Op-eds

Lengthy opinion pieces that express my perspective on a specific issue, aiming to present a well-supported argument and / or recommendation.

Mama Zersetzung

As a deadly sin, lust is believed to spur other sins and additional immoral behavior. Lust becomes a sin when it's pursued without regard for ethical or moral boundaries, objectifies others, or leads to actions that violate God's laws or principles.

Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer, his fifteeen murders involved necrophilia, and cannibalism. To create a "zombie" four of his victims had holes bored into their skulls through which Dahmer injected hydrochloric acid or, later, boiling water, into their frontal lobes in an attempt to induce a permanent, submissive, unresistant state.

Ancrum

I became a resident in the village of Ancrum on June 6th 2024 arriving at an empty house to sign a Secure Tenancy Agreement with SBHA. The housing officer was a lovely man who clearly enjoyed his job, initially I signed with high hopes that I'd be welcome within this village. This is the first time I have settled anywhere long term since 11 years old, taken into care I moved fifty-two times, placed with foster parents, children's homes, friends of the family, and then to homeless accommodation, a DSS resettlement unit in Leicester. During seven childhood years surviving my mothers paranoid schizophrenic illness, I became inflicted with uncontrollable fight or flight response; and Borderline Emotional Personality Disorder; this spurned me to shift from pillar to post, cycling "here I go again" vagrancy for most of my life. Seeking a sense of belonging I joined the New Age Travellers 1990-1993, aligning with the Road Protesting Movement 1993-1998 to acquire a sense of purpose, and enrolled into Ruskin College in 1999 for an education. From squatting a terrace house in Herne hill London 2002-6, travelling to India 2008-9, then after two gruelling years street homeless in London, rather than waste away from self neglect I committed myself to a life of adventure, walking the UK coastline, bagging Munros etc. Wild camping in lightweight tents, suffering from exposure I sought shelter inside bothies. A decade later a defining moment came on Ladhope golf course when trembling hands became frozen stuck to tent posts, that I wasn't here or there any more, I'd descended so zombified that I was fading away into nothingness. Scottish Borders Council was initially unhelpful, although they provided emergency accommodation they threatened to transfer housing authority to Cornwall. After a week or two inside a "crash pad" flat located in Church Square, Galashiels, I was given a local connection and relocated to Silverbutthall, Hawick, where I waited eighteen months to be rehoused in Ancrum. I waited three extra months whilst celling, floor and wall plaster was replaced due to flooding caused by previous tennant relatives failing to turn off the house water mains.

Whilst living in Hawick I met my partner Charlie whilst hitchhiking (I've hitched thousands of lifts during my transient life) along the A7; it had been five years since another person had shared their life with me. Charlie, a lifelong farmer and an ex-antiques dealer (owned a shop in Selkirk) helped me furnish my house; as well as DIY activities. Charlie lives in a beautiful farmhouse, and would be happy if I moved in, but after 34 years of no fixed abode I wanted to be settled independent. Apart from a lovely support worker named Sam, nobody in Hawick wanted correspondence with me, the entire eighteen months I was resident there; so alas, I was hoping Ancrum, being smaller, may be different. This was not the case, peoples sharp-edged ill-thought judgements and ingrained phobias etched places and people inaccessible. I attempted to build correspondence with the village shop, but was fronted by a social normality facade purporting to be genuine, shielded by partisan contempt of silence enabling deformation of character. It is possible to peer though this veil of wanton ignorance by utilising kinesics (study of the way in which certain body movements and gestures serve as a form of non-verbal communication) and applying transactional analysis (theory and method of psychotherapy that explores how people communicate and interact with each other). Unseeing communication as merely verbal, reveals a different world in Ancrum, a deeper resentment possessed by fear, loathing and envy. This isn't just narrow-minded xenophobia. But malevolent conjuring of stigmatising misconceptions revealed in correspondence unto me after a Ancrum Community Council meeting. I'd gone to this public meeting to talk my concerns of cars speeding through the village and was about to have my say when the meeting became swarm overwhelmed by parents with their children. Merely days after the villages annual "handba" they came requesting goal posts be placed on Ancrum village green. I disagreed with their motion, stating Ancrum already has a football ground, that placing goal posts affectively exceeded "kick around" recreation activity, by erecting a defined boundary upon Common Land. The meetings chair had never seen so many people in the room, but deliberated as "nice to be nice" as if consensus had been decided.

After five minutes, I was thanked for attending, a polite way of being motioned to go; I presumed they'd voted on the motion after I had left the Community hall to keep the decision unanimous. The following morning the goal posts were announced on Ancrum village Facebook page; I posted my objections in comment and was almost immediately set upon by what I described as a rabid pack of scornful hyenas attempting to gaslight negative correspondence from me. They achieved their goal as I became sickened by a barrage of progressively obscene comments; removing my account from membership of Ancrum village page, and blocking their profiles. Two - three weeks had passed when we, Charlie and I discovered two three-quarter size goal posts, placed upon the green, far and wide. At the meeting these posts were to be removed, and stored so as not to be a permeant fixture but irrespectively are present upon the village green unless an event is to be held upon the green. Ancrum village does not tolerate altercating opinion, igniting a suppression of opposition that is akin to xenophobic fascism utilising Zersetzung tactics that belong to East Germany's STASI. I have not harmed or wronged anybody in this village, yet children run past sacred, and or scream whenever they see me; yet nobody in this village denounces this behaviour as wrongful because such stigmatisation upholds their ostracism, propagated by gaslighting moral panic. I'm lucky in that I have two friendly neighbours either side of me who know, after ten months that by merely living within the village I'm not a hurting anybody, but merely by presence alone, drawing out their paranoid phobias and unwarranted prejudices. Several residents, when I first moved into Ancrum asked why I put up fixed CCTV cameras watching my house; not wanting to predispose them to a predisposition I did not disclose to them that the CCTV cameras I had installed was to protect me from such gaslit abuses that could possibly endeavour to inflict a nervous breakdown upon me. I enjoy living in my little house, and I enjoy gardening, this, my house could be relocated to the end of the universe, and things would appear no different, but I'd still inhabit here; self contented, I've made enough peace with myself not to conjour stigmatisations onto others that don't agree with me.

Ancrum isn't the prim and perfect village described by the Jethart Callant's speech; and certainly not virtuous enough to shun neighbouring residents as an infection endemic. Since moving to Ancrum a neighbour opposite me has installed an eavesdropping device on the ledge of her front upper window, to listen in on my casual and somewhat inert conversations with side by side neighbours. I've attempted to talk to this neighbour, but she ignored me as though I did not exist; if I had not moved out the way of her parked van she'd of surely run me over; so tell me again that "Hearts and Minds" psychological warfare (by those who depise our virtues) does not exist. Since a neighbour moved in two doors away our streets sewage system has been blocked with wet wipes; two non-working cars have been parked idle, each for months at a time; my complaint was mocked, but car parking is hard to find along Ancrums troubled bus route, in this instance none working cars have taken away a parking space, this is not sharing our car park. I believe these cars are not registered to any resident in Ancrum; more troubling is this car parