not Fit for purpose

That's not a lion, that's a tired old donkey

Following on from last week's publication of the shortlist for the Stonewall Awards, we find that the nomination for Journalist of the Year has been withdrawn from Bill Leckie, a columnist on the Scottish Sun whose work has been cited by Stonewall Scotland as an example of bad journalism.

Bill seems a little peeved at this, claiming that he had been dropped from the list without having been told. "I'd have thought they might have had a bit more backbone than that, but hey ho," he said. A sentiment with which I'd have to agree.

Irrespective of any possible merit or otherwise in Bill Leckie's writing, there is a conversation which might be worth having here, between Bill Leckie and Ben Summerskill of Stonewall. Like, whether either of them take on board Stonewall Scotland's analysis of Bill's work, and if so, how much time they think has to pass before a writer can be dissociated from what he has written, if he has not modified his tone in the meantime.

But I doubt if it will happen.

More fun and games with Stonewall today; they are promoting a video for use in schools. It's called Fit. It's about challenging homophobia, as far as I can make out. It also seems to think that it's OK to call transgender people 'trannies'. Well, yes, Stonewall. Just like 'homos' is an acceptable term for gay people. Innit.




And these people have apparently been advising government ministers on trans issues relating to marriage and Gender Recognition certificates. Despite there being perfectly good organisations and people within the trans community. We don't need to be spoken for by someone without a mandate, and who has explicitly stated that they do not represent trans people.

Then again, they don't appear to want to represent lesbians or bisexuals either. In their press release for the Stonewall Awards, they describe it as a celebration of 'champions of gay equality'. On having this erasure of the L and B part of their corporate identity pointed out to them over on Facebook, they responded that "We sometimes shorten it to 'gay equality' to be concise and acronym-free for the media...". Fair play. In the same way that use of 'he' as a pronoun should be taken to mean 'he or she', of course.

And then there was the rebuke put to Stonewall by Stephen Gilbert at the Lib Dem conference- "It should not be for me as an MP to lobby Stonewall to support gay equality, it should be for Stonewall to lobby me".

Something seems to be a bit wonky over at Stonewall. I'm sure they used to be a useful organisation. I'm not so sure they are now.

Still, they do wear ties. That counts for something.

Summerskill, and the living is easy

Mr Summerskill finds his place in history

Upside Down In Cloud has been an occasional chronicler of the Gays In Ties phenomenon, and has watched the rise and apotheosis of Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, with the appalled fascination with which you might observe your neighbour's lurcher doing something you think it probably shouldn't and you didn't quite think possible anyway.

There was a bit of a hoo-ha two years back, when his tame organisation nominated Julie Bindel for their Journalist of the Year award, despite the rather unsavoury and somewhat partial nature of her writings about transsexual people. After all, as Ben takes pains to point out, Stonewall doesn't have anything to do with transsexual people.

Which didn't stop them, apparently, from consulting recently with government ministers on the matter of trans people, marriage, and GRCs. Fair enough, you might think. After all, I understand that they may have seen some trans people once. Standing outside the V&A in the rain, or something. So they know what they're talking about, I guess.

Latest wheeze in the 'let's piss off the trannies' game is one of this year's nominations for that prestigious Stonewall Journalist of the Year award. It's Bill Leckie, whose work has been cited by Stonewall Scotland (no relation- they embrace diversity up in Scotland, apparently) as an example of negative media portrayals. Here's an example of his work, from the Sun

EIGHT o’clock on Wednesday and an army of frighteningly ugly women are pouring into a boozer called Prism for bingo night. Or at least from a distance they LOOK like women. But then you see the poster on the door.
And you realise that this isn’t just any bingo night. It’s Drag Queen bingo night.
Now, I can’t pretend that my devotion to this column is such that I wiggled along to see how it went. Not when I got there and saw someone going in with the same frock.
However, my sources tell me it went a little bit like: “Two fat ladyboys… 88. Unlucky for some … unprotected sex. Five and two… Danny La Rue.” And someone shouted: “Really nicely-decorated house!

-hmmm. It's almost certainly a Good Thing that gay men are now far more socially acceptable than they used to be, at least in some quarters. But I sometimes get the feeling that some of them want to pull the drawbridge up after them. And in at least some cases, they remind me of the dominant pigs of Animal Farm, at the end of the story...

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Thanks to Zoe O'Connell for alerting me to this in her blog