The trouble with 'objective' journalism

'It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place...you had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.' - Hunter S Thompson, 'He Was a Crook'

Still thinking about something I saw on the news on Monday night. A journalist was interviewing people for vox pops in Great Yarmouth after Labour's immigration announcement. One of the people he interviewed said 'I don't complain about the immigrants taking the jobs because a lot of the locals won't do the jobs. But it's these benefits they get - free cars, free houses...'

Immigrants don't get free cars.

Immigrants don't get free houses.

This is generally known, by people who've looked into it - such as journalists. We know this stuff about free cars and houses is made-up - and, in the case of the free cars thing, we can specifically trace it to a bullshit column from professional opinion-haver Carol Malone, back in 2009.

But the journalist didn't correct this woman - even though what she said was demonstrably untrue - because that might have been thought 'biased'. This is where so-called 'objective' journalism lets us all down: because people watching that programme will have seen these words about free cars and free houses go unchallenged, and will think 'well, it must be true - someone said it on the news'.

It's especially annoying that this was the Channel 4 News; if their reporters can take it on themselves to confront a hipster doofus over the cost of his overpriced Lucky Charms, you would think they would also be willing to call someone out for spreading this poisonous, racist 'free cars' bullshit. 

You would think so, but you would, it seems, be wrong.

Regardless of Consent

I circled it, my truth,
like an opponent
that I doubted
I could beat; or, rather,

one I wanted to give in to,
but would make a show
of putting up a fight.
My truth protected me

when it most seemed to hurt;
when it most seemed I would be broken
my truth held me, with its teeth
beside my ear, biting off

the final consonant of 'slut',
and you could call the noise
I made a sob, could call this
degradation, but

I have seen people,
bound and helpless,
smile with sanctity
I never saw in church,

and I have sat in cafes
looking out onto the street
and feeling Buddha-level love
for every passing face I see

because the night before,
somebody beat me up
the way I like it, and
- how long will this be legal?

Physical or verbal abuse

(regardless if consensual)

is only forbidden on video now,

along with

Spanking

Strangulation

Facesitting

(and, oh, what I could write about those, 

and as to

penetration by any object

associated with violence

- do love beads count? I mean,

I know they're not exactly weapons-grade,

but when I thought that they'd got stuck...

well, that was scarier than being choked

between a lover's thighs) but

when you enclose desire, things tend

to creep: what cannot be seen

can become harder to imagine,

to explain; once an image in motion

is prohibited, the still frame

becomes suspect, once a photo

is forbidden, illustration

seems transgressive, and when

all image is off-limits

then the words which conjure images

speak threat

and must be censored.

And, yes, there are times

when we agree safe limits

to such violence: but the limit

is consent: informed,

enthusiastic - from the Greek

en theos, meaning

'full of God', and really

there is no better description

of this blessing which will never let me go,

this love which only seems like violence from outside,

this truth I circled, circled, circled

for so long, until the knowledge

that what I thought single combat

was instead a mosh pit carnival, 

a battle royal, a free-for-all,

that I was not alone:

this, you disown,

regardless of consent. 

Three words, that's all:

but all the difference

between defending and denying our existence. 

           *           *          *

So, if you're the kind of person who likes my work - and I'm going to assume you are, since you're reading this blog - you'll already be aware of the ludicrous new regulations on online pornography in the UK. As you'll have gathered from one or two of my poems, I enjoy being dominated and, well, beaten up, frankly, in a safe, consensual setting, so the idea that the government has essentially, at a stroke, declared quite a lot of my sex life illegal is a little worrying. Sure, right now it's technically only illegal in the arena of video-on-demand porn produced in the UK, but it's a slippery slope, y'know? And for me, the scariest part of the legislation is 'physical and verbal abuse' being illegal regardless of whether or not those involved consent. This seems, to me, to carry worrying echoes of 'Operation Spanner' and the bad old days of the 1980s. Anyway, I've been wanting to get my thoughts about this thing down poetically, and this is a first, very rough attempt at that. It's going to need knocking into shape later; hopefully it'll take to that as well as I do.

Unstoppable

Don't call me unstoppable
because of what poisoned my veins;
Don't call me unstoppable
because you maintain that I have a 'male frame';
Don't call me unstoppable
because girls like us all have big hands;
don't call me unstoppable
because I 'used to be a man':

you've never seen deceleration
'til you've seen a trans girl breaking,
asking why she's been forsaken
through a face of running make-up,

defeated and retreating from the space we're told we take up,
anticipating beatings from the moment that we wake up
reeling from repeated sneaky
cotton ceiling break-ups,

Wise up! Size up who statistics really favour,
we're more Miss Elizabeth
than Big Van Vader,
you get away with hitting us
by claiming we're a danger
say our inexistence
should be morally mandated
leaving me inquisitive
on why we're highly gate-kept

who
crept
through the hospital doors,
slipping past the smokers outside,
bypassing the wards,
who got to board-level
and kissed some corporate arse,
and got to set the obstacles
that we all have to pass?

Do you think I'm paranoid?
Well, call me Shirley Manson,
'cause I've fought with the dysmorphia
that tells me I'm not handsome,
and coped with self-congratulators
who want me to thank them
for using the right pronouns
when they message me one-handed,

AND this, AND that, and a hundred other things,
I've been knocked flat a dozen times with suffering,
called 'bitch', called 'fat', always called that other thing,
everybody and their cat
thinks I could use some humbling,
is it any wonder that
I often feel I'm stumbling?

