Inaccuracy, Disrespect, Indignation

Trans Media Watch have as their tagline “Accuracy, Respect, Dignity.”  The problem with such taglines is that is makes you a hostage to fortune, especially if your organisation is a media watch group.   Inaccuracy is the main topic of this article and I will return to that point below.  I have already dealt with the disrespect shown to media professional Julie Bindel by their trustee, Paris Lees -  on the night that she was supposedly working herself into a state of ill-health organizing the official launch of Trans Media Watch’s Memorandum of Understanding.

Indignation is not quite the opposite of Dignity, but is it a convenient hook on which to hang the problem of using social media to promote professional standards in the media.  Unless you heavily edit posts (assuming the social media platform allows you to do so), you will invariably end up with your social media page containing the level of invective that is not conducive to good negotiations with media outlets.  Trans Media Watch’s Facebook page declares, “Views expressed on this page do not necessarily represent those of Trans Media Watch.”  This is just as well too when you see some of the group members’ posts.

Now to inaccuracy.  Trans Media Watch get a good write-up in the June 2011 issue of Diva.   Iman Qureshi’s “Lost In Transition” gives a lot of the article over to Paris Lees, her fellow Diva journalist, and a Trans Media Watch trustee.  This does not mean that the article is uncritical of Trans Media Watch, as she cites a complaint that their Memorandum of Understanding is toothless.  Iman also allows Paris just enough rope to tie herself up in knots.  The final paragraph and a half are given over to Paris’ views on transphobia among the lesbian community (who along with bisexual women are Diva’s target audience).  This is a rather odd ending to an article on media presentation of trans people, especially as the intention is to encourage lesbian (and bisexual) readers to support trans-positive images in the media.

There is one glaring example of inaccuracy in Iman’s article and if she is taking advice from Paris and Trans Media Watch it is an inaccuracy that is perfectly excusable (for Iman, not for an organisation purporting to provide guidance to the media).  The inaccuracy comes when interviewing Keira McCormack about her unsuccessful Press Complaints Commission case against Sunday Life.   Iman notes that Keira is entitled to privacy under the Gender Recognition Act, but this is a common fallacy pushed by many trans people and organisations, including Trans Media Watch.

The Gender Recognition Act (2004) is the bill that enabled trans people to be considered to legally be treated for all purposes (with a few exceptions) as being their new permanent gender identity.  There is a lot of online misinformation about the Acts’s Section 22, with a chief culprit being Trans Media Watch’s Guidance for the Media – Approaches to Avoid.  Under the heading of ‘Previous Names’ they warm media organisations that they face prosecution if they reveal the previous gender identity of someone in receipt of a Gender Recognition Certificate.  They press home the fear factor by noting that there is no exemption for journalists.

Unfortunately, for Trans Media Watch (and Iman) the reason that there is no exemption for journalists is that Section 22 does not apply to journalists.  It applies to individuals who obtain the information in their line of work with a public body, the trans person’s employer or businesses to whom the trans person has given details of their previous gender identity.  Therefore, it does not apply to a journalist as they have not been given the details by the trans person (or if they have it would probably imply consent to publish).  For example, if the journalist gains the information from an employer then the employer, and not the journalist, would be liable for prosecution under the Gender Recognition Act.

The typical response on trans online forums to pointing out what Section 22 actually says is that it has yet to be sufficiently tested in court.  Trans Media Watch reflect that response when they caution media organisations that “There have been no high profile prosecutions under Section 22, but that situation is unlikely to last.”  If there is a successful high profile prosecution it will not be against someone acting as a journalist.  It could of course be launched against someone who happens to be a journalist and also has official access to such information.

Trans Media Watch want trans people to receive accuracy from the media and it is hypocritical for them to use inaccurate interpretations of the Gender Recognition Act.  The end result of changing media policy about the presentation of trans people might be worthy, but it does not justify the inaccurate means used by this media watch group.

Watch Trans Media Watch

Lynne Featherstone has written a blog article in support of Channel 4 signing up to Trans Media Watch’s Memorandum of Understanding.   I am interested in this on two fronts, Lynne is my MP and fellow Highgate (North London) resident, and I was one of the founder members of Trans Media Watch.

Unlike many campaigning organizations, Trans Media Watch did not set up a Facebook group to promote their work.  Rather, it was set up as a Facebook group that later expanded into a non-virtual organization.  I can give chapter on verse on this as I was one of the first invited members of the group.  As the Trans Media Watch website states, it arose out of a campaign against a deeply discriminatory episode of the Kudos-produced ITV comedy Moving Wallpaper.  I was quite prominent in a Facebook group set up to campaign against the Moving Wallpaper producers, as well as being one of the official complainants to OFCOM.

I withdrew from Trans Media Watch at a time when I was being spammed with daily updates about supposedly transphobic occurrences in the media.  A large proportion of these were little more than journalists using language that members of the Trans Media Watch Facebook group did not like, in particular, use of the term “sex change.”  I personally have no problem with a journalist saying that I am on a waiting list for sex change surgery, as I do not expect journalists to keep up with the minutiae of label wars within the trans community.  What I do expect of journalists, and other branches of the media, is that they treat trans people with a similar level of respect to that which is given to other minority groups within UK society.

By the time I withdrew from the Facebook group I felt that I had already made an important contribution.  The group’s original creator had phrased its aims in a way that suggested that it was there to attack the media for getting it wrong.  I pointed out on its Facebook wall, that this is the wrong way to effect change.  Instead, I proposed that the group should be seeking to educate the media about why certain approaches to trans people (fictional or factual) would be regarded as offensive.  To change the media you need to be a friend to the media, and not an organization the media view as there purely to criticise them.  That shift of emphasis was achieved when one of the Facebook’s current co-administrators, Jennie Kermode, joined the group and, as a journalist, and took the lead on designing a set of media guidelines.

I fully support the continuing work of Trans Media Watch to change matters for the better for all trans people, but they are still on a learning curve and need to learn fast.  An organisation acting as a monitor for media behaviour needs to behave to a far higher standard than it expects of the media.  In that respect, Trans Media Watch is currently failing and risks not only its own success, but bringing embarrassment to Lynne Featherstone, probably the most trans positive government minister that the UK has seen.

Lynne was at the official launch of Trans Media Watch’s Memorandum of Co-operation on Monday 14^th March 2011.  As a government minister she has a great opportunity to make changes such as her blog article point towards in bringing a Transgender Action Plan into being.  It is unfortunate, therefore, that she faces potential embarrassment from a foolish, and foolishly timed, blog article by the woman who introduced her at the official launch, Paris Lees.    She is a journalist (for Diva), and fellow administrator of the Trans Media Watch Facebook group with Jennie Kermode.

The foolish article is “Julie Bindel’s Genitals” and the foolish timing was to publish this the day before a government minister was lending her support to the Trans Media Watch launch.  Had the article been published after the launch it would still hold a lot of embarrassment for Trans Media Watch, but would not have presented a potential media trap for Lynne, who could yet find herself receiving media flak for her presence at such a hypocritical launch.

The launch was hypocritical because 24 hours earlier Paris Lees had broken a key aspect of a key aspect of Trans Media Watch’s Guidance for the Media, and one that goes back to its origins in the protest against the comedy, Moving Wallpaper.  The Guidance asks media organizations not to make use of comedic references to genitalia with regard to trans people.  This links back to that episode of Moving Wallpaper, with its cruel, and not very humorous, references to the trans character’s genitalia.  This aspect of guidance does not make it into the Memorandum of Understanding to which Channel 4 have signed up and which BBC and ITV may sign up to, presumably because attempts to limit comedy are unlikely to get the signature of a broadcaster.  It is, however, something that Trans Media Watch have signed up to by placing it in their Guidance to the Media.  Media monitoring organizations need to show the media that they themselves maintain high standards, and that must include living up to the standards that they expect of the media.

On Sunday 13^th March, members of Trans Media Watch should have been preparing themselves for their important launch.  Instead, Paris Lees choose to make a political point through comedic reference to “Julie Bindel’s Gentials.”  This caused a flurry of internet activity, including on Julie’s Facebook account.  Paris also created a Facebook group called “Julie Bindel’s Genitals.”  She claimed in the response to the first comment on her “Julie Bindel’s Genitals” article that she closed the group down because she did not have the time to moderate wall comments.  In reality, it was probably closed down by Facebook after a flurry of complaints from Julie’s Facebook friends, as it broke Facebook rules by being a group set up to target an individual.  I would have made such a complaint, but the group had already been closed by the time I searched for it.

Paris had posted in a previous article “Julie-Bindel’s-Coming-For-Tea Lemon Drizzle Cake” on 26^th February that she was inviting Julie round to meet her and some trans friends.  On the day of the “Julie Bindel’s Genitals” Facebook group being created and deleted (13^th March), Julie lamented on her Twitter account that Paris had cancelled the meeting.  I have no idea if the meeting was ever really to take place or if it was just Julie responding to Paris’ earlier post, but meeting over cake would have been far better than making Trans Media Watch look hypocritical and Lynne Featherstone look unwise.

