New Review for the Ark

Well, here is a new review from me on the Ark Preston, about a cool Prog Rock album, regular updates coming up this week.

http://www.thearkpreston.com/2013-01/elohymn-pale-blue-dot/

Birchillgate: Or the irony of the Oppressed Oppressing the Oppressed

Screenshot from Dys4ia, an autobiographical game about gender reassignment surgery

I should start with a bit of a set up for this, since it's a bit out there as far as a Clinkening topic (although I’ve touched on gender politics before). I originally wanted to write this for the Clinkening last week, but thanks to my phenomenally stupid time management skills, I was two busy fighting the two headed viper of essay deadlines and sleep deprivation to really be able to do it justice.

And I suspect I'll have to to get away with this one.

My attention was drawn during one of my all-too-frequent breaks from my essays to an article by bastion of tact Julie Birchill and her article “Transsexuals Should Cut it Out” (now removed from Comment is Free, so reference will be to the “We've got some clowns...” archived version of it), in which she throws out every trans slur possible in the name of explaining how a “bunch of dicks in chicks' clothing” have no right to contribute to the feminist agenda, and that apparently their issues aren't important enough to discuss.

I originally was a bit wary of entering a debate where, as not a woman, nor a transsexual outside of maybe Baudrillard's definition (where we all are), but since this is as much a debate on excluding voices as it is on the feminist Zeitgeist, I figured it'd be ironic enough for me to get away with it. So let's be balanced about it, let Birchill get her day in court.

The purpose of the article was as a response to criticism of lauded (and controversial: infamous feminist critic Germaine Greer famously describing her: “hair birds-nested all over the place, f***-me shoes and three inches of fat cleavage”) feminist writer Suzanne Moore, who posted an extract from her latest book Red: The Waterstones Anthology about the power of female anger. For the most part the piece was Marxist-inspired discussion of the seeming reversal in gender equality in the last five years, its causes and the warning to the powers that be that women wouldn't be put down and pulled down anymore by identity politics and tokenism. However, in what she calls a “throwaway line”, she comments on the subject of image and gender politics:

The cliché is that female anger is always turned inwards rather than outwards into despair. We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual.

The “Brazilian transsexual” line was a moment of pretty phallic stupidity to be quite honest, a point where Moore lost the point of her argument and relied on pretty lurid stereotypes. Unless she was talking in a kind of Baudrillardian sense – that the body has become an “artifice” that is crafted and constructed to the point where it is no longer sexually attractive in a physiological sense but in the sense of its image, it's constructed image – then perhaps I can see where Moore was going with that. But as she later admitted it was a throwaway line meant to spice it up, transsexual commenters, writers and the like were justifiably upset, as were actual Brazilian transsexuals, given Brazil's appalling record on trans crime, despite it's Carnival reputation. Moore's responses weren't entirely convincing, mainly because she didn't offer a true act of contrition for it (she has apologised for it though, that should be pointed out), more asking for perspective on the 'real issues' and the real enemies.

Yeah, denigrating trans issues is TOTALLY going to make them feel united and that they are part of a universal struggle for equality.

So yeah, there was a lot of classic “Feminism is Middle Aged White Women” issues with Moore's article, and that arrogant lack of self-awareness that broke down the Women's Liberation Movement by the early eighties (Women's liberation being the name for the largest fragment of second wave feminism), but on the whole its focus was elsewhere, and the issue the trans community seemed to have with it was as much about flippancy as it was about actual offence.

Birchill on the other hand...

Right, I'd better get this out of the way; I have a lot of bile built up from reading the piece repeatedly so I'd better get it out of the way. The article was pretty close to fucking abuse, and it's fairly fucking ironic that she in the tagline harps on that “it's never a good idea for those who feel oppressed to start bullying others in turn” as she spends the entire article denigrating, belittling and attempting to silence trans people, ending with an outright threat:

“Shims, shemales, whatever you're calling yourselves these days – don't threaten or bully us lowly natural-born women, I warn you. We may not have as many lovely big swinging Phds as you, but we've experienced a lifetime of PMT and sexual harassment and many of us are now staring HRT and the menopause straight in the face – and still not flinching. Trust me, you ain't seen nothing yet. You really won't like us when we're angry.”

Yes Ms Birchill, it really isn't a good idea to bully others because you feel oppressed, is it?

Right, with that out of the way, my vitriol back to safe levels, it's time to try and break down Birchill's argument, such that it is. What is Birchill trying to say, other than “chicks with dicks” need to stop haressing her friend because they have the foolish right to believe that they can be accepted as women, who they mentally have always been but physiology has betrayed? Because, if one line sums up Birchill's argument is, funnily enough, a quote from Moore herself “'People can just fuck off really. Cut their dicks off and be more feminist than me. Good for them.'” There is the notion that there is some kind of competition between M to F transsexuals and born women, as if only one of these groups represents “true” feminism, and more tellingly that there is somehow a conspiracy that men undergo gender reassignment therapy (a series of painful, intrusive, long term procedures) purely, as Birchill eloquently puts it “to have your cock cut off and then plead special privileges as women”. Actually, she summed it up much better here in a piece simply entitled 'Gender Bending':

Transsexualism is, basically, just another, more drastic twist on the male menopause, which in turn is just another excuse for men to do as they please.

