Kierkegaard's Lunch

What should we do, cisgender friends? I am part of a tiny group of people. No MPs. No Members of the House of Lords. No Judges. No Newspaper Editors. No CEOs. No Senior Civil Servants. No Senior TV Executives. No Heads of Banks. Read the article . Sheila Jeffreys has plenty of form, over decades. She has dedicated her entire adult life to erasing people like me completely. Her stance is very simple. I am a dangerous, male sexual predator. She and a few like her are becoming more and more influential. In a wider setting, like Trump (who was once a joke) did. Like Bannon or Miller, or Farage did. These people were once seen as fringe figures. But they cracked it. They worked out how to draw hate towards them like iron filings towards a magnet. How to use it. They took over the minds of an increasing number of people, as a parasite does, eating the organism from the inside. In fact, maybe ten years ago Jeffreys, and her attitudes, were seen as beyond the fringe. Five years ago they were ...

Perhaps I wasn’t the only one who spotted it? In the first of Trump’s delusional rants to camera in denial of democratic reality, early in the morning after the election, he took to the microphone to claim victory and allege massive Democrat fraud, even as many States were still counting votes. Yet, before he said these extraordinary, constitution-destroying things, he began by talking about having to cancel the party that was all set to start, in his honour. The big showcase adorationfest with him as star guest, in front of fawning, adoring and maskless underlings. A place he loves to be. A place he must be if his entire self-concept is to function.  It was striking. The four-year-old in action once more, tantrumming his way into ground zero of the election agenda and framing the entire situation around his upset at not being able to have a party in his own honour. That was his opener. To me, the rest of what he said just seemed like the typical psychological reaction of this bro...

It's relentless. If I sound like a broken record, sorry not sorry as they say. This is my life. And the life of many friends of mine. And, as another weekend rolls around, that means more public attacks on the transgender community. Fresh from the success of preventing the reform of The Gender Recognition Act, turning a public consultation into a fiasco at the end of which trans people were pathetically grateful that their rights hadn't actually been pushed back, the Usual Suspects are moving on. The next target, we suspect, is the repeal of The Gender Recognition Act.  Some of us thought the bigger public health disaster for a century combined with a piece of voluntary economic self-harm unparalleled in modern history might give them something else to think about.  They didn't miss a beat.  At the weekend: a grotesque piece in The Mail on Sunday claiming teachers were now to be stopped from 'transing' children (something no teacher has EVER done) and a letter in ...

Another day, and now a move by a powerful British institution against transgender people. A piece of erasure so naked and stark that it barely seeks to conceal the prejudice contained within it. The BBC runs a service called Action Line - essentially a website to which it directs viewers and listeners who are dealing with particular problems, or who might be affected by the issues discussed in programming. It contains resources and links. Until a few days ago, it contained a section on gender identity, with links to three organisations which support trans people, including trans kids and their families. I have plenty of knowledge of two of them,  Mermaids and GIRES . They are respected, respectable and caring organisations. I have known Susie Green, CEO of Mermaids, for years. I know Bernard and Terry Reed, who founded GIRES, and who were both given OBEs for their work. All three started working in this field years ago when trans people were pretty much entirely ignored or jus...

It's been another difficult 24 hours. I am going to start this post with a lengthy quotation from Reni Eddo-Lodge, from The Guardian piece that flowed from her original 2014 post, and was in 2017 about to be turned into her best selling book, ' Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race ': 'They’ve never had to think about what it means, in power terms, to be white, so any time they’re vaguely reminded of this fact, they interpret it as an affront. Their eyes glaze over in boredom or widen in indignation. Their mouths start twitching as they get defensive. Their throats open up as they try to interrupt, itching to talk over you but not to really listen, because they need to let you know that you’ve got it wrong.  The journey towards understanding structural racism still requires people of colour to prioritise white feelings. Even if they can hear you, they’re not really listening. It’s like something happens to the words as they leave our mouths and r...

Trans Rights Protest, Parliament Square London, July 4th 2020.  I often find protesting a melancholy experience. How many have I been on since 2016 now? Several to fight Brexit; at one of them over a million turned up. Two to express my anger at our government's pandering to Donald Trump. A Women's March. I was there as a woman with my sisters. I even stood in a damp Trafalgar Square along with a couple of hundred EU citizens to show my solidarity with them. Each protest had a personal purpose, often to show my support for others. The cataclysm of Brexit still awaits, and though it will hurt me and take money out of my pocket, I am lucky to be able to hope that the effect will not be too great - economically at least - on me. It, of course, depends on how bad it gets. I went on the anti-Brexit marches thinking of the millions it will crucify (all the more so now). The anti-Trump marches felt like solidarity with Americans reeling under the boot of a proto-fascist, the W...

Today is my birthday. I am in my 50s. Suffice to say that 60 is charging over the horizon rather faster than it was and 50 is starting to look like a blip on the edge of the radar screen. It's been a lovely day. My children, who love me and whom I love dearly, have made a fuss of me and got me nice things. One decorated the house with banners and balloons and confetti. I walked out of a long and gruelling work conference call this morning to see her efforts. Friends have sent love and care and cards. I appreciate it all. As I write this, my fiancee and my youngest daughter are cooking me a birthday dinner, whilst I type away accompanied by a Sun sinking in the west and a rather nice South African Sauvignon Blanc. Life is good. I am blessed. I am loved. And yet, I know I am not loved by all. The reverse. I am hated. I sit here, ensconced in warmth and human affection and today, just for one day, I have turned the hate off. I have avoided the places where it blazes away, red...