Thursday 19 February 2015

Who can say "I'm being SILENCED!!!!" loudest?

Last night, I went to a public meeting about the demonstration being planned in Newcastle to oppose a rally by UK supporters of German far-right group Pegida. This Pegida rally was supposed to be an actual march, but it has since been reduced to a static protest in the Bigg Market - it seems that the Master Race's representatives hadn't allowed for the fact that (a) Newcastle United - whose fans aren't keen on a bunch of fascists coming to town to cause trouble - are playing at home on the 28th, and (b) the event is scheduled to take place at 10:30am, and the fash need their beauty sleep. No, they do, they really do - I've seen them. I saw them back in May 2013, when the EDL marched in Newcastle, and I was forced to walk past a bunch of them getting tanked up at a really shit local pub on my way to have IPL treatment (oddly enough, at 10:30am, though that day's march was scheduled for later - I guess the EDL can drag themselves out of bed when there's a chance of going for a piss-up):


And I got to see them again yesterday night, when a bunch of them turned up, predictably, to try and disrupt the meeting. I have to say that in my opinion the meeting's organisers, among them Councillor Dipu Ahad, showed a great deal of patience in tolerating the dozen or so EDLites who continually tried to undermine the meeting with what teachers call 'low level disruption' before the poor little things finally decided to have a full-on tantrum during questions from the floor and got themselves thrown out. What interests me here is their tactics, and who they remind me of.

One of the most interesting things was the way the EDL constantly strove to present themselves as the victims, and to appropriate the discourse of rights and democracy to try and serve their entirely undemocratic ends. To repeated reminders that their monosyllabic interjections needed to be kept to a minimum, they invariably responded by curling their Aryan lips and moaning that 'this is a public meeting, isn't it', then claiming that the organisers were interfering with their cherished freeze peach.



Not only were the people who want to beat up brown folks fearless free speech warriors, they were also, it seemed, zealous defenders of the right to privacy. When attendees at the meeting started taking pictures of the fascists, as evidence should they need to be charged with anything later, one woman separated from the main EDL group  - clearly a plant - began to complain that she didn't want someone 'tekkin pictchas of us, like'.

It seemed they were even ardent campaigners against hate speech, too - one man behind me who seemed inordinately upset that a speaker on the panel had referred to Ukip as racists - now, why might anyone think that? - complained to the police and to meeting security that a gentleman in the same row as him had uttered an unconscionable slur against his person. The terrible slur? This man - who seemed remarkably like a man I saw in ex-military drag, drinking pints with the skinheads leering at me as I walked to Central Station - felt deeply hurt that he had been called a fascist! 

It reminded me of another group who've been very vocal this week: this group has claimed that their free speech is being suppressed, has complained about how simply ghastly it is that people refer to them using slurs - and if they haven't been as at pains to accuse their critics of invading their privacy, that's probably because even some of their ideological allies would see that as being a bit rich, given the frequency with which they doxx and harass their targets - targets which have included a sixteen-year-old girl.

Yes, the local fascists reminded me of no-one so much as the TERFs, the so-called 'Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminists' - I say 'so-called' because while they certainly are trans-exclusive, I don't consider them either radical or feminist: Alex Gabriel, in the blog linked above, suggests we start using the acronym TEF-LON, to take into account the fact that the UK's trans-exclusive 'feminists' are mainly a London-based clique, while Zoe Stavri at Another Angry Woman prefers the phrase 'violent transmisogynistic bigots'.

Powerless victims of horrific slurs march  in 1930s Germany.


I think I like the latter term best, capturing as it does the similarity which I've seen, first-hand, between these folks and the violent fascistic bigots who tried to throw their weight around on Wednesday night. And to return to that night, it might be worth noting that a member of the audience from Newcastle University Students' Union informed us that they're currently trying to get Pegida added to their no-platform list.

I look forward to seeing Beatrix Campbell bravely defending the rights of Islamophobic German fascists in the Observer this weekend.

Melissa, she was trans

Inspired by this story.



Melissa's roommate hit her, but the cis
arresting officer thought she was the
aggressor, 'cause Melissa? She was trans.

And then the women at the shelter got
Melissa in the shower, and assaulted
and ejected her, 'cause they knew she was trans,

and if you're listening, and thinking
that my record must be skipping
'cause I'm still listing injustices to people who are trans,

then think how I feel! My reality
is the conditionality of my right
to exist, and you insist you've heard this script

before, and try to stifle yawns
because I'm spoiling your enjoyment
as you practise fact avoidance

but the poisonous thing is
there are Melissas in this city
as we speak, and the aggressors

the arresting officers think victims?
Well, they, too, are in existence
in this city, and you know that this

is true, because the kids who bullied you?
Well, they were cis: the kids
who hit you in the playground, brick by brick

tore your esteem down 'til you wished
that you could leave town,
scream the shitting, pissing scheme down?

They
were
cis.

So, if this seems a bit repetitive?
It might be worth reflecting
on just exactly where

the
problem
is.

   

Tuesday 17 February 2015

Science? Fiction?

'And the really WEIRD thing,' said Du'thuen, 'was that we were actually on the verge of making first contact with them a number of times, but they kept getting hung up on gender.'
'WHAT?' Spluttered Hnngal. 'How in the stars could an advanced species get hung up on THAT? What's to ponder?'
'Well, incredibly enough, it seems they spent most of the centuries after becoming a type 0.5 part-global civilisation believing it was possible to assign gender at birth, based mainly on secondary sexual characteristics.'
'That is...that's almost inconceivable, Du'thuen! Even the thought-herders of Nagesh-3 weren't *that* foolish! '
'You're vibrating at the mufulon here, Hnngal, believe me. As best we can figure out, the problem derived from industrialisation occurring in precisely the one planetary culture not sophisticated enough to handle it. I mean, the sheer number of wars alone...'
'Yes, one of the Remnants I spoke to on the Star Sanctuary said much the same thing. He said the problem was the...pale person?'
'"The white man" was, I believe, the term, but yes. We wanted to intervene at Vorthruk/Naaal criticality but they just could NOT get over this gender thing. Eventually some factions in the Council began advocating more drastic measures, there was even a breakaway group...'
'Ah, yes, the...Schwanian League?'
'Quite. They actually took to forcibly abducting members of the population and subjecting them to increasingly odd pranks in an effort to break them out of their conditioning.'
'Did it work?'
'Look around you,' Du'thuen sighed, as the mist subsided and hir dorsal talons cleared a space out of the bones underfoot. 'Does it LOOK like it worked?'