Writer Paris Lees, image via lastofthecleanbohemians
 
“Transgate”, the recent controversy surrounding writers Suzanne Moore and Julie Burchill’s comments about transgendered people online and in the print media, may seem like a bit of a storm in a teacup to those who have not been directly affected by the issues.

But it could be a decisive moment, not just for transgender awareness, but also how people view the “oldstream” media (in the UK at least) and in turn how social media can shape and express changes in public opinions exponentially quicker, and much more powerfully, than print and television can. 

That’s one of the very interesting topics of conversation in a Google Hangout-filmed debate posted by Channel 4 News yesterday, titled Transsexual people and the online age of outrage. It features writer Paris Lees, of META magazine and this well read Vice article, Sarah Savage of Channel 4’s My Transexual Summer, and experts on social media and transgender-issues.

Transgate certainly seems, as is mentioned in the video, a tipping point in public aware of the transgender community and the struggles faced by its members. I certainly don’t remember this much debate around a trans issue in my lifetime, and if there’s any heartening aspect to this whole shameful debacle, it’s that the backlash suggests trans people now have more allies than ever before.

But aside from drawing attention to the hateful attitudes certain persons, columnists, and even schools of feminism display towards people on the trans spectrum, this whole issue has made it that much clearer to the public just how valuable our opinions (and our freedom to express them) are to oldstream media. More and more, the cries of “freedom of speech!” and “anti-censorship” employed by columnists and news institutions over the last week are beginning to translate to the general public as “freedom for us to tell you how it is!”

This is particularly evident when commenters try to repost quotes from the Burchill article itself in the comments sections under certain op-ed pieces decrying the removal of her article only to see the quotes themselves removed. It has happened to me, and it has happened to others, and it makes a mockery of any kind of claim to “free speech”. Why should a writer of such low caliber as Julie Burchill be allowed to make statements about a social group, when members of the public are blocked from doing so?

It’s quite simply a PR disaster for print journalism.

This comes at a time when the Levenson Enquiry is trying to establish whether an independent regulator is needed for the British press. As people are getting their news from online sources much more these days, and thus beginning to doubt the role (and agendas) of mainstream news outlets, journalists are unlikely to be able to whip up enough outrage—real or “manufactured”, a frankly hypocritical term journalists LOVE to use about any controversy that they themselves did not stir up—to make people give a damn.

And let’s be clear about one thing, this is NOT an issue of “censorship”, a claim that’s getting bleated over and over in various echo chambers. If the offensive article was really “censored”, then how come it’s so easy to find on another major, mainstream news platform? I thought “censored” meant it would be gone for good? Or only available through a leaks site? Not on the site of the Daily Telegraph, surely?

This quote from Harry Giles very neatly explains the difference between “censorship” and “editorial policy”:

“… the columnists get it wrong … most call the Observer’s decision “censorship”, without expanding what they mean by that. This makes it seem as if the Observer’s decision were equal with a government passing a law against a speech or a type of speech. Government censorship prevents all speech of a certain kind, or an instance of speech, from happening in a country. Newspaper censorship – another word for which is “editorial policy” – says “we do not think this kind of speech should happen in our house”. Granted, because newspapers have a particular important role in a free speech society, they should be more careful about restrictions in their editorial policy than I would about restrictions on my Facebook wall.”

That is part of an excellent blog post by Giles, called Julie Burchill, Newspapers and Freedom of Speech, that dissects Transgate in a cool, calm and steadfastly philosophical fashion. It’s one of the best analyses I have read about the whole matter, and avoids being confrontational, or emotional (which is pretty hard, considering the language used by both Burchill and Moore.) I highly recommend it.

And for more enlightened discussion of Transgate and the mainstream media’s reaction to the “Twitter storm” here is the Channel 4 News discussion:

Transsexual people and the online age of outrage
 

“What if the Attorney General, and listen the reason I say this might happen is because if you remember the first report put out by the Director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, when the President became President of the United States, she put out a paper talking about the people who are the categories of people who might be homegrown terrorists.

In that list she put people who believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ, people who believe in pro-life issues, people who don’t believe in having illegal aliens here, they put a lot of good, decent categories of people in that paper.

