And he is a god, though one born of a different time and a different need. Jackson rose in the last days of enigma and wonder; West, in an accessible age, when every fuck is a tweet and every defecation a status update. And perhaps, in that way, West has done something more remarkable, more amazing than Jackson, because he is a man of no mystery, overexposed, who holds the world’s attention through simply the consistent, amazing, near-peerless quality of his work.
For several years, I did a monthly technology surgery on BBC Radio Scotland. It was fun to do, but I was always scared that one day everyone would find out I was trans and the gig would be up.
This morning, I did a technology surgery on BBC Radio Scotland. I wore a nice dress.
My dad was born in 1940. In his early twenties, he was part of the Bob Dylan generation and his devotion to that cause is overwhelmingly reflected in his record collection, but he was also influenced by Scottish folk artists like Hamish Imlach and Matt McGinn. He played guitar and wrote his own songs and it’s clear that my interest and passion for music is inherited from him. He loved playing, but -apart from family parties- he never performed in public. His three kids, at some point or another, all ended up playing in bands, so I suppose we took his musical interests just a little bit further.
A minority of individuals may elect to have personalized modules sitting at home so they can leave their vacation stuff and the kids’ soccer gear in them. They’ll still want that convenience.
The vehicles, however, will no longer be driven by humans because in 15 to 20 years — at the latest — human-driven vehicles will be legislated off the highways.
Lutz reckons that the big names of the future won’t be car makers. They’ll be Uber, or Lyft, or whatever other high-tech, tax-dodging, anti-regulation “disruptor†gets the market. He’s probably right.
The company responsible for launching the modern carmaking era with Henry Ford’s assembly line will pivot away from being a full-line automaker, shrinking its passenger-car lineup and shifting only to low-volume, high-margin models.
The idea of autonomous transport modules whooshing around the place is undoubtedly appealing, but in the UK we live in a country that hasn’t got the hang of trains yet, and we’ve been running them commercially since 1812.
So you’ll understand why I’m just a little bit cynical.
I’m still not too sure about autonomous vehicles. I think they’re coming, but not as quickly as many people predict: in the shorter term electric bicycles are having a bigger impact because the technology is simpler, the benefits much more dramatic and the cost of entry much, much lower.
As industry observer Horace Dediu pointed out on Twitter:
For distances up to 9 km the eBike is the fastest mode of transport in urban areas. Half of Germany’s 30 million commuters travel less than 10km to work.
In most European cities, e-bikes are faster than cars. You do not have to work as hard or get as sweaty so they work in hot environments, and you can bundle up for the ride in colder cities. New bikes are being designed that are safer and easier for older riders
I live in Glasgow, and I don’t cycle. It’s only partly because I’m lazy. It’s mainly because the roads near me are busy, the drivers are all mental and there aren’t any bike lanes. Bike lanes and e-bikes could transform cities like mine, probably more than any gleaming white hyperconnected travel pods. And for considerably less money too.
Autonomous vehicles, especially car-like ones, are still enormously resource-intensive and inefficient modes of transport. That’s not going to change in the foreseeable future.
Treehugger again:
Perhaps instead of being so obsessed with making the world safe for autonomous cars, we should be concentrating on making them safe for bikes and e-bikes; they are going to carry a lot more people a lot sooner.
I don’t swim any more. I used to, because I preferred it to going to the gym. And of course when you’re a parent it’s a cheap way to keep the kids amused. But since becoming me, the thought of going to a swimming pool scares the shit out of me.
…I can’t remember the last time I actually went swimming. I don’t think it will be anytime soon.
Likewise. I’m not scared of much any more, but I’m scared of that. Scared of public humiliation. Scared that someone will be scared of me. Scared that even in gender-neutral changing facilities where the only time I’m naked is in a locked, private cubicle, someone will loudly object to my being there and claim I’m somehow dangerous.
Dangerously clumsy, maybe. But dangerous? The only risk from my presence anywhere near a swimming pool is if I fall on you or belly flop nearby.
There are trans-friendly, private swimming sessions around the UK, I know. The next Glasgow one, I believe, is on the 3rd of June. I can’t make it, but I don’t want to go either. I know they’re well-intentioned, that the idea is to create a safe space where trans, intersex and non-binary people can swim and change without fear, but I’m not a great believer in segregating people. I’d feel second-class, like I was sneaking in to use a space I’m not supposed to be in.
Trans, intersex and non-binary people shouldn’t need safe spaces. There is nothing inherently dangerous about a changing area, or a swimming pool. And there’s nothing inherently dangerous about a trans person.
The reason I’m scared to go swimming is because of people pushing the predator myth: we can’t let group X near our children or women because they’re violent, sexual predators. It was said about various ethnic minorities. It was said about gay, bisexual and lesbian people. And now it’s being said about people like me.
These days no decent people mind sharing a changing room with people of different ethnicities, nationalities or sexualities, because they know that most people with different ethnicities, nationalities or sexualities are decent people too.
