Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • The awful badness of cisnormativity

    The British Psychological Society – Cisnormativity impacts core emotional needs of transgender and gender diverse people:

    Despite thousands of years of diverse gender expression, many trans and non-binary people still grapple with the impact of cisnormativity: the belief that cisgender people (people whose gender matches the body they were born with) are 'normal' or 'right', while others are not. The pressure to conform to this expectation can significantly affect mental health: societal messaging around gender being determined by biology, for example, may affect someone's ability to feel safe and happy as themselves. At a time when trans people are also being asked to "accept perceived reduced rights", this is more important than ever.

    Oh god. It's that "gender being determined by biology" which is doing the damage here. Sex is determined by biology. As for gender, well, in its usual meaning nowadays as, basically, sexual presentation in the cultural climate you're in – dress how you want, present yourself how you want. Live how you want. But you can't change your sex. 

    It's not that hard. Really. Unless you're a psychologist.

    Added: to spell it out….this sex/gender confusion has devastating consequences.

    The old way: if you're a girl who likes cars and playing football, and doesn't like dolls and girly things, then…*shrug*. So what? If you grow out of it after puberty, fine. If you don't grow out of it after puberty, fine. Maybe you're lesbian, maybe you're not. Whatever. You'll find your own path.

    The new way: if you're a girl who likes cars and playing football, and doesn't like dolls and girly things, then…this means that you're a boy. That's because real girls don't like cars and playing football, and do like dolls and girly things. So you need to transition. First the puberty blockers, then the hormone replacement, and then, very likely, the surgical mutilation. You'll be sterile, your sex life will be problematic at best, and you'll require constant medical attention for the rest of your (shortened) life. 

    It's not hard to see which side here is governed by "societal expectations" and gender stereotypes.

  • From the BBC’s Global News Director

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    Full text:

    Shocking misinformation from the BBC's Global News Director, Jonathan Munro, on whether Hamas controls how local Gazan journalists operate:

    "They're not restricted in what they are able to see and show. There may be physical restrictions – for example, not many of them have much fuel to go from one town to another – but there is no restriction on what they can show, what they can see and what they can film when they're on location. There is no suggestion at all that any of those people are under any political influence."

    This is utter rubbish, sadly.

    Hamas's tight – and often violent – control over journalists has been well known for years. How on earth can the BBC claim not to know this?

    From last month – Gaza journalists speak out about Hamas intimidation, threats, assaults.

  • Not a woman’s crime, again

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    Article here. All female pronouns. Aren't journalists supposed to report the truth?

  • The BBC’s wider failure to properly report on events in Gaza

    From a Times report on the problems facing BBC Verify, and the ongoing war of words with the White House:

    Despite the focus on Verify, some consider the criticism it faces to be a symptom of the BBC’s wider failure to properly report on events in Gaza.

    “No one turns to Verify after it has done a bit of geo-locating and says ‘The wool has now fallen from my eyes and I can see clearly’,” said one senior journalist.

    “Hamas is a body that routinely lies and executes people it doesn’t like, but we treat them as if they’re of equal status to a democratically elected government that runs an open society. Impartiality does not mean neutrality — it means truthfulness.”

    John Ware, the former BBC Panorama reporter, called the broadcaster’s coverage of events in Gaza “quite timid”.

    “[No] programme has spent any time in the Palestinian Authority, looking at the official outlets, which almost daily spew out the most revolting antisemitic tropes,” said Ware.

    For the BBC only one side is guilty of spewing hatred, and it isn't the Palestinians.

  • The genocide framing of the Gaza conflict

    References to genocide have soared in the past eighteen months. Not about Sudan, though, or Xinjiang, or Ukraine. Of course not. Only one country now stands accused of genocide. Even before Israel launched its attacks on Gaza, the word started appearing on banners and in headlines across the world: "stop the genocide". It's everywhere. And it's always "the genocide". However much we may wish to criticise the Israeli assault on Gaza, one thing it assuredly isn't is a genocide in the traditional meaning of the word. Many people have been killed, but there's no question of Israel seeking to eliminate the Palestinians as an ethnic group. So what's going on?

