Feminism

Couldn’t Make It Up

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

I’m sorry to keep coming back to this story, but it is a fine illustration of the depths to which the British media will sink when they think that they have a defenseless minority that they can persecute at will. Let’s have a brief recap.

It all started when Suzanne Moore said something mildly insensitive (possibly out of ignorance) in an article, and was questioned about it on Twitter. Instead of engaging with her critic, she flung off a series of insults about trans people, got the predictable response, then left Twitter in a huff claiming that she had been driven away.

Then Julie Burchill leapt to her friend’s defense with an article that was basically a whole string of insults about trans people all gathered into one place and held together with protestations of Ms. Burchill’s poor, working class nature, as compared to the wealthy and highly educated trans community. The Observer got a lot of stick for publishing this, so they withdrew it, probably to escape the embarrassment of the huge amount of criticism they were getting on their website. Burchill immediately re-sold the piece to her old working class buddy, Toby Young (the son of Baron Young of Dartington), who published it in the Telegraph, where it remains online to this day.

We have since been treated to a succession of articles by concerned journalists explaining how bad it is that Ms. Burchill should be treated in this way, because getting paid twice for a piece of writing that is currently available to be read all over the world means that she has been subjected to censorship thanks to the lobbying of the evil and powerful trans cabal.

Yesterday Roz Kaveney was summoned onto BBC Radio 4’s Media Show to discuss the issue with Mr. Young (who, by the way, goes by @toadmeister on Twitter). You can listen to it here. You may notice, as I did, that Roz’s comments have been clumsily edited so that she’s cut off in mid flow several times. Toadmeister, on the other hand, is allowed to talk freely. Roz explains what happened here.

The irony of someone being accused of censorship of an article that is freely available worldwide having her words edited out of a debate on the subject is presumably lost on the commentariat. However, I was chatting with Roz on the phone earlier today and we both agreed that the BBC probably didn’t intend any malice. It is just that they had a debate between a member of the nobility on one hand, and on the other a representative of a minority group, all of whom the World Health Organization and the NHS regards as mentally ill, and they gave prominence to those speakers accordingly.

Meanwhile Suzanne Moore has taken to the Guardian to explain how belief in freedom is incompatible with equality, so equality has to go. She reports her recent experiences thus: “The wrath of the transgender community has been insane.” Well of course. As we are all mentally ill, what does she expect? But of course you will all have seen the vile and vicious way in which I have attacked Ms. Moore here. (Julie Burchill must be sick with envy of me.) And there’s more. If you really want to see how leading members of the trans community have poured hatred and bile on poor Ms. Moore’s head I recommend that you read Christine Burns and Paris Lees.

The original fuss, of course, was caused by Moore’s unfortunate use of “Brazilian transsexual” as a punchline. Well Pink News discovered that a Brazilian trans woman was murdered this very week. That’s not actually very surprising as the murder rate for Brazilian trans women is currently running at between 2 and 3 every week. But hey, they had a picture of the unfortunate woman in a skimpy costume, and as nothing says Important News Story more loudly than big boobies they ran with it to help explain why some trans people were so upset with Moore.

Moore threatened them with legal action.

Because, you know, freedom of speech.

This morning Moore is claiming that her threat was just a joke. I guess you can interpret that in two ways. On the one hand she may still be in desperate need of lessons on how to use social media [Hint: 😉 is good for indicating a joke]. But it is also possible that she has learned very quickly how to troll for outrage so that she can then continue to paint herself as a victim.

There is one aspect of the whole thing that I find troubling. Some trans people are saying things like, “It would never happen if I was black/disabled/Jewish/Muslim/etc.” Ironically these are some of the same people extolling the virtues of intersectionality. There is no greasy totem poll of oppression, people. This sort of highlighting of the actions of a few extremists in order to smear the bulk of a despised group gets done to many different groups, not just us.

Still, I have learned from this how a proper journalist is supposed to behave, and now I am going to put it into practice. You see, SFWA has just issued the 200th edition of its magazine, the SFWA Bulletin. The cover is graced by a picture of a good looking red-haired woman (see below). Inside Mike Resnick has an article about sexy women editors. In true journalistic tradition, I am assuming that this is All About Me, and will sue.

Firstly there’s breach of copyright. SFWA has clearly used my picture on the cover of their magazine without permission. (And by the way, people, that’s scale armor I’m wearing, not a chain mail bikini. Even I’m not that stupid.) Secondly, if Mike has failed to list me amongst his list of the totally hawtest women editors in the community, I shall sue for defamation.

As a well-known and outspoken feminist writer, I am sure that I can rely on the support of the UK media in my quest for fair treatment.

SFWA Bulletin #200

And see here for some alternative versions, given that Jim Hines and John Scalzi are not available to model.

Picking Your Fights

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The row about Julie Burchill’s Observer article continues to rumble on in the UK media, becoming more and more meta by the day. The current situation is that everyone is up in arms about how a journalist who decided to vilify and threaten an oppressed minority because she said they were bullying her friend is now apparently being bullied in turn by that same evil minority group. Given that Burchill is such a shy and retiring individual herself, all of her friends are queuing up to defend her from awful people like me. My heart bleeds for the poor dear, it really does.

Sadly, however, I can’t fight on behalf of all oppressed minorities, so I’ll have to leave defending poor Julie to the rest of the Bolly and Lobster consuming commentariat. I have other things to do. Most of yesterday was actually spent working on the day job, but in the evening I headed off to Bristol to talk to Freedom Youth, a local LGBT Youth group. My colleague, Andy Foyle, and I were there to encourage them to get involved in the LGBT History Exhibition. It was a really fun evening, and I think I came over quite well thanks to my knowledge of superheroes, Buffy, Xena and so on.

