Mail On Sunday: Up The Duff

If you read the story, you'll find this headline is bollocks.

Basically.

Naturally, Britain's leading transphobe Julie Bindel is up in arms - and in cahoots with the Mail On Sunday.

Barry Humphries: Nothing Like A Dame

Humphries is not, he insists, particularly Right wing. “I don’t know anything about politics. But the far Left is so conservative, paradoxically, inflexible, doctrinaire and humourless. You can’t describe the world as it is any more. You get jumped on.” Does he? He chortles. “I’m happy to say I do. I give offence therefore I am. Not too much offence, though.”

As an expat, Humphries is always grouped with fellow Australians Germaine Greer and Clive James. “I don’t mind; they’re friends,” he says. On the other hand, he disliked being linked to Rolf Harris. “He behaved evilly,” says Humphries. 

Greer attracted fury after claiming that “trans” women such as Caitlyn Jenner (formerly the Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner) are men “who believe that they are women and have themselves castrated”, with students at Cardiff University describing Greer as “transphobic” and someone who should make all right-minded people feel “sick to [their] stomachs”.

Humphries is supportive of Greer in the controversy. “I agree with Germaine! You’re a mutilated man, that’s all,” he says. “Self-mutilation, what’s all this carry on? Caitlyn Jenner – what a publicity-seeking ratbag. It’s all given the stamp – not of respectability, but authenticity or something. If you criticise anything you’re racist or sexist or homophobic.” ...

Telegraph. 

I imagine this will go down well, won't it?

Guardian Shortcut: Barry Humphries: Tactless bigot or another satirical creation? Hmm...

PS America's favourite trans Republican is the new cover star of The Advocate.

Update: This account has a blue tick for what it's worth.

pic.twitter.com/VTxMs92o59

— Dame Edna Everage (@DameEdnaEverage) January 6, 2016

Zoolander 2: Call To Boycott All

Telegraph.

Oh, please.

This is the sort of thing the LGBT media do.

Even thousands of people clicking on an online petition is pretty meaningless in the general scheme of things.

Remember the call to boycott Star Wars VII as it 'promotes white genocide' - a couple of racist cunts used it as a hashtag and it became a HUGE NEWS STORY!

Here's an e-petition to Boycott 50 Shades Of Grey - 'Say no to abuse'.

And don't get me started on Frozen -  'I could blatantly see the homosexual agenda...'

I think this cute little movie is going to indoctrinate my 5-year-old to be a lesbian or treat homosexuality or bestiality in a light sort of way. - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/swanson-disneys-frozen-satanic-push-turn-kids-gay#sthash.809jOz8o.dpuf

I think this cute little movie is going to indoctrinate my 5-year-old to be a lesbian or treat homosexuality or bestiality in a light sort of way. - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/swanson-disneys-frozen-satanic-push-turn-kids-gay#sthash.809jOz8o.dpuf

I think this cute little movie is going to indoctrinate my 5-year-old to be a lesbian or treat homosexuality or bestiality in a light sort of way. - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/swanson-disneys-frozen-satanic-push-turn-kids-gay#sthash.809jOz8o.dpuf

Or how about one man's crass 'campaign' to 'Drop the T in LGBT'?

Sake.

PS Will you sign my petition to ban online petitions?, James North.

BrewDog No Label: Tastes Like Pinkwashing

A company has created what it claims is the world’s first “transgender” beer – using hops that have changed sex from male to female.

Scottish brewing company Brewdog launched the new product, No Label – which it claims “captures the spirit of Soho itself”.

Brewdog explained: “No Label is the world’s first ‘non-binary, transgender beer’ designed to reflect the diversity of the area and champion inclusivity.

“This 4.6% ABV Kölsch has been brewed with hops that have changed sex from female to male flowers prior to harvest.

“We have used these to emphasise that, just like humans, beer can be whatever the hell it wants to be, and proud of it.” ...

“The beer draws parallels with individuals who identify themselves in a similar ‘non-binary’ way, as neither exclusively male nor female – a community of people that is still largely under-acknowledged by society...

Profits from the beer will be donated to queer event collective Queerest of the Queer, in turn to support trans communities.

Pink News.

It really is baffling that Queerest of the Queer would not only be involved with this, but open their post on it by decrying pinkwashing.

— How Upsetting (@How_Upsetting) November 5, 2015

Queerest of the Queer aren't the people you call when you want to pink wash - we don't give you easy credits on your corporate social responsibility - we're a collection of politically minded queers into performance and creating queer spaces.

