Fuck you, I won't pee where you tell me*

Some are born activists. Some become activists. And some, it seems, have activism thrust upon them.

The other day I posted here about the case of Katrina Harte, a trans woman who was denied access to the ladies' loos in a Whitley Bay pub, even though she'd been using it for three years without a problem. I also posted the text of the letter I'd sent to the Sir John Fitzgerald Group booze empire,  informing them of my decision to boycott their premises. Well, I also cross-posted the text of that letter in the Facebook Group set up to support Katrina and, well, things have snowballed somewhat.

I'm now an admin on the group. I've contacted the Gender Trust for any information and advice they can provide, and I've been downloading their fact sheets and, well, building a case against SJF, arguing as to why Kat should be allowed to use the ladies' loos if she wants to (and the clue there, for the hard-of-understanding, is in the use of the pronoun in that sentence: Katrina is a she, i.e. she's a woman, ergo she gets to use the toilets for women. Simples, as that annoying cartoon meerkat puts it). We're talking about organising a demo, which will involve writing up press releases for the media and liaising with the police to...well, do whatever it is you have to liaise with the police about regarding demos. And, because I'm not really all that bright, it's just occurred to me that as we are boycotting the pubs we should have done a press release to Pink News, to let them know about the boycott, so we're discussing what to put in that.

So yes, I rather seem to have had activism thrust upon me. It's with no small irony that I notice that the last tweet I posted before all this stuff kicked off was 'Boooooooored.' Be careful what you wish for, Fishley...

Anyway, as part of   all this, I recently posted, over at the Facebook Page, some ideas I'd had for arguments against one of the most common tropes which gets trotted out in this ladies' room debate, specifically the ridiculous and wrong-headed notion that we have to keep trans women out of the little girls' room because some of them might have penises and oh my god the children, the children, will nobody think of the children? I've put my thoughts on this here, after the jump, both because I think they might be of use to others confronted with this specious argument and in the hope that you, readers, may be able to point out any arguments I've missed.

Weeks like these will happen to you (1)

Crazy times. For one thing, I seem, largely as a result of my goddam insomnia, which kept me up way past any normal person's idea of bedtime, involved in the efforts on Twitter to draw attention to the Haitian earthquake, the ways that people can donate, and the reasons why rich, privileged, white people like us should donate as a result of the horrible history of colonial interference in that country's history. Haiti is the one country in the world which had a successful slave revolt, and, as Noam Chomsky points out, colonizers have to punish successful dissent pour discourager les autres. So, despite the failure of a variety of European powers, including both Britain and Napoleonic France, to conquer the Haitians, they were eventually starved out and forced to submit anew to our dominion, and - in one of the most twisted moves in the sordid history of colonialism - made to pay reparations to the French for the 'crime' of daring to revolt against slavery.

During the twentieth century, as a country in 'America's backyard', Haiti was a battleground in the Cold War, and the US, pursuing its interests, supported the monstrous regimes of 'Papa Doc' and 'Baby Doc' Duvalier , and undermined more democratic governments. The constant interference, terrorism, and atmosphere of coup and counter-coup destabilised an already-weakened country, and created the conditions which have made it hard for the country to deal with this disaster.

Haiti is our problem. The wealth that we, in our privileged nations, enjoy, is based in part on the fruits of colonization, slavery, and the economic terrorism leveraged against the Haitian people. That's why I've been telling people as often as I can, via Twitter, to donate using sites like the British Red Cross site here. There are other places to give. Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation and Medecins sans Frontieres are doing good work too - I gave to the British Red Cross because I know they have people on the ground there, and I could donate in pounds. But please, whatever you do, visit one of the sites, or some other, and give what you can. I gave, and I'm poor and unemployed (though that's 'poor' in the sense of 'spent stupid money on skincare stuff today' and 'unemployed' in the sense of 'had two interviews this week', so...).

I don't want to go all 'white man's burden' here. But I don't think that's what I'm doing. We created this problem. We are complicit in a system which keeps countries like Haiti poor, and badly-placed to weather disasters like this. It's not paternalism. It's not white guys knowing best. It's privileged people making up for the shit they created.

In fact, y'know what? It's not even that. It's being a good person. It's not passing by on the other side. It's doing what we can 'cause, really, but for an accident of birth, we could be sleeping outside tonight, surrounded by the wreckage of our country, wondering if tomorrow we'll see the corpses of people we know piled up by the Canape Vert road for identification. It, like everything I pull people up for not doing on this blog, is being a good human being.

So...if you've been good already, then thank you. If you haven't, yet, then go be good. You don't have to give money, if you can't afford it. Just tell people there are ways they can give. Throw your weight behind ideas like granting Haitian refugees temporary protected status, or cancelling Haiti's debts (the modern-day equivalent of those reparations). Just keep going on about it - that's all I'm doing here, really. Keep it trending, keep it in the media, keep it before the eyes of the powerful and the privileged. Keep it going.

