Great news from the Independent on Sunday

The Independent on Sunday have announced a new policy of refusing to review children's books which are aimed only at boys, or only at girls:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/genderspecific-books-demean-all-our-children-so-the-independent-on-sunday-will-no-longer-review-anything-marketed-to-exclude-either-sex-9194694.html

Which is A Good Thing. We don't need any more glittery pink books telling girls they should aspire to be princesses or fashion models; nor trashy, dumbed-down books for boys that ultimately only reinforce the idea that reading is for girls.

Thanks to Let Toys Be Toys for breaking this news.

Hey! I'm out to my co-workers!

Tonight, I officially came out as transgender to my co-workers, at the works christmas party.  I went as Julie, not ${BOYNAME}, and was accepted thus by everyone.

Think my boss must have suspcted for awhile; because if he's been looking at my out-of-hours activities like any decent hacker would then he must have spotted "Julie Montoya" signing some code that was embarrassingly similar in style to ${BOYNAME}'s code  (he writes like a girl anyway, in a girlie language).

I love you all <3 <3 <3

Disclosure: Whose Business Is It Anyway?

O.K.  Your turn to be judge, jury and -- if you so wish -- executioner in some made-up-cases.

A, a "devout and committed" vegan who boasts that they would never have sex with anyone who was not also a vegan, meets B in a vegan restaurant.  A chemistry soon develops between the couple and, after several meetings either on neutral territory or A's home, they have intimate relations.  Some time later, A discovers that B is not a vegan.

Has B committed a sexual offence by failing to disclose their omnivorous diet, which -- had A known of it in advance -- would have been grounds for withdrawal of consent?

Side question, no extra marks, just something to ponder:  Would it make any difference who did what to whom?  (B was acting at all times in good faith that A was consenting and a willing participant.)

C, a supporter of Celtic Football Club, meets D; who, unbeknownst to C, is a supporter of Glasgow Rangers F.C.  Stepping into the light following a knee-tremble in the bushes outside, C spots a "Rangers FC" tattoo on D's body; which was previously covered by D's coat, and was not noticeable in the gloom before the sexual encounter proper.

Has D committed a sexual offence by failing to disclose their sporting allegiance, which -- had C known in advance -- would have been grounds for withdrawal of consent?

And another one:

E, who has a severe phobia of insects, encounters F.  A relationship eventually develops, and leads to sex.  E discovers that F is a lecturer in entomology at a local college, and subsequently claims to feel as though beetles are crawling all over their skin whenever they think of F.

Did F commit any sexual offence by not mentioning, before the event, the potentially-phobia-triggering fact that they worked with insects?

Well, analogously to this court ruling, they would have.  Well, at least they would have if the plaintiff was transphobic and the defendant was transsexual.  Because the rules are just different for us  :(

O.K., so you probably shouldn't jump into bed without first establishing that there are no potential deal-breakers lurking under the surface.  But in those sorts of cases, surely it's up to the fussy person to ask the other person if they might have some non-obvious grounds for denial of consent?  "Wait -- are you a vegan, too?  Because I could never f**k someone who gorged themself on the rotting flesh of animal corpses." is surely a lot more reasonable than "I didn't know it was rape until I saw B in McDonalds".

And if a partner was man or woman enough for you at the time, and you only later feel a sense of revulsion after discovering that they were transsexual, well, you should have asked first.  Because you are the one with the problem  (refusal to sleep with a subset of people sharing some certain non-obvious or low-obviety characteristic, and feeling icky afterwards if you discovered that you had inadvertently done so).  And if you are embarrassed at the thought of having to ask a potential partner "Have you always been like that down there?", maybe you're actually transphobic and embarrassed by that.

The Sun almost get it right!

After a whole bunch of transphobic screeds in the media, this article is actually pretty benign by the standards of The Sun:  (Yes, The Sun. You have been warned.)

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/lifestyle/4867253/pre-op-transgender-woman-takes-revenge-on-childhood-bully.html

They at least refer to Nicole as a woman throughout the article.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that Nicole is conventionally beautiful and very "passable".

