Sarah Ditum, columnist, critic and feature writer with bylines at the New Statesman, the Guardian, the Spectator, the Independent, Eurogamer, Stylist, Grazia, Elle and more. Regular TV and radio appearances, including Newsnight and Today…and hopelessly ‘no platformed’ by the transgender conspiracy. *Helps if you know the Deputy Editor of the New Statesman, though…;)
Sarah Ditum, freelance journalist and transphobe extraordinaire informs us via her blog that she finds Jeremy Corbyn “likable”.
There is nothing like a Dame…to lecture the rest of us on privilege.
1. Create the illusion that everyone loves trans people now; there is no discrimination or prejudice anymore and that life for them is just a bowl of cherries. Check.
2. Create the myth that there is a powerful and sinister trans lobby operating behind the scenes that conspires to manipulate and control to the extent that they already have too much power now and are taking over. As evidenced by them getting ‘uppity’ recently and having the temerity to ask if they’re going to get equal rights at some point in the future. Check.Double-Check.
3. Turn the wealthy and powerful journalistic establishment who have traditionally persecuted and marginalised them into the actual victim instead. Check.Double-Check.
4. Re-iterate the usual pseudo-scientific misinformation about the ‘unfair advantages’ trans people have in sport backed up by no-one in particular. Check.
5. Of course, don’t forget to repeat the obligatory line that all trans people conform and reinforce patriarchal gender stereotypes whilst all cis people do not. Check.Double-Check.
6. In order to further terrify the reader, make casual mention of a trans person who has committed a crime – or is notorious in some way, like did time for alleged disloyalty or treason. Check.Double-Check.Triple-Check.
7. By all means, please remember to make the ridiculously offensive association with paedophilia (*Too over the top for the target reader audience to swallow? Go on, be bold…Trump is in power now and tomorrow belongs to Putin!). Check.
8. Reassure the reader that even if by the end of your article they have formed the suspicion that you have an ulterior motive to lie and demonize the extraordinarily diverse trans community, it doesn’t really matter if knuckle dragging bigots are incited by your words of hate and misinformation to actually go out there and discriminate, beat, rape and murder innocent trans people because they are basically a really miniscule minority anyway so in a world where rampant fascism’s back in fashion, they’re small and they don’t matter. Like Belgium. Check.
9. Conclude by claiming that you are not prejudiced, of course. Check.
(*Please note, will also work just as well when the outrageously right-wing media baron whom you work for wants to scapegoat a. immigrants; b. single parents; c. non-white people; d. the working class; e. disabled people; f. Muslims etc.) Happy paycheck journalism!
Anyone familiar with us here at Becky Transsexual will know that we’re not exactly fans of Nazis. That’s w
Chabloz: Mocks children abused by Nazis…need I say anything more
hy we were much dismayed to come across a video on YouTube in which a holocaust revisionist sings songs mocking the victims of the infamous Dr Joseph Mengele – many of whom were tiny children whom he conducted medical experiments on.
Even more mystifying is that Alison Chabloz (who is due to attend court this Thursday for her anti-Semitic hate-speak and defamation) has chosen the medium of swing/jazz music to express her odious views. You don’t have to have a Phd in Modern German History to know that in the Third Reich, which Chabloz and her confederates so admire, swing and all other forms of jazz music (which were the primary form of popular music back in the 1930s and ’40s) were strictly verboten. Moreover, anyone caught listening, and/or dancing to swing music – let alone playing or performing it – was liable to be arrested and even sent to a concentration camp, largely due to the fact of the worldwide prominence of the many talented black and Jewish performers and composers who created this extremely popular music genre.
Furthermore, in an age when the supposedly well-educated middle classes look down on the working classes and are apt to dismiss us as a bunch of knuckle-dragging, ignorant racists – often blaming the rise of the far right, Brexit and the coming to power of Trump on us – it is as well to note that there are many racists, fascists, neo-Nazis and generally bigoted snobs in their class too. Underneath the cut-glass posh, public-school educated accents, flash suits and professional careers so many a treacherous parasite lurks, abusing their power and socio-political economic privileges that our classist society invests them with to discriminate against people on the grounds of our race, religion, ethnic backgrounds, sexuality and, yes, gender identity too.
