From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/18/julie-burchill-and-the-observer
The readers’ editor on why the paper was wrong to publish slurs against trans people
Stephen Pritchard
The Observer, Friday 18 January 2013
It was “appalling”, “vile”, “hateful”. It was “incredibly offensive”. It was “rude, bigoted and downright insulting”. In the 24 hours following the publication of Julie Burchill‘s Observer piece headlined “Transsexuals should cut it out”, more than 1,000 emails arrived in my inbox and 2,952 comments were posted online, most of them highly critical of the decision to publish what one correspondent called “her bullying nonsense”.
The piece in question was a defence of her friend, the columnist Suzanne Moore, who claims she has been driven off Twitter by a vociferous campaign from transsexual people. Moore had contributed an essay on women’s anger to an anthology of polemical writing. Women were angry, she wrote, at the effect of government policy on the weakest members of society, many of whom happened to be women, and they were angry, among other things, at “not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual”.
This, wrote Burchill, led to Moore being “monstered” by a lobby that Burchill said would rather silence Moore than decry the idea “that every broad should look like an oven-ready porn star”. She said the lobby was now saying it was Moore’s refusal to apologise that “made” them drive her from Twitter, presumably in the name of solidarity. Some of the language was gratuitously offensive; to repeat it here would be to add insult to injury.
The ensuing storm was notable both for its vociferous nature and for its individuality. A controversial issue will often bring a blizzard of identikit protest of apparently confected anger but while clearly this lobby was organised most of the emails and letters we received were personal and heartfelt. And they were not only from trans people. Concerned readers with no connection to the trans lobby felt hurt that a minority that could expect to be protected by a liberal publication was being attacked in an extremely insulting manner.
“Would you have run the article if it had contained similar slurs regarding people of colour or people with disabilities?” was a typical question.
Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/18/julie-burchill-and-the-observer
