Harry’s Place

For the first time, the Palestinian Authority has taken out advertisements in Israel’s Hebrew language press to promote the Saudi peace plan. The 2002 Saudi plan (in brief) offers diplomatic recognition of Israel in exchange for the lands captured in 1967, East Jerusalem and a “just solution” to the Palestinian refugee question. I don’t want to get into the details of the plan here, which broadly accords with what a majority of Israelis and Palestinians support, depending of course on your definition of a “just solution” for the refugees and the boundaries of East Jerusalem.

By going over the head of Israel’s fractious politicians, the PA has done something imaginative and productive, which hopefully will at least trigger debate. As the BBC reports:

The PA advertisement appears in the three main Hebrew dailies and is headed by the Palestinian and Israeli flags.

The text reads: “Fifty-seven Arab and Muslim countries will establish diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for a full peace accord and the end of the occupation.”

The advert includes the full text of the seven-point initiative and is framed by the flags of 50 Arab and Muslim countries.

Mabruk!

This is a guest post by habibi

Azad Ali is the president of the Civil Service Islamic Society (CSIS). This is how the CSIS presents itself on its web site:

The Civil Service Islamic Society (CSIS) was launched in February 2005 and is a non-political, voluntary society, representative of mainstream Islamic opinion in central government. The Society works within the Civil Service framework of honesty, impartiality and integrity. It aims to build on common shared inter-faith values for the benefit of the Civil Service. The mission of the CSIS is to raise awareness of Islam, influence areas of interests and empower its Muslim staff by acting as a representative body of mainstream Islamic affairs. The patron and ambassador of the Civil Service Islamic Society is Sir Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service.

Azad Ali blogs here under the umbrella of the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE).  The IFE is linked to Jamaat i Islami and the East London Mosque.

Take a look at Ali’s latest post, titled “Defeating extremism by promoting balance”.  It is an embittered call to Muslims to stand up for what he sees as a correct understanding of jihad: it is the struggle against “oppression” in religiously appropriate circumstances as well as inner purification.  In fact, he opens the post with some words from Huthaifa Azzam, son of Abdullah Azzam, a prominent “Afghan Arab” in the 1980s jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, a mentor of Osama bin Laden, and a fanatical Jew hater.  Here’s a short video telling part of Azzam père’s story.

While discussing the theological contribution of Azzam fils, Ali cites this quote:

“If I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier’s uniform inside Iraq I would kill him because that is my obligation. If I found the same soldier over the border in Jordan I wouldn’t touch him. In Iraq he is a fighter and an occupier, here he is not. This is my religion and I respect this as the main instruction in my religion for jihad.”

For Azad Ali, apparently these are words of wisdom, for jihad must be reclaimed not from al Qaeda alone, who have bombed Amman, Huthaifa Azzam’s home, but Muslim peaceniks too:

There are a few Muslims who promote the understanding of the term Jihad in its comprehensive glory, one that reflects history as well as the practice of Muslims going back to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.

There are multiple reasons for this, but primarily, in my opinion, it is to do with the restrictions (whether perceived or actual) placed on Muslims by themselves. Self-censorship has taken many Muslims to the point where you can almost feel the contempt they have for Jihad. We have had campaign after campaign that tells people Islam is peace, scholars, activists and droves of Muslims rush to let everyone know that Islam is peace.

Of course this action by the vast majority is noble and I am not knocking that – but I am concerned why they could not say Islam is about Justice – peace is related to Justice. What peace does a man have when he is oppressed? What peace does the soul have when it has transgressed Allah’s boundaries? Is it not said that Muslims are in the category of Nafs (soul) al-Lawamma (questioning/blame) and we aspire to be in the category of Nafs al-Mutma’innah (soul at peace)?By this approach we have caused disillusionment and in some instances radical and extreme reactions from within.

You may take Shaykh Anwar Awlaki as an example. Reading his blogs, one cannot help but feel his frustration at the constant denial of legitimate Islamic principles. Worse is the complete incompetence of some Muslims to distinguish between Jihad and acts of murder.

