No floating of views allowed
Another one of these:
Stephanie Douet says more on her blog today:
I have just been expelled from Outpost studios and membership for writing this post that their Committee describes as ‘explicitly transphobic and discriminatory’ and ‘causing discomfort and offence’.
My post may have been ignorant or insensitive, but it was neither transphobic or discriminatory, or was it intentionally hurtful.
My question is this: how is anyone ever gain any meaningful understanding, see someone else’s point of view or change their mind – without asking questions?
She includes a communication from OUTPOST’s board of trustees explaining why they have decided to shun her.
April 15th 2020
Dear Stephanie,
I am writing to inform you that your position as a studio holder at OUTPOST studios, and as a member of OUTPOST has been discussed by the trustees after a public online post you made was highlighted to us. The post contained explicitly transphobic statements failing to show respect and consideration to others. OUTPOST does not tolerate discrimination against individual’s protected characteristics.
What was it she said again?
I want to float my view that for someone to want to change gender is a failure of imagination and visual awareness. If you feel you are in the wrong body, surgically altering that body is not the only possible solution. There is more to being a man or woman than just looking like a man or woman.
For example, David Bowie was a pioneering explorer of what it is possible to do with the raw materials of flesh and hair, as are fashion designers from the wilder shores of creativity, playfully liberating themselves from the binary with cloth and face paint.
Can we instead consider the question ‘what does being a woman/man look like?’ – but consider it only having spent an hour looking through Vogue?” – 10th February 2020
She’s talking about, and thinking about, the ideas behind calling people “transgender.” It’s not “phobic” to do that. It’s more the other way around: it’s thoughtphobic, understandingphobic, analysisphobic, truthphobic to shun and punish people for trying to think about and analyze and understand concepts. Transgenderism is a concept, and it’s a very new and very rapidly expanding and enveloping concept, yet we are not allowed to think about and talk about and question the concept. That is ridiculous; it’s Trump-level ridiculous.
The censoring shunning Board continues, starting with another paragraph from Douet:
“I don’t have a moral or ethical stance with regard to trans matters – I know little about it – it just seems to open the door to possibilities of grief, pain and disappointment, all the things you want to protect your loved ones from” – 14th February 2020
We felt that this breached the studio license agreement in regards to the Key issue of compliance ‘(q) To have a duty of care towards other licensees, the committee and the building’ and jeopardizes OUTPOST’s “equality of opportunity and equal treatment of all persons involved with the organization” as stated in our Equal Opportunities Policy. As you are an active and outspoken member of the OUTPOST community on Facebook and beyond, this means that statements like this are not private but in fact are highly visible to others and to other studio holders. It is for these reasons we are also considering removing your membership of the charity.
It’s as if they’ve all been hypnotized and drugged and threatened and held hostage.
There is further correspondence; the Board’s side of the debate does not become any more reasonable or fair or adult.
A little bit of background: Outpost Studios are located in Norwich, and are partly funded by Arts Council England (ACE), with support for their Creative Programme to the tune of £44,673 in the financial year just ended. Their financial return to the Charity Commission for 2017 is currently 842 days overdue, which suggests that good management is not high up on their list of priorities. No accounts have been submitted since February 2017. I would argue, as the sort of miserable killjoy who takes financial probity seriously, that ACE should not be splashing money in the direction of a concern whose accounting is so disastrously in arrears.
Charity Commission page here: http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/CharityWithoutPartB.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=1109254&SubsidiaryNumber=0
It’s interesting how TRAs are so often accusing others of ‘causing discomfort and offence’ and ‘failing to show respect and consideration to others’, often anonymously, when they themselves are so often guilty of this.
The BBC has been shuffling a bit about transgenderism and letting a lot go unquestioned about non- binary, multi-identity etc. But a programme yesterday, about a butch Lesbian performance poet, did question about activists going into schools telling gay kids that they are really the other sex inside
Paul Burston former editor of gay and lesbian affairs from Time Out.
Slow decline of Lesbian spaces partly because of the focus on gender identities discourages young lesbians as coming out as butch. “Imagine if you’re 12 or 13 at school and someone comes in and says if you’re a girl and you don’t like this, this and this you are possibly trapped in the wrong body. Possibly you are, possibly you are not. There are a lot of discussion around that which are not being had.
He then extols butch lesbians for joining with gay men at Stonewall and were at their bedsides during the Aids crisis.
No abusing him on twitter. May be TRA don’t listen to Radio 4.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000j8qr
They rarely, if ever, attack men (I guess Graham Linehan is an exception–but he seems to relish picking fights).
I must clarify my earlier comment – it seems that Outpost is now registered with the Charity Commission under the name #Fbf696 and its accounts are up-to-date. http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/CharityWithoutPartB.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=1165944&SubsidiaryNumber=0
Do words just not mean anything any more?
Explicit means stated directly, spelled out in plain language; it is the antonym of implicit. Telling people that surgery is not the only option might be implicitly transphobic to the TRA team, but it is not explicitly so because… ah why do I bother. These people think pointing out the sexed differences in sports is ‘literal murder’ after all.
The exchange of letters is fascinating and can be summarised thus:
Outpost: you have been explicitly transphobic and we might have to evict you. You have a right of reply.
Douet: No I haven’t, and if you’re going to be Stalinists I resign.
Outpost: We support free speech and maintain that a decision as to what action will be taken has not yet been made.
Douet: OK then, I withdraw my resignation and will be happy to defend myself at a tribunal. I want to know the details of the complaint, who made it, and what transphobia I have apparently articulated.
Outpost: We aint doing that, we can, and will, evict you on a legal technicality. Byeeee.