    Zach Goldberg at Tablet:

    Coverage linking Israel with genocide has surged far beyond every other agreed-upon historical case of genocide across all examined outlets. In The New York Times, for example, articles pairing Israel and genocide reached levels more than nine times higher than the peak for Rwanda and nearly six times greater than for Darfur. Similarly, in The Guardian, more than 1 percent of all articles now reference both Israel and genocide—a frequency unmatched by any other pairing in recent decades.

    This is not a minor anomaly. It marks a profound shift in how the concept of genocide is being applied in public discourse.

    If Israel’s war in Gaza qualifies as genocide, it would constitute a striking historical outlier: perhaps the first such case of genocide triggered by a mass terrorist attack involving the slaughter of civilians and the taking of hostages; the first in which the genocider permitted food, fuel, and humanitarian aid to flow into the territory of its purported victims; and potentially the only instance in which the perpetrators lacked any prior plan or ideological commitment to extermination. It may also be unique in that the targeted group’s combatants have deliberately embedded themselves in civilian infrastructure and sought to increase civilian casualties for strategic and propaganda purposes. And it could be the only genocide that might plausibly be halted on the spot—not by the genocider, but by the group claiming victimhood. Specifically, were Hamas to release the hostages and lay down its arms, Israel’s military campaign—having achieved its core objectives—would likely cease….

    Why has the genocide framing of the Gaza conflict dominated media coverage to a far greater extent than conflicts with far clearer claims to that label?

    Traditional factors such as access or transparency do not offer satisfactory explanations for the sudden expansion of the term genocide or for the escalation in its use by mainstream outlets. Israel’s open media environment, combined with its geographic proximity to Gaza and the steady stream of imagery and testimony emerging from the territory—often via NGOs and local sources, some affiliated with Hamas—enables consistent and detailed, if often false or misleading, reporting. Far from inoculating Israel against baseless charges, this openness perversely amplifies them, making the country a uniquely visible and morally charged target.

    While anti-Israel prejudice in the mainstream media is long-standing and certainly plays a role, framing the problem as one of bias fundamentally misunderstands its nature. The rapid escalation in the use of the term genocide is not the product of ignorance; rather, it is entirely purposeful, with mainstream reporters and essayists engaging in frequent linguistic and legalistic contortions to justify their usage of an inflammatory term in order to delegitimize the actions of one side in a conflict and legitimize the actions of the terrorist organization that started the Gaza war.

    Well yes. But surely an important factor here is that old truth: the Jews will never be forgiven for the Holocaust. Now, at last, comes the chance to point the finger at those smug people who, by their very existence, and in particular by their determination to build Israel, a land of their own where they can be free from persecution, keep reminding us of the unparalleled evil that was inflicted on them by the great civilisation that was Europe. By us. The opportunity is being gleefully seized. Ha! See? They're just as bad as us. No – they're worse. All the old antisemitic canards about the nasty Jews – hey, it turns out they're true after all!

  • Nothing taken from trans people ‘except a false belief’

    After the Guardian's misleading headline, the Telegraph gets it right – Supreme Court ruling has taken nothing from trans people ‘except a false belief’, says equality watchdog chief:

    Trans people have been “lied to over many years” over their rights to enter female-only spaces, a senior member of Britain’s equality watchdog has said.

    Akua Reindorf, one of eight commissioners at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said transgender people had been misled about their entitlements and there “has to be a period of correction” to recognise the women’s right to single-sex spaces.

    Ms Reindorf made the comments at a debate about the Supreme Court ruling that the word “sex” in the Equality Act refers only to biological sex, and not to a person’s gender identity.

    The ruling confirmed it was lawful for female-only sports teams to exclude trans women and for trans people to be barred from lavatories and changing rooms for the opposite sex. This was later backed up by interim guidance from the EHRC.

