monkey hangers

 Have you ever worked in a bar? It's an opportunity to see behind the polite mask of the people you serve; the pushy ones who jump the queue, the ones who treat you with contempt because you're a menial. It is a small insight into how thin can be the veneer of civilisation.

Coming out as transsexual gives you a much better opportunity to see this. For so many people, transsexuals are creatures fabulous as unicorns or camelopards, or as monkeys stranded on the shores of Hartlepool. And because they don't know how they are supposed to behave, they can behave very badly indeed.

It's not that they intend to be bad; it's just that some people fear what they don't know. Of course, the people of Hartlepool are rightly annoyed if you call them 'monkey hangers'. They will tell you that the monkey in question actually got on really well with the locals, all except for the village idiot, who was convinced that the monkey was a french spy, and sold the story to Richard Littlejohn, who denounced it in the Daily Mail. And then the monkey was constantly followed around by newspaper hacks looking for evidence of frenchness about it, until it despaired and jumped into the sea and drowned.

 But that was long ago.

Just, maybe not that long.

So, coming out as trans. People who already knew you will adjust with various degrees of acceptance; "Oh, that figures..." "Oh.... hmmmmm...." "Oh.... I think we can still be friends..."

Some will feel betrayed at the revelation of such a big thing, and go stomping off.

And so on. As for people who didn't know you before, their response to you depends on how well you 'pass'. As I'm talking about my experience in the early days of transitioning, then you can assume correctly that I didn't 'pass' entirely, if at all.

Some people just behave naturally, and good people they are too.

Some try just too hard. "Of course I see you as a woman." "Oh! I met a transsexual woman at a wedding in Bognor; she was really nice; do you know her?"

And then there's the monkey hangers. The blokes who sit in corners muttering darkly, making snide or offensive comments, misgendering you, sticking up little notices with obscene 'jokes' on.

I had a lot of that. It was relentless on the ship I worked on, for two years, from 2002 to 2004. I kept going because I had earned my right to work in that place, and I wasn't going to be beaten by them. But it was hard going.

I do recall the strong sense of betrayal I felt, in January 2004, when I read Julie Bindel's 'Gender Benders Beware' in the Guardian.  Because I expected stupidity and nastiness from my colleagues; but it was a rude shock to find it in a newspaper that I'd previously held in high regard. Although that article was an attack on transsexual identities as a whole (and Kimberley Nixon in particular) I did feel personally injured, not least because it came at a bad time and I was feeling very lonely.

After I'd been assaulted, I finally left P&O, and spent two years prosecuting a case against them. Those were very difficult times, and sometimes the struggle felt almost too hard to continue. I did think of suicide. The two things that kept me going were my daughter, and my determination that the people who had wronged me should not get away with it.

I was lucky. I got through it, and won. Which didn't stop the press from trying their best to put their traditional spin on the story, when it finally broke. But by then, I was on the attack. So I was not as damaged by their nastiness and prurience as I might have been some years before.

But it is still an awful feeling, to see yourself written about in an ignorant and prejudiced way, in a national newspaper. And to know that you have no voice of your own in the world, and no effective means of redress.

Remember Lucy Meadows. 

the times are a-changing

What would Sunday morning be like without a thumb through the saucy stuff in the Sunday papers? And what better than to gawp and guffaw at the tranny, looking all ill-at-ease in the grainy photograph taken outside a law court, under the headline "No nobby bobby keeps jobby", or "Sex swap ferry flirt rattles men in engine room". What larks! Thank goodness we're normal. We'd give 'em what-for if they tried that sort of thing round here.

And so it's off to the pub while the wife makes dinner, and somewhere out in make-believe land there's another ruined life that the papers intruded into, exploited, and went on their way.

Funny things have been going on lately, though. The characters in the Standard Tranny Narrative have been talking back to the newspaper writers (we can hardly call them journalists) whose exclusive domain it has formerly been. Goodness, they have even started writing their own scripts.

Helen Belcher recently  presented the Trans Media Watch submission to the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics. She detailed the sort of media coverage that trans people routinely experience; intrusiveness, inappropriate language, 'othering', inaccuracy, bias.... my own experience was included in the evidence. There have been worse things done by the press, but there; it is an ill-favoured thing, and mine own.

To hear Dominic Mohan, editor of the Sun, at the Leveson Inquiry, you might think the bad times were behind us. He accepted that the Sun's coverage of trans stories had at times 'crossed the line'. but reckoned that things had changed; "We've raised our game in terms of transgender reporting", he said.

