On the death of Nathan Verhelst

Driving back from work today I was listening to the 6:00 pm news on Radio 4.

There was a story about a transsexual (female to male) in Belgian named Nathan Verhelst who was “helped to die by doctors after a series of failed sex change operations.” There’s more on the BBC web site here. There’s some more on the Daily Mail web site here and The Independent here.

I find the whole story very sad.

Reading some of the comments I find it strange how so many people want to try to fit individual unique people and circumstances into neat stereotypes. Sometimes using a single news story about a single individual to justify quite sweeping statements about entire groups of people.

It’s said that in Belgium, 2% of all deaths are now a result of euthanasia. I find that a surprisingly high number. It seems disquieting.

I’m not qualified to comment much on psychological disorders. But I find it sad to think that when faced with a person with deep problems and needs, a doctor will effectively agree that the best treatment is for the patient to die. For if the doctor didn’t agree that this was the best treatment then why would she or he help carry out the treatment?

Maybe there is a time and a place for this. But it bothers me that it could just become the easiest and lowest cost of the possible treatments.

On the death of Lucy Meadows

Tonight driving back from work I listened to part of the 6:00 pm news on BBC Radio 4.
There’s a summary of it on the BBC News website here. There are also stories in the Huffington Post, The Independent and the Accrington Observer where, it seems, the whole media show began.
A male teacher at a primary school was about to undergo gender reassignment. The school wrote a letter to parents to explain what was happening. At least one parent was upset by this and the whole story ended up being published by the local and the national press. The teacher concerned was hounded by journalists and complained to the Press Complaints Commission about harassment and an article in the Daily Mail by columnist Richard Littlejohn questioning her right to teach.
The teacher, Lucy Meadows, later took her own life.
The Daily Mail has said there was no link between the article and the teacher’s death and that the article in fact defended the rights of people to have sex change operations.
However, they have removed the article from their web site.
The Daily Mail is a newspaper that is not noted for its fair mindedness. I think that it has a poor track record on how it deals with trans-gender related issues.
Having read Richard Littlejohn’s article, it is true to say that he doesn’t complain about the idea of  gender reassignment.
However, the article does seem to amount to an unjustified, unsubstantiated and unfounded  personal attack upon the teacher concerned.
Here is the text of the article (it isn’t possible to read it on the Daily Mail web site any more, so I can’t post a link to it that will work):