Though the wording is cautious, surely Azad Ali is citing Azzam fils as an example to follow precisely because he supports the murder – yes, it would be murder - of British soldiers in Iraq.

He does not say what British Muslims should do if jihad is an obligation.  Perhaps a civil servant could ask him.

This is very dangerous talk.   Supporting jihad in Iraq, or other “occupied” lands for that matter, is bad enough.  Worse, at home in Britain, is the conclusion the angriest young men who hear the likes of it may draw.  If the British army in Iraq is certainly a legitimate target, the state is its master, and voters and taxpayers choose the government and fund the army, why not mount attacks in the UK?  This is indeed a message that recurs in “martyrdom videos” of arrested British jihadis.

Note too Azad Ali’s citation of Anwar al Awlaki, an American Yemeni Islamist, in the quotes above.  Ali is fond of al Awlaki, calling him ”one of my favourite speakers and scholars” and saying “I really do love him for the sake of Allah, he has an uncanny way of explaining things to people which is endearing”.  In this post Ali is referring specifically to this hateful screed,  where al Awlaki claims America is at war with Islam “and not just against the so called extremists”; insists that Muslims have a duty ”to strive through Jihad to establish the Islamic Khilafah [caliphate]; and compares American Muslims who particpated in the presidential election to abused dogs that remain loyal to their “owners” only because they are given a bone once in a while.

In a related post on the American election, al Awlaki calls American Muslims who voted in the presidential election “house negros” and tells them “you will always be seen as the enemy and you will never be accepted unless you do one thing: give up your religion”.

Mr al Awlaki is, well, quite unbalanced.  So is anyone who admires him, such as Azad Ali, for example.

Turning back to Britain, Azad Ali thinks that the government’s domestic anti-extremism measures are bound to fail, and he says so, bluntly:

The millions pumped in by the government to ‘de-radicalise’ Muslims will be a complete waste and will not really achieve anything other than one or two headlines here and there. The real victory will come when we start promoting ‘balance’ in this matter (and in our religion) and not either of the two extremes.

“Balance”, as far as Azad Ali is concerned, appears to mean buying into Azzam’s conception of jihad in order to “defeat extremism”. What else, in practice, does Ali expect the government to do? To support jihadi politics overseas? To allow those who promote jihad into the UK?  To partner with organisations in the UK which are linked to jihadi parties, such as Jamaat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood?

If CSIS is to make a worthwhile contribution to anti-extremism campaigns, it needs a new president.

The trouble is, Azad Ali has made links with officialdom over many years, which puts him in a strong position when he pushes this dangerous and foolish agenda. See this description of his extensive dealings with various governmental bodies:

Azad Ali is married with 3 children and lives in East London; he has been a community activist for over 20 years. He is a presenter on Muslim Community Radio’s flagship show Easy Talk. Aziz is the former chair of the Muslim Safety Forum and currently leads on the Counter Terrorism work-team for the Forum, working with the Home Office, ACPO and Security Services. Azad is currently the President of the Civil Service Islamic Society and a Board Member of the London CrimeStoppers. He is also a Trustee of the East London Mosque & London Muslim Centre. He chairs the Muslim Council of Britain’s Membership Committee and is a member of its Central Working Committee. He is also the Vice-Chair of Canon Barnet School Board of Governors and Chair of the Saturday Islamic School Board of Governors. He sits on the Strategic Stop & Search Committee and Police Use of Firearms Group with the Met. Azad is also a member of the IPCC’s Community Advisory Group and the Home Office’s Trust and Confidence Community Panel.

As far as CSIS itself goes, many of its activities appear wholly anodyne to me. However, this year part of the proceeds of its annual iftar dinner were passed to Interpal (source here), a charity that is banned in a number of jurisdictions, although not in the United Kingdom. The dinner was attended by Sadiq Khan, MP, and Peter Lewis, head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

What a sad and mad state of affairs. Poor Britain. It needs and deserves much better when it comes to fighting and beating extremism.