And I will stumble,
I will fall,
and I will rise up Phoenix - style
and BE unstoppable

and that's not because I'm stronger,
and it's not because I'm hard,
it's not because blunt trauma hurts less
when your tissue's scarred;
it's not that I'm a mutant,
some majestic weirdo freak,
it's not even because I have a flawless rhyme technique,

no: if I can seem unstoppable
it's because of the things I've been through;
if you must call me unstoppable
it's 'cause what tried to stop me
was you.

*   *   *

I know one often loves one's poems a little too much after first writing them, but right now I feel like filming this professionally with some proper music behind it. Anyone up for helping?

Draft: This Woman's War

Something cheerful for you this Tuesday morning. Yes, the title is a Kate Bush reference.

This woman’s war

Digital flare above trenches of sleep,

eyes tighten at the brightness of the screen

bracing for the first assault, the numbers by the bell,

the pixelled envelopes, the blue world

with its warnings labelled red,

the morning’s propaganda, last night’s fallen,

the latest ‘allies’ to go over to the enemy;

the severed ties, the necessary mutinies,

their continuous reprisals, our few victories:

then out the door to meet the tracer

eyes of haters, chasers, taking bullets

on the platform and the train,

no purple hearts in this campaign,

no medical evacuation

when you’re standing being stared at in the station:

midnight or the morning it’s the same.

Get to work and you’re already bleeding.

Now: the next wave, voices without end,

your throat grown ragged, fearing a betrayal,

the mouths that grin at how they’re doing well

in a world which set you up to fail

the moment you were labelled boy

and ushered into life. A battered mess

by five-to-five, you’re praying for the grace

to make the evening run on time,

but there’s almost always one more ring

before the clock ticks over,

always one more little thing

and now the crowds are rougher

somehow, or you’re worn down,

waiting to be back behind

familiar lines: you slip the ‘phones inside

your ears so you don’t have to hear

the laughter, which might not be aimed at you,

but after the day you’ve been through

it hurts to hear either way, and anyway,

it’s dangerous to think you’re ever safe,

dangerous to trust a smiling face,

a word of praise, a pair of eyes gone wide

in what might look like admiration.

Bruises follow from infatuation

in the best-case outcome. No love

in these trenches, no safe rolling

in this mud, no ecstasy of fumbling

in the corner of a club that won’t

end badly for you. Kill the thought

of love before a dream of love

kills you. Love isn’t what we struggle for.

For mere life, we fight a losing war.

Poet of the Republic, Architect of the Month...hang on, wait!

Dear reader: it's certainly the case that a great deal of transphobic, misogynistic, ableist, poor-hating, homophobic crap remains to be tackled in this world - we had David Cameron's Tory Conference speech today, after all - but for the moment I would beg you to turn your attention away from such things and look, instead, at the front page of the Apples and Snakes website. 

And I would direct you there because, first of all, you will find they've named me Poet of the Month. But that's not all! They've also used the film I and Laura Degnan made of my poem 'Letter to a Minnesota Prison' to represent the many excellent films made as part of the Architects of Our Republic project I was involved in last year. Which feels brilliant. It's great to think that something I worked on a year ago still has a life in the world, and it's even better knowing that the piece chosen to represent the project is a poem about CeCe McDonald, a genuine trans heroine. For obvious reasons, I've been performing 'Fallon' a lot over the past few months, and I usually introduce that poem by pointing out that Fallon Fox takes a lot more risks for trans rights than I do - well, that goes double for CeCe, who not only had to defend herself against a brutal, transphobic attack, but was put in prison for doing it. Please familiarise yourself with CeCe's story, and, should you happen to have some spare pounds jangling around in your bank account, you could do a heck of a lot worse than send some of it towards the Free CeCe Documentary, a film created by Jac Gares and Laverne Cox which uses CeCe's story as a prism through which to examine the culture of violence experienced by trans women of colour. 

And if you've came here from the Apples and Snakes site, here's a bit of an easter egg, as it were: the video of me performing the 'unplugged' version of 'Letter to a Minnesota Prison' that I was moved to record after hearing the excellent news that CeCe was to be released earlier this year:

 

Poem about Breasts

Pornography, pornography!

You’ve got a lot to answer for.

You’re probably the reason why

I like it when girls call me whore

and grab my hair, and slap my face,

but more than this, much worse than this,

you’ve spread misinformation

on the topic of our tits.

And I don’t mean just the tits of trans girls,

though you’ve got some odd ideas

of how we get them, call them ‘fake’

- but have a feel: no implants here!

Or are they artificial as they

sprung up after hormones?

Well, tell me, please, exactly

how your girlfriend’s girls were grown?

No – this breast-based boondoggle  is a bane to trans and cis,

and the thing that really bothers me is this:

ask a fella if he’ll draw a dame without her vest

and see what shapes he uses

for the front part of her chest,

and what will you see? Beach-balls! Spheres!

That white thing from The Prisoner

twice over, faceless back-up heads

too big for any milliner!

But, just as perfect circles

aren’t found anywhere in nature,

I’m afraid I have to tell you boys

there’s far more variation

in the contents of our bras than are

allowed for in your narrow chest-aesthetic,

that reduces what’s near-infinite

to mere dialectic

between ‘pert’ and ‘buxom’. But:

no blame. It took me time to get it,

and if I’m honest, guys,

I never really got it ‘til

I rubbed gel on my thigh,

and found that, where I used to glance,

I couldn’t keep from staring:

only now I wasn’t ogling or perving

but comparing,

seeing how I measured up,

and I won’t lie: I’ll tell you

from the bottom of my B-cup,

I’m not on the winning side.

I’m still a noob to boobs! A chestal virgin! Not well-versed

in how to lift and separate

or generate

a cleavage, I’m

intimidated

when a bosom’s heaving,

and I envy women who are blessed with great big

aurioles, while mine just skirt my nipples

like a pair of poxy holes...

but knowing mine aren’t perfect

has made me much more aware

of all the imperfections I

and other women share.

We women feel the same way

when we’re checking out each other:

the girl who’s firm and perky knows

that she will never smother

faces underneath her chest:

while the one who’s more endowed,

that that lass reckons favoured,

is wishing for the freedom

of a bra less engineered,

a back that aches less, and that guys

might maybe, just occasionally

look her in the eyes,

or at least, if you must look

so clearly at her chest,

then don’t let the sole criteria

by which each breast’s assessed

be where her pups are placing

on the Jordan-Moss Continuum,

and whether, in a centrefold,

they’d excite your residuum,

but look at them! Just look at them

as if you’ve never seen

the inside of a strip club

or a line of beauty queens,

appreciate

we’re not one shape,

we’re loose and tight and pointy,

a variable phenomenon

to baffle Merleau-Ponty,

some bounce around Space Hopper-style,

while some are far from jumpy,

(and whatever shape they are,

be sure to check them if they’re lumpy)

spheres, ellipsoids, cylinders, and I will even swear

that I’ve seen some whose strawberry creams appear

to be square – and that’s alright! It’s great!

Don’t you boys dare to be disgusted,

because, sirs, I implore you to recall what Cornershop said,

and if you accept the premise the best pillow is a bosom,

look at a woman’s bed and you’ll find every kind of cushion,

because we know that sleep is better

when there’s comforters and bolsters,

and you’ll find as much variety here in our boulder-holsters,

so let’s hear it for the wobbly ones, let’s hear it for the tubes,

let’s hear it for the loners, and the chests with both removed,

and let’s hear it for the pot-pourri, the glorious plenitude

the motley mammary miscellany, the majesty of boobs!

Even beasts will break and fade

Let me see your wound again: I feel I need the laugh.
Walk me through your injuries: I want to feel them bleed,
your followers, I want to see you suck
their sympathy, I want to hear you play it
like a treated violin. I want to watch you
claiming you're not in this for the pain,

because I love to see a monster turning babyface for bigots;
I love to see the taming of the far too proudly vicious;
and I know you're looking in my eyes
and calling kettles black:
perhaps I'll walk you through my injuries
and listen to you laugh.

After the dust has cleared, after the wounds are stitched: reflections on Fox, Brents, TERFs and poetry

I'll tell you another secret about poets: we're mercenaries, but we're also soft fucking shites. Or at least I know I am. It's at the core of my practice: I have to make myself vulnerable, expose myself, take risks, say things about myself that may sometimes put me in danger, sometimes social, sometimes psychological, sometimes physical. It's one of the reasons I'm surprised I've done so well in slams, because I associate slam poetry with confident, braggadocious delivery, and with me - well, if it isn't hurting me somehow, I don't think it's working.

Sometimes, the danger is that people might laugh at you. Sometimes, the danger is that they might pelt you with rocks, or come and try to find you in the toilets after the gig. And sometimes, the danger is that a trans woman who you consider a coward, a Quisling, and a sycophant towards TERFs will misgender you on Facebook, and engage in a deliberate, bad-faith misreading of one of your poems:

I'm going to pass over the allegation of butchphobia, as anyone aware of the kind of women to whom I tend to be attracted will find it as ludicrous as I do. In fact, on that note, it really ought to be said that as far as it goes Tamikka Brents is more my 'type' than Fallon, physically (the dog-whistle transphobia and refusal to repudiate transphobic fans were a turn-off, though). As to the charge of racism - well, this, this and this, basically.

The 'comparing Brents to a rapist' thing? Well, that is technically correct, I suppose, in that I compared her to Mike Tyson and Tyson is a rapist. But that doesn't necessarily imply that that's the equivalence I was making. One could, for example, say that Janice Raymond is like Adolf Hitler in that both wrote books identifying an enemy (trans people in Raymond's case, Jews in the case of the Little Colonel) who they felt ought to be 'mandated out of existence'; but if I made that comparison, it wouldn't necessarily follow that I was also saying Janice Raymond would undertake a land invasion of Russia in winter.

Similarly, to say that I consider Brents and Tyson to have similar fighting styles, and are similarly driven, doesn't necessarily mean I want to imply that they have similar views on rape. Goodness knows, I should hope they don't: a lesbian with dodgy views about rape would be much, much worse than one with dodgy views on trans people...