Over the past couple of weeks, far-right extremism particularly amongst the wealthy classes has come to prominence, yet of course the majority of our mainstream media (often run by equally rich people with views that border those of the Nazis) have not similarly put this down to the ignorance and depravity of people amongst their own class. Ex-public schoolboy, Joshua Bonehill-Paine is a glaring recent example of what one of these £36,000-a-year private schools can produce. A pathetic man-child fantasist who equates trolling the Internet to being a soldier in an actual war, Bonehead was finally jailed the other day after a long-term campaign of vile anti-Semitic and misogynist abuse and threats online towards Jewish Labour MP, Luciana Berger.
Bonehill-Paine: little boy fantasist with decidedly unhealthy fixation on Ms. Berger
Obviously proof that the most posh education that money can buy is never guaranteed to turn its recipient into a gentleman, lady or even a reasonably polite, intelligent and more importantly kind human being.
Take a step back for a moment, look at the bigger picture and you will realise that there are plenty of double-barrelled surnames amongst the Nazi movement right from the start: let’s not forget that the most notorious British fascist-ever – blackshirt leader Oswald Mosely – was, in fact, a member of the aristocracy; a Baronet.
Baronet, Sir Oswald Ernald Mosely doing an impression of a tea-pot in game of charades with chums sometime in the 1930s.
Then there were the equally notorious (and similarly ridiculous) two Mitford sisters (apologies to the other one who was normal.) Going right to the top of the shit pile there was the rather pathetic Edward VIII – ask anyone in the UK still old enough to vaguely remember him and they’ll most probably tell you what most ordinary folk thought of him at the time: a ‘twerp’ who was mocked mercilessly. And, don’t even get me started on the late Lady Birdbrain, sorry Birdwood!
Nazi heiress ‘Lady’ Michele Renouf: plenty of bling – so that’s what happened to all that gold the Nazis stole
Our supposedly social ‘betters’ are still at it, so it’s no it’s not surprise to find today’s leader of choice for Britain Nazis (who evidently relishes his tabloid billing as ‘the third most important fascist leader in Britain’), is yet another double-barrelled named schmuck – ex-army officer Jeremy Bedford-Turner (oooh fancy!) Friends call him Jez (is that short for Jezebel, one wonders?;)
Dishonorably discharged: contemporary British Nazi Fuhrer, Jezebel Bedford-Truck (or whatever his name is)
He is self appointed Fuhrer of an organisation of posh men in suits called The London Forum, who meet at the city’s four star Grosvenor Hotel to proclaim their deranged, hateful ‘theories’ to similarly wealthy, influential people of their class and then post it on YouTube for the commoners.
There was something deeply sickening that I felt arise deep within me when I saw those fucking privileged snobs all gathered round snorting with laughter and derision at the sick jokes about poor little kids maimed and murdered by Mengele during the Holocaust from the hateful, big fat gob of the similarly ‘well-spoken’ Alison Chabloz, Switzerland-dwelling ex-wife of some bankster who no doubt has wads of cash stuffed away from her divorce settlement in some fancy Swiss bank account. They’re all a bunch of sick parasites and represent everything that’s not only wrong with Britain, but with the rest of the world too – now that billionaire puppet Trump has seized power in the USA to do their bidding.
So next time those amongst the well-to-do who are not Nazis (maybe just classist snobs) decide to look down their noses at the Great British Working Class they might care to remember the miners back in the ’30s who downed tools to travel to Spain and join the International Brigades to fight Franco’s fascists during the civil war there. Or they might want to reflect that it was ordinary, everyday people who fought against Hitler and brought him down and defeated him in the end. Ordinary people of every conceivable nationality, race, sexuality and gender whose basic, decent level of humanity could no longer tolerate living under, or the threat of living under, a Nazi regime – either for themselves, or for others.
Privileged Nazi socialites, the Mitford Sisters Diana and Valkyrie (yes, really!), on the set of classic British TV comedy On the Buses sometime in the 1970s – I guess;)
Because you see, the extremists in whatever shape or form will never win because the majority of reasonable people do not want to live in a world like that – even if they are not the particular groups who are scapegoated by those particular extremists at the time.