Here are two articles that discuss Sharia courts in action. The first extract is from the International Herald Tribune: 

A Pakistan-born 33-year-old mother of five explained that her husband would beat her and her children. “He threatens to kill us,” she said, as her daughter translated from Urdu. “He calls me a Jew and an infidel.” Hasan told her to immediately get police protection and request an Islamic divorce.

Another woman, 25, wanted out of a two-year-old arranged marriage with a man who refused to consummate the relationship. Hasan counseled dialogue.

“Until we see the husband,” he said, “we can’t be sure that what you’re saying is true.”

There was also a seminar, chaired by Lady Butler Sloss, at which Sheikh Faiz ul-Aqtab Siddiqi of the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal argued for the acceptance of polygamy:

Later, after a question from the floor, he clarified his position as being one of confusion as to why relationships such as extra-marital affairs should be recognised under English law, and furthermore how men could be permitted to marry other men, and women other women. He argued that if such relationships were not considered abhorrent, then current attitudes towards polygamy could not, and should not, be justified.

The main problem with using this argument in favour of recognition of polygamous marriages both inside and outside this country is that of proof as to whether these marriages have been entered into willingly and freely by the women involved. No one forces a person to have an extra-marital affair, or to enter into a civil partnership, but there is widespread evidence of the forcing of women into polygamous relationships in many religions and in many parts of the world. To compare consensual relationships with forced ones, whether physical or emotional coercion is used, is completely misguided.

Rosa Freedman relates the full story on CiF.

Despite the best efforts of Hugo Chavez, it seems the threat of a US invasion is not the number-one concern of Venezuelans these days.

Rather it is fear of violent crime. And Chavez’s failure to deal with it may be a factor in Sunday’s regional elections in Venezuela.

In Caracas, the vast majority of people live in fear of being victimized, pollsters and criminologists say.

Fifty-six percent of those recently polled by Datanalisis, a Caracas polling firm, said crime was their top concern, ahead of inflation and economic problems. And a poll by a well-known sociologist who studies crime, Roberto Briceño-León, showed that 64 percent feared being attacked in the streets.

Juan Forero of The Washington Post spoke with Miriam Sánchez, a resident of a Caracas slum. Unbelievably and horribly, four of her sons have been shot dead– three since Chavez took office in 1999.

Although previously a supporter of Chavez, she is now considering voting against his candidates in the election.

Though she acknowledges improvements spurred by the government’s generous social spending, Sánchez said she has little confidence that the streets will be getting safer anytime soon.

“I get angry because I feel that Chávez is the one to blame for everything that is happening because he is not watching out for Caracas,” she said. “He should be watching more television to see how much crime there is and all the killings there are.”

Forero reports that “for three years now, the government has kept homicide statistics secret, although the data are made public by crime research organizations and criminologists who receive the information surreptitiously from law enforcement sources.”

Venezuela was hardly a murder-free paradise before Chavez came to power. But in 1998, the last year before he became president, the murder rate stood at 19 per 100,000. By 2007 it had soared to 48. In that same year, in the ultra-violent United States of some Europeans’ imagination, the murder rate was 5.6– still too high, of course.

Is it unfair to compare Venezuela’s murder rate to that of the United States? Absolutely. So let’s compare it to another South American country with a reputation for unbridled violent crime– namely Brazil.

Over approximately the same period, Brazil’s homicide rate has held reasonably steady at between 25 and 30 per 100,000, and has declined somewhat. In Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, homicides have declined sharply and in 2005 were actually below the national rate.

According to a report in The Economist, the drop is due largely to stricter gun control, better policing and changing demographics.

Forero reports Venezuela’s capital and largest city has an astounding murder rate of 130 per 100,000.

In Caracas, perhaps the biggest problem is the police, who are considered ineffective and brutal and sometimes are directly involved in crime. Concern over police prompted the government, under Interior Minister Jesse Chacón, to establish a commission to reform the police in 2006.

