Alan Vega: 1938-2016

To Suicide - the original - and best - pervy synth duo!

Alan was 78, but still, that's my day ruined.

Can everyone stop dying, please?

Tim Cook: Apple Watch

Pink News.

Are they the suicidal workers in your Chinese sweatshops?

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

Suicide: Keep Your Dreams

This is my favourite song.
Oh yes, my favourite song,
I hope you love it, too. x

Thought For The Day: Derren Brown

"The process of coming out is normally very disappointing. It’s not that people react badly to it - they really don’t care."

Metro.

PS Your thoughts on this story, Mr Brown?

PPS Or err this one?

Independent On Sunday: Getting LGBT Suicide Wrog

The Independent (On Sunday) continue their embarrassingly bad gay coverage.

The survey cited was unscientific, self-selecting and asked leading questions.

Asking someone if they have ever thought about suicide is meaningless - who hasn't? - particularly when no comparison is given to young straight people. *

The survey was conducted by Youth Chances and the charity Metro.

Maybe they have a vested interest in exaggerating the problem as they are currently seeking more lottery funding?

The headline says it all; 'Mental health crisis looms for gay teenagers'

Sounds like a funding application to Fagburn.

Our homophobic culture certainly ruins - and sometimes ends - lives, but nonsense like this does nothing to help.

Still, I bet the usual gay hysterics will be jacking off over this junk science.

Pathetic.

* Update: The Independent wrote last year about a "survey" that claimed a third of all young people have "contemplated suicide" - roughly the same as above, allowing for the usual "statistical margin of error" - and again without questioning the figures.
But why print a story if it's not a scare story?

Will Young: Are We Talking Crap?

I like to think I'm down with youth culture and its slang. Well, a bit anyway. I understand that the word "sick" can mean "cool", and "bare" can mean "a lot". This is pretty much the limit of my knowledge. But I do like to think I can tell the difference between words that have changed their meaning in a quirky but harmless way, and those that have a damaging knock-on effect.

The evolution of the word "gay" is a case in point. Once it meant carefree or merry. Over time it came to be used to describe a sexual orientation. Now – for many at least – it has been appropriated to mean "rubbish" or "crap". So a word that started out meaning "happy" has ended up being used to denigrate. Well, language changes, doesn't it? Many would see no problem with a shift driven by everyday speech...

Will Young in The Guardian.

I'm sure he means well, but Will Young's interventions on this subject seem like a rather embarrassing turn at the St Cake's School Debating Society.
This is but one example of a problem that's general in our culture, where somebody's somewhat banal and quarter-baked thoughts are given weight and taken seriously just because they're a celebrity.
Why ask Will? He's hardly the only gay man in the country who went to a school.

Presumably this is a slightly garbled response to Brendan O'Neill's piece on the Telegraph blog last week; Gay now means rubbish - get over it. 

"The rising use of the word “gay” to mean rubbish has coincided with increased levels of tolerance towards homosexuals among young people," O'Neill wrote. "When I was at school, we never used the word gay to mean rubbish, and yet there was a lot of anti-gay sentiment, reflecting broader anti-gay outlooks in politics and society. Today, the opposite is the case – kids are forever using the word gay to mean rubbish, yet real, genuinely prejudiced anti-gay sentiment is on the wane, both in schools and in society."*

Gay academic Mark McCormack has reached similar conclusions through his research at three British schools, presented in his book, The Declining Significance Of Homophobia: How teenage boys are redefining masculinity and heterosexuality.**

Mark writes here on the need to contextualise how such language is used; Don’t call me homophobic: the complexity of ‘that’s so gay’

Will "Nice But Dim" Young was also in The Sun yesterday.
[Edit: This is clearly now his specialist subject, he's also on Newsnight this evening. I still haven't got over his squirm-inducing appearance on Question Time...].

He suggests calling in the thought police; "It is now time to come down on homophobic language like a ton of bricks."

His Sun article is titled; 23% of young gay people will try suicide.. it's a crisis - Singer's call to end bullying language
This story was filed under Showbiz, natch.

These statistics are highly dubious*** - and, as before, we need to be extremely cautious whenever discussing gay teen suicides; there is much research suggesting ill-thought-out media coverage may actually encourage it. 

But as ever, emotionally potent Cry Homophobia! gay hysteria seems to have trumped a much-needed rational debate.

Will Young, wearing a tea-cosy, and fellow posh gay twat Milo Yiannopoulos.

Clearly BBC  Newsnight's idea of a balanced debate.

* Ironically The Daily Telegraph is the only British newspaper that still tells writers not to use the word "gay", but "homosexual".

** O'Neill acknowledges Stonewall also say this; "Even Stonewall’s own report on the widespread use of the word gay in schools admits that “most of the time it is used unconsciously and without hurtful intent”
See Stonewall's 2012 The School Report - with comments on what school pupils make of all this.
Here Mark McCormack critiques their research and their use of stats for Psychology Today; "The School Report 2012 is a missed opportunity to inform the debate on homophobia in British schools, but the greater concern is that its overwhelmingly negative tone may encourage kids to stay in the closet."

*** By coincidence Fagburn is reading a fascinating, entertaining and thoroughly depressing book on the media's love of dodgy data and statistics; The Numbers Game: The commonsense guide to understanding numbers in the news, in politics and in life. What are the chances of that happening, eh? etc etc.

Labelling: A Lesbian Suicide?

"In November last year, television fitness expert Angie Dowds killed herself jumping from Beachy Head. Last week's inquest reveals that Dowds, who'd previously struggled with addictions, had toxic levels of alcohol and drugs in her system at the time of her death. She was also anxious about work and had split from her partner, to whom she sent a text: "My heart is broken, my spirit is broken." Such a sad story, and one which requires no embellishment. Why, then, was the fact that Dowd was a lesbian deemed so intrinsic to the tragedy? When a human being feels so beaten and lost that only suicide is the answer, what does their sexuality have to do with it?
"Dowds was a lesbian, but her suicide was not lesbian. Dowds had a sexual orientation, but her death didn't...
"Even today, there are still times when people's sexuality has a direct bearing on their death – such as the ongoing persecution of gay people all over the world and the recent spate of suicides of bullied gay teenagers. Sometimes a death, or a suicide, truly warrants being defined as "gay" or "lesbian". Angie Dowd's didn't, and the rush to label it makes me wonder just how much we've really moved on."

The great Barbara Ellen writing in The Observer. 
Headline illustration from the Daily Mail, natch.
But what of the inverse of this - The Obituary Closet?

For Dominic Crouch: His Dad Speaks

Dominic Crouch, a 15 year-old kid from Cheltenham, committed suicide after being bullied and teased at school cause people thought he was gay.
Here's the eulogy his dad, Roger, gave at his funeral.
More tributes here.

x

• This video was made by Manchester's LGFoundation, here's a link to their Enough Is Enough! campaign.