Today I was in Bristol again for an appearance on Ujima Radio. This was for the launch of Paulette’s new Women’s Outlook show. We had a great half hour on women in literature, in which I got to talk about Tolkien, Eowyn and the forthcoming Kij Johnson lecture. That’s the first part of this podcast (and yes, the Ujima website has got the name of the show wrong). The second half hour of that podcast has women from three local feminist groups as guests. I was delighted to hear Anna Brown of the Bristol Feminist Network talking about their inclusive policy (and her colleague, Sian Norris, has been very supportive over the Burchill debacle).

Talking of Sian, there will be a Women’s Literature Festival in Bristol in March. Stella Duffy will be there, and therefore so will I.

I also got a couple of slots in the second hour of the show. It begins with a slightly silly session on public toilets, in which I argue the merits of gender-neutral bathrooms. The final half hour is devoted to discussion of Female Genital Mutilation. Paulette kindly let me get a mention in right at the end for Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death. Hopefully that will get Nnedi a few more sales.

Tomorrow night I’ll be on ShoutOut with a couple of other trans people talking about #TransDocFail, which I happen to think is far more important than Miss Stroppy Pants Burchill.

And next week on Ujima we have a whole hour devoted to LBT issues, so I’ll have lots more of me to link to after that.

Missing The Point

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Well, yesterday was “interesting”, and might have been more productively spent. The outpouring of support for trans people, however, was amazingly heartwarming. More people spent more time defending the rights of trans people than I think they did in the whole of the past year. I haven’t seen that much support since the My Transsexual Summer TV series. And indeed I’d like to publicly thank the MTS7 for putting themselves out there so bravely and educating people. Had they not done so, I am sure that Julie Burchill would have got much more support.

Inevitably some of the commentary missed the point. I’ve seen people saying what a horrible person Julie Burchill is, and others saying that we should ignore the whole things because it is only Julie Burchill doing what she always does. This is true. Burchill has been busily offending people for as long as she has been a journalist, but it is also not particularly important. What matters is that staff at the Observer saw fit to publish her rant. I see that they have now removed the evidence, which conveniently also removes all of the comments complaining about the piece.

There has been some right of reply. The Guardian commissioned Roz Kaveney to pen something, and she’s been brilliant as ever. Laurie Penny also has something in the works (after having insisted that an actual trans person get the first right of reply). Brooke Magnanti has a nice piece in the Telegraph pointing out that sex workers get the same sort of treatment from Burchill, Bindel, et al. And the New Statesman is running an entire week of trans-related stories. However, neither Roz nor Laurie’s piece will appear in print editions (Burchill’s did), and I imagine that by next Sunday the Observer will be assuming that everyone has forgotten about the story.

Elsewhere some of the “support” has been a little less than helpful. We’ve had the usual outrage trolls searching Twitter for people who are being supportive but can be attacked for doing it in the wrong way, or who can be misinterpreted as supporting Burchill. And we’ve had the finger waggers lecturing at length on what people are allowed to say. Last night I saw a cis woman telling her readers that “transsexual” was a bad word and that we are not to use it. I guess she got that from some ardent transgender activist. I’ve also seen a supportive cis person being told off on the grounds that she has no right to speak on behalf of trans people. This sort of thing is not helpful. Last night I was in danger of having my own Suzanne Moore moment, so I gave up and went to bed with a book.

Which brings me back to the other area where people are missing the point. There’s no question that some people were extremely mean to Suzanne Moore on Twitter. Some of them were undoubtedly trans people. Others were cis people. Probably some of them had PhDs in gender theory. I say this because I’ve been told off for “doing trans wrong” by such people before. But in the telling this story has become one of Moore being attacked solely by trans people as a monolithic whole (or the “trans cabal” as Julie Bindel would have it); then her and Burchill responding by attacking all trans people (which they inevitably caricature as comprising only trans women). As ever, when large numbers of people are involved, it is easier to demonize a group as a whole, rather than respond to the actual people behaving badly. It makes a simpler, and therefore better, story. As a result, even though we got all that support, the dominant media narrative is quickly becoming one of trans people as a unified and vicious group of social media harpies. As we have no influence on the media, we can’t do much to challenge that.

I worry about where we go from here. On the one hand it is good that the message is occasionally getting out. On the other I’m sure that the campaign to shut down all health care for trans people will continue, and that more articles like David Batty’s will appear. In the meantime, someone has to try to turn things around. Firstly we need evidence. Things that can’t be dismissed as the “alleged” complaints of deranged people. One of Christine Burns’ colleagues has produced this helpful blog post detailing how GPs in the North West of England responded to attempts to find out how trans patients are being served, and to provide trans awareness posters for waiting rooms. It includes such gems as, “Another refused to use the poster on the grounds that ‘women and children come in here'” and “There aren’t many around here in Cumbria because they’d stick out like a sore thumb”.

Meanwhile I spent the morning talking to a friend who has done Equality & Diversity training for the NHS in Somerset about how we might continue to offer such training throughout the South West. And I’ll be doing a slot on ShoutOut about TransDocFail on Thursday evening. I also need to get on with running my various businesses.

By Their Words Shall Ye Know Them

~ Cheryl ~ 11 Comments

It is not often that I will post a link to a British tabloid newspaper, but today the Daily Mirror ran an article about what it called the “Ugly Face of UKIP”. For US readers, UKIP is a right wing minority party previously best known for its hatred of the European Union which is now trying to rebrand itself as Libertarian. Last week they sacked the leader of their youth wing because he supports marriage equality. Nevertheless they try to claim respectability. So someone (presumably an insider) leaked a few choice comments from UKIP’s internal web forums. Here are some extracts from the article:

On the forum, senior UKIP member Dr Julia Gasper branded gay rights a “lunatic’s charter” and claimed some homosexuals prefer sex with animals. She added: “As for the links between homosexuality and paedophilia, there is so much evidence that even a full-length book could hardly do justice to the ­subject.”

and:

Another member complained about the impact of immigration on the NHS, writing: “I am informed by past media that Black Caribbean and not Black African have a higher instance of schizophrenia.

