> I find it so depressing. So utterly depressing.


Its a fucking disgrace.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 13, 2013)

purenarcotic said:


> What the fuck?!


 
Basically making (or actually failing to make) the argument that some females who have gender reassignment to male are some form of repressed lesbian who can only feel right sleeping with other women once they (the "repressed lesbian") are in a male body. It's the worst kind of assumptive bullshit that's based on a theory rather than any sort of research with trans people.

And, of course, the likes of Bindel have no stake in preserving their own _status quo_, definitely not.


----------



## purenarcotic (Jan 13, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> Basically making (or actually failing to make) the argument that some females who have gender reassignment to male are some form of repressed lesbian who can only feel right sleeping with other women once they (the "repressed lesbian") are in a male body. It's the worst kind of assumptive bullshit that's based on a theory rather than any sort of research with trans people.
> 
> And, of course, the likes of Bindel have no stake in preserving their own _status quo_, definitely not.


 
What an absolute piece of nonsense.  I am quite, quite disgusted.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> these are the people who have their womens festival with inspections at the gate to nab any imposters


 
Because there's nothing even vaguely sinister about demanding a gyno-check on the gate, is there?


----------



## maomao (Jan 13, 2013)

peterkro said:


> Moores picture disappeared from Burchills article half way through the day,possibly from a complaint by Moore.


Apparently being a close personal friend of Julie Burchill has damaged Suzanne Moore far more in my estimation than anything she could possibly say about any minority group.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 13, 2013)

purenarcotic said:


> What an absolute piece of nonsense. I am quite, quite disgusted.


 
Unfortunately, it's another classic example of why identity politics suck dog arse - everything gets reduced to what the loudest people in a particular identity group has to say, so someone like BIndel (who represents a minority of lesbians if she represents any at all besides herself), who is media-savvy and connected, can get more "airtime" for her (frankly offensive) views than more rational but less notorious speakers from a lesbian perspective can.


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

bi0boy said:


> You know how the fash have Redwatch to name and shame commies and trade unionists?
> 
> RadFems now have Gender Identity Watch to "monitor organizations that push gender identity and thus engage in the erasure of female reality"


You think that's bad? 

On the same website one of the top ten posts is 'useful feminist knowledge: safe home abortions'. I read the blogpost - and I'm not posting the link because if you want to read, go look for it, it's nothing I want to link to.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

elbows said:


> Yes its very obvious that you would like to think that. However what you've actually demonstrated are the limitations of your experience.


Whatever.  Now perhaps we can let it go....


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

purenarcotic said:


> What an absolute piece of nonsense. I am quite, quite disgusted.


You're not the only one, sadly. It makes me ashamed to be a feminist, the way this radfem lot carry on.


----------



## smokedout (Jan 13, 2013)

well Bindel's been supporting Burchill on twitter saying it was a long time coming after the "hatred doled out by some trans" = and of course theres never been any provocation for this: http://twanzphobic.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/tootsie-of-the-week-give-it-up-keith/#more-3113


----------



## purenarcotic (Jan 13, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> You think that's bad?
> 
> On the same website one of the top ten posts is 'useful feminist knowledge: safe home abortions'. I read the blogpost - and I'm not posting the link because if you want to read, go look for it, it's nothing I want to link to.


 
What fucks me off about that is the angle it's coming from; rather than saying should abortion laws change we should be massively collectivising to stand up against this, it's basically saying 'let's lie down and take it, so here's some non properly tested alternatives'.  It's all wrong.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

its nationalism. its concerned with keeping people out rather than what feminism is really about. they also really hate bdsm and hate heterosexual women as well.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

That gender identity watch site is, well, it's pretty something.

http://genderidentitywatch.wordpress.com/about/

The comments


----------



## Fedayn (Jan 13, 2013)

Seems Julie has form, from 2001.


----------



## Firky (Jan 13, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> You think that's bad?
> 
> On the same website one of the top ten posts is 'useful feminist knowledge: safe home abortions'. I read the blogpost - and I'm not posting the link because if you want to read, go look for it, it's nothing I want to link to.


 
Evolution in action.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

http://twanzphobic.wordpress.com/

is pretty much a far-right site. its the exact same as writing "homophobic since forever" and dressing it up in some sort of progressive garb.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuucking hell. I'm in the predator class.







*AWESOME.*


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

smokedout said:


> well Bindel's been supporting Burchill on twitter saying it was a long time coming after the "hatred doled out by some trans" = and of course theres never been any provocation for this: http://twanzphobic.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/tootsie-of-the-week-give-it-up-keith/#more-3113


That's a hateful vile blog.


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Fuuuuuuuuuuuuucking hell. I'm in the predator class.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Stop oppressing with your predatoryness


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

smokedout said:


> well Bindel's been supporting Burchill on twitter saying it was a long time coming after the "hatred doled out by some trans" = and of course theres never been any provocation for this: http://twanzphobic.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/tootsie-of-the-week-give-it-up-keith/#more-3113


 
I'm not sure what 'hatred' she might be thinking of, at least any coming from the transgender community.  There, of course, has been a lot of antagonism, in the other direction, from certain hard-line sections of the women's movement, since the days of 'The Transsexual Empire' (1979 - when the world transsexual population probably didn't even pass a thousand or so!) and certain defensive stances may have been taken by the TG community.

I think what the problem is here is that, whereas the modern social experience is accepting a huge blurry area in the middle of the two sexes, some antique feminist politics can only cope within clear dualism.  I think even Germaine Greer has accepted the changed reality and has softened her antagonism of late.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> Stop oppressing with your predatoryness


 
Given the not so subtle message in the Alien trilogy, AvP and AvP requiem may be the two most relevant gender binary films in the history of the world


----------



## Balham (Jan 13, 2013)

There is this article in the Telegraph that describes Julie Birchill as the;
_Bernard Manning of feminism _. Is that being a bit unfair to Bernard Manning?

It's almost as if she is running a hate campaign . . . . against herself.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

> For proof of that, take a look at *Owen Jones*’s twitter feed. *The Justin Bieber of British politics* seems to have lost his entire Sunday to dealing with the fallout of Burchill’s article. A day that probably should have been spent licking envelopes on behalf of one minority (Islington Unicyclists United to Save Cuba?) was instead spent batting off allegations of bigotry against another. My advice to him is to drop the Alinksy and pick up some Edmund Burke. Conservatives don’t have to trouble themselves over these special interest turf wars. It distracts from important things … like _actual _charity work.


----------



## FridgeMagnet (Jan 13, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I'm not sure what 'hatred' she might be thinking of, at least any coming from the transgender community.


There has been a lot of hate directed towards Bindel regarding her writings regarding trans people, because she despises them and has said so repeatedly over many years e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jan/31/gender.weekend7 "Gender benders, beware" in, er, the Guardian, from 2004.


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Given the not so subtle message in the Alien trilogy, AvP and AvP requiem may be the two most relevant gender binary films in the history of the world


You're still oppressing me with your predatoryness :


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

*taps self destruct button*


----------



## Delroy Booth (Jan 13, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> Their argument is that transsexual women (sorry, i dont know the correct term) aren't really women but are merely imposters and probably perverts who just want to pretend to be women to get access to "women only spaces", they are not really oppressed (which is complete and utter bullshit, plenty of transphobic attacks have resulted in death, plenty of people are disowned by their families for wishing to become a different sex) and transsexual men are self-hating women who have been indoctrinated by a sexist culture so that they have become "traitors" to their sex. It is mental.


 
Shows just how easily the "all politics is identity politics" concept can be used to justify straightforward bigotry.

Was it the EDL or BNP who describe themselves "A civil rights group for white people" yeah the far-right are going to lap this stuff up.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

Delroy Booth said:


> Shows just how easily the "all politics is identity politics" concept can be used to justify straightforward bigotry.
> 
> Was it the EDL or BNP who describe themselves "A civil rights group for white people" yeah the far-right are going to lap this stuff up.


 
well yes there was already that "charity for the ethnic english"  ( ) that the BNP set up. Also i've seen zionists talking about "gentile privilege" on zionist blogs, not that there is not a problem with anti-semitism within the left which a lot of people dont see and I would be the first person to point out, but i've seen that sort of shit from "anti-zionist jews", if somebody is saying bigoted shit it's still shit no matter who says it, and also my criticism is that it contributes to racialisation of the public discourse, so somebody saying something is not attacked for what they say but for what group they come from (or don't come from) whereas surely if they've said it and it's incorrect it doesn't make a difference how oppressed they are, they would still be wrong regardless


----------



## Sirena (Jan 13, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> There has been a lot of hate directed towards Bindel regarding her writings regarding trans people, because she despises them and has said so repeatedly over many years e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jan/31/gender.weekend7 "Gender benders, beware" in, er, the Guardian, from 2004.


 
I think it is obviously wrong for people to pick on a sector of the population regularly or obsessively.  I don't know Bindel or if she does that.

In the particular case she mentions, I have sympathy with her and I think the transsexual in question should, maybe, have thought deeply before pursuing the matter so vigorously - into the courts: just because it was about rape.  Laws change instantly but society and its thought patterns tend to change more slowly and organically.

I am part of the pagan world (traditionally very liberal) but, in the last year, mostly from the USA, there has been an almighty hoo-ha about transsexuals and whether m-f transsexuals should be allowed into womens' self-awareness groups.  On the one hand, some US feminist pagan women are fiercely against this and, on the other, some transsexuals are 'demanding' the right and are claiming discrimination if they are denied.  I think the UK opinion is largely that both sides should back off and chill-out a bit.

A m-f transsexual starts out as a male.  It may be quite a masculine male: big bones, deep voice and all the rest.  After years of hormone treatment, body-fat moves and features soften.  Also, in a less measurable way, the 'electricity' of a person starts to change.  Presumably, the transsexual is also working on their voice and general self-presentation. 

If a woman, in a very sensitive situation, is asked to accept the first model as a woman, it will be very hard and it may not be reasonable to expect her to do it easily.  Later on, it may become easier and the reasonable expectation may be that she should. 

But it's not black and white.  The whole transsexual experience is about this blurriness.  The transsexual is in some liminal position and, while they self-identify as a transsexual, they should be prepared to accommodate the feelings of others.  Later, if they are convincing in their chosen role, they can let their past melt away and disappear into society and forget/deny their starting condition.  But that is probably for the few, not the most.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

You're talking about trans women there though, and it's not so much the difficulty in some second wave feminists have in transitioning into a world where trans women are welcome - it's about directed transphobia from members of that same group.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

But trans women are women tho. And it's not as though there aren't any women who were born that way who are sexual predators and that sort of thing.


----------



## FridgeMagnet (Jan 13, 2013)

It's amazing how trans men might as well not exist in all of these discussions, btw, except as an afterthought.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

I was sort of working on assumptions there. So yes, from my standpoint trans women are women.

I suppose in some case the anger and fury of some feminist writers, the absolute polarity of thought intended to waken women from whence they slumbered might have unduly influenced the sleepers. Like a really annoying alarm clock that your housemate has, which puts you in a bad mood all day.


----------



## stuff_it (Jan 13, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> Stop oppressing with your predatoryness


Check your predator privilege!


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 13, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> It's amazing how trans men might as well not exist in all of these discussions, btw, except as an afterthought.


 
Well yeah, exactly!!


----------



## Balbi (Jan 13, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> It's amazing how trans men might as well not exist in all of these discussions, btw, except as an afterthought.



Pfft, traitors to the sisterhood . 

I've been quite careful to define and note that I am talking about trans women in this case, because this case is about trans-women. Moore used brazilian transsexual to refer to an idealised feminine form, and was pulled up on it because she didn't say trans woman. The debate from there is centred on trans women. 

Trans men - that'll be a good talk.


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 13, 2013)

stuff_it said:


> Check your predator privilege!


I am not predatoring. Wait, maybe I'm anti-predators. Perhaps I need to encourage balbi in his predatoryness, predating in the jungles.

I thank you for insisting on the privilege check, sister.


----------



## FridgeMagnet (Jan 14, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Pfft, traitors to the sisterhood .
> 
> I've been quite careful to define and note that I am talking about trans women in this case, because this case is about trans-women. Moore used brazilian transsexual to refer to an idealised feminine form, and was pulled up on it because she didn't say trans woman. The debate from there is centred on trans women.
> 
> Trans men - that'll be a good talk.


I'm not talking about discussion here - which is going to be led by what's being commented on, reasonably enough - but more generally. One of the fantasies of a certain strand of commentators seems to be that trans is only something involving "men pretending to be women" for assorted invalid and predatory reasons.


----------



## frogwoman (Jan 14, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> I'm not talking about discussion here - which is going to be led by what's being commented on, reasonably enough - but more generally. One of the fantasies of a certain strand of commentators seems to be that trans is only something involving "men pretending to be women" for assorted invalid and predatory reasons.


 
Yep, trans men may as well not to exist to them. And if they do exist, they're traitors.


----------



## TheHoodedClaw (Jan 14, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Should put a warning, I have only been reading about this for two or three days, about five hours of reading total


 
A reminder.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 14, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> It's amazing how trans men might as well not exist in all of these discussions, btw, except as an afterthought.


 
That wasn't originally the case. At the turn of the 20th century, male impersonators were everywhere in the music hall, whereas female impersonators were less common. Male hormones were isolated in the 30s and were available to women who wanted to live as men (female hormones were not available till the late 40s). The first British transsexual was f-m: Laura Dillon, a member of the aristocracy, who in 1938 was the first woman to take male hormones with a view to changing sex. She was helped by Sir Harold Gillies, a surgeon who had pioneered plastic surgery techniques on disfigured WW1 veterans. She became Michael Dillon and, as a male, spent the latter part of his life trying to become a buddhist monk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dillon


----------



## Favelado (Jan 14, 2013)

It reminds me of The Onion's "Marilyn Manson Now Going Door-to-Door Trying To Shock People" headline.


----------



## Knotted (Jan 14, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> There has been a lot of hate directed towards Bindel regarding her writings regarding trans people, because she despises them and has said so repeatedly over many years e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jan/31/gender.weekend7 "Gender benders, beware" in, er, the Guardian, from 2004.


 
This is key:



> Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the one battle we feminists won fair and square was to convince at least those left of centre that gender roles are made up. They are not real. We play at them. We develop traditional masculine or feminine traits by being indoctrinated, not because we are biologically programmed to behave in those ways.


 
A radical nurture over nature doctrine that should have died in the 60's means she cannot accept that is such a thing as gender identity. I think Sirena above is wrong, on the contrary Julie Bindel insists that the lines are blurred but transgendered people are a reminder that the lines not blurred to the extent that they are willing to undergo surgery because of how they feel about themselves. It's brittle feminism that cannot tolerate it's doctrines being challenged.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

Most successful academy award winning actor in Sylvia Scarlett, 1935. Posted only because it's a good film until the final third. Cary Grant's cockney wideboy's bloody awful though.


----------



## Reno (Jan 14, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Most successful academy award winning actor in Sylvia Scarlett, 1935. Posted only because it's a good film until the final third. Cary Grant's cockney wideboy's bloody awful though.


 
...and nothing to do with being transgender.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

Yep, I was just having a Hepburn morning.


----------



## ska invita (Jan 14, 2013)

rosecore said:


> Not to mention the line "The reaction of the trans lobby reminded me very much of those wretched inner-city kids who shoot another inner-city kid dead in a fast-food shop for not showing them enough "respect". Ignore the real enemy" She really means black inner-city kids. She just can't bring herself to say it.


white kids are plenty involved in gang related gun and knife crime in UK cities too


----------



## Steel Icarus (Jan 14, 2013)

From a blog on this subject





> I once wrote a blog post about female urinals that included the line ‘women don’t have penises’. As soon as I tweeted it someone tweeted back saying ‘hey, how about you cut out the nasty transphobia in your second paragraph, yeah?’





> My reaction was a stunned, gobsmacked, horrified ‘what the fuck?!’ I re-read the blog and I couldn’t see anything that would lead people to think that I was phobic or hateful towards transgendered people. So you know what I did? Rather than call her a prick, or tell her to fuck off and leave me alone, I asked what she meant.
> 
> She explained: ‘some women, you know, _do_ have penises. Gender vs sex.’ That made sense, so I asked her what I should change it to and she suggested ‘most women don’t have penises.’ The change wasn’t exactly a fucking revolution, but it made this person, and potentially others, a bit more comfortable with what I was writing, and also made me a bit more careful about the language I used from then on. I’m not asking for a medal, by the way – this is quite literally the least I can do to not be a dick.




I understand the need for understanding and empathy, like, but if I'd read that article first and not this, and come across the line "most women don't have penises", I'd think it was a flippant gag in an odd context. I dunno. I'm pretty much not horrible to anybody - in fact the opposite - but I'm increasingly thinking there are a fair few young people (lol) into politics determined to categorise, analyse, weigh, judge, finger-point, slate, talk down to and generally out-minutae every fucker who for one reason or another uses the wrong word or doesn't understand stuff. Highlighting differences not comparing the ways in which we're the same, like.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 14, 2013)

S☼I said:


> From a blog on this subject
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
Yes, there is a lot of political sanctimony about....