The commission, which included representatives of the business community, criminologists, neighborhood representatives and officials from the judicial sector, issued a report that highlighted police corruption and proposed reforms. But crime experts here said the findings were ignored after Chacón, who had championed the commission, was replaced as minister by Pedro Carreño in January 2007.

Instead, the government approved a law that will merge police departments into one national force under a central command.

So Chavez has been in power nearly 10 years. Thanks to (until recently) record oil prices, he has had huge amounts of money to deal with what is clearly a national crisis. Why hasn’t he?

Watch the video. Witness for yourself the way he whips up a crowd with violent antigay rhetoric like “”Faggots, I kill every one of them!” To cheers he urges people to drive “batty man” (gays) out of “our community”. Over the course of Bounty Killer’s tirade from the stage, he appears to blame “batty man” for everything from corruption of the nation’s morals to the country’s economic hardships. His 6 minute rant ends with more exhortations to kill, this time will added sound effects of gun shots. The crowd goes wild.

Perhaps you’re Jewish, Muslim, Sikh or Hindu. Perhaps you’re black, or Asian, or eastern European, whoever you are, imagine if someone who whipped up such violent hatred and prejudice against your community was coming to your town. How would you feel?

We live in a free country and enjoy freedom of speech. We are allowed to disagree - sometimes very robustly and even disrespectfully - over matters of politics, theology, philosophy and morality, or anything else. This issue is not about that. I would support Bounty Killer’s right to condemn homosexuality and to express his aversion to it, just as I would support anyone’s right to criticises other moral, religious, liefstyle, political, or economic stances, choices or ideas.

But to whip up this level of hostility and create such a potential for violence is inexcusable and unjustifyable.

Nevertheless, Bounty Killer has been granted a visa to perform in the UK and the Metropolitan Police have agreed to let this man’s concerts go ahead.

UPDATE:

It the first one wasn’t too much for you, here’s another one from Sumfest 2008:

There can be no doubt that this sort of thing is a standard feature of his concerts.

The Guardian and The Times are reporting today on the arrest of Iranian blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, who has been accused of spying for Israel.

Derakhshan has the enviable nickname the “blogfather” for his efforts in kick starting the Iranian blogging revolution - so far the only casualties of which have been the bloggers themselves.

He was arrested after returning to Tehran a few weeks ago having lived in the UK and Canada. He had been publicly critical of Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling him a “hardline reactionary”.

Derakhshan had previously visited Israel as he wanted to show Iranian readers what “Israel really looked like and how people live there”. He said he also wanted to “humanise” Iranians for Israelis.  His reward for that slice of humanity was a visit from the Revolutionary Guards.

According to the Iranian website Jahan News, which is said to be linked to linked to the Iranian intelligence services, Derakhshan “confessed” during interrogation to being involved in espionage. Jahan News  also said he had been described in Jewish newspaper articles as a “friend of Israel”.

The Guardian quoted him as saying:  “Iran doesn’t recognise Israel, has no diplomatic relations with it … Too bad, but I don’t care. Fortunately, I am a citizen of Canada and I have the right to visit any country I like. I’m going to Israel as a citizen journalist and a peace activist.”

His blog has been blocked by Iranian government since 2004 and he founded Stop censoring us blog to watch the situation of internet censorship in Iran. The last post to his English language blog was on October 6.

That post marked one of a few that had seen him start to distance himself from Israel and praise Ahmadinejad.

“Ahmadinejad’s brilliant strategy of dismissing Israel and smiling to the U.S. has divided the the U.S. in all levels and that’s a big achievement comparing to Khatami’s weak and failed U.S. strategy that led to Iran being part of the ‘axis of evil’. Now the same Bush administration has officially opened the diplomatic line. Please get over Ahmadinejad’s scruffy look, prayers, and plain language and see these achievements.”