“I wonder if this is due to inbreeding on these small islands in slave times or is it due to ­smoking grass.”

which pretty much confirms my opinion of the sort of people who join UKIP.

Meanwhile, over at the Observer, Julie Buchill takes up arms on behalf of Suzanne Moore, managing to produce one of those rare articles in which the comment thread is far more civilized than the main text. You probably don’t want to read the whole thing as it is one long exercise in ignorant stereotyping and throwing insults. The final paragraph will do:

Shims, shemales, whatever you’re calling yourselves these days – don’t threaten or bully us lowly natural-born women, I warn you. We may not have as many lovely big swinging Phds as you, but we’ve experienced a lifetime of PMT and sexual harassment and many of us are now staring HRT and the menopause straight in the face – and still not flinching. Trust me, you ain’t seen nothing yet. You really won’t like us when we’re angry.

A lot of people are asking how such mindless, frothing hatred can be published in the Observer (the Sunday edition of the Guardian). Sadly it doesn’t surprise me. The fact that Guardian staff are willing to publish such rot goes a long way towards explaining why they are willing to publish the far more dangerous clever lies of people like David Batty. Burchill represents the reality of what many Guardian staff and their friends think about trans people.

I’ve also seem people saying, “I bet they wouldn’t have published that if it had been about [some other minority group]”. But an Afro-Caribbean friend of mine challenged this, claiming that his people too get this treatment and, just like trans folks, get accused of political correctness if they complain. Here’s Burchill, from the same piece:

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”.

I wonder which sort of people she’s stereotyping there.

The one thing that has cheered me about the whole affair is the number of cis people who have expressed their horror at Burchill’s article. Many of them have been people from the science fiction community (who I guess also know a bit about being stereotyped in the press). One of the best pieces was this one on LGBT.co.uk. It is by Jane Carnall. I don’t know how many trans people she knows, but I’m one of them. I once seconded a motion that she put before the WSFS Business Meeting. Small world.

By the way, if any of you feel like making a complaint about Burchill, the Press Complaints Commission website is here. However, a quick scan of the comment thread on the article suggests that the PCC regards “comment pieces” as outside of their purview, and will therefore ignore any complaints. Self-regulation my arse.

Update: The Independent is cheekily running a poll to gauge reactions to Burchill’s article. You can vote here. I see that the trans cabal have been deploying their PhDs to good effect, as someone must have hacked the poll to have it running 9:1 against poor Julie.

Update 2: Have corrected spelling of Burchill’s name. Sorry folks. Tired and emotional today.

Wanted: Someone To Hate

~ Cheryl

The ongoing fallout from #TransDocFail continues to generate blog posts. Mostly people are a bit bemused. Dru Marland notes that the sort of abuse documented in #TransDocFail should be investigated by crusading journalists. It won’t be. Those stories have already been relegated to the status of “alleged abuse”, the deranged fantasies of people who are widely regarded as insane.

On Twitter Christine Burns is asking why all of the journalists who are wringing their hands about the failure to believe the victims of the serial pedophile, Jimmy Savile, are not listening to the tales of trans people abused by doctors. It is a nice point, but nothing will happen.

Kat Gupta notes how professional contacts within the media have allowed Suzanne Moore to respond easily (and dishonestly) to the way her abusive comments about trans people have been received. Moore has plenty of friends in the media, while trans people do not.

Savile, of course, had plenty of friends in the media (and in politics, he was a close friend of Margaret Thatcher). And of course he was well loved by the public. All that made him untouchable while he was alive. Even though many people knew the truth, no one would speak out. Or, of they did, they would not be believed. The victims of child sex abuse are generally not believed when their abusers are celebrities, or other powerful people such as priests. But that’s not all there is to it.

Gupta, who is an academic specializing in gender and the media, also notes something interesting about the nature of existing trans coverage: it is all very personal. That is, journalists look for individuals whom they can write human interest stories about. This should give us a clue as to why #TransDocFail won’t get any further traction in the media.

You see, journalism is all about stories, and just as in traditional fiction you need compelling characters: heroes and/or villains. Richard Curtis makes a good villain because he’s a doctor in private practice with an office near Harley Street. I’m also self-employed, and my guess is that he earns a lot less money than the NHS consultants who are trying to put him out of business, but it is easy to spin a story that paints him as a rich private doctor who ruthlessly exploits the “mentally ill” (i.e. trans people).

Savile too, now that he’s dead, makes a good storybook villain. But #TransDocFail has no obvious heroes and villains. It is about large numbers of disgusting freaks ordinary people being routinely abused by large numbers of other ordinary people. That makes it bad story material. Without an obvious hero, victim or villain, the press won’t be interested.

Last night Helen Belcher was tweeting about what I assume is another case of trans abuse. “And then I come back to a story of repeated abuse in an NHS hospital which has left me completely stunned”, and “Every so often you stumble across a story of abuse that’s so bad, it takes your breath away”. It sounds awful, but Goddess help me I found myself wondering if this was the story we need to keep this issue in the news. I see that Jane Fae is on the case. Watch this space.

