Layers of Culpability

The huge tyre fire near Amberley in North Canterbury last Friday is in an area with a high water table, extreme fire risk in summer, two kilometres from a town of 2000 residents, and on the edge of one of NZ’s premier wine regions.

 

The extreme risks to immediate and long-term health, from smoke and leachates from a tyre fire are well known. Some of the large number of particulates and gases released are highly toxic and can cause both acute and chronic health problems. A tyre burns as hot as coal and emits almost as much carbon dioxide. Because of the extreme heat generated the smoke plume rises high and the toxins can be carried many kilometres, polluting air, plants, soil, and water and harming humans, stock, and wildlife. The soil under the fire will be heavily contaminated, with the potential for toxins to be easily leached into surface and subterranean water systems.  (1)

 

The owner of the block of land where the tyres were dumped, Warren Hislop, was permitted by Hurunui District Council’s ten-year plan to lease his land to a tyre disposal firm to store waste tyres before permanent disposal. That latter stage never happened, and the pile grew until it contained somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 tyres. 

 

It was the subject of constant complaints locally for its potential impact on the health and the safety of people who lived close by – from the threat of potential fires and contamination of ground water – and the adverse impact on the value of property. 

 

After a deliberate fire in a smaller pile of about 20,000 tyres was started two years ago, local people decided to take matters into their own hands. Julia McLean, then a Hurunui District councillor, formed Accountability Action (AA) and with a waste management consultant, Bruce Gledhill, put together a viable plan for disposal (chipping, transport, and use in cement production), raised pledges of money locally, and applied for grants from the Canterbury Waste Joint Committee and The Waste Minimisation Fund. The group had wide-ranging support including FENZ, HDC, the Chair of ECAN, all the Canterbury Mayors, local schools and the grape growers’ association. (2)

 

AA’s plan would have cleared the pile within three months from getting funding approved and established an important template for dealing with the problem of waste tyres across NZ. 

 

However what they did not have was the support of the landowner and his lawyer who in May last year approached ECAN to submit another application for funding, in competition with AA’s application.

 

When approached by Hislop and his lawyer, Instead of acting as an honest broker to support the community group which had done all the work, and assuaging any legitimate concerns the landowner and his lawyer had (3), officers decided to submit a second application for funding.  By so doing they effectively undermined their own Chair’s support for the project, shafted AA and then reinforced the impression of bad faith by refusing to confirm that was what they were doing when asked by the media. 

 

AA eventually agreed to withdraw its application in order to move matters forward, and to support ECAN’s application which was based on AA’s plan.

 

Then, nothing much happened except lots of meetings, until someone set fire to the entire pile last Friday.

 

The resulting fire, whilst contained, may burn for weeks and when it can be handled, it seems the landowner has undertaken to clear the remaining heavily contaminated material and arrange for its disposal in the Kate Valley landfill – if KV will take that much heat damaged tyre waste. How he will do this and meet the very considerable cost (4) is anyone’s guess. 

 

Perhaps ECAN has a plan.

 

The CEO of ECAN was quick to point the finger of blame in the direction of the arsonist, and claimed they were just “weeks away from a solution”. A day later, at a local meeting, ECAN officers blamed the inaction on the limitations of the organisation’s legal powers.

  

The questions I want an answer to, and which were sidestepped at that meeting, is why ECAN was not more proactive at an earlier stage and why, when approached by the landowner – who was complicit in creating the toxic mess and who had made money from it – officers chose to collaborate with him and to blindside the community group which had done all the work.

 

The Mayor of Hurunui District Council was quick to tell people now is not the time to apportion blame. Whilst HDC had been prepared to work with AA, the council would do well to reflect on how much effort it had put in to resolving an issue that was caused because its district plan permits people to use their land for such purposes. It might also consider how much support it really gave to the one councillor who took the threat seriously. 