He had also defended Iran’s right to nuclear weapons for defensive purposes, and said he would return to defend Iran if America ever attacked. “I can’t let myself to sit down for a moment and watch make a Baghdad out of Tehran”.

The concillatory tone could be seen as an volte face or alternatively it could be seen as the reality of living and blogging back in Iran, which ever it was it did not affect the attitude of the regime.

I asked the Green Party to respond to the revelations that their Parliamentary candidate in Cheltenham, Keith Bessant, was exposed yesterday as a member of the BNP. I should add, that it transpired that there were two other people on the list that appeared to be connected with the Green Party, one a former branch chair in Essex.

Here is The Green Party’s statement, from the Chair of the party, James Humphreys:

“The Green Party stands against racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and bigotry of all kinds. We welcome the contribution to our country of people from every part of the world, and take seriously our moral obligation to give shelter to persecuted people and refugees. We consider the BNP and their extremist views an affront to British values of tolerance, equality and solidarity.

“The Green Party is aware of the past membership of Mr Bessant and Rev Stanton. Both left the Green Party a number of years ago. A third man, Barrie Davey of the Isle of Wight, is noted as having run in a local election as an “Independent Green Party” candidate. We have not to our knowledge ever had any contact with Mr Davey, and he has never been a member or candidate of the Green Party.

“The Green Party takes membership applications in good faith and we are not aware of anything that Mr Bessant or Rev Stanton had done or said prior to becoming a party member that should have made them ineligible.  However, had they promoted the BNP’s bigoted views while members, they would have been disciplined and if necessary expelled.”

Let me explain why I don’t think this is good enough.

You may recall that we have been here before. A fortnight or so back I had the painful task of exposing the fact that homophobe and antisemite Tony Gosling was a Green Party candidate in Bristol, and that two other office-bearers were also given to antisemitic conspiracy theories and 9/11 ‘Troof’ lunacy. The Green Party issued a statement on this and promised to investigate. At this time, I have no information about how far that investigation has come.

Now, first things first. I accept that Mr Davey has nothing to do with the official Green Party, so let’s write him out of the story. I have also discovered that Rev Stanton appears to be quite mad and confused and quite clearly has no business being in politics. How, then, he managed to obtain a position of some responsibility in the Green Party is a troubling mystery. But, as they put Tony Gosling forward as a candidate in an election, it seems the Party’s strength isn’t rooting out the hatters. (Remember a “9/11 Truth” motion was only narrowly defeated at their AGM!)

So let’s let it go as far as Rev Stanton is concerned.

But Keith Bessant was a parliamentary candidate in not one but two consecutive general elections. That means he was in a high-profile, public-facing, leadership position in the party for about 7 years! What’s more, the last general election was in 2005. The leaked BNP list was apparently from last year. That means there was less than two years in which Bessant metamorphosised from a Green Party Parliamentary Candidate into a far-right BNP Member.

To then dismiss his association by saying he left the party “a number of years ago” is just plain spin. It’s bullshit, and its horrifying to think that if Mr Bessant was on the political trajectory we now know he was on, what the consequences might have been had he bucked the trend and actually won an election. This is my theory: The Greens (c.f. Tony Gosling) are personally and institutionally unable to spot people with zany views. I don’t believe that Bessant had some weird Damascene experience within a year of fighting an election for the Greens and decided to become a white nationalist instead. I believe he was a crank all along but that many of his views - probably diplomatically phrased, but zany nonetheless - simply did not register as zany.

Humphreys says “However, had they promoted the BNP’s bigoted views while members, they would have been disciplined and if necessary expelled.” But is this good enough? Bessant wasn’t some strange loner hanging about the back of the hall after local meetings, he was right up front, on the podium, with the energies of the entire constituency membership behind him trying to get him elected. For all those years, for two consecutive general elections, what was he doing? Faking it? Or perhaps, like Gosling, he said a few ‘odd’ things about the ‘gay mafia’ or ‘the new world order’ or ‘Jewish bankers’ and no one noticed! Or at least thought it was anything to be too worried about.