So when BrewDog responded to our challenge to talk about their fundraising video and how they could seriously re-engage with and make amends to the LGBTQ+ community they weren't taking the easy track.

We met and started to talk about levels of oppression and how Cis, White, Rich, Gay men are not the only voice, even if they are a loud voice. There are other lived experiences. We had long animated discussions, including how charitable money doesn't often end up going to the grass roots organisations that help LGBTQ+ youth, especially when they are supporting the homeless and refugees.

Then we got talking about the history of brewing, the role of women in early brewing that was slowly erased, and the work Brew Dog are doing, and should continue to do, to bring more diversity into brewing.

This led us to talking about the closure of queer spaces, with the closure of the Black Cap, Madame JoJo’s and the George and Dragon to mention but a few.

  

So we ended up where we are today, with No Label - a beer with our name on it. A beer without anybody’s name on it. A beer, as it were, without a name.

All money from this venture is gong to charities - because one of the goals of Queerest of the Queer was that we give as much of any profit we can to charity. We didn’t make a profit from the festival in September- and this allowed us to do more than we could have done even if we had a capacity crowd.

Money is going to the Albert Kennedy Trust, Micro Rainbow who support LGBT asylum seekers, and we are working with Mosaic Youth and other youth charities to run a LGBTQ+ youth ball in the new year.

We haven’t put a label on what this relationship with BrewDog is – it would be counter-intuitive...

Facebook post - please read the comments.

Pink News.

Last September, BrewDog released a crowdfunding video that showed founders James Watt and Martin Dickie sending up how desperate they were for money by dressing in bad drag and trying to sell their bodies in a brothel window, under the hashtag #dontmakeusdothis.

This was greeted with a (slightly OTT) online petition and a call for a boycott until the 'transphobic' online ad was withdrawn.

BrewDog beer company claims to be "beer for punks". They claim to be ethical. Yet in their new crowdsourcing video they mock homeless people, trans women and sex workers. They say, "don't make us do this" whilst performing as offensive caricatures of people, many of whom already suffer discrimination every day. They are mocking the lives and experiences of people who real punks would be defending and helping.

Worse, this is a fundraising video - they're using these images in an exploitative manner to make money.

In February 2014, BrewDog came up with this wanky PR stunt to jump on the hysterical Sochi bandwagon; ‘Hello My Name is Vladimir’ has been launched as the world’s first protest beer, aimed to mock and criticise Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda” laws.

Take that Putin!

Full disclosure: Fagburn completely missed this one, I ignore a lot of these tedious pink PR exercises as I don't like giving them the oxygen of publicity.

I had no idea how farcical this one was - thanks to @How_Upsetting for joining the dots. x

See also Why Drinking 'Transgender Beer' Won't Help The LGBT Community, Anthony Lorenzo, Vice.

PS Should point out that Fagburn does not think the BrewDog dudes are devils, and probably had good intentions.

Look at this for an example of classic bourgeois LGBTIQWXYZ victimhood!

Sorry?

Where was the 'HARM DONE'! by their crappy ad?

Sake.

Free Speech: Transgressions

With gay marriage now legal in America, there is also the sense among online social justice communities that trans rights are “the new civil rights frontier” (as Time magazine wrote next to a photo of Orange is the New Black star Laverne Cox). Social media has acted like an accelerant on this fire: sites like Buzzfeed and Huffington Post’s LGBT section offer uplifting tales of transgender children’s achievements and famous adults coming out, alternating with occasional three-minute hates for “TERFs” (trans exclusionary radical feminists), a group who are said to be inciting violence against trans women by refusing to accept them as women. Sharing such articles has become a badge of progressive correctness. The word “TERF” is sprayed around like confetti, with very little understanding of what it means. I’ve been called a TERF, even though I think trans women are women and absolutely have a place in feminism. I think it’s become a politer way of saying “witch”...

Helen Lewis, New Statesman.

The censorship movement thrives off a sense of victimhood, the idea there are powerful forces denying them their room to speak. When journalists or debate organisers actively seek out their opinions, it is interpreted as aggression because it must be filtered through the required prism of conspiracy and suspicion.

That sense of victimhood is combined with a constant demand for political purity, whipped into a tribal frenzy by social media. Any deviation from the moral lines of the tribe is treated as harshly as possible, typically with Twitter users encouraging their followers to pile on the transgressor. The storms they create are man-made. They are not just the result of many individual decisions. Usually, they are whipped up and encouraged by a small number of prominent social media users...

Ian Dunt, Free Speech Isn't All About You, Politics.co.uk

See also Zoe Williams, Silencing Germaine Greer Will Let Prejudice Against Trans People Flourish, and Hugo Rifkind in The Times today, on l'affaire Greer, Right-on Bigots Are Their Own Worst Enemy. 

