Keisha Jenkins: Say Her Name

Keisha Jenkins, 22. RIP

Say Her Name. Go on. Say it. Keisha Jenkins.

According to Philadelphia Police, Keisha Jenkins, 22, was ambushed by about five men who began to pummel her moments after she exited a car around 2:30 a.m. She was then shot twice in the back and later died in a hospital. Keisha is the most recent in a wave of killings of trans women in the United States.

Keisha’s brutal death brings the total of trans women murdered in the USA — that we know of — to 21 this year. While the USA is not the most dangerous place in the world for trans women — that’s Brazil — the US  has undercurrents of racism and sexism that are not apparent elsewhere and which are conspiring to make matters worse.

The underlying cause of these killings is the patriarchy’s misogynistic premise that women are worth less than men. This powers the killing of both trans women and trans men as well as rape and ‘honour’ killings of women. These phenomena are all closely related and a symptom of the patriarchy, which is not an organisation but a parasitic disease that feeds on people.
The patriarchy only needs women to supply it with sons that bear their fathers’ names; since trans women cannot do this the patriarchy encourages men to kill them. This is what causes ‘passer-by’ killings, where there appears to have been no social interaction between the victim and her killers. They just killed her because the patriarchy made them believe they should. We don’t yet know if this was what happened to Keisha and, sadly, we probably never will: the history of the investigation of the murder of trans women suggests that their killers are rarely brought to justice.

A second issue is that the patriarchy attempts to control how and with whom men have sex. (It doesn’t really care what women do in bed as long as they make babies for men and do as they are told by them.) This is because human sex is our most powerful drive. It bonds societies together, and to do so, humans are evolved, like our nearest relatives the bonobos, Pan paniscus, to be both pansexual and gender-fluid.

I cover this in Why Men Made God and blogged about it at Pansexual: the human norm.

For our two species, same-sex bonding is part of our group dynamic. It ties, through sexualised bonds of love, the groups we are evolved to live in together, and so helps the individuals in them survive. Because the same-sex sexual bonding occurs alongside opposite-sex intercourse, and these two species, left to their own devices, have a lot of sex, there is always enough reproductive sex to ensure future generations.

The patriarchy put an end to that. For it, sex had only to be about procreation and not about shared pleasure. Women, indeed, were not expected to find sex pleasant; this was ‘unbecoming’. (A view still held by Christians and Muslims; for example; clitorectomy is specifically designed to prevent women enjoying sex.) This is because the patriarchy wants its control systems, principally religions but not exclusively, to be the ‘authority’ that governs us.

It is central to the patriarchal desire for control that men stop having sex with other males, so it teaches young men that such an attraction is demeaning and forbidden or even ‘unnatural’. This allows the patriarchy, through supplying sexual partners sanctioned by its contract of ownership of women, called ‘marriage’, to control men by regulating the supply of baby-factories to ensure their lineage is preserved. To enforce this it trains them to beat, bully and kill (as we see in ISIS and elsewhere in the Islamic world) men who express willingness to have sex with other men. At very least it is tantamount to a surrender of all the man’s status.

After all, why would any man jump through the hoops the patriarchy sets just for a little bit of sex if he could do otherwise? Men being creative, that is exactly what they do, and why the patriarchy so hates that they do, and why their ex-cathedra condemnation is so vitriolic.

Since the patriarchy sees trans women as men prepared to have sex with other men, it wants them dead.
At the same time the patriarchy teaches young men that women are sexual targets and that they have a right to penetrate them. (See here: Why America is the World’s Rape Capital ) It turns sex into a competition, with the highest status going to the man who penetrates the most women. (Religious sanctions like marriage are only intended to control women; men are not bound by them but in name.) This is an utter perversion of the way humans have evolved, but the patriarchy is supported in its blatant lying by religion, politicians, and, to its great shame, the academy.

The above two factors are catastrophically dangerous for one kind of transwomen, who are the majority. These women are sexually attracted to men and probably highly desirable, as Keisha was. They frequently find themselves alone with men, in the interest of having sex.

When the man, having succeeded in the challenge the patriarchy set him and penetrated the girl, finds out she has a penis, all hell breaks loose. Because he has been taught that all possessors of penises are men, to his mind he has just had sex with a man, and his patriarchal status has been totally destroyed. An episode of narcissistic rage (which men are very prone to) occurs and he beats the girl to death. This is EXACTLY what happened to Jennifer Laude, Gwen Araujo and countless others.
Frequently these murders do not happen immediately and the killer goes off to find some male friends who will help him recover his ‘honour’ by killing her. Is this what happened to Keisha? We don’t know.

The situation is even worse than it seems, however. There are two completely different types of male-to-female transsexual. The first, which used to be called ‘true’ transsexual, is now known as ‘Blanchard HSTS’ or ‘transkid’. They realise they are girls in childhood, may go through a phase of thinking they are gay boys (when they are vulnerable to quack psychologists) and most importantly, they are sexually attracted to men. Think Janet Mock, Geena Rocero, Kevin Balot, Jamie Clayton. Keisha and at least 17 of the other trans women murdered (that we know of) in the US this year, were of this type; they probably all were. These are the overwhelming majority of trans women.

The second type used to be called ‘pseudo’ transsexual, but is now known by the more accurate name ‘Blanchard autogynephile’ or ‘AGP’. These are all the MtF ‘transsexuals’ who are not principally attracted to men. Instead they are sexually attracted to themselves, as women. (Some do become attracted to men after they transition, but that’s for another day.) Autogynephilia is popularly known as male fetishistic cross-dressing, although it is actually somewhat more complex. Think ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner.
These latter are, definitively, not women. They are men with a paraphilia, a sexual fetish. They are heterosexual and prey on women. They are the most perfect expression of the patriarchy’s contempt for women: men with fake vaginas and boob jobs, gaining admission to women’s private spaces to rape them with their minds.
Although actually a minority, in the West autogynephiles claim they are the majority, but in order to do this, they have to pretend that the overall prevalence of MtF transgender is much lower than it is. They use out-of-date, debunked and plain old deliberately falsified statistics to try to shore their claim up, and suggest that the prevalence is of the order of 1:10,000.

However the true prevalence, as demonstrated in censuses and surveys all over the world, and in the US by prestigious organisations for such as the Williams Institute for Law of the University of California, and by Professor Lynn Conway, is around 1:250 or higher. There are at least 700,000 MtF transgender people in the USA and well over 90% of them are not AGP, but HSTS. (Williams; Conway’s total is higher.)*

However, were autogynephiles to recognise the actual prevalence they would immediately lose credibility for the status they have arrogated to themselves, of being the spokesmen for all trans women. By doing this, autogynephiles encourage under-reporting and contribute to the killing of real trans women. These are white middle-class, middle-aged men with good careers and money in the bank, presuming to speak for principally of colour, poor, largely under-educated trans women.
Although it is possible that one or two of the trans women murdered in the USA today are AGP, it is most unlikely. The majority of the dead were trans women of colour and AGP is almost exclusively a phenomenon of white, middle-class males.