Well here’s what number four says, the Attorney General can put who he wants to on the list of people who are too dangerous to get guns. What if he decides radio talk show hosts who don’t believe in gay marriage, they’re dangerous, so they shouldn’t get guns? What about pastors who preach against abortion and homosexuality? They’re too dangerous to get guns? That could happen.”

—“American Family Association” radio host Buster Wilson.

Wilson is the same fucking idiot who tried to get conservative Christians to boycott Google over their “Legalize Love Campaign” and who announced this boycott on Google-owned YouTube. The phrase “Dumber than a bag of wet hair” probably wasn’t coined to describe Buster Wilson, but it could have been.

Back in August, chucklehead Buster blamed Hurricane Issac on a New Orleans LGBT festival!

As one YouTube user commented on the clip below:

Tell me then, genius, why did the power of the most high manifest itself by destroying tiny Joplin in a state that’s 77% Christian? Why does he flood massive areas of Mississippi—the most Christian state—every year? Why is it that he makes NYC the centre of the global economy & LA the centre of global culture, yet does nothing to stop their decadence? A hurricane flattened Joplin, it didn’t even dent Manhattan. Sounds like your god is incompetent.

This guy is out of his mind. More at Right Wing Watch.
 

 
Admittedly, I’ve always considered GLAAD the most bourgeois LGBTQ organization out there—sort of a feel-good parade of celebrities patting themselves on the back, pushing for the kind of gay acceptance that your grandma could muster. But since they just nominated the John Waters fever dream that is Honey Boo Boo for a GLAAD Media Award, they suddenly seem a little less square. From their website:

Breakout TLC reality star Alana Thompson, better known as Honey Boo Boo, said on her show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, “Ain’t nothing wrong with bein’ a little gay. Everybody’s a little gay.” Thompson’s out Uncle Lee Thompson (“Uncle Poodle”) and the rest of the family participated in Spirit Day on October 19. GLAAD posted an exclusive video of Lee speaking about being bullied for growing up gay in the South and Alana posted a picture to the official Honey Boo Boo Facebook captioned, “You can’t change the way you are or who you fell in love with… we support Uncle Poodle and all the other poodles in the world too.”

Of course people are losing their minds over such trash being recognized, (apparently the world is suddenly going to hell in a handbasket because a chubby little working-class redneck girl isn’t appropriately ashamed), but kudos to GLAAD for giving a platform to queer folks (and their allies) who don’t meet the luke-warm liberal vision of ideal respectability.

Lee Thompson is also HIV positive, and adamantly vocal about the importance of safe sex—can we get him a nomination, too? Here he is talking about bullying for GLAAD.
 

 
Some anti-gay party poopers hired a plane to fly above a Lady Gaga concert yesterday in Tacoma, WA at the start of her US tour.

The virulently anti-LGBT Florida Family Association hired the aircraft to fly their “NOT Born this way” banner over Lady Gaga’s “Born Brave” bus (a LGBT educational resource for young people that is tailgating her U.S. concert dates) for several hours and then to fly continuously around the Tacoma Dome parking lot from 1 PM until sunset before her January 14th concert.

According to the FFA, the protest cost $1,900 and the group is soliciting more money to target further Lady Gaga tour dates. In their fundraising efforts for the stunt, the group asked their members:

“How would you feel if your child or grandchild went to a concert where unbeknownst to you they were convinced to embrace a homosexual or transgender lifestyle for a lifetime?”

I don’t know about you, but for the life of me, I cannot imagine deciding to change my sexual orientation because of a pop singer tried to convince me of it. Not that this has anything to do with Lady Gaga or the wonderful message she’s putting out there, of course.

The group’s monetary appeal went on to read:

“The fact that someone these kids do not know spent significant resources to fly a plan to tell them they are NOT born that way will prayerfully speak to their souls.”

Yeah, right. They pointed and laughed is what they did.