----------



## Stoat Boy (Jan 14, 2013)

I read a comment yesterday about how this spate was the perfect example of Identity politics eating itself.

Do you all really care that much about this ? Does it really matter in any sort of way, shape or form ?


----------



## Steel Icarus (Jan 14, 2013)

I expect trans people are pretty interested. I'm more interested how many non-trans people are flocking to put their two-pennorth in (not here, obv, this is a informative thread, not just a load of people shouting "bastard" at journalists who don't care and can't hear them).


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

Stoat Boy said:


> I read a comment yesterday about how this spate was the perfect example of Identity politics eating itself.
> 
> Do you all really care that much about this ? Does it really matter in any sort of way, shape or form ?



It's interesting in the wagon circling of a certain set of journalists, and the discussion about language and collective stuff, and basic courtesy.


----------



## Stoat Boy (Jan 14, 2013)

S☼I said:


> I expect trans people are pretty interested.


 

But why would they be ? Ok, so somebody is born a man but reckons they should have been a woman. So they get a load of drugs, get bits chopped off or added and expect to be called Ms.

Surely then what matters is them just cracking on with dealing with all the slings and arrows that befall the rest of society ? They were a man, now they are a woman so move along, nothing to see here now.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

Stoat Boy said:


> But why would they be ? Ok, so somebody is born a man but reckons they should have been a woman. So they get a load of drugs, get bits chopped off or added and expect to be called Ms.
> 
> Surely then what matters is them just cracking on with dealing with all the slings and arrows that befall the rest of society ? They were a man, now they are a woman so move along, nothing to see here now.


 
Wouldn't it be nice if everyone else thought that.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

My housemate made a comparison regarding identity etc last night that part amused, part interested me.

Trans men and women are much more accepted than they were, but have further to go than women - however, the switch of such a core identity feature just about makes them the gender/sex equivalent to the black to white skin process Michael Jackson went though. It creeps people out, and provokes extreme reaction - across the spectrum of political ideology and social groupings.


----------



## bi0boy (Jan 14, 2013)

Balbi said:


> My housemate made a comparison regarding identity etc last night that part amused, part interested me.
> 
> Trans men and women are much more accepted than they were, but have further to go than women - however, the switch of such a core identity feature just about makes them the gender/sex equivalent black to white process Michael Jackson went though.


 
Not really a useful comparison. Transsexualism involves changing the body's sex to match one's gender which is defined by the architecture of the brain.

I'm pretty sure skin colour is only defined by the colour of your skin and that MJ wasn't a "white man born in the wrong body".


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

bi0boy said:


> Not really a useful comparison. Transsexualism involves changing the body's sex to match one's gender which is defined by the architecture of the brain.
> 
> I'm pretty sure skin colour is only defined by the colour of your skin and that MJ wasn't a "white man born in the wrong body".


 
I think it was more the reference to the reaction of him being 'white skinned' - equivalent to the flinch test with 3D modelling. How a change of appearance can provoke some weird forms of thought surrounding and targeting that person.


----------



## smokedout (Jan 14, 2013)

Balbi said:


> I think it was more the reference to the reaction of him being 'white skinned' - equivalent to the flinch test with 3D modelling. How a change of appearance can provoke some weird forms of thought surrounding and targeting that person.


 
I think you're onto something here, a lot of the crap from Bindel etc reads like its a kind of visceral prejudice to something they don't feel and can't empathise with, and because that makes them uncomfortable theyve tried to justify that prejudice with a theory

It's very reminiscent of some people's reaction to gay and lesbian sexualities


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

*wags tail excitedly*



It's a challenge to their understanding, not their words or actions, and it provokes a strong response. Like the idea that I think Sagan proposed which was the first reaction of a human to a genuine alien being would be puking up and running away. It's the 'other' that has no frame of reference, or requires you to change - not good for many.


----------



## Santino (Jan 14, 2013)

bi0boy said:


> Not really a useful comparison. Transsexualism involves changing the body's sex to match one's gender which is defined by the architecture of the brain.


To what extent is it accepted that one's gender is defined by a the innate physiological structure of the brain?


----------



## smokedout (Jan 14, 2013)

yes, and it is a challenge to the idea of gender as a social construct, which by and large it is and its a useful way to think about gender politically, but it's not a done deal scientifically and things like body dysmorphia, possible neurological differences between genders etc are not in any way understood

and even if gender is, completely, a social construct (which means so is trans-genderism) then why should people who are trans be held to a higher standard then anyone else who adopts a gendered role, which is all of us to some degree


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

Yeah, the theorists have done the theory - now the pesky neuroscientists need to get the brain equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider and sort it out


----------



## bi0boy (Jan 14, 2013)

Santino said:


> To what extent is it accepted that one's gender is defined by a the innate physiological structure of the brain?


 
Pretty much: http://www.shb-info.org/sexbrain.html

And trans people's brain show their gender traits: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan.html


----------



## newbie (Jan 14, 2013)

S☼I said:


> I'm increasingly thinking there are a fair few young people (lol) into politics determined to categorise, analyse, weigh, judge, finger-point, slate, talk down to and generally out-minutae every fucker who for one reason or another uses the wrong word or doesn't understand stuff. Highlighting differences not comparing the ways in which we're the same, like.


 
I've had this recent feeling about how similar this is becoming to the late 70s/early 80s when there was loads of thrashing around _out-minutae_ing on identity liberation subjects, all the while with other groups intoning "it's just a distraction from the class struggle comrades".


Perhaps I'm wrong, no evidence other than memory, but I've nearly posted something similar on both the LP and SWP threads in the last few days, because the memory is so strong.


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Jan 14, 2013)

newbie said:


> Perhaps I'm wrong


No, you're right. It was my experience of some of the more batshit fringes of feminism at that time.


----------



## butchersapron (Jan 14, 2013)

newbie said:


> I've had this recent feeling about how similar this is becoming to the late 70s/early 80s when there was loads of thrashing around _out-minutae_ing on identity liberation subjects, all the while with other groups intoning "it's just a distraction from the class struggle comrades".
> 
> 
> Perhaps I'm wrong, no evidence other than memory, but I've nearly posted something similar on both the LP and SWP threads in the last few days, because the memory is so strong.


Leaving the real class/material politics to the right to take over. Maybe this is what happens when you squeeze the middle.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 14, 2013)

Santino said:


> To what extent is it accepted that one's gender is defined by a the innate physiological structure of the brain?


 
If you google 'bed nucleus of the stria terminalis' you will find loads of links to an important 1995 paper.


----------



## newbie (Jan 14, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> Leaving the real class/material politics to the right to take over. Maybe this is what happens when you squeeze the middle.


that's sort of what I was wondering.

question is, why?


----------



## Firky (Jan 14, 2013)

Stoat Boy said:


> But why would they be ? Ok, so somebody is born a man but reckons they should have been a woman. So they get a load of drugs, get bits chopped off or added and expect to be called Ms.
> 
> Surely then what matters is them just cracking on with dealing with all the slings and arrows that befall the rest of society ? They were a man, now they are a woman so move along, nothing to see here now.


 
Pixie dust, kittens, cupcakes and a world where society just shrugs it's shoulders and carries on.

What world is that? I don't recognise it.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

http://33revolutionsperminute.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/the-burchill-ultimatum/



> In Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen (spoiler warning by the way), the messianic billionaire superhero known as Ozymandias decides on a drastic plan to bring the world back from the brink of nuclear annihilation. He arranges a fake alien invasion, in the form of a giant psychedelic squid which wipes out half of Manhattan, in order to unite the warring factions in mutual horror and make their own grievances seem petty in comparison. Yesterday Twitter was Manhattan, Julie Burchill was Ozymandias and her Observer column about transsexuals was the giant psychedelic squid.


 
This article is good.


----------



## butchersapron (Jan 14, 2013)

And no one else even noticed. That they'd  built a statue.


----------



## cesare (Jan 14, 2013)

The Observer's withdrawn Burchill's piece: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/14/1


----------



## butchersapron (Jan 14, 2013)

You can't withdraw it. You can disassociate yourself (and the way you do things and the networks they rely on) from the piece.


----------



## butchersapron (Jan 14, 2013)

> The comments posted beneath the article have also been removed in line with our deletion process and as a result these comments will no longer appear in individual users' profiles.


----------



## cesare (Jan 14, 2013)

Erase it and the comments that it provoked


----------



## butchersapron (Jan 14, 2013)

The _Mulholland school of falsification._


----------



## cesare (Jan 14, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> You can't withdraw it. You can disassociate yourself (and the way you do things and the networks they rely on) from the piece.


Yes, it's like people that "purge" an email after everyone's received it. Doesn't make it go away.


----------



## sihhi (Jan 14, 2013)

cesare said:


> The Observer's withdrawn Burchill's piece: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/14/1


 
Probably in response to millionaire from Highgate Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone calling for the Observer to sack her even though I believe she is a freelancer


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 14, 2013)

On a related (albeit slightly minor) point, does anyone know how widespread the choice of the title 'Mx' is now?

I've started to encounter it in my workplace (first time was early last year). it's rare IME, but not vanishingly so. Usually but not always chosen by people changing names and possibly/probably gender identity too (that factor is not always obvious in the data that I see, but _sometimes_ there is a clear link).

Just curiosity that one ... wondered whether other Urbans knew more.


----------



## cesare (Jan 14, 2013)

sihhi said:


> Probably in response to millionaire from Highgate Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone calling for the Observer to sack her even though I believe she is a freelancer


You think that's more likely than the response?


----------



## rosecore (Jan 14, 2013)

A little too late eh? Too busy counting the hits. It's a terrible failure in editorial policy. Apology won't suffice.


----------



## peterkro (Jan 14, 2013)

William of Walworth said:


> On a related (albeit slightly minor) point, does anyone know how widespread the choice of the title 'Mx' is now?
> 
> I've started to encounter it in my workplace (first time was early last year). it's rare IME, but not vanishingly so. Usually but not always chosen by people changing names and possibly/probably gender identity too (that factor is not always obvious in the data that I see, but _sometimes_ there is a clear link).
> 
> Just curiosity that one ... wondered whether other Urbans knew more.


I think it's genderless,for example you don't know or the person thinks thinks their gender is irrelevant in the situation.


----------



## rosecore (Jan 14, 2013)

You can still access it cached:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...ls+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a


----------



## elbows (Jan 14, 2013)

There is some sense in this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/se...chill-to-police-the-borders-of-womanhood.html


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 14, 2013)

peterkro said:


> I think it's genderless,for example you don't know or the person thinks thinks their gender is irrelevant in the situation.


 
Thanks for that, see the point. But people often choose a blank space (also an option) for no title.


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 14, 2013)

elbows said:


> There is some sense in this:
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/se...chill-to-police-the-borders-of-womanhood.html


 
Agree, that's pretty fair I reckon, Surprisingly so to me I have to admit!

Interesting that the Obs has seen fit to erase Julie Burchill's drivel now. Or as correctly said, disassociate. It says a lot more about their shit editorial 'judgement' that they chose to run it in the first place.

Also interesting that Rusbridger, the other day, was so VERY keen to emphasise that it was a piece nothing to do with him/the Guarduan, separately edited Observer and all that. Maybe? he felt he'd had his fingers badly burnt enough for far too long by hiring her for so long on Saturdays, a few years back.

Taken the Observer far too long to reach the same (?) conclusion, that she's full of shit.

Anyway, that's enough derailing from me on this thead about the Guardian   (was only responding to some earlier points really, sorry).


----------



## butchersapron (Jan 14, 2013)

William of Walworth said:


> Agree, that's pretty fair I reckon, Surprisingly so to them, I admit!
> 
> Interesting that the Obs has seen fit to erase Julie Burchill's drivel now. Or as correctly said, disassociate. It says a lot mre


But they have erased it, rather than disassociating. It stinks. Erase all mistakes.


----------



## tufty79 (Jan 14, 2013)

peterkro said:


> I think it's genderless,for example you don't know or the person thinks thinks their gender is irrelevant in the situation.


yup. gender neutral according to here. look out for 'misc' next, william 
as to why people don't just leave it blank, not wanting a gender-specific title doesn't automatically mean you don't want a title of _any_ sort..


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 14, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> But they have erased it, rather than disassociating. It stinks. Erase all mistakes.


 
I've edited now, system kicked me out before I could sort it.  I agree with you.


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 14, 2013)

tufty79 said:


> yup. gender neutral according to here. look out for 'misc' next, william
> as to why people don't just leave it blank, not wanting a gender-specific title doesn't automatically mean you don't want a title of _any_ sort..


 
Thanks, that's the sort of insight I was looking for because I admit that particular area is little known to me


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

That Brooke Magnati article's got its own inter-journo rivalry though - I seem to recall Moore, Moran etc having a barney with Belle de Jour about something.


----------



## bi0boy (Jan 14, 2013)

I wonder if she might be pushed into writing an "apology" next week


----------



## tufty79 (Jan 14, 2013)

William of Walworth said:


> Thanks, that's the sort of insight I was looking for because I admit that particular area is little known to me


i wish it'd been around fifteen years ago - i remember working for a bank, and spending AGES going through the (limited) range of titles with a person didn't want to use mr/mrs/ms etc because they didn't believe in gender. i can't remember how we actually got around it


----------



## cesare (Jan 14, 2013)

Vodafone are *still* bloody sending letters/bills to my old name and married title, nearly 14 years later. Pisses me off.


----------



## rosecore (Jan 14, 2013)

Toby Young has her permission to re-print it. Could he be a bigger asshole?


----------



## cesare (Jan 14, 2013)

Might have guessed that they'd be crying "censored" now


----------



## Balbi (Jan 14, 2013)

Burchill and Young teaming up.


----------



## Jollity Farm (Jan 15, 2013)

Having read a post on another forum by a trans person who was suicidal after the article, I am not really feeling too sympathetic to the "but it's just semantics" and "there are far more important things, like _my_ problems" style of response. Real people, fellow human beings, have to deal with a world where there's barely any acceptance for who they are, where most mainstream attitudes towards you are "ha ha, funny joke", and that's at best. People have to be frightened that they'll be abused or killed by people just for the shape of their chromosomes (look up "Transgender day of Remembrance"). People have to be frightened that they'll lose their jobs, that they won't be hired, because someone found out their terrible secret. Most trans people are just trying to "crack on with their lives", but it's a tiny bit difficult when even a trip to the shop for some milk and bread can lead to being verbally abused or followed. People who've never had to suffer this can find it easy to say "just ignore it", but when one's very existence is called into question, when each angle sends the message "the world doesn't want you", it can wear one down to nothing. It's no surprise that some people lash out, it's just a shame that people will, without thinking, peer down from their positions of privilege and say "well, I don't see the problem here"


----------



## butchersapron (Jan 15, 2013)

Who you talking to?


----------



## Steel Icarus (Jan 15, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> Who you talking to?






			
				Stoat Boy said:
			
		

> But why would they be ? Ok, so somebody is born a man but reckons they should have been a woman. So they get a load of drugs, get bits chopped off or added and expect to be called Ms.
> 
> Surely then what matters is them just cracking on with dealing with all the slings and arrows that befall the rest of society ? They were a man, now they are a woman so move along, nothing to see here now.




This, presumably


----------



## Sirena (Jan 15, 2013)

Incidentally, as Adele from Fascinating Aida once pointed out, she wasn't born a man, she was born a baby...


----------



## nino_savatte (Jan 15, 2013)

rosecore said:


> Toby Young has her permission to re-print it. Could he be a bigger asshole?


Yes.


----------



## rosecore (Jan 15, 2013)

Spiked have now re-printed it with a more offensive headline


----------



## Balbi (Jan 15, 2013)

Burchill's going to need moderated comments for a while. She's created a trans* mob/cabal of her very own.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 15, 2013)

http://www.penny-red.com/post/40595682748/on-feminism-transphobia-and-free-speech

L.P speaketh. And doesn't do a bad job.


----------



## dylanredefined (Jan 15, 2013)

Jollity Farm said:


> Having read a post on another forum by a trans person who was suicidal after the article.


 
 What! Its a Julie Burchill rant she is at best a parody and has made a career out of being a troll. How anyone could take her seriously
is beyond me. Insulting probably to be taken seriously not at all.


----------



## el-ahrairah (Jan 15, 2013)

Balbi said:


> That Brooke Magnati article's got its own inter-journo rivalry though - I seem to recall Moore, Moran etc having a barney with Belle de Jour about something.


 
yeah, theres long time beef between them.  BM has history of making up stats to attack her rivals, the first printing of her book was pulped cos of it!


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 15, 2013)

rosecore said:


> Spiked have now re-printed it with a more offensive headline


 
 Spiked as a platform now? No hope for her at all ...


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 15, 2013)

Balbi said:


> http://www.penny-red.com/post/40595682748/on-feminism-transphobia-and-free-speech
> 
> L.P speaketh. And doesn't do a bad job.


lauriepenny : great blog article on the whole furore, laurie. Hope to see more of your work like this piece


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 15, 2013)

dylanredefined said:


> What! Its a Julie Burchill rant she is at best a parody and has made a career out of being a troll. How anyone could take her seriously
> is beyond me. Insulting probably to be taken seriously not at all.