 

Central government should reflect on its failure to deal with this growing environmental threat. This tyre fire will dump a cocktail of toxins onto vineyards, olive groves, and farms where stock will eat polluted grass. NZ’s clean green image is already tarnished. Japan has already rejected NZ honey because of glyphosate residues, what effects will the toxic fallout from this fire have on local honey production, agriculture, horticulture, and viticulture?  

 

It might also reflect on how much responsibility it holds for forcing local government into a largely toothless revenue gathering entity administering centrally imposed laws and as a result often incapable of mounting effective responses to pressing local issues.

 

How insane is it, that a local council has the powers to seize a person’s property for non-payment of rates, and calling for a rate strike is an illegal act, but when it comes to controlling a highly dangerous activity with obvious potential ill-effects and massive social costs, nothing can be done?

 

The District Health Board ought to reflect on whether it should have been more proactive in warning the public and relevant agencies of the considerable health risks in the event of a large tyre fire. It might also reflect on how effective its immediate response to anyone directly affected by the smoke has been – stay indoors, put your air con on recycling, try to avoid breathing in the smoke and if you feel unwell see your doctor. I’m pretty sure people could work that much out for themselves.

 

FENZ – the organisation on the front-line – should have added its institutional voice more loudly to the call for this mess to be sorted out quickly, if only to protect its personnel and been more proactive in respect of fire prevention.

 

The heat generated by a mass tyre fire is enormous, the smoke is thick and oily and contains a vast range of toxic gases and particulates which no one should be anywhere near without full protection equipment, including BA. FENZ top brass acknowledged they have never had to deal with such a fire; all they can do is let it burn and eventually try to separate any unburned material – using local contractors with diggers. 

 

This decision is not solely because the land where the dump is has a high-water table and is where Amberley’s best well is located so contaminated water runoff would be an immediate and long-term ecological disaster – it’s also because using water to fight a large tyre fire demands vast amounts delivered via special nozzles from huge pumps – none of which are available to the volunteer firefighters in rural fire services with their standard pumps and severely limited access to water.

 

The firefighters also encountered access issues because old machinery had been dumped on the site which begs the question – why weren’t all those hazards assessed, mapped, and a plan quickly put in place to deal with them? 

 

And what did happen to good old fire prevention? North Canterbury had just had the highest temperatures, lowest humidity, and strongest, hottest winds seen in decades. A perfect storm of adverse conditions for a dump of anywhere up to 200,000 waste tyres, haphazardly stored in an area surrounded by pine trees, tinder-dry grass, and old machinery. Even if someone hadn’t set fire to it, a grass fire upwind of it could easily have ignited it.

 

BUT, the true villains in this tale of multiple layers of culpability, incompetence, or failure to be proactive, are the dumpers. Michael Le Roy and Peter George Benden failed to arrange for proper disposal and hid behind company law to avoid their legal and ethical responsibilities. Le Roy has slid out from under any responsibility by declaring bankruptcy, and the fines and compensation costs levied against Benden are risible when the actual harm and social costs are added up.

 

A great many officials and officers have presided over this poorly coordinated response to an inappropriate land use permitted by the local council, and as a result have failed to protect both residents’ health and well-being, and an already under threat wider environment. 

 

Officers and officials alike should remember that citing reasons why they could not act at all or act any faster, is to add insult to what may prove to be a terrible injury.

 

Notes:

(1) Open tyre fire emissions include "criteria" pollutants, such as particulates, carbon monoxide, sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds. They also include "non-criteria" hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), such as polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, dioxins, furans, hydrogen chloride, benzene, polychlorinated biphenyls; and metals such as arsenic, cadmium, nickel, zinc, mercury, chromium, and vanadium. Both criteria and HAP emissions from an open tyre fire can represent significant acute and chronic health hazards. Depending on the length and degree of exposure, these health effects could include irritation of the skin, eyes, and mucous membranes, respiratory effects, central nervous system depression, and cancer. 

(2) Not one of the 42 tyre firms which had used the services of Le Roy and Benden contributed to the AA project when asked to. 

(3) These concerns included the completely incorrect assertion that McLean and Gledhill wanted to make money out of the project.