Outside of the Staples Center here in Los Angles before Lady Gaga’s “Monster Ball” show a few years back, there was a single sad-sack asshole Christian guy protesting, his sign accusing Gaga of being the Whore of Babylon. Owing to the number of people we saw telling him either to go fuck himself, or simply passing by him and paying him absolutely ZERO mind like the nutcase he was, I’d estimate his rate of converting Lady Gaga fans to Christianity at about zero as well.

The FFA feels differently:

Thousands of kids who might have otherwise worked through their pubescent sexual identity issues will be inspired to accept the wrong choice based upon this unscientific, emotionally charged propaganda. What’s brave or kind about telling thousands of sexually frustrated teens that they were Born This Way when a high percentage of them would have ended up taking the straight heterosexual path for life?

(Whistles, shakes head)

Still, talk about a terrific waste of money, eh? I hope every fucktard thinking of donating to the FFA gives and gives generously. Last spring, the FFA flew a banner during “Gay Days” at Walt Disney World to tip off parents that there were (whispers) homosexuals in the park.

Via Joe.My.God

 
Yesterday British writer Julie Burchill published an opinion piece on the website of the Guardian Media Group that was a very open attack on the transgender community. She called them “bedwetters in bad wigs,” “shims”(!) and a whole host of other disgraceful terms. The full story is at Queerty.

While I take it she’s a nobody in the States, Burchill is well-known in the UK media for being a self-defined “feminist” who lashes out semi-regularly, and who constantly rabbits on about being “working class” even though her class status changed many, many years ago. Her transmisogynist article has created quite the media storm over here, and with good reason. Her bigoted words left readers agape, for all the wrong reasons, and have opened up a huge debate around feminism and discrimination, and in particular discrimination by certain types of feminists. 

Today I went on The Guardian’s “Comment Is Free” website and published a comment which took her exact words and swapped the gender of some of the people involved. Instead of referring to transgender people, I made the general beef to seem as if it is about women and feminism. I simply swapped out some words and terms, like a “Mad-Lib.”

To my surprise, the comment was deleted by The Guardian website’s moderators. For what exact reason, I don’t know, but it has left me bewildered.

Surely if they saw fit to publish Burchill’s original piece, they shouldn’t have had a problem with mine? After all, THEY ARE PRETTY MUCH THE EXACT SAME ARTICLE.

Personally, I don’t want to give any oxygen of publicity to this frankly terrible, woefully self-important writer, but if you really want to read what she has written, it’s here. Knock yourself out. In the meantime though, and for all the people who have been asking what the reaction would be if the article were aimed at another minority group, this is my original “Mad-Lib” of the piece.

Yes, this is offensive. To be clear, I do not stand behind or advocate any of the views published below. It’s satire. However, the original article was not, and was published on one of the biggest national news forums in Britain.

[...] I was incredulous to read that my friend was being monstered on Twitter, to the extent that he had quit it, for supposedly picking on a minority – women. Though I imagine it to be something akin to being savaged by a dead sheep, as Denis Healey had it of Geoffrey Howe, I nevertheless felt indignant that a man of such style and substance should be driven from his chosen mode of time-wasting by a bunch of chicks in slutty clothing.

Bitches, hos, whatever you’re calling yourselves these days – don’t threaten or bully us lowly wholesome, decent men, I warn you. We may not have as two lovely big bouncing PhDs like you, but we’ve experienced a lifetime of pissing standing up and female admonishment and many of us are now staring Viagra and the middle-age spread 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.

So what do you think? Were The Guardian* website moderators right to remove this comment? If so, shouldn’t they also remove Burchill’s original article?

Thankfully, an awful lot of people have shared their disgust at Burchill’s bigotted nonsense, coming as it does from a supposedly “respectabe” liberal news outlet. The Guardian themselves published a retort from noted trans writer Roz Kaveney, and some brilliant replies have been published by Paris Lees (via Diva magazine) and Ruth Pearce (via the Lesbilicious blog).

Most interestingly of all, the right-wing paper The Telegraph (commonly known as “The Torygraph”) have published a thoughtful and inspiring response. Wait a minute, are the British press playing switcheroo with their political allegiances?!

*The Guardian is at serious pains to distance itself from the article, claiming it was published by the Guardian Media Group’s Sunday title The Observer, and not The Guardian newspaper itself. They now need to distance themselves from Julie Burchill full stop.