Now it is also possible that Bessant was a political light-weight and highly impressionable and simply ’fell in with the wrong crowd’ some time in the year or so after the general election. But if he is so simple-minded that all his years in the Greens hadn’t educated him about the BNP and steadied every fibre of his being against racism and fascism, then something is seriously wrong. If he is so naive and impressionable that this theory holds together, then did he have any business being a parliamentary candidate in the first place? Is the Green Party so desperate for candidates that they take anyone willing to stand? No wonder they are targeted then by cynical entryists and madmen with egos and delusions.

As a progressive party, do they not have a responsibility to the public to ensure that those they put up in front of us for election are up to the job, are sound, and steady? Do they appreciate that they almost sent a nazi to Westminster on a Green ticket?

But there is another ugly possibility which I hope the Party leadership take seriously. Perhaps these cranks do feel they have something in common with the party. Perhaps they do think “hey, the Greens, that’s the party for me!”.

If I were a Green Party leader, I’d be terribly seriously worried about this. I ask myself “what it is about the Party that seems to attract these nutters?”

I understand their impulse for damage control, but this bland statement won’t do. Instead of excuses, I’d like to know that they’re taking this series of unfortunate events very seriously indeed. I want to know that they’re freaking out. I certainly would be.

UPDATE:

According to the Press Association, “The Green Party has revealed one of its former parliamentary candidates joined the British National Party because he believed its climate change policy ‘was more radical’.”

The Green Party said Mr Bessant left to join the BNP but is thought to have left soon after.

A spokesman for the Green Party said: “He formed the opinion that the BNP climate change policy was more radical than ours.

“He didn’t hold any racist or bigoted views and I believe he left after a couple of weeks. It’s amazing how little people know about the BNP.”

Seriously, guys, come on! Are we honestly meant to believe that you field Parliamentary candidates who are so naive about politics that they don’t know that the BNP is a far-right racist party!?

You know, what upsets me is that this is possibly true… in which case what the party has done is unforgivably unethical. Are you really pushing people into leadership roles in constituencies when it is clear that they are fragile, vulnerable and unstable… and (if you’ll forgive the expression) “politically green”? Do you do this simply to get the Green Party’s name ‘out there’ without any regard for the person’s mental health or suitability for the role? Do you use people? Do you use them just as something local to anchor Green Party leaflets onto?

Hat Tip - Pootergeek

UPDATE - Loads more here

This is a guest post by Sarah Brown

Back in October, David T wrote about a row which had erupted between LGB campaigning organisation, Stonewall, and some members of the UK transgender community, as well as some of our LGB and straight supporters and allies, over the nomination of Julie Bindel for Stonewall’s “Journalist of the Year Award”.

It may be worth taking a few moments to clarify why many trans people are so upset with Bindel. To hear her side of the story, one would imagine it was all about her 2004 article, “Gender Benders Beware”, where she pandered to negative stereotypes about us, suggested that we were all gay people who transition to avoid the social stigma of a same-sex relationship, and said that a world inhabited by transsexual people would “look like the set of grease”. She would also, I suspect, point out that she apologised for the tone of that article, and that she is only interested in honest debate.

The view from the other side of the “debate” is rather different. I am a trans woman (i.e. I transitioned from male to female) who is also a lesbian, and was one of the many people who chipped-in to make what ended up being the UK’s largest ever trans-rights demo, when around 150 protesters gathered outside Stonewall’s awards ceremony on a cold November evening, happen. My objection to Bindel has nothing to do with her pandering to negative stereotypes about me and people like me. Her 2004 article was ludicrous, it’s true. Transsexual people are not the stereotypes she portrays us as, we come in all “shapes and sizes”, just like the rest of society (girly girls and macho men, to butch lesbian trans women and effeminate gay trans men who sometimes enjoy a bit of drag).