    Asked by an audience member about concerns that the ruling could roll back the rights of trans people, Naomi Cunningham, a barrister and panellist at the debate, said trans people “will have to give way”, adding: “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

    Ms Reindorf, speaking next, agreed, saying: “Unfortunately, young people and trans people have been lied to over many years about what their rights are.

    “It’s like Naomi said – I just can’t say it in a more diplomatic way than that. They have been lied to, and there has to be a period of correction, because other people have rights.”

    Naturally there are dissenting voices:

    But Chiara Capraro, the head of gender justice at Amnesty International UK, criticised Ms Reindorf’s comments.

    She said: “The EHRC has the duty to uphold the rights of everyone, including all with protected characteristics. We are concerned that it is failing to do so and is unhelpfully pitting the rights of women and trans people against each other.”

    It was, of course, the trans activists who pitted the rights of women and trans people against each other, by demanding that trans women – men in dresses – have access to women's toilets, women's sport, women's prisons, lesbian groups, by misrepresenting the law. Now they know better. Or should know better. But Amnesty have lost the plot on this, as on so much else.

  • Hamas brutality

    As not seen on the BBC:

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    "Six others were reportedly executed without trial, without court—just Hamas’s bullets.

    "For those constantly worried about ISIS-linked militias in Gaza: hopefully, your concern extends—at least equally—to the daily torture, executions, and lawless brutality inflicted by Hamas on Gazans themselves."

  • Men in women’s sport

    When it's fine:

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  • Piers Morgan “a significant part of the problem of disinformation”

    Natasha Hausdorff was interviewed by Piers Morgan earlier this week, and it didn't go well. Morgan interrupted her some sixty times, and called her views despicable. This was in marked contrast to interviews he had with the likes of the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, who referred to the hostages being held in Gaza as prisoners, and claimed they were all soldiers. This was met with little or no pushback.

    Could he perhaps in any way be biased?

    Hausdorff in the Spectator – Why can’t Piers Morgan handle the truth about Israel?

    Being interrupted and harangued, or even having my volume turned down or line cut, is not a new experience for me in “interviews”. It has always been a clear indication that the individuals involved in this unprofessional conduct were out of their depth and at a loss as to how to engage with the evidence I had presented. Nor, indeed, am I the only one experiencing such treatment. Any individual who does not subscribe to the virulently anti-Israel agenda, and who is asked to comment on broadcast media, will have experienced similar playground antics. It is demonstrative of a catastrophic failure by the media to do its job and an abject absence of journalistic integrity.

    The pathetic display this week by Piers Morgan demonstrates that he is a significant part of the problem of disinformation about this conflict. Morgan should be well aware that there have been repeated stories emerging from Gaza which have subsequently been debunked only after they spread around the world. The predictable result has been the poisoning of many minds against Israel, on the basis of fabrications and blood libels. My simple entreaty was that the matter should not be prejudged, especially where fake AI generated images had been deployed to support it. Cue frenzied outrage and bile from Morgan.

    Defence of fake images in pursuit of a “good story” is, of course, old ground for Morgan. He was dismissed from his role as editor of the Daily Mirror in 2004, following the publication of photographs that purportedly showed British soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. The images were later determined to be staged and not taken in Iraq. Morgan stood by their publication and refused to issue an apology on the basis there was no firm evidence that they were fake, though the newspaper did, acknowledging that it had been the victim of a “calculated and malicious hoax” and expressing deep regret for the reputational damage caused to the British Army. Morgan’s defence of his decision to publish those fake pictures stemmed from his opposition to the Iraq war in a disgraceful example of “the ends justify the means”.

    Did he learn anything from that shameful incident? The way I was treated on Uncensored suggests not. At least when Morgan was in the employ of a national newspaper, he could be held accountable. But this no longer appears to be the case. He is now free to shout down his guests without consequence.

    The problem doesn’t stop with Morgan. The unfair way in which Israel is presented in the Western media, and the refusal to treat Hamas’s claims with scepticism, misleads the public. It increases the threat of violence to Jews around the world, but also, crucially, props up and encourages Hamas, thereby prolonging the war and the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

  • The realisation of the Palestinian vision of return

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