(4) Dumping the material from the first fire involving 20,000 tyres cost $160k.

 

 

 

 

God's Waiting Room

Over the eight years before her death my mother survived a stroke which caused major brain damage and loss of right side mobility; a broken hip; a broken shoulder; several serious gastric bleeds, and more drugs than my system would be able to tolerate. 

 

She lived with me after her stroke but her – largely iatrogenic – medical needs became more complex, and we moved her into a rest home, a studio where she lived for three years until she fell and broke her arm and ended up in hospital level care, where she rapidly declined.

In the months before her death she suffered from episodes of extreme confusion and anxiety. She repeated over and over that she was "terribly, terribly frightened" – or various garbled versions of that. It was distressing for her and for those of us who visited her, as nothing calmed her – except the chemical cudgel wielded by the medical staff – with the very best of intentions of course.

 

Whilst I respect the front line workers who keep elder care facilities functioning, I cannot say the same for the industry as a whole. It sucks vast sums of money out of the public purse and makes huge profits for owners and shareholders while paying its front line staff low wages and often feeding its residents a diet that is low in essential nutrients, and treating them like children. 

 

It pays lip service to patients' rights and it purports to care deeply about their welfare, but strip away the patina of political correctness and there is the cold, hard commercial reality of the making of big profits – mostly, these days, for a large corporate entity.

 

It is almost impossible to find an aged care facility that doesn't charge a premium per a week in addition to the c$900 a week government set maximum charge, which is the state subsidy payable for people with less than $220k in assets.  

 

This "premium" is charged for an en suite, or shared shower room, a room with a view, one that is larger than average or one that is sunny, or any other attribute the owners can dream up to justify whacking on an extra charge. Hospital level care is further subsidised by the government.

 

An en suite is more of a convenience and time saver for staff than a benefit for residents who are immobile but the industry still charges a hefty premium for them. A room of a good size, one that gets some sun, that is pleasantly decorated should be standard for all rooms.

 

In rest homes, the rooms typically are very small as residents are expected to spend time in the communal lounges. Rooms tend to be larger in the hospital facilities, not as a benefit to the residents, but because the staff have to be able to use hoists to manoeuvre fully or partially immobile people in and out of bed. 

 

The institutionalised care of old, frail, disabled, sick people is big business. It is why sporting icons like the All Blacks are advised to invest in it. The returns are very high, and there's a huge and growing demand in an ageing population in a society that no longer cares for its old within the family, or cares very much at all.

I hate it. And all the more because it operates behind a facade of "caring" while it exploits – mainly women – workers, and perpetuates a model of elder care that can turn end of life into a kind of nightmare.

 

I want to be able to end my life on my terms, to my time frame, with those I care about around me; I do not ever want to end my life like that. It's cruel and it's based on a massive hypocrisy that is a combination of religious dogma and corporate greed.  

 

Only god can take a life say the fundamentalists but it's okay for us to go to extraordinary lengths to prolong a life of fear, misery and hopelessness, or to hide behind the administration of drugs given purportedly to ensure quality of life but which effectively shorten it.

 

Hospital level care homes may leave a person in a bed 20 hours out of 24 – mostly for their convenience. When not in a bed, the person is in an armchair on wheels – parked in a group of other helpless old people in front of a TV or radio invariably spouting utter garbage. If the person is disruptive, they are put back in their room – on their own and possibly with their TV tuned into some other utter garbage – or they are put back to bed. 

 

They are turned regularly to avoid pressure sores, and their incontinence pads are changed regularly to avoid skin damage and infection,  because these may all be interpreted as signs of "neglect" if they occur.

  

If the person makes too much noise or gets distressed in the morning by being moved, washed and dressed, which is highly likely because of muscle stiffness and joint pain,  they are drugged. 

The worst is fentanyl – used because the slow release skin patches are convenient and the drug is so terrifyingly powerful that tiny amounts give the same narcotic effects as other opioids thus reducing the adverse side effects. The amount may be tiny but when so is the person's body and the brain and / or liver are damaged, the effects will be more powerful and unpredictable.

