Month: September 2018

Modern first-world problems #37: Trans man who gave birth denied benefits

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

A piece by Frances Gibb, Legal Editor, in yesterday’s Times:

A transgender man who is attempting to be registered as a baby’s father after giving birth cannot obtain child benefit, the High Court was told yesterday.

His legal challenge, which could result in the baby becoming the first born in England and Wales to not legally have a mother, is delaying the issue of a birth certificate and therefore the granting of the benefit.

Lawyers say that the baby is the child of a single parent who was born a woman but now lives as a man after undergoing surgery. They have told judges that the man had been biologically able to become pregnant and give birth but had legally become a man once the child was born.

He wants to be identified as the child’s “father” or “parent” on a birth certificate. However, a registrar told him that the law requires people who give birth to be registered as mothers. He took legal action after complaining of discrimination but it may be months before a full hearing. In the mean time he cannot obtain child benefit because no birth certificate has been issued.

The man claims that forcing him to register as the child’s “mother” breaches his human right to respect for privacy and family life. His identity cannot be revealed for legal reasons.

Lawyers say that other transgender men have given birth but have been registered on birth certificates as mothers. The case has been the subject of several hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in London. Lawyers representing the man are lined up against counterparts representing the Registrar General for England and Wales and government ministers.

Mr Justice Holman was told that the baby had been given a passport because British citizenship had been established. However, Ben Jaffey, QC, who is representing ministers told the judge that child benefit had not yet been granted. Mr Jaffey said that a birth certificate could not be issued until the judge had ruled on the challenge.

Mr Justice Holman said that the man was taking a stand and “mounting a head-on challenge to a wall of legislation”. He suggested that Sir Andrew McFarlane, the most senior family court judge in England and Wales, may oversee a trial and make a decision.

At a preliminary hearing in June Mr Justice Francis said that the issue had never been raised in a court in England and Wales before. He added that if the man won his fight, ministers might have to consider changing the law.

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‘Unconsiderate’ sex can be worse than stranger rape, says Germaine Greer

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

Germaine Greer says that women are treated as “a piece of evidence” during rape cases

Times caption: Germaine Greer says that women are treated as “a piece of evidence” during rape cases YUI MOK/PA

A piece by Will Humphries in yesterday’s Times. As always with Greer, the recurring theme is that sex is something men DO to women, not something men SHARE with women. Women have no moral agency, no responsibility towards their partners. What an odious woman, why was she ever let into the UK? In a fair world she’d long ago have been locked up in the Tower of London, the only reading matter being admiring biographies of Margaret Thatcher.

Constant “unconsiderate” sex with a partner can be worse than rape by a stranger, the feminist writer Germaine Greer has suggested.

While rape by a stranger is “bloody bad luck”, it does not necessarily force a woman to reassess her whole life in the way that abuse by loved ones can, Greer said.

The Australian writer was speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme as part of a round of publicity for her essay On Rape, which has prompted controversy around the world.

She said: “I think it is important we don’t diminish the effects of constant unconsiderate use of a woman’s body by the man she loves.

“In some ways, it is worse to be abused and treated without consideration by the people who are at the centre of your life.

“Stranger rape is bloody bad luck, for sure, but it is like being run down by a bus. You don’t have to internalise it and look at the structure of your whole life from that point of view. It is way out there on left field.”

Greer said that she would like the law to be changed so that women are a formal party in any court case relating to their rape or sexual assault.

Existing laws mean that when women make complaints, their assaults are treated as alleged offences against the state, with the victim playing the role a witness or a piece of evidence, she said.

“The woman who complains of rape is herself not party to the action,” Greer said. “She is a piece of evidence and she will be examined to find out if the claims she is making that the offence has occurred is true.”

She added: “The better way would be to begin again to look at it from a woman’s point of view, rather than the point of view of the patriarchate.

“When you go to the police, you are asking the state to clean up an offence against itself, whereas if we were in Belgium you would be a party to the action as the victim and you would have a voice in court.

“As it is now, you have no voice in court, you don’t have anyone representing you and you can’t be helped to deal with the cross-examination. You are being treated almost like a child.”

Greer has previously said that newspapers and broadcasters report rape trials with “crushing detail” and suggested that one way to mitigate victims’ pain would be for such cases to be heard in a closed court. That is done in Ireland, which also has a statutory definition of consent and is considering adopting the system used in France and Belgium whereby the complainant is a party in the case.

In Ireland the name of the accused is also not made public unless they are convicted.