To prove this, a week later, the Sun initiated a witch-hunt for a 'pregnant man', with a hotline for its readers to call if they knew of his whereabouts. This, at the same time as the same Sun complained, with a complete lack of any apparent sense of irony, that it was itself being subjected to a witch-hunt.

As you might expect, the Daily Mail was only too happy to goad itself into a frenzy of inconsequence over the same story. Perhaps my favourite coverage was by Bel Mooney, whose liberal credentials extend, I understand, to liking William Morris wallpaper and wearing Laura Ashley while sitting on Solsbury Hill. "I'm a liberal", she said - "but a man giving birth is freakish  and beyond the pale." No, Bel; a self-identified liberal policing other people's bodies is what is beyond the pale. Sorry if it's confusing.


The week got even more interesting when Paddy Power, an Irish betting shop outfit, produced an ad intended for TV, in which Cheltenham racegoers are invited to play hunt-the-transgender-woman, or 'tell the stallions from the mares' as they described it. What fun, as any trans person who has ever been shouted at in the streets would agree. Though this ad managed to be offensive to all women, surely.


After a storm of objections and complaints to the ASA, the ad was deemed unfit for broadcast after all. Paddy Power were ungracious about this change of mind, pointing out that the ad had been discussed with a 'leading transgender group'. This group turned out to be the Beaumont Society, one of whose members had, the week before, confirmed to the Sun the existence of the 'pregnant man', thus sparking their witch-hunt. The Beaumont Society caters chiefly to transvestites, and seems a bit out of its depth when it comes to recent media coverage. Presumably they were surprised by the storm of opprobrium that broke over them in consequence of what might kindly be decribed as naive and ill-advised responses on their part to approaches from organisations that were only too happy to exploit them. I understand that they, and the other parties involved, have now got the message that BS are emphatically not the 'go-to' organisation when it come to trans issues in the media.


Because times are a-changing. Social media have proved a terrifically good way of creating ad hoc groupings to respond to problems. Back in 2009, an ITV 'comedy' programme, Moving Wallpaper, proved the starting point for the group of individuals that coalesced into Trans Media Watch. And, in the nature of social media, anyone can have input. It's very much a case of being able to start your own revolution and cut out the middle man. 

And there are more and more articulate voices joining in. Because, while it would be nice to put all trans stuff behind us and just get on with living, it seems that there are always people determined to interfere with our lives. Which can be rather annoying, when that determination is based on nothing more than the desire to 'other' us. A desire that can unite the looser cannons of radical feminism with the self-appointed defenders of family values. Thus the Daily Mail's manufactured outrage over Zach Avery, the child who recently decided to live as a girl, and is in consequence described as a 'victim of the politically correct gender identity industry'. The same industrial process that exists in Julie Bindel's mind, too, if not in real life. 


Certainly, there's a lot of trans stuff in the papers at the mo. Especially in the Daily Mail. Maybe Daul Dacre is annoyed that the TMW submission was critical of his paper, even if the PCC, which he chairs, has exonerated it. (Historically, by the way, the Mail covers far more trans stories than any other paper.)


But more trans people are coming out into the open too. Maybe the message is getting across, that you can be trans and happy and successful and fulfilled. More so than if you suppressed it, even. It would be nice if the papers which so much want to be arbiters of their readers' thoughts, could rejoice in parents who are happy to allow their children to explore their own identities, rather than police their gender. Happy children, or messed up children? Your choice.

press intrusion: the Leveson Inquiry

Trans Media Watch has been collecting examples of press intrusion and offensiveness, to present to the Leveson Inquiry. I contributed this piece from the Daily Mail, from December 2006. 

article by Ian Drury, Daily Mail

As I said in the accompanying submission,

As requested: I declined the offer of a gagging order at my Employment Tribunal because I thought it was important to have the truth told.
Generally, reportage sensationalised the allegations made against me, and ignored or minimalised the actions perpetrated against me.
The Daily Mail phoned me, and asked me to reveal my former name. I told them that it was not relevant to the story, and that it was both wrong and bad practice to publish it. They found my former name somewhere, and again asked me to confirm it. I refused. They published it anyway.
There were other failings with the article, including an offensive headline.
I made a complaint to the PCC, on the grounds that I found the article biased, offensive and intrusive.
http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=NDQ4OQ%3D%3D
The PCC let the Mail off.
My abiding feeling about this episode is that the press involved in my story treated me as a figure of fun, presented for the titillation of their readers. I had spent two years pursuing a legal case, unaided, against a bullying company, and won; I felt that the press response, as exemplified by the Mail, was that that sort of thing didn’t (or shouldn’t) happen in their world, and that they resented what I had hoped would be seen as a victory for equality and fairness. I have learnt that the press are vile and not to be trusted. And that the PCC are worthless.