You really do become the thing you hate don't you? Also, I'm glad thirteen years of thought has led you to the same tired conclusion Ms Birchill.

So, to summate, she's a hateful writer who apparently twists an agenda initially based on the fight for equality to turn it against people she considers “no true Sco- I mean Women!” and in doing so undermines her cause, the cause for feminism (by proving a lot of crtics of feminism absolutely right) and damaged the credibility of The Observer, the newspaper this hateful polemic initially appeared in. This has sent ripples throughthe intelligentsia, most of which siding against Birchill if not for her toxic views than at least for the way she said it and has led to the removal of the article (for breaking large swathes of the code of conduct, namely the bit about using language offensive to various groups) and really in the end proving her own immaturity while doing so.

I'd say that Julie Birchill should cut it out, but I don't think the choice is in her hands now that the PCC is involved...

It's a pretty incendiary debate, so comments are welcome, but try to keep them civil. 

Stay safe and always hug it out, no matter who you are

Huggy Dave

The Ark Presents: Rock Story

Hey, just a quick update to say that Rock Story Part Five is up on The Ark Preston. There may be another post before I go off to gig tonight. Full Disclosure part one should be uploaded sometime this weekend, when I can stomach listening to the full discography of the artist I'm doing.

Stay safe and hug it out

HuggyDave

Previous parts: 

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

New Year New Clinkening?

Hello there, empty space. It's been quite a while since I last updated, and I suppose some of the people who would be there if there wasn't anyone there would probably be asking whether there is actually a point of returning to the site after a four month hiatus, particularly since the blog didn't really have a focus to begin with. That is an interesting question, though one I don't think I'll actually end up answering tonight.

Instead I will start with a question quite literally noone is asking! What happened to the updates? Why were you away so long? The answer to that is simply being too busy to work on the site, most of the abandonment came when I went back to start my MA, and was dealing with the workload, commitments and issues that stem from that and with various side projects on top of that (My Band, stuff with the Ark Preston I'll discuss below, newspaper stuff when that ran), time became the enemy. Really I suppose the entire point of a blog is to comment on your world and what matters to you but I've always struggled with blogging about issues centralised to me personally. I struggle a bit more to wrangle humour out of that kind of stuff and I guess at the time I saw that as a problem rather than a challenge. I also wanted to prepare for NaNoWriMo, which went about as well as a demented chicken trying to swim breaststroke (Cue groan), and with that I felt my creative juices were expended and decided to cut my losses and write the rest of the year off to find my muse as it were, and see if I can use the Clinkening, the tabula rasa that it is, to help me find my muse and have some kind of semi-permanent place for my thoughts as they float down the stream of consciousness.

I guess I did kind of answer my question after all.

So what does this mean for the site? Well, I'm aiming (this is my new years resolution so don't hold out too much hope) to have at least one update posted a week, but most likely it'll be between two and four, most of them little mini updates or signposts to stuff I do on other sites (Yes I contribute to other places! Clearly they didn't read the warning signs), but some being more substantial. The substantial things will include comments on current events that matter to me of course, reviews of various media (I have been meaning to do more strange Rock/Metal reviews for RocSoc, and the thought constantly strikes me to continue a certain segment from another blog...). I also have a few more features in mind for the site that will probably rotate on a semi-frequent basis. I've not finalised the other potential ones, but the first will be 'Full Disclosure', a challenge of sorts for me based on the judgemental, blindly critical sorts on the internet who I seem to argue with on music on a frequent basis, believing somehow that Led Zep are representative of music in the 70s and Justin Bieber of music of the 2010s. I seek to find one question in that “Is such and such really that bad?”, and hopefully, given the strain of essay deadlines that will be the other update this week. I might also do some more top ten lists based on strange criteria, since the one I did on baffling pop singles seemed to go over quite well. The final stuff really will be artsy stuff, writing mostly, maybe a little art, things I'm ordinarily not brave enough to showcase on 'the net', as well as things and comments and overspill relating to my work on other sites. Oh and Cat in A Hammock will surely continue, if only because I'm sure I'll need to chill out and look at cute cat pictures.

Well, that sums up pretty much everything I wanted to say. I made the mistake of not signposting my other work but most of my stuff can be read on The Ark Preston (www.thearkpreston.com) where I do song reviews and a regular feature about the trials and tribulations of my band Project Unicorn (at the moment annoyingly called 'Rock Story'; I'll get that changed), and if I end up providing content for any other websites I will keep you all updated.

Until then, stay safe, and always hug it out

HuggyDave (@huggydave on Twitter)