Free Speech: Things Not To Say To A Trans Person

Big Issue: Owen Jones' Big Election

Roll up, roll up and read all about this week's star-studded Big Issue - guest edited by Owen Jones

With the general election bringing claim and counter-claim we wanted someone to navigate us through these confusing times. So we asked Owen Jones if he wanted to take control of The Big Issue and lasso some names who could offer new perspectives in the final days before polling.

Among those featured is revolutionary popinjayRussell Brand who disentangles his thoughts on politics and reveals whether he would run for office himself. Actor Michael Sheen offers his own prescription for saving the NHS. Queen legend Brian May talks about his journey from pop to politics by way of badgers. Brit-award winner Paloma Faith calls for more social responsibility, pub landlord Al Murray explains why he is standing against Nigel Farage in South Thanet...

The new supersized 'star-studded' big issue of the Big Issue edited by the starstruck star and stud Owen Jones is available now for £2.50.

Also contains Ken Loach and Paris Lees, who are a lot more interesting than Paloma 'Let me be your kooky girlfriend' Faith.

Fagburn promises to buy one, but may skip the Russell Brand kiss-in.

Guardian Live: Non-transgender Voices

Transgender voices and faces are finally moving from the margins to the mainstream. Tired of talking about the pain and difficulty of being transgender, focusing on physical transition or feelings about being in the ‘wrong body’ tonight is a chance to bring the conversation forward.

More satisfied and successful transgender figures have been appearing in the media, from Laverne Cox, to Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace to Lib Dem councillor Sarah Brown. This evening’s discussion will be dedicated to exploring the many paths to self and social acceptance, what work still needs to be done and the ways in which life for trans people can be made better.

Hosted by the formidable Paris Lees, the panel includes Dr Kate Stone, research engineer and scientist, Peter Tatchell veteran LGBT campaigner, Owen Jones, Guardian columnist and transgender supporter and Fred McConnell Guardian video journalist and trans columnist.

Theguardian.com.

Presumably they got two cis gay men on the panel cause they couldn't find any 'transgender figures' -The Guardian at its patronising best.

The saintly Owen makes much of his refusal to be on a male-only panel, so why is he happy to take the place of a trans person here?

The irony here is unbelievable.

And just £15!

Transgender Kids: Fear Of Change

So, as well as paying for women to have Double D breasts because they're depressed they were born with Double A's; as well as paying for fatties to have gastric bands because they refuse to stop stuffing their faces, the NHS has now decided that our hard-earned cash should be spent treating three-year-olds who think they were born in the wrong body. Seriously?

Your average three-year-old can't decide whether he wants fish fingers or baked beans for tea. So how on earth would he know he was born in the wrong body? And how would such a young child be able to express that kind of emotion?

It all sounds like PC nonsense to me. However, not according to experts at the Tavistock and Portman Trust - two NHS hospitals which specialise in gender issues - which says the numbers of Under 11's referred to them has quadrupled in the last four years. And nearly a third of those were aged between three and four.

But are those children really concerned about gender issues or is their thinking being influenced by other people i.e parents who themselves might be transgender? Parents who might have wanted a girl instead of a boy or vice versa and are unconsciously projecting that onto their child? Or might they just be idiots who have looked at something their child has done and come to a completely uninformed conclusion about it...

Oh dear. This is more Daily Express or Daily Mail than Daily Mirror.* 

Mail Online.

Note the grand total of three year olds who've been referred to the NHS is two.

That number again... TWO!

And puffing that the number has quadrupled (in six years) when the earlier number was just 17, is what's known as base rate fallacy.

And what's wrong with offering them counselling?

Ho hum...

Transgender kids is clearly this month's thing.

Here's Louis Theroux more level-headed look at the media's latest moral panic broadcast on Sunday.

Paris Lee wondered, What's the big deal?

The issue of trans children became a national talking point thanks to Louis Theroux's bold BBC documentary Transgender Kids. #TransgenderKids trended for hours on social media and, aside from the usual ignorance and bigotry, which I expected, there was also an outpouring of empathy, understanding and support for the families featured. Good. This is what happens when real people are allowed to tell their own stories.