....the Daily Mail person also asked what title I used. "Ms", I replied. "The Daily Mail does not believe in using 'Ms'" he said. Hence the 'Miss', above. Go figure. 

Here is the PCC's decision in my case.

Commission’s decision in the case of
Marland v Daily Mail

The Commission noted the complainant had raised three concerns: first, that the article suggested she had been subjected only to ‘taunts’; second, that the disclosure of her former name against her wishes intruded into her privacy; and third, that the headline ‘would you Adam and Steve it’ was discriminatory.

The Commission noted the complainant had raised concerns that the sub-headline suggested she had only suffered ‘taunts’ and misleadingly omitted to include the threats of violence and an assault to which she had been subjected. Taking into account that the fact she had suffered taunts was not in dispute, the Commisslon considered that — in the context of the article as a whole which made clear that the complainant had won her tribunal after suffering ‘verbal and physical harassment’ — it was not necessary for the newspaper to have included every detail of her ordeal. The selection of material for publication is a matter of editorial discretion, provided of course that the Code is not otherwise breached. In this instance, the Commission was satisfied that the omission of detailed information regarding the complainant’s treatment did not rendethe article misleading in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code. 

The Commission then turned to the complainant’s concerns that the article had intruded into her privacy when it stated that it was ‘understood’ that her former name was XXXX, and that a person by that name shared her birthday and was listed as living in her flat until 2002. The Commission acknowledged that the complainant was unhappy with this disclosure, but emphasised that it could only come to a decision under the terms of Clause 3 (Privacy) of the Code. This clause makes clear that everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private life. The Commission indicated that it did not generally consider a name to be an intrinsically private detail. In this instance, the Commission was satisfied that speculating on the complainant’s former name using evidence available in the public domain did not intrude into her privacy in breach of Clause 3 (Privacy). 

Finally, the Commission addressed the complainant’s concerns that the headline of the article was discriminatory. It noted that Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Code states that the press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to (amongst other things) an individual’s gender. In this instance, the Commission was satisfied that the headline was not a pejorative reference to the complainant’s gender change. Indeed, the Commission noted that the basis for using the phrase was its adaptation from a comment the complainant claimed had been made to her by crew members. In those circumstances, the Commission did not consider the headline to establish a breach of Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Code.

That said, given that the reference had upset the complainant, the Commission welcomed the newspaper’s offer to write to her privately to apologise.

 ...and here is the letter of apology from the Daily Mail. As you see, it does not apologise for the article, but expresses regret that I found the article 'distressing'. Which I hadn't. Annoying, yes. Species of dumbfuckery, certainly. But not distressing.....

THE DAILY MAlL
7 March 2007
Dear Drusilla
I write to apologize sincerely for any distress caused, which I assure you was in no way our intention, by our article and headline on Monday December 18, 2006.
The headline was not intended to be pejorative. The article is very positive to your case and fully reported the tribunal’s findings.
Nonetheless, it is most regrettable that you were distressed by the piece and I have brought your concerns to the attention of the members of staff involved who join me in saying we are sorry we added to your concerns at a very difficult time for you.
Yours sincerely
Robin Esser
Executive Managing Editor

Here, for a bit of light relief, is a bit of dumbfuckery from the Daily Sport. 

Written by Who Ever; presumably the person who wrote it was too ashamed to put their real name. In the Daily Sport's world, I apparently enjoyed 'life wearing a dress in the engine room'. Quite. It was a Vivienne Westwood one, with a useful tool pocket on the hem. The guys was sooo jealous!

...here is some of the earlier coverage of the case. This is where third party allegations, made by the perpetrators of the harrassment, were presented by P&O's HR people as 'evidence'. They were found to be without substance.

article by Jeff Wells, Western Daily Press

And here is a press statement of the case which I made at its conclusion. Compare and contrast!