Racism pervades US culture in a way that no European can really understand. Racism does exist here, but it is completely different. I saw a person of colour approach the school across the road yesterday. I didn’t know him, never seen him before. In the US, what would a white person have done? Be honest. You’d have called the police or maybe just got a gun and shot him. That is what you’d have done. I assumed he was a newcomer to the village come to pick up his kid from school and guess what? So he was. Next time I see him I’ll say hi and welcome to the community.

This racism in the US fuels the conflict between AGPs and the majority HSTS. Because AGPs are actually patriarchal white men, they will not tolerate women of colour speaking for them. It is essential to them that they maintain the illusion of their numerical superiority, in order to remain the spokesmen for the ‘transgender community’.

Did you really think it was coincidence that Bruce Jenner, an admitted lifelong cross-dressing fetishist, suddenly decided, at the age of 65, to ‘come out as a woman’? Open your eyes: the high ground has been taken by trans women of colour like Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, Geena Rocero and many others. Jenner ‘came out’ to steal that limelight back for white cross-dressing men.

These people are parasitic male opportunists; ghastly succubi created by the patriarchy to feed off the identities of women while having sex with them. To them, HSTS are the enemies and they are unconcerned by their killings. This is why Jenner has been so strangely quiet on the subject.

Bad enough to be so betrayed by a competing group of transsexuals, but HSTS trans women of colour get it from another source too: gay men. The modern gay movement has banned femininity and smothered its expression. Why? Because it wants to be part of the patriarchy. Only people with a profoundly patriarchal mindset would spend so much time and effort to actually allow themselves to be bound by the patriarchy’s contract of ownership, marriage. But HSTS trans women flout that authority too. Since gay men actually see HSTS trans women as …well, gay men, they expect them to wear slacks and have pecs. When trans women refuse, gay men get nasty.

Amongst the most aggressive critics of trans women, alongside Bible-thumping preachers and others suffering from the delusion of religion, have been gay movement leaders like Jim Fourrat. The history of the gay male movement — led by squeaky white men — in the last three decades is of betraying and abusing HSTS trans women, mainly of colour, while sucking up to the patriarchy and also to AGPs — who are also white men.

Keisha Jenkins will not be the last to die. Many more will, HSTS trans women, mainly of colour. While they do, white gays and lesbians continue to congratulate themselves on at last getting their merit badges from the patriarchy and at the same time white cross-dressing men pontificate on how hard life is while getting sexually aroused at the thought of knitting, wearing frilly knickers or using women’s toilets.

I grieve for Keisha’s parents and for the loved ones of all the trans women who have been murdered. But we will not end this carnage until we see through the lies and propaganda that sustain their killing, and recognise that two of the most sinister accessories are gay men and cross-dressing fetishists. **

 

* The issue of prevalence and the blatant lies being promulgated by AGPs and their front organisations deserves a blog post of its own, which I will work up.

** A draft of this article was accidentally published yesterday. I have rewritten it in the light of the sad news about Keisha Jenkins.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Keisha Jenkins: Say Her Name appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

Related posts:

1. People don’t ‘become’ transgender. They just are.
2. An exploration of transgender lives
3. Pansexual: the human norm

The patriarchy is a parasitic disease

Every year, over a hundred trans women are killed in Brazil. In the USA, an epidemic of killing of trans women appears to be under way, and a woman is raped every 6 minutes. In other parts of the Americas, things are no better. In the UK and across Europe, trans killings are less frequent but beating and intimidation are commonplace, and rape is at an all-time high. In India, rape is epidemic. Why is this happening? Why the hate?

The underlying cause is the patriarchy, which is based on a misogynistic premise that women are worth less than men. The central plank of the patriarchy’s evil creed is ‘man=superior, woman=inferior’. This powers rape and ‘honour’ killings of women as well as the killing of both trans women and trans men. These phenomena are all closely related and a symptom of the patriarchy, which is not an organisation but a parasitic disease that feeds on people.

We’ve looked at rape before, so let’s look at trans killings here. Why does the patriarchy hate trans people so much? After all, they do share certain characteristics with men.

Well, we’ll come to the specific reasons later, but first you have to understand that there are two completely different types of male-to-female transsexual. The first, which used to be called ‘true’ transsexual, is now known by a range of more politically correct names, including ‘Blanchard HSTS’ and ‘transkid’. They realise they are girls in childhood, may go through a phase of thinking they are gay boys (when they are vulnerable to quack psychologists) and most importantly, they are sexually attracted to men. This puts them in harms way, because men are rapists and killers.

The second type used to be called ‘pseudo’ transsexual, but is now known as ‘Blanchard autogynephile’ or ‘AGP’. These are all the MtF transsexuals who are not principally attracted to men. They are sexually attracted to themselves, as women. (Some do become attracted to men after they transition, but that’s for another day.) Autogynephilia is popularly known as male fetishistic cross-dressing.  Think ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner.

Because trans women have the physical ability to be men but are not, both types offend the patriarchy’s hierarchy of status. This is just the first of its reasons for eradicating them.

The patriarchy only needs women to supply it with sons that bear their fathers’ names; since trans women cannot do this the patriarchy encourages men to kill them. This is what causes the ‘passer-by’ killings, where there appears to have been no social interaction between the victim and her killer. He just killed her because the patriarchy told him he should. Although AGPs are very rarely killed, when they are, it tend to be in these situations.

A second issue is that the patriarchy attempts to control how and with whom men have sex. (It doesn’t really care what women do in bed as long as they make babies for men and do as they are told by it.) This is because human sex is our most powerful drive. It bonds societies together, and to do so, humans are evolved, like our nearest relatives the bonobos, Pan paniscus, to be both pansexual and gender-fluid.

(I cover this in Why Men Made God and blogged about it yesterday at Pansexual: the human norm which may also cast light.)

For our two species, same-sex bonding is part of our group dynamic. It helps bond the groups we are evolved to live in together, and so helps the individuals in them survive. Because the same-sex sexual bonding occurs alongside opposite-sex intercourse, and these two species, left to their own devices, have a lot of sex, there is always enough reproductive sex to ensure future generations.

The patriarchy put an end to that. For it, sex had only to be about procreation and not about shared pleasure. Women, indeed, were not expected to find sex pleasant; this was ‘unbecoming’. (A view still held by Christians and Muslims; for example; clitorectomy is specifically designed to prevent women enjoying sex.) This is because the patriarchy wants its control systems, principally religions, to be the ‘glue’ that holds society together.

In order to do this, it is central to the patriarchal cults that men stop having sex with other males, so it teaches young men that such an attraction is demeaning and forbidden or even ‘unnatural’. It trains them to beat, bully and kill (as we see in ISIS and elsewhere in the Islamic world) men who express this. At very least it is tantamount to a surrender of all the man’s status.

At the same time the patriarchy teaches young men that women are sexual targets and that they have a right to penetrate them. (See here: Why America is the World’s Rape Capital ) It turns sex into a competition, with the most status going to the man who penetrates the most women. (Religious sanctions like marriage are only to control women; men are not bound by them.)