That’s why I really hope that Alison Chabloz loses her case this Thursday and for this latest Nazi wannabe ‘warrior’ the war really will be over.
Becky Transsexual couldn’t help noticing how Labour MP, (and former ‘Blair Babe’), Caroline Flint waded into the debate on gender and public washrooms the other day with all the subtlety and forethought of a 2003 illegal invasion of a sovereign state, predictably leaving similarly high levels of ‘shock and awe’ amongst the thinking classes in her wake. The Beckinator finds the saddest aspect of all of this, though, is how self-publicizing radio Caroline has turned out to be something more of a weapon of mass distraction than destruction (of self, or otherwise), at least so far as such.
I mean, how disappointing that the first-ever UK parliamentary debate into transgender equality should become derailed to concentrate on how trans and gender non-conforming people pose such a supposedly potential threat to cis people when using public facilities. Particularly so, when statistically, it has been shown time after time that it’s actually us who are far, far more likely to be attacked by cis people than the other way ’round.
But what self-promoting, publicity-seeking, vote-hungry career politician ever passed up the opportunity to ingratiate oneself to the Great British Tabloid, eh? Moreover, with the shock decision of 52 per cent of the UK to Brexit; a correspondingly startling rise in the popularity of far-right parties across Europe and the realisation of the nightmare scenario of Donald Duck being elected as President of the USA, I guess it’s only natural that a type of politician with no specific ideology other than furthering their own career should see it as currently imperative that they now cash in their chips with the shift toward the extreme right.
This one, of course, insists she is not transphobic and as a socialist women MP is a great friend of LGBT people; a trusty comrade with a homotransphilic ‘squeaky clean’ voting record to match – whom (like the recently glitter-bombed George Galloway) comes not to bury us, but to praise us. Instead, Flint assures us, what her misgivings on the prospect of what she terms ‘gender-neutral’ public facilities was all about was her concern for the safety of women. She actually said that ya know, she said she cares *passionately* for the rights of women…and, erm…oh yes, those transgenders. (Whom, the women amongst whom, presumably, she doesn’t actually class as women by her omission of us). Gee thanx, Caroline: unconscious bias, much??!
Moreover, your derailing of a debate that was supposed to be about transgender equality (which I guess also includes the right to safety) to transforming it into something that was ‘all about teh cis’ is kinda reminiscent of what femeenists such as yourself complain about when MRAs take over debates about sexism’s impact on women by claiming that the issue is that men are the ones who are really discriminated against, not women. kettle, pot, black, much?;)
Must admit, the more the Bexxxster thinks on this the more she wonders if Caroline Flintstone is genuine in her claims that she is not transphobic. Hhhhmmmmmmmmmm…..
Well, lookey what we got ourselves here now…………….Facts-wise, that is. For starters, it didn’t help that she highlighted a transphobic article in the New Statesman on the subject, by serial trans exclusionary ‘radical’ feminist, Sarah Ditum as her primary motivation in raising such concerns. I mean quoting someone like Sarah Ditum on Twitter as an inspiration for asking a question in a parliamentary debate about transgender equality is equivalent to citing notorious Neo-Nazi holocaust revisionist, David Irving as a reliable source in one on anti-Semitism. CerrriKKKey!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m sure alarm bells would rightly go off if a mainstream MP had done that and their real intentions and sympathies be subsequently probed to find out if they are in line with the views of an avowedly left-wing/liberal democratic political party or whether they need to be expelled so they can peddle their irrational hate with the BNP! With some irony moreover, a keen critic of Jeremy Corbyn like Flint would have probably wasted no time in being one of the first to slap down one of his supporters for doing so!
Flint’s relationship with Sarah Ditum in this regard is kind of worrying – particularly so, since Flint has not only cited Ditum once, but has also now thanked her gushingly in a further Tweet following this controversy. Ditum is NOT an unbiased source and it would be fairly clear beyond all reasonable doubt to a reasonably intelligent person like veteran front-bench, high-profile MP Caroline Flint to realise this. Ditum has a history; a track record of hostility towards the transgender community. If they’re mates and believe exactly the same things about the trans community, as a prominent public servant, Flint should at least be up-front about it. In a world where politicians are increasingly gaining a reputation for being two-faced, an increasingly weary electorate deserve to know if they are voting for a progressive MP or instead someone who has more in common with US Republicans in North Carolina in regard to certain issues and certain groups of people.