  

But these businesses don't employ enough staff to allow time to be taken with individuals,  and the patients are triaged and some are deemed to no longer benefit from physio. So they are shunted from bed to chair to bed and some, like my mother, spend most of their last days in a haze of pain and fear.

"I'm sick of - everything!!!!!"

A response to one of those really annoying homespun,“white is right” memes that circulate on FB.

 

It started with :

“I don’t know who wrote this but SOMEONE FINALLY put into words what I’ve been thinking and I couldn't agree more!”

It was obviously written by an angry Australian with a heavy finger on the exclamation mark and shift keys who I shall assume is a man.

“I’m sick of covid-19!!”

Probably blissfully unaware of how much at risk he is of becoming literally sick of Covid-19.

“I’m sick of black vs. white!!”

If he's a white person and is sick of black vs white, I wonder if he can imagine what it feels like to have been placed at the bottom of the hierarchy of "race" that was developed by white people to justify their exploitation and oppression of black people? Yeah, I also doubt his imagination could stretch that far.

“I’m sick of Labor Vs Liberals”

Unfortunately for Angry Man, he lives in a country in which party politics is pretty much the mirror image of the “two faces of the same coin” model as the US.  My advice – don''t like it? Get off your arse, get involved and change it.

“I’m sick of gay vs. straight!!”

 Really? He needs to ponder who put the versus into that relationship – and why?

“I’m REALLY sick of the media!!!!”

Just as it might be said that you get the government you deserve, you also get the media you deserve. If he doesn't like it – I suggest he stops buying it, and buying into it. Support quality journalism and show good intentions by not polluting social media with ranty, right wing homilies.

“I’m sick of the language being used and plastered all over the media!”

God forbid the media uses language. If he means a particular sort of language, why not say so, and avoid coming across as a bit of a cabbage.

“I’m sick of no one being allowed to think what they want & feel what they do without offending someone!!”

No one can stop someone thinking what they want. What an utter plank – even conspiracy nutjobs don't actually believe the mysterious “THEY” can read our thoughts. There have always been constraints on what people can say and do – and a foundational element of the social contract is trying to avoid offending other people – you know, in the way you'd expect them to avoid offending you.

“I am sick of the people who are out there jumping on the bandwagon to protest just to cause mass confusion and more hatred and to riot, loot, and destroy!!!!!!”

 As this was written by an angry Aussie – and given the “riot, loot and destroy” is clearly aimed at BLM protests in the US – the attack on bandwagon jumpers is a tad hypocritical.  And he really needs to go easy on the exclamation marks; he's starting to look unhinged.

“I am sick of blaming the world for the sins of a few!!”

 I'm sure he didn't actually mean to say this, but if he did, the answer's simple, stop doing it.

“We’re one race—the human race. We ALL Matter!!”

This eejit needs to stop the self-righteous ranting for a moment and consider who developed the idea of different races, and to what end? And clearly we do not ALL matter – equally or even at all – or 5 million mainly black and brown kids under 5 wouldn’t die every year from easily preventable causes. 

“You want to support PM Scott Morrisson?(sic) You do it! It’s your choice. You want to support Anthony Albanese? Fine... also your choice!”

Who's saying people shouldn’t? Of course it’s their choice, it’s a democracy, a fucked-up, dumbed-down one, but still a democracy. What is his problem?

“You want to believe in God? Okay, believe in God. You want to believe in magical creatures that fly around & sprinkle fairy dust to make life better? Awesome... you do it!!”

Oy vey.

“BUT how about being mature enough to be able to deal with the fact that everyone doesn’t have the same exact mind-set as you. Having our own minds is what makes us all individuals and beautiful.”

We have a mind that allows us to conceive of ourselves as individual persons only because of the existence of other persons. The problem for those of us inside the imperial bubble, is that the concept of the individual as we frame it is arguably undermining the very social structures that enable us to become human. We are becoming so isolated, alienated, and fragmented, the very bonds that hold us together as social beings are eroding. This plank needs to ask himself, who’s driving that, and why?

