Mostly snark

Hi,

Greetings peasants. Today’s lesson is two sexes good, 72 genders bad. Stay in your assigned lane, do not question, and no, you’re not allowed to see the evidence.

Oof. Sorry about that. I must remember to remove my subscription to the Alternative Facts blogging AI. 😉

Coping mechanism #12

As I caught the headline in PinkNews this week – and, this isn’t an anti Pink News grumble! 🏳️‍🌈 – I caught sight of some white, rich, cishet person talking guff. I know, such an unusual occurrence! 😉

I paused for a moment and thought back to the other things said person, and those like them, had said.

I now have a special memory bucket* and go to phrase for certain items of news:

Poisonous bigot says something poisonous and bigoted.

It’s surprising how often that seems to pop up in the media! Anyone might think we’re living through a moral panic or Culture War… again 😉

Problem Page

I’d like to introduce a new feature where I go through a question someone hasn’t sent in and I’ve totally just made up.

Dear YATGB,

I’m hoping you can help me with a problem around gender issues. I’m currently working for a large employer who’s management seem to hate on trans people. Apparently, this – and people coming in from overseas fleeing war and persecution – are our top priorities. I’m doing my bit by not focusing on the cuts the school budgets, growing mental health crisis in the young, and avoiding handling the rise of misogyny. But, I’m a bit short on evidence and I don’t want to talk to people with lived experiences, because that might A) educate me, B) bring out a horrible dose of empathy, and C) haven’t we heard enough from experts? Is there anything you could recommend?

Confused of Westminster

Thanks for writing in, Confused. Firstly, if you’re challenged about the lack of evidence, the best thing you can do is give a very long answer about concerns and worried parents. Keep on with this even if you’ve only heard for folk who don’t like equality and don’t have trans kids. If you keep going on long enough, you might find the interviewer runs out of time and moves on. Well done you!

The other thing to keep in mind is keep an the stories vague and don’t name individuals. Much better to suggest a threatening cabal of ‘activists’ who turn up and indoctrinate young minds. You know, like other behaviours such as intolerance, racism, and what have you.

Keep your ‘facts’ with a nice sounding common sense approach because this keeps people reassured – even if they’re not true. Don’t name your sources and use the words ‘researchers’ and ‘studies’ because plurality adds weight, even if that was done outside of a peer reviewed system like asking a set of people from a website with a bias or just Googling stuff that matches your existing views. Don’t name your sources either, as that may cause people to check the validity of the work and we wouldn’t want evidence based decision making to get in the way of an opinion.

Don’t be tempted to say “Well, the science is quite complicated, but we’ve consulted experts in the field. Sex is actually more a lose human construct that we use as a cultural shortcut. There’s a lot of grey areas between the binary genders of male & female. That’s before we get into the lived experiences of trans and gender diverse people who’ve only try had a string voice for the last few decades. Really, there’s lots of ways a person can be male, female, or a bit of both. It’s also not easy to tell cosmetically and that’s before you get to the complexity of genetics.” Most folk will have switched off, so go with simple home truths that can’t be debunked in another soundbite, so it’ll look like you’re always right. If you do come across someone who’s all expert in the field and has you on the metaphorical back foot, remember the comedian Stuart Lee said in his standup, “You can prove anything with facts.” Do use that non ironically or go after the fear factor of ‘but what about the children!’, rather than address the science. Note, if you do mention child safety, be ready to deflect any questions about poverty, poor mental health, underfunding in schools, the sidelining of children with special educational needs, etc.

Likewise, don’t point out that learning tools such as the Genderbread Person can be used to safely explore and explain the different ways people just are around who they love, how they like to dress, how they think of themselves, and suchlike. Don’t say that adults are able to use it – as in cisgender folk – to help illustrate we are very much on various spectrums around our personality, appearance, etc. Much better to add up the four or so characteristics, multiply it by something, and say there’s 72 genders. Throw in that it’s a cartoon and that’ll it effect a child’s brain. Maybe throw in some troubling pop culture references like Ironman-but-not-on-weekends, Wonder Woman Only Services, or Saint George & the Drag Queen, because as we know, when a child says they want to be like Batman, it’s not just play and performance, they would literally be outside attacking criminals if they could.

Remember to say that if there’s something you don’t like – perhaps some peer reviewed research or the consensus from a minority group – throw in the words ‘contested’ and ‘belief’ because it’s a great way to make the people you need to convince, that these activitist types and woke folk are just confused. Remember: it’s just a phase! Quality advice from the 80s. I mean, I’m over 50 now and I’m still in my trans phase, so it must be true.

Good luck with your new plans and I hope this helps keep the public’s eyes away from the economy, the managed decline of public services, and Inaction on climate.

PS: Any chance you could do something about the sh** in the rivers?

Meanwhile….

So yes, I’m leaning in to what I do when faced with deeply troubling nastiness and ineptitude: take the p*ss. Sometimes, a dark laugh at the idiocy is all you can do. Perhaps a more creative way of dealing with the stress compared to the string of Ph 2 profanities that spilled out of me as the news broke on the radio….

Clearly I had not reflected fully on coping option #12 😉

I lived through Section 28 and I feel this current nonsense around what to teach children will eventually go out of the window. I grew up in a time where there were next to no role models for trans folk. We certainly didn’t talk about it at school in any way, and this being pre Internet, it wasn’t like you could look things up. Occasionally you might see a programme late at night where trans people might be able to talk openly, but it was very rare.

On listening to both of our children about what they’d studied at school, neither of them spoke about trans stuff. Being the Guardian reading, tofu* eating, wokerati it did pop up in our conversations about how it’s okay to love who you love it be who you need to be. Likewise, when a trans friend, Sophie, visited Wee Man was accepting and nonplussed. ‘Cos, y’know, manners and kindness are the new cool.

As to Child 2.0, they said that while they didn’t feel typical – my words, not his, and no, he didn’t say ‘normal’ – they couldn’t put their finger on what it was. It wasn’t until a language lesson where they had to say Je suis une fille that their egg cracked.

I wonder if we will ban highly gendered European languages from the classroom? I mean, that’s why I voted Leave 😜

So, is there a point to this week’s post? I guess I would say that we’ve been here before with a right wing government and Section 28. This current round seems more… badly planned and inept. Not that it doesn’t sting. Yet, Section 28 is long ago and compared to the dark days of the 80s, we are a long way forward from then.

I am hoping the current bumblers will be gone soon and we, the UK, start to be back to where we were with being inclusive, accepting, and in general, not d*cks about nearly everything.

L x

PS: Happy IDAHOBIT – International Day Against LGBTQIA+ Discrimination 🏳️‍🌈

PPS: Survey results from the YouGov polling organisation and how parents feel that gender identity should be taught in schools.