More #TransDocFail Links

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I know you are probably getting fed up with this stuff by now, but this story does illustrate very clearly just how manipulative the press can be if they want to be, openly spreading ideas that they must know to be false when there’s a minority group that they want to pillory. I noticed yesterday some discussion on Twitter about how applications from students from South Asia wishing to study in the UK were down sharply in the past year — a 25% drop from India, 13% down from Pakistan. This was blamed squarely on the Daily Malice stirring up hatred against foreign visitors and immigrants, which in turn leads the immigration service to impose ever more draconian policies.

I’ll bring this back to Leveson at the end, but first lets look at some of the press coverage.

First up, here’s Ed West in the Telegraph, claiming that there is no medical evidence that gender reassignment improves trans people’s lives for the better, and that academics who try to prove this are being hounded out of academia. On the face of it the article sounds quite sympathetic towards trans people, but anyone who knows a bit about the subject can quickly see that it is all founded on lies and distortions.

A key feature of West’s argument is the story of J. Michael Bailey and his book, The Man Who Would Be Queen. Bailey claims that there are only two types of trans people. There are “homosexual transsexuals”, by which he means trans women who are sexually attracted to men, and there are “autogynophiliacs”, by which he means trans women who are sexually attracted to women. Like most people who make a living from publicly abusing trans people, Bailey largely ignores the existence of trans men. They don’t rate anywhere near the same amount of column inches in the media. You’ll note also that Bailey’s terminology clearly implies that trans women are, and can only ever be, men.

According to Bailey’s theory, “homosexual transsexuals” change gender primarily so that they can have sex with as many men as possible. It’s not clear what evidence he has for this, but he notes, “Nearly all the homosexual transsexuals I know work as escorts after they have their surgery” and “Prostitution is the single most common occupation that homosexual transsexuals in our study admitted to”. It doesn’t occur to Bailey that these people might be working as prostitutes because they can’t get jobs thanks to endemic discrimination against trans people in the labor market. Instead he notes that they “might be especially suited to prostitution”. Remember, this is people like me that Bailey is talking about.

As for the autogynophiliacs, I’ve written about this strange, made-up condition before. Basically Bailey is suggesting that people change gender because they are sexually obsessed with the image of themselves when cross-dressed. It would be laughable if the idea wasn’t treated with such seriousness by the American Psychiatric Association.

The publication of Bailey’s book was accompanied by a publicity campaign trumpeting its challenging and ground-breaking science, and on the basis of that it was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. The Lammys, remember, are for books which promote LGBT people. There then followed an outbreak of outrage amongst the trans community, and several complaints against Bailey by people who had been his research subjects. Amongst other things, we learned that, as part of his research, Bailey had had sex with at least one of his subjects. Great devotion to science there!

West claims that Bailey was “effectively hounded out of academia”, but in fact his college ignored or dismissed all of the complaints against him. All that happened is that a book that vast numbers of trans people regarded as offensive and defamatory was dropped from the nominees list for an award intended to promote positive images of LGBT people. You can read more about the story from trans academics, Lynn Conway and Joan Roughgarden.

As to the absence of medical evidence for the efficacy of gender reassignment, well, I’ll admit that searching for academic papers can be hard, but I had a go. It took me about 10 minutes to find this. It is a review of NHS gender treatment produced by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. It includes references to a number of academic studies looking at outcomes of treatment. Here are some of the results:

Charing Cross is a very large clinic with a long-standing reputation in the field; in twenty years of practice, they have only had three patients who reverted to their original gender – Shirzaker et al. (2006) Oxfordshire Priorities Forum – Minutes of Meeting 27/09/06

in over 80 qualitatively different case studies and reviews from 12 countries, it has been demonstrated during the last 30 years that the treatment that includes the whole process of gender reassignment is effective – Pfafflin & Junge. (1998) Sex Reassignment. Thirty Years of International Follow-up Studies After Sex Reassignment Surgery: A Comprehensive Review, 1961-1991; English Ed. by Jacobson & Meier

no patient was actually dissatisfied, 91.6 per cent were satisfied with their overall appearance and the remaining 8.4 per cent were neutral – Smith, YLS. Van Goozen, SHM. Kuiper, AJ & Cohen-Kettenis, PT. (2005) Sex reassignment: outcomes and predictors of treatment for adolescent and adult transsexuals, Psychological Medicine 35:88-99.

A survey in the UK also reported a high level of satisfaction of 98 per cent following genital surgery – Schonfield, S. (2008) Audit, Information and Analysis Unit: audit of patient satisfaction with transgender services.

A further study on outcomes in trans women shows that they function well on a physical, emotional, psychological and social level – Weyers, S. Elaut, E. De Sutter, P. Gerris, J. T’Sjoen, G. Heylens, G. De Cuypere, G. & Verstraelen, H. (2009) Long-term assessment of the physical, mental and sexual health among transsexual women, Journal of Sexual Medicine 6:752-760.

Now of course the Telegraph is the sort of publication that is likely to claim that there is no scientific evidence for climate change, evolution or heliocentrism, so I’m not surprised at West’s claims, but if you look the evidence for the value of gender treatments isn’t hard to find.

Gay Star News also covered the Richard Curtis story, and as you might expect it did a rather better job, but it also did it’s best to cover it’s backside by supplying what journalists euphemistically call “balance”. It notes a Facebook campaign in support of Dr. Curtis, and gives almost equal space to someone who has spoken out against it. Now of course there is an actual complaint from a real patient here, and that needs to be investigated. But it should not be “investigated” by means of articles in national newspapers that throw in a whole lot of spurious additional accusations of malpractice and attempt to cast doubt on the wisdom of providing anyone with treatment. Also there are currently 259 people in the Facebook group. I’ve only noticed two complaining. Journalists know that the amount of space you give to an opinion is critical in determining how much credence readers give to that opinion. By giving almost equal space to the contrary view, Gay Star News is suggesting that the trans community is equally divided on the issue. That’s not what I’m seeing at all.