 “If you can’t handle that fact....I’m sorry!! I don’t have to agree with everything you believe in.”

 Why does he think anyone is asking him to? He needs to calm down. 

“So be a decent human being.”

Back at you, bud.

Yet More Identity Politics

While I’m musing about things political in NZ – here’s a few thoughts about the left and Identity politics.

The issue of "hate speech" comes up in relation to that all the time. Take transgenderism – I call it that because it is a political movement with a political goals and an ideology – pretty much anything which counters the current TG orthodoxy is deemed to be "hate speech". 

Now I take my politics seriously, and one thing I have learned is this – you do no one any favours by applying important political concepts to any and all behaviour, thereby emptying those concepts of critical and political meaning. 

If all people, who as much as question any aspect of transgenderism, are transphobes, and transphobes are Nazis, where do you go when you need to identity a real Nazi? 

It is ludicrous. Infantile. Dangerous. Divisive. 

And the attacks on the socially cautious left by a bunch of largely middle class, affluent, comfortable, well-educated, socially and geographically mobile people – well, the Aranui girl in me wants to say, "fuck you". Actually she’d say – "listen mates, the old organising principle of the left – strength through unity – remains the only way we can possibly hope to counter the destructive might of corporate capitalism and the coercive state machinery it can command."

Of course the working class has to fight for the rights of people who are oppressed on grounds other than class – women and people of colour, and especially black people – and those who face social disadvantage by being denied formal rights. And it has done so, although at times not nearly as well or as full-heartedly as it needed to. 

But, keep on dividing into smaller and smaller categories – competing for rights and choices that are made meaningless unless people have the means to exercise them – and we’re in neo-liberalism’s ball park, playing its game and by its rules but blindfolded and with our hands and feet bound.

If the working class is reduced to just another interest group, and economic exploitation and the accompanying forms of oppression are reduced to another ism – what common cause is there to bind people together? What's the political and social glue that will stop the identity politics movement exploding into a thousand pieces? 

A running leap into political quicksand...

Sands UK – a UK charity that exists to support bereaved mothers, tweeted a message of support for "all birthing parents" – presumably a well-intentioned attempt by whoever was running their social media account to be "inclusive" of transgender and non-binary people who give birth. In the context of the ideological battles being waged around these issues, this was arguably not a good decision.   

 

Freddy Connell – a UK journalist  and transman who made headlines by giving birth and trying (unsuccessfully) to argue for his name being listed on the child's birth certificate as its "father" – tweeted that the people objecting to Sands' message were "transphobes" and "bullies".

By so doing, Freddy managed to offend and upset the loads of women who feel they have also a right to a say in how a charity they support and use, refers to them.

This encapsulates the essence of this increasingly ludicrous debate and highlights how dangerously divisive and polarising it can be. 

I tweeted a thread in response. No doubt like most of my tweets it will go unnoticed, as will this post, but every little helps.  

If Fred reads it, I hope he knows it's written in good faith and that when the chips are down it'll be people like me who will have his back – whilst I'd hazard a guess that a quite a few of his erstwhile allies will do what they did when neoliberalism was busy dismantling working class collectives, and are doing as it tightens the austerity screws on the poor, be otherwise engaged in protecting their well-padded backsides.

So here's the meat of the thread. For what it's worth.

Look at the world that the child you gestated and gave birth to, stands to inherit and tell me, Fred – is this is the hill you want to make a stand on?  Calling people – including loads of bereaved mothers – “transphobes” because they objected to the erasure of the word “mother” by a charity that was founded by bereaved mothers, to support bereaved mothers? 

At least SandsUK had the good grace and common sense to backtrack.

“Mothers and other birthing parents” would have been inclusive – erasing the word mother is not just a step too far – it's a running jump into political quicksand. 

 

There’s an old pre-DNA saying: "maternity's a certainty; paternity's an opinion". 