The fact is, people HAVE been insulted though. Whether it's a rant or not, it's no excuse.


----------



## Steel Icarus (Jan 15, 2013)

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/julie-burchill-should-be-free-to-offend-8451861.html

Still they come


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Jan 15, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> The fact is, people HAVE been insulted though. Whether it's a rant or not, it's no excuse.


It was really nasty. If it had been a rant directed at fat grannies with the same level of hatred, I would have been upset.


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Jan 15, 2013)

That's the thing about her. She knows how to really wound and enrage in as hateful a way as she can muster, it's her main schtick.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 15, 2013)

S☼I said:


> http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/julie-burchill-should-be-free-to-offend-8451861.html
> 
> Still they come


 people who capitulate and don't defend their freedom of speech don't deserve freedom of speech.


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 15, 2013)

Mrs Magpie said:


> That's the thing about her. She knows how to really wound and enrage in as hateful a way as she can muster, it's her main schtick.


doing her knees and elbows would show other people can wound just as much as she can


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Jan 15, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> doing her knees and elbows would show other people can wound just as much as she can


She'd still be able to type though.....


----------



## Pickman's model (Jan 15, 2013)

Mrs Magpie said:


> She'd still be able to type though.....


She won't if she's reminded that there's another 200 bones in her body, with something like 20 in each hand to which force can be applied


----------



## FridgeMagnet (Jan 16, 2013)

S☼I said:


> http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/julie-burchill-should-be-free-to-offend-8451861.html
> 
> Still they come


Who is this little shitstain?


----------



## Frances Lengel (Jan 16, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> She won't if she's reminded that there's another 200 bones in her body, with something like 20 in each hand to which force can be applied


 
Except all of her bones are made up solely of fat cells. Same as her brain.


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Jan 16, 2013)

I don't think the Observer should have closed the stable door after the horse had shat all over the yard though. Pointless. I do think Burchill should get the brunt of a fuck of a lot of free speech though, and not just from the target of her bile, but from everyone else too.


----------



## elbows (Jan 16, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> Who is this little shitstain?


 
He hasnt got all that much stick on twitter about his shit article, just a few angry tweets, possibly because hardly anyone noticed his existence. And he hasnt said anything on twitter itself that was quite as disgraceful as the first part of his article, although a few tweets made it obvious where his idiotic opinion was going to go.

‏@*tompeck*
After a weekend spent in the real world, only just acquainting myself with the Burchill column. Bit disappointing. Was braced for far worse.

@*tompeck*
So the Obs has "withdrawn" the Burchill piece, providing crucial encouragement to manufacturers of confected outrage everywhere. Pathetic.


----------



## Frances Lengel (Jan 16, 2013)

Tom Peckerwood.


----------



## FridgeMagnet (Jan 16, 2013)

Tbh he sounds like some nobody trying to get a Spiked column. Probably somebody's kid if he got the indie piece, but it's really not worth the effort.


----------



## Mrs Magpie (Jan 16, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> Probably somebody's kid if he got the indie piece


 Say it ain't so


----------



## Knotted (Jan 16, 2013)

Mrs Magpie said:


> That's the thing about her. She knows how to really wound and enrage in as hateful a way as she can muster, it's her main schtick.


 
I strongly disagree. I think she's useless as a wind up merchant these days. She's just needy, vulnerable and tame. This article was virtually a sob story. She hasn't been right since she discovered religion, who'd have thought it ten years ago - Julie Burchill wanting to be pitied because she's a woman and from a working class background and everything! What's troubling is that the attitudes towards transgendered women reflect a certain ideology amongst certain feminists and wider prejudice. Too many people harumphing along with this. It's an easy prejudice.


----------



## Random (Jan 16, 2013)

FridgeMagnet said:


> Tbh he sounds like some nobody trying to get a Spiked column. Probably somebody's kid if he got the indie piece, but it's really not worth the effort.


Yes, someone hoping to waterski a bit in Burchill's wake.


----------



## teuchter (Jan 16, 2013)

Meanwhile transphobia goes unchallenged on U75


----------



## Balbi (Jan 16, 2013)

teuchter said:


> Meanwhile transphobia goes unchallenged on U75



Critics, critique thyself.


----------



## Santino (Jan 16, 2013)

teuchter said:


> Meanwhile transphobia goes unchallenged on U75


I don't see it being unchallenged in that link.


----------



## killer b (Jan 16, 2013)

teuchter said:


> Meanwhile transphobia goes unchallenged on U75


looks to me like you did challenge it?


----------



## teuchter (Jan 16, 2013)

Santino said:


> I don't see it being unchallenged in that link.





killer b said:


> looks to me like you did challenge it?


So, you both see transphobia, being challenged?


----------



## tommers (Jan 16, 2013)

He's got you there.


----------



## 8ball (Jan 16, 2013)

S☼I said:


> http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/julie-burchill-should-be-free-to-offend-8451861.html
> 
> Still they come


 
Bizarre - there's nothing in principle I disagree with there except that he seems to be talking about some accidental offhand offense that some people took out of perversity, rather than a deliberate attack on a well-defined minority.


----------



## Steel Icarus (Jan 16, 2013)

Great week for this, BBC

http://www.transcomedyaward.org/


----------



## tufty79 (Jan 16, 2013)

S☼I said:


> Great week for this, BBC
> 
> http://www.transcomedyaward.org/


 that'd been up for a while before the burchill fiasco..
edit: oh, i think i get you. 
i think.


----------



## TopCat (Jan 16, 2013)

Is the piece available? Point me to it?


----------



## Steel Icarus (Jan 16, 2013)

TopCat said:


> Is the piece available? Point me to it?


 
The Burchill dross?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...is-julie-burchills-censored-observer-article/


----------



## smokedout (Jan 16, 2013)

the lulz continue, Moore's now threatening to sue Pink News on twitter




*suzanne moore* ‏@*suzanne_moore* 
Read this piece of shit and Pink News will hear from my lawyers in the morning http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/16/reports-brazilian-transwoman-shot-dead/ …


----------



## Frances Lengel (Jan 16, 2013)

smokedout said:


> the lulz continue, Moore's now threatening to sue Pink News on twitter
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
The self styled working class journalist Suzanne Moore has got her own team of lawyers. Mind you they could be legal aid (yeah). Healy Connor Mulcahy in Rochdale do a good line in criminal defence, their office isn't much to write home about but they do a good job. Especially Mr Mulcahy.

E2a - Didn't Chris Morris dis Suzanne Moore ages ago in the 90's sometime? Can't remember why but I'm sure he did, called her a fraud or somesuch.

E2a I thought she'd latered herself off twitter - Didn't last long.


----------



## Dan U (Jan 16, 2013)

This is the alleged working class champion having dinner with IDS according to the original article


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/17/supporting-freedom-makes-me-opponent-equality

Dig UP Lazarus! UP!



> How has the left ceded the word "freedom" to the right? It maddens me. We can argue about sexuality and gender till the sacred cows come home. Obviously my politics come out of feminism and did I need to say that I have never personally condoned the murder of a single woman, Brazilian, trans or otherwise? Nor did I make up stuff; I merely reported what is actually happening in Brazil. According to an Associated Press report: "The trans-models have a proverbial leg up on their female colleagues. Unlike even the thinnest of women, without cellulite and stretch marks ... once they've lasered away facial and body hair, they can look more feminine than models who were born female." This description has as much to do with the average transgender person as I do with Naomi Campbell, but the artificiality of femininity is something I often write about.



She reported fuck all, she used the words as a punchline. Yet another expansion of the boundaries to dilute the actual event. But what about x, y and z!


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

> More and more I realise I am on the side of liberation, which seems so often to be on the opposite one to equality. That makes me sad. As Labour became increasingly authoritarian and took us to war in the name of "freedom", many turned to the Lib Dems to protect our civil liberties. They turned out to be as liberal as Ann Widdecombe on Advocaat.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

Being for liberation doesn't make you an enemy of equality. And being angry about one topic doesn't give you the right to demean fellow strugglers.


----------



## Steel Icarus (Jan 17, 2013)

smokedout said:


> the lulz continue, Moore's now threatening to sue Pink News on twitter
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
Doesn't seem to be anything in that you could hang a case of libel on.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

Frances Lengel said:


> E2a I thought she'd latered herself off twitter - Didn't last long.



She was hounded off by a drooling, slathering trans mob cabal hybrid. Because she wouldn't apologise.

She apologised by the way, http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/1...-apologises-for-brazilian-transsexual-remark/

.... then wrote todays article, which is a row back from her apology.


----------



## Greebo (Jan 17, 2013)

Balbi said:


> <snip>She apologised by the way, http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/1...-apologises-for-brazilian-transsexual-remark/
> 
> .... then wrote todays article, which is a row back from her apology.


Why am I not surprised?


----------



## Steel Icarus (Jan 17, 2013)

Balbi said:


> She was hounded off by a drooling, slathering trans mob cabal hybrid. Because she wouldn't apologise.
> 
> She apologised by the way, http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/1...-apologises-for-brazilian-transsexual-remark/
> 
> .... then wrote todays article, which is a row back from her apology.


 
It's cos not only did she not apologise, she lashed out and unsurprisingly got jumped on and, yes, insulted to fuck.

Very few people coming out of this very well, eh. To Rid Liddle's delight (I'm not going to link to that piece of shit's article, but it's in the Speccie today)


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

Like a circle jerk with all hands grasped firmly round the throat.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

S☼I said:


> Doesn't seem to be anything in that you could hang a case of libel on.



It's hilariously dark how she genuinely believes the freedom of speech of people with newspaper columns is under attack. 

And how to avoid any blame it's now about freedom vs equality, sexual liberation vs equality. Kicking up dirt to create a dust cloud which allows her to continue unabated.


----------



## Das Uberdog (Jan 17, 2013)

gotta say,i really cannot understand what was wrong about Suzanne Moores original article


----------



## cesare (Jan 17, 2013)

Das Uberdog said:


> gotta say,i really cannot understand what was wrong about Suzanne Moores original article


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

Das Uberdog said:


> gotta say,i really cannot understand what was wrong about Suzanne Moores original article



The article's subject was fine, solidarity against cuts. She made a punchline out of something, someone pointed out that it wasn't that appropriate but unintentional, Moore decided to then be intentionally offensive using the same language.

Her twitter meltdown and language used there is what sparked this, but as twitter isn't a column on a national paper - Moore and others got to set the terms of what the issue was. Which is even more hilarious now she's complaining about her freedom of speech being attacked.

 It wasn't the two words, it was the torrent afterwards.



(The reason I am terrier/posties leg on this is because language, freedom and that are my catnip)


----------



## Bakunin (Jan 17, 2013)

Balbi said:


> It's hilariously dark how she genuinely believes the freedom of speech of people with newspaper columns is under attack.


 
Does she have a similarly passionate and deeply held conviction about the well-being of ordinary people on the receiving end of newpaper columnists' freedom of speech? The ones who also lack either the cash to sue for libel or an equivalent media profile through which to exercise their right of reply? 

Come to think of it, she's banging on about her freedom of speech and then threatening to sue people for exercising their own because they've done so in a way that offends her. The words 'Does not compute...' spring to mind.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

Bakunin said:


> Does she have a similarly passionate and deeply held conviction about the well-being of ordinary people on the receiving end of newpaper columnists' freedom of speech? The ones who also lack either the cash to sue for libel or an equivalent media profile through which to exercise their right of reply?
> 
> Come to think of it, she's banging on about her freedom of speech and then threatening to sue people for exercising their own because they've done so in a way that offends her. The words 'Does not compute...' spring to mind.



A ZX Spectrum approach in a digital age. One tape can be played at a time. Non-sequiter of the week from our second wave columnist...



> We need both love and anger to be free, to be human. Take that away and who really wins?



You do Suzanne. With your comfortable platform.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

Interesting to watch a left of centre columnist realise she's past her political ideology sell by date and drift into 'I will be offensive as it's about freedom' attitudes.


----------



## 8ball (Jan 17, 2013)

Balbi said:


> It's hilariously dark how she genuinely believes the freedom of speech of people with newspaper columns is under attack.


 
Though it seems normal to believe the freedom of speech of authors was under attack when Salman Rushdie got death threats.

I mean, he was a still a big-name author and could still have said whatever he liked from his police-protected safe house, so where's the beef?


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

8ball said:


> Though it seems normal to believe the freedom of speech of authors was under attack when Salman Rushdie got death threats.
> 
> I mean, he was a still a big-name author and could still have said whatever he liked from his police-protected safe house, so where's the beef?


 
She's confused freedom of speech with freedom from criticism hasn't she?


----------



## 8ball (Jan 17, 2013)

Balbi said:


> She's confused freedom of speech with freedom from criticism hasn't she?


 
I think if someone is being hounded and getting menacing threats then they have cause to complain, though being (verbally) slapped down for talking shit is something a columnist should be able to handle.

I think Burchill's attempt at a 'defense' was far worse than the original hoo ha.


----------



## Greebo (Jan 17, 2013)

Balbi said:


> She's confused freedom of speech with freedom from criticism hasn't she?


She appears to have forgotten that you're free to do whatever you please, as long as you don't mind taking the consequences.


----------



## Santino (Jan 17, 2013)

8ball said:


> Though it seems normal to believe the freedom of speech of authors was under attack when Salman Rushdie got death threats.
> 
> I mean, he was a still a big-name author and could still have said whatever he liked from his police-protected safe house, so where's the beef?


Yeah... yeah, that's the same. It's the same thing.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

8ball said:


> I think if someone is being hounded and getting menacing threats then they have cause to complain, though being (verbally) slapped down for talking shit is something a columnist should be able to handle.
> 
> I think Burchill's attempt at a 'defense' was far worse than the original hoo ha.


 
Moore's conflated the two though - saying it's entirely unfair for the people to attack her, when it was Moore who went on the attack first to what was justifiable criticism. No, it's not acceptable for people to use menacing threats etc, but in her apology she says *"But I am not ladylike when attacked and fight with fire" *which fails to address that she was the one firing up the flamethrower first. Her subsequent articles all failed to mention the twitter meltdown, and tried to centre the debate around two words - which was a part of the discussion, but not the main cause of the ire against her. Excusing herself.

I don't think it's entirely fair that she's going to be under the spotlight from now on though, but then again if she continues with the apology/de-apology approach she's taking - apologising in a small distribution forum like pink-news, then using her media platform at the guardian to absolve herself - Moore deserves it.

In fact, the whole 'freedom vs equality/sexual liberation vs equality' shit is exactly the kind of binary bollocks that got her into the trouble in the first place.


----------



## 8ball (Jan 17, 2013)

Santino said:


> Yeah... yeah, that's the same. It's the same thing.


 
Obviously completely different - you weren't offended by anything Rushdie said.


----------



## 8ball (Jan 17, 2013)

Balbi said:


> Moore's conflated the two though - saying it's entirely unfair for the people to attack her, when it was Moore who went on the attack first.


 
Unfortunately her original article has been taken down (I know someone has probably kept it somewhere), but from the single quote I've seen it's hard to see that she was gunning for transexuals - I agree it was a poor choice of words, though.

Burchill, on the other hand...



Balbi said:


> I don't think it's entirely fair that she's going to be under the spotlight from now on though, but then again if she continues with the apology/de-apology approach she's taking - apologising in a small distribution forum, then using her media platform to absolve herself - Moore deserves it.


 
I think you can apologise for something you've done and still be angry at the excesses coming from the other side, but I agree she should be aiming for some kind of consistency under the circumstances.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

8ball said:


> Unfortunately her original article has been taken down (I know someone has probably kept it somewhere), but from the single quote I've seen it's hard to see that she was gunning for transexuals - I agree it was a poor choice of words, though.


 
http://storify.com/leftytgirl/suzanne-moore-timeline-of-trans-misogynistic-twitt

Have a gander at that though - she was certainly gunning for trans* people in her tweets about it.


----------



## Steel Icarus (Jan 17, 2013)

Balbi said:


> "*ladylike"*


 
Whose idea of ladylike - behaving calmly and not kicking off - is she talking about?


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

S☼I said:


> Whose idea of ladylike - behaving calmly and not kicking off - is she talking about?


 
You put down that fucking tin opener before I brain you with that can of worms


----------



## 8ball (Jan 17, 2013)

Balbi said:


> http://storify.com/leftytgirl/suzanne-moore-timeline-of-trans-misogynistic-twitt
> 
> Have a gander at that though - she was certainly gunning for trans* people in her tweets about it.


 
Fair point, she's hardly making things better with that - I still don't think it merits an mass-abuse circlejerk, though.

I don't really get the transphobic hostility in some feminist quarters - it's been explained to me as something akin to the women in false beards at the 'men only' meeting in Life Of Brian, but 'the patriarchy' persuading a squad of men to cut their nobs off in order to eavesdrop on some wayward women would surely be too implausible for even Python to run with.


----------



## Steel Icarus (Jan 17, 2013)

Balbi said:


> You put down that fucking tin opener before I brain you with that can of worms


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 17, 2013)

teuchter said:


> Meanwhile transphobia goes unchallenged on U75


 
Pathetic, as usual.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 17, 2013)

killer b said:


> looks to me like you did challenge it?