A transsexual woman, formerly employed by P&O Ferries, has been awarded £64,862 compensation by a Southampton employment tribunal after it found that she had been constructively dismissed.
Drusilla Marland, 48, of Bristol, worked as a repairperson on the Pride of Bilbao from October 2002 until October 2004. During this time, she suffered verbal and physical harassment from the engine room crew.
The tribunal heard how remarks were made to her such as "We're all men here," "If he's got balls, he's a gentleman," and "When God made man it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." She was constantly addressed incorrectly, and referred to as "He, she, it, whatever."
When a pornographic calendar was introduced to the engine control room, she was subjected to offensive comparisons with the pictures. Chief engineer Steffan Robb commented, "It's a sort of training manual for you." When she requested that the calendar be removed, she was told not to make an issue of it. Finally, in August 2003, she found written on the calendar "Dru," with an arrow pointing to a model's vulva. When the engine room crew was assembled for tea break, she took the calendar down, said that she found it unacceptably offensive, and ripped it up. Among others who shouted at her, Gary Howard, the RMT union representative, said "You are going to get done…. not if, but when". Although the incident was witnessed by both ratings and officers no action was taken against Howard. The pornographic calendar was replaced with a similar one, and Marland was sent to Coventry by several crew members.
In June 2004 Marland asked Steffan Robb to implement guidelines for appropriate behaviour with transsexual colleagues, pointing out that similar guidelines had been implemented on a ship in Dover when an officer had transitioned. Robb commented "But they are an officer," and refused the request.
In September 2004, Marland was tripped up by Ged Pollard, a motorman with a history of hostility to her. She reported the incident to her superior officer, but he took no action. Finally, after making a written report, and ten days after the assault, she was seen by the senior chief engineer, Martin Sonnen. He told her that he wanted to drop the matter in case it became "messy", and accused her of "camping it up". Shortly after, she left the ship and collapsed with what her GP diagnosed as "work related stress".
An investigation subsequently undertaken by Sandra Ray, P&O HR officer, was judged by the Tribunal to be "flawed, perfunctory and superficial":
• She interviewed only those members of the crew implicated in the grievance, and none cited as witnesses
• Her finding that Marland's treatment "was not to the standard I would have expected" was deemed "so inadequate as to amount to an insult"
• She provided no explanation or grounds for her finding that the Chief Engineers and the Senior Chief Engineer were supportive of Marland. The tribunal judged that Robb's conduct in particular was "wholly reprehensible"
• Her claim that Marland's own behaviour was inappropriate was unsupported by any evidence
The Tribunal criticised P&O's senior management, particularly in the case of Peter Ambrose, P&O's HR Manager, for their failure to put in place adequate management instructions and guidelines with regard to employees undergoing gender reassignment. Ambrose's decision to allow the Captain and Chief Engineers to deal with matters, without their having received any instruction or guidance, was judged by the Tribunal to be a serious managerial misjudgement.

The result of the printing of unfounded allegations, for the propagation of which P&O were admittedly as much to blame as the newspapers in question, was that people who didn't know anything about either me or the true facts of the case, said vile things about me on the internet. Which is not nice. Is it?

willing mischief

Others, I am not the first
Have willed more mischief than they durst

If the thought is father to the deed, and it certainly seems that way to me; and if the deed that is the logical consequence of that thought is immoral or illegal or just plain wrong; then how free should you be to express that thought?

This came up in the discussion over my previous post, with Carolyn Ann wading in in defence of freedom of speech as covered by the US First Amendment. I have difficulty with the notion of total freedom of speech. The Jan Moir piece in the Daily Mail, discussed in that post, is certainly odious and offensive; plain stupid, even; but it's useful in a way, because it's alerted lots of people, myself included, to just how odious and offensive people like Jan Moir are. So it was a useful piece of information, in that sense. I don't imagine she won anyone over with the strength of her case, because it wasn't really a case; it was just a nasty little squib. And I don't suppose any of her intended audience has changed the way they think as a result of the backlash against Jan; they probably think, like her, that it's just an orchestrated campaign by people who haven't even read the article. Well, duh.

Still, as I say, letting her have her say and then responding to her is perhaps the healthiest option. What to do with Ray of Liverpool, though, who commented on the Daily Mail's story about a 'sex-change prostitute' (evidently 'woman' was not enough for the Daily Mail)...

.....Perverts are like irrepairably broken machines. Can't be fixed. Should be disposed of. Rid the world of their defective genome.

-this was a comment that had passed the moderation process, remember. (It has since been pulled, as have all comments on that story). Should Ray really be allowed the freedom to say that transssexuals should be murdered? I rather think not, but then I would, wouldn't I?