However, any move to make rape hearings in England and Wales private is likely to be strongly opposed. Matthew Scott, a criminal barrister, said: “Save in totally exceptional cases, all criminal cases should be heard in public. Secret criminal trials are extremely undesirable.”

Greer also proposes a second reform — separating the elements of assault for which consent is not an issue from the actual rape where it is the only issue. It should then be possible to convict at least on the assault charges, she suggests.

The incidence of rape has remained intractable, with one in five women experiencing sexual violence, she says, yet few rapes find their way into court.

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Hip, hip, hurray!!! It’s curtains for suffragette hip‑hop flop Sylvia

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

Whitney White as Christabel Pankhurst and Beverley Knight as Emmeline Pankhust in the Old Vic show

Times caption: Whitney White as Christabel Pankhurst and Beverley Knight as Emmeline Pankhust in the Old Vic show

A piece in yesterday’s Times by David Sanderson, Arts Correspondent:

The road to female suffrage wasn’t easy and the same has proved true of efforts a century later to tell the story on stage.

Sylvia, a show at the Old Vic mixing dance, hip-hop, soul and funk to shed light on the life of Sylvia Pankhurst and the suffragettes, will not now “cross the finishing line”, the theatre’s artistic director, Matthew Warchus, has said.

The musical, which closes on Saturday, will remain at the preview stage, rather than becoming a finished production, after being hit by waves of illness and a lack of time.

Warchus said that the show, part-funded by the 14-18 NOW centenary First World War art project, was too much of a sprint. It has been retitled a “work in progress”, with audiences on Monday and last night warned that they would be seeing an “enhanced concert-style version, performing songs with excerpts of choreography”.

The show, awarded two stars yesterday by Ann Treneman, The Times’s theatre critic, has been previewing for two weeks.

Warchus said that a determination to be “part of the political cultural conversation” to mark the anniversary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which gave some women the vote, had not left enough time to create a finished work.

The theatre, which does not receive public subsidy, has being charging lower preview prices for the run and has said that it will offer refunds for the two nights which Izuka Hoyle, who plays Emily Davison, missed because of laryngitis.

The project has left another question mark over 14-18 NOW, which was launched in 2013 to “look afresh” at the events of the Great War. It has since spent about £50 million of public money on various art commissions. Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, the installation of 888,246 ceramic poppies at the Tower of London, which it belatedly supported, has been alone among its endeavours in receiving widespread appreciation.

Warchus, who has run the Old Vic to great acclaim since succeeding Kevin Spacey in 2015, said that Sylvia had fallen victim to “unusual circumstances amplified by bad luck”.

During its first open dress rehearsal at the start of this month Genesis Lynea, who was playing Sylvia Pank- hurst, collapsed on stage and was taken to hospital. She managed to come back but then had to go to hospital again.

Her replacement has been Maria Omakinwa, who had been playing another character, Ada, in the musical, created by Zoo Nation: The Kate Prince Company.

Warchus said that there had been no option but to resort to a slimmed-down version. Some audience members complained, with one tweeting: “I went home. Zoo Nation is a dance company. I wanted to see the dance and the staging and experience a piece of theatre.” Warchus defended the theatre’s response, saying that those of the audience that remained had been “dancing and cheering”.

He said that given that two “visionary” women, Emma Cons and Lilian Baylis, had established the theatre, he had been determined that it would “contribute culturally” to the centenary of the Representation of the People Act.

“We just don’t have the option in the schedule this time to get beyond a bumpy preview period,” he said, adding that, given its tight finances, there “is no way the Old Vic can afford to go dark . . . leaving a gap in the schedule is just not an option. We are more used to Crossrail announcing that they are a year behind than we are at a show not crossing the finishing line,” he said.

Stage dramas

• Alan Ayckbourn’s 1981 play Way Upstream was set aboard a cabin cruiser on an English river. First performed in Yorkshire, when it was brought to the National Theatre, the boat was held in a 6,000-gallon tank of water. The tank split, the water cascaded through the stage machinery, previews were cancelled and on the opening night a critic turned up in wellies.

• In 1991 Adrian Noble put on Henry IV parts I and II for the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford. However for the first week there was no scenery as the workshops frantically tried to complete its construction.

• Rotating stages have caused a number of performances to come a cropper. Last year a power surge at the Bridge Theatre in central London caused its revolving set to stop. The performance of Young Marx, starring Rory Kinnear, never made it past the interval.

• In 2013 the roof of the West End’s historic Apollo Theatre collapsed midway through a packed performance of The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-Time, injuring 88 people. The show had been taking £190,000 a week at the box office, with its closure costing the producers, the National Theatre, millions.