 
He means that you should be reviling me as a transphobic.


----------



## 8ball (Jan 17, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> He means that you should be reviling me as a transphobic.


 
He's on shaky ground when there are so many undisputed grounds for reviling you.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 17, 2013)

8ball said:


> He's on shaky ground when there are so many undisputed grounds for reviling you.


 
True.


----------



## smokedout (Jan 17, 2013)

8ball said:


> Fair point, she's hardly making things better with that - I still don't think it merits an mass-abuse circlejerk, though.


 
i can't fucking stand the liberal twitter cops, or the right wing misogynist shit - but the worst of that mass abuse, and the thing she keeps going on about, was someone tweeting to her why dont you cut your own head off - now there's worse than that on virtually every long running thread on these boards

in some countries journalists get killed, imprisoned and tortured, here they're all whinging (not just moore, laurie, owen and all the rest of them) that someone was a bit rude to them on twitter

its fucking pathetic


----------



## 8ball (Jan 17, 2013)

smokedout said:


> i can't fucking stand the liberal twitter cops, or a lot of the right wing misogynist shit - but the worst of that mass abuse, and the thing she keeps going on about, was someone tweeting to her why dont you cut your own head off - now there's worse than that on virtually every long running thread on these boards


 
I'd read somewhere about physical threats, but if you're trusting the victim to carry it out it loses some of its potency.


----------



## smokedout (Jan 17, 2013)

*suzanne moore* ‏@*suzanne_moore* 
I hear that people have been tweeting my whereabouts tonight. So what exactly are they planning to do?

*Laurie Penny* ‏@*PennyRed* 
People tweeting @*suzanne_moore*'s whereabouts tonight have gone too far. It's not on to make someone feel unsafe because of her views.

*Helen Lewis* ‏@*helenlewis* 
I'm chairing tonight's #*Leveson* debate with @*nickcohen* @*suzanne_moore* & @*DrEvanHarris* - if you can't make it, you can tweet Qs to me

lol


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

Beautiful.


----------



## smokedout (Jan 17, 2013)

8ball said:


> I'd read somewhere about physical threats, but if you're trusting the victim to carry it out it loses some of its potency.


 
i've never seen any evidence of that, more things like this

 *Jᴏᴇ Sᴛᴀᴄᴋ* ‏@*chocoboner* 
@*OwenJones84* lol you're a cheap fucking parody of a socialist who's only in it for the money and you're denouncing karen as a cliche???

again, strong but not unlike something youd read on here and imo not even a bannable offence, to which Jones replied

*Owen Jones* ‏@*OwenJones84* 
@*chocoboner* I'm a lifelong socialist and an activist. I write as a means to an end. And you are just an abusive anonymous troll

apart from the fact he wasn't trolling, who knows whether joe stack is his real name (although it probably isn't) - but i suspect anonymous actually means not famous


----------



## Balbi (Jan 17, 2013)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/lostinshowbiz/2013/jan/17/lindsay-lohan-canyons-go-wrong

Hadley Freeman mistakenly attributes autism as a mental disorder in her column.

Commenter points out it's not, and classing it as such is not ok.

Freeman accepts, rewords, and rings night editor to change tomorrows print edition.

HOW FUCKING EASY WAS THAT!


----------



## Jollity Farm (Jan 18, 2013)

Hadley Freeman doesn't realise her freedom of speech is being curtailed. Someone should get Suzanne Moore on the case.


----------



## Balbi (Jan 18, 2013)

Done now. Moore using her twitter account to label criticism as misogyny and that it's men telling her what to do. Luckily she's got the menopause and it makes her not care.


----------



## teuchter (Jan 18, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> He means that you should be reviling me as a transphobic.


 
It's more about U75's selective blindness, actually.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 18, 2013)

teuchter said:


> It's more about U75's selective blindness, actually.


 
Or rather, your perception of U75's selective blindness.

That you yourself may be blinded by the shining light of your own self-righteousness seems to escape you.


----------



## bi0boy (Jan 18, 2013)

Protest outside Guardian offices


----------



## elbows (Jan 18, 2013)

A 'lesson has been learned' and editorial grovelling of the longer-winded variety has begun.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/18/julie-burchill-and-the-observer?intcmp=239

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2013/jan/18/theobserver-julie-burchill?intcmp=239


----------



## Firky (Jan 18, 2013)

I never complained because I'd rather see journalists hang themselves, but I saw this on Facebook from someone who I am acquainted with, they're gay and I think like to dress as a man when they can. Anyway, they received this response:

Over 800 complaints





> Thank you for your complaint about article published by The Observer on 13 January with the headline “Transsexuals should cut it out”. The Press Complaints Commission received over 800 complaints about this article. I am sorry for the short delay in reverting to you while we processed the complaints.
> 
> When it receives multiple complaints about a single issue, the PCC’s standard procedure is to select a lead complainant for the purposes of its investigation. We have done so and are now investigating the matter using that individual as a correspondent. We will seek to feed all the concerns raised – including under Clause 1 (Accuracy), Clause 4 (Harassment), and Clause 12 (Discrimination) – into this process and will let you know the outcome of our investigation when we can.
> 
> ...


----------



## cesare (Jan 18, 2013)

PCC are spineless cunts though.


----------



## Firky (Jan 18, 2013)

Useless and spineless, but 800+ people went to the bother of complaining.


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 19, 2013)

800's a lot.

Good on your online contact for being no. 799 (or so!) firky.


----------



## Bakunin (Jan 19, 2013)

firky said:


> Useless and spineless


 
Pretty much, yes.

I refer you to the single harshest sanction the PCC can currently deliver according to their own website:



> 6. What is the PCC's greatest sanction?
> 
> 
> The PCC's greatest sanction is issuing a critical adjudication against a newspaper or magazine (see above for a full explanation of this). This is a very strong deterrent which effectively acts as a powerful ‘name and shame' sanction as editors do not like having to publicise their mistakes to their staff, readers and competitors. Under the system of self regulation the publication will then have to publish this text in full on its own pages, with a headline reference to the PCC, and with ‘due prominence'.
> ...





Basically, the PCC's best shot is to tell everybody that you've been naughty and make your paper put in a piece to that effect. Truly terrifying if your editor cares more about sales and circulation than they do about the PCC (most editors couldn't give a damn for the PCC unless they're forced to, by the way).


----------



## newbie (Jan 19, 2013)

8ball said:


> I don't really get the transphobic hostility in some feminist quarters - it's been explained to me as something akin to the women in false beards at the 'men only' meeting in Life Of Brian, but 'the patriarchy' persuading a squad of men to cut their nobs off in order to eavesdrop on some wayward women would surely be too implausible for even Python to run with.


I dunno.  I pretend no understanding, and certainly have no direct knowledge, but it's not hard to find clues like this one, from 2011:




> They believe that females have no rights to any space or service or gathering, public or private, that excludes the presence of males, or that exists for the benefit of female fellowship, or for the protection of females from potential male predation. It’s true! That’s what transgender activists believe, and that is what they are fighting- sometimes literally with violence and terrorism – to enforce on females. It’s also worth noting that female spaces and organizations (whether public or private) that exist for *Lesbian* women are the target of most of the terrorism harassment and boundary violation of these women-hating, homophobic males.
> Some of these male-supremacist activists violate the boundaries of female spaces in the most direct manner. They simply ignore the wishes of the women and insert themselves in female spaces in a hostile act of unwanted penetration.
> Here is a partial list of incidents involving these men at this year’s festival, as posted by Graceaware on the Michfest forum:
> “0.1. a female-born womon is told “I am more woman than you” by a trans woman
> ...


 
and so on.

I've no idea if any of that is true, but the simple fact that some people believe such allegations may help explain the hostility.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 19, 2013)

There's far too much old school (male) politics flying about here. People taking hard-line dualistic positions and 'demanding' rights. Transwimmin (or whatver the pc word is) should be getting on with their own lives more and spending less time pushing for access (a very male feature....) into women-only areas. They see it as a principle but a principle is just an intellectual construct, a head thing. They think they are women but thinking alone does not make it so: the thing happens slowly, over years, as hormones gently work their magick. It's the hormones that do it, not the word on the page nor the thought in the head, nor the attitude you strike. Those transwomen causing the conflict are probably very new on the block, full of the zealotry that marks a person who has just 'come out'. They think there's an important principle here and they want to confront it. But they forget that their main job is not to fight for trans rights but to become women and you don't become a woman by confronting other women and demanding they notice you. That's just boy stuff, 'look-at-me-mummy' stuff.

That said, being politicised in an old-school way, these trans-women know of the decades-old antipathy of feminism towards transsexualism and it is probably that that pushes them. That text quoted above just stinks of transphobia, exaggeration, even outright lies maybe.

Women, traditionally, don't resolve their differences by fighting, by confrontation, but by talking. I think the thing will resolve itself eventually but dualistic male political posturing will only hinder it and won't help it.

Blah blah blah.


----------



## elbows (Jan 19, 2013)

How I hate that site, but I have no problem believing that the occasional problematic incident can occur on either side and then be used by extremists to peddle their hate.

Although in practical terms there is some truth to what you said about hormones, I wouldnt put it like that myself, its a dangerous oversimplification that Im really tempted to find quite offensive, and nor do I intend to lecture anybody else about 'what their job is'.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 19, 2013)

elbows said:


> How I hate that site, but I have no problem believing that the occasional problematic incident can occur on either side and then be used by extremists to peddle their hate.
> 
> Although in practical terms there is some truth to what you said about hormones, I wouldnt put it like that myself, its a dangerous oversimplification that Im really tempted to find quite offensive, and nor do I intend to lecture anybody else about 'what their job is'.


 
Go on, tell me why you think it is an oversimplification and why you might find it offensive. I won't get offended. I'm interested.


----------



## elbows (Jan 19, 2013)

Well I was under the impression that what gender people identify with is a head thing, and that matters a lot. We cant dismiss any aspect of the human condition as simply being an intellectual principal, since we experience everything via our minds, our perceptions of reality are real in their own right, linked to but not completely subservient to physical reality.

And I dont think that its a good idea to suggest that the process of someone changing their body to more accurately reflect the person they are should be mixed together with statements about whether someone is really a woman 'yet' or not. 

I'm not going to go crazy about this because I think I can appreciate what you were trying to get at given what lead us to this particular conversation. eg the talk of erect penises causing problems at womens events or certain attitudes being brought to the party which are going to cause problems. But the very suggestion that some of the trans people are making terrible mistakes at these events because they are still behaving too much like men is a dangerous stance because its using a logic which follows stereotypical ideas about gender, which is surely doomed when it comes to both trans and feminist issues.


----------



## elbows (Jan 19, 2013)

Oh blimey I just realised you are the same person I was arguing with about the use of certain terms. I dont want this to be a repeated personal clash so I'm going to step away now and would like some other people to have their say since I cannot rule out the possibility that there is just something about our mutual use of language which causes friction. Maybe I am wrong, I'm not exactly an expert or authority on these matters.


----------



## gunneradt (Jan 19, 2013)

15 pages on trannies - wonderful


----------



## elbows (Jan 19, 2013)

gunneradt said:


> 15 pages on trannies - wonderful


 
We dont need any pages to realise that the chances of you transitioning into a decent human being are rather slim.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 19, 2013)

elbows said:


> Oh blimey I just realised you are the same person I was arguing with about the use of certain terms. I dont want this to be a repeated personal clash so I'm going to step away now and would like some other people to have their say since I cannot rule out the possibility that there is just something about our mutual use of language which causes friction. Maybe I am wrong, I'm not exactly an expert or authority on these matters.


 
There is no animosity here.  We are both trying to reach some sort of truths, according to our own lights, understandings and experiences.  We differed on the use of a single word, that's all.  I may be looser than you but that may be because of my experiences.  It's a bit late now but I may come back about your larger post tomorrow.....


----------



## gunneradt (Jan 19, 2013)

elbows said:


> We dont need any pages to realise that the chances of you transitioning into a decent human being are rather slim.


 
ha ha - almost funny.  We don't mind if you get your wig out


----------



## Firky (Jan 19, 2013)

gunneradt said:


> 15 pages on trannies - wonderful


 
No. It is about a journalist. You choose only too see the "trannies" part.


----------



## Jollity Farm (Jan 19, 2013)

Considering how many pages there are to some of the whimsical game threads in the general forum, I am not sure why someone decided to come into a thread of only thirteen pages and complain that it was about the thing it is clearly labeled as being about. Unless gunneradt meant "wonderful" quite sincerely, and I doubt (s)he did. Also, Sirena should stop talking about "what women do" as opposed to "what men do". "Women" and "men" are not boxes of identical items for sale, but are a great complicated network of billions of different things that are only very loosely connected by fine threads we call gender. There is no one way that men act as opposed to the one way women act. To say that there is is to do the very thing these radical feminists accuse trans people of doing - engaging in gender-related stereotypes.


----------



## equationgirl (Jan 19, 2013)

gunneradt : this is not a thread to post transphobic comments on. Please stop.


----------



## newbie (Jan 20, 2013)

Sirena said:


> .... old school (male) politics ....a very male feature....... just boy stuff... dualistic male political posturing


 
phew, back on familiar territory!



> Women, traditionally, don't resolve their differences by fighting, by confrontation, but by talking.


has anyone told Moore, Birchill, the women who contribute to gendertrender or the women who wrote the tweets quoted on there?


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 20, 2013)

firky said:


> No. It is about a journalist. You choose only too see the "trannies" part.


That's because he's a narrow-minded rape-apologist right-wing shit-sack.


----------



## Frankie Jack (Jan 20, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> That's because he's a narrow-minded rape-apologist right-wing shit-sack.


You have an excellent way with written verbals VP


----------



## gunneradt (Jan 20, 2013)

equationgirl said:


> gunneradt : this is not a thread to post transphobic comments on. Please stop.


 
ha ha lovely

I could crush a grape


----------



## DotCommunist (Jan 20, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> That's because he's a narrow-minded rape-apologist right-wing shit-sack.


 

good friend to known beasts as well


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 20, 2013)

gunneradt said:


> ha ha lovely
> 
> I could crush a grape


 
Typical. Stealing the catchphrase of someone who's 10x as manly as you'll ever be.

And yeah, I know Stu Francis wasn't that manly. That's the point.


----------



## ViolentPanda (Jan 20, 2013)

DotCommunist said:


> good friend to known beasts as well


 
Hardly surprising, is it?


----------



## Nylock (Jan 20, 2013)

gunneradt said:


> ha ha lovely
> 
> I could crush a grape


I was wondering how long it would be before you came along and stunk up the thread -it's not as if you don't have prior form or anything


----------



## FridgeMagnet (Jan 20, 2013)

I think he should probably stop.


----------



## bi0boy (Jan 20, 2013)

Sirena said:


> Go on, tell me why you think it is an oversimplification and why you might find it offensive. I won't get offended. I'm interested.


 
It doesn't take much knowledge of transsexualism to know that gender isn't defined by hormone treatment. Also, while there might be something to say about different approaches to achieving equality, to say that "demanding rights" = "boy stuff" is, well, I give up.


----------



## Sirena (Jan 20, 2013)

bi0boy said:


> It doesn't take much knowledge of transsexualism to know that gender isn't defined by hormone treatment. Also, while there might be something to say about different approaches to achieving equality, to say that "demanding rights" = "boy stuff" is, well, I give up.


 
I think you will find that sex is determined by hormones and once sex is determined, then gender will tend to follow.  In the womb, both male and female start with the same standard model (men would not have residual nipples otherwise) and, at about 6 weeks, the presence of the y chromosome triggers a flood of testosterone from the mother and the male is determined.  Otherwise the standard model grows to be a female.  Once the child is born, successive floods of hormones trigger the further development of the primary sex characteristics and then the secondary.  These are what makes a man sexually different from a woman.

Gender is a more subtle thing, in large part socialised, but such socialisation is based on the natural characteristics that oestrogen and testosterone produce in humans.  You would have to do some reading up, I'm afraid.

If you give a woman testosterone or a man oestrogen, they will change and that change will not be restricted to physical stuff like muscle development, body hair and fat displacement.  A man will become more placid, be subject more to introspection, emotions and moodiness.  A woman will become more active and forthright and tend towards anger more readily.  The changes, over the years will become quite marked.

I am not saying that hormones are the only thing in determining gender but I think they are overwhelmingly important and, without them, we would not be male and female and Nature would fail.


----------



## bi0boy (Jan 20, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I think you will find that sex is determined by hormones and once sex is determined, then gender will tend to follow....I am not saying that hormones are the only thing in determining gender but I think they are overwhelmingly important and, without them, we would not be male and female and Nature would fail.


 
Ever heard of transexualism? You know, where gender is opposite to the sex of the body and it's hormones?  If you think sex hormones are overwhelmingly important in determining gender perhaps you should speak to some transsexuals that have been through puberty?



> Gender is a more subtle thing, in large part socialised, but such socialisation is based on the natural characteristics that oestrogen and testosterone produce in humans. You would have to do some reading up, I'm afraid.


 
I already posted a link in this thread showing how gender is determined in the womb. Perhaps you are confusing gender identity with gender expression?


----------



## William of Walworth (Jan 20, 2013)

Observer letters page today, Sun 20th.

Stephen Pritchard, Obs Readers editor, on why the Burchill article was wiped.

(That second one was online on Friday, apols if the link's been posted already further up. Just picked up on it in the printed edition today)


----------



## smokedout (Jan 20, 2013)

bi0boy said:


> Ever heard of transexualism? You know, where gender is opposite to the sex of the body and it's hormones? If you think sex hormones are overwhelmingly important in determining gender perhaps you should speak to some transsexuals that have been through puberty?


 
interesting that transgenderism appears to blow a hole in both nature and nurture


----------



## FridgeMagnet (Jan 20, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I think you will find that sex is determined by hormones and once sex is determined, then gender will tend to follow.  ... Gender is a more subtle thing, in large part socialised, but such socialisation is based on the natural characteristics that oestrogen and testosterone produce in humans.  You would have to do some reading up, I'm afraid.
> 
> If you give a woman testosterone or a man oestrogen, they will change and that change will not be restricted to physical stuff like muscle development, body hair and fat displacement.  A man will become more placid, be subject more to introspection, emotions and moodiness.  A woman will become more active and forthright and tend towards anger more readily.  The changes, over the years will become quite marked.
> 
> I am not saying that hormones are the only thing in determining gender but I think they are overwhelmingly important and, without them, we would not be male and female and Nature would fail.


This is the sort of thing that they say, yes. Gender is sex which is binary ("a woman does this, a man does that"). Thanks.


----------



## Balham (Jan 21, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I think you will find that sex is determined by hormones and once sex is determined, then gender will tend to follow.


Think gender might be a social concept. I think when I was younger gender was a word that related to linguistics (masc and fem or neutre in language), now it seems it is a word that one finds on forms to fill in, instead of a question asking Sex the form might ask 'Gender'  .

Physical sex determined by chromosones then at about seven weeks hormones finish thing off but may miss about bits, like the brain so the 'brain sex' or psychological sex' differs to the physical sex.

I knew someonewho is somewhere between the two sexes sort of thing and who would often challenge _'define a man, define a woman'_ . Actually not such an easy thing to do, well, when she was about not, she had an intelligent answer, observation for most peoples interpretations.


----------



## teuchter (Jan 21, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> your own self-righteousness seems to escape you.


...



ViolentPanda said:


> That's because he's a narrow-minded rape-apologist right-wing shit-sack.


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## Balbi (Jan 21, 2013)

Are you boxing for a points decision teuchter? Because everyone else is playing rummy.


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## butchersapron (Jan 31, 2013)

I've just found out that Parsons and Burchill dedicated their book The Boy Looked at Johnny to Menachem Begin.


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## stuff_it (Jan 31, 2013)

Balham said:


> Think gender might be a social concept. I think when I was younger gender was a word that related to linguistics (masc and fem or neutre in language), now it seems it is a word that one finds on forms to fill in, instead of a question asking Sex the form might ask 'Gender' .
> 
> Physical sex determined by chromosones then at about seven weeks hormones finish thing off but may miss about bits, like the brain so the 'brain sex' or psychological sex' differs to the physical sex.
> 
> I knew someonewho is somewhere between the two sexes sort of thing and who would often challenge _'define a man, define a woman'_ . Actually not such an easy thing to do, well, when she was about not, she had an intelligent answer, observation for most peoples interpretations.


I should point out now that many of my gay and trans friends on the free party scene are happy to describe shit music as 'gay' just as any straight person would. In fact they quite revel in it as no one can suggest that it's homophobic.


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## frogwoman (Jan 31, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> I've just found out that Parsons and Burchill dedicated their book The Boy Looked at Johnny to Menachem Begin.


 
  

why??


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## sihhi (Jan 31, 2013)

butchersapron said:


> Burchill dedicated their book The Boy Looked at Johnny to Menachem Begin.


 
 

This is Julie Burchill visiting a private school in Brighton in 2009, as explained by a mainstream pro-Israeli Jew.

http://melpoluck.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/tangled-up-in-jews-but-why/



> She told the Limmud conference -coverage from the JC on the talk here - that at the age of 10 she told her mum she wanted to marry a Jew


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## fogbat (Jan 31, 2013)

Sirena said:


> I think you will find that sex is determined by hormones and once sex is determined, then gender will tend to follow.  In the womb, both male and female start with the same standard model (men would not have residual nipples otherwise) and, at about 6 weeks, the presence of the y chromosome triggers a flood of testosterone from the mother and the male is determined.  Otherwise the standard model grows to be a female.  Once the child is born, successive floods of hormones trigger the further development of the primary sex characteristics and then the secondary.  These are what makes a man sexually different from a woman.
> 
> Gender is a more subtle thing, in large part socialised, but such socialisation is based on the natural characteristics that oestrogen and testosterone produce in humans.  You would have to do some reading up, I'm afraid.
> 
> ...



It is only days ago that you complained about people using science, and derided "book learning".


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## ViolentPanda (Jan 31, 2013)

fogbat said:


> It is only days ago that you complained about people using science, and derided "book learning".


 
Remember, my friend, that according to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines".
And fogbats, so it seems.


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## fogbat (Jan 31, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> Remember, my friend, that according to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines".
> And fogbats, so it seems.


I think I come under "little minds".


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## Santino (Feb 1, 2013)

fogbat said:


> I think I come under "little minds".


And hobgoblin.


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## frogwoman (Feb 1, 2013)

sihhi said:


> This is Julie Burchill visiting a private school in Brighton in 2009, as explained by a mainstream pro-Israeli Jew.
> 
> http://melpoluck.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/tangled-up-in-jews-but-why/


 
ive been to that conference, its not a private school. its like a week long religous/cultural thing. http://www.limmud.org

that sounds pretty distasteful to be honest.


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## butchersapron (Feb 1, 2013)

The event might be but Rodean is a private school...


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## frogwoman (Feb 1, 2013)

i cant see it mentioned anywhere there  iirc the conference is at nottingham uni, that's where it was when i went.


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## butchersapron (Feb 1, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> i cant see it mentioned anywhere there  iirc the conference is at nottingham uni, that's where it was when i went.


They have different ones at different places - the 2009 one was at Rodean.


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## frogwoman (Feb 1, 2013)

ah yeh, fair enough!


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## baldrick (Feb 1, 2013)

Did anyone catch Toby Young's vile tweet about 'giving Suzanne Moore one' so she walks bow-legged for a week?

Deleted now of course, but he's a disgusting specimen of humanity.


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## Bun (Feb 1, 2013)

It was that other slime ball, Delingpole. A head made for butting.


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## William of Walworth (Feb 1, 2013)

Given that in the past Burchill has described herself as Thatcherite and a Stalinist simulaneously, accomodating ultra-fanaticism towards Israel into that spectrum isn't too great a stretch at all.

For her


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## brogdale (Feb 1, 2013)

Bun said:


> It was that other slime ball, Delingpole. A head made for butting.


 
Quite so.

Though I must say that I enjoyed his QT performance...in a kind of 'car crash' manner.

Although at times he looked so odd and cortorted that i wondered if there's something wrong with him...apart from the obvious.


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## teuchter (Feb 6, 2013)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-l...honest-intentions-was-Guy-Fawkes/318151134603

Marvellous.


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## elbows (Feb 6, 2013)

And posting it, especially in this thread, helps in what way exactly?


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 6, 2013)

elbows said:


> And posting it, especially in this thread, helps in what way exactly?


 
it doesn't. It doesn't even help teuchter. It just makes people think "that teuchter's a bit of a fixated cunt, isn't he?".


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## elbows (Feb 6, 2013)

Well I cant say I was especially delighted with what your posts that he previously tried to point people towards were saying. But I was primarily interested in hate filled articles that are actually read by lots of people, as opposed to trying to unwind whatever the history and baggage is between you two and make judgements about what is acceptable humour in a situation I cant be arsed to understand.


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## teuchter (Feb 7, 2013)

Well, facebook is actually read by lots of people.

Comments on facebook are often interesting to compare with comments on urban because of the different cross sections of people they represent.

Seems to be a bit of ambiguity about whether or not "people on urban" really see the kind of casual transphobia exhibited by that picture (and by certain people here) as a serious issue.

There are now quite a lot of comments under that picture on facebook.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

teuchter said:


> Well, facebook is actually read by lots of people.


 
My comments about being read by a lot of people were in relation to the old post(s) on another thread by ViolentPanda that you tried to draw attention to here, and how I couldnt be arsed to try to figure out the context of that spat, and I was suggesting that it hardly offended the trans community or threatened them in the way the disgusting Burchill piece did. That doesnt mean I find casual transphobia to be acceptable in any way, and I was quite happy to run the risk of coming across as a tedious fart by picking on a poster earlier in this thread who thought they were knowledgeable on trans matters but in fact appeared to be at best woefully misinformed about the acceptable use of language and what gender might actually be.



> Seems to be a bit of ambiguity about whether or not "people on urban" really see the kind of casual transphobia exhibited by that picture (and by certain people here) as a serious issue.


 
Nobody should kid themselves that u75 is sorted on this front. It blatantly isnt because there are still posters who get away with everything from transphobia to even more basic stuff, bonkers comments about 'the gays'. We may assume that they are left to their dribbling because they are either known bigots, socially conservative throwbacks or the village idiot who talks complete shit when (frequently) drunk, or arent worthy of the attention, but that doesnt exactly make it right.

What I find more disturbing is that a well respected poster who has plenty of knowledge and insight into the subject, appeared to throw their hands up in despair on more than one occasion and declare that they were giving up discussing the subject seriously here quite some time ago, long before this thread. Presumably this was because they were beyond bored, offended or enraged by the range of ignorant responses they routinely received as people stumbled around trans and gender subjects as if the last 40 years never happened. And if I recall correctly, on the occasions they ran into this stuff, they didnt exactly get a lot of obvious backup from the u75 masses, no matter how sound various peoples attitudes towards this stuff may be. They were allowed to give up without an outcry of support, without a mass recognition of our collective failures to address the problems, the ignorance, etc. The very fact that I've been so vocal on this thread is another worrying sign, because although I care about these issues quite a bit, its not an area I have an especially deep understanding of myself. So when its left to me to drone on about it, I assume things aint right.


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## toggle (Feb 7, 2013)

urban isn't sorted on a lot of fronts. a banning of someone for baiting on a disability thread was widely opposed. there's a fair few posters who deliberately post up sexist funnies when women try to discuss their expereinces of living with sexism. and the recent threads on gay marriage really brought out some deeply unpleasent homophobia.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

And even if we somehow reached a point where we were sorted most of the time, the big challenge will always be when it is tempting to apply these issues cruelly against people deemed worthy of our hate. Thatcher and Cameron are hated for obvious reasons, and this will lead to a drop of standards and revelations about how far attitudes about certain things havent really come. A classic u75 example that springs to mind would be the thread about David Shayler when he developed a female alter ego. We wouldnt expect that situation to give rise to sensible discussion about gender and trans issues, because of the baggage he brought with him, ie the reasons people had for already disliking him, and indeed it did not.

Likewise u75 can feature people preaching sophisticated positions regarding issues such as mental health, drug addiction and autism, yet that offers few barriers against venom and hate on the occasions that someone struggling with one or more of these issues ends up talking shit here. It seems inevitable that such situations will quickly give rise to u75's equivalent of George Galloway on Big Brother saying 'poor me, poor me, poor me another drink' to Michael Barrymore, with the excuse that Barrymore has baggage and was behaving like a control freak at the time with some sinister menacing undertones oozing out of the tv set.

And it only takes a woman in the public eye to have a dodgy political opinion about something to unleash a stream of sexist, violent language or crude comments about how she looks. Or a closeted Tory suffering innuendo in the press to open the gates and let flow the nudge-nudge wink wink playground smears against teh gays. I dont see this changing, and the most I expect I'll be able to do about it is to simply acknowledge it once in a while.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

Apologies to toggle that Ive been tweaking my posts immediately after posting them, possibly causing them to like something thats since undergone the addition of a few sentences.


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## toggle (Feb 7, 2013)

you're ok there.


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## ymu (Feb 7, 2013)

Jollity Farm said:


> Considering how many pages there are to some of the whimsical game threads in the general forum, I am not sure why someone decided to come into a thread of only thirteen pages and complain that it was about the thing it is clearly labeled as being about. Unless gunneradt meant "wonderful" quite sincerely, and I doubt (s)he did. Also, Sirena should stop talking about "what women do" as opposed to "what men do". "Women" and "men" are not boxes of identical items for sale, but are a great complicated network of billions of different things that are only very loosely connected by fine threads we call gender. There is no one way that men act as opposed to the one way women act. To say that there is is to do the very thing these radical feminists accuse trans people of doing - engaging in gender-related stereotypes.


I don't agree with the tone or content of Sirena's posts, but I think there is a serious point in there.

I do not agree with those 'feminists' who want to exclude trans-women from the domain of all that is female, but social conditioning has a much bigger effect on behaviour than biology. All men have to put some effort and empathy into understanding what it is like to be a woman, and many of them fail to do so in spectacularly offensive ways. There is absolutely no reason to think that trans-women will automatically get it when cis-men don't.

That is not to dismiss their own struggle or insist that it is separate from other struggles around sex and sexism, it is simply to point out that people who have been brought up as male (whether or not that is a personal tragedy) have a different perspective on the world, different ways of interacting with it and different expectations of how others will treat them and how they can treat others.

Working-class feminists have exactly the same problem with (some) middle-class feminists asserting their own agendas with the confidence and aggressiveness that comes with their life experience. But middle-class voices are louder, so they don't get excluded. More's the pity.


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## co-op (Feb 7, 2013)

elbows said:


> What I find more disturbing is that a well respected poster who has plenty of knowledge and insight into the subject, appeared to throw their hands up in despair on more than one occasion and declare that they were giving up discussing the subject seriously here quite some time ago, long before this thread. Presumably this was because they were beyond bored, offended or enraged by the range of ignorant responses they routinely received as people stumbled around trans and gender subjects* as if the last 40 years never happened.* .


 
I'd like to make a small plea for understanding people who unwittingly say things which are offensive. When you talk about the "last 40 years" I think you might not realise how little some of these topics have crossed over into the mainstream. I was active in leftish squatting circles in London in the 1980s and what is now called identity politics were _really really_ flavour of the day - for every political discussion involving class there were 10 or more on gender, sexuality and race (or at least that's how it seems to me now when I recall it). And this was partly because a lot of those issues were really pressing ones - many squats had women in them that were fleeing domestic violence and had no where to go, I was in Brixton and racist policing was an everyday problem, homphobia was again an everyday problem - the idea of safe spaces seemed extra important (I think) because the wider society was often (probably usually) aggressively hostile.

Anyway that's by way of a preamble to say I've had quite a lot of exposure to the general topic and I've taken part in debates which seemed to talk it from one end to the other and back again. But before the Suzanne Moore article I had never heard of "cis-gendered" and only heard of "intersectionality" on the manarchists thread on here in the past 12 months. And I couldn't be arsed to look up "intersectionality" before the recent transgendered rumpus when it seemed like it was a word that was going to be around for a while. I'm still not sure if I really know what it means because frankly it's unlikely to come up in my everyday working life. It's like the melt down of the SWP - it just doesn't matter.

My point is that it's very easy to say the wrong thing if you haven't been part of the debate and getting massively self-righteously angry with people for doing so is just vanity (NB not saying you are doing this but my god I have seen plenty of it on this kind of topic on the internet - U75 included - in the past month or two). The fact that someone has been inducted into a debate early and can stamp around scolding anyone else who uses the "wrong" words is more likely to be a sign that the scolder is a member of (or very close to) a privileged in-group who gets to decide what is and isn't acceptable language in the future. 

I guess this has all been done to death on here but when you talk of "ignorant responses" I find that my response is to think - well that includes me half the time, and if it includes me then that's going to be quite a lot of the population.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

I'm sure it also includes me! Although I find it easy to start sneering at and condemning ignorance, I dont think its a shootable offence or a completely solvable problem. Its when ignorance is used to justify the terrible treatment of someone or a group, that we should be looking to stand against the ignorami with urgency.

Personally I am a perpetual outsider with few opportunities to put anything I've learnt into practical use, apart from woffling on here about whatever subjects take my fancy. The bottom line for me, despite my often harsh criticisms, is that I'd rather have people speak their minds and run the risk of putting the foot in it, than have silence.

And the timing of this thread exposed something of a dilemma when it comes to identity politics, because immediately prior to the Suzanne Moore thing exploding on twitter people had been busy taking the piss out of identity politics and its failings.


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## ymu (Feb 7, 2013)

There's nothing wrong with being ignorant of other people's experiences and sensitivities. There is something very wrong with being told that you're ignorant and refusing to do something about it. Some people jump on others too quickly, but that's partly because there are plenty who are wilfully ignorant and do it deliberately.

The excesses of identity politics are partly at fault here. Parts of the left are reclaiming the ground for class-based politics, quite rightly, but the subtleties of the valid critiques of identity politics are often lost in translation. The take home message for some seems to be "-isms don't matter at all" rather than "-isms divide the class and these middle-class wankers are co-opting these struggles to pretend that class doesn't matter at all". Merely mentioning an -ism can get you accused of identity politics in some circles, and it's definitely used by some 'would rather not be reconstructed' types to close down debate that they find uncomfortable.


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## cesare (Feb 7, 2013)

^ absolutely


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## toggle (Feb 7, 2013)

Speaking from my own expereinces dealing with my own issues, I don't think it's necessarily ignorance that is th issue. ignorance can be excusable when it is based on lack of exposure to the ideas. it is when someone is willfully ignorant. demands education, nitpicks the resources offered to them rather than attempting to understand them and then goes on to defend either their position, or their right to be ignorant, or starts posting up bullshit to stifle debate.

ti's like mrsfran 's thread. on her experiences of having deaf parents and growing up with deaf culture. Lot of people there who were coming from a position of not having a clue. but no one telling fran her expereinces were wrong. or trying to stop her discussing them so the not knowing was not a problem so much as an opourtunity to learn. that's a huge difference in approach.


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## co-op (Feb 7, 2013)

toggle said:


> Speaking from my own expereinces dealing with my own issues, I don't think it's necessarily ignorance that is th issue. *ignorance can be excusable when it is based on lack of exposure to the ideas. it is when someone is willfully ignorant.* demands education, nitpicks the resources offered to them rather than attempting to understand them and then goes on to defend either their position, or their right to be ignorant, or starts posting up bullshit to stifle debate.


 
This (the bolded bit) very much. I think there are two meanings of the word 'ignorant' - there's 'just not knowing' (a bit like that line they used to use on the easy rounds of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? - "it's only easy if you know the answer") but there's also "ignoring" - i.e. being presented with the info and choosing to pretend you haven't been.

And the "ignoring" meaning is likely to be the political one anyway because when people ignore something that's a choice and it'll be based on all sorts of other pressures from 'wanting to fit in' to 'believing what the priest says' or whatever. Not knowing something isn't a choice.

Let me give an example - articul8 - everyone's favourite whipping boy (I can't join in because I've used all his lines too often in the past, I was that political position) let slip on a thread about sex work that it clearly hadn't occurred to him that a female prostitute might be married and he got flamed out of sight (mostly because he's a Labour apologist-fantasist I'd guess). But it was kind of obvious that he just didn't know that this might be the case. Now this might be a borderline case because ?maybe it betrays a lack of imagination about other peoples' lives but I bet this is a very common assumption. That's just not knowing; now he does. As I said the flaming is probably to do with other things anyway but I thought a lot of the "_of course_ prostitutes can be married" posting was just the vanity of being in the know - I bet some of them only learned that second hand off the internet a couple of weeks earlier.

NB I do not know about my use of the word "prostitute" here - seriously.



toggle said:


> ti's like mrsfran 's thread. on her experiences of having deaf parents and growing up with deaf culture. Lot of people there who were coming from a position of not having a clue. but no one telling fran her expereinces were wrong. or trying to stop her discussing them so the not knowing was not a problem so much as an opourtunity to learn. that's a huge difference in approach.


 
God bless the internet for this kind of thing, you can get a look into someone elses life and experiences without all the media intermediaries that we have to put up with normally.

I mean the lesson maybe is to not sound off about what you don't know and then you won't get flamed, but for me a lot of that is about growing up and I've said before I'm glad I didn't have to deal with the internet when I was in my teens and twenties and much more of a gobshite than I am now.


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## ymu (Feb 7, 2013)

co-op said:


> And the "ignoring" meaning is likely to be the political one anyway because when people ignore something that's a choice and it'll be based on all sorts of other pressures from 'wanting to fit in' to 'believing what the priest says' or whatever. Not knowing something isn't a choice.


I swear half the time no one knows what butchersapron is talking about but they're too afraid to say so. 

(Not a dig, butchers. It happens because you're usually right, dammit. )


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## Frances Lengel (Feb 7, 2013)

He watches some decent films as well - I'd never have heard of Wake In Fright if it wasn't for butchers.


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## toggle (Feb 7, 2013)

co-op said:


> I mean the lesson maybe is to not sound off about what you don't know and then you won't get flamed, but for me a lot of that is about growing up and I've said before I'm glad I didn't have to deal with the internet when I was in my teens and twenties and much more of a gobshite than I am now.


 
nods. I don't comment on a lot of the history of politics threads, cause i'm painfully aware of my lack of understanding of anyhting other than the mainstream of the late 19th century. and i'm only just coming to terms with that. i do understand some of the sisues involved in gender, because a very lovelly transman spent some time pointing me in the direction of where i might educate myself, and explaining his expereinces because being young, black, living the wrong life and being the far less common transition gave him a very interesting perspective on some of these issues. i owe him for his patience.


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## co-op (Feb 7, 2013)

ymu said:


> I swear half the time no one knows what butchersapron is talking about but they're too afraid to say so.
> 
> (Not a dig, butchers. It happens because you're usually right, dammit. )


 
Oi! I wasn't calling out ba - everyone steamed into a8 on the one I mentioned!

Pax ba. Pax.


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## ymu (Feb 7, 2013)

He's a scary fucker, eh.


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## co-op (Feb 7, 2013)

ymu said:


> He's a scary fucker, eh.


 
Well I have my own machismo issues so I probably picked an argument or two with him just to show I don't mind having a pop at the Big Guy, pub stuff really bit childish really. But I have plenty of respect for what he knows.


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 7, 2013)

elbows said:


> And even if we somehow reached a point where we were sorted most of the time, the big challenge will always be when it is tempting to apply these issues cruelly against people deemed worthy of our hate. Thatcher and Cameron are hated for obvious reasons, and this will lead to a drop of standards and revelations about how far attitudes about certain things havent really come. A classic u75 example that springs to mind would be the thread about David Shayler when he developed a female alter ego. We wouldnt expect that situation to give rise to sensible discussion about gender and trans issues, because of the baggage he brought with him, ie the reasons people had for already disliking him, and indeed it did not.
> 
> Likewise u75 can feature people preaching sophisticated positions regarding issues such as mental health, drug addiction and autism, yet that offers few barriers against venom and hate on the occasions that someone struggling with one or more of these issues ends up talking shit here. It seems inevitable that such situations will quickly give rise to u75's equivalent of George Galloway on Big Brother saying 'poor me, poor me, poor me another drink' to Michael Barrymore, with the excuse that Barrymore has baggage and was behaving like a control freak at the time with some sinister menacing undertones oozing out of the tv set.
> 
> And it only takes a woman in the public eye to have a dodgy political opinion about something to unleash a stream of sexist, violent language or crude comments about how she looks. Or a closeted Tory suffering innuendo in the press to open the gates and let flow the nudge-nudge wink wink playground smears against teh gays. I dont see this changing, and the most I expect I'll be able to do about it is to simply acknowledge it once in a while.


 
People are human. They're susceptible to exhibiting their worst, as well as their best qualities.

BTW, your aside about the "closeted Tory" (only slightly) misses the point that one of the reasons he was so heavily slammed on Urban and suffered innuendo in the press was his perceived hypocrisy, given his voting record on gay issues. Does anyone slam "out" gay Tories for their sexuality? Not so much, IME. They have, at least, had the courage of their convictions.  People, for example, stopped trading innuendo about Portillo at pretty much the same time he admitted that the rumours of his "experiments with homosexuality" during his uni years were true.


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 7, 2013)

toggle said:


> urban isn't sorted on a lot of fronts. a banning of someone for baiting on a disability thread was widely opposed.


 
In fact a lot of those who opposed the ban (of a poster who's serially-returned since then) couldn't even see what he'd done wrong.



> there's a fair few posters who deliberately post up sexist funnies when women try to discuss their expereinces of living with sexism. and the recent threads on gay marriage really brought out some deeply unpleasent homophobia.


 
As well as some repulsive "moral conservatism"-based arguments that don't make any sense unless you do actually think that LGBT people are somehow of less social value than heterosexuals.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

ymu said:


> He's a scary fucker, eh.


 
I got pretty damn scared when he praised more than one of my posts . Shit, dont tell me I actually have a clue what I'm talking about sometimes, normally I see this guy pissing all over peoples inadequacies and feeble positions, how have I gradually managed to avoid this fate  despite not being very well read on stuff that really matters? Did I manage to somewhat overcome my middle-class upbringing by treating footage of molotov cocktail throwing in Egypt as some kind of political sporting event?


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 7, 2013)

elbows said:


> I'm sure it also includes me! Although I find it easy to start sneering at and condemning ignorance, I dont think its a shootable offence or a completely solvable problem. Its when ignorance is used to justify the terrible treatment of someone or a group, that we should be looking to stand against the ignorami with urgency.
> 
> Personally I am a perpetual outsider with few opportunities to put anything I've learnt into practical use, apart from woffling on here about whatever subjects take my fancy. The bottom line for me, despite my often harsh criticisms, is that I'd rather have people speak their minds and run the risk of putting the foot in it, than have silence.
> 
> And the timing of this thread exposed something of a dilemma when it comes to identity politics, because immediately prior to the Suzanne Moore thing exploding on twitter people had been busy taking the piss out of identity politics and its failings.


 
Identity politics as a tool for encoding and decoding specific arguments are fine by me. Where they fall down, in my opinion, is when those tools are seen as the only valid analytic devices through which to filter any and all political and social arguments. It leaves no room, for example, for class: Probably the greatest overarching theme through which such arguments should (in my opinion) be analysed.


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## ymu (Feb 7, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> BTW, your aside about the "closeted Tory" (only slightly) misses the point that one of the reasons he was so heavily slammed on Urban and suffered innuendo in the press was his perceived hypocrisy, given his voting record on gay issues. Does anyone slam "out" gay Tories for their sexuality? Not so much, IME. They have, at least, had the courage of their convictions. People, for example, stopped trading innuendo about Portillo at pretty much the same time he admitted that the rumours of his "experiments with homosexuality" during his uni years were true.


That is true, but some of the innuendo crossed way over that line. The veneer of political correctness is sometimes paper thin (silver Rizla paper, that is).


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 7, 2013)

ymu said:


> That is true, but some of the innuendo crossed way over that line. The veneer of political correctness is sometimes paper thin (silver Rizla paper, that is).


 
Not wishing to be combative, but I'd rather people didn't feel constrained by ideas of political correctness in debate - in my opinion it makes it easier to educate people if you can show them "what's wrong" without reference to some nebulous concept of what is or isn't permissible to say for social/political reasons. I'd rather they can be shown "what's wrong" through reference to their own humanity and their lived experience as a social animal. If they then can't see that they're in error, there's no reason at all not to tear into them for being asocial shiteaters.


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## ymu (Feb 7, 2013)

Without being combative, that comment was in no way supportive of 'political correctness'. Quite the opposite.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> People are human. They're susceptible to exhibiting their worst, as well as their best qualities.
> 
> BTW, your aside about the "closeted Tory" (only slightly) misses the point that one of the reasons he was so heavily slammed on Urban and suffered innuendo in the press was his perceived hypocrisy, given his voting record on gay issues. Does anyone slam "out" gay Tories for their sexuality? Not so much, IME. They have, at least, had the courage of their convictions. People, for example, stopped trading innuendo about Portillo at pretty much the same time he admitted that the rumours of his "experiments with homosexuality" during his uni years were true.


 
Oh thats a big part of it but I'm always keen to pick on the trickier stuff that I've never been convinced is simply based on the crime of hypocrisy. And there is no way you'll convince me that most of the innuendo in the press was based on a dislike of hypocrisy.

The allegations about paedophiles in high places provided me with numerous opportunities to further observe related phenomenon, including a rehashing of some of the stuff you just mentioned and new varieties of it, especially when Cameron went on about the danger of gay witch-hunts - I was surprised how many people managed to deliberately avoid exploring what valid point he may actually have so they could just wibble on about fresh cover-ups, tory scum and sinister gays.


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 7, 2013)

elbows said:


> Oh thats a big part of it but I'm always keen to pick on the trickier stuff that I've never been convinced is simply based on the crime of hypocrisy. And there is no way you'll convince me that most of the innuendo in the press was based on a dislike of hypocrisy.


 
Personally, the only innuendo against foetus-boy that I found beyond-the-pale was that so many journos (and others) were happy to beat him over the head with the fact of his marriage's childlessness, as if that meant that he was obviously homosexual. As it was, he and his wife had a perfectly reasonable (but sad) explanation for it, something they shouldn't have needed to publicly-disclose.



> The allegations about paedophiles in high places provided me with numerous opportunities to further observe related phenomenon, including a rehashing of some of the stuff you just mentioned and new varieties of it, especially when Cameron went on about the danger of gay witch-hunts - I was surprised how many people managed to deliberately avoid exploring what valid point he may actually have so they could just wibble on about fresh cover-ups, tory scum and sinister gays.


 
Unfortunately, we're all prey to speculation, in the absence of hard data. The best people can do in such a situation is either to shut up (unlikely!) or to couch their speculation within the framework of what is already known, and the context in which it occurred (hence, for example, me mentioning the firebombing and death of a household on the south coast that contained several former carees who were bringing a complaint against their local authority). Unfortunately, some people prefer to let their creative instincts have free rein, rather than staying within the bounds of reason and knowledge.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> Identity politics as a tool for encoding and decoding specific arguments are fine by me. Where they fall down, in my opinion, is when those tools are seen as the only valid analytic devices through which to filter any and all political and social arguments. It leaves no room, for example, for class: Probably the greatest overarching theme through which such arguments should (in my opinion) be analysed.


 
I'm pretty underwhelmed by the crude way that the language of class is often applied to political discussions, as soon as it goes beyond the important core themes, eg political and economic analysis by the likes of Marx. It strikes me as often descending into another variety of crude sectarianism that actually plays into divide-and-conquer politics of the damned. If we dont want to be left eternally groaning at the sight of middle or upper class people pretending to be working class, drooling unproductively all over the place as a result of guilt and angst, or mangling, subverting or hijacking a variety of causes or movements, some kind of inclusive approach is required.  Seeing the baby thrown out with the bathwater when it comes to everything from movements and struggles, useful press, identity politics etc because the non-working class whose hearts and politics are actually in the right place feel the need to overcompensate badly for the sins of their parents, privilege and indoctrination, doesnt seem useful to me. It doesnt seem very inclusive or part of a real solution, it seems to be condemning swathes of people for no good reason. 

Bollocks to it. I no more intend to feel guilty about who I am and my background than I intend to patronise the working classes or deny them the opportunities I was lucky enough to have (and, incidentally, squander). And although I was so utterly class-blind at the time that I only realised it years later, one of the people who had the soundest and most just politics that I've ever met, appears to have had a family background so upper class that I believe someone once threw a bomb at one of her ancestors elephants! Her families historical role in empire does not stand in the way of her ability to work for the common good in the 21st century, probably quite the opposite.


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 7, 2013)

elbows said:


> I'm pretty underwhelmed by the crude way that the language of class is often applied to political discussions, as soon as it goes beyond the important core themes, eg political and economic analysis by the likes of Marx.


 
You have to start from a "crude" base in order to get to the good stuff, though. People, even those who're well-informed, tend to perceive class through a conflictual lens, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.



> It strikes me as often descending into another variety of crude sectarianism that actually plays into divide-and-conquer politics of the damned.


 
My issue with what you're saying reduces to "without retaining awareness of the roles that the various classes have historically played, we (as a people) lose any sense of what is or is not acceptable, of what may or may not work". It's not crude sectarianism if what you're saying is "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me". "Divide and conquer" isn't divide and conquer if it stops a movement being subsumed by another movement with different goals.



> If we dont want to be left eternally groaning at the sight of middle or upper class people pretending to be working class, drooling unproductively all over the place as a result of guilt and angst, or mangling, subverting or hijacking a variety of causes or movements, some kind of inclusive approach is required. Seeing the baby thrown out with the bathwater when it comes to everything from movements and struggles, useful press, identity politics etc because the non-working class whose hearts and politics are actually in the right place feel the need to overcompensate badly for the sins of their parents, privilege and indoctrination, doesnt seem useful to me. It doesnt seem very inclusive or part of a real solution, it seems to be condemning swathes of people for no good reason.


 
I have plenty of time for individuals. What I don't have time for is the embodiment of the _bourgeoisie_ and the ruling class. I'm not going to spit on an individual who wants to lend a hand or a brain, or even a group of individuals. I am going to spit on any group that pretends to represent my values in order solely to capture my loyalty, and then proceeds to piss on me.
As for people manifesting "middle class guilt", what sort of idiot feels guilty for something they had nothing to do with, that pre-existed their birth? What sort of idiot castigates an individual for something they had nothing to do with, that pre-existed their birth?



> Bollocks to it. I no more intend to feel guilty about who I am and my background than I intend to patronise the working classes or deny them the opportunities I was lucky enough to have (and, incidentally, squander). And although I was so utterly class-blind at the time that I only realised it years later, one of the people who had the soundest and most just politics that I've ever met, appears to have had a family background so upper class that I believe someone once threw a bomb at one of her ancestors elephants! Her families historical role in empire does not stand in the way of her ability to work for the common good in the 21st century, probably quite the opposite.