The above two factors are catastrophically dangerous for  transkids, who are the majority of trans women.* These women are sexually attracted to men and probably highly desirable. They frequently find themselves alone with men, in the interest of having sex. The man, having succeeded in the challenge the patriarchy set him and penetrated the girl, then finds out she has a penis. Because he has been taught that all possessors of penises are men, to his mind he has just had sex with a man, and his patriarchal status has been totally destroyed. An episode of narcissistic rage (which men are very prone to) occurs and he beats the girl to death. This is EXACTLY what happened to Jennifer Laude, Gwen Araujo and countless others.

As far as trans men are concerned, their numbers are smaller, but they are still victims. Here the issue is less sexualised. They are killed because they are seen by the patriarchy as usurping the status it reserves for men. To the patriarchy, women are ALWAYS inferior and must never be allowed to set themselves up as equals. Since for a woman to present as a man challenges the very foundation of the patriarchy, and trans men are a minority, the patriarchy thinks it can kill them with impunity and encourages the men who are its tools to do so.

 

*In the West autogynephiles claim they are the majority, but in order to do this, they have to pretend that the overall prevalence is much lower than it is. They use out-of-date,  debunked and plain old deliberately falsified statistics to try to shore their bogus claim up.

(One source of this misinformation is WPATH, formerly the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, an organisation run by and in the interests of autogynephiles.)

The true prevalence, as demonstrated in censuses and surveys all over the world, and in the US by prestigious organisations for such as the Williams Institute for Law of the University of California, and by Professor Lynn Conway, is around 1:250 or higher. There are at least 700,000 MtF transgender peopl in the USA and over 90% of them are not AGP, but HSTS. (Williams; Conway’s total is higher.)

However,  were autogynephiles to recognise the actual prevalence they would immediately lose credibility for the status they have arrogated to themselves, of being the spokesmen for all trans women. By doing this, autogynephiles encourage under-reporting and contribute to the killing of real trans women. These are white middle-class, middle-aged men with good careers and money in the bank, presuming to speak for principally of colour, poor, largely under-educated trans women. Nice.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post The patriarchy is a parasitic disease appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

No related posts.

Pansexual: the human norm

Bonobos chilling to the beat — as well as being pansexual and gender-fluid, bonobos like music. How cool is that?

When we did the research for Why Men Made God we spent a lot of time looking at how societies might have been structured in the era before the development of agriculture and the establishment of the patriarchy (I will be calling these ‘traditional’ societies.) Clearly, we can’t directly study the human groups that existed outside Africa between 50,000 and 5,000 years ago, because they no longer exist.

They left very little evidence. Although they did use stone and bone, a great deal of their artefacts were made of wood or leather and were perishable. The few that we do have are somewhat mysterious.

To try to shed light on this, we reviewed a wide range of anthropological literature. We especially concentrated on extant traditional societies, of which there are a surprising number, despite the attempts by the patriarchy, especially the Christian and Muslim ones, to eradicate them. (As a matter of fact, Islam has been less damaging to many traditional societies than Christianity, as we see from the number of traditional groups still living, and respected, in Indonesia.)

We reviewed the mythology that was recorded soon after the invention of writing in the culture that leads to the Western Patriarchy, which appeared in Sumer in the 5th Millennium BCE. We then compared this to modern mythologies which form part of traditional cultures.

We also looked at close relatives of humans, particularly our closest, the Dwarf Chimpanzee or bonobo, Pan paniscus.

Bonobos bonding

Bonobos have a fascinating social model. They are pansexual and gender-fluid. Males are not dominant and rape has never been observed in bonobo society, either in the wild or in captivity. Generally speaking, they have very relaxed, cool societies with notably low levels of aggression and stress.

In fact, bonobos use sex as the antidote to aggression and stress. Instead of fighting, they love each other, to be blunt. What is interesting is that when they do this, there is no dominance imperative: partners in bonobo sexual relations are equals. Females and males are equally likely to initiate sex. Furthermore, they have no defined preferences — they will as happily have sex with same-sex partners as with opposite.

Sex is a powerful bonding agent in bonobo society. It holds groups together and prevents division. This protects the group from falling apart and thus the individuals within it are more likely to survive. So sex has an evolutionary imperative alongside the reproductive one. In fact, bonobos don’t have sex to make babies, they have sex with their friends and for fun, because they like it. However, they have so much sex that there is no shortage of bonobo babies. Bonobos are evolved to be pansexual and gender-fluid, and we argue that this is the case for humans too.

It should be clear how this torpedoes the ‘homosexuality is an evolutionary dead-end’ argument. It might be, as far as individuals are concerned, but when everyone is having sex with everyone else, this is not the case. Being exclusively homosexual does mean an end to the individual’s genetic line, but this is not how same-sex sex works in either bonobo or traditional societies. The individual male only has to impregnate one female to reproduce his genes; and given the amount of sex in bonobo society, and the variety of it, this is easily achieved. The same, of course, holds true for females — if they give up having sex with each other occasionally to have it with a male, job done. Bonobos are naturally pansexual, to accommodate this, and we argue that the same is true of humans, and back it up with examples.

Further, bonobos are gender-fluid. This does not mean what some people think it does; it is not about wearing a miniskirt and sporting a beard. It means being happy to play either the penetrating or receiving role in sex. Bonobo males are routinely observed having sex, in which one penetrates and the other receives, and immediately after, having sex again and swapping roles. Then they will go off and have sex with females, who probably were having sex with each other in the meantime. Bonobo children are brought up by the group.

Bonobo females having fun sex.

We share over 98% of our DNA with bonobos and our traditional social models are almost identical. We wondered if we would find something in traditional societies that pointed to similar behaviours in humans and we found it.

All over the world, traditional societies exist that do not follow the patriarchal model, which is, men appropriate women as their mates for life; women in the patriarchy are the literal possessions, the property of men, initially their father, then their husband and brothers. Yet in traditional societies, this is not the case.

In many such cultures, same-sex activity is normal; frequently this is observed between adult men and boys. (Unfortunately, and probably due to the fact that the anthropologists doing the research were men, there is far less information about the women’s sexuality.) The adult men in these relations have women partners too. We cite quite a few examples and refer to over 400 sources in Why Men Made God that develop this.

We know of the Spartans that not only the men but the women had normalised same-sex relations, and while Sparta was a matriarchy, this appears also to have happened in more patriarchal pre-Abrahamic cultures too, which surprised me, frankly.

In fact, being gender fluid (in a sexual sense) and pansexual appears to be as normal for humans as it is for bonobos. However, bonobos have had to do without the curse of organised patriarchal religions, so are still happily having sex with anyone they like, while we invented a whole raft of ridiculous rules and conventions about it.

So in a way, this question is the wrong way round; it should be ‘When and why did strict monogamy and heterosexuality become enforced?’ and the answer to that we give in the book.