No doubt Flint and her supporters will try and make this all about being ‘no platformed’ (as is the current, ‘oh, those beastly trans activists!’ standard ‘excuse’ rolled out by those challenged on their transphobia). I, and I suspect most of the people within the trans community, contrary to tabloid accusations and those of the usual self-appointed right-wing pundits, have no desire to no-platform anyone for expressing their own stupid and bigoted ideas, but if Caroline Flint is using her position to lobby and grandstand on transphobic people’s behalf then she should declare such an interest so we all know exactly where we are with her. It actually goes beyond transgender issues alone: speaking with forked-tongue is precisely what causes the cynicism towards mainstream politics that so many politicians are apt to accuse the electorate of. Not good for the health of a supposedly liberal democracy. And, meantime, by filibustering and attempting to further erase the voice and collective experience (not to mention desperate needs) of a minority group – who is effectively ‘no platforming’ whom here?
Soap box rant over and out…and I can assure you, I remain very OUT and intend to do so indefinitely!
Sorry this is old news to many people, but I only just caught up with it on You Tube the other day. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic. The audience seems to think so too, as Trump makes himself an utter laughing stock here. Not that he really had to put any effort in that himself anyway with his track record.
I guess he could be called a half-hearted transphobe in that he’s prepared to make the effort to be transphobic if he thinks it will make him popular (which he’s obviously unsure of, if the weasel-like behaviour in the above clip is anything to go by). I guess the Caitlyn Jenner factor might have kicked in here, with a slight realisation that not all trans people are necessarily going to vote Democrat, despite the Rethuglican Party being the traditional party of the transphobic religious US right.
Erm…isn’t a transgender person voting Republican kind of analogous to a turkey voting for Thanksgiving, though?
Plus even though he doesn’t seem that particularly obsessed with us, who could forget Trump’s dufus-like after-reaction a few years’ back, when he finally had to concede to equality laws which allow trans women like Miss Universe candidate Jenna Tacklova to take part in his beauty contest. Making a weak, immature pun on her name associating it with genitalia on some mindless US prime time TV chat show pretty much shows him as beneath the intellectual of the average 12-year-old bully.
Should, no doubt appeal to some of the transphobic nutjobs with time on their hands and nothing better to do with it than invade Target stores to disturb the peace protesting about trans people having the right to use public lavatories though. Seriously, these people are like the racial segregationalists of the 1960s and the ‘commies under the beds’ red scare McCarthyite witch-hunt paranoid pitchfork wielding fanatics all rolled into one. They are simply acting to type as if you look throughout US history there is a tendency for these sorts of national panics – up to and including the legendary time when a sci-fi radio show opened with a statement that the Martians had landed and it caused pandemonium amongst large swathes of terrified listeners who actually assumed this was a real news flash!
Personally, I can’t conceive of why anyone would wish to vote for such a frightful chap. Anyone out there who is considering voting for him in November’s forthcoming US presidential election, please do feel free to enlighten me as to what the attraction could possibly be?
To that end, probably the most miraculous aspect of this whole Trump phenomenon to me as an observer from abroad is that I’m actually surprised that there’s anyone left whom he’s managed to not offend. At the rate he’s going with regard to alienating the American electorate, I really do feel it’s unfair that the Democrats haven’t offered to put him on their payroll as he must be Hillary Clinton’s best campaign asset! Though he hardly needs the cash, does he?
Stephanie Davies-Arai, Child Communicator, Sculptor, Journalist and Transphobe
Stephanie Davies-Arai is an angry woman. A very, very angry woman. She doesn’t like transsexual women. She tells us so on her twitter page, facebook profile and website.
Stephanie Davies-Arai wrote an article telling us she was very upset because she felt that transsexual women are really men in disguise who spoil International Women’s Day. She wrote this in a magazine for grown-ups called the Welsh Arts Review because she is a sculptor.
This is so she can tell transgender girls that they are really boys who were experimented on when they were little by an evil Nazi doctor. One day Stephanie Davies-Arai’s child said to her ‘I am a girl’ but she told her to ‘go away you can’t be a girl because you are sensitive.’
