Stonewall Demo at Victoria and Albert Museum

Stonewall Demo at Victoria and Albert Museum
Originally uploaded by Loz Flowers.

Stonewall, despite naming itself after an event in which trannies took part, has never made any bones about being an organisation that does not represent transsexual people. However, for it's 2008 awards it decided to accept a nomination for best journalist for Julie Bindel, a writer with a history of transphobic opinions and writing.

So a group of about 150 pissed-off transsexual people and their allies held a fun and trouble-free protest outside of the Stonewall Awards at the Victoria and Albert Museum on the evening of the 6th of November 2008 to remind them of what they seemed keen to forget or ignore.

Stonewall should never allow itself to be an organisation that champions bigotry in any form. What is especially short-sighted is that they are trying to see transpeople as just that, ignoring that they can also be lesbians, gays or bisexuals. A nomination for Julie Bindel is a nomination that is also for hate against gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

She didn't win in the end :-)

Stonewall Demo at Victoria and Albert Museum

Stonewall Demo at Victoria and Albert Museum
Originally uploaded by Loz Flowers.

Don't make Julie angry, you wouldn't like her when she's angry...

So Julie Bindel has spent the day making threats against the trans-community on Facebook, muttering darkly about how she's going to write more about her views on transsexuals, she wrote that transpeople weren't real men or women when she was writing with calm, clinical detachment. Who knows what monster we've unleashed now? Personally, I think it's something along the lines of 'Angry Dad' from The Simpsons, first person to make Bindel's head explode wins!

Amy Lamé was not impressed by the demo which is a shame, especially as people were telling me yesterday evening that she was cool and had been quoted out of context by Bindel in an article she'd written about unisex loos.

But anyway, I decided I'd send another email to Ben Summerskill, hoping his hangover wasn't too bad.

Dear Ben,

Sorry I never took the opportunity to phone you, I was busy for several days with work stuff and, well, when I had the free time, from hearing other people's reports of discussions they'd had with you it seemed like I'd just be wasting your time, they'd already said everything to you that I wanted to say and you'd already made clear you felt you had no room to make changes.

So, I hope you all had a good time last night, we certainly had fun outside. It's funny how the police are so much nicer when you're demonstrating on South Kensington as opposed to when you're in Whitehall wanting the end to the war in Iraq. But still...

I was just wondering, as we have 364 days until the next Stonewall Awards, do you have some space to make changes to your procedures now? I'm not going to ask you to turn Stonewall into a campaigning agency for transsexuals, after all, you never seem to find the time to do anything for bisexual people and they ARE in your job description, so just adding another group for the sake of inclusiveness but then doing absolutely nothing to help them is in neither your interests or mine.

But how about some clear statement, that everyone can see, that people will not be considered for awards if they have a pattern of behaviour that is sexist, racist, homophobic or transphobic. The constituency you say you stand for contains transpeople whether you like it or not but even a quick search on the marvellous internet will show a number of queer voices who don't think to be gay or to be lesbian means to hate transsexuals. It's such a little thing, and then you can have your awards in piece and we can spend the night in the pub. At least until we find out something else you're doing wrong! ;)

I look forward to your response.

Loz

Let's see what happens this time. My Wednesday is completely free if he offers to talk again.