And...I'm done. I had intended to talk about other stuff in this post. I finished the manuscript for what might be the most important book of poems I've ever written yesterday. Today I had a fun day in Morpeth attending an interview and doing a lot of other stuff. But this isn't the time for that. I will talk about that, but not now. Not today.

Today is the day that we think about Haiti.

Just don't be a dick, David.

I'm back, and unfortunately people continue to act like pricks and show no sense of maturity, intelligence or social awareness, thus requiring me to dress them down via the puny medium of my pathetic little poetry blog.

The latest candidate for my gnat-sized attack is concertina-faced woman-exploiter David 'people still watch me' Letterman, who decided this week that Barack Obama's historic decision to appoint a trans woman to a position of office was a suitable subject for a cheap laugh.

This 'joke' is pretty unfunny when you consider that trans women are one of the most vulnerable sectors of the US population, and that people who murder trans women often invoke the bullshit trans panic defense and by making a joke like this, Letterman helps to create an environment in which freaking out over the fact that a woman is trans is acceptable.

Fortunately, CBS have a feedback page where you can complain about the negative effects of the fast-fading funnyman's failure to understand how proper jokes work. I've done it, and I urge you to do so too. As the pathetic Sachsgate affair in the UK proved, TV companies do have to listen to complaints: and I'd argue that helping to create a climate which normalises violence against marginalised people is a more serious crime than taking the piss out of Manuel from Fawlty Towers.

Operation: Sex Change

...is the title of a game I proposed to MB that would, I swear, have made them a cool billion, but did they go for it? No. They thought a game in which the player has to carry out a perfect vaginoplasty (link NSFW, BTW) on a ruddy-nosed cartoon man might be, and I quote 'pushing the envelope in a direction we, as a family games manufacturer, really don't want to go, and if you keep calling our office high on drugs in the middle of the night we'll have you bludgeoned', and instead went with a Simpsons tie-in edition of the old Operation! franchise. Pussies.

Not really of course. What Operation:Sex Change is, in fact, is a Facebook Campaign set up by people from Bekhsoos, a queer arab magazine, to draw attention to the problems faced by transgendered people around the world, and in particular to draw attention to the International Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20th. It's a pretty simple idea: you go on Facebook, you change your gender identity on your profile, publish the change to your profile and, when people ask why, you tell them about the campaign.

Readers of this blog will know that as someone who self-identifies as genderqueer I often explore related issues on this blog and in my work, and will not be wholly surprised to note that on my FB profile I now appear to be one of those HOT LOCAL GIRLS facebook ads are always telling us we should meet up with RIGHT NOW. But I'd also like to encourage you to do the same. As Cheryl Morgan points out, it doesn't hurt, and it's only temporary. Go on, live dangerously.

I Know What I'm (t)Here For

Well now. There are ten days left before I'm on the plinth. It's about time I decided what I'm doing.

And I have.

I'm doing this to raise money for International PEN. They defend peoples' right to freedom of expression. It follows, then, that that should be the theme of my performance. And it will be.

In countries like Cuba and Mexico, people are kept quiet by fear of imprisonment or disappearance. We're cleverer, here. In the UK, in the US, in the quote-unquote 'civilised' world, we keep quiet because we don't want to look weird. We don't want to offend the 'Values Voters', and their UK avatars. We want to keep our jobs.

The punishment we face is less extreme: the end result is still the same. We keep schtum, afraid of punishment. But we don't have to.

As part of my time on the plinth, I want to write a sonnet. 14 lines. Doesn't have to be Petrarchan, or Spenserian. Doesn't even have to rhyme. But I want each line to be a genuine expression from someone - maybe in the crowd, maybe on the net, wherever. And I want each line to be something you're afraid to say. Something you'd like to say, but which you keep quiet for fear of the consequences. Those consequences might be ostracision, or prison, or a beating, or being called names on the schoolyard, or unemployment, or just an indefinable fear that folk will think less of you - but as part of my hour on the plinth, I want you to shout what you're afraid to say, and I will shout it with you. Call out, or tweet, your line, and I will read it for you.

If you want anonymity, then fine. Before I go down to London, I'll set up a collective twitter ID, give out the password, and if you really don't want to admit to what you fear to express, then you can tweet using that. A caveat though. Log out when you're finished, and let others have a go.

However you do it - whether you want to shout at me in public or send me a message over the ether - I hope you take part. For an hour, in a way I never imagined, I get the chance to express myself - to put my psyche on the line and let the world know who I am. And, for good or ill, I want to bring you with me.

October 2nd. 0400-0500 AM. 'I'm afraid to say it, but...' let's do this thing.