When the launch took place the following day, it appeared that Paris had got away with it.  So two days later she posted “For the Love of Channel 4 …”, an article about the launch, complete with a photograph of her (and I think Jennie Kermode) sitting with Lynne Featherstone.  The launch might have been hypocritical, but Paris soared to new heights with this article.  She notes “Accuracy. Dignity. Respect. Three journalistic principles which should be upheld in all forms of media production.”  Those three catchwords are the tagline for Trans Media Watch, but 24 hours before the launch took place, Paris was showing anything but dignity and respect towards Julie.  I guess the cat must have eaten the lemon drizzle cake.  Hold on, folks, do not move on yet, there is a yet more spectacular feat of hypocrisy to be revealed.  Without a hint of irony, Paris writes, “I feel like a broken record saying this sometimes. I mean it’s simple huh? We don’t go around discussing other people’s genitals do we? You’d never catch me doing that, not even to make http://lastofthecleanbohemians.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/julie-bindels-genitals-2/a political point through allegory.”  Oh, what happened there?  Where did that link come from, it is not on Paris’ wordpress blog.  Actually, it is, she has just broken the link, so the irony was not unintended but broken.

Note that the link is for an article called “Julie Bindel’s Gentials,” but it is now entitled “***** ******’s Genitals!”  Paris notes in the opening to the article “NB: Following mixed reactions to the orginal [sic] version of this post, I have chosen to remove some of the more offensive terminiology [sic].”  In response to my Open Letter to Paris Lees, she denied that this article was changed other than to asterisk out someone’s name.  I am far too good a comic to miss an opening like that, so in response I informed her that that would make Julie Bindel’s name offensive terminology.  I also noted that she was incorrect and that that content had been changed.

Paris is a key figure in Trans Media Watch and she is exposing the tender plant of this worthwhile organization to a withering in the current heatwave.  The heatwave, that is, of Paris’ hypocrisy, not the one that is making it difficult to write in the city shared by Paris, Julie and me.  She notes of Julie that if she really is repentant of her 2004 Guardian article (“Gender benders beware”) about transsexuals that it would no longer be available online. This may show Paris’ inexperience as a journalist, in that she will learn in time that once a piece is published, a writer may not have the contractual power to control whether their article remains online.  Leaving that aside, at least Julie has apologised and made the point that she has apologised three times in a later (and still online) Guardian article “My trans mission.”

Apology is not, however, something that Paris majors on.  In a later article, “Private Parts,” she bemoans the negative reaction that she received from established journalist Johann Hari, and the surprised reaction from her Diva editor, Jane Czyzselska (whose name Paris constantly misspells).  What she does not do is apologise for the reference to genitals (has she not read the Trans Media Watch Guidelines for the Media?), and nor has she taken the offending article off-line.

I could wax more lyrical on the Judgment of Paris, but I will leave that for another article.  Suffice to say for now, Watch Trans Media Watch, as what they are trying to achieve is worthwhile and I wish success to an organisation that I helped get off the ground.  They are still, however, on a learning curve, and so I plead that someone will Watch Trans Media Watch, because with Paris Lees in a prominent position, they certainly need watching.

Oh, and Paris, please take your puerile Julie Bindel’s Genitals offline.  And, yes, I do know that puerile means “like a boy.”  I have an A Level in Latin, where among other things I translated The Judgement of Paris.  Attacking a woman whom you do not like by encouraging others to giggle at her genitals is acting like a boy, and you being a woman does not excuse you from the charge of being puerile.  You may not worry about embarrassment to you, but take a care for the very trans positive Lynne Featherstone, and for Trans Media Watch, whom you claim to represent.

Mummy, What Did You Do in the War?

Within the UK trans community there are a lot of people talking about what they have achieved in recent days, namely the cancellation of a conference, for example this article.  The conference was organised by the (UK) Royal College of Psychiatrist’s Lesbian and Gay Special Interest Group and entitled “Transgender:  Time to Change.”  Hooray for the trans community – they have stopped a debate taking place where people who happen to disagree with self-appointed activists, who claim that they are the trans community.  What a wonderful thing to enthuse further activism – we stopped a conference taking place.

I am sick and tired of this group of activists focusing all their energies on stopping others sharing contrary views.  In fact it is normally just one other, respected journalist and campaigner, Julie Bindel, but that will be the subject of another article.  The claim is that this is not all about Julie, just as the demonstration against her being nominated for a Stonewall Award was apparently not about Julie, despite many of those involved talking about little else ever since.

