Dambusters Dog, Trans Pronouns, Letters, Haircuts, Fashion Nonsense
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| Black Retriever in a Landscape Richard Ansdell (1815-1885) Photo Credit: Walker Art Gallery [CC BY-NC] |
Some teachers at great universities now assert, however, that not only is there no such such thing as truth but also that we should refashion our accounts of past words, events and people to conform to modern mores.
I received an email last week from a man who deemed it racist that, in a recent book, I named Guy Gibson's dog. I responded that, while of course no modern person would use such a word, in 1943 the dog and its name were facts. Nonetheless, last month the dog's gravestone was removed from RAF Scampton.
We chroniclers may come to be grateful that few people nowadays learn any history except about slavery and the world wars. Most are thus blissfully ignorant that our ancestors did even worse things than give dogs racist names.
(Max Hastings, The Times, 2020)
Oh Max, we must move with the times - the dog and its name might have been facts then, but they are not to be mentioned now. The facts are to be censored or suppressed. Evidence contained in the accounts of past words, events and people must be refashioned according to what some modern historians dictate. Can these people really be called historians? By the way the dog, in question, wasn't a black retriever but a black labrador!
Trans Pronouns
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| The First Madness of Ophelia Dante Gabriel Rossetti ( 1828-1882) Photo Credit: Gallery Oldham [CC BY-NC-ND] |
Last week the performance poet and musician Kate (now Kae) Tempest came out as non-binary; that is, neither "she" nor "he" but "they". Their new name, pronounced like the letter K, is the culmination of a long journey in which they learnt "to be able to stand with my own queerness and where I sit on the gender spectrum".
Kate follows in the footsteps of the Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter Sam Smith, once "he", now "they/them". When Smith declared themselves to be no longer male but genderqueer back in 2019 they said: "I'm not male or female, I think I flow somewhere in between. It's all on the spectrum."
For the overwhelming majority, declaring yourself to be neither male nor female is to deny biological reality. It is to say that all those pesky things such as chromosomes and hormones and genitalia do not apply to you. Your feelings - more finely tuned than everyone else's override the inconvenience of a body... Demanding to be called they/them rather than he/she is to insist that the rest of the world share in your fantasy.
...The feminist author and journalist Laurie Penny wrote on Twitter last week asking that she be referred to as they/them by people she knows in non-professional settings, but as she/her when being a feminist in public. This is only right, Penny declared, because "I earned that pronoun with a lot of hard work."
...At many universities, students are given pronoun badges when they arrive on campus. They may be expected to state their preferred pronouns in seminars. At conferences too, attendees might be offered pronoun-identifying badges. Some corporations, such as the BBC and local authorities, ask staff to include pronouns in their email signatures.
(Joanna Williams, The Times, 2020)
On Monday I wish to be known as he. On Tuesday, she. I prefer to be called it on Wednesday whilst on Thursday how about they. Friday is a bit of a confusing day for me so he/she/ it or they will do. Saturday and Sunday you choose what you call me, as long as you differentiate the pronoun when I'm at home or when I appear in public. We're all somewhere on the gender spectrum aren't we?
Kirsty Wark is worried about trans rights activists and cancel culture.
"I think there is a real issue about cancelling people," she says intently. "It's a really, really worrying aspect of our society, because what it does, it encourages a kind of mob mentality, which is completely fed by the internet and which can become incredibly dangerous. People who have neither been charged nor convicted of anything are found guilty in the court of public opinion. Once we start going down that road, where do we stop?"
The notion that anyone who holds unfashionable opinions must be exiled in perpetuity "to a kind of leper island" appals her "It's really difficult as a journalist to say that people should be cancelled for ever, because you have to engage in order to understand. It's really important that you actually air the argument. "Trans rights activists currently calling for JK Rowling to be cancelled, because of her recent statements on protecting women-only spaces, are wrong. Wrong. Obviously there are lots of people who feel very hurt by what JK Rowling wrote. But not publishing her? Locking away? That's not the way to deal with it. You have to engage."...
(Decca Aitkenhead, The Sunday Times, 2020)
Letters
If Pam Lunn was taught to read at home with the Manchester Guardian, how come there isn't a single spelling mistake in her letter?
(Sam Babiker, Bristol, The Guardian, 2020)
Sir, There is enough evidence in Charles Darwin's writing to show that he was a racist, misogynist and partially convinced eugenicist; in fact a typical Victorian intellectual.
However, credit is due to him for recognising the abominations of slavery, something George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both slave owners, never did in their lifetimes. In these woke times, however, Darwin fans will need to to keep a keen eye on his statues.
(Professor Milton Wainwright, Caernarfon, The Times, 2020)
Haircuts
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| A Malabar Barber Cutting a Customer's Hair unknown artist Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain] |
Does a blind gangster cut Donald Trump's hair? Because that's the only explanation I can think of for him claiming $70,000 in "haircare expenses" as a deduction on his income taxes. I can create the "troll doll" or "chinchilla sitting atop the head" look for a fraction of that mate, call me.
It costs my husband £15 to have his hair cut and he thinks that's pricey. I thought the president was supposed to be smart with money. Yet here he is apparently paying top dollar for a hairdo that has been described, quite correctly as a "decomposing ear of corn". It makes the days when we used to hyperventilate over Cherie Blair spending £7,700 on her coiffure during the 2005 general election seem quaint and rather amateur.
(Carol Midgely, The Times, 2020)
Fashion Nonsense
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| A Singer with a Donkey Giuseppe Maria Crespi (1665-1747) Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND] |
I have worn a tailored jacket, a proper blazer, every day of this week. Sometimes as part of a trouser suit, sometimes not. I cannot overstate how much better I feel as a result. No one is more surprised than me.
I had last worn one in March. It's not that I have entirely eschewed smartness since then. The second we were allowed to start going out again I wore dresses, dresses, dresses. Yet tailored smartness didn't feel right somehow. And now suddenly it does.
The blazers I have been wearing aren't new. Yet the wearing of them is making me feel new. The power of clothes. And they are getting me noticed, garnering me compliments. Because so few of us are dressing in that way at the moment. Again. The power of.
What's changed? Nothing. If anything, we have (sigh) been bearing witness to what might be called an unchange, a going backwards. It's in my head, this shift towards tailoring. I would go further. I think it's my personal response to said unchange. It's a kind of fashion therapy. The world is not moving on. So I am (in my clothing choices at least), to distract myself from the stasis.
In essence this is the kernel of what fashion is. This is where trends come from. This is why the end of the Second World War brought the extravagance of Dior's New Look. Change, even if only the illusion of it, is a basic human desire. As, concomitantly, is consistency. Ha! No one could describe Homo Sapiens as straightforward...
(Anna Murphy, The Times, 2020)
A prime candidate for Private Eye's Pseuds' Corner.
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