Much of the media coverage I've seen so far has focused on the ages of the kids Louis interviewed - some, like Lady Gaga lover Camille, as young as five. How could they possibly know? Aren't they too young? What if they're making a huge mistake? ...

In my head though I couldn't help but respond with a question of my own, one that Camille's parents eventually voiced: "What does it matter?" What's the big deal if a feminine boy or a masculine girl changes their social gender? What is so wrong about supporting them to transition socially, or to delay puberty with blockers? People who object are usually seeing it from their own subjective point of view. But it's not about them. The idea of changing gender terrifies most people who are not trans precisely because they are not trans - the same way that the idea of not transitioning seems awful to trans people.

Just let kids be who they need to be. If they can transition one way, they can transition back again...

Indeed.

Why do some people get so worked up about policing gender norms?

And what are the alternatives?

Conversion therapy?

Suicide?

PS It doesn't have to be this way, Paris Lees on trans teen suicides, Attitude.

* Edit: You may want to compare and contrast this with How can a child of three need transgender counselling?, asks Libby Purves, in the Mail, Thursday.

Never ceases to amaze me how willing people who have ZERO experience, expertise or understanding of trans issues feel their opinion matters.
— Paris Lees (@ParisLees) April 9, 2015

The Spectator: Putin's Secret Plan

Now, after two decades in the economic basket, Russia is decisively back as an ideological force in the world — this time as a champion of conservative values. In his annual state of the nation speech to Russia’s parliament in December, Vladimir Putin assured conservatives around the world that Russia was ready and willing to stand up for ‘family values’ against a tide of liberal, western, pro-gay propaganda ‘that asks us to accept without question the equality of good and evil’. Russia, he promised, will ‘defend traditional values that have made up the spiritual and moral foundation of civilisation in every nation for thousands of years’. Crucially, Putin made it clear that his message was directed not only at Russians — who have already been protected from ‘promotion of non-traditional relationships’ by recent legislation — but for ‘more and more people across the world who support our position’.

He's on to something...

A pot pourri of conspiracy theory, conjecture, nonsense and non sequiturs in that noted champion of gay rights, The Spectator.
Luckily there are no right-wing New Cold Warriors in the West that ab/use the LGBT community as a soft power play.
Like by cherry-picking which countries to criticise and demonise over how they treat gay people, for example. 

This issue also contains an unwittingly hilarious article by Julie Burchill about 'intersectionality' and being accused of transphobia, which after spewing bile and insults in all directions like Regan in The Exorcist, concludes...

Here’s hoping that the in-fighting in-crowd of intersectionality disappear up their own intersection really soon, so the rest of us can resume creating a tolerant and united socialism.

Err...

Update: Paris Lees replies to La Burchill. 

Film: All Things Are Possible

The Independent. 

A great piece by Paris Lees - which thinks about and asks why this doesn't happen, though the header makes it sound like it's going to be another 'Only A can play A!' foot-stamping whine.
Far from it...

Friends in casting tell me their first choice is to cast trans people in trans roles nowadays. What a shame we don’t have more established trans actors, or at least none on which Hollywood would gamble a big-budget film’s success. Until we encourage acting talent from diverse sources, that seems unlikely to change any time soon. So yes, watch Dallas Buyers Club and by all means enjoy it, but, when Leto’s on screen, keep an eyebrow raised.

NIkki Sinclaire: Trans Europe

AMBITIOUS politician Nikki Sinclaire today reveals her secret — she is Britain’s first transsexual parliamentarian.

The striking-looking MEP lived as a man until the age of 23 before having a life-changing op on the NHS.

In an exclusive interview she tells The Sun on Sunday how she wants to enter the UK Parliament and emulate her idol Maggie Thatcher.

Speaking about her Commons aspirations for the first time, she said: “Margaret Thatcher is my hero and there is no reason why I shouldn’t follow her path to Westminster one day.”

The Sun On Sunday.