He's not only in the wrong body... he's in the wrong job
PUBLISHED: 17:29 EST, 20 December 2012 |
UPDATED: 03:08 EST, 21 December 2012
Look, it can’t be much fun being a woman trapped in a man’s body. Believe me, ladies, there are times when it’s not exactly a bundle of laughs being a man trapped inside a man’s body.
So I have every sympathy for the 400 or so people a year who opt for ‘gender reassignment’ surgery to put themselves out of their misery.
I don’t even have any problem with sex-change operations being carried out on the NHS, provided it’s a genuine medical necessity and not a lifestyle choice. Transsexuals pay taxes, too.
Schoolteacher Nathan Upton, 32, says he always knew he was born into the wrong sex. Yet he married and fathered a child, now aged three. It was only fairly recently that he decided to go public with his inner turmoil.
The first indications came when he began growing his cropped hair and dyeing it purple. He started turning up for class wearing pink nail varnish and sparkly headbands.
His pupils at St Mary Magdalen’s Church of England Primary School in Accrington, Lancs, couldn’t help noticing. A crayon drawing of Mr Upton by a Year 6 pupil on the school’s website shows him with long hair swept back over his shoulders.
One parent said: ‘I saw what I thought was Mr Upton dressed as a woman in town one weekend, but I decided I had imagined it.’
Oh no, you hadn’t.
Confirmation came in the school’s Christmas newsletter. It started innocuously enough, with a series of routine staff announcements. Then in paragraph six, out of the blue, BOOM! Are you sitting comfortably, children?
‘Mr Upton has made a significant change in his life and will be transitioning to live as a woman after the Christmas  break. She will return to work as Miss Meadows.’
It went on to stress that the school is ‘proud of our commitment to equality and diversity’. Of course they are.
This week, the school’s 169 pupils, aged between seven and 11, were informed class-by-class that from now on, ‘Sir’ would be ‘Miss’.
Teachers told them that Mr Upton felt he had been ‘born with a girl’s brain in a boy’s body’ and would henceforth be living as a woman.
Nathan Upton is now in the early stages of gender reassignment treatment. He issued a statement which read: ‘This has been a long and difficult journey for me and it was certainly not an easy decision to make.’
So that’s all right, then. From now on, kiddies, Mr Upton will be known as Miss Lucy Meadows.
What are you staring at, Johnny? Move along, nothing to see here. Get on with your spelling test. Today’s word is ‘transitioning’.
Mr Upton/Miss Meadows may well be comfortable with his/her decision to seek a sex-change and return to work as if nothing has happened. The school might be extremely proud of its ‘commitment to equality and diversity’.
But has anyone stopped for a moment to think of the devastating effect all this is having on those who really matter? Children as young as seven aren’t equipped to compute this kind of information.
Pre-pubescent boys and girls haven’t even had the chance to come to terms with the changes in their own bodies.
Why should they be forced to deal with the news that a male teacher they have always known as Mr Upton will henceforth be a woman called Miss Meadows? Anyway, why not Miss Upton?
Parent Wayne Cowie said the news had left his ten-year-old son worried and confused.
For the past three years he has been taught by Mr Upton, but has now been told that he will be punished if he continues to call ‘Miss Meadows’ ‘Mr Upton’ after the Christmas holidays. ‘My middle boy thinks that he might wake up with a girl’s brain because he was told that Mr Upton, as he got older, got a girl’s brains.’
The school shouldn’t be allowed to elevate its ‘commitment to diversity and equality’ above its duty of care to its pupils and their parents.
It should be protecting pupils from some of the more, er, challenging realities of adult life, not forcing them down their throats.
These are primary school children, for heaven’s sake. Most them still believe in Father Christmas. Let them enjoy their childhood. They will lose their innocence soon enough.
The head teacher denies that pupils will be punished for referring to the teacher as Mr Upton but added ominously that they would be ‘expected to behave properly around her.’ Nathan Upton is entitled to his gender reassignment surgery, but he isn’t entitled to project his personal problems on to impressionable young children.
By insisting on returning to St Mary Magdalen’s, he is putting his own selfish needs ahead of the well-being of the children he has taught for the past few years.
It would have been easy for him to disappear quietly at Christmas, have the operation and then return to work as ‘Miss Meadows’ at another school on the other side of town in September. No-one would have been any the wiser.
But if he cares so little for the sensibilities of the children he is paid to teach, he’s not only trapped in the wrong body, he’s in the wrong job.
 

In a way I find this kind of personal attack even worse than would have been an attack on the concept of gender reassignment itself. The corner at the teacher’s inquest referred to media character assassination. And to me that is exactly how it reads.
I find it difficult to understand how anyone can say “I have every sympathy for the 400 or so people a year who opt for ‘gender reassignment’ surgery” and then proceed to write an article that demonstrates an almost complete absence of sympathy.
I’m not going to write a line by line critique of Richard Littlejohn’s article. It’s tone, as well as its content, is sufficiently self-defeating.
But I will express my sadness that national and local newspapers, and journalists stoop so low as to write and publish this kind of stuff.
The coroner at the teacher’s inquest said:

"I will be writing to the government to consider now implementing in full the recommendations of the Leveson Report in order to seek to ensure that other people in the same position as Lucy Meadows are not faced with the same ill-informed bigotry as seems to be displayed in the case of Lucy."
Addressing the media at the conclusion of the inquest he said: "And to you, the press, I say shame - shame on all of you."

Maybe Richard Littlejohn’s article wasn’t the direct cause of Lucy’s death. But I find it impossible to believe that it wasn’t a serious contributing factor. And I agree with the coroner, that is a shameful thing. To both the author and to the publishers.

There is an online petition at http://action.sumofus.org/a/daily-mail-littlejohn-lucy-meadows/?sub=taf. Take a look at it if you'd like to express your feelings to the Daily Mail.

David Cameron, Lord Carey, Gender and Christian Persecution

Today I read this headline from the Daily Telegraph:

David Cameron 'feeds fears of Christian persecution', former Archbishop of Canterbury says

And this from the Daily Mail (PM is David Cameron, the Prime Minister):

The PM's done more than any leader to make Christians feel they're persecuted

The Daily Mail article is attributed to Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury.

Lord Carey says that he likes David Cameron and believes in his sincerity in making Britain a generous nation where “we care for one another and where people of faith may exercise their beliefs fully”.

A little later he suggests that many Christians doubt David Cameron’s sincerity. That according to a ComRes poll more than two-thirds of Christians feel they are part of a persecuted minority.

He does, however, point out that these feelings of persecution may not be justified since “few in the UK are actually persecuted.”

And yet, he says, the Prime Minister has “done more than any other recent political leader to feed these anxieties.”