The suggestion that we transition to avoid being seen as homosexual is also ridiculous. While it’s true in Iran, there are cases of people using gender transition as a last, desperate way to avoid execution for being gay, the UK is not Iran. Being visibly transsexual, a stage that most of us occupy for at least the early part of transition, if not forever in some cases, is to invite constant stares and threats of violence to a point where it’s a struggle to avoid having ones spirit crushed. It also ignores the rather inconvenient (for Bindel) point that after transition, transsexual people identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual in a far greater proportion than the rest of society.

No, where I have a real problem with Bindel’s work is with the stuff she hasn’t apologised for, much of which is far nastier than merely insulting a whole group of people in a national newspaper. Listening to Bindel talk about this (and she does, at length), one may form the impression that she’s invented her own version of transsexualism in her head. One where instead of us begging and fighting with doctors and NHS bureaucrats to obtain the one thing that helps end the pain of gender dysphoria, she pictures gender psychiatrists luring unsuspecting effeminate men and butch women into gender clinics. There they use their psychiatric mind-control powers, presumably accompanied by glowing, spinning eyeballs, to talk us in to having our willies or breasts “cut off”. This is because, so Bindel’s argument goes, transsexualism was invented in the 1950s by psychiatrists, motivated by a desire to make everyone conform to culturally oppressive gender roles. Since Bindel suggests gender (and here she seems to lose the distinction between gender identity and gender roles - a distinction which is crucially important for trans people) is simply a tool to oppress women, it follows that transsexualism is a medical plot to keep women down, presumably by maintaining a nice wide gap between “male” and “female” gender roles.

This too is ludicrous. For a start, the numbers involved simply do not add up - in the grand scheme of things there are hardly any transsexual people (5000 transsexual people in the UK is a figure that’s often quoted, although most agree this is an underestimate) , and far from being instrumental in enforcing gender barriers in society, we’re usually presented as figures of fun or contempt, sad pathetic people who are “fooling” nobody, or subversive deceivers who “trick” unsuspecting men into having “gay” sex. We have about as much influence on gender norms as a cork bobbing about in the wake of a supertanker has on its course.

But Bindel doesn’t stop there. She seems to be on a crusade to end this horrible conspiracy. In the summer of 2007, I sat in the audience for BBC Radio 4’s “Hecklers” debate in which Bindel took on four panellists in order to argue that “sex change surgery is unnecessary mutilation”. I listened to her paint a picture suggesting people like me are pathetic Emily Howard type characters, obsessed with girly shopping trips for blouses in pastel shades, and also say that “sex change surgery should not be available”, and that we “should be offered talking cures instead”.

That’s getting to the nub of why I, and many others, find Bindel’s views and agenda so objectionable; trans people represent an inconvenient diversion on the road to her genderless utopia (where everyone presumably “does gender” in the one true approved, vaguely masculine flavour of largely chaste grey androgyny). If we really are who we say we are, then we blow some of her vital assumptions about gender out of the water. Therefore we cannot be who we say we are - we must be deluded, the victims of a medical conspiracy.

And we have to go, for the good of the revolution.

While trolling the Facebook group set up to talk about the Stonewall protest, Bindel said that she did not support reparative therapy (the type of treatment favoured by the US religious right to “deprogram” LGBT people):

“I can confirm that I am strongly against ‘reparative’ or ‘aversion’ therapy, full stop.”

…but she refused to clarify her oft-stated position that we should not be allowed to have access to medical transition, that we just need to be talked out of it. I think she’s playing word games. She doesn’t “support” reparative therapy because she doesn’t believe what she’s advocating is reparative therapy; it’s not a duck, even though it quacks, waddles and can be found scrounging bread on urban riverbanks the length of the country.

Bindel likes to play the victim, to protest that everyone is harassing her. Presumably she believes that our programming by the evil psychiatrists is so pervasive that we can’t recognise her hand of friendship for what it is, and so bite it instead. She wants us to understand that she just wants to have a “debate”.