Hold the Coach and Horses, I said that this article was not going to be about stopping Julie from speaking.  What was it about, oh yes, how to answer the following question:  what have you achieved positively for the trans community (i.e., all trans people, not a small self-selecting group who think that they ARE the trans community).  Okay, I cannot completely avoid talking about Julie, because before and after the Stonewall demo many of those involved in it turned on the established figures in the trans community, simply for not coming out to support their demo.  The attack was particularly strong on Stephen Whittle OBE and Christine Burns MBE, present and past members of Press For Change, who had been involved in drawing up the legislation for the Gender Recognition Act 2004.  Christine’s crime was to interview Julie, even though the demo was apparently not about her, but about Stonewall.

So when you get too old to continue in the activist way, what will you answer to the question, “What did you do when trans people still had to fight for their rights?”  It would be churlish of me to set that question and not answer it for myself, so here goes.  I forced a government department to change a policy that adversely affected trans people.  The only assistance that I had was to get my MP to write a letter to the appropriate department, asking them to support my request for a policy change.

In late 2008 it was still the situation that if anyone changed their legal name with the National Insurance Contributions Headquarters in a way that suggested a change of gender, a block would be put on their record, meaning that junior public sector staff could not access their records.   Such staff are supposed to know how to deal with a record being blocked, i.e., refer it to their line manager, but not all of them know what to do when the computer says not “No,” but “You cannot access this information.”   In my case, a public sector worker decided that being unable to access my National Insurance Number meant that I did not have one and set in train the process for me to be interviewed to get one.  This is despite the fact that at that point I had had one for 25 years.  As a consequence, my student loan application was delayed, causing great financial hardship, because I had only been accepted on the university course one month before it began (it had already been delayed for another reason, but that would be besides the point of this article).

The first that I knew of the problem was receiving a letter inviting me to attend an Identity Centre.  When I phoned the helpline to ask why I was being asked to attend the telephonist was evasive, and finally I told her that as they were trying to give me a second National Insurance Number, which is illegal, I would not attend the interview.  I then contacted National Insurance Contribution Headquarters to find out what was going on.  It was only then that I learnt about the block on my account and that I could ask for it to be removed.  I did ask for it to be removed and made an official complaint requesting that the policy change without delay.

Later, I received a letter from a senior manager stating that the policy had been changed, and I subsequently discovered by chance that they had begun writing to everyone who had previously had this block put on and not been informed about it.  So when I am asked “Mummy, what did you do in the war?” I will tell this non-existent child of mine that in the war for trans rights I took on a government department and won.  I won the right for trans people to be treated as being capable of giving informed consent to having a block placed on their records.  The block still goes on by default to protect those wanting that protection, but you are informed in writing that the block is there and given the information on how to remove it.  That letter also allows the block to be removed by people whose change of name is erroneously thought to signify a change of gender (e.g., if Shirley Crabtree was still alive and changing his name by Deed Poll to Big Daddy, it might mistakenly be thought that this was a gender related change of name).

So when internet transsexual activists who focus their energies on the negatives of stopping free speech say “Who is this Mercia Josephine and who does she think she is?” the answer is simple.  She is the person who won you the human right to be told about a block on your National Insurance Number that could seriously harm your financial health.

If anyone wants to make a comment about what they have done positively to win rights for trans people, I will approve the comments.  Those who say I stood in the demo against Julie (oops mentioned her again) or other purely negative achievements will not have their comments approved.  Of course, I will approve comments arguing for negative campaigning, as I am, after all, in favour of free speech.

I cannot include the communication from the government department as that is crown copyright, but to fill in some of the details of my complaint, I include it below with identifying details removed (except for my previous identity, which I do not hide).

HM Revenue & Customs
National Insurance Contributions Office
Special Section D, BP9207
Benton Park View
Longbenton
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE98 1ZZ
cc: Tony Lloyd, MP Manchester Central

Friday, 22 April 2011

Dear Sir or Madam,

Further to my phone conversation with XXXX today, please remove the restriction that your office placed on my account when you changed my name and style of address from Mr Mark Robert Joseph George Walker to Miss Mercia Josephine McMahon.

I was informed that this restriction has been standard practice for years, well the practice needs to change.  The Student Loans Company has suspended payments of my loan because they cannot access my account, and when I was erroneously invited to an Identity Centre in application for a National Insurance Number (which I have held since 1983), even this government agency working for National Insurance could not access the account to tell me why I was being asked to establish my identity. As many transsexuals do want to hide the connection between their new and old identity it is right and proper that the default position is to restrict the account.  You should, however, inform the person that the restriction has been put in place, and that the restriction can be removed on written request.  I received a letter informing me that my National Insurance details had been changed, detailing my retirement dates (unchanged of course, as I have not presented a Gender Recognition Certificate). Under “What our records show” you should have informed me that the restriction was in place and under “What to do now” you should have explained the procedure for removing the restriction.