Stephanie Davies-Arai is a trans-exclusionary-radical-feminist. (*DON’T DO THAT GERMAINE!) We call these people TERFs. A TERF is a very, very angry person. That’s why whenever you see a TERF you should always smile sweetly and say “do calm down dear”.
Then make them a cup of tea to stop them thinking you are sexist.
We here at Beckytranssexual, are somewhat shocked by the amount of online hostility and downright venom directed against Ms Anna Lee, whom we are proud of as the UK’s first ever trans woman candidate for the position of NUS Women’s Officer, even more so when it emanates from places that you wouldn’t feel were particularly reactionary or politically right-wing such as that famed ‘middle-of-the-road’ online stomping ground widely known as mumsnet:
Erm yeah…for real, mumsnet – yikes – that’s more or less Jo/e Average territory of the Net, right? Yet many of the comments accessible via the link above almost make me want to hop over to the Daily Mail thread on this for the more ‘liberal’ view!
Alarmingly, that just seems to be the tip of a very large iceberg, however. The attitudes amongst posters in Part 1 of the thread were even more intense and obsessive in their condemnation of her, which kind of makes us suspicious as to whether or not this is part of some orchestrated hate campaign against her by a fringe minority of crazed far-right wingers and deranged evangelicals who maybe arrived at the show already pre-loaded on a skinful of special-brew strength hate with one whole Wagnerian armoury of ideological axes to grind.
The main ‘excuse’ they seem to employ for their rejection of Ms Lee is that because they personally aren’t trans they don’t want to be represented by a woman who personally is trans because they feel she didn’t receive the same socialization whilst growing up and consequently doesn’t share the same experiences as them.
*Hmmm…now let’s see, if we’re right in guessing that the majority of these objectors and the rest of the students at the university are also white and middle class then by the same logic they’d presumably reject a black or working class female candidate for NUS women’s officer because she just happens to be a different colour or socio-economic group than they are and has therefore had a different experience with a more growing up as a female from a more privileged background?! Two words: racism and snobbery.
To that end, we at the BT can’t believe the herd bigotry that we’re seeing over this! After all, one would have hoped that the majority of rational, reasonable people were passed all that?
Moreover, if they really are genuine feminists then can they not grasp the reality that there is no single blueprint for how a woman should be and that women come from a whole multitude of different and diverse backgrounds? Indeed, erm…duh…isn’t that supposed to be one of the main, fundamental tenets of feminism?!!!
…And, in the allegedly diverse and open-minded environment that a university supposedly has to offer, what ever happened to the realization and enthusiasm for the myriad of advantages to be had in learning from one another, eh?
“Blogger Belinda McKenzie said…
That’s the spirit. Tar n feather the paedo hoax promoting androgynous hermaphrodite nonce lover.
25 January 2016 at 19:16”
Oh well, they do say that after a while hating on people does tend to show in your face…Just sayin’;)
“Belinda McKenzie (born 1946 in Northampton UK, MA Oxon in Oriental Languages (Japanese) and MA Sussex in International Relations, followed by a PGCE) has worked variously as a translator, curatorial research assistant, as director of an educational consultancy and in business but since ‘retirement’ in 1998 has immersed herself in a succession of humanitarian and public interest initiatives, starting with taking a leading role in defending a UK-based Iranian charity looking after victims of the fundamentalist regime when it came under attack from the Charity Commission for England & Wales. This led to the setting up of the Association for Charities as a counterweight to the Commission’s at times draconian use of its powers against small charities and to campaign for new provisions in charity law to temper those powers and enable charities to seek redress for perceived wrongful closure. The result was the introduction of a Charity Appeal Tribunal in the Charities Act 2006 as well as wording in the law making it incumbent on the Commission to exercise its powers ‘proportionately.’
Other initiatives in which Belinda has been involved over the past decade include the British 9/11 & 7/7 Truth campaign, Make Wars History, an anti-war campaign demanding adherence on the part of governments to the international laws of war and two alternative science projects, ‘Energen’, a Free Energy project and others.