UPDATE:

The Guardian has withdrawn Burchill’s article and issued this statement:

We have decided to withdraw from publication the Julie Burchill comment piece ‘Transsexuals should cut it out’. The piece was an attempt to explore contentious issues within what had become a highly-charged debate. The Observer is a paper which prides itself on ventilating difficult debates and airing challenging views. On this occasion we got it wrong and in light of the hurt and offence caused I apologise and have made the decision to withdraw the piece. The Observer Readers’ Editor will report on these issues at greater length.

 
Known simply as “iiGethii”·on YouTube, here’s her summary of the timelapse video:

This video is of me going through a 3 year transition (Roughly one thousand pictures). I have had FFS during the process. I started roughly around when I was 20 - 21 years of age.

I use to have my own channel a while ago where I’d post videos, but removed it. Here I am again making a return.

BTW, FFS stands for facial feminization surgeries.
 

 
Via Nerdcore

 
While I had known for a while that the Hüsker Dü front-man was gay, I didn’t know Bob Mould was actually so open about being in the bear (as in hairy, and/or big gay dude) scene.

From Washington City Paper:

For others, like the well-known post-punk singer Bob Mould, who was a mainstay of D.C.’s bear scene in the mid-2000s, the subculture is an entrée for misfits into mainstream gay life. In his 2011 memoir See a Little Light, Mould describes discovering Dupont’s DIK Bar: “It reminded me of my punk rock days: guys in flannel shirts, T-shirts, and jeans. There wasn’t a lot of pretense, sarcasm, or campy behavior…I enjoyed the company of guys who were comfortable with their masculinity. At DIK Bar I didn’t feel like I had to do anything to fit in except be myself. I didn’t have to try to look or act like a bear because I already was one.”

What’s more surprising to me about the article is that the general taxonomy of bear subculture is so diverse (chubs, cubs, chasers, twinks, leather daddies, otters… otters?). Well, that, and the fact that there’s any culture at all in boring Washington, DC (Buuuuuuurrrrrnnn!)

Below, Hüsker Dü take a fantastic rip through The Byrd’s “Eight Miles High” at the Pink Pop Festival, Netherlands, 1987:
 

 
Jean Genet wrote Our Lady of the Flowers while in prison in 1942. It was published anonymously the following year, and sold around 30 copies. It wasn’t until after the Allied Forces liberated France in 1944 that the bulk of the copies were bound and sold.

Due to its sexual content Our Lady of the Flowers was sold as high class erotica, but Genet never intended it as such. It would take until the book had been revised and reprinted by Gallimard in 1951 that Our Lady of the Flowers received the critical accolades it richly deserved - even if Jean-Paul Sartre described it as “the epic of masturbation.”

It was an over-the-wall conversation with a neighbor that led Lindsay Kemp to create and produce his now legendary dance production of Flowers in 1974. As Lindsay recounted to Dangerous Minds last year:

‘I’d just rented a little cottage, a country retreat, in Hungerford in Berkshire, and my next door neighbor - it was one Sunday morning and we were listening to Round the Horne, we all did on those Sunday mornings - and my neighbor across the fence leaned over and said.

“Oh hi, I think this book might interest you.”

And it was Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers. And I began to read it, and as soon as I began to read it I could already see it on the stage, and I could see myself as Divine, the central character. And two weeks later, we opened it.

Only someone of Kemp’s incredible talents and vision could have produced Flowers, and the production put Kemp and his dance company literally “on the map.” Since then, Kemp and Co. have performed Flowers all across the world to incredible acclaim.

In 1982, a video was made of the Lindsay Kemp Dance Company performing Flowers at the Teatro Parioli, Roma. It is rarely been seen since, and the video is a incredible treat for anyone interested in dance, performance and theater.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Lindsay Kemp is on the ‘phone: Scenes from his life from Genet to Bowie

Lindsay Kemp: Seldom seen interview about his production of ‘Salome’ from 1977

David Bowie and Lindsay Kemp’s rarely seen production ‘Pierrot in Turquoise’ from 1968

 
With thanks to Lindsay Kemp’s Last Dance
 

”I’m not in love, but I’m open to persuasion”

Before the chill lady with the smooth voice, ringing guitar, and possibly Sapphic tendencies became the stuff of (sometimes laughably bad) cliché, Joan Armatrading was a pre-Lilith Fair anomaly.