Now a caveat: we are talking about sex. The modern idea, that one is only ever attracted to a specific gender, is a modern idea, a by-product of the artificial sexual model imposed by the patriarchy. In fact, we should be having sex with all our friends and developing stronger bonds with them; instead we invented golf. However the patriarchy doesn’t want people being relaxed and loving each other; it wants people to compete, so they miss how it’s shafting them. Again, we explain this in far greater detail in the book than I can go into here.

Gender in the patriarchy is a construct which was developed and is used to suppress women. Gender, in fact, is how you are having sex at one specific moment in time. That’s all. In five minutes you might swap. It confers no advantage or superiority, and one gender is not intrinsically more attractive than the other. Most of what you have read or heard about this is a patriarchal lie.

With that in mind, it is disappointing to see how the modern gay ‘accommodationist’ movement has modelled itself on the patriarchy and imposes rules of behaviour on those whom is sees as being under its aegis. There is nothing that says ‘once gay always gay’ or that a man may not enjoy sex with other men, and also with women and vice versa. These are pseudo-patriarchal rules of behaviour invented by white gay male academics and activists who seek access to patriarchal privilege. I never thought that would happen; but then, the patriarchy is devious and good at perverting people to its ends.

People will not be happy and at peace until the patriarchy, and all its ridiculous rules and conventions, is utterly destroyed. Can’t come quick enough for me.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Pansexual: the human norm appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

Related posts:

1. An exploration of transgender lives
2. Why would a man not want to date a trans woman?
3. People don’t ‘become’ transgender. They just are.

Gay is square and trans is hip

 

Scottish trans woman Jai Dara Latto crowned Miss Transgender UK 2015. Congratulations and may the Zeitgeist go with you!

When I was at art school in Edinburgh in the early 1980s, there was only one place to be: the Hoochie-Koochie Club. Why? Because it was the only gay nightclub. Straight women liked it because there was an unspoken rule: straights are welcome, but no hitting on the women. Straight men liked it because we were much less likely to get battered in the face there than in any of the regular meat-markets in the city. There was no pressure; you could just chill, dance, have a drink.

But more than that, it was culturally cool. The gays always had the best music. They were the best-dressed cats in town and if somebody said ‘you’re looking a bit gay today’ you knew you had your fashion statement bang on. It was the era of the New Romantics and everybody was wearing eye-liner and bleaching their hair. Gender signals were profoundly mixed. Straight women wore sports jackets and top hats over jeans and men wore earrings and chiffon. The gay zeitgeist was as hip as it could be.

Contestants at the 2015 Miss Transgender UK Finals

After I graduated I became Sabbatical President of my Alma Mater’s Student Representative Council. One of my responsibilities was to listen to the pleas of destitute and often homeless students who had spent the grant, that was meant to last twelve weeks, in four of solid, flat out partying. Having also burnt the £50 overdraft facility that Barclays Bank would give anyone who walked in with a matriculation card, they ended up in front of me, begging for a bail out from the hardship fund; which I always gave them. I remember one, Alan we shall call him, sitting on my desk, holding one of my hands in his and supplicating me for help, despite the fact that I’d already said ‘yes’. And when he left he flounced out in style, blowing me kisses and wiggling his bum.

Another of my roles was to oversee the opening of the new Student Bar, which had been years in the development. Pulling a political fast one on the hard left, who apparently wanted old bentwood chairs and sacking, I persuaded the Governors to give me enough money to turn it into the most gay-attractive place in Edinburgh — and so it became, the legendary Wee Red Bar.  (Yup, that was me.) Why did I do this? Because gay was hip. Gay was cool. Gay meant bums on seats and cocktails being drunk, great music, colour, women not being harassed by neds and NO HASSLE.

Everybody interesting was gay. Freddie Mercury was gay, George Michael and Jimmy Somerville were gay, Frankie Goes to Hollywood were gay and Marc Almond was even more dangerously sexy than Debbie Harry. ‘YMCA’, ‘Relax’ and ‘Tainted Love’ were the soundtrack. Gay was the zeitgeist, the iconography to follow. Straights had to infer some sort of a kink just to be taken seriously — just look at Phil Oakey. Gay was cool.

That was before AIDS. I remember the tragedy all too clearly. But I could not have foreseen, then, working as a freelance photographer and documenting this horror, through the tears I cried for friends taken — what was to come.

Gay isn’t cool any more. Gay isn’t dangerous or cutting edge. Gay people are surely as lovely as they ever were, but they lost the zeitgeist. Instead of sparkling young things with multicoloured hair, full make-up and the most provocative clothes anyone approximating masculine gender could possibly wear, we have…two near-identical, balding, inclined to sedentary spread, IT technicians getting married. Did someone say ‘After the Lord Mayor’s Show?’

Now don’t get me wrong. I am really happy that Marriage Equality is now legal in so many countries, even if marriage itself is a questionable institution, both an instrument and an award of the patriarchy. And of course it goes without saying that everyone should be treated equally under the law. I celebrate this, the culmination of decades of activism.

But you know what? It’s dull. It’s grey. It’s what I never would have believed gays could be, boring and conventional. Square.

What happened to the rampant ménages a trois, quatre, cinq or more that the Art School models used to tell us about during their tea-breaks? What happened to the flaming boys with their tongues so far down each other’s throats they could have retuned their vocal cords? What happened to the fashion statements? I think Stephen Fry is very sweet and avuncular but iconic? Are you kidding? Marc Almond was iconic. Stephen is…comfortable. And he is about the most dangerous gay man still left out there. The rest have been swallowed up in a tide of grey, the favourite colour of the patriarchy. What happened to the zeitgeist, dammit?

Gone. All lost. The leaders of the gay movement today belong to a group called the ‘accommodationists’ and no, it’s not a synth band. This group’s philosophy was articulated by Jim Fouratt, a New-York based activist. It may be summed up as: ‘please accept us; we’re just like you but we love other men.’

Which is a lovely sentiment, don’t you think? Except it is one of submission. The accommodationists believed they could never beat the patriarchy and they would have to join it. They thought that if they conformed to the patriarchy’s notions of gender, they might sneak under its radar. And they had a great stroke of political fortune when the AIDS epidemic wiped out most of the opposition.

So they erased and banished the real leaders, like Harry Hay, the ‘Radical Faerie’ a cross-dressing imp who founded the Mattachine Society, the forerunner of the modern gay movement. They erased the trans women and drag queens of colour who really led the Stonewall Riots, like Marsha P. King and Sylvia Rivera; so successful were they that the director of this year’s film ‘Stonewall’, (Roland P. Emmerich, as badly-dressed an accommodationist as one could wish for) actually rewrote history to give these non-white women’s roles to white men, and worse, wrote them out of the story completely. For shame. Who would have thought a proud and out gay man would be both transphobic and racist?

Could I ever have believed, remembering Alan, sitting on my desk in his cowboy boots and hot pants, his hair pink and blue and his nails painted, reeking of patchouli, that such would be the end of something so colourful and provocative — that the face of 21st century gayness would be two middle-aged IT technicians in bad suits taking the patriarchal pledge of monogamy and commitment to perpetuate it?

