I went to the candlelit vigil held outside the Daily Mail's Kensington headquarters, Northcliffe House, in memory of transgender primary teacher Lucy ...
I send Simon Price a message to verify if he identifies as straight; he does, but adds that he is "culturally queer." That'll do. He says I'm "Wide of the mark" to call Hilary Mantel's remarks bitchy. Why? "Because it demeans the valid points she made and implies that her remarks were made with personal malice, when her beef wasn't personal."
What really worries me here is that a self-confessed feminist is actually resorting to the same tactics used by the likes of Ann Coulter and Nick Griffin to justify her hateful beliefs.
Transgender people might be one of the last oppressed minorities. If Ms Burchill's rant had been directed against black or Asian people, homosexual people, Jews, or Muslims, I am pretty sure it would have been met with the full force of the law.
For anyone not yet acquainted with MooreBurchillTransGate (it's catchy!), a summary of the offense taken reads as follows: Throughout life, culminati...
Burchill is actually quite elegant in her dismantlement of the "vociferous transsexual lobby and their grim groupies". Shame her understanding of such communities amounts to a gross misrepresentation.
Transphobic remarks from Julie Burchill in her Observer piece include talk about having nuts taken off because "its all most of them are fit to do", 'their relationship with their phantom limb" and various references to cutting things off and "expecting" privilege - I can't picture the situation in which the editor thought these were all reasonable, measured and insightful things to say...
The main concern here is that in a recent article in the Observer, Burchill suggests that transgender women don't have the right to talk about being women or to complain or to compare themselves to other women...
This week, it was announced that France is going to start teaching about LGBTQ issues in primary schools as a way of helping to combat homophobia. They've likened the situation to educating young people about other types of bullying.
I have been fascinated with Marilyn Monroe since I read Fred Lawrence Guiles book about her at the age of 12. When the editor of High50 suggested this idea to me, it was a real pleasure and challenge to imagine how her life could have been if she had been saved that night.
A couple of weeks ago Julie Burchill was complaining in the Independent about people who use the C-word. She thoroughly disapproves. But I think she's wrong. It's a splendid word. A super word. A great full-stop of a word. Uttered with a suitable amount of venom, it can bring any conversation to a complete halt, whereas its miserably overused cousin, the F-word, has lost all power to shock. LANGUAGE WARNING: For those left uncharmed by a more liberal usage of our great Anglo-Saxon tongue, please read no further...