...and as it happens, there are lesbians out there with decidedly dodgy views about rape. They happen to be members of Gender Identity Watch (a group which vocally supported Brents when they hoped she was going to beat the shit out of Fallon Fox) and their views on rape are extremely depressing. See, in the world of Gender Identity Watch, only men rape. Which is, to put it bluntly, a load. As CN Lester points out, sexual violence by women against people of every gender is possible; Rape Crisis includes the idea that 'women cannot rape' as a myth which they debunk on their website; Our Bodies, Our Selves take the same view. None of these are exactly Men's Rights Activist sources: but as far as GIDWatch are concerned, they may as well be, because in their world only men rape. If you catch them on a good day, they might admit that women can be guilty of 'sexual assault', but they will scream blue murder to defend a nice, legalistic division between the two crimes. I wonder why, sometimes. I've always been suspicious of people of whatever gender who try to minimise the crime of rape. I tend to agree with Stavvers about it: you have to wonder, with some people, about why they're so desperate to say that rape is always X and never Y. I've noticed that when people draw such nice distinctions, it's because it helps them sleep at night.

Maybe that was why the TERFs were so offended by 'You remind me of Tyson, Tamikka'. I wrote it as a kind of free-associating riff on something which had occurred to me that morning, and it zoomed out pretty swiftly from being a poem about Brents to being a poem about the way her fans reacted to Fox, about some of the most icky, nudge-nudge-wink-wink he-oh, sorry, she comments that they'd made, it included what I thought was a fucking brilliant line about Joel Grey and Roy 'Chubby' Brown, and I even managed to cram in a Joyce Carol Oates reference. But all the TERFs saw was a simplistic, 1:1 mapping of everything about Brents, MMA fighter and poor lesbian advocate, onto everything about Mike Tyson, phenomenally succesful boxer, convicted rapist and, in my view, a horrible human being. And - because this was a heresy on an unimaginable level in their dogma - it made them livid.

Well, much good their lividity did them. Last time I checked, the video of me reading that poem had passed 400 views on my YouTube channel, making it my third most-viewed video ever. It had easily surpassed the previous third most-viewed vid, 'Specially Formulated for Sensitive Skin', and was gaining rapidly on the second most-viewed video, 'Resume', my screed about Caleb Hannan, who I decried for publishing a report which led to the suicide of a trans woman in a quest to drive eyeballs to the online sports magazine, Grantland: 

In a funny way, the TERFs had been good for my viewing figures. In less than a week, that one poem had racked up a quite amazing amount of views compared to the other videos on my channel. Some of which I actually thought much better poems. It appears, for example, that the number of people impressed with my use of the word 'enormity' in its correct dictionary sense to mean 'outrage', in the title of this poem,

amounts to a twentieth of the people energised by me ranting about a cage-fighter I considered to be complicit with transphobia. It's depressing, really. And this brings me back to my point, at the start of this piece, about being a soft shite.

See, Brents lost her fight to Fallon Fox this past Saturday, pretty decisively as it happens. And the usual, tedious Fox-is-a-monster backlash has begun, once again illustrating the classic double-bind I wrote about here: if Fallon doesn't win, she's a no-mark who only gets publicity because she's trans; if she does win, she's an unstoppable beast who can't be beaten because she's trans. Much has been made of the injuries that Brents suffered during the fight: as far as it goes, I agree with MMA Jam that the responsibility for those injuries lies with the frankly appalling refereeing. The match should have been ended much earlier than it was: in my view the ref was intimidated by the vocally pro-Brents crowd, and didn't want to be seen to give up on their fighter too quickly. That was a poor, and dangerous, decision: a ref who's afraid of the crowd shouldn't be officiating.

Much has been said, including by big strong MMA men who really ought to know better, about Brents' injuries being 'career-ending'. And when you list them, they do sound severe. 'An orbital fracture, a concussion, and seven head staples' sounds pretty grim - but orbital fractures have a high rate of recovery, with no long-term complications, concussion is similarly an eminently survivable injury if treated fast (I should know - I've had concussion in the past, from banging my head against the steel edge of a reinforced concrete step, and I'm okay), and while 'seven head staples' sounds severe, here's a dude with eight: 

None of which is intended to make light of Brents' injuries: as I say, I've had concussion before, and it fucking sucked. But you do get better. Brents will get better: she's announced her intention to come back from the injury on her Facebook page, and she has form for making comebacks, having fought her way back into competition following a severe knee injury back in 2013.

The people who are all over Brents' Facebook page now saying she'll never recover from her injuries are doing her a disservice, and doing so deliberately, because the fact is there is nothing those people would like more than to see her forced to walk away from MMA for good because she lost a fight to Fallon Fox. Because then they would have - in their eyes - incontrovertible proof for the Fox-is-a-monster hypothesis. It's the same reason why many of the same people who were urging Brents to 'show Fallon who's boss' before the fight are now bleating that she never had a chance.

Well, of course she had a fucking chance. I'm not in the habit of comparing people who can't punch their way out of a paper bag to Mike Tyson. I genuinely thought that Brents stood a good chance of beating Fox, and that was why I was so exercised about her refusal to call out transphobia from her fans: I really didn't want to see someone who, in my view, had failed to act as a true advocate for the trans community having her hand raised in the arena last Saturday. But the fact is that is that I did see Brents' hand raised...

...because Brents herself raised Fallon Fox's hand. The hand of the woman she had said only got publicity for being trans; of whom Brents said she would 'derail that shit quickly' if they ever fought; and who. she said, distracted attention from 'the female fighters who deserve it'. Tamikka Brents said all those things about Fallon Fox, and, after they fought on Saturday night, she raised Fallon Fox's hand.