 

There's a powerful material reality underpinning that – the same reality that’s the foundation of people’s deep-rooted attachment to words like mother, woman, female. 

 

It's arguably the most ancient of all human realities with roots that run far too deep and wide to be removed as a result of sometimes petulant, sometimes bullying demands from a tiny minority of people, mostly living, not just inside the imperial bubble, but within the well-buffered coordinator class that helps keep the bubble intact and inflated.

 

Outside the bubble and that strata, most of human and all of other life still moves to more ancient and foundational rhythms  – I suggest you take the literal or figurative ear buds out and have a listen.  

 

You won’t succeed in undermining the deep beliefs in the material realities that underpin the word mother with this sort of foot-stamping in the name of inclusivity – but you might very well help erode wider support for far more important aspects of inclusivity.

 

So, a word in your shell-like, Fred, my old china, ease off the entitlement pedal and learn to pick your battles. 

Somewhere over a spectrum.....

Someone was paid a lot of money to produce a glossy set of Relationship & Sexuality Education  guidance to teachers in NZ and we have a right to expect them to be of a very high quality given the consultation around the implementation of them involves no need for negotiation or agreement, ie. it is solely about informing and implementing, irrespective of stakeholders' opinions.

Some of what is in the guidelines is very good, and it is pleasing to see the ubiquity of porn and its effects on young people being addressed – it is to be hoped the education process will also involve the interrogation of the malign and growing power of the global porn industry and sex trade, the incidence of femicide and rape, the merging patterns of economic exploitation in commercial surrogacy, and all the other massive impactors on young people's (especially girls and women) sexual health and wellbeing, in the broadest sense of the terms.   

But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that this is more a vehicle for the promotion of gender identity theory and praxis or what can broadly be described as the current transgender orthodoxy.(CTO) 

It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that I have some issues with that orthodoxy. This does not mean I am anti transgender  – I am not – but I find it both politically and critically impossible to reconcile my support for women’s sex-based rights with support for gender self ID specifically and for other aspects of the CTO.

 

The bottom line of what I see as a post hoc attempt to impose logic and consistency on an essentially contradictory set of metaphysical and highly politicised beliefs – is that gender – framed as the subjective, possibly inconstant, sense of personal identity on a continuum of masculinities and femininities – trumps biological sex; that there is a disembodied, inner, gendered self that is, and can conceive of itself as, separate from the material reality of the biological, sexed body.

 

In the Years 9-13 glossary of 44 terms – which is an important guide to people who aren't well versed in the CTO, and who want to make sense, both of ideas that are being embedded into the social contract, and ideas that are being removed from it – has some major inconsistencies and omissions. 

Sex is defined as "biological sex characteristics - male, female, intersex" – which strongly implies there's a third (or more) sex(es) existing between male and female. (1)

Biological sex characteristics are defined as a person’s physical features – “genitalia and other sexual and reproductive anatomy, chromosomes, hormones and secondary physical features emerging from puberty.”

 

Gender is defined as "individual identity related to a continuum of masculinities and femininities.  Neither femininities nor masculinities are defined, but we can assume this is derived from the pink to dark brown spectrum of jelly baby figures so popular with transgender equality and diversity trainers and lobbyists. Or more graphically – Barbie to GI Joe.

 

Sexual orientation is defined as a person's "sexual identity" – which is defined by the point/s on the "continuum of masculinities and femininities" a person is sexually and/or emotionally attracted to. 

 

So, both your gender and your sexual orientation / identity are where you sit on the Barbie-GI Joe “continuum of masculinities and femininities”, and your sexual orientation or sexual identity is where the persons you are attracted to sit on that same continuum. 

 

Apart from demonstrating how the lazy conflation of gender and sex gets people’s intellectual and political knickers in a knot – according to this, there is no such thing as a sexual orientation – there is just gender orientation. 

 

Is it any wonder some lesbians and gay men are feeling anxious? They have good cause as shown when we delve deeper into the glossary of terms underpinning these important guidelines.