They are very careful to describe the stories being related on the #TransDocFail hashtag as “alleged”. That’s often journalist code for “probably made up”. And the examples they pick to showcase are mainly name-calling. The much more serious incidents are ignored. You can get a much better idea of the level of abuse by looking at this useful list of lowlights from the hashtag.

The Guardian tried to add a little balance of their own by accepting this article by Jane Fae which does a pretty good job of covering the issue. Spectacularly it also makes a first appearance in The Guardian for my vagina. Not a picture, of course, but definitely a mention. I’m going to count that as an almost Amanda Palmer level of awesomeness, though I’m sure that Amanda herself has done far better.

Unfortunately The Guardian also chose yesterday to publish an article by Suzanne Moore in which she argued that trans women should put up with being abused and ridiculed by her because of the need for feminist solidarity. She also repeats the classic Janice Raymond and Julie Bindel line about trans people reinforcing the gender binary (and so are anti-feminist). You can find a more nuanced (by which I mean not written by Moore herself) view of the whole furor over at The F-Word.

Finally in this round-up of links I’d like to give credit again to Sarah Brown for starting the whole thing. Here she is talking about it. Her article also includes a link to a 5-minute slot on BBC Radio Cambridge in which she and Christine Burns discuss the issue with a very supportive interviewer.

Now, I promised you a link back to Leveson. Thanks to my pal Eugene Byrne, I discovered this blog post by the Met Office complaining about lies and distortions being spread about their service by the Daily Malice. Incredibly, the Malice article even contained a lie that had been the subject of a successful complaint to the Press Complaints Commission when it first appeared in the Telegraph. So not only does the Malice feel free to print lies, it will do so even when another newspaper has already been censured for doing so. And this is not some despised minority we are talking about here, this is a matter of the accuracy of scientific work. So next time someone tells you that British newspapers can be trusted to self-regulate, I recommend asking for a balanced assessment.

Trans Anger Hits The Headlines

~ Cheryl

Well, yesterday was busy. That #TransDocFail hashtag that I mentioned was far more popular than anyone had anticipated, which just goes to show how angry trans people are about how they are treated by the medical profession. This is the key to the Richard Curtis story. He may, or may not, have made mistakes with a few clients. That’s a proper subject for an investigation (and not for trial by media). However, his treatment of the majority of his clients is so much better than what they have got from the NHS, and no one in the NHS ever gets brought to book for their behavior. Indeed, it seems that mostly they don’t care. Remember, 84% of NHS staff believe that trans people should not be allowed NHS treatment for their gender issues.

Thankfully that’s not 100%, and those opposed to the use NHS funds for surgery may still be perfectly happy providing normal GP services. Someone has noticed, because this article about the #TransDocFail phenomenon appeared on a medical news site. I note also that many of the issues reported under the hashtag are as much a function of ignorance as of malice. If NHS staff got training about gender issues the situation might get a lot better.

It would also be better if trans people actually complained about how they are treated. The hashtag is a promising start. Jane Fae suggests that this may be our “Stonewall moment”. I’m not happy with that label, because the Stonewall riots were started by trans people. The fact that the name “Stonewall” has been co-opted by transphobic gays such as Ben Summerskill is a source of constant irritation. Nevertheless, the outpouring of anger was hopeful.

The other side of the story is brought to light by this article in New Statesman. I spent some time corresponding with Charlie Hallam last night and I’m pleased to see what a fine job she has done. I note also that she was up until 6:00am writing this article, and then had the alarm on for 9:00am so she could be available when her editor got into the office. That’s dedication.

Charlie had a word limit, and was barely able to scratch the surface of the issues raised by the hashtag, but she got right to a core point: trans people don’t complain about how they are treated by the NHS because they believe, with good reason, that they will only be treated worse, or denied treatment altogether, if they object. Indeed, the whole philosophy by which trans patients are currently tested to see if they are suitable for transition is to put as many unpleasant roadblocks in their way as possible to see how determined they are. The theory, I think, is that if someone can put up with how they are treated by their doctors then, and only then, will they have a strong enough personality to cope with how they will be treated by the rest of the world after they have transitioned.

What I want to know is, whatever happened to “do no harm”.

Some Follow-Up

~ Cheryl

Last night Christine Burns posted a few links on Facebook that illustrate the institutional issues surrounding discrimination in the NHS (and, of course, the media).

First up we have a horrifying story of a Polish doctor who was eventually awarded £4.5m after a sustained campaign of bullying and manufactured disciplinary complaints against her. The treatment that Dr. Michalak suffered is far worse than that being suffered by Dr. Curtis, although of course the consequences for patients are far less.

Secondly, for an example of the sort of thing you can get away with if you are white and male (and your patients are women), here’s a BBC report on a doctor from Cornwall who was allowed to continue in practice despite 12 investigations into his competence and numerous botched operations. Is this the sort of thing that David Batty might report on? Apparently not, Mr. Batty is only interested in allegations of medical malpractice if they can be used to help deny treatment to trans people.

And finally, if you are on Twitter, take a look at the #TransDocFail hashtag, which started earlier today. It contains a massive and damning collection of stories about how trans people are denied treatment, lied to, and abused by NHS staff. Next time someone asks what is meant by “institutionally transphobic”, all I need to do is point them to that.

GMC – The Wider Issue

~ Cheryl

When I wrote the post about Richard Curtis I couldn’t find any links to the issues that Christine Burns has raised. However, she has kindly sent me some links via Twitter, which I’ll now share with you.