Consequently, I wish to make a formal complaint against your present procedures (I am not complaining about any staff members involved as they are simply carrying out unjust procedures). To fail to inform me of the restriction on my account and how to have that restriction removed is offensive as it implies that I am a vulnerable adult incapable of giving informed consent.  As a student nurse I am required to make all reasonable efforts to obtain informed consent for any procedure, even when that patient is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and if I have to perform the procedure without their consent, as soon as they are capable of understanding, I must explain to them what I did and what emergency required that I proceed without their consent. For the National Insurance Contributions Office to restrict my account without informing me is disgraceful and procedures should be altered as a matter of urgency.

Thanking you in anticipation of carrying out my instructions,

Mercia McMahon

_______

Disclaimer:  I am currently a Civil Servant and so bound by the Civil Service Code.  This requires that I do not campaign to change current government policy.  This article does not contravene the Civil Service Code as I was a student nurse when I succeeded in this campaign and I fully support the current government policy, which was introduced because of my complaint.

Surnames Are Misogynist

Some of you who have been reading this blog long-term (I think that makes two of us) might be a little confused about my name.  I changed my name for writing purposes to Mercia Josephine because I regard surnames as misogynist.  Surnames require a woman to be named after either her father or husband.  There are other traditions for which see this article (note however that the article is incorrect about Icelandic surnames – daughters are also named after their father).  For any purposes where I have to use my legal name I still use Mercia McMahon.  There is no point in making Josephine my surname as that would defeat the object of not being known by my surname.

Note that McMahon is not misogynist for me, as I have never had a husband and my father was not called McMahon.  When I was changing my name by Deed Poll I choose to change my surname as well, and opted for a geonymic (a name based on a place).  At the time I lived in Cork in the suburb of Blackrock, but on the border of the suburb of Mahon – so I chose the surname Child of Mahon (McMahon).  A historical analogy would be Leonardo Da Vinci, which means Leonardo who comes from Vinci.

Surnames are a fact of life in England so I still need to use McMahon, but I write under my two forenames, Mercia Josephine.  So if you are a bit of a Jane (Marple) you will have worked out that my full legal name is Mercia Josephine McMahon, which I often write as Mercia Josephine (McMahon).

Rape Is Not a Metaphor – An Open Letter to Paris Lees

Dear Paris,

You seem to have got quite a bee in your bonnet about rape of late.  Generally that is a good thing, as rape is still so prevalent in British society and of epidemic proportions in some cultures (e.g., South Africa).  It is not, however, a good thing when you use rape as a way to make smart comments to spruce up your writing.  There are some subjects that do not lend themselves to humour, such as The Shoah (aka The Holocaust), terrorist atrocities, serial murders, and, yes Paris, rape.

Rape is not a metaphor.

I will leave that in a paragraph on its own in the hope that you will not miss the message. What, Paris, only skim reading, okay, I will repeat it again, rape is not a metaphor.  In case the point is not getting through, or you think that you see a loophole, let me make clear that rape is not a simile, rape is not an illustration, rape is not source material for humorous articles, and rape is not a riposte to use in a flame-war.

Rape is rape.

There is nothing like rape, so it is certainly not a simile.  It is not like anything else.  It is not even like murder, although that is often the follow-on from the rapist, or the threat to let the rape proceed without the victim fighting back.  Rape is not an illustration to explain something else, as a rape victim often spends the rest of her life trying to explain to herself why she suffered it.  Nor are arguments that have their place in a discussion of rape appropriate ripostes to defend your views on something other than rape in an online flame-war.  Rape is not fair game for humour, any more than what the victim wore made her fair game.  Rape is not a game and it is not fair.  Rape is not humorous.

Rape is a life sentence.

Victims struggle to fully move on from rape, the memories are always there just waiting to ambush you when you think that life is going well, just waiting to embarrass you as you thought you would be taking that tube journey without bursting into tears, just waiting to re-surface because a journalist thinks that rape is a clever metaphor and a source for humour.

Mercia Josephine

Note to Editors – do not let Paris Lees write about rape.  Oops, too late, Jane Czyzselska, editor of Diva has already done so.  The unfortunate result was “Sorry (Forgot My Rape Whistle)” in the December 2010 edition of Diva.  Maybe this example of foolhardiness was down to Jane feeling generous to a young journalist in the run-up to Christmas.  Or maybe the opening sentence fooled her, where Paris opined “What effect does the drip drip of rape-avoidance advice have on those unlucky enough to have been sexually assaulted?”