Very surprised Nikki Sinclaire has managed to keep this out of the papers, particularly as they love outing people who are trans even when they are not public figures..
Sinclaire has a book out, so it doesn't look a tabloid "Nikki we know something, probably best to tell us your side" sting.
She's a UKIP MEP, now sitting an an Independent after falling out with Nigel Farage, she claims over his fraternisation with far right groups in the European parliament.
She came out as a lesbian in 2004.
Good luck to her, though it's impossible to think kindly of a politician who says; "Margaret Thatcher is my hero."

TOMORROW: Agony that turned me into a lesbian...

Update: Nikki Sinclaire told BBC Radio 5 Live on 22nd November;

One of the reasons I've had to reveal this was threats from journalists and UKIP.
They threatened to expose this and this is why I felt the need. Because people asked: “Why are you saying this now?
Basically, I wanted to put my side of it before someone else put a distorted side out.

Question Time: Paris Is Burning

Paris Lees seemed to be quite the hit on last night's Question Time.
A star is born! etc.
Though it turned into a bit of a love-in on Twitter.
Surely everyone can't have, not just agreed with, but adored everything she said?
But yes, she did make those identikit MPs - Chris Bryant included - look ever so grey.
It's not on YouTube in full yet, but you can watch it on BBC iPlayer here.

Question Time is repeated on BBC2 at 10am, apparently they're going to take out Ed Milliband's penis. http://t.co/b7QdmZJLxk
— Paris Lees (@ParisLees) November 1, 2013

Paris is profiled on the BBC News website, From Prison To Transgender Role Model...

Strangely, Paris thanked provocative writer Julie Burchill when she topped the Pink List earlier this month.
Burchill was widely criticised for an Observer article in which she described "trannies" as "a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs" - a piece which Paris describes as "pure transphobia".
"I'm grateful to her for doing that because it was so bad that it put trans on the radar for a lot of people," says Paris.
"Julie Burchill, thank you for being awful."

Lou Reed: He Wasn't Too Keen On Journalists...

Apparently the last portrait, taken earlier this month by Jean Baptiste Mondino.

Only saw two queer-specific articles about Lou in the British media, which seems rather odd considering his stunning impact on your actual gay culture, but doesn't really surprise me.
Here's Paris Lees on the Channel 4 News website on what he meant to trans people.
And Tom Robinson wrote for The Independent on his "implied bisexuality"...

Perhaps it was our own hunger for affirmation that led my generation to try and cast such a complex – and downright ornery – individual as Lou Reed in the role of Gay Figurehead. If ever an artist saw sexuality as a vast, diverse landscape with many bright wonders and dark private places – and if there was ever an artist unlikely to identify himself publicly with just one corner of that territory – it was Sister Lou.

An Independent reader replies...

And let's not forget the Daily Mail's moving eulogy to Uncle Lou...

A VERY debauched walk on the wild side: He did more than any other rock star to give drugs a false and dangerous glamor. Now, after a liver transplant in May, Lou Reed's own excesses have finally caught up with him

Remember, the life of this rapacious, proselytizing drug-taking pervert was cruelly cut short at the age of just 71.

Just say no, kids!

Update: In Wednesday's Mail Jan Moir writes on Lou Reed and our "dysfunctional relationship with celebrity death."
Yes, that's the same Jan Moir who infamously wrote about Stephen Gately's Strange, Lonely And Troubling Death!

Stockholm Syndrome: Evil Men

Stockholm Syndrome describes the strange propensity of hostages to feel positively towards their captors – sometimes to the point of defending them. It catalogues the “strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.” Gay men of Mr Starkey’s age remember well when the British establishment harassed and intimidated gay people, and the state’s reluctance to afford equal marriage rights continues those abuses today.
Mr Pierce, Mr Everett and Mr Starkey – as gay men, I do believe you have a touch of Stockholm Syndrome. The disappointing thing is that, deep down, I’m sure you would love to live in an equal society and enjoy the same rights as everyone else. It’s just so very sad, then, to see you lick the hands that push you down.

Paris Lees in Independent Voices.

Good piece as ever from Paris, but she neglects to state the obvious - gay men who are "anti-gay" are invariably middle/upper class snobs and/or really right-wing.
Mentioning no names [Cough! Mark Simpson].
What they hate is ordinary gay men - ie the rest of us.
Cause; "They're all so frightfully common and vulgar, yah?"
I wish them all dead.