People don't really change their opinions very much or very easily, so 'debate' is really more about who can shout the loudest. Should we allow anyone to shout whatever they like? There is a quotation that usually gets dragged out at times like this, and usually attributed to Voltaire; "I may not like what you write, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

I've always had problems with that idea. I certainly have no desire to defend to the death, the right of people whom I dislike to say detestable things. Because then I'd be dead and they'd still be saying detestable things. There seems to be something fundamentally wrong in that relationship, from my point of view at least.

Another problem with the idea is the assumptions behind it. It seems to presuppose that the speaker is in a position of power, and is granting permission to the detested party to say what they like. Imagine instead the position of an isolated minority being subjected to verbal abuse from the majority around them. How do you think the persecutors in this relationship would react to their victims coming out with the Voltairean line? -Heave half a brick, I should imagine.

I watched a BBC Panorama programme last night, filmed on a Bristol estate about a mile from where I live. Two reporters, British moslems, lived undercover for eight weeks, and recorded the acts of verbal and physical abuse that they experienced on a daily basis. It was truly shocking. On the plus side, two of the perpetrators have had their collars felt by the police, for an attempted mugging and an assault. On the other hand, so many of the persecutors behaved so very badly, and despite being named (not, presumably, shamed) have got away with it.

And this evening, Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, and himself a man with a conviction for incitement to racial hatred, will be appearing on the BBC.

why there was nothing 'natural' about Jan Moir's death

...or at least the death of her scribbling career.

(Well, if only...)

There was something cosy and reassuring about Jan Moir's writing. It was like a nice mug of Ovaltine, spreading the warm glow of self-righteousness and quietly homo-, xeno-, trans-, wotever-phobic smugness among people who don't like to think very hard. You know, the target audience of the Daily Mail.

come out of there, Jan!

Her latest column is a case in point. We get:

A criticism of women in the workplace having too many rights, which describes the Equalities office as a 'citadel of gender gelding'

A celebration of muffins, which nostalgically looks back to Jan's days of drunken sexual predation (alarm bells there, but don't worry; it was chilled white wine that got 'em loaded, and it was Jan and her girlfriends doing the predation. For men, so that's OK too. Posh and heterosexual. Phew).

A bit of tosh about autumn ('the season we Brits do best' -rah, the Brits!):

This is the season for freshly cracked-open books, rough-skinned English apples and woodsmoke; for piles of russet leaves and the smack of your big soled boots on a city pavement.

'Tis the time for a shot of whisky in a sparkling glass, the blip of venison stew on a low flame and cold, fresh air pouring through the bedroom window at midnight.

(I try to keep the cold,fresh air out of my bedroom at midnight, but then I don't have central heating....)

The Nolan Sisters, who, we learn, are a bit tubby and don't have much dress sense (thin ice there, Jan!)

A comparison of Tara Palmer Tomkinson's dress sense with that of a 'tranny' (unkind to trannies, Jan!)

-oh, and the piece that insinuated, without any evidence, that Stephen Gately died of immorality. Because he was gay.

This has become a bit of an overnight sensation. Charlie Brooker very quickly wrote a very good piece in the Guardian, and no doubt you can find plenty more if you look.

And, what with Twitter and Facebook spreading the word, the PCC internet portal crashed under the weight of complaints, and the companies whose ads were being run on the same page as the story pulled them off in protest.

Jan's response was to complain that she had been subjected to an 'orchestrated campaign', by people who hadn't read her column properly.

Now, in my book, an orchestra is a bunch of people who get paid to play the same tune, with minor variations. You know, like Daily Mail journalists. Their victims are, or should be, the disempowered and voiceless.

Which is why Jan's nemesis is so unnatural. In the natural order of things, the Daily Mail makes nasty snidey comments, and if someone complains then the Press Complaints Commission, a bunch of poachers judging a fellow poacher, look at the complaint and usually say "We can't see anything wrong with this" and go back to sleep. Like they did with me, once. Blogged here, PCC response here.

Oh well, that was yesterday. Business as usual at the Mail today; a story from their website this morning asserts that a woman murdered in Brighton had a transsexual history. Which, if true, is irrelevant to the story, and its revelation, should she have a GRC, an offence. And in the comments below the story, under the bit that says The comments below have been moderated in advance, we find

One of her flock, no doubt. Perverts are like irrepairably broken machines. Can't be fixed. Should be disposed of. Rid the world of their defective genome.

- Ray, Liverpool, 17/10/2009 18:19