That opening would suggest an article that had the interests of the victims at heart, but the only interest at heart in the rest of the article appears to be Paris Lees.  If the victims were her concern, then the article would not be replete with allusions to penetration.  After the victim positive opening we are treated in the next paragraph to the notion that purveyors of rape defence gadgets are “trying to insert their products into our glossy folds.”  As Paris gets up a head of steam about the various girly-coloured gadgets she mocks the notion that a rape free future is possible because  “candy-coloured key-rings are shoved with special Christmas force into young girls’ stockings.”  She then accuses one of the gadget makers of crossing the line by implying that their attack deterrent will give a woman confidence because she knows that she can defend herself.

No line that should not be crossed has been transgressed by the marketers of this deterrent.  I am not a victim of advertising because my keys are adorned with a heart shaped fob that is actually a personal attack alarm provided by Greater Manchester Police at Sparkle 2008, nor the fact that my handbag is never without the attack alarm provided by Camden LGBT Forum at London Pride 2009.  I am a victim, who does not want to repeat the experience.  Although carrying these alarms does not fill me with confidence as I had one with me the night that I was attacked, but I was too scared to use it.

The line crossing has been done by Paris, who purports to protect victims of sexual assault from misplaced guilt and feeling responsible for their own rape.  It is not, however, the marketers for rape defence gadgets from whom Paris needs to defend the victims – they need protecting from the cheapening of their experience in Paris’ writing, and it is not just this article that gives vent to Paris’ rape fascination.

On 13^th March 2011, Paris sought to establish her transsexual activism credentials by creating a Facebook group called “Julie Bindel’s Genitals” and posted in her blog (http://lastofthecleanbohemians.wordpress.com) an article of the same name.  The article has since been renamed on the blog as ***** ******’s Genitals due to negative reaction to the original post (which I never got to read).  Other items were removed from the article as well as the renaming of the article.  The Facebook group was closed the same day that it was set up.  Paris claims in a comment on the blog post that this was because she did not have time to vet the wall posts, but much more likely Facebook closed the group as it contravened the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities by being a group created to attack an individual.  The blog post contains a claim that Julie would probably describe the article as being a form of rape, which is an attempt by Paris to indulge her fascination with rape as metaphor, while trying to pass the buck to Julie Bindel, who is well known for campaigning for rape victims.  More importantly, Paris responds positively to a post that describes the experience of being a pre-operative male to female transsexual as being continuously raped by her own body.  To Paris that viewpoint is interesting, because she only wants to protect rape victims from gadgets designed to prevent a repeat attack, she is not interested in protecting them from those who chose to cheapen their horrifying experience.

Paris’ fascination with the metaphor of rape is in evidence again on a minor flame-war she engaged in on the Facebook group for Trans Media Watch.  She is one of two administrators for the group and had to be reprimanded by the other administrator for her comments.  [EDIT:  One of the administrators has deleted the thread that contained this comment, so I shall remove reference to its details here, as it is no longer publicly verifiable.]

Paris cannot be trusted to write about rape.  Editors, especially Jane, I trust that you have taken note.

Interior Design

Where I grew up in Belfast there was a stigma against living inside your own head, mind you in Belfast there were (and still are) a lot of things and groups of people that are stigmatized.   Two sayings from my childhood illustrate this point:

“Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness” and

“Only the mad have imaginary friends.”

Those sayings share a stigmatization of madness, but they also impacted on me at three different levels:  I have talked to myself all of my life, I was a creative thinker (and we need to talk our ideas through with ourselves), and I was my own imaginary friend, as I struggled to cope with being stuck in the wrong gender.  The fact that I came to the decision to stop pretending to be male after 15 months psychiatric treatment does not establish that I was mad after all, in fact the consultant psychiatrists were in agreement that I was suffering from anxiety due to my life situation as a priest that did not allow my to resolve my gender identity issues, which were not signs of a mental illness, but just part of the variety of human life.  Incidentally, this took place in Ireland at a time when the state was running a campaign against the stigmatization of those who had been treated in pyschiatric centres.  I picked this up in a sermon, where I came out as having suffered from anxiety at the time when I was on the sick.  In response, my bishop forced me onto sick leave on the grounds that no sane person would admit to having had a mental illness, and I never worked as a priest again.

The supposed madness that cost me my livelihood (it took me 14 months to return to paid employment) was nothing to do with talking to myself, but with daring to talk to others about anxiety as if, to use the sermon’s illustration, it was no more noteworthy than suffering from psoriasis.  What you do or do not say in a church sermon is not a conundrum faced by too many trans people, but many will be familiar with the reality of talking to yourself, usually without being certifiably mad.