Tamikka Brents styled herself an LGBT advocate while at the same time saying those things, and I objected to that: but that gesture, one cis, lesbian fighter raising another trans, lesbian fighter's hand, is a more powerful act of advocacy than anything I could do.

And that's worthy of respect: and telling a fighter that they never had a chance, and that they can never come back from their injuries, is far from respectful. But equally, I feel bad about leaving 'You remind me of Tyson, Tamikka' up online while Brents is recuperating from serious injuries. Hey, I told you I was a soft shite.

So, I've decided to take the video down. I realise nothing I can say can stop the TERFs seeing this as a victory: if so, it's a pyrrhic one for them, because that video wouldn't have had half the views it got if it hadn't been for them working themselves into a good frothy lather over the sight of me being so, dammit, so, ooooooh, so disrespectful, oooooh, someone really ought to teach me a lesson...(you see what I'm getting at here, but hey, if a hate-fap helps someone make it through the day, who am I to judge? God knows the TERFs don't seem to lead very full lives...). If I were all about the viewcount, I'd have left the video up and basked in the disgust generated by my perceived enormity (do you see? Do you see how much cooler it sounds when you use it to describe an outrage?), but I am not all about the clickbait. That's the very thing for which I castigated Caleb Hannan, and I stand by everything I said back then. Including the long riff on comic-book journalists.

While I've actually been writing this piece, I've fielded a number of attacks on Twitter from TERF accounts, and part of me thought, y'know what? Sod it. Leave the fucking video up there. Piss them right off. And if this were just about the TERFs? Yeah, I'd leave it up. Fuck those people. But it isn't.

This is about Tamikka Brents, who I really wanted to respect, and who said things, and tolerated things, that caused me to lose that respect. And Tamikka Brents has, after Saturday night, regained my respect, to some extent.  And she doesn't need a bunch of people telling her she never had a chance, and she doesn't need a bunch of people telling her she can't come back from her injuries, and, in my opinion, while she's recovering, she doesn't need to see a video of me dissing her. So, she won't. The video will go down. And the third most-viewed video on my channel will once again be me ranting about a popular hair-removal product.

I hope Tamikka Brents recovers quickly from her injuries. I hope she gets back to fighting soon. And - now that all this is over, and she and Fox have left it all in the cage - I think, frankly, that next time she fights, she should wear the damn flag.

No last-minute redemption for Tamikka Brents: the Fightin' Bigot still refuses to condemn her fans' transphobia

If you thought that Tamikka Brents might just have been waiting until the last minute to do a face turn, round on the transphobes in her fan base and start really acting like the 'advocate for the LGBT' she once flapped her gums about being, then it is my sad duty to inform you that, at this point  - 17:33 GMT on 13/09/14, for the record - you'd be wrong, Professor.

I decided to have another look at Brents' Facebook fan page. I'm a positive person, you see. I like to believe that people can change: that, whatever they've done in the past (and let's face it, some people in the Brents camp have done some pretty appalling things...), they can still be redeemed, and make good on what they've done wrong. What can I say? I'm an optimist. Maybe Brents had finally had a change of heart, or at the least instructed whoever runs her social media operation that they needed to sanitise her page now she's been signed to Invicta - I mean, is Shannon Knapp really going to be happy to employ someone who tolerates transphobia because the people engaging in it are her fans?

But nah.

Brents has compared Fallon Fox to a sideshow act - but the real freakshow, in my view, is the parade of mediocrities who show their support for the Fightin' Bigot by going on her page to a-hoot and a-holler and a-engage-in-a-little-transphobia.

Here's Ralphybeatdown Ross, a man who seems, from his profile picture, to live in an actual trailer park, claiming Fallon Fox 'should be in prison not in a cage'. Because transitioning is actually illegal now?

And here's Andrew Prince. Andrew likes to use the t-slur. Almost as much as he likes to use emojis.

And then there's Ryan Moore. He's an interesting fella. He likes to say 'shemale':

Ryan really likes to say 'shemale'. It makes him feel like a big man:

But while Ryan may not like the T, he certainly likes the tea...the Tea PARTY, that is:

Yes, really: one of Tamikka 'advocate for the LGBT' Brents' supporters is a teabagger. At this stage, I'm honestly not even surprised: but given the moral calibre of the rest of her supporters, I'm confident he'll fit right in. 

Because you can't tell the players without a scorecard: who to support in Fox vs Brents?

So, this Saturday night, it happens. Fallon Fox, the world's first out transgender women's MMA fighter, will face Tamikka Brents, self-styled 'advocate for the LGBT', at Capital City Cage Wars in Springfield, Illinois. With two LGBT competitors facing off in this rumble, you may be wondering who I think you should support. While I would never presume to tell you what to do, let me present you with some information so that you can make up your own mind.

First, consider this: Fallon Fox is a woman who faces massive amounts of prejudice just for stepping into the Octagon, regardless of how well she does inside it. For years, bigots claimed that she had 'unfair advantages' because of her 'male body', and could not be beaten. And then she was beaten, by Ashlee Evans-Smith, and these yutzes still tried to claim Fallon had an unfair advantage in that fight - a bullshit position I take apart in this video:

And after Fox had shown that she was simply a competitor like any other, the Anti-Fallon Party suddenly changed their tune, claiming that she's a no-mark palooka who only gets attention because she's trans. Here's me taking apart a particularly egregious example of this, from a Bleacher Report hack called Jonathan Snowden.