 

Lesbian is defined as "women who are attracted to other women" but woman itself is not defined, nor is man although trans woman and trans man are defined as people who were assigned male or female at birth but who identify as the opposite.  (2)

 

Homosexual is not defined except in reference to the existence of homophobia, which is defined as an “irrational fear of or negative response to people who are homosexual.”

 

There is no definition of homosexual men – just “gay people (mostly men) who are attracted to "people of the same gender".

 

Heterosexual is defined as “attraction to the other binary gender" – so presumably they see homosexual as attraction to the same binary gender.

 

BUT…

 

Binary gender is defined as "the (incorrect) assumption there are only two genders".

 

So, if binary gender is deemed to be incorrect – i.e. to not actually exist because – spectrum, by this document’s logic, neither do heterosexuality nor homosexuality.

 

I'm all for kids being encouraged to dispense with those "masculinities and femininities"  that owe much to imposed gender stereotypes, which have their roots deep in the biological, material reality of reproductive sex – (especially those heavily gendered, pornified behaviours and appearances that are commodified and sold to young people these days) (3) and to break with these essentially patriarchal and oppressive constructs. 

 

Who knows, doing that might allow kids to do simple things like question the automatic positioning and implied hierarchy of male/female; man/woman; masculinities/femininities that is used throughout these guidelines. 

Bottom line, if you are going to attempt to dig out the roots of the many complex beliefs and practices that centre around the existence of two sexes, and seek to undermine feminism’s differentiation between the material realities of biological sex and the social construction of ideas about sex roles i.e. gender, and how that has been and still is used to subjugate women – then best be prepared for a long hard dig. Best also be prepared for the very real possibility that your attempt will actually promote even more vigorous and invasive new growth.

 

 

(1)  The wording of this reinforces the ideologically motivated claim that there is a literal “spectrum of sex” – which leads to confusions like the widely repeated and woefully wrong, assertion that there are as many as six sexes, all capable of reproducing. This is absurdism. All intersex conditions are chromosomal / endocrine disorders of the biological sex characteristics of one or other of the two sexes – female and male. All, apart from the purely cosmetic, like mild hypospadias, involve either infertility or sub-fertility, and some have profound implications for health or, in the absence of medical intervention, even for survival. The harnessing of these rare conditions to the gender identity plough is political, and it is all too often cynical or heedless of consequence. Acknowledging the existence of DSDs (originally disorders of sex differentiation, now differences of sexual development), in a world that is literally saturated in DNA damaging and endocrine disrupting chemicals, charting the incidence of them, ensuring people affected by them are treated with dignity and respect and have all the medical and other services they need – are all vitally important. Deploying this diverse (and increasing) set of genetic/endocrine disorders as a weapon in the arguments around sex and gender identity is unfair to the tiny and diverse minority of people who are affected by them.

(2)  Given the current influence of a social milieu that believes or purports to believe gender identity is separate from, and superior to biological sex, i.e. the current transgender orthodoxy has a considerable weight of political, institutional, corporate, media acceptance and influence (despite its claims to be the most politically, economically, socially marginalised and vulnerable of all minorities) – the political slogan “transwomen are women” has a material outcome in the expansion of the term lesbian to include male-bodied persons who identify as women and who are sexually oriented towards women. For the most part, transgender lesbians (transwomen who are sexually attracted to natal females) are not sexually oriented to other transgender lesbians. Lesbians who were born female can find themselves being shamed, by means of the socially toxic labels of transphobe, genital fetishist or essentialist etc, into being open to the idea of a sexual relationship with transgender women, many of whom retain male genitalia and who may have made no, or only superficial, changes to their biological sex characteristics or social gender expression. This includes retaining male-typical patterns of behaviour if the extraordinary prevalence on social media of phallocentric, masculinist threats and insults from people claiming to be translesbians is any measure.

(3)  What second wave feminist foresaw a 21^st century in which masses of young women would believe looking and behaving in hyper-feminine and/or pornified ways, as liberatory? Who could have foreseen cynical fashion designers attempts to surf the gender wave and sell little girl gingham dresses, modelled by anorexic androgynes, to young men?