It is commonly noted by trans people that they imagined themselves to be a person in the gender that they feel they should have been born into.  Indeed, they can often name that person, and sometimes use that name if and when they begin to live in their true gender (not in my case, as my imaginary other was called Shirley).  In that sense they become your imaginary friend, in that they live a life daily in your imagination to counter the difficulties of living a life in a gender that you are not comfortable being.  Of course this is not an imaginary friend in the sense that many parents of young children get worried about – you do not talk out loud to this imaginary friend, because even at a very young age you are painfully aware that this friend is a secret that must not be revealed to anyone.  In fact, I have often wondered if my transformation from struggling student to a bit of a boring brain box at the age of eight was driven by my need to cleverly hide the real me.

I am intelligent, even if I was not smart enough to put that intelligence towards a more marketable qualification.  I have a PhD from an elite university in postmodern theology, which makes me smart to acheive it, but not necessarily smart to do it in the first place.  The title of this blog does not indicate that I am now about to take a Masters in Interior Design, which would be great relief not only to the residents of interior designed buildings, but also to my art teacher who was so unimpressed that all my circles looked oval that he erroneously asked if I would draw a circle is he asked for an oval.  The interior design of the blog’s title is asking if the amount of time that a trans kid spends secretly inside their own head helps them in other areas of  interiority.  I personally have excelled in the intellectual and spiritual arenas, and I am not too bad as a creative writer, either.  I cannot draw circles (or ovals), but two of my trans acquaintances are artists, while others are intellectuals, and many are interested in the spiritual side of life.

A recent European-wide study found transsexuals have a higher than average level of educational attainment if they make it as far as university, but are more likely to withdraw from secondary education  [Whittle et al, Eurostudy:  Legal Survey and Focus on the Transgender Experience of Health Care 2008:46].  This might suggest that those transsexuals who can survive the distractions of their mind being consumed with thoughts about their imaginary other can go on to excel in unversity level work, because they are so attuned to the interior life.  On the other hand, it also suggests that many do not survive either that distraction or the discrimination at school for being different.  That, however, is a topic for a different post.

There is a strong level of religious interest among trans people, despite the negative views that many religious groups take against sexual or gender difference.  This is evidenced in the 42,000 strong Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, which has had trans members since its creation, as well as numerous trans organizations within other religious groups.  Trans people are also found in the artistic and academic communities, despite on-going discrimination.  These numbers could simply point to the fact that trans people are as likely to be spiritual, artistic, or intellectual as the general population, but I suspect that the forced interiority of young trans minds has an influence on preparing some trans adults to excel in other interior pursuits.  Maybe even as interior designers.

New Beauty Page

I have added a new page on beauty, which is not my make-up tips, but a reflection on attitudes to beauty and passing among male to female transsexuals.  In essence it is a long blog post, but it is such a crucial issue that I decided to make it a page in its own write.

Admiring Lynne Conway (Ada Lovelace Day)

Today, 24th March, is Ada Lovelace Day.  This is a day when people are asked to remember women in science and technology and as par tof it there is a project to get people to blog about a women in technology whom they admire.  I have chosen Lynne Conway, an American computer scientist and a past winner of the National Achievement Award of the Society of Women Engineers.  Her work in microchip design at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s laid the foundations of much of today’s microchip designs, while holding down a part-time professorship at MIT.  She also co-authored, with Prof. Carver Mead of Caltech, the very influential Introduction to VLSI Systems (1979).  Then in the 1990s as the amount of transistors on a microchip was increasing,, use was made of a system known as Dynamic Instruction Scheduling (DSI).   Gradually, researchers noticed a similarity between DSI and Conway’s VLSI work.  So in 1999 as she was returing from academic work she began to use a blog to tell her story.  She had once been called Robert and had developed DSI at IBM in 1965. However, when she told IBM that she was a transsexual and intended to  become a woman, she was sacked.  IBM sacked her because they worried that she would cause emotional stress to her colleagues because of her transition, and also because the computer they were focusing on (the 360) did not need her DSI invention.  Yet by the late 1990s DSI had become very important and the invention of Robert, now Lynne, came to fruition.  Not only is Lynne a great example of woman in technology, but the sad tale of her sacking is a salutory lesson for all employers who plan to drive transsexuals out of employment.  Just how many millions of dollars did IBM’s bigotry cost them, just because they could not cope with the fact that the brain behind those ideas was no longer that of a man called Robert, but a woman called Lynne Conway.