First up there’s a Department of Health paper (PDF) on the need for “revalidation” of doctors, particularly in the light of recent equalities legislation. The problem is that, once a doctor is certified to practice, she can carry on doing so for life. There is no requirement to keep up with best practice, or to familiarize yourself with issues that might never have been addressed when you were trained.

The section on trans people is quite illuminating. The headline statistic is that 84% of GPs and hospital staff are opposed to the funding of gender reassignment on the NHS. It is not surprising, therefore, that post-op trans people are treated in a hostile manner when they present themselves for treatment for ordinary health issues. Now of course the NHS is massively overstretched, so I appreciate concern about the use of funds. But given the suicide rate amongst trans people, the relative cheapness of the treatment (surgery costs are a tiny fraction of the levels typically quoted by newspapers, and the NHS would make a profit on my hormone prescription if I could find a GP willing to prescribe them), and the very high success rate, I suspect you’d find that gender reassignment was one of the more cost-effective live-saving treatments around.

In addition I can report, from personal experience, that there is often a double standard applied here. While NHS employees do not want trans people treated by the state, if you do opt for private medicine they don’t thank you. What they do is accuse you of having self-medicated, and assume that any further health problems you have, of whatever sort, are a result of that self-medication, and therefore also not worthy of treatment by the NHS. Being a post-op trans person is like being someone who smokes 50 cigarettes a day and is massively overweight as far as some NHS staff are concerned.

This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. The report I linked to goes into detail on all nine strands of the Equality Act, and there are problems with all of them. Furthermore Christine sent me a link to this report (PDF) produced by the University of Bradford on the disproportionate use of disciplinary action against black and minority ethnic workers in the health service. The headline stat there is that a BME member of staff is twice as likely to be disciplined as a white person. Because these days managers and HR departments are adept at phrasing their attacks on minority staff in ways that avoid allegations of discrimination, they get away with this. (And indeed I’ve suffered it myself. In the last job I had, I quit because it became obvious that the HR team was fabricating a disciplinary complaint against me so as to avoid being subject to California’s trans equality legislation.)

The good news is that the problem is being recognized, and Christine also sent me a link to this conference being held at the University of Manchester in March to discuss the problem, not just in the health service, but throughout all so-called “professional” occupations.

New Aussie Podcast

~ Cheryl

Thanks to Kirstyn and Mondy of The Writer & The Critic I have been altered to a new podcast by prolific Australian blogger, Sean Wright. The podcast is named after his blog, Adventures of a Bookonaut, and Episode 1 is very interesting.

It contains three interviews. The first is with Luke Preston. He’s a thriller writer, but well worth listening to as he has come to novel writing from a screen writing background. Consequently he has some interesting views on how to write (which I suspect are better-suited to his chosen genre than to other types of fiction).

Next up is Joelyn Alexandra from Singapore who introduces us to her own writing, and to several other writers from her part of the world.

Finally there is an interview with Helen Merrick, author of The Secret Feminist Cabal. This is a must-listen for anyone with an interest in feminism and science fiction.

Thanks Sean, I’m looking forward to more episodes.

Men In Dresses

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

Earlier this week, John Scalzi and Jim Hines did a charity thing in which they did parodies of a “silly female pose” book cover. If you haven’t seen the pictures then you have probably seen people laughing at them. Well, this morning I woke up to discover that concerned feminists were angry about this. Apparently anyone who laughed at the pictures was guilty of transphobia. Jim even saw fit to issue a public apology. Update: Scalzi also has a post on the subject here.

Let me see. I didn’t exactly laugh out loud, but I did groan and appreciate the joke. I guess that makes me a wicked transphobe.

No, wait, let’s step back a minute. What John and Jim were doing was drag. Now drag is a complex phenomenon that I’ve never been part of, but I do know some stuff about it. I know, for example, that it can take many forms, from gross parody in which the performer is making fun of extreme forms of gender presentation, to impersonation, where the idea is to look convincing when cross-dressed. I also know that some drag performers self-identify as trans, while others adamantly do not. And I know that some cis people mistakenly believe that drag and trans are one and the same thing.

Now what John and Jim were doing was pretty clearly in the parody category. They weren’t trying to look like women, and they were deliberately mocking the way that women are portrayed on book covers.

In contrast, trans people, for the most part, are not intending to parody anything, though some may do so at times to make a political point. It’s true that there are genderqueer folks who enjoy mixing and matching elements of gender presentation, but they take pride in their appearance. Indeed, some of the genderqueer people I know are incredibly stylish and good-looking. Even the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Goddess bless them, have their own, off-the-wall aesthetic, as exemplified by Project Nunway.

I note also that drag performers (with one or two dishonorable exceptions) do not set out to mock trans people, they are mocking cis people.

It never crossed my mind that John & Jim might be seen as mocking trans people. Of course there are going to be idiots who comment on the pictures saying things like, “Hur, hur, u look like a tr*nny!” That’s why you should never read the comments. But the connection between parody drag and trans people was in their minds already, John and Jim didn’t put it there.

The connection can be in other minds too. When I hear someone say, “Anyone who laughs at those pictures is transphobic”, what I actually hear is, “Well, we know that trans women are actually ugly men in dresses, and can never be anything else, but you still shouldn’t laugh at them.”

You know, I appreciate the concern, but I’m not sure that I want to be defended by people who think I look like John & Jim do in those pictures. Nor do I want the idea spread that those pictures are what trans people look like.

Marriage: L&G But Not Equal

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

The UK government’s marriage equality legislation got its first airing in the Commons today. Here’s a brief overview.

If you are gay or lesbian and not Church of England you’ll be pretty happy.