This being The Sun, of course, they manage to turn her into an object, using gratuitous underwear shots to "prove" how feminine she is.  But at least they are objectifying her fully as a woman, rather than presenting her as some kind of freak.  And some would say points should be docked for the gratuitous inclusion of boypix and boyname; but some people are more comfortable than others with mention of their previous lives, and for all I know, maybe Nicole is cool with this.

So, yes, the article is misogynistic -- but it's not particularly transphobic, compared to how it could have been written.  She is only being beaten with one stick, instead of two.  I would love to think this is a sign, however dim, that we should hope for better.

Comment is Free -- and this comment is overpriced

Julie Burchill has written a nasty, transphobic screed in Comment is Free in today's Observer.

The piece can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/julie-burchill-suzanne-moore-transsexuals WARNING: Sick bag recommended.

Background:  Suzanne Moore -- who is a personal friend of Burchill -- made a thoughtless remark that society's ideal shape for a woman's body is that of a Brazilian transsexual.  When it was pointed out to her that this was insensitive and why, instead of apologising and moving on like an adult, Moore doubled down.

Today, Burchill uses her position of privilege to vomit a piece of cliché-ridden bile not so much in support of her friend, but simply against trans women.  Her thesis being that we are somehow inferior to "natural-born women".  Sorry, but with friends using phrases like "dicks in chicks' clothing" and "bed-wetters in bad wigs", who needs enemies?

I was more accepted as a woman by a bunch of builders shouting "Show us your tits, love!" from the safety of their scaffolding, than by this Julie Burchill.

I will be complaining to the authorities about this.  (Read how to complain here -- thanks to the F word UK)  The article is quite evidently illegal hate speech.  It would also be nice to see a court order that any advertising revenues earned from printing this filth be forfeit.

Casual Misogyny Begins at an Early Age

This morning's Metro featured a particularly obnoxious advertisement for Sainsburys.

The text reads "I like red lollies and green lollies. But not yellow ones. Girls like yellow ones."

I find this hugely problematic because it is a symptom of the way the gender binary (and hence, sexist attitudes in general) is being instilled into children from birth. The thing is, there really are boys who think that they are not supposed to like things because girls like them.

If this is what five-year-olds think, and it goes unchallenged, what sorts of sexist drivel might they be spouting by the time they are older?

If you also find this offensive, you may wish to contact the following people:

Advertising Standards Authority Ltd,
Mid City Place,
71 High Holborn,
London
WC1V 6QT

And, as dirty as it makes me feel to have to say this, you may also wish to shop at Tesco.

Book review: "Delusions of Gender" by Cordelia Fine

There is an idea in popular science -- and in real science, for that matter -- that male and female brains are hardwired for different tasks. So we end up with books like "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" and "Why Men Don't Listen and Women can't read Maps".

Unfortunately, it's bollocks.

Or at least, that is Fine's hypothesis, and she makes a very convincing case for the supposedly-hardwired differences being learned in childhood. If I had to pick out just one quote that sums up the idea, it would have to be this:

One child believed that men drank tea and women drank coffee, because that was the way it was in his house. He was thus perplexed when a male visitor requested coffee.

The book is divided into three sections. In the first, Fine points out that the mind can be influenced by the subtlest of signals. (For instance, mentioning that women tend to perform worse in an assessment, or even having subjects tick a "male" or "female" box before taking a test, can influence the result.) In the second, she picks apart "neurosexism" -- the use of pretty coloured brain images to lend a veneer of legitimacy to old-fashioned confirmation bias and prove points that aren't even really there. And in the third, she explains how a continuous drip, drip, drip of gender stereotypes into impressionable young minds leads to the formation of associations that persist into adulthood.

239 pages of main text are followed by a further 98 pages of reference material which include acknowledgements, authors' notes, annotations for each chapter, a full bibliography and a comprehensive index.

Published by Icon Books. ISBN 978-184831220-3. RRP £8.99. ****