Memphis Belles

As we enter a new year, 2008 cannot end soon enough for Memphis male to female transsexuals.  In July Ebony Whitaker was found shot dead, in November Duanna Johnson was shot in the street, and in December Leeneshia Edwards was shot in the face and is seeing the new year in recovering in hospital.  All three were prostitutes and in the Old Year’s Day edition of Pink News, Jessica Green writes that local trans campaigners are blaming their shootings on being forced into prostitution because no one will give transsexuals employment.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-10167.html

At the time of her murder, Duanna was considering taking legal action against the Memphis police over video evidence that she was beaten up by two police officers.  This prompted some trans bloggers to assert that this must be a police conspiracy, but tragically it looks like she is one of a series of  victims – it might even be a serial killer.

Are the campaigners correct, however, to blame the violence on lack of employment opportunities?  Certainly, they have made themselves targets by being prostitutes, but the murder of six non-trans female prostitutes in Ipswich shows that this danger is not limited to trans people, and as the following BBC article points out – prostitutes are “Easy Targets for Predators.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7226330.stm

Giving better employment opportunities to Memphis’ transsexuals might reduce their exposure to danger, but the campaigners seem to be band-wagon jumping here.  The stories of Ebony, Duanna, and Leeneshiaare are not about employment opportunities, they are about hate crime.  Murder is murder and hate is hate – it is wrong if trans people are murdered, it is wrong if any prostitute is murdered, and keeping trans people out of this dangerous profession will not make the murder of prostitutes any less evil.

Stonewall Was a Riot By Drag Queens

“I think we would do well to remember that Stonewall is named after a riot by drag queens. That is all I want to say.”  Those are the words of  Joe Galliano, editor of GT, as reported in the Pink News article ‘Celebs split over trans protest at Stonewall Awards.’  [http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-9523.html]

The trans protest in question was against the nomination as Journalist of the Year given to Julie Bindel, whose past comments on the pointlessness of Gender Realignment Surgery had incensed many in the trans community.  The protest, however, was as much against Stonewall for not only nominating Bindel, but also for not incorporating trans issues into their campaigns (Stonewall Scotland do include trans issues, but not the rest of the UK organisations).   This meant that many of those commenting in trans internet sites after the demonstration (probably the largest trans demo ever held in the UK) saw Galliano’s comments as a vindication, especially as one particularly large banner at the demo proclaimed “Stonewall Was A Riot.”  I am not sure, however, that Galliano was supporting them.

Stonewall was a riot at the Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village, New York on 27th June 1969.  To find out more about it you can view the online version of Columbia University’s exhibition [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/exhibitions/sw25/].  That exhibition was named ‘Stonewall and Beyond:  Lesbian and Gay Culture.’  That title is one that annoys many trans people, as within the trans community there is an often heard claim that Stonewall was a riot in a pub frequented by trans people of colour, and that the street riot by gays meant that the trans origins of the Stonewall Riot was forgotten.  Those who hold to that view will not like the Stonewall and Beyond Exhibition as it provides absolutely no evidence of Stonewall being a trans club.

Galliano called Stonewall a riot by drag queens and certainly one of the memorial moments of the riot was the drag queens chanting either:

We are the Stonewall girls
We wear our hair in curls
We wear no underwear
We show our pubic hair  . . .
We wear our dungarees
Above our nelly knees.

or the original version:

We are the Stonewall Girls we wear our hair in curls,
We always dress with flair, we wear clean underwear,
We wear our dungarees, above our nellie knees,
We ain’t no wannabees, we pay our Stonewall fees!

So was Galliano supporting the demonstrators’ claim by implying that if Stonewall was a riot by drag queens then the Stonewall organisation should support Trans rights as well as Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual rights?  Or was he suggesting that as it was a riot by drag queens that the trans community had no claim to be involved in an organisation just because it is called Stonewall?

Well he stated that is all he has to say about that, so I guess we will never know, but  what is the truth behind the Stonewall Inn?  The reports in the press in the Stonewall and Beyond Exhibition focus on gay men, but then that was an era when most of the journalists would not know the difference between gay and trans (other than those who were hiding their gay or trans status in order to keep their jobs).  More telling is the report that one of the slogans put up on the boards covering the Stonewall Inn’s windows was “Support Gay Power — C’mon in, girls,” which does not sound like a trans pub.  Even more telling is the description of a typical Stonewall Inn crowd as “some transvestites, a lot of students, young people, older people, businessmen.”  So has history been re-written very successfully or has the trans community over-estimated the trans element at the Stonewall Inn?  That should be easier to find out that Galliano’s opinion, so any views with evidence cited in the comments would be very much appreciated.