Sorry, Church of England people, yours is the one religion in the country that will be banned from performing same-sex marriages. Most people can, of course defect to another branch of Christianity, but this is really rough on C of E clergy who want to minister to L & G people.

It is possible that straight couples where one decides to transition will now be able to keep their marriages. However, I understand that Northern Ireland is holding out against this and as yet the government isn’t willing to go forward without them.

And of course straight couples still can’t have a civil partnership, even if they want one. That means that a gay or lesbian couple with a civil partnership where one decides to transition will have to convert to a marriage in order to avoid having to dissolve their relationship.

It would be so much easier if a) the government didn’t have to appease the bishops, and b) we didn’t have Stonewall continually whispering in the government’s ear, “hey, we know what will appease them, why not screw over the trannies again, no one cares about them.”

Update: The Scottish government has published its marriage equality bill. You can find it here. There is lengthy and respectful discussion of the issues affecting trans people. It makes it clear that the problem with the divorce requirement is that the Gender Recognition Act is a UK-wide piece of legislation and, with Northern Ireland holding out firmly against same-sex marriage, any changes need to be agreed nation-wide.

Women In Sensible Social Situations

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

There has been quite a bit of talk around the blogosphere recently about how “realistic” having strong female characters in epic fantasy novels might be. Apparently various authors have been getting complaints from outraged fanboys over their use of strong and independent women. Didn’t they know that in medieval times women were all busy in the kitchen or having babies? Having them actually go on adventures totally ruins the careful world-building that you have done to justify the inclusion of magic, dragons and so on. And as for pirate queens, well, no self-respecting, red-blooded fantasy writer would ever do that!

There have been some quite entertaining responses. Tansy Rayner Roberts put on her professional historian hat over at Tor.com, while Foz Meadows has done an awesome amount of actual research (including covering the race angle as well).

Because such things tend to run and run, I’m guessing that there will be follow-up articles popping up all over the place. One of the things I am expecting to see people say is that it is about time that someone actually wrote more epic fantasy with strong women in it, because there is so little of it about. Which of course is silly, there’s plenty of it. The trouble is that much of it is written by women, and so it doesn’t get noticed by a lot of people.

I’m naturally proud of my authors, so I’d like to point out that Juliet McKenna has been writing fine epic fantasy for years, all of which contains plenty of female characters of different types. Some of them are adventurers, or professional magicians, while others are wives and mothers. You could try her out, starting at the beginning.

I’d also like to give a shout-out to my pal Glenda Larke. Her latest series, the Watergivers trilogy, is excellent, and is also set in a very different world from the run-of-the-mill pseudo-medieval fantasy. Finally, of course, there is Mary Gentle’s Ash, which is a magnificent piece of work.

The other thing I’d like to note is that the reverse argument is not true. That is, while it is not “unrealistic” to have strong, independent women in your fantasy, it is not “sexist” to not have them. Sure, remarkable women have existed in all periods of history; doubtless far more than have actually had their stories recorded. They have a place in adventure novels for the same reason that remarkable barbarian boys from far off Cimmeria have such a place. But not everyone was like that. The majority of women in medieval societies had fairly tough lives, and unless your fantasy world has invented modern medicine the dangers of pregnancy will loom large over your female characters. Even with modern medicine, women still have it tough, especially in less wealthy countries.

If we produced fantasy novels where the only female characters were strong and independent then we’d both be erasing the very real struggles of women in the past, and forfeiting the opportunity to create parallels with women’s struggles today. Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion that a fantasy novel that only has strong, independent women in it will probably only have one or two women in it (the heroine, or the heroine and her rival). Realistic worlds have all sorts of people in them, and roughly 50% of them will be female.

Eurocon Update

~ Cheryl

The Kiev Eurocon has updated its website. There is even a draft programme up (which, somewhat to my surprise, I am on). Meanwhile I have been trying to get some information on the local political situation.

Thanks to TGEU I have made contact with an LGBT activist organization in Kiev. Their view is that the proposed law against “promoting homosexuality”, if it is implemented by April, is unlikely to be used against foreign visitors. As to whether it happens at all, that’s unclear. The EU has recently given Ukraine a clear warning that the proposed law is in direct contravention of agreements that Ukraine has made with the EU. The UN has also spoken out against the proposed law. There was, apparently, a demonstration in Kiev today against the proposals. I hope it went well.

I’ll continue to monitor the situation. I’d like to go, especially if I can support local LGBT groups by doing so. My final decision will be based on the state of my finances, and on what the Ukrainian activists tell me.

Don’t Believe What You Read

~ Cheryl

One of the well known features of modern journalism is that most of what gets into papers isn’t actually written by the journalists, it is just re-cycled press releases. Therefore, if you have done something bad and want to put a positive spin on it, what you do is put out a well-written press release that contains the message you want put in front of the public. The chances are that it will land on the desk of someone who knows nothing about your work, and who will be only to happy to recycle what you have given them.

This is how news sources this week have been full of stories about the positive things done for trans people by the American Psychiatric Association in the latest release of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V), which has just been published. Here’s The Guardian swallowing the Kool-Aid. Here’s Gay Star News doing the right thing and talking to trans activists but still missing half the story. And here’s Julia Serano having a rant.

As you may recall, the current revision of the DSM has been a massive exercise in political compromise between psychiatrists who are sympathetic to trans people, and those who think we are a bunch of disgusting and dangerous sex perverts. I blogged about this last year. So yes, the good guys have had their way, sort of. There is no longer such a thing as Gender Identity Disorder. It is now Gender Dysphoria, which has the benefit of being a term that most people are familiar with, though is probably still more negative than the Gender Incongruence that was originally proposed.