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No blue lines: police taught how to use banter

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

A piece in yesterday’s Times by Fiona Hamilton, Crime Editor:

Police officers in Leicestershire had hoped for a crime investigation course to improve their skills. Instead they will be taught how to banter in the office without causing offence.

The training, which officers first thought was a joke, is to help them to understand the “fine line” between funny and harmful communication. It is said to “put political correctness in its place, recognise the benefits of fun at work and focus on the risk and responsibilities for all concerned”.

One officer said yesterday: “It’s not a wind-up though it sounds like one. It shows the disconnect between the front line and HQ. We could badly do with some crime investigation training at all levels but instead we get this.”

Details of the banter training were posted on Leicestershire police’s intranet. The course promises to teach officers about banter-related case law and how to minimise the risk of employment tribunal claims and “excluded, unhappy and unproductive staff”. It will provide practical advice for “tackling banter in the work-place” and a “technique for having a challenge conversation about workplace banter”. [J4MB: Begging the questions, of course, about why banter has to be “tackled”, and why there needs to be a “challenging conversation”.]

The force said that it was not possible to provide the cost of the course, but on the plus side it would provided valuable income for fat ugly whiny feminists, who otherwise are all but unemployable. [J4MB: We may have inserted a few words there.] Lynne Woodward, from the force’s equality unit, said that the voluntary training was not about constraining and restricting conversations among colleagues. [J4MB: In the immortal word of Eric Morecambe, “Rubbish!” That’s PRECISELY what it’s “about”. What lines of work did hatchet-faced humourless women pursue before recent decades? You wouldn’t want to be at the Xmas party of the “equality unit”, would you? Poking yourself in both eyes with a sharp stick would surely be more fun.] “We recognise the workplace should be a sociable environment, so long as no women’s feelings are ever hurt” she said. [J4MB: Again, a few words added by us, but we think they’re implied.]

Last week a Metropolitan Police officer was placed under investigation for telling colleagues that their behaviour needed to be “whiter than white”.

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Piers Morgan’s campaign for men is straight out of the MRA and incel playbooks

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

Our thanks to James for pointing us to this cat litter liner in the New Statesman. Sadly there doesn’t appear to be a comments section, otherwise I’d have pointed readers to Karen Straughan’s keynote speech at the recent conference, Why women must consign feminism to the dustbin of history.

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TEXAS: Bartenders are criminally charged after drunk 50-year-old woman allegedly causes fatal car accident

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

Our thanks to Martin for this. He writes:

I thought it was the responsibility of the drinker not to get drunk, not the bartender’s.

Is it the responsibility of the local butcher that a person gets fat, for selling him/her the meat?

What has the world come to? women are not responsible for anything, yet have all the rights.

The gentleman culture really belongs to the dustbin of history by now.

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Do you have a used laptop you could donate to J4MB?

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

We’re upgrading our IT and wish to take advantage of a trade-in deal at Currys PC World, to enable us to get £200 off a new laptop. If you have a used but still functional laptop not more than seven years old, please let me know (mike@j4mb.org.uk). The contractual terms of the deal are here. We’ll cover the cost of transport to an address in London.

We understand the deal will only be available for a few more days, so the earlier we can sort this matter out, the better. Thanks.

If everyone who read this gave us just £1.00 – or even better, £1.00 or more, monthly – we could change the world. Click here to make a difference. Thanks.

The Guardian: UK survey (for the Girlguiding organisation) finds sharp decline in happiness of young women and girls

/ Mike Buchanan / Leave a comment

Young women and girls less happy today? In the words of punk songstress Toyah Wilcox, It’s a mystery, oh, it’s a mystery. An extract:

Older Guides who have risen through the ranks of the organisation expressed shock at the deep levels of unhappiness revealed in the 2018 survey. “It’s really sad,” said Victoria Kinkaid, a 23-year-old medical student who has been a Guide for 18 years.

She pointed to more encouraging findings too. Young girls were more likely to consider themselves a feminist – up from just over a third (35%) in 2013 to just under half (47%) this year. “That’s a lovely thing to hear,” said Kinkaid. “When I was 16, being a feminist had a lot of negative connotations attached to it. Today from what I can see on social media, it’s more of a trendy word and less of a taboo.”

Feminism is a “trendy word” on social media? Hilarious. In the real world, the evil toxic ideology is dying on its arse. Today, despite relentless feminist propaganda, most “young girls” don’t consider themselves feminists (in common with a higher proportion of older girls, and women). There’s hope yet.

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