 
The thing with class-blindness is that it mostly only manifess in those whose situation *allows* them to be blind to it.   Having your nose rubbed daily in your perceived social inferiority opens your eyes early!


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

I like everything you've said there. And I would expect that I've made my points badly since its probably the first time I've ever tried to explain my feelings on this.

I am not advocating class blindness, or a denial of the historical and contemporary role of classes in society, economic and power structures, etc. 

Nor do I do know much about middle class guilt. What I am probably keen to explore is what causes a person such as Laurie Penny to turn out the way they do, and how productive the variety of attacks on her and her ilk actually are. As such, I find the way you have put things in your post to be a very good starting point that avoids most of what I was moaning about. Perhaps what I am trying to get at is whether some of these people who are doing harm, actually still have the potential to have values that are in alignment with the rascal multitude and just struggle, but they need help to get there. And that attacking them in certain ways is counterproductive as it leads to a defensiveness which reinforces their unsavoury values rather than the ones that have potential. Perhaps I am just too naive or charitable, but I dont like to give up on anyone who isnt a right wing, hate filled exploitative bag of shit. And there do seem to be rather a lot of people whose hearts are in the right place but whose heads have gone wrong, and that seems like a crucial waste that hampers struggle significantly. This is probably also why I've easted much time on comspiraloons who dont actually seem to be right0wing but end up hoovering up right0wing agendas due to an imbaance of cynicism and knowledge.

I'm sure these posts of mine are not exactly my finest hour but I thought I'd take the risk of stumbling badly into this territory anyway, I dont mind making a fool of myself.


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## ymu (Feb 7, 2013)

There's nothing unreasonable in what you say elbows, but it ignores the fundamental problem. Middle-class lefties have louder voices - not just in terms of access to the media but also in terms of their ability to dominate discussion simply because they have the confidence and articulacy and sense of entitlement afforded by their life experience. And it does damage because middle-class preoccupations get priority and working-class priorities get side-lined.

Why does identity politics virtually ignore class? Because it was hijacked by the middle-class left.

Why has feminism landed us in a situation where two partners have to be in work to earn the same spending power as one did thirty years ago when there's still the same amount of housework and childcare to do (and still mostly done by women)? Because it was hijacked by middle-class women whose primary concern is access to the same jobs and salaries as middle-class men. The cleaner and the nanny can sort the rest out when they've abandoned their leftist principles in favour of convenience.

It's not about criticising someone for the circumstances of their birth or choices their parents made (although plenty of that does go on), it's about asking middle-class lefties to work on their perspective before stomping all over the agenda. In exactly the same way as men would be asked to at a meeting about sexual equality. Those who have the privilege need the humility to just shut the fuck up and listen.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> The thing with class-blindness is that it mostly only manifess in those whose situation *allows* them to be blind to it.  Having your nose rubbed daily in your perceived social inferiority opens your eyes early!


 
In my case it may be because other social inferiorities trumped it. I have yet to even partially recover from being told I was ugly, uncool, unloveable, a loser with no sporting ability who would grow old and die a sad lonely wanker. The relative safehaven of academic success did not last past GCSE level, and relishing in my own geekiness is not proving to be an adequate substitute for having a life. A perpetual lack of wealth/security and an inability to ever earn anything approaching £20k+ a year adds to the sense of underdog chip on shoulder.

I'm aware that this personal woe is me shit is not on topic, but it is an attempt to explain why I may have some vague understanding of struggle despite being white, male & middle class.


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 7, 2013)

elbows said:


> In my case it may be because other social inferiorities trumped it. I have yet to even partially recover from being told I was ugly, uncool, unloveable, a loser with no sporting ability who would grow old and die a sad lonely wanker. The relative safehaven of academic success did not last past GCSE level, and relishing in my own geekiness is not proving to be an adequate substitute for having a life. A perpetual lack of wealth/security and an inability to ever earn anything approaching £20k+ a year adds to the sense of underdog chip on shoulder.
> 
> I'm aware that this personal woe is me shit is not on topic, but it is an attempt to explain why I may have some vague understanding of struggle despite being white, male & middle class.


 
I'll take you off "the list" and put you on secret probation, in that case.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> I'll take you off "the list" and put you on secret probation, in that case.


 
Be sure to send me regular evaluation reports so that I know whether I am slipping back into condemned territory. I like to dwell on my fate in advance.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

ymu said:


> There's nothing unreasonable in what you say elbows, but it ignores the fundamental problem. Middle-class lefties have louder voices - not just in terms of access to the media but also in terms of their ability to dominate discussion simply because they have the confidence and articulacy and sense of entitlement afforded by their life experience. And it does damage because middle-class preoccupations get priority and working-class priorities get side-lined.


 
I am interested as to whether there is any likely escape from that problem. How come relatively few working class people managed to gain the confidence etc during the generation or two that actually did have better educational opportunities? Teachers still being knobs and sucking all the confidence out of kids from an early age, peers & family taking the piss out of swots and eggheads or what?

And, for those that did manage to gain a level of confidence, articulation and expectation, were they able to blend these skills authentically with working class priorities and their roots or did it make them rather likely to end up with the same priorities and shortcoming as those middle class for whom that journey was often much easier?

Dennis Potter is an obvious example, since early in his career he publicly struggled with the gulf that his educational opportunities set up between him and his family & community. He said something on the telly that hurt his dad, and it seems hard to change your communication abilities and forms without affecting the essence of social relations, identity, priorities etc.


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## ymu (Feb 7, 2013)

There's a bit of a difference between being born middle-class and becoming middle-class.

If you were born middle-class, you never expected to end up working for minimum wage or thought you had to work particularly hard to avoid it. Your parents peer group are mostly highish earners and you know the kinds of opportunities out there for the taking. Yeah, education matters and if you can get good grades, go for it. You'll have your own space to work, always plenty of food in the house, no going to school hungry, usually at least one parent around to help with schoolwork because they're neither working two jobs nor afraid of their own lack of knowledge, probably not many of your classmates going hungry or being neglected (financially, at least), so getting good grades should be pretty easy. But if you can't be arsed or school doesn't suit you, it's fine. Mum or dad can introduce you to some people who'll give you a job if they don't have any jobs to offer you themselves. Or they'll pay for private tuition, or if you fuck your degree up, they'll pay for a masters to make up for it.

It's got fuck all to do with what people do with the opportunities afforded to them. It has everything to do with expectations and the ease with which doors open.

A lad from a 'troubled' family used to come and visit me when things got fraught at home. He turned up one Friday night for a session on the playstation and was gutted to find me packing to go away for the weekend. I was going straight to a meeting for work after that so I was packing books as well as clothes and shit.

"Why do you need books? "
"You need books for work? What kind of work is that?"
"You get to work on a computer all day? Really? They pay you to work on a computer? Fucking hell, that's cool!"

He'd just been excluded from school and his mother was refusing to speak to the head about it. Fed up with middle-class do-gooders making her life harder. What chances did he have, really?

You need to know what the options are before you can take advantage of the opportunities out there, and you need to know that you have a decent shot at getting there to find the energy to even try.


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

ymu said:


> If you were born middle-class, you never expected to end up working for minimum wage or thought you had to work particularly hard to avoid it. Your parents peer group are mostly highish earners and you know the kinds of opportunities out there for the taking. Yeah, education matters and if you can get good grades, go for it. You'll have your own space to work, always plenty of food in the house, no going to school hungry, usually at least one parent around to help with schoolwork because they're neither working two jobs nor afraid of their own lack of knowledge, probably not many of your classmates going hungry or being neglected (financially, at least), so getting good grades should be pretty easy. But if you can't be arsed or school doesn't suit you, it's fine. Mum or dad can introduce you to some people who'll give you a job if they don't have any jobs to offer you themselves. Or they'll pay for private tuition, or if you fuck your degree up, they'll pay for a masters to make up for it.


 
This is why I find working & middle class labels rather inadequate at times. My parents were teachers, so I had the benefit of help getting started with learning and reading, space at home to work, and I never went hungry. But my parents only seemed to know other teachers, and knew nobody who could give me a job. Hell I struggled to even find a weeks work experience placement. There was no money for a new family car, foreign holidays, private tuition, and we had a variety of 2nd hand televisions until I was about 12. I'd never have gone to university if it wasnt for the maintenance grant & lack of tuition fees, and when I was at school people took the piss because I grew out of my trousers too quickly and my mum had to turn down the bottoms. When I fucked up my degree I ended up working in a factory and eventually got myself a job in a computer shop where I got to watch the boss charge me out at £35+VAT per hour while I earnt something like £4.60 an hour. When I went round working class peoples homes their furnishings and electronic goods were way nicer than ours, but the areas they lived in were far rougher. And at my last place of work, which I lingered in for over a decade before it went bust, I saw a succession of working class people find jobs there with relative ease because they drank in the same pub as the owners or were related in some way. And when I pop round their houses to look at their computers for them, their kids have way more stuff than I ever had. On reflection, most of my school, college & uni friends had middle-class background that were a lot closer to what you describe, but I was only vaguely aware of it at the time. 

So what does that make me? The privilege I received was almost entirely on the education front, which has certainly left me with some advantages in life, including that confidence to communicate at great length, but relatively few opportunities to harness these abilities.

Anyway sorry for taking this thread so off-topic, but I think the main thrust of the original topic had mostly run out of steam here for now anyway?


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## ymu (Feb 7, 2013)

Binary labels are never going to be adequate for something as complex as class. I was trying to explain why your question "How come relatively few working class people managed to gain the confidence etc during the generation or two that actually did have better educational opportunities?" is a bit insulting, that's all.


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## teuchter (Feb 7, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> unless you do actually think that LGBT people are somehow of less social value than heterosexuals.


 
As might be suggested if someone were to put the word "women" in scare quotes in an attempt to insult, you mean? Someone who'd do that and then try and ignore any questioning of it?


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## elbows (Feb 7, 2013)

ymu said:


> Binary labels are never going to be adequate for something as complex as class. I was trying to explain why your question "How come relatively few working class people managed to gain the confidence etc during the generation or two that actually did have better educational opportunities?" is a bit insulting, that's all.


 
Thats fine, that question of mine was meant to be blunt and stupid anyway. I believe I can often learn things more directly by sloppily putting my foot in it, and your response was helpful in that regard. Although I dont think it quite answered the question I was getting at, but thats probably my own fault for putting it in a crap way.

So this difference between being born middle class and becoming middle class. Is it possible to go to university and yet still be able to speak confidently of working class priorities? If so, how come we dont see more of these types in the media or other political spheres, counteracting the exceedingly middle class bollocks, and if not, how the hell are we ever going to get anywhere?


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 7, 2013)

teuchter said:


> As might be suggested if someone were to put the word "women" in scare quotes in an attempt to insult, you mean? Someone who'd do that and then try and ignore any questioning of it?


 
Ignore? Replying in terms you don't agree with isn't ignoring, however much you wish to paint it as such.


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## ymu (Feb 7, 2013)

elbows said:


> Thats fine, that question of mine was meant to be blunt and stupid anyway. I believe I can often learn things more directly by sloppily putting my foot in it, and your response was helpful in that regard. Although I dont think it quite answered the question I was getting at, but thats probably my own fault for putting it in a crap way.
> 
> So this difference between being born middle class and becoming middle class. Is it possible to go to university and yet still be able to speak confidently of working class priorities? If so, how come we dont see more of these types in the media or other political spheres, counteracting the exceedingly middle class bollocks, and if not, how the hell are we ever going to get anywhere?


 
The working-class people who go to university are less likely to be those who were on free school meals, and those that go to the kind of university that opens media doors are vanishingly unlikely to have been on free school meals. Binary labels do not cut it.

My best mate in first year at Oxford was from Newcastle, her whole family thrown on the dole by Thatcher. They accepted her without O' level maths because her inner city school hadn't bothered to get her through it. She was bullied for even thinking about going to university, let alone applying to Oxford, let alone getting in.

Once there, the condescending liberals who wanted to increase the social mix didn't bother giving her the help she would need with maths to get through first year economics (after which she could drop the subject entirely). She failed that one paper of three and got kicked out.

A lad who failed all his history papers was allowed to stay because his dad bought the college a new boathouse.

Being born working-class is no guarantee of understanding working-class priorities. Alan Sugar didn't go to university but he reckons there's no excuse for being poor because people can do exactly what he did. All can succeed no matter how many millions are trying to do the same entrepreneurial thing. 

I don't see why you have to have been to university to speak for the working-class. The media do. Because they're middle-class.


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 7, 2013)

elbows said:


> Thats fine, that question of mine was meant to be blunt and stupid anyway. I believe I can often learn things more directly by sloppily putting my foot in it, and your response was helpful in that regard. Although I dont think it quite answered the question I was getting at, but thats probably my own fault for putting it in a crap way.
> 
> So this difference between being born middle class and becoming middle class. Is it possible to go to university and yet still be able to speak confidently of working class priorities? If so, how come we dont see more of these types in the media or other political spheres, counteracting the exceedingly middle class bollocks, and if not, how the hell are we ever going to get anywhere?


 
You can be *from* the class, and *represent** the class, but you cease to be *of* the class when your interests move away from those of the people you represent.

*By "represent", I mean "choose to speak for".

An under-appreciated problem (at least in my opinion) with "the class debate" is that people are often wary of reflecting on the fact that social mobility inevitably means ideological and class mobility too. It means that you're faced by a barrage of new discourses aimed at shaping your views away from those of your previous "station" and towards those of your new "station". Even when people know this and attempt to consciously work around it, they still often subconsciously conform.


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## teuchter (Feb 7, 2013)

ViolentPanda said:


> Ignore? Replying in terms you don't agree with isn't ignoring, however much you wish to paint it as such.


 
Doing no more than repeatedly calling me a "cunt", and suchlike, to me very much represents a deliberate attempt to ignore the questions about what you originally said.


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## smokedout (Feb 7, 2013)

elbows said:


> This is why I find working & middle class labels rather inadequate at times. My parents were teachers, so I had the benefit of help getting started with learning and reading, space at home to work, and I never went hungry. But my parents only seemed to know other teachers, and knew nobody who could give me a job. Hell I struggled to even find a weeks work experience placement. There was no money for a new family car, foreign holidays, private tuition, and we had a variety of 2nd hand televisions until I was about 12. I'd never have gone to university if it wasnt for the maintenance grant & lack of tuition fees, and when I was at school people took the piss because I grew out of my trousers too quickly and my mum had to turn down the bottoms. When I fucked up my degree I ended up working in a factory and eventually got myself a job in a computer shop where I got to watch the boss charge me out at £35+VAT per hour while I earnt something like £4.60 an hour. When I went round working class peoples homes their furnishings and electronic goods were way nicer than ours, but the areas they lived in were far rougher. And at my last place of work, which I lingered in for over a decade before it went bust, I saw a succession of working class people find jobs there with relative ease because they drank in the same pub as the owners or were related in some way. And when I pop round their houses to look at their computers for them, their kids have way more stuff than I ever had. On reflection, most of my school, college & uni friends had middle-class background that were a lot closer to what you describe, but I was only vaguely aware of it at the time.
> 
> ?


 
i hate to break it to you, but you dont sound that middle class


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## goldenecitrone (Feb 7, 2013)

smokedout said:


> i hate to break it to you, but you dont sound that middle class


 
The squeezed out middle.


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## smokedout (Feb 7, 2013)

i think there's a danger when working class is just thought to mean very poor or brought up on a council estate, if someone's on low wages by the time there in their 30s/40s, has no capital, education or any real stake or power in society then they are working class, both technically and probably socially (whatever that means)

i barely remember living on a council estate and when my mum married my step dad he did alright, got a mortgage etc, my half sister even went to a shit private school for a bit, though id left home and was living in a nightshelter by then

ive got 5 GCSEs, about three quid, am a tenant and likely to stay that way till i die and despite blagging my way into a few jobs working with homeless people in my 20s, have done manual or casual work for the last ten years, call me middle class ill gouge your eyes out with my whippet

(my step dad fucked it up anyway, got made redundant and spent the last 20 years of his life working in a call centre so lol)


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## mrs quoad (Feb 10, 2013)

She's on Desert Island Discs ATM! The theme to exodus is currently playing, bc "I don't know why, but I've always loved the Jewish people."

It's curious listening, so far!


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## trashpony (Feb 10, 2013)

I think she has narcissistic personality disorder. I've never heard anyone so self-absorbed


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## Kaka Tim (Feb 10, 2013)

She came accross as  bitter, sentimental, with zero self awareness and an intellectual midget.

I thought they were interviewing a particularly nauseating 13 year old at first.


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## DotCommunist (Feb 10, 2013)

wb


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## William of Walworth (Feb 10, 2013)

Kaka Tim said:


> She came accross as bitter, sentimental, with zero self awareness and an intellectual midget.
> 
> I thought they were interviewing a particularly nauseating 13 year old at first.


 
Call me biased but I've hated Burchill ever since her NME days!! And she only got worse since then ...


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## Reno (Feb 11, 2013)

Kaka Tim said:


> She came accross as bitter, sentimental, with zero self awareness and an intellectual midget.
> 
> I thought they were interviewing a particularly nauseating 13 year old at first.


