Well it had to happen some time, I suppose.
The story starts with Julie Bindel, the CiF blogger who used to work at the Child and Women Abuse Studies Unit (now at London Metropolitan University).
CWASU is an interesting organisation. Ideologically, it is pretty close to the politics of Dworkin-MacKinnon. Nevertheless, it is a think-tank which has produced work for the Home Office and for a number of other public bodies. It has also been a prime mover in the successive attempts to tinker with the law relating to sexual offences, with the aim of increasing the total number of convictions. These reforms have placed a series of significant and unprecedented handicaps on defendants, and have hugely increased the number of sexual offences cases that are prosecuted. However, as we know, juries will not convict in many of these cases, because they regard them as weak. Therefore, the overal conviction rate has fallen.
Julie Bindel’s present position on reforming rape law appears to be that the “human rights boys” are preventing the sort of reform she really wants, which is as follows:
I agree, juries are a big problem – both men and women. I suggest piloting a scheme where for one year all sex crime cases are heard by a specialist panel of judges, not juries.
So now you know a little bit about where Julie Bindel is coming from, politically.
Julie Bindel has just been nominated by the LGB (but not “T”) civil liberties group, Stonewall, as “Journalist of the Year”. Her nomination has resulted in utter fury from transsexuals.
This is why:
LGB campaigning organisation, Stonewall are hosting a glitzy event on November 6th at the Victoria and Albert in London, where they will announce the winners of their annual awards.
Nominated under the “Journalist of the Year” category is Julie Bindel, who is well known for her transphobic writing. In 2007, I sat in the audience of Radio 4’s “Hecklers debate” on sex reassignment surgery and listened to Bindel explain how she wanted hormonal and surgical treatment of transpeople replaced with reparative therapy (which she euphemistically referred to as “talking cures”).
Stonewall, despite being named after a riot in which trans people were instrumental
, has achieved a certain notoriety within the UK Trans community for the apparent low regard in which it holds trans issues, but nominating an actively transphobic journalist for this award could be seen as a direct slap in the face for the UK’s trans community.
Julie Bindel does, indeed, seem to be slightly preoccupied with trannies. Opinions like this aren’t likely to make you many friends in that particular political scene:
At least those women were women, and hadn’t gone to gender reassignment clinics to have their breasts sliced off and a penis made out of their beer bellies. Their attitude was, we’re comfortable in our own skin, let’s be women but subvert what that means. Could we really have imagined back then that unpicking constructions of gender would result in Kwik-Fit sex changes on offer to all and sundry?
[S]ex change surgery is modern-day aversion therapy treatment for homosexuals. The highest number of sex change operations take place in Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death. Sex change surgery, therefore, renders gays and lesbians “heterosexual”.
As is often the way with these things, a Facebook group has been formed, which now has almost 300 members.
Julie Bindel has joined the Facebook group:
I joined the group to monitor the level of bullying and harassment aimed at me.
Best, Julie
Julie Bindel has her own supporters club, which consists of a number of feminists, whose politics and rhetoric I recognise from the late 1980s, but who I had hoped might have grown up and moved onto something else by now. They, in turn, have accused the transsexuals of being “anti-woman”, “anti-lesbian” and “lesbophobic”.
These women have now organised under their own Facebook group, The Official Julie Bindel Fan Club (International) (33 members) to organise a demonstration in support of Julie Bindel entitled SOS! Support Our Sister!!!! (one confirmed attendee).
The trannies, by contrast, appear to have a broad range of supporters, including a number of straight and lesbian women.
My sympathies are with the trannies. Bindel’s opinions are pretty unexceptional Richard Littlejohnesque stuff. If Bindel really believes that transsexuals are screwed up, fair enough. It is the mirror image of those who say the same sort of thing about lesbians and gays. To be frank, I find Bindel’s desire to abolish the jury system far more offensive.
However, it is odd that somebody who clearly thinks that transsexuals are weirdos might be honoured by a group like Stonewall.