Gay and lesbian has become boring. It’s dull. It’s unattractive. It’s conventional. It’s Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell. It’s square, man. The patriarchy has bought it, drawn its teeth and clipped its wings. Face it: you can’t be a part of the patriarchy and be interesting.

Oh the Bisexuals are still out there having fun, but you should hear what the L and G have to say about them, darling. Conformity — that sad expression of social conservatism that is nowhere more at home than in the US — has sold out all the individuals in the name of patriarchal acceptance and capitalist economics. Square square square.

And then again.

Suddenly Laverne Cox. Suddenly Janet Mock. Suddenly Paris Lees. Suddenly Sass Rogando Sasot and Geena Rocero. And trans men too: suddenly Fox Fisher, Chas Bono. Suddenly smart, stylish, articulate and beautiful trans people are everywhere.

Gays and lesbians gave up the zeitgeist. They — or at least the mainstream — didn’t really want to be cutting edge, not once they were over twenty-five and got decent jobs anyway. They wanted to be part of the patriarchal club and that meant accepting their position within it, the status the patriarchy allocated to them. So they abandoned all the dangerous people and settled for conformity; a safe marriage, a mortgage and maybe kids. How sweet.

One flaming femboy, her bubble-butt stretching the velour of her lethally short pants, her bag slung on her shoulder, mincing along the street in ludicrously high pumps, does more damage to the patriarchy in ten paces than all the clone, accommodationist gays and lesbians will in their entire lives. They don’t want to damage the patriarchy: they support it and want access to its system of privilege. Our mincing poppet doesn’t give two hoots for the patriarchy. She throws its privilege system back in its face and laughs at it. She just wants to be drop-dead gorgeous and have lots of sex and most of all, she wants it on her terms.

The effect of that is cataclysmic. Thirty-five years ago, before the onset of the AIDs epidemic and the triumph of the accommodationists, the patriarchy was equally challenged. White gay men and lesbians stole the initiative and settled for second best; acceptance on the patriarchy’s terms. Now all that is changing. Trans people are appearing everywhere; they’re on catwalks, on television, on magazine covers, all over the Internet. They have grabbed back the zeitgeist and are running with it. They have the excitement, the danger and the attractiveness and they know it; they always knew it, but now they have articulate voices too, voices that are being listened to, voices that won’t be shouted down by privileged white cis-men and women, the way Johnson and Rivera’s were, or for that matter are being, by older trans people.

In 2004, Fouratt, in a speech that shocked many, claimed that trans women were ‘crazy queens’ who threatened ‘the way we live our lives’. What he meant was that feminine gay men should stop being feminine, that they should instead assert their masculinity and thus fit into his accommodationist model, which was less menacing to the patriarchy. This was not how it was read, at least by many trans activists, who threw the kind of storm in a latte cup they are famous for; but these were all so-called ‘late onset non-androphilic’ or ‘Blanchard autogynephile’ trans women. They definitely are not an extension of gay maleness; many in fact see themselves as lesbian. In the last two decades, however, they have been the ones who made the noise. Fouratt was torpedoed and sank from view.

But there is another type of trans women. These do like men. They are the ‘early onset androphile’, ‘Blanchard HSTS’, or more informally, ‘transkids’ (because they identify as trans while still children). They are the nieces of Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and the daughters of a line of trans women reaching back into history, far beyond the invention of writing.

They are cousins to the hijra and thirunangai of India, the kathoey of Thailand, the transpinays of the Philippines, the waria of Indonesia, the North American ‘Two Spirit’ people and the travestis of Latin America and Southern Europe, as well as myriad other populations all over the world. Once, they were priestesses to the goddesses Inanna, Ishtar and Astarte. The Roman writer Livy tells how devotees of Cybele distilled pregnant mare urine to extract the oestrogen, which they used to feminise themselves — and would secretly give to their enemies to emasculate them. In Rome they were the galli, boys who ritually self-castrated to become priestesses — a procedure we might find shocking but which is carried on to this day by the hijra. The ancient Vedic texts, the foundation of Hinduism, describe these women in detail. They have always been among us.

Thai transgender model Nisamanee Lertvorapong in make-up

Overwhelmingly, they are a world majority of trans women. In Thailand they are estimated to be one percent of born-male population. Thailand is famously trans and gay friendly, but in Malaysia, which is anything but, one study put the prevalence only slightly lower at 1:170. The latest census in India, the first to try to count them, put the numbers of hijra close to half a million, but due to high rates of illiteracy and deep mistrust of patriarchal authority, most did not register. Support workers estimate that there may be as many as four million.

Anyone who has spent time in Asia knows that there is a continuum between feminine gay men and trans women. Traditionally, gay men in these societies identify as women ‘on the inside’ and they will express this if the circumstances are right. This depends on the level of social tolerance they experience, the cultural confirmation of their feminine identity — Asian societies have long-established traditions venerating trans people and indeed, may be more tolerant of trans women than of gay men — and, bluntly, how attractive they are as women.

There is little reason why this should not happen in the West. If you are a naturally feminine boy attracted to men, do you really want to become the image of the accommodationist gay man, an IT technician in a bad suit? It’s the last thing you’d do, if you could be a glamorous woman instead. This is what actually does happen, in most of the world.

In a way, the accommodationist gay movement and its counterpart lesbian one, have come to the end of their shelf-life. We should not be sad about this; they have achieved much. There will always be a place for gay men whose masculinity is too central to their personalities to let go of. But gender is a construct and its expression can be reshaped; the zeitgeist, furthermore, is a freight train coming. Best not be in the way.

Trans people’s star is rising. They have taken up the torch that was dropped by the gays and lesbians — of being stylish, of being shocking, of being iconoclastic, of being dangerously sexy but most of all, of waving the bold red rag of refusal to conform in the face of the patriarchy.

Trans is the new hip. Get ready.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Gay is square and trans is hip appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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Only Corbyn can save Labour’s ass

You can’t steal the Tories’ political clothes.

Future historians will see the 2010 UK General Election as the moment the ‘British’ Labour Party died, poisoned to its core by the ‘New Labour’ experiment. Gordon’s Brown’s catastrophic loss may not have translated immediately into a Tory majority, but that was only a matter of time.

The poison had been slow but nobody in Labour seemed to recognise what was happening as the gangrene turned black and pussy. Tony Blair didn’t win the 1997 General Election; the Tories connived and corrupted their way out of power, and an electorate, utterly sick of almost two decades of self-serving lies and destruction of the fabric of the ‘nation’ threw them out. Quite honestly they’d as likely have voted in the Three Amigos, complete with embroidered chaps and ten-gallon hats, as a triad of Tory-Liters led by Blair, all with uniform suits that cost even more than the real Tories’ ones.

Gordon Brown’s catastrophe was just the moment when everyone realised the awful truth: there was no further point to Labour at all. Ed Milliband spent years trying to persuade everyone that he could win a General Election, but he was doomed to ignominious failure. Not because he was an awful leader, or at least, not only because of that; but because Labour is now unelectable.