 
Just listened to Desert Island Discs and while I'm no fan of Burchill's trolling, I neither got bitterness nor "zero self-awareness". You are describing a person people would think she is from her writing, but surprisingly in many ways isn't when you hear her talk. She confirmed herself that she probably has some sort of personality disorder, even if she didn't quite put it that way. She may be wrong minded and her way of arguing in print is at times loathsome, but she struck me as both honest and fairly content. To be sentimental about the death of your parents strikes me as no great failing. She pretty much said fair enough when people attack her (like her ex Toby Jones in his book) and she sees her perceived failings as a human being as strengths. She is like a psychpath who has diverted her aggression into writing and she seems well aware of that.

I do give you the "intellectual midget" at least in her writing she comes actross as an idiot at times, but even there I doubt that she is stupid.


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## D'wards (Feb 11, 2013)

She is so inherantly fucking pleased with herself.

Just because she is aware she is a nasty horrible sneery troll it doesn't make it alright


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## D'wards (Feb 11, 2013)

Plus spiking someone's tea is a terrible thing to do, of which she was totally unrepentant.

In a way she embodies the "no regrets" philisophy that lots espouse but very few actually live by


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## phildwyer (Feb 11, 2013)

Reno said:


> Just listened to Desert Island Discs and while I'm no fan of Burchill's trolling, I neither got bitterness nor "zero self-awareness". You are describing a person people would think she is from her writing, but surprisingly in many ways isn't when you hear her talk. She confirmed herself that she probably has some sort of personality disorder, even if she didn't quite put it that way. She may be wrong minded and at times loathsome, but she struck me as both honest and fairly content. To be sentimental about the death of your parents strikes me as no great failing. She pretty much said fair enough when people attack her (like her ex Toby Jones in his book) and she sees her perceived failings as a human being as strengths. She is like a psychpath who has diverted her aggression into writing and she seems well aware of that.
> 
> I do give you the "intellectual midget" at least in her writing she comes actross as an idiot at times, but even there I doubt that she is stupid.


 
I think she's brilliant, both intellectually and as a writer.  If she comes across as stupid it's quite deliberate.


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## Pickman's model (Feb 11, 2013)

Reno said:


> Just listened to Desert Island Discs and while I'm no fan of Burchill's trolling, I neither got bitterness nor "zero self-awareness". You are describing a person people would think she is from her writing, but surprisingly in many ways isn't when you hear her talk. She confirmed herself that she probably has some sort of personality disorder, even if she didn't quite put it that way. She may be wrong minded and at times loathsome, but she struck me as both honest and fairly content. To be sentimental about the death of your parents strikes me as no great failing. She pretty much said fair enough when people attack her (like her ex Toby Jones in his book) and she sees her perceived failings as a human being as strengths. She is like a psychpath who has diverted her aggression into writing and she seems well aware of that.
> 
> I do give you the "intellectual midget" at least in her writing she comes actross as an idiot at times, but even there I doubt that she is stupid.


she struck you as honest despite declaring that her career was founded on a big auld lie.


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## Random (Feb 11, 2013)

phildwyer said:


> I think she's brilliant, both intellectually and as a writer.  If she comes across as stupid it's quite deliberate.


You wish!


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## Reno (Feb 11, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> she struck you as honest despite declaring that her career was founded on a big auld lie.


 
She struck me as honest enough on Desert Island Discs and that's what I was writing about. When someone admits to a lie then that is honest in itself. Are you argueing that just because someone lied about something when they were a teenager, everything else they ever say has to be a lie ? In any case, she must have had some affinity for what she wrote about because she kept her job.

I don't mind Julie Burchill as a personality. I haven't met her myself, but I know a few people who have worked and hung out with her and she seems pleasant enough to be around (at least until she gets drunk). I find her attention seeking in print tiresome and much of what she has to say stupid. But because of that I don't have to discredit every aspect of her personality and call her a habitual lier when I don't think she is.


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## Reno (Feb 11, 2013)

D'wards said:


> She is so inherantly fucking pleased with herself.
> 
> Just because she is aware she is a nasty horrible sneery troll it doesn't make it alright


 
Nobody said it was.


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## Pickman's model (Feb 11, 2013)

Reno said:


> She struck me as honest enough on Desert Island Discs and that's what I was writing about. When someone admits to a lie then that is honest in itself. Are you argueing that just because someone lied about something when they were a teenager, everything else they ever say has to be a lie ? In any case, she must have had some affinity for what she wrote about because she kept her job.
> 
> I don't mind Julie Burchill as a personality, I haven't met her myself, but I know a few people who have worked and hung out with her and she seems pleasant enough to be around (at least until she gets drunk). I find her attention seeking in print tiresome and much of what she has to say stupid. But because of that I don't have to discredit every aspect of her personality and call her a habitual lier when I don't think she is.


i said she declared her career was founded on a big lie. nothing in your post seems to take issue with that. you claim she's honest: she's more fucking honest than you, though that's not saying much.


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## Reno (Feb 11, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> i said she declared her career was founded on a big lie. nothing in your post seems to take issue with that. you claim she's honest: she's more fucking honest than you, though that's not saying much.


 
Talking of trolling....


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## Pickman's model (Feb 11, 2013)

Reno said:


> Talking of trolling....


you said





> I don't have to discredit every aspect of her personality and call her a habitual lier when I don't think she is


did i say she was a 'habitual lier'? i fucking think not you dishonest cunt.


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## Reno (Feb 11, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> you saiddid i say she was a 'habitual lier'? i fucking think not you dishonest cunt.


 
At least Burchill has a rational reason for her trolling in that she gets paid a lot of money to pick fights with whatever she writes. You on the other hand are a sad cunt who regularly picks fight on and Internet forum, probably just to make up for a small cock or somesuch. Twat.


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## smokedout (Feb 11, 2013)

Reno said:


> probably just to make up for a small cock or somesuch. Twat.


 
very tasteful, especially on this thread


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## Reno (Feb 11, 2013)

smokedout said:


> very tasteful, especially on this thread


 
Please explain yourself.


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## Frances Lengel (Feb 11, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> she struck you as honest despite declaring that her career was founded on a big auld lie.


 
What is the lie her career was built on? Genuine question BTW.


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## Pickman's model (Feb 11, 2013)

Reno said:


> At least Burchill has a rational reason for her trolling in that she gets paid a lot of money to pick fights with whatever she writes. You on the other hand are a sad cunt who regularly picks fight on and Internet forum, probably just to make up for a small cock or somesuch. Twat.


you are of course entitled to your opinion. I note though that you do not contest the charge of dishonesty


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## Pickman's model (Feb 11, 2013)

Frances Lengel said:


> What is the lie her career was built on? Genuine question BTW.


She founded her journalism career off the back of punk, writing with tony parsons the book 'the boy who looked at johnny' or some such title. Yet despite affecting to like punk she said on DID that she was never a fan and went home from punk gigs to listen to the islay brothers.


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## teuchter (Feb 11, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> despite affecting to like punk she said on DID that she was never a fan and went home from punk gigs to listen to the islay brothers.


 
OMG


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## teuchter (Feb 11, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> I note though that you do not contest the charge of dishonesty


OMG


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## Frances Lengel (Feb 11, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> She founded her journalism career off the back of punk, writing with tony parsons the book 'the boy who looked at johnny' or some such title. Yet despite affecting to like punk she said on DID that she was never a fan and went home from punk gigs to listen to the islay brothers.


 
Fair enough - Though, to me, the entire punk thing was bullshit - Punk was the reason spanners like Burchill and Parsons ever got airspace - I genuinely despise the entire notion of punk.


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## Reno (Feb 11, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> you are of course entitled to your opinion. I note though that you do not contest the charge of dishonesty


 
Sorry, not interested in your petty point scoring. No need to contest anything, I still fail to see where I was being "dishonest".


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## Reno (Feb 11, 2013)

teuchter said:


> OMG


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## cantsin (Feb 11, 2013)

D'wards said:


> Plus spiking someone's tea is a terrible thing to do, of which she was totally unrepentant.
> 
> In a way she embodies the "no regrets" philisophy that lots espouse but very few actually live by


 
oh purlease, Sid didnt die so we could sit around 35 yrs later getting attacks of the vapors over JB spiking Country Jo Macfucking Donald ffs, get over it ....


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## cantsin (Feb 11, 2013)

on the other hand , her Zionist trolling gets a bit wearsiome,  to say the feckin least


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## smokedout (Feb 11, 2013)

Reno said:


> Please explain yourself.


 
err, I was being sarcastic

I dont really think it's tasteful that on a thread about misogyny and transphobia you seem to think that penis size is a good line of attack


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## Reno (Feb 11, 2013)

smokedout said:


> err, I was being sarcastic
> 
> I dont really think it's tasteful that on a thread about misogyny and transphobia you seem to think that penis size is a good line of attack


 
Something said on Urban not being in the best of taste ? There is a shocker. Not sure what Pickman's tiny dick has to do with misogyny or transphobia.


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## teuchter (Feb 11, 2013)

Reno said:


> Something said on Urban not being in the best of taste ? There is a shocker. Not sure what Pickman's tiny dick has to do with misogyny or transphobia.


What has it got to do with anything?


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## Frances Lengel (Feb 11, 2013)

Reno said:


> Something said on Urban not being in the best of taste ? There is a shocker. Not sure what Pickman's tiny dick has to do with misogyny or transphobia.


 
Nah, you were a bit out of line - You surely must understand that drawing attention to the fact that Pickers has to call upon the aid of the monocle he keeps in his top pocket in order to find his dick isn't really cricket on a thread about transphobia? Best just to admit it and move on.


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## D'wards (Feb 12, 2013)

cantsin said:


> oh purlease, Sid didnt die so we could sit around 35 yrs later getting attacks of the vapors over JB spiking Country Jo Macfucking Donald ffs, get over it ....


 No way, guy.

I, and a few friends of mine, have had trouble with drugs in the past - if someone spiked me it would fuck me up good and proper these days.

I maintain that spiking someone is a terrible thing to do, and if you think its an okay thing to do then you are as much of a tosser as said Burchill is.


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## Frances Lengel (Feb 12, 2013)

D'wards said:


> No way, guy.
> 
> I, and a few friends of mine, have had trouble with drugs in the past - if someone spiked me it would fuck me up good and proper these days.
> 
> I maintain that spiking someone is a terrible thing to do, and if you think its an okay thing to do then you are as much of a tosser as said Burchill is.


 
Yeah, I agree with that - Spiking someone might seem like a jolly wheeze but really it's a wankers trick of the highest magnitude.


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## ViolentPanda (Feb 12, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> She founded her journalism career off the back of punk, writing with tony parsons the book 'the boy who looked at johnny' or some such title. Yet despite affecting to like punk she said on DID that she was never a fan and went home from punk gigs to listen to the *islay* brothers.


 
Freudian slip.


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## cantsin (Feb 12, 2013)

D'wards said:


> No way, guy.
> 
> I, and a few friends of mine, have had trouble with drugs in the past - if someone spiked me it would fuck me up good and proper these days.
> 
> I maintain that spiking someone is a terrible thing to do, and if you think its an okay thing to do then you are as much of a tosser as said Burchill is.


 
it was 3 + decades ago, the punk wars were raging, the trenches full of the wounded, the shell shocked and the disorientated, refugees from the 60's like Country Joe mac were getting caught in the crossfire, shit happened.

Btw, have you actually thought of how likely the whole incident was to have actually happened ? like , 1 in 100 chance i'd guess ? So prob. no need for the amateur dramatics anyway...


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## Pickman's model (Feb 12, 2013)

Reno said:


> Something said on Urban not being in the best of taste ? There is a shocker. Not sure what Pickman's tiny dick has to do with misogyny or transphobia.


my tiny dick still more use than your shrivelled brain.


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## William of Walworth (Feb 13, 2013)

cantsin said:


> oh purlease, Sid didnt die so we could sit around 35 yrs later *getting attacks of the vapors over JB spiking Country Jo Macfucking Donald ffs, get over it* ....


 
Somehow seem to have missed this story completely -- was she boasting about it on Desert Island Discs? Spiked his tea was it, and with what?


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## cantsin (Feb 13, 2013)

William of Walworth said:


> Somehow seem to have missed this story completely -- was she boasting about it on Desert Island Discs? Spiked his tea was it, and with what?


 
speed, allegedly ...


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## Jollity Farm (Feb 15, 2013)

Is speed water soluble? Or would it just collect in the bottom of the cup? I don't know much about drugs.

Anyway, spiking of food and drinks could cause health problems. Or could worsen health problems that the person already had. Since one doesn't always know which health problems a person has, it is best to not spike anyone's drink at all, just in case. Then again, Burchill has often been dismissive of illnesses that she doesn't understand, mental and physical.


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## editor (Feb 15, 2013)

Jollity Farm said:


> Is speed water soluble?


Yes. Or it can float on the top, so be unnoticed on a pint with a head.

Tastes like shit though.


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## Jollity Farm (Feb 15, 2013)

Thanks for the facts. Also the swift response. If only all education could be so efficient.


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## Firky (Mar 20, 2013)

Been forwarded this:



> Further to your complaint to the Press Complaints Commission concerning the article published by The Observer on 13 January with the headline “Transsexuals should cut it out”. As you are aware, the Press Complaints Commission received over 800 complaints about this article and, in accordance with its standard procedure, selected a lead complainant for the purposes of its investigation.
> 
> That investigation has now been concluded and the Commission has issued its ruling. A copy of the Commission’s decision appears below.
> 
> ...


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## elbows (Mar 20, 2013)

I suppose its not terribly surprising that a code that is supposed to protect individuals (and doesnt even have a good rep for doing that) is not going to apply to such a piece. 

The PCC or other lists of rules are not the means by which we get to see whether certain opinions are well out of step with what a society seems to deem acceptable these days.

Personally I suspect that the reaction to Burchills shit article was a sign that some progress is slowly being made, but I doubt we will see ignorance or hate totally vanish from the scene. All the same away from the shittest ends of the press I think something really has started to change in the last decade when it comes to gender stuff. For example I see there was a BBC piece on Richard O'Brien that managed not to make all the usual mistakes about gender issues, and was the most read article at one point. I havent yet checked to see if the stupid elements of the press picked up on it and did their own sneery mocking version. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21788238


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## Firky (Mar 20, 2013)

She probably had a few sleepless nights as a result; can't say I am sorry. I am not surprised either, elbows. Didn't really agree with people complaining but I can totally understand why they did.


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## elbows (Mar 20, 2013)

Meanwhile in the USA there will be opportunities to cover trans issues in a crap way as there is currently some debate about a MMA fighter who is now a woman wanting to fight other women. Plenty of opportunities for schoolboy humour there. As for the actual practicalities of the case, in this instance I dont think its wrong not to let her compete as any other woman would, because there are physical reasons why parts of the body that developed when a man shouldnt be allowed to smash women in the face. You'd need to transition early to avoid that issue, eg large hands, broad shoulders. In mixed martial arts the only thing that complicates this issue, which is one of health & safety, is the women who abuse testosterone and other performance enhancing drugs so dont exactly have a 'normal' female body either when competing.


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## Firky (Mar 20, 2013)

What's MMA?


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## elbows (Mar 20, 2013)

Mixed martial arts.


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## Bakunin (Mar 21, 2013)

Frances Lengel said:


> I genuinely despise the entire notion of punk.


 
The appearance of and continued exposure to Parsons and Burchill would be reason enough to despise anything, to be fair.


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## rosecore (Mar 22, 2013)

*Trans Media Watch* ‏@*TransMediaWatch*
We have been advised that the Metropolitan Police are taking action against Julie Burchill over her transphobic Observer article.


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## elbows (Mar 22, 2013)

Interesting. I'll reserve judgement till we hear the details, but I suppose I wont be completely surprised if some action is taken. When a society has evolved in terms of acceptable attitudes, but some still lag behind, there will be moments where people are made an example of in order to highlight the new realities. If this is one of those then it would be something.


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## Firky (Mar 22, 2013)

rosecore said:


> *Trans Media Watch* ‏@*TransMediaWatch*
> We have been advised that the Metropolitan Police are taking action against Julie Burchill over her transphobic Observer article.


 
Haha! This is great news.

(I think... not entirely sure now I've had more than a second to think about it)


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## Mr.Bishie (Mar 22, 2013)

All depends on the word 'action'.


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## Mrs Magpie (Mar 22, 2013)

Pickman's model said:


> my tiny dick still more use than your shrivelled brain.


...and, as any fule no, the largest sexual organ is the brain.


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## frogwoman (Mar 22, 2013)

i really dislike julie burchill.


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## Firky (Mar 22, 2013)

frogwoman said:


> i really dislike julie burchill.


 
She's horribly vapid.


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## frogwoman (Mar 22, 2013)

she can fuck right off in my opinion.


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## Jeff Robinson (Mar 16, 2021)

This fuckwit has gotten trounced by comrade Sarkar:


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## Orang Utan (Mar 16, 2021)

Wow, that really is a large helping of humble pie for Burchill


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## Pickman's model (Mar 16, 2021)

Jeff Robinson said:


> This fuckwit has gotten trounced by comrade Sarkar:



Turned out nice again


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