But, and this is a huge but, there is an entirely separate section of the DSM under which trans people can also be diagnosed. It is part of the section on “paraphilias”, which includes things like paedophilia and flashing alongside more consensual activities that conservative psychiatrists find freaky such as BDSM. Basically, if a trans person has an active sex life of any sort, then they can be diagnosed with Transvestic Fetishism because someone deems that they are sexually aroused by wearing clothing inappropriate to their “true” sex (and I used “sex” deliberately there as such people generally refuse to accept gender as a legitimate concept).

It used to be the case that we could laugh at this a bit because it applied only to people wearing women’s clothing, the so-called Autogynophilia. But in the final revisions of DSM V someone sneaked in a new “mental illness” called Autoandrophilia. Yes, it is now possible for women to be deemed crazy on the grounds that they are sexually aroused by wearing men’s clothing. What does this mean? Jeans? Shirts? “Boyfriend” sweaters?

Autoandrophilia
This woman clearly suffers from autoandrophilia

My guess is that these diagnoses will be deployed mainly against trans people who are homosexual in their preferred gender, because the sort of psychiatrist who is going to persecute trans people is probably going to be homophobic too. But with an “illness” like this on the official register it isn’t too much of a stretch to see it being deployed against cis women whose attire is deemed insufficiently feminine. So remember girls, if you do wear pajamas in bed, make sure that they are pink.

The Jim Hines Inclusion Linkfest

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

In the wake of the “fake geek girl” nonsense that has been flooding the Internet over the past few weeks, Jim Hines has done a blog post linking to various posts by other people calling for more inclusivity in fandom. He’s been kind enough to link to something I wrote several years back, but don’t let that put you off, there’s lots more interesting material to read as well.

The whole “fake geek girl” thing amuses me no end, because the same people who rant and rave about girls not being real geeks are also likely to rant and rave about me not being a real girl, which of course means I can be a real geek. I’m also struck by the parallels between the “fake geek girl” narrative and the stories told about trans women. I’ll explain.

The people who complain about “fake geek girls” often do so in terms of entrapment. That is, they claim that the girls who turn up at conventions are not doing so because they are interested in the topic of the con. No, they are doing so to flaunt their boobies in skintight cosplay outfits so as to attract the attention of innocent geeks, whom they can then persecute by refusing to sleep with them. It’s a totally evil plan.

In comparison, people who complain about trans women often also use the entrapment story. In this case the trans women are “really” gay men who disguise themselves as beautiful women so that they can attract the attention of innocent males and lure them into gay sex.

Interesting, isn’t it. Who knew that the world was so full of insecure males?

Thank You, United Nations #TDOR

~ Cheryl

Some of you may remember a huge fuss a couple of years back when the UN voted to remove “sexual orientation” from its annual resolution condemning extrajudicial killings. Hilary Clinton and Susan Rice turned up last year to get that overturned. This year Sweden introduced the motion and added to it, for the very first time, protection for “gender identity”. What’s more they did this yesterday, on the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which of course specifically commemorates those killed because of their gender identity.

The motion was opposed by the usual unholy coalition of Muslim countries, the Vatican, and various states with hardline Christian traditions, but all of their attempts to remove the protections failed. In the final vote only Iran voted against, though I’m deeply disappointed in the United States which chose to abstain.

Full details, included the texts of the various resolutions and the voting record, is available here.

Heck of a Day Part I – #TDOR

~ Cheryl

Well, the TDOR event at Bristol went pretty well. Huge thanks to everyone who came, and to the Council for providing the space. We had 18 people in total, which was 50% more than my top-end estimate.

I appear to have done OK with the reading of the names, though I’m sure I butchered the pronunciation on some. As usual with such things, my main concern was that the event should not be disrupted by some activist taking exception to something I did or said. And if you think that’s far-fetched, one of Roz’s young friends reported via Twitter being spat at after her presentation at a local event because she’d tried to emphasize the fact that the event should be about those who died, not about relatively safe middle-class white people. Trans people can be just as stupid as the rest of society at times.

Anyway, it’s done. And there should be some further coverage on Shout Out tomorrow night (thanks to Niall & Nathan).

Now, what am I going to do with all of these left-over candles…?

Not Just The Tabloids

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Important updates to this at the end of the post.

I’m pretty used to the Daily Malice running sensationalist stories about trans people. Spreading hatred about minority groups is one of the main ways that they market their paper. But it is by no means only tabloid newspapers that are to blame. Today The Independent ran an article about trans model and beauty queen, Jackie Green. It purports to be an interview with Jackie’s mum. There’s a lot in the article that needs to be challenged (and people are starting to do so in the comments), but for now I’ll confine myself of a couple of things. Firstly the article pulls the usual dirty trick of referring to Jackie as male as often as it possibly can so as to reinforce the idea that she can never be anything else. And secondly, note the maximum shock value opening sentence: “When Jack Green was six years old, he asked ‘Mummy, when can I have my willy chopped off?” That’s completely made up. I know that because I’ve just read a very angry comment by Susie Green on the Trans Media Watch Facebook page.

To do this sort of thing at any time is disgraceful. To run a story that is pretty much designed to attract transphobic trolls on Transgender Day of Remembrance is beyond belief. I have no idea who Charlotte Philby is, but I hope I never have the misfortune to meet someone so hateful and insensitive.

Update: Just to show what can be done, The Telegraph has a wonderful article about Janet Mock. Also The Guardian gives Roz Kaveney space to tackle one of the worst sources of transphobia in the world. The Malice, of course, has an outright attack article, which I won’t link to.

Update 2: And lo, representation was made. And the representation appears to have got the ear of someone high up at The Independent. For while I was out the article has been substantially re-written, removing the invented quotes and deliberate misgendering. Here’s the fixed version.