Fallon Fox, then, has faced some serious bigotry in her quest to compete in  MMA. And Tamikka Brents? What's she done? Well...er...she...carried a rainbow flag to the ring a couple of times?

And, to be honest, that alone would have been okay. If Brents hadn't then given an interview dripping with dog-whistle transphobia aimed at Fox - but she did.

And it might still have been okay if Brents had walked back from that interview, and taken steps to disavow the disgraceful, frat-house transphobia of her fans - but she didn't.

In fact, she not only refused to repudiate the transphobia of her fans - she was happy to accept support from transphobic hate-groups and individuals - many of whom were guilty of some horrendously vile behaviour.

I asked Brents, again and again, to distance herself from these bigots - but she was happy enough to be their champion. And the transphobes themselves refused to respond to any of my journalistic articles about Brents. But then, I wrote a poem...

...and something about the poem must have touched a nerve, either with Brents or the transphobes who supported her, because suddenly the TERFs (Trans-Exclusive 'Radical Feminists') came after me with a vengeance. You can see me writing about their hate-fuelled response, and the motives for it, in this post for the York LGBT History Month blog. And you can see me thanking the many decent cis people who came to my aid during the affair - proving that, despite what transphobes contend, cis is not a slur - here.

While organisations like Stonewall and the HRC have made bold steps to include and try to represent and do better by trans people, Tamikka Brents has chosen to hitch her wagon to an outmoded, bigoted and hate-fuelled war of aggression against us in a desperate attempt to secure some cheap pops as she heads into her next fight. The attention Brents has been getting has propelled her into the big time in women's MMA, as she signs a contract with Invicta FC - but her craven refusal to take a stand against transphobia - in fact, her out-and-out desire to try and ride a wave of transphobic bigotry for her own benefit - has also drawn the attention of leading women's MMA blog womensmma.com, who have came out strongly against Brents' willingness to pander to anti-trans bigotry.

The fact is that there is no question who you should support in Fox/Brents this Saturday, because one of the people fighting is a real role model for all LGBT people, and one of those fighting is a bigot who wraps herself in a rainbow flag because she happens to be lesbian, but couldn't give a damn about any other section of the LGBT community. If you care about every letter in that acronym, if you believe in real equality, if you're any kind of a decent human being at all - you'll support Fallon Fox, and you'll join me in hoping that she wins this Saturday night. And, whoever wins that night, you'll join me in resolving to make sure that people never forget that Tamikka Brents is a transphobe, a bully, a coward, and a thoroughly rotten human being. And in saying that, until she humans up and takes a stand against transphobia as well as homophobia, she should take that flag OFF.

Tamikka Brents fans may hate trans people, but at least one of them *really* loves kids...

While the LGBT community waits to see if MMA fighter and self-proclaimed 'advocate for the LGBT' Tamikka Brents will respond to So So Gay's repeated requests that she publicly repudiate the transphobia of her fans, some of those fans have decided to attack me, the magazine's Deputy Editor,  for holding her accountable - and they include a self-styled 'gay advocate' with a conviction for possessing and promoting child pornography.

That's what I discovered yesterday morning, when contacts in the trans community informed me of a blog written by one Nelson Garcia. Garcia accuses me and 'many trans activists' of already deciding who 'is the favorite to win' the upcoming fight between Brents and trans MMA competitor Fallon Fox, misgenders me as 'a heterosexual man who thinks he's lesbian' throughout the piece, and also criticises as 'nonsensical' a poem which I wrote about Brents:

Mr Garcia's literary criticism would carry more weight were he critiquing the correct poem, however. Garcia quotes me making a reference to Peter Parker in the Brents poem - a reference I never made. I did, however, make reference to Peter Parker as one of a list of fictional reporters to whom I unfavourably compared Caleb Hannan, a journalist who wrote a sensationalist Grantland article about a trans woman who later committed suicide, in this poem:

It turns out, though, that failure to distinguish between two different YouTube videos is not the biggest flaw in Mr Garcia's character. The same source who informed me of Mr Garcia's blog about me also informed me that he appears to be the same Nelson Garcia who was convicted on a charge of 'promoting an obscene sexual performance by a child less than 16 years of age' in 2003.

A press release from the Bronx District Attorney's Office reports Garcia's arrest. The annual report(PDF) of the same DA's office confirms that he pleaded guilty to the charges, and was sentenced to one year's incarceration without the possibility of early release (page 26), and notes that 'he is required to register with the New York State Sex Offender Registry as a Level 1 Sex Offender'.  And posts on both The Bilerico Project and the defunct (and somewhat over-zealous, it has to be said) anti-paedophile site Evil Unveiled confirm that Garcia the activist and Garcia the offender are one and the same person.

Here, and at So So Gay, I've repeatedly asked whether or not Tamikka Brents will publicly disavow the transphobic groups and individuals who have cynically thrown their support behind her merely because, on 13 September, she will fight an opponent who happens to be trans. Repeatedly, Ms Brents has refused to comment. But how happy is she with her latest supporter? Accepting the support of transphobes is one thing: accepting the support of paedophiles is quite another. So, once again, I ask the question: Ms Brents, is there any support you won't accept?