PS Pierce looking slightly rougher there than the photo he uses in his Daily Mail by-line.

Transphobia: We'll Always Have Paris

Ever been kicked in the face? I have. Violence is common towards children who display gender difference. Poofter, they used to call me. AIDS victim, they’d whisper. Walk like a man, boy, or get a clip ’round the earhole. That last one came from my father. Still, as one matures, so does the nature of the bullying. Instead of gossip and ciggies behind bike-sheds, badmouthing is done by respectable journalists in national newspapers. Take the Telegraph’s Ed West, for example, who seems perfectly comfortable belittling the existence of “transphobia” (hatred towards transgender people). His quotation marks, not mine. Guess he’s never had a kick in the head. In fact, I doubt he has any subjective experience of being trans, and nor will many of his readers. That’s the trouble. 
I question everything, now...

Great piece on The Independent's blog by Paris Lees.
Great self-explanatory title, too - Lies about transgender people (and how to spot a rubbish journalist)
She writes there are six giveaways for poorly written trans features:

1.   Sex Change. This is seldom used by trans people and has zero medical currency. Authors who use this have nothing valuable to share on trans issues.

2.   Children having “sex changes”. Always false. In the UK, trans surgery is only performed on those aged 18 and above. Children prescribed reversible puberty blockers will have been monitored for years following careful guidelines.

3.   Hermaphrodite. Widely offensive and biologically inaccurate. Humans with biological sex differences are described as intersex. Or people.

4.   Taxpayers/NHS waste of money/cosmetic surgery. Don’t trust anyone who mentions tax during a polemic against trans people. Trans people also pay taxes, and we are more likely to do so when provided with proper healthcare and freedom from discrimination. Nevertheless, “wasteful” trans treatment costs are frequently exaggerated.

5.   “Gender” – in quotation marks. Everyone has a gender identity. Clothing, language, toilets and many other arbitrary social cogs are gendered. Pretending that trans people have imagined their gender is, well, delusional.

6.   Regret. Studies show that an astonishing 98 per cent of people who undergo genital surgery express no regret. Regret usually focuses on surgical results. Any journalist who mentions transition regret, without acknowledging this, has made a terrible mistake.

META Magazine: Non-Commercial Break

Sales Pitch: META is a unique digital magazine which brings you the very best trans and genderqueer news and entertainment coverage
Its goal is to connect with a broad community of gender variant people and give them voice(s) in the media.
More here...

"Trans is the new punk. Rather than conforming to the gender binary - or even perpetuating it, as some ill-informed commentators have previously suggested - trans people are the ultimate triumph of rebellious self-expression. We don't let what's between our legs tell us what to do. Bodily autonomy couldn't ask for more passionate advocates."
Paris Lees, META editor.

META is now here!

My Transsexual Summer: The Shock Of The New

"Fancy getting sozzled tonight? Try the Trans Documentary Drinking Game, something of a transgender community in-joke. The rules are simple: for every cliche, take one shot of tequila. US writer Helen Boyd, author of My Husband Betty, lists 35 classic clangers, including: trans woman putting on makeup (two shots for reverse camera shot into mirror); showing "before" photos; any reference to genital surgery that includes "finally becoming a woman"; and anything with a trans woman sitting in an above-the-knee skirt, "posed so you can see what great gams she has". Camera in the operating room? Down the whole bottle.
"All these silly tropes appear in the first episode of My Transsexual Summer, Channel 4's new primetime reality doc. Yet MTS does have something original to offer: it gives trans people – at least seven – a voice..."

Paris Lees writing in The Guardian about My Transsexual Summer.
"The first major piece of trans-themed output since Channel 4 signed a Memorandum of Understanding with my campaign group, Trans Media Watch...
"The document suggests treating trans people with accuracy, dignity and respect. Pretty radical, huh?"
So Channel 4 has got Paris Lees, a transsexual, to work as a consultant on the series, and The Guardian asked a transsexual to write about the programme.
Do you think these crazy new-fangled ideas will catch on?

• Watch My Transsexual Summer here.