Try to remember that narcissism is not rebellion
I don’t consider Julie Burchill the best of the Julies, but she says good things at (sorry) Spiked:
Paradoxically, redrawing the boundaries of what is ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate’ in order not to make anyone feel ‘excluded’ actually has the counter-productive effect of literally excluding many groups from both social media and public platforms: ex-Muslims espousing atheism, women querying the rights of the transgendered to play them at sport, and lesbians not attracted to a penis even if it has a frock over it. A whole page of last week’s Sunday Times was entirely composed of items reflecting what I call the Perils Of Inclusivity: ‘Tax expert fired for saying trans women aren’t women’ – ‘Gallery covers up art after complaints by Muslim viewers’ – ‘Anonymous journal lets academics publish and not be damned’. All in aid of preventing hurty feelz!
And now sexual perverts (among whom, on occasion, I happily count myself) are the latest group to demand ‘inclusion’. Please! When I was young, we thought nothing more desirable than being An Outsider – why are the young of today so obsessed with getting a tick on the register, rather than playing hooky? There is a happy place between believing that no one should be excluded on the basis of race, sex or social class, and believing that official validation of every life choice any person freely makes are the same. Someone who likes dressing up in a gimp mask is not Rosa Parks, and I find the increasing lack of ability to differentiate between the two in some quarters highly risible at best and downright insulting at worst.
Too right about the official validation bit. The plaintive cries of “I am valid!” are indeed both hilarious and insulting. What are you, a bus pass? Why do you need “validation” from the world in the first place?
The latest snowflake flutter is ‘Don’t kink-shame me!’. At a Vancouver university last year, a man insisting he was an ‘adult baby’ pestered a university nurse to change his dirty nappy and perved over his repulsed female classmates. A whistle-blowing workplace-safety director was sacked for standing up for the women. In Wolverhampton a few months back, a tattooist calling himself ‘Dr Evil’ was charged with grievous bodily harm after slicing ears and nipples from paying customers. He was reported as having support from ‘the body-modification community’ who set up a petition in his favour.
Say…what? Why were we not told? Does ‘the body-modification community’ get together to validate each other’s plans to body-modify other people?
Consults Google.
A body modification artist known as Dr Evil has been jailed for carrying out ear and nipple removals and splitting a customer’s tongue.
Brendan McCarthy carried out consensual procedures without using anaesthetic.
…
Judge Amjad Nawaz said the body-modification industry was unregulated and McCarthy was only registered as a tattooist and cosmetic piercer.
He said McCarthy “had no qualifications to carry out surgical procedures or to deal with any adverse consequences which could have arisen”.
…
An online petition which attracted 13,000 signatures was set up to support the “knowledgeable, skilful and hygienic” body-piercer, who was refused permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The BBC quotes one guy who says if he’d known the whole thing wasn’t legal he wouldn’t have had his ear sliced off, because he certainly wasn’t that desperate to have it done.
Back to Burchill:
I’m a broad-minded broad, so I’m not offended by these people – but I do despise them for being so wimpy that they need their kink validated by straight society. When did perverts start being ashamed to be perverts and need to be a community? ‘Community’ used to be such a jolly word, redolent of cheery singing or a nice place to land on the Monopoly board. Now it just means a bunch of whiners whining about stuff.
So I would say this to the youth of today: grab your outsider status and wear it with pride. Don’t demand that society alters to accommodate you, because that’s the way of the wimp. And try to remember that narcissism is not rebellion next time you call yourself ‘genderqueer’ on the occasion of your heterosexual marriage, Miley Cyrus, when so many genuinely queer people are still being murdered for the ‘crime’ of homosexuality all across the world. Don’t wear a crown that’s been paid for with the blood of others.
There should be a line of T shirts with “narcissism is not rebellion” on them in big scarlet letters.
Please accept an internet, a comfit and an elegant thimble.
lol
And of course it’s not just kinksters who make that absurd and insulting conflation of “my thing is a minority interest” with “I am oppressed.”
I read this article, recently, by The Other Julie:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/05/why-are-boringly-straight-women-claiming-to-be-lesbians/
on that last point, lesbian tourism.
All I can say is oh, the comments. Jesus Christ Almighty, the comments.
Fun fact: the shithole North East town Bindel grew up and came out in is Darlington, which is the nearest town to where I live! OK, not exactly a ‘fun’ fact.
latsot, that was a great article. When she was describing what she experienced after coming out as gay, I felt some deja vu, because I experienced very similar when it was discovered I had a psychiatric disorder. We as a species do seem to be rather consistent in how we treat those who are different, don’t we?
And I feel the same thing when I hear people casually say, “oh, I’m just so OCD!” when they are describing or doing something that is no more than a habit. They have no idea of the ways that OCD, real OCD, can impair or disrupt ones life.
Just like men who claim to be women have no idea how much of the hate they’re receiving is more about the hatred that women receive, not about their own special snowflake gender identity. You want to be a woman? Understand what the f*** women have to go through, and we don’t get all sorts of huge megaphones to shout through and get everyone fired who we don’t think treats us fairly.
*Desperately waves away red mist and the chanting of doom-laden evil words in my head*
That, yes. See also “lol, I’m so autistic” and “Duh, I’m such an aspie”.
No, you are in a headlock, if you say anything like that around me.
I once worked with someone who had severe OCD. She was desperately miserable. The people I know with Asperger’s and Autism are less miserable, but experience anxiety ranging from fairly horrible to agonisingly severe. People using other people’s misery as a fun adventure in pretend specialness does less to endear them to me than they seem to expect, hence my endless contempt for men who pull the more-disadvantaged-than-you card on women at every opportunity, whether they’re trans or not.
I can only imagine what life was like for Julie Bindel coming out in Darlington in the 70s. It was bad enough just being anywhere near the place, let alone being near it while lesbian. Mrs latsot was born and raised in the place, which is harsh, and ended up married to me, which proves that once life has you on the ground it will make damn sure to give you a right good kicking, too.
And – in all seriousness – the place is not much better now. The comments on the local paper’s site make that clear every single day. Fortunately our windows face in the other direction and we get to look at the North Yorks Moors instead, but the estate Bindel grew up on is still there and still a centre of hatred dense enough to drag asteroids out of the sky.