It’s easy to see why. The relentless sliming of Tony Blair and his incessant push towards the right disembowelled any notion of principle or purpose the party ever had. Labour always struggled to be elected, but its strongest suit was its social conscience. In the past, when people suffered, the British electorate (as it was then) voted Labour to put an end to Tories helping themselves. That’s how we got the National Health Service.

You can’t beat the Tories at their own game. They wrote the rule book. Well, actually, they didn’t, it was Niccolo Machiavelli and it’s called ‘The Prince’. Read it some time. It will explain everything you need to know about how the Tory mind works: grab and hold on to power any way we can, to make ourselves rich. That’s what Toryism is. It’s not hindered by baggage such as principles.

And because of that, trying to steal its clothes is a total waste of time. All you end up with is a bunch of worn out rags from Oxfam when you thought you’d just blagged some Savile Row.  And the next thing you know, here’s the Tories, elbowing their way to the trough again, wearing brand new suits that look remarkably like the ones you just bought.

Yet that is what Labour, under the surpassingly short-sighted leadership of Blair, Brown and Mandelson, tried to do, aided and abetted by hired help like Alistair Campbell and John McTernan, the orchestrator of ‘Scottish’ Labour’s defenestration this year. You can’t help but think these goons were being paid too much — and still are, in McTernan’s case.

You can’t out-Tory the Tories. You either wait for them to make themselves unelectable, or you come up with that anathema to Blairism, a principled position to challenge them. There’s no point in trying to challenge them on the right; everybody knows it’s a con. New Labour can chatter on as much as it likes about fiscal responsibility and you know what? It won’t make a damn bit of difference, because no Labour voter wants austerity in the first place, and the Tories know it’s a ruse. And the consequence of all this Tory-Lite centrism, designed to pick up Tory voters, is that Labour voters have stopped going to the polls.

Why should they? Labour — in any meaningful sense — no longer exists. Blairite UK Labour made the exact same mistake in England as it did in Scotland: it just assumed its ‘core vote’ would put up with anything. It was wrong in Scotland and it is wrong in England. Unless Labour is radical, it is unelectable. It’s that simple. It has to actually appeal to its natural voters, and the more it woos blimps and blue-rinses, the more it repels the core vote.

You have to enthuse a popular support and, when the Tories control all of the mainstream media, that is a tough job. It takes dedication, hard work and passion but absolutely most of all, it demands that you have something to enthuse people about, and a leader capable of doing it..

Labour has to abandon the blimps and blue rinses, the get-rich-quick barrow boys and self-serving bankers, and stand up what it was invented to stand up for — ordinary people and their rights.

Whatever happens now, Labour will not win a majority in 2020. That’s a given. We know that already.

But here’s a thing: the UK electoral system automatically favours two large parties. So the non-Tory vote will not fracture into a multiplicity of parties if Labour should collapse; it will remain essentially a two-party system. The only two parties (leaving aside Scotland) that these could be are the Tories and Labour.

Absent the SNP deciding to contest seats in England (which they could; and that would put the cat in with the doos) Labour still has a choice: to be a perpetual party of opposition, drained of any life, like Banquo’s ghost, providing spurious legitimacy for a permanent Tory dictatorship, or it must reinvent itself as a populist and popular party of the Left, committed to radical reform of the economy, a reversal of privatisation, abolition of the Lords, constitutional reform, protection for workers and so much more that it has abandoned in its rush to become the new Tories.

This is the tactic that the SNP in Scotland, Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece and may others have used and are using to upset the comfortable political status quo. The quicker Labour realises it must abandon its Tory-Lite fantasy and get back to the hard work of real politics, the quicker it will have a chance of breaking out of an otherwise vicious cycle of collapse.

The only person who can save Labour’s sorry ass now, is Jeremy Corbyn. And you only have to look at the reaction from the Tory-Lite wing to see that he might actually get the chance. Bookmakers have already begun paying out on bets that he will become leader, a whole month before the election. That is unprecedented.

So much the better. Labour needs to understand right now that no matter who it puts in the driving seat it will not win a majority in 2020. But only under Corbyn might it possibly hope to repeat the trick the SNP pulled off in Scotland (and which the Labour Scottish Branch so miserably failed and fails to replicate) and build a mass party of grass-roots enthusiasts. The only way it can do this is by enthusing the Left and the young. Only Corbyn can do this.

Furthermore, only under Corbyn could a deal be worked out with the SNP to maintain a Labour Government long enough to push through the necessary constitutional reform that will ensure that never again will a bunch of Etonite yobs hold absolute power on a third of the votes cast.

And, should it be elected, Labour must actually deliver: this will be a one-time only chance to save the party and if they go back to the old ways of promising the Earth and delivering a barrow load of infill, there won’t be another. Electors are savvy now and they have the Internet in their pockets. The old certainties are gone, and lies and broken promises will be remembered.

The almost certain immediate result of Corbyn’s election result will be that a number of high-profile Tory-Liters will try to mount a palace coup and when that fails, go off in a huff and start their own party, as did the so-called SDP over thirty years ago. And just like their utterly failed predecessor, this new breakaway group will, after a year or two of abject failure, join forces with the Liberals, who have no principles to worry about; they’ll suck any anyone’s cock if they think it might get them a Cabinet position or two. (Not that I have any objection to fellatio, you understand; but it’s an activity better suited to the bedroom than public life.)

And that will be the epitaph of Blairism; soon it will be forgotten, just like the names of the Gang of Four that led the breakaway SDP split. I’m not even going to look them up; and that is what is going to happen to the Tory-Lite, New Labour Blairites.

Jeremy Corbyn will likely even gain a seat or two back in Scotland, though the wind has changed too far to reverse the SNP’s domination for a long while yet. But even though I am an SNP supporter, I have in the past voted for Labour and, were I living in England and had to, I might consider voting for the party again, under Corbyn. Otherwise I’d just vote Green in protest.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Only Corbyn can save Labour’s ass appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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Evolution observed in trout

You have to be brain-dead to deny the fact of Evolution these days. Well, these last 150 years actually… Apparently though, at least 40% of USians (other Americans are smarter), are indeed just so cerebrally demised. Hopped the neurological twig as it were. Zombified the gray matter. Deceased the thinking apparatus.

Now why would we worry? These are sister-shagging Bible belt rednecks who still think the South actually won the Civil War, aren’t they? ‘Oh no man we just kinda took a time out for a mint juleps n some grits n shit them gaddamn Yankees done called time on us!’ So who cares what they think?

Well the trouble is, they get to elect the Preseedunt of the Yewnited States (of America, not Mexico), and unfortunately, given the performance of some of the incumbents, that is the most powerful office in the world. I mean they elected Dubbya. (Well they didn’t really, but he still got the job.) And there is a risk they might elect another scion of the Terminally Religionard House of Bush next year.

