This is a song about a famous train wreck .....

.....  Co-incidentally, it was about a famous train wreck before I changed the words.

Oh, they gave her her orders at Guardian Headquarters
Saying "Burch, we're way behind
"We've been losing readers since 1997
"You must whip 'em to a frenzy this time!"

Julie Burchill turned across to her spoilt, paying intern
And said, "Shovel on a little more hate
"And then when we get out there and the presses are a-rollin'
"We can watch those tr*nnies disintegrate!"

She was writing out bull$#!t, making ninety words a minute
When they heard a piercing scream
'Cause the ink in her fountain pen had overheated
And she vanished in a cloud of blue steam!

When the money from the advertising slowed to a trickle
They said, "Sorry -- that article stank!"
If you print harsh words about a minority
You can eat crow all the way to the bank!

Now all I need is a time machine, and then I can go back to when it was actually topical  :)

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.

Bad Journalism

Today's Metro carries a badly-written story about a young trans-girl -- one of the youngest patients to be diagnosed with GID by the NHS. Not, as they called her, "a boy living as a girl": It even says in the article that she prefers to be called a girl, yet they still managed to deny her even that courtesy.

We explained to the other kids at the school that [still using boy name]'s body was that of a boy but in his brain he was a girl. We said _____ was just happier being a girl than a boy. But the other kids haven't batted an eyelid.

Well, that's good at least. Primary-school age kids are still learning about the world, and seeing someone who does not fit the stereotypical gender binary model can only be a good thing for them. But anyone who consistently uses the wrong pronouns is part of the problem, not part of the solution. And revealing the child's name (unconfirmed reports suggest that another paper has revealed her location) is potentially exposing her and her family to trouble.

This could, and should, all have been done so much better. The article in the Metro as it stands is just fodder for transphobes and misogynists (someone out there is going to take from it the message that Dora the Explorer turns healthy young boys into disgusting perverts and it's all the fault of uppity women not knowing their place). In fact, in some ways, it might have been better for it to be a full-on, frothing-at-the-mouth anti-trans rant; because at least them there would have been something immediately, obviously wrong with it that reasonable people could have latched onto.

Come on, journalists. You can do better than this. Please try to remember that there are human beings behind stories, and afford them the dignity that they deserve.