What has the Prime Minster done?

• Allowed government lawyers to argue against the idea that Christians should be able to wear the Cross at their place of work
• More shockingly: is allowing the Equalities Minister to support a bill that would make the Parliamentary chapel of St Mary Undercroft into a multi faith prayer room
• He is working towards changing the law to allow same sex marriages
• The law might not offer religious believers who are registrars to refuse to carry out same sex marriages on religious grounds
• The law might force teachers to express agreement with the new politically correct orthodoxy (with respect to same sex marriage)

And what might this result in:

• The alienation of people who were considered to be pillars of society
• Christians not voting Conservative in the next general election
• Driving law-abiding Christians into the ranks of the malcontents and alienated

It’s not so long ago that things were very different. Same gender sexual activity wasn’t an accepted thing for people to be involved in. There is historical stuff here and more contemporary stuff here. And some background on LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) issues in the United Kingdom here. Though it actually says an enormous lot more about G than it does about L, B or T.

There have been times when sexual activity between  men resulted in the death penalty. More recently – within my living memory – it resulted in imprisonment. It seems that in 1957 the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Geoffrey Fisher, spoke out in favour of the decriminalisation of consensual and private homosexual behaviour.

It wasn’t until 1967, however, that this decriminalisation occurred when the Sexual Offences Bill was made passed.

A quote from Wikipedia:

Lord Arran, a sponsor of the Sexual Offences Bill, made the following remarks at the third reading in the Lords:

“Because of the Bill now to be enacted, perhaps a million human beings will be able to live in greater peace. I find this an awesome and marvellous thing. The late Oscar Wilde, on his release from Reading Gaol, wrote to a friend:

Yes, we shall win in the end; but the road will be long and red with monstrous martyrdoms.

My Lords, Mr. Wilde was right: the road has been long and the martyrdoms many, monstrous and bloody. Today, please God! sees the end of that road.”

And yet, Lord Arran went on to say:

“I ask one thing and I ask it earnestly. I ask those who have, as it were, been in bondage and for whom the prison doors are now open to show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity. This is no occasion for jubilation; certainly not for celebration. Any form of ostentatious behaviour; now or in the future any form of public flaunting, would be utterly distasteful and would, I believe, make the sponsors of the Bill regret that they have done what they have done. Homosexuals must continue to remember that while there may be nothing bad in being a homosexual, there is certainly nothing good. Lest the opponents of the Bill think that a new freedom, a new privileged class, has been created, let me remind them that no amount of legislation will prevent homosexuals from being the subject of dislike and derision, or at best of pity. We shall always, I fear, resent the odd man out. That is their burden for all time, and they must shoulder it like men—for men they are.”

It seems that,in the UK, it wasn’t until 2003 that gay relationships began to be permitted in a similar way to heterosexual relationships. Civil partnerships weren’t introduced until 2005.  The first civil partnership ceremony took place at 11:00 on 5 December 2005 between Matthew Roche and Christopher Cramp at St Barnabas Hospice, Worthing, West Sussex. The usual 14 day waiting period was waived as Roche was suffering from a terminal illness. He died the next day. The article here gives additional background.

In all of this I’m left feeling that for many, many, many years it has been gay people that have been persecuted. The levels of persecution were extreme. The perpetrators of this persecution have included the Church and the State.

Thankfully things have changed and continue to change. A reading of the history of it suggests that the House of Lords has been a lot less willing to support such changes than has been the House of Commons. And some parts of the Church are moving much more slowly than is society in general.

I believe that Lord Arran was right in saying that no amount of legislation would change the way that people feel about homosexuals and homosexuality. Legislation doesn’t do that kind of thing.

But thankfully his view that homosexuals would forever be the subject of dislike and derision or pity … a burden for all time …  demonstrated that he severely underestimated people’s capacity for change when propaganda and misinformation are no longer supported by the fear that unjust laws can engender.

I’m not at all convinced by the idea that Christians in the UK are being persecuted in any kind of systematic or state-supported way.

There have been instances of lack of sensitivity – but equally there have been instances where the law has mainly been involved in preventing people with strongly held religious beliefs imposing the restrictions of those beliefs upon other people.

I’m particularly saddened by the view that support for same sex marriages should be construed as some kind of a persecution of the Church. Thank goodness that there are many, many Christians who don’t hold this view.

If David Cameron has done so much to make Christians feel persecuted then I’m left with the feeling that there are perhaps a lot of Christians that suffer from an excess of paranoia.