‘Howdee do Jebby boy! Done shot any coons lately? I do mean raccoons now, y’all. Maybe one o them Afreecan Geeraffes? Or a Liahn?’

Mind you, I must admit that this one is less obviously an evolutionary throwback

Well he does

— an irony lost on the Scions of Bush — than the last. Visually anyway. Lemme pick a louse or two there, Dub.

Maybe southern shitkickers too busy chasing their sisters’ tails to think about it might not be worried that the most powerful person in the world might be a man whose brain has already said ‘Hasta la vista’, but the rest of us should.

You could ask whatever it is now, a quarter of a million dead Iraqis, or Kurds or Syrians what they think, but oh dang woops a daisy, they done got killed already. And anyway, they ain’t Chrischuns.

But one must never lose hope of turning the tide of wilful, self inflicted, deliberate stupidity that laps at the shores of ‘Amereeca’. And there are signs of hope: The Southern Baptist Convention, one of the most intensely and egregiously thick religious groups in the United States, has quietly — not telling anyone now– lost a million adherents over the last few years, down from 17 million to 16. And even better, this reduction has been linked to Internet access, suggesting that mutts too stupid to read a book will believe what they see on a screen in front of them — something the yellow journalists at Fox figured out a while ago.

But because the Internet is not filtered by Murdoch-friendly aliens attempting to take over the planet on the quiet, some actual real truth slips through. From time to time.

And here is a nice piece just to show that. Scientific American magazine (the readership of which is probably not amongst the 40%,) has run a story this week about observed Evolution in trout.

Fish are known to be able to adapt quickly to environmental changes, particularly pollutants like heavy metals and PCBs. Noting this, the magazine discusses a study on  trout (Salmo trutta) in southwest England (where the greeting used to be ‘Oooaarr buoy, oo well terday?’ but has become ‘Ayoh morning cheps do try not to get the doorstep muddy,’ due to an influx of early-retired middle-class Londoners making it impossible for locals to afford to live there.)

Anyway SM says that the study ‘reveals not only that the local populations of these trout have changed rapidly in response to pollution, it also ties distinct genetic changes to precise events in human industrial history.’

In other words, we can see the evolution and at the same time we can see what caused it. Neat huh? (Stop sticking your tongue in Lucy-Mae’s ear, Jebediah. Lawsh knows what your mother would think. Oh, she’s your cousin…just this once then.)

An egregious picture of some nice food. Including a trout

The team from the University of Exeter were able to identify two specific genetic divergences in the fish, both directly related to industrial activities, one 960 and the other 150 years ago.

From the SM piece, ‘Dating techniques can be quite imprecise but the fact that both splits fit events in history so well was compelling and a big surprise,’ says Jamie Stevens, the research team leader. ‘The adaptation appears to be metal-specific, with trout in each river adapted to a unique cocktail of metals. A fish in one river might tolerate arsenic but would die in a catchment high in tin or zinc.’

These splits coincide with peaks in mining and industrial activity and it appears that the fish suffered ‘bottlenecks’ at each of these two points, when their numbers were drastically reduced and only the most resistant to the pollution survived, passing on this genetic adaptation to future generations.

(Bottlenecks are something that we discuss in Why Men Made God, by the way. Great read.)

Egregious picture of a girl with a trout. It’s Friday

So not only can we show that Evolution happens, we can also show that human activity can provoke it. So, job done. Evolution observed, theory confirmed, all Evolution-deniers either shut up or shoot yourselves.

Now I know that the Bible-belters are all standing there with their fingers (or their cousin’s tongues) in their ears shouting ‘Lalalalala I can’t hear you,’ (or ‘Ooooh, Jebby let’s go back to Ma’s trailer and make a baby,’) but that’s no reason not to share a good wee story from an excellent magazine.

And hey, maybe somebody might learn something. Maybe.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Evolution observed in trout appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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3 Ps One: Pot; marijuana

The first of our 3 Ps is Pot.

Pot — marijuana, cannabis, grass, weed, call it what you like, has been used by humans since the beginning of recorded history. It is likely that we have been using it for tens of thousands of years.

While there are risks associated with the use of pot, these are vastly overstated and much less than those of using alcohol or tobacco, both of which cause huge numbers of deaths and human suffering and by the way, cost society a vast amount of money. Marijuana prohibition is one of the greatest misuses of state resources and taxpayers’ money in the world today.

Until the 1930s pot use was legal and largely unremarked. William Randolph Hearst, the American media tycoon, changed that. Hearst was the inventor of ‘yellow journalism’ the sensationalising of factually incorrect and often invented stories for political purposes. He was a fanatical right-winger and a friend of Adolph Hitler. Up until the engagement of the United Sates in World War 2, Hearst remained in close contact with Nazi authorities in Germany regularly had his newspapers run anti-Russian, anti-Communist and pro-German articles, which were provided by the Gestapo’s propaganda services.

Attack on Pearl Harbor, 1941

Hearst was anti-British and a fervent ‘isolationist’ who used his media to discourage American entry into the European war. He repeatedly attacked Roosevelt’s attempts to help European states, especially the UK, against the Nazis through schemes like lend-lease and severely restricted the President’s ability to assist in the disaster. Amongst his other crimes, therefore, Hearst may be indicted for being accessory to the murders of millions of Europeans, especially Jews and other minorities like homosexuals. It was only at the point of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that he was forced to backtrack.

At home, Hearst had invested hugely in forestry and other resources to produce wood-based paper. However, making wood-based paper is very damaging to the environment and relatively expensive. Paper made from hemp (the male pot plant) is cheaper, a better product and less damaging. Hearst risked being undercut.

Hearst (centre) with high-ranking Nazis

Hearst, as well as being a Nazi and fascist sympathiser and more, was a virulent racist who particularly detested Mexicans. Marijuana use was popular amongst them and, never being one to waste an effort, Hearst saw a way to make sure his investment in wood-based paper production paid off, and to make as many Mexicans as miserable as he could: he used his media to persuade the US government to make hemp illegal either for paper production or for consumption.

He was greatly assisted in this by Henry J. Anslinger, a career civil servant in the recently-formed Bureau of Narcotics, who was also a white supremacist racist. Like Hearst, Anslinger despised blacks, Mexicans, Asians and Filipinos. He also hated Jazz and Blues music, which, here revealing his profound misogyny, he thought caused white women to become ‘immoral’. Since marijuana was popular amongst Jazz and Blues musicians, Anslinger was presented with another easy target, which Hearst lost no time in demonising.

The sick mentality at the heart of the American right was revealed in the attitudes of these two evil men: racism, white supremacy, misogyny and the appropriation of women’s bodies

Using its usual combination of threats and bullying, the US, again motivated by Hearst’s media empire, ‘persuaded’ its trading partners to do the same. So the fact is, ladies and gentlemen, that smoking pot is illegal because it suited the business ends of a Nazi-sympathising media tycoon with no respect for truth, and the career of a bureaucrat. That is why countless billions have been wasted and innumerable lives lost and ruined in the entirely specious ‘War on Drugs’. There is no other reason.