Cis is Not a Slur

We say that a lot, don't we, as trans people, as trans activists? We respond to the endless pearl-clutching of TERFs who claim that we concocted it as some kind of vile calumny to spit at 'womyn-born-womyn' or whatever term they're using this week by patiently explaining that, no, it's a scientific term, it comes from Latin, they use it a lot in chemistry, Cisalpine Gaul, etc etc...but let's face it, too often we do use it, if not as a slur in itself, in a negative context. We point out someone is cis when they treat us like crap: we're less keen to do that when they treat us right.

Well, tonight, I'm going to do the opposite. I've had a pretty interesting day: my poem about Tamikka Brents has roused the ire of the transphobes in a way none of my journalism about her has. There were a lot of hate comments directed at me on YouTube and elsewhere for daring to speak my mind, and I had to call on a number of allies to help out. And those allies? A lot of them...were cis.

Sure, there were lots of trans people of all genders who stepped up to the plate to help out, but the majority of the support I had?

The local artists, comedians and friends from the Newcastle scene who jumped in for me, shared my video, and wrote, movingly, about the effect my poems had had on them?

Most of them were cis.

My fellow editors from So So Gay, who got involved and backed me up?

They're all cis.

The friend who took me out for lunch to take my mind off this? She was cis.
The flatmates who checked to see if I was alright? They were cis.

The poets from all over this country, and beyond, who would not stand by and allow a talented colleague to be slagged off by bigots hiding behind computer screens and easily-disproven allegations?

Almost all of those people...were cis.

And I'd like to thank all of them. All of you, if you're reading this: you'll have heard me bitch about cis people before, and you'll hear it again, but right now: thank you, you beautiful cis people, for helping me out when I needed it. You're good people, and you're fine people, and you happen to be cis people.

Thank you.

It's not a slur.

Video post - You remind me of Tyson, Tamikka

Let me tell you something about poets. 

We're mercenaries, of a sort. When we take on a battle, it's always with a view to what we'll get out of it, artistically. Even if it's a cause we really believe in, we'll never be satisfied until we manage to get a decent poem out of the issue. 

So when I began working on the Tamikka Brents story for So So Gay, investigating her sponsors and the transphobic hate-groups who were declaring their support for her, I knew I was gonna be pissed-off if I didn't emerge from spending weeks mired in sports journalism without a decent poem to show for it. 

Well, tonight I wrote that poem.  

For the benefit of those unable to hear the poem, I've included a transcript below, in the previous post!

You remind me of Tyson, Tamikka

I worked out who you remind me of, Tamikka,
and I know that you might take it as a compliment.
Understand - that isn't how it's meant. You remind me
of Tyson: because you're squat, you're strong,
and fast out of the gate, because you're fuelled
by arrogance and rage: and because I'm betting
that you'll end your days

exactly as he has: an Adult Swim joke,
a frat-comedy guest star, like
Drederick Tatum, in The Simpsons,
only more of a cartoon. A bad taste 'toon,
as crude as any episode of Family Guy,
with fewer laughs: and all the gags
are rape gags. Hey, shit happens when you're drunk.

Because, you see, rage can sustain,
but calcifies to hate, and does it smiling,
puts on comic drag, conducts
the low bass rumble
of the we're-all-normal laugh,
barks freak-show patter,
and corrects itself
with a vaudeville wink.

It's not Joel Grey: it's Chubby Brown,
it's pandering, it's mugging to the crowd,
it's giving them the beast they want to see,
the beast they want to be, the rock star clown,
the charismatic bully: not the Leader

but the license for the losers
to indulge their worst extremes,
the toast of every boozer in the sports bar
making jokes about Mike Sam and 'special teams'
and boasting that they'd spit on rainbow laces
if their kid should dare to wear them on the field.

That's who you'll be.
That's what you'll stand for:
the bully girl, the big, bad, comic monster,
and you'll draw buys for Invicta, for a while,
but we both know
that you'll get slow
and punchy
and the strategy that balances the rage:
you'll never learn it, 'cause you won't feel that you have to
'til it's later than you think. And then?

Best hope that frat-coms are still playing
in the multiplexes; best hope stoned hipsters
are still pitching ironic cartoons; best hope
somebody still remembers, and they get someone
with class to ghost your memoir,
and that someone like Joyce Carol Oates
is on hand to review it,
and give your sorry life a sense of drama,

as you stumble from talk-show to talk-show
walking money leaking from your pocket.
Jake la Motta thought he was a poet,
but I write because I cannot
throw a punch: it's my one talent. Fallon
can do both, and, when she walks free of the cage,
that's what she'll do. And you? I'm betting
that you turn out just like Tyson.
Understand: that's not a flattering
comparison.  

Picking up a bigot's tab: a roll call of Tamikka Brents' sponsors

I wasn't going to write about Tamikka Brents today. I wasn't going to write anything. But then, this morning, Ms Brents posted the following to her Facebook Fan Page, thanking her sponsors:

So I decided to find out what I could about these sponsors. What kind of people, I thought, would support the new face of transphobia in MMA? They're an...interesting bunch, I think you'll agree.