Belinda has come to rest she feels for the remainder of her life in child & family protection work and is co-founder of the Association of McKenzie Friends which aims to raise the status of lay legal advisers particularly in the family court system and help prevent the too often unjust and unwarranted removal of children from their birth parents and families. She is also campaigning for abuse of children to be investigated and prosecuted regardless of the social status of the abuser.
Here to help make this world a better place for you and your children.
Belinda & Iran Aid – Statement of Truth
Due to negative rumours flying all over Facebook & the internet regarding my involvement with the charity formerly known as Iran Aid, for the sake of people knowing the truth and not swallowing malicious lies and misinformation I make the following Statement of Truth:
It was always my intention to work full-time for the benefit of humanity once my children were grown up and had left home. This moment for me coincided with my having received a substantial inheritance, £4 million to be precise from my wealthy landowner father on his death in 1996. £I million of this money I used to buy my sons and daughter their first flats, £2 million I put into a Trust for them and their future children and the remaining £1 million I resolved to devote to humanitarian good causes, as and when need presented itself.
The first case of acute humanitarian need of which I became aware was the crisis suffered by a charity to which I had already been a donor for some years, Iran Aid. Iran Aid, based a couple of miles from my home in North Finchley looked after the remaining family members of dissidents murdered by the Iranian regime of which a large proportion were young children. On coming to power in 1997 Tony Blair set about restoring relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran for the sake of gaining access to Iran’s oil and gas and general business opportunities. In return, the Iranian mullahs demanded that the charity supporting their opponents be closed down.
Accordingly, in July 1998 the Charity Commission suddenly froze Iran Aid’s funds and three months later sent in the Receiver and Manager to take it over entirely. However by then both the Iranian community and British donors such as myself had massed in the charity’s defence and when the Receiver Manager arrived to lock up the office we would not let him in. He had signalled his intention to send the charity’s records out to Iran for inspection which would instantly place the hidden beneficiaries in severe danger – it would be tantamount to sending details of Anne Frank’s hiding place to the gestapo!
The sit-in at the charity’s office dragged on for 20 months and the stalemate led to the closure of Iran Aid. In Iran Aid’s defence it should be said that during the three months during which the Charity Commission had full access to the charity’s documentation no trace of wrong-doing was found.
While all this was going on, and with fund-raising stopped, the beneficiaries of the charity still needed feeding and protecting which is where British donors such as myself stepped into the breach. We put up large sums out of our savings and in some case mortgaged our houses to keep the charity’s beneficiaries alive. Eventually new organisations were set up by supporters and again we helped to render those rapidly solvent so that the humanitarian work could continue.
I was intimately involved with the charity during all of these years of battling simultaneously the murderous Iranian regime and the British Charity Commission which I felt used its powers too readily and destructively against smaller charities such as Iran Aid. With other charities which had suffered assaults by the Commission I set up an Association for Charities to deal with the problem and we helped influence the wording of the Charities Act 2004 in favour of smaller charities less able to defend themselves against the Commission’s powers. The setting up of a Charities’ Appeal Tribunal could have been due in no small part to our campaigning.
By 2004 I had parted with some £1.7 million in all to this cause, including taking out a mortgage on my house. I made it very clear to my friends in the Iranian community that this money was mainly a loan and that in due course I would need it to be repaid in full, all bar £300,000 which I wrote off as an outright gift, but the rest, £1,400,000 would need to come back to me.
This is what has been happening over the 10 years since that time; the Iranians have been faithfully repaying me what they owe me in the form of monthly payments which I dispense in turn to my own humanitarian causes and cases. More recently however, I began to request that the process of repayment be speeded up as I have to settle my mortgage to the tune of £300,000 in 2016. Accordingly, in 2015 the remaining monthly repayments have gone up to £20,000 a month which goes straight into a mortgage account for the purpose of meeting the 2016 deadline. By May 2016 the repayment of my loan and by extension the settlement of my mortgage account will be fully concluded.
My main Iranian trustee friend Hamid Bayazi will confirm that I have never taken a penny from Iran Aid or any charity for that matter. Ever since I received the inheritance from my father I have been a giver rather than a taker and this will continue. I am here in the world to help people and my own comfort or pleasure mean nothing to me. I buy my clothes from charity shops, never go on holiday and live modestly and anyone is welcome to inspect my bank-account going back 20 years to see that what I have said is true.
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