 

Imagine...

 

Imagine being born in 1900.

When your 14 years old

World War 1 begins

And it ends when you are 18

With 22 million dead.

Shortly after, a world pandemic,

an influence called “Spanish”,

It kills 50 million people.

You come out alive and unscathed,

you are 20 years old

Then at 29 you survive the global economic crisis that started with the collapse of the New York stock market, causing inflation, unemployment and famine.

At 33 years old Nazis come to power.

You’re 39 when World War II starts

And it ends when you’re 45 During the Holocaust (Shoah) 6 million Jews die.

There will be over 60 million dead in total.

When you are 52 years old the Korean War starts.

When you’re 64 the Vietnam War starts and ends when you are 75

A baby born in 1985 thinks his grandparents have no idea how difficult life is, 

And survived several wars and disasters.

A boy born in 1995 and today 25 thinks it’s the end of the world when his Amazon 

package takes more than three days to arrive or when he doesn’t get more than 15 “ 

likes” for his posted photo on Facebook or Instagram…

In 2020 many of us live in comfort, have access to different sources of 

entertainment at home and often have more than necessary.

But people complain because of everything.

Yet they have electricity, phone, food, hot water and roof over their heads.

None of this existed in the past.

But humanity survived much more serious circumstances and never lost the joy of living. 

Maybe it’s time to be less selfish, stop complaining and crying.

(Anonymous)

 

 

The above was posted on a friend's Facebook page – spelling, punctuation as per original. I've seen loads of these sort of memes and all I can say about this one is whoever wrote it was wise to stay anonymous. 

 

 A baby born in 1995 lives in a world in which if s/he is lucky enough to be born into affluence may indeed have electricity but around one billion people don't.

  

They might have access to a cell phone but 40% of the world's population do not.

 

Parts of the world have more food than they need and waste obscene amounts of it but around 700 million are under-nourished and every day scores die of starvation.

  

Let's forget the luxury of hot water and look at safe drinking water; around 800 million people don't have that, and in fact most drinking water across the entire globe, even if is considered 'safe', is heavily polluted with industrial and agricultural toxins and is getting worse every year.

 

A roof over their heads? Around 1.6 billion people are homeless. 

 

And as to none of these advantages having existed in the past – the Romans, as just one example, had running water, underfloor heating and public loos and it might come as a bit of a surprise to Anonymous but people have been building various sorts of houses with roofs for thousands of years. 

 

So, whoever wrote this bit of homespun nonsense clearly lives inside the imperial bubble and doesn't bother looking outside it. 

 

ALSO, let's just consider the world these ever-so lucky kids born in 1995 live in.

 

If they aren’t in one of the parts of the globe suffering famine or food shortages caused by war – thanks to the explosion of hyper-processed food, they are much more likely to be obese, develop type-2 diabetes, colorectal and other cancers and – thanks to the approximately 144,000+ chemicals humans have released into the environment so far and are still releasing at a rate of about 2000 a year, and the 250 BILLION tonnes of toxic waste poured out into it every year – are far more likely to suffer DNA damage and/or endocrine disruption. 

 

And then there's the fact that they and their kids face a future – not just of a threat of global pandemics, nuclear, chemical or biological war or accidental catastrophe, but global warming and mass species extinction, including of species utterly essential to our long-term survival – indeed to the survival of pretty much everything except cockroaches and Donald Trump.

 

Plus they have been deskilled, dumbed down and made reliant on various forms of technology that stop the moment the electricity supply fails.

 

And as for wars – how dumbed-down do you have to be to not know that, since the end of the Vietnam war, around 21 million people have died in or as a result of the constant wars being waged across the globe, including many examples of America's imperialistic meddling?

 

And what do all these things have in common? Like the wars listed in the post – they're pretty much all directly caused by greed – the lust for wealth and power – aided and abetted by people idealising and not learning from the past, and taking a narrow view of the present.