I’d like to think decent people think the same about trans people, but in the current climate I’m too scared to test the water.
Before I came out, I was scared of men. Now I’m scared of women too.
Trans Media Watch’s submission to Parliament on the subject of hate crime and biased media reporting is pretty frightening.
In 8 weeks from March 2018, TMW identified 445 pieces about trans/intersex/non-binary people in UK newspapers (the study excluded LGBT titles such as Gay Times, Diva etc and religious titles such as The Catholic Herald). The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday alone accounted for more than 120.
In the same period in 2012, there were 73.
TMW’s analysis is fair: it covers a huge range of titles (the Hull Daily Mail and The Grocer as well as the Fleet Street titles) and as you can see from the included appendix and the graph I’ve embedded at the top of this post it includes positive stories as well as negative ones.
Trans people have come to dread Sundays in particular, because the Mail on Sunday and Sunday Times run anti-trans pieces every week: between them they ran 23 pieces about trans people during the 8 week monitoring period.
So I thought it’d be interesting to go with numbers rather than just gut feeling, to compare the number of positive stories about trans/intersex/NB people against the ones suggesting we’re involved in child sacrifice or the ones – particularly in the Sunday Times – that get retracted weeks later because they are complete bollocks.
There was a good piece about anti-trans hysteria in the (Glasgow) Herald this week. I know the author, Oceana Maund, a trans activist who couldn’t be more different to the lazy, malicious stereotype of trans activists as angry young people wearing masks and shouting. Maund is a brave and thoughtful person who seeks to build bridges, not burn them.
The combination of being physically assaulted in public on two previous occasions and the fact that I am a single parent with a teenage daughter means I am probably more concerned than most.
In Scotland the law means that anyone found using public toilets or changing rooms for nefarious purposes, regardless of what they are wearing or what is between their legs, will rightly face prosecution and severe penalty.
To claim that trans women are likely to use toilets and changing rooms for anything other than the designed purpose demonises an already misrepresented minority.
The piece is on the long side, but fair play to the Herald for running it: it once more debunks the complete bullshit being spread about proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act.
I mentioned Jake Graf’s wedding a few weeks ago; now I’m sharing one of his films.
I was reminded of it this morning when I called to change my car insurance policy. After going through all the security questions I got stuck in a bit of a loop.
“Okay, and your name is?”
– Carrie.
“No, sorry, I need your name now.”
– It’s Carrie.
“No, I mean *your* name.”
– It’s Carrie. I’m the policy holder. Carrie Marshall.
“But it says here… it says Ms.”
– I know, your system doesn’t support Mx. I’m transgender.
“But…”
Bear in mind that the very first question he’d asked me in the call was “can I take your name, please?”
Eventually we agreed that my name was indeed Carrie, but he wasn’t happy about it. I lost count of the number of times in our short conversation the agent asked, “are you sure there isn’t anything else you need to inform us about?”
It’s annoying, but thankfully it doesn’t happen very often: when I called my bank the other day to try and resolve a name issue (RBS has been trying and failing to change my name on two accounts since November), the chap on the phone used my old name. I hadn’t even noticed, but he spent so long apologising I was starting to worry that the call might end with him committing seppuku.
And as Jake’s video shows, sometimes people are not just okay, but actually brilliant.
I went as me to see Manic Street Preachers at the SSE Hydro tonight, assuming (correctly) that if any band’s crowd would be cool with trans people it’d be theirs.
But it was still a really big deal, a major step for me. I spent most of today absolutely shitting myself at the prospect.
I go to the Hydro a lot, but before tonight I hadn’t gone as me. It’s too big, too busy, capable of holding 12,000 people. That’s a lot of potential trouble when you’re tall and visibly trans. The long walkway you travel post-gig can be pretty rowdy too. For a while I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do it.
So I’ve been working up to it. The bar of King Tut’s, capacity a few hundred. The new bit of the Royal Concert Hall, capacity 500. The O2 ABC, capacity 1,200. The O2 Academy, 2,500.
And tonight, the 12K Hydro.
Not so much out of my comfort zone as on a completely different planet to it.
And like every other big step I’ve had to take, I had to do it solo. No wingman to give me confidence. No voice offering assurance that I can do this. No shoulder to cry on when the sheer enormity of it all seems too much.
It’s a hard road to walk. Harder still to walk alone.
A couple of weeks ago I linked to an article by Amia Srinivasan that among other things discussed “incelsâ€, angry young men who believe they’re the victims of evil women.
The dynamic is a familiar one in the age of digital community building. Once the incels griped to themselves, occasionally victimizing others, and sometimes getting over their pathology or finding a partner. Now they can come together online and find others to validate their grievances and encourage them to action.
Update, 30/4:
Writing in The Observer, Catherine Bennett used the Toronto terror atrocity to attack the real enemy here: trans women. Her column compared trans women to incels and Jack The Ripper..