Smoking pot is a victimless crime. Even if it were proven that it was as damaging as other, legal, recreational drugs, the only person being harmed is the person consuming it. Any other harm comes simply from the fact of its prohibition. As country star Willie Nelson said. ‘the most dangerous thing you can do with marijuana is get caught with it.’

A little personal history. I began smoking pot when I was 15, while I was a young musician playing in bands. I loved it. I didn’t drink alcohol. I smoked pretty much every day for the next six years, and then toned it down, only because my life changed a bit. When I did so, I had no difficulty. I didn’t become an addict. I took my degree and entered journalism as a photographer. I was headhunted for the launch of Scotland on Sunday, and soon became the youngest, ever, Executive Picture Editor in Scotland. I ran a very successful photography business for decades, I have beautiful children who all took or are taking degrees, I took my own Master’s degree and I own my home outright. Does it sound like pot ruined my life? Don’t be a blithering idiot. And I still enjoy a blast, believe me.

And it’s not just me. I know countless people who would say the same — who run good little businesses, some good big businesses, who, for years, every time you saw them, had smoke coming out of their ears. Doctors, lawyers, university professors (a lot of them, actually) journalists, you name it. Reeking for years and you’re telling me it hurt them? Away, what utter garbage.

Did any of us succumb to the draw of stronger drugs? No. We just looked at that and said, ‘that shit ain’t for me bud, don’t bogart that joint.’

And while I was smoking a lot I hardly ever drank. My friends and I would go weeks at a time without even a pint. Can you believe that?

Which should tell you why pot is still illegal, so long after Hearst’s death. Yes folks, it has nothing to do with the paltry harm it can do. It has nothing to do with the (now discredited) suggestion that it can cause mental instability. It has nothing to do with utter nonsense about ‘gateway drugs’ or non-existent ‘social consequences.’

The main reason pot is still so widely illegal is that the alcohol producing companies spend fortunes hiring sharp-suited little shits to persuade politicians to keep it so, because they think that way, we’ll buy more alcohol. They are aided and abetted by career bean-pushers like Anslinger who populate police and regulatory bureaux across the globe, whose only interest is their next pay cheque.

A wise man once told me, ‘When you see people doing something there’s no reasonable explanation for, the answer is always money.’ Case in point.

Pot is important and it’s the first of the 3Ps because in the first place, its use is a crime that is in itself utterly victimless. Its victims stem from a specious attempt to prohibit it, either through lives and livelihoods lost to government agencies like the American DEA, or amongst the criminals to whom the business has been ceded by politicians. The persecution of consumers has ruined the lives of countless otherwise hardworking, ordinary people. They were victimised for smoking a plant that will happily grow in your garden. Is that a fair use of the power of the state?

Criminalising the use of pot criminalises pot consumers. Even if you are never caught, criminalising a relatively harmless natural substance makes consumers reconsider the relationship of individual to state. Now while most pot consumers are probably by nature non-conformists, knowing that the state holds you to be criminal for doing something that does you no harm, makes you rethink your perspective on the law. It makes you ask, ‘How many other laws are as absurd as this one?’

It tells you that obeying the law is a matter of choice, because if the law is wrong about pot, then what else is it wrong about? It means we have to look at each and every law and decide, one by one, whether or not we think it should be obeyed.

In the absence of moral authority, which law abandons the instance it criminalises people for doing something that harms no-one else, why should we obey any law? Out of fear. Is that the relationship we want to have between state and people, one of obedience enforced by fear? I don’t want a society like that.

I do not think it is helpful for the law to be considered an ass, but for the law not to be considered so, all the ass-like laws — and this is one — have to be repealed.

Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol in the 1920s in America, and it hasn’t worked with pot. The so-called ‘war on drugs’ has been an unmitigated disaster. It has destabilised large parts of the world and led to untold death and suffering; yet it has not impacted one iota on the availability of pot. Face it, that war is lost. It’s over. If you want to do some good, maybe — just maybe — you could divert resources from the failed attempt to prohibit a substance that dos no harm to really working on one that does, like meth — and not through prohibition, but rehabilitation. Hell, give them pot instead — it might work.

Prohibition of pot has poured billions directly into the pockets of organised crime families all over the world. Not only is that money then used to fund far more nefarious operations, it has other consequences. Today, in the UK, thousands of Vietnamese have been smuggled in to work inn marijuana-growing factories — as SLAVES. That is right, prohibition of marijuana has directly led to the re-establishment of a slave economy actually inside the UK. And the same is true across Europe.

Does anyone imagine for one second that this atrocity would be permitted in a legal business? Are you nuts? There would be inspections, Health and Safety, minimum wage, working hours… the people who now are working as slaves would actually be making a living. And they would be PAYING TAX. Just as the business owners would.

The alcohol business generates huge amounts of revenue that goes directly to the exchequers of the countries where it exists. This comes through duty, through point of sale taxes, through income tax paid by workers and corporation tax paid by the companies.

Not ONE PENNY of this potential fortune goes to any government where marijuana is prohibited and instead ALL of it goes into the pockets of the crime bosses and, further back the chain, is used to fund terrorism, killing, extortion, people trafficking, smuggling and the panoply of criminal activities.

The only way to stop this is to legalise the consumption, trade and sale of marijuana and control its production — which is exactly what we do with alcohol, so we have the mechanisms and the personnel already in place.

In the UK, according to a 2014 survey, 29% of the population had used an illegal substance — and so are criminalised under this absurd law — while 52% of voters favour legalisation. In the light of that, is continuing with a failed attempt to outlaw something that almost a third of the population has used — with no ill effect — an intelligent use of the power of the state? Is that a reasonable use of taxpayers’ money? Yet the politicians, ever in the pockets of business, continue to throw taxpayers money at prohibition, when simple legalisation would save all that, put an end to the crime barons and their slave trade and raise huge amounts of revenue for the Exchequer.

In recent years, chinks of light have begun to appear. At time of writing, just under half (24) of all American states have either decriminalised or fully legalised pot, with absolutely no ill effects to public health and, in some case, considerable benefit to their exchequers. Colorado, with a population the size of Scotland, 5 million, raised $76m (£48m) in marijuana tax revenues during its first year of legalisation.

In Europe, improvement is slow but only today we read that several English police forces have decided to stop prosecuting for growing or consuming the plant. In Spain, you can both grow and smoke in your own home. The Czech Republic has legalised cannabis, one more reason to go there. And despite pressure from France and Germany, the Dutch capital, Amsterdam, remains a toker’s refuge.

Nevertheless we would have to consider that, on this measure of our freedom, we are not doing well. Government authority is being used in an unreasonable way, damaging the lives of huge numbers of otherwise law-abiding, taxpaying citizens and turning them into criminals. Doing so debases both the notion of criminality and the justice system itself. It makes legislatures a laughing-stock and plays into the hands of crime barons. On this ‘P’ we need to do much better.

I think imma smoke me a spliff now.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post 3 Ps One: Pot; marijuana appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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