All information below is very much what's in the public domain, by the way. This didn't involve any Woodward and Bernstein stuff, and it's information any enterprising individual could have pulled together in half an hour's Googling after reading Brents' roll call of sponsors (indeed, I didn't even have to turn on my computer: I found all this stuff out mucking around on my phone). I'm going to assume that by sponsoring Brents and allowing her to post about it, the following companies are happy enough to have their names out there. The fact this means they'll now be associated with a woman who stands by and does nothing when her fans throw around hate speech and compare trans women to rapists? That's something they're going to have to deal with.

Keppler Environmental Management is an Illinois excavation and wrecking contractor. Their Facebook page includes the interesting titbit that their owner is apparently a 'God-fearing Christian man'. Strange company for an out lesbian like Brents to keep - but, as the case of Gender Identity Watch and the Pacific Justice Institute shows, there's precedent for self-styled lesbian advocates getting in bed with the religious right when there are trans people's lives to ruin.

Green Hyundai are, unsurprisingly, a Hyundai dealership, also in Illinois. It would seem they employ one Marc Passoni, who Brents names as one of her sponsors. Two questions occur: first, did Mr Passoni seek permission from his employers before allowing Brents to use their name; and, second, how happy are his employers to have their brand associated with the behaviour of Brents' more rabidly bigoted fans?

Spartan Sports Park is an all-American sporting fun palace for kids and families, offering softball and 'sand volleyball', which appears to be beach volleyball only without the beach or bikinis. For such a family-oriented bunch they sure sponsor some interesting people: besides Brents, they also appear as a sponsor for Trevor Ward, the guy who sent me a threatening message for criticising the Fightin' Bigot:

There's a little bit of woo going on with Tamikka's supporters, too. One of her sponsors is 66 Chiropractic, who appear to offer some kind of 'detox' package. I have to confess to being uncertain how back-cracking can aid in the removal of toxins, but then hey, I'm no Simon Singh. 

Detox through spinal manipulation is not the only bold claim made by a Brents sponsor, though. Brents is also sponsored by Defense Soap, manufacturers of a soap marketed mainly to martial artists on the grounds that it can kill MRSA...because it contains tea tree oil (TTO). The science on this is mixed to say the least: the US National Institutes of Health found that while TTO is 'capable of killing' MRSA 'in a laboratory setting', randomised controlled trials on clinical subjects found no significant difference between TTO and traditional treatments. There's even some concern - and apologies for linking to a Daily Mail article here - that the use of preparations with a low dose of TTO might actually make bacteria stronger, by stressing them without killing them, thus causing them to develop drug-resistance. It's worth nothing in this context that none of the information I found about Defense Soap, in my (admittedly brief) gander at their website, indicates what percentage of TTO their product contains. One review found that Defense Soap didn't measure up well against more traditional, less new-age sounding cleansing products, noting that it has yet to receive FDA approval as an antibacterial treatment. It's not all bad news, though - the reviewer did concede that Defense smelled nicer.

Well, so does this, but that doesn't make it antibacterial

Perhaps the most egregious of Brents' sponsors, however, is the Women's MMA blog Promoting Real Women.  That's a name guaranteed to set off serious alarm bells for any trans activist, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt and checked out their site. It didn't, however, take me long to get their number - check out this interview they did with Allana Jones, Fallon Fox's first opponent after she was forced, due to media pressure, to come out as transgender. Fun fact about Ms Jones: the entrance music she picked for that fight was 'Dude looks like a Lady' by Aerosmith. A class act, I'm sure you'll agree. 

It's all becoming a little bit clearer now, isn't it? Recall, if you will, that I first took an interest in this story after Brents made comments in an interview that amounted to dog-whistle transphobia. Brents, the self-styled LGBT advocate, drew an implicit distinction between Fox, a 'transgender fighter' and 'the female fighters who earn it': a position which eerily mimics that of the Bleacher Report's Jonathan Snowden, who - as I pointed out yesterday - took to touting the view that Fox is getting publicity she doesn't deserve only after Fox's first loss put paid to the line that she was an Unbeatable Trans Monster. Brents, though, did choose to throw in a little dehumanisation of Fox for good measure, comparing her to something one would find in a 'side show' - a freak, in other words. 

Tamikka Brents is sponsored by a provocatively-named blog which takes an openly anti-Fox position, and has promoted her opponents in the past. Tamikka Brents gives an interview in which she gives off subtle signals that she, too, doesn't consider Fox a 'real' woman. Tamikka Brents refuses to disavow the transphobia of her fans despite repeated calls to do so, and refuses even to disassociate herself from Cathy Brennan, a bigoted zealot known for trying to ruin trans peoples' lives - including the life of a teenage girl who was put on suicide watch after harassment by the aforementioned Pacific Justice Institute. 

I'm not really sure how much more evidence is needed, so at this point I am just going to say it: it is my opinion that the actions of Tamikka Brents are consistent with the attitudes of the organised group of self-styled 'feminist' bigots that many progressives in the LGBT community refer to as Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, or TERFs, for short. And I encourage every organisation that sponsors Ms Brents to familiarise themselves with this site, which offers a comprehensive overview of this hate group's genocidal ideology, and damaging actions. I would urge them also to read the following two posts from The TransAdvocate, outlining the fact that ideologues belonging to this hate faction threatened to engage in acts of terrorism against a record company that employed a trans woman, and physically assaulted two feminists of a less bigoted persuasion who attempted to defend another trans woman from their attacks. And I would urge them to ask themselves this question: is this what you want to be associated with?