And Roger Scruton's A Point Of View: Why We Should Demand The Right To Be Offensive.

Yes, he's a right-wing shitbag, but often they seem to be the only people daring to speak out about this pitchfork-waving Victim Olympics nonsense.

The above quotes and citations also should not be seen as an endorsement of anything else they've written neither, obvs.

And nobody's defending Germaine Greer's odious comments, so don't be silly.

James Dawson: Not Being A Boy

“I’d like to think in 2015 being trans is so mainstream now that it won’t be an issue, but sadly there will be people who will think it’s weird, and there is the worry that there will be a tabloid backlash around a ‘trans children’s writer’... Mainly I’m just excited.”

YA author, that nice James Dawson, comes out as transitioning on BuzzFeed.

Here's his coming out statement.

PS James Dawson comes out as transgender - and urges people not to demonise Germaine Greer - Dawson said it was 'a shame' and 'disheartening' that the 'icon of feminism' held that view, The Independent. 

Good to see James speaking out against the infantile 'Ban everyone we disgree with!' crusade.

Bushell On The Box: Newsflash Fellas!

SEX Diaries opened with the claim that “ordinary British men are now openly declaring their attraction to women with penises” – the greatest TV lie since Matthew Wright claimed: “I am not a halfwit.”

Trans-dating is the term for men who bed guys who choose to dress as women.

Not to be confused with tramp-dating, that’s hobo-sexual.

Window cleaner Mark had married blonde Brazilian Lorena (32-24-32, and 6 when aroused) but still insisted he was fully heterosexual.

At what point might it seem ever so slightly gay, Mark?

When you’re in her, when she’s in you… or when she takes off her make-up?

Newsflash: fellas, if the woman you’re having sex with is a bloke in a syrup you’re technically as straight as Fifa.

The Daily Star's almost touchingly dimwitted TV critic Mr Garry 'Not Gary' Bushell.

Advertising: Could You Be More Boring?

Nearly 7,000 people have called on Brewdog, a British craft beer company, to remove a fundraising advert many are considering transphobic.

Thousands have people say they will boycott Brewdog until they remove the video...

[The petition claimed it featured] “offensive caricatures of people, many of whom already suffer discrimination every day [such as] homeless people, trans women and sex workers”...

Gay Star News. 

Here's the ad.

Fagburn loves the idea of boycotting something you weren't buying anyway.

Clicking on an e-petition is quite meaningless.

All this tells us is that there are some very boring and joyless people with access to a computer, and who'll take offence at a pink fondue fancy.


Update; 'Brewdog “cannot and will not guarantee that at some point we will not offend the following groups due to our deep-seated and heartfelt prejudices”. It then went on to list a number of groups including Sepp Blatter; Nazis; overweight cats; diet drinks and people who put lime into lager bottles.

'The company summed up its advertising approach by saying “we sometimes don’t take ourselves too seriously” and asked people to accept the list of groups as full transparency regarding who and what it discriminated against, warning that it may well ridicule them in the future. The statement concluded that anyone believes “we are ridiculing anything other than people or items listed above, you are either misguided, ill-informed or out of your tiny mind".

 Statement quoted in marketing mag, The Drum.

President Obama: All Hail To The Chief?

A transgender woman who interrupted President Obama during today's White House East Room reception to mark LGBT Pride month was quickly dispatched by a stern, then jovial commander in chief, who told the immigration demonstrator, “You’re in my house” and “shame on you".

The protester, Jennicet Gutiérrez, is a transgender woman and undocumented immigrant, affiliated with the Not1MoreCampaign, which opposes the Obama adminstration’s deportation policies. She recently participated in a demonstration in Santa Ana, Calif., calling for the release of several trans women currently being held at the Immigrations and Custom Enforcement facility.

At the White House today, she called for an end to the deportation of LGBT immigrants, interrupting the president just moments after he began his 15-minute address.

Speaking to The Advocate by phone from Washington, D.C., Gutiérrez, a 29-year-old trans woman who lives in Los Angeles, said her outburst was unplanned when she initially attended the White House Pride reception with a spare ticket offered to her by a friend.

"[Obama] came out, started speaking and started to get into his speech on how wonderful everything is," Gutiérrez says. "And I couldn’t help but think about the conditions that my LGBTQ Latino/Latina, especially trans women of color, are facing in detention. So, to me, that was the moment I had to speak up. I had to raise awareness to the President and to everyone else watching that I’m not just going to celebrate, when my trans sisters are facing a lot of violence in the detention centers. [Trans women are facing] sexual and physical abuse, and I just had to send a message."

