what's in a name?

What names do transsexual women adopt when they transition? In some ways it is a bit of a privilege to be able to choose again, rather than go through life with a name chosen for you and which you may not be happy with. I, for instance, never liked my original name. Which is why I adopted 'Drew' in my teens. And when the time came formally to change my name, 'Drusilla' suggested itself, or rather, it was suggested by three other people, and I sometimes go by the Rule Of Threes. So I did on this occasion. As far as I'm concerned, the full version is for official purposes only, and I'm still just Dru. It might have been better to go for a more decidedly gendered name, to help people to make the mental jump from my old self to my present one; but it's a bit late to worry about that, if I were the worrying kind.

This is what TS Roadmap has to say about TS names in general, and this is what it has to say about my name, even if they can't spell it properly:

Soap-opera names: Lexie, Reena, Drucilla, the sorts of names you've probably never heard used for real people.

...well, those nice folk at TS Roadmap are American, and apparently in America everyone is called either Randy or Cindy-Lou, so sucks to them.

I did a little research. I looked at the names of 700 transsexual women, and if they cropped up more than once then they're on this list.

Alex (var, Alexandra) 7

Alice 2

Alison (var. Allyson, Alyssa) 9

Amy (var. Amelie) 7

Andrea 2

Angie 2

Anne (var. Anna) 6

Becky (var Rebecca 5) 10

Bethany 2

Brenda 2

Caitlin (var Kate 1) 3

Caroline (var Carol) 4

Catherine (var Cathy) 6

Charlotte 2

Chloe 3

Christine (var Chrissy, Kristy 3) 8

Claire (var Clarissa 1) 10

Debbie 3

Ellen 4

Emily 2

Emma 9

Erin 2

Eve 2

Fiona 4

Gemma 3

Gill 3

Helen 2

Jackie (var Jacqui 1) 3

Jane (var Jayne 2) 6

Jennifer (var Jenny 6) 12

Jessica (var Jessa, Jessy) 6

Joanne (var Johanna) 5

Judy 3

July (var Julia 3) 5

Karen (var Karina, Karine) 5

Kate (var Kathy, Katie) 13

Kin 3

Kirsty 2

Laura 2

Linda 5

Lisa 5

Louise 2

Lucy 4

Madeleine 2

Maggie 2

Marie 2

Melissa 3

Michelle 5

Natalie 7

Nicola (var. Nicky, Nikki) 7

Paula 3

Rachael 8

Rebecca 3

Rose 3

Sarah 10

Vicky 2

Zoe 2

blue sky parking

Bristol is a centre of excellence when it comes to innovative solutions to maximising the use of cars in a crowded urban environment. I have previously documented some of the ways in which drivers have found parking spaces where once there were none. Bristol Traffic is an indefatigable campaigner for the freedom of car drivers in Bristol, threatened as they are by the muddled thinking of the pro-bike lobby. I humbly follow in their wake.

This is an interesting bit of blue sky thinking, when it comes to parking for the man-on-the-go. The driver of this Mitsubishi Colt, R643KAV, has found a way to avoid those wasted moments usually spent lining up the car parallel to the pavement. Unfortunately, I missed the arrival of the car, so I couldn't see if the driver jumped out and crouched behind the wall, covering the house door with a handgun and shouting "Come on out with your hands up! Get out an APB and get on down to the DA's office! Carter, you slaaaag! Right, you're nicked!" or any of the vocabulary of television crime shows of the 70s.

But I did see him saunter out and drive away a while later.

Portland interlude

A quick look at life in Portland in May 1997. I was working on MV Havelet, a ferry that had been retired from the Channel Island run and which was now tied up in the former navy base, waiting to be bought by somebody. There was a small crew of Poles- a bosun, a deckhand, a greaser and a steward- there was Jim Nelson the Chief Engineer, and there was me. It was a fairly relaxed time, tinkering with stuff that wasn't working, and eating the awful food that Roman the steward produced- chickens deep-fried whole, indeterminate soup of a gray colour with gobbets of Stuff in...

With the Royal Navy pulling out, Portland had become very quiet indeed. Wildlife had begun re-colonising the dockyard; seagulls were everywhere, and the bridge wings were littered with the bits of seaweed that I think are what seagulls use as love tokens, rather than boxes of Milk Tray. The security guards in their little hut by the gate had made friends with the local foxes, who used to sit in the hut and share their sandwiches.

At the other end of the dockyard, Cable and Wireless had set up shop, and there was some activity around a floating dry dock that had sunk. Apparently, the pump that kept the water out had either been switched off or tripped, and the night watchman had just watched it settle lower and lower in the water and go under. Attempts to refloat it had failed, and it was being cut up and removed bit by bit. You can see the big floating crane that did the salvage work, Norma, down there in this picture .

Also down there is HM Prison Weare, a floating prison which had been used as accommodation in the Falklands.

Sometimes things would be livened up by the appearance of the SBS, who would come down and practice assaulting ships. They didn't wear uniforms, because they liked to be inconspicuous. But a trained eye could pick them out, as they arrived in the biggest 4x4 you ever saw in your life, with a matt black paint job, smoked glass windows and heavy mesh over the windscreen.



This is a speed boat they were playing with. It was dropped into the harbour from a Chinook helicopter, and spent the afternoon haring around with helicopter in pursuit, presumably trying to pick it up again.


And this is British Telecom's CS Sovereign, a cable-laying ship that sat alongside us waiting for a job to come along. We were grubby and rusty; Sovereign was pristine, and periodically large groups of men in spotless overalls would appear on the deck and sit in a big circle drinking tea in the sunshine, before going back in to re-polish something.

when the klondikers came to Weymouth

In October 1996, Weymouth Bay was home to a fleet of ramshackle Russian factory ships, and Weymouth harbour was crowded with fishing boats, a large proportion of which came from the Scottish east coast. The fishing boats offloaded their catch onto the factory ships. The Scottish trawlermen introduced Irn Bru to various Weymouth bars, not least of which being The Moorings, where we ferry people used to hang out too. The Russians would occasionally pootle over to the quay in their rackety old lifeboats, belching black smoke, and rummage their way through the town's charity shops. Some people would complain about the noise, the smell, the occasional slick of dead mackerel being washed up on the beach, and their complaints would make their way into the Dorset Echo. It was all quite lively and fun.

I was babysitting MV Havelet, also parked up on Weymouth quay, and drew the scene above on Thursday 17th October. Evidently the man with the money had turned up, and all the Russian lifeboats spent the day shuttling to and fro with cargoes of cabbages, potatoes and lumps of frozen meat.

I think that was the last year the Klondikers came to Weymouth. So I'm glad I saw them.

Havelet was sold to the Montenegro Shipping Company and sailed off to Bar. Here's a couple of maps of the voyage there, which was interesting. And hot and thirsty.

Weymouth quay

Klondiker at Tolverne, Cornwall. This ship featured in Granta 61, a piece called Waiting For St Petersburg

look sea

Ortac, home to a gannet colony off Alderney

I collected all my old diaries when I was visiting Richard the other week. It was odd, and quite cringey, reading through them after all this time. But there are some fairly nice pictures in there too, little records of things that happen rather than attempts at art. I'm looking and thinking of something good to write about my seafaring days. All in good time. Meanwhile...


Watching fish rising in Portland harbour one summer's evening, with a Mulberry harbour and Chesil Beach in the background

Bunkering (taking on fuel oil) in Weymouth harbour



A lifeboat (well, duh!)

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