TRIGGER WARNING- This article contains references to trans*phobic hate speech.

Julie Burchill, you are not the mouthpiece of the feminist population

Original Article: Julie Burchill, “Transsexuals should cut it out” (The original article, as mentioned, has been removed. This is a copy)

On the 13th January, The Observer’s website erupted. This surge in on-line users and commenters can be accounted to Julie Burchill’s recent upload. Her article, entitled Transsexuals Should Cut It Out, caused uproar. The language she used was dubbed my many ‘unacceptable’, and ‘motivated by hate’.

The article came in ‘defence’ of her good friend, Suzanne Moore. Moore had written a piece about women’s anger in a book of essays, Red: The Waterstones Anthology. In her piece Moore had written that women were angry about “not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual”. The comparison was shocking in and of itself, but because it had come from a well respected journalist and feminist, the shock caused outrage. Moore received abuse, and to the greatest extent, death threats from Twitter users, which were wholly wrong and shameful, but they were from a minority if the trans* population, and condemned by many more, which Burchill evidently fails to realise.

The cause of the offence of Moore’s words was the ignorance of the tragedies that occur every day in Brazil. Brazil has the highest rate of LGBT people murders in the world, with the GGB (Grupo Gay de Bahia) announcing that every 33 hours a Brazilian LGBT person was brutally murdered in 2011 as a victim of hate crime. While Moore had unwittingly caused the offence, her refusal to apologise allowed one of the most transphobic pieces in journalism to be published.

The message of Burchill’s article was emphasised throughout, through inference and blatant insult; transsexuals are a second class. Burchill consistently undermined trans* people and their struggle, arguing it was nothing compared to that of a “natural born woman”. She trivialised trans* people in regards to the article, likening their outcry to a that of “screaming mimis”, and in a wider context, dubbing transsexuals “dicks in chicks’ clothing”. The legitimate upset in regards to Moore’s comparison was brutalised by Burchill, claiming the “grim groupies” “savaged” Moore.

Burchill dehumanised and ridiculed trans* people, claiming the “imagined” women, who in her opinion, “look like an oven-ready porn star”. This perpetuates the (wrongly) assumed image of a trans* woman (because Burchill all but ignores trans men) as looking like an exaggerated form of typical female beauty. She simplified gender reassignment surgery (male to female surgery only, again) as a simple operation of having their “cock cut off”, which is entirely unrepresentative of the surgery (which isn’t undertaken by every trans* person anyway) and signifies Burchill’s lack of fundamental knowledge, or even research.

Putting trans* people in a higher social position, reaffirming their apparent privilege of “family money”, “safety nets” and “education beyond all common sense”, while appealing to the “women of working-class origin”, Burchill attempts to create a social divide. The resentment those wealthier and more privileged than you has been exploited many times in history, and Burchill tries to repeat this, opening trans* people up to discrimination and abuse.

Even odder than her assumption that trans* people are privileged, over-educated and middle class, is Burchill’s conjecture that she speaks for the feminist population. Ending her article with “you really won’t like us when we’re angry”, Burchill believes her article is representative of all feminists. Julie Burchill, you are not the mouthpiece for the feminist movement.

The response to this article was massive, and online polls indicated an overwhelming majority thought Burchill had gone “too far in her ‘transphobic’ defence of Suzanne Moore”. On the 20th January, the polls on the Independent’s website reported 87% of people favoured this view. As a result, the debate of freedom of speech versus hate speech has come to the forefront of society. Burchill’s article is a clear example of how hate speech i.e. communication that vilifies a person or group on the basis of a characteristic (in this case gender), should limit the right to free speech. It would not have been so bad, had a person on the street used this language, but it came from an influential mode of media, from the Guardian no less. The press have a responsibility to remain free of hate speech, as what they publish reaches thousands of vulnerable and easily influenced readers, and in this case, they ignored this responsibility.

However, once something is out in ‘cyber-space’, it is not as easy as removing it from one website to remove it from people’s minds. The Observer’s response, taking down the article and apologising for the “hurt and offence caused”, can be viewed as a cowardly act of not acknowledging their initial irresponsible actions. One can only hope editors learn from this mistake and not take transphobia, or any hate speech, lightly.

While it is hard to disagree Burchill did want to defend her friend, she used this defence as an excuse to legitimise her hatred and bigotry. One Twitter user sums this article neatly: “life could be worse; Julie Burchill could be defending you”.

(The views represented in this article are a result of a Penarth DF meeting, whereby Moore’s, Burchill’s and response articles were analysed and assessed)

Referenced Articles:

Suzanne Moore, “Seeing red: the power of female anger”

Original Article: Julie Burchill, “Transsexuals should cut it out” (The original article, as mentioned, has been removed. This is a copy)