Gay Marriage and Making a Difference

The issue of “Gay Marriage” is back in the news in the UK.

It saddens me the way that people seem to misrepresent the facts and each other when they argue about this.

But, it seems that it is possible to change some little things at least.

A few days ago I noticed an article in the Daily Mail. The article itself is here.

On December 7th, the headline for the article was:

Churches to hold gay weddings as 'arrogant' David Cameron vows to defy Tory MPs to force changes through Parliament

I left a comment on 7th December at 17:37 that reads as follows:

The headline for this article says: “Churches to hold gay weddings as 'arrogant' David Cameron vows to defy Tory MPs to force changes through Parliament.”

Within the article, David Cameron is quoted as saying: “But let me be absolutely 100% clear, if there is any church or any synagogue or any mosque that doesn't want to have a gay marriage it will not, absolutely must not, be forced to hold it. 'That is absolutely clear in the legislation. Also let me make clear, this is a free vote for Members of Parliament but personally I will be supporting it.”

To me, the headline isn't a fair reflection of what David Cameron is suggesting at all.

Today, December 9th, the headline reads:

Gay marriage to be allowed in church: Religious groups can choose whether to host same-sex weddings

I have no way of knowing if my comment influenced the decision to change the headline. But perhaps it did. Either way, it’s good that it was changed, but not so good that the first version of it ever existed in the first place.

Sally, my wife, says that I am a cynic. I prefer to think of myself as a realist. But whatever I am, I feel a sense of sadness in reading a lot of the other comments made by people in response to this article.

One interesting thing about the whole issue is that there are people with very different political backgrounds – right, left and centre – that are supporting the changes that are likely to be proposed by new legislation. Having said that, the main opposition seems likely to be from the right rather than the left. An article in the Daily Telegraph suggests that there is likely to be even more opposition from the House of Lords – the un-elected side of UK politics.

As I’ve mentioned before, I hope that it gets passed.

Between now and the vote I’ll write to my Member of Parliament (MP), Adam Afriyie, and ask if he will vote in favour of it.

If you live in the UK and have an MP and feel strongly about this the please take the time to write to them as well. You can get contact details here.

The Daily Mail, Chatroulette and Transvestites

Once in a while … well quite often really … I look at the headlines in Google News. Sometimes I even read the entire article. This one here (Last updated at 12:48 AM on 27th April 2010) caught my eye … the headline being:

Chatroulette: Is new teenage website the most disturbing internet craze yet?

I have a bias here … several biases in fact.

The first of my biases is that I’ve never really been impressed by the Daily Mail’s ability to report news in an impartial and unbiased way.

So here goes on my analysis of what Olivia Lichtenstein says about Chatroulette.

First – the headline.

Chatroulette isn’t a teenage website. It’s a web site. It’s no more a teenage website than the Daily Mail is a teen newspaper.

Maybe Olivia didn’t write the headline … but whoever did was putting an immediate misconception into the mind of the reader.

The article says:

When writer OLIVIA LICHTENSTEIN's daughter told her about a 'cool' new teen website, she decided to investigate. What she found was the most worrying internet craze to date.

A selection of the criticisms levelled at Chatroulette are:

• What may have started as the innocent game of a Moscow schoolboy has quickly become a potential tailor-made portal for perverts and paedophiles - proving once again that the internet is putting the lives of our vulnerable teenagers in jeopardy
• The latest Frankenstein monster spawned by the internet is, as with so much web-based activity, impossible to monitor, restrict or control.
• The ease with which I was able to access it was terrifying.
• Within seconds you find yourself jettisoned into a stranger's bedroom, living room, or, all too often, trousers.
• At least one out of every five of the strangers I was connected to was a man with the camera pointed directly at his private parts. Within the first few seconds of using the site, I was asked: ' Do you show boobs?'
• The ability to parachute into the lives of strangers is simultaneously addictive and repellent. Just like pornography, it leaves the user feeling dirty and ashamed.
• The fact that my daughter and her friends are not shocked by the site is shocking in itself - it's a further indication that such aberrant behaviour has been normalised.
• Thanks to the internet - such sexualised behaviour is pervading all generations.
• I fear for what is going to happen next. For, when you think back to the creation of mobile phones, what started as a useful way of communicating quickly turned into sexting (sending explicit text messages).
• Now, we face the worrying prospect that a growing number of men find it acceptable to expose themselves to strangers online - and the young girls watching them not only think it's normal, but some even agree to perform sex acts on themselves in return.
• While users of other social networking sites are urged to check the identities of those they talk to, Chatroulette aficionados socially enter into conversation with random strangers who remain entirely anonymous.
• The site is little more than a haven for exhibitionists and voyeurs.
• It's not a game, it's porn, and pornography is addictive, corrosive and promotes unhealthy sexual stereotypes and behaviour for girls and boys. It undermines dignity and respect for others by making sexual intimacy into little more than a spectator sport without love, commitment or responsibility.
• I discovered during my short venture into that world, it's yet another example of the pernicious sexual culture that threatens to corrupt the fibre of our children's innocence.
• Just think of the way that Ashley Cole threw away his marriage to Cheryl Cole by texting naked photos of himself to a stranger, before embarking on an alleged affair with her. 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall was raped and murdered by 26-year-old Peter Chapman, a man who had met and groomed her on Facebook.
  