Armatrading was born in the West Indies in 1950. Her family moved to Birmingham, England when she was three, and sent for her and her siblings as they could afford to—she wasn’t able to rejoin her parents until the age of seven. Though her father was a musician, she was never allowed to play his guitar, and taught herself on a pawn shop acoustic her mother traded for two baby strollers.

Armatrading quit school at 15 to start factory work supporting her family, but at 16 she was performing her own material in clubs, and at 18 found herself in the London stage production of Hair!, (notoriously shy, she abstained from the nude scenes).  It was here she met Pam Nestor, with whom she wrote her debut album, Whatever’s for Us.

Her music is absolutely beautiful: complex, sweet, and sincere. It’s easy to see how she launched 1,000 imitators.

As famous for her introspective, tender vocal delivery as her closely guarded private life (and performance anxiety), Armatrading is believed to have married her girlfriend in a quiet ceremony last year.

Below, Track Record, one half doc about the enigmatic singer/songwriter, one half travelogue.
 

 
Call us crazy, call us stupid… we don’t care.

This is what Tranarchy is doing this weekend, a tribute to all things trashy, sleazy, skeezy, strange and Baltimorean. Yup, we’re showing every single full length film by cult auteur and Pope of Trash, the Ayatollah of Crud, the Prince of Puke, the one and only John Waters.

Every single one. In a row. Non-stop. For 24 hours.

The only things we’re not showing are his hard-to-find early short, and hell, if we can find ‘em, we’ll probably show them too!

You know, maybe we are crazy. And a little bit stupid. But we still don’t care. This movie marathon is something some of our members have dreamed of doing their whole lives, and just like the Dreamlanders, Tranarchy is dedicated to making our craziest, stupidest dreams a reality.

Let’s face it. watching all of these films back to back non-stop for 24 hours is going to be quite an endurance test. We are inviting patrons to sleep over, and Manchester’s Islington Mill (the venue for this festival of freakiness) are kindly letting us convert one of their heated gallery spaces into a giant bedroom for anyone who needs a break.

There will be lots of interactivity’s for patrons , including a Waters-inspired photo booth featuring some of his most iconic movie scenes, free popcorn, edible turds, and for the final film, a dance-a-long screening of Hairspray, dance lessons that will teach you to do The Madison. We’ll want you to go two up and two back with a big, strong turn. The brilliant artwork, above, by Manchester-based illustrator David Bailey, will also be available to buy as limited edition prints.

Even now, 42 years after the Dreamlanders made their first ripples in the puddle of public consciousness with the release of Pink Flamingos (our midnight show, of course!) they are THE SHIT. They were punks before there were punks (they died their hair with pen ink because colored dye was not commercially available back then.) They were openly queer before there was such a thing as queer culture (in fact, they were a huge part of defining what queer culture could and would be.) They were one of the only pockets of hippie-resistance outside of Warhol’s Factory, and their couldn’t-give-a-flying-fuck attitude is inspirational to this day. Cookie Meuller, Mink Stole, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pierce, Pat Moran, Vincent Peranio, Divine and John Waters, we salute you. For 24 fucking hours.

The Facebook event page for Tranarchy’s 24 Hour John Waters Movie Marathon is here.

In sourcing the content for the movie marathon we’ve collected some interesting curios and documentaries about John Waters and the Drreamlanders. Thankfully, some of them have appeared on Dangerous Minds before, including the excellent Incredibly Strange Move Show with Jonathan Ross and the brilliant Divine Trash. But here’s a little curio I am happy to say has never been on this site before. It’s an appearance on Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous, where he gives us a tour of his Baltimore home and its cavalcade of perversions: 

John Waters on Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous:
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

You know, we’ve been posting about John Waters on DM almost since its very inception. There are just too many great posts about the man to list them all individually. So instead of singling them out, have a scroll through the John Waters-tag page.