Stonewall, Schisms and Biological Sex
Here's a great opinion piece by Janice Turner from October 2019 on the growing schism with Stonewall over 'biological sex' versus 'gender identity'.
Seems like these chickens are now coming home to roost.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/stonewall-has-lost-its-way-on-the-trans-issue-hd3lw08wb
Stonewall has lost its way on the trans issue
JANICE TURNER
By Janice Turner - The Times
For several years now a schism has been building within the LGBT community between Stonewall and those alarmed by its trajectory. This reached its logical end on Tuesday night with the birth of a breakaway group, provisionally titled the LGB Alliance.
Conway Hall in Holborn was full of distinguished lesbians and gay men: local government officers, a consultant psychiatrist, psychotherapists, academics, doctors, a BBC producer, film-makers. All once stood behind Stonewall. Indeed the broadcaster Simon Fanshawe was a founder member and the former American Express vice-president Kate Harris a major fundraiser.
Yet they believe that since 2015, when the charity incorporated trans rights into its remit, Stonewall has ceased to represent them. They say it endorses sexist stereotypes promoting the notion that a “butch” girl or a “feminine” boy is in the wrong body and needs treatment when most gender non-conforming children turn out, like them, to be gay.
Their first demand is that the Equality and Human Rights Commission investigates the advice Stonewall (which receives an annual £600,000 in government grants) gives to public bodies from councils to police. They say it misrepresents the Equality Act by replacing the legally protected characteristic biological “sex” with “gender identity”. From this alleged deceit has come gender-neutral school toilets, police recording male-bodied rapists as “female” or the NHS admitting self-identified trans women onto female wards. The LGB Alliance calls this “Stonewall Law” and plans to fight it.
Biting back
I’ve learnt to be suspicious of any device claiming to be squirrel-proof. My bird feeder is covered in a metal cage which clamps down over access to the nuts whenever a bushy-tailed thief, obese on bin-dived Sainsbury’s doughnuts, swings upon it. So instead the squirrels have prised open the metal top and bitten through a thick steel wire that holds the feeder together. I found it on the ground, all nuts gone.
Perhaps it is time for revenge. A neighbour once erected a trap whereby squirrels fell into a water butt. He then removed and skinned these drowned creatures, freezing them until he had enough for a family meal. It tasted, as everything seems to, like chicken. I’m tempted.
Curse lifted
A first principle of Greek tragedy is that the protagonist is ruined by his fatal flaw. I was reminded of this on Monday when Northern Ireland finally gained same-sex marriage and abortion rights. Campaigners have long battled for equality with the rest of the UK. But in the end it was achieved because the DUP could not, even when its most cherished “rights of the unborn” were at stake, co-operate with nationalist groups, especially over the Irish language. So it watched impotently as the law changed at midnight, like a fairy curse lifting, undone by its own fatal flaw: utter intransigence.
Five stars for subtitles
The seventh series of the French cop show Spiral (BBC Four) has started. I’m about four episodes in and it’s, well . . . its usual self. Lightly corrupt cops investigating the sneaky, drug-dealing exploits of north African criminals in Parisian banlieues. A bit racist, a bit gritty, with a fair bit of shonky acting from the guy who plays Monsieur Judge.
My most middle-class habit is forgiving mediocrity in subtitled TV I’d never tolerate in British dramas. I put up with poor characterisation (the English boyfriend in Borgen), preposterous plot twists (the last two series of The Bridge) and needless repetition (The Killing’s Lund and her damn jumper).
In fact I’d never watch a British police procedural. But just as I enjoy Danish drama to admire light fittings and designer coffee pots, I tolerate Spiral for the exotic spectacle of a sweaty, low-life flic. I get pleasure simply from watching French people being very French. Plus it makes Paris look so grim that I no longer care it’s too expensive to enjoy and I feed the self-delusion it might improve my own terrible français.