Gutiérrez was escorted from the East Room by Secret Service officers, and tells The Advocate she informed them of her immigration status.

"It was a moment where you just don’t know how to react," recalls Gutiérrez. "Because I openly disclosed my identity and everything, and it was just an awkward vibe."

But it was the crowd gathered at the White House for Pride that most frustrated Gutiérrez.

"I’m just very disappointed with the way it was handled," she tells The Advocate. "I'm part of the LGBT community, and they didn't back me, instead they were booing, which to me was like a slap in the face to all these people in detention centers." ...

The Advocate.

The only media I've seen - gay or straight - that talked to Gutiérrez and asked what she was angry about.

Most just wibbled on about how supercool they thought Obama's putdown was.

Queerty couldn't even be bothered to mention it.

Update: The one thing nobody's saying about Obama's latest White House heckler, Mic News contains a statement from Gutiérrez, several media ran pieces based on this and The Advocate interview. How the White House heckler exposed a rift in the gay-rights community, Jorge Rivas, Fusion.

'So Brave' Watch: Caitlyn Jenner

'Changing sex is so brave...' Rachel Johnson, Mail On Sunday.

'Changing sex is vain, not brave' Julie Burchill, The Sunday Times.

Has Katie Hopkins stuck her oar in yet?

Bindel?

Free Speech: Things Not To Say To A Trans Person

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

Chelsea Manning Watch: Poisoned

Chelsea Manning, the US army soldier who released hundreds of thousands of secret documents to WikiLeaks, has filed a lawsuit in a federal court that charges her military jailers with violating her constitutional rights by denying medical treatment for gender dysphoria.

The legal complaint, lodged with a US district court in Washington DC, accuses the army of repeatedly ignoring her pleas for appropriate treatment for her condition. It names as defendants: the secretary of defence Chuck Hagel, major general David Quantock of the army corrections command, and colonel Erica Nelson who commands the disciplinary barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where Manning is held.

“Every day that goes by without appropriate treatment, [Manning] experiences escalating anxiety, distress and depression. She feels as though her body is being poisoned by testosterone,” the suit says....

The Guardian.

Last week Chelsea wrote a comment piece for The Guardian, How To Make Isis Fall On Its Own Sword. See also Glenn Greenwald, Bombing Syria.

Mail On Sunday: No Change

'Best newspaper in the world!' Alan Partridge.

Conchita Wurst: Q&A

Daily Telegraph.

Daily Telegraph blog.

Ask a silly question...

Eurovision: Wurst Place

Fagburn extends his heartiest congratulations to the adorable Austrian bearded fella in a frock, Conchita Wurst, the winner of this year's Eurovision Song Contest.
Which I didn't watch.
Good to see the Twittergays keeping this in proportion.
Will we ever be the same again? etc etc.

PS The Sunday People deleted this tweet pretty quickly....

Oops!

Thanks to @rudemrlang x

The Sun: Stay Classy

Thanks to @rudemrlang x

Thanks for the scan cause this seems to have disappeared from the internet already.

Julie Bindel: Why I've Always Hated...

It was early evening and I had not yet eaten, so I took a glass of wine and a packet of Haribos into the private screening of I Am Divine: the story of Divine. I touched neither, because early on in the film I felt a little sick. I’m unsure as to whether that queasiness was a result of the mention of dog excrement (more anon) or the scale of misogyny contained within its 90 minutes...

Footage from Divine’s one and only appearance on Top of the Pops (he was banned as a result of complaints about obscenity) in 1984 singing ‘You Think You’re a Man’ reminded me why I always hated drag. Feminists at the time of the TOTP atrocity labelled Divine ‘woman hating’.

So by the time, towards the end of the film, we were treated to footage of Divine in Pink Flamingos eating dog excrement, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to want dinner that evening. The fact that it was alluded to at the beginning of the film (it being the stuff of cinematic legend) made the rest of the film pretty unpalatable.

Julie Bindel - who else! - writes for Britain's best-selling right-wing magazine, The Spectator.

A bizarre lesbore who hates gay men and trans women - so tries to justify it with endless ridiculous bilious articles about how they hate women.

I guess she must practice being dull and sanctimonious.

Anyway, hope that slag-off by the dreadful Bindel's left you gagging to see the film - here's the all-singing all dancing website.

And here's a video interview with the director Jeffrey Schwarz at Flare: The BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.. 

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. 

Richard Littlejohn: Facepalm!

Daily Mail.