The things I find difficult about a lot of the above is the way that it’s written in a clear-cut black fashion. And it doesn’t add up.

There are quite a lot of comments from various people. Not many of the comments show much agreement with the author.

People can rate the comments. The two comment that are rated worst are:

The first chapter of Romans 21-25 sums up the situation....
"For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen."
Just another sign of our times..

and:

There is no option this site must be taken down!!!
There are no effective controls at all and even if teenagers are not too shocked, this has to be made a no-go zone or there will be more tragedy down the line!!!

The most positively rated comments are:

I'd be wary of letting anyone use a computer who's thick enough to install that Canon toolbar.

and:

If parents don't want their teenagers using sites such as these (a sentiment I largely agree with) then parents must restrict their teenagers access to them.
Why are there always calls for the Government to ban such sites? Do you really want politicians deciding what is and what is not good or bad for your children? Why can't we as parents take control? We would all go to great lengths to protect our kids from sexual deviants in any other sphere of life so why not with the internet and mobile phones (for mobile internet access)?

Some of my thoughts:

• Chatroulette doesn’t seem like the kind of place that anyone would use if they were trying to groom anyone. The webcam has got to make any pretence at being someone else more difficult.
• 80% of the people that Olivia communicated with did not have their genitals on display. So is it fair to say that it is “little more than a haven for exhibitionists and voyeurs”
• It is not true that pornography always leaves every user feeling dirty and ashamed.
• Some aspects of the Internet may be putting the lives of vulnerable teenagers in jeopardy. But so does the production of clothing, coffee and tea by organisations that use child labour. So does the arms trade. So do parents. So have some Catholic priests.
• It is not true that it is impossible to monitor, restrict or control children’s access to the Internet. In a similar way that we put child-proof gadgets on cupboard containing bleach and drawers full of kitchen knives – it’s possible to manage access to the Internet. It would be irresponsible of adults not to.
• Times change – a lot what once was viewed as aberrant behaviour has been normalised. Is that a bad thing? It depends on a persons biases and perspectives. To be gay was once aberrant. To be transgendered was one aberrant. To be a member of a racial minority group was aberrant. To be female was aberrant. I admit that the normalisation of instant displays of genitalia isn’t quite in the same category as these other things. But one person’s “aberrant” is another persons “normal”. No one that I know of is forced to use Chatroulette.
• I’ve never receive 
• Pornography may result in unhealthy stereotypes … but this isn’t by any means  inevitable. And … stereotypes of any kind are usually not a good thing. Children need to know this.

As I said … the thing that I find offensive about the article is that there is no room for discussion. No room for doubt. No real question-asking. It seems to include as much misinformation as information. It’s a series of assertions of apparent absolute truths.

My biased view of the Daily Mail’s reporting has also been partly fuelled by an article which was published a while ago.

There’s some information about it here. A few words from the beginning of this:

A national newspaper article which described Liphook as "a country town invaded by transvestites" is at the centre of a storm of controversy.

A feature in the Daily Mail reported how a social group for transvestites, called Fabuliss, has been hiring a room in the Millennium Hall for social events.
But the article has inspired scores of messages of support for the group on Liphook's community website.

I know people that go to Fabuliss. The article that appeared in the Daily Mail was a fabrication that bore no resemblance to reality.  It was biased and full of misinformation. The Daily Mail article no longer appears online … it used to be here. There seems to be way too much of an attitude that says something like … “if they are different from us they must be evil perverts.”

It would be satisfying to say “I’ll never buy the Daily Mail again.”

It would also be inaccurate since I never have bought a copy of it before.

There may, however, be a sense in which such obviously biased and inaccurate misinformation ends up having the exact opposite effect from the one that was intended. Perhaps that’s why the article was eventually withdrawn?