And that’s my second big problem with Bindel - the way she seems to think we owe her. She assumes our audience and participation in a debate she wants to have about whether we should be allowed to exist. It’s an academic exercise for her, but for us, this “debate” is about our lives. There seems to be absolutely nothing in it for us; we get to fight a rearguard action, justifying our right to exist, with the best possible (and extremely unlikely) outcome being that she stops being quite so gratuitously offensive towards us in her Guardian columns. Big deal.

One of the complaints many feminists have about the way men tend to behave towards women is the assumption that women will just drop what we’re doing to follow the agenda of a particular man who might be, for example, trying to chat us up (you were having a bad day, reading a book, just wanting to be left alone, none of that matters, can I pester you to have a cup of coffee with me? Oh, you’re a lesbian! Can I watch?) Bindel’s behaviour here is tragically ironic.

Even then, some of us decided to call her bluff. A forum was created in the Facebook group for this “debate” to happen in. A few of us asked questions. One woman asked:

1) Do you believe that ’sex change surgery is unnecessary mutilation’?
2) can a trans woman be (a) a woman; (b) a lesbian; (c) a feminist?
3) can/should we be ‘cured’ with talking therapies?
4) should we be denied hormone treatment?

In the same thread, I posted my questions:

1) Have you attempted to educate yourself on contemporary trans feminist thought by, e.g. reading Whipping Girl?
2) Do you know how easy oestrogen is to get without a prescription, and that there are non-UK surgeons who will operate with few questions asked?
3) What do you think of legal regimes which deny women legitimate routes to obtaining healthcare, thus leaving people such as back-street abortionists as the only route available?

Bindel did not respond to anyone. So much for her “debate”.

After the protest, she wrote an article in the Guardian where she declared she wanted nothing to do with other parts of the LGBT community. In it, she conflated queer people with those into “kinky sex” and said:

I for one do not wish to be lumped in with an ever-increasing list of folk defined by “odd” sexual habits or characteristics. Shall we just start with A and work our way through the alphabet? A, androgynous, b, bisexual, c, cat-fancying d, devil worshipping. Where will it ever end?

I just want to be left alone. I am not in your gang, I did not ask to be, so please don’t tell me I am one of yours, and then tell me off for offending your orthodoxy. Let’s have an amicable split, instead of ending up carrying on like The Judean People’s Front.

So imagine our surprise when, a few days later, trans campaigning group, Press for Change (who, despite having met with Stonewall’s supremo, Ben Summerskill to talk about the Bindel nomination were completely silent about the protest, and actively hostile towards some of those of us involved in making it work) announce that they are to be hosting “The Transsexual Debate” in Manchester on the 5th of December, between renowned US trans feminist academic, Susan Stryker, and “Stonewall award nominated journalist, Julie Bindel”.

Many of us can’t quite believe PfC are doing the very thing we were protesting about - giving Bindel the credibility that comes from being nominated for Stonewall’s Journalist of the Year and giving her another platform from which to conduct her “trannies as roadkill” agenda. Her opponent, Susan Stryker, is a formidable figure and I have absolutely no doubt that she will eviscerate Bindel’s position, but that doesn’t really matter. The mainstream press all but ignored the UK’s largest ever trans rights demo on the 6th of November outside the V&A, with the exception of Julie Bindel, writing in the Guardian. I’m not a betting woman, but if I were I’d put money on the only mainstream report on “The Transsexual Debate” being by Julie Bindel, in the Guardian.

One doesn’t have to read between the lines very much to realise that PfC feel that their noses have been put out of joint by the grass roots demo against Stonewall. There have been suggestions that they see the whole thing as some sort of a power grab against them (it’s not - we wanted their help, but they ignored us). I understand that within PfC circles, those of us involved are now being referred to as “those sort of people”. What comes as a shock is that they’re apparently willing to help such an unrepentant transphobe like Bindel push her agenda to reassert their dominance.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

The light beige Ayman al-Zawahri  have spoke his brains:

Ayman al-Zawahri said Mr Obama was not an “honourable black American” but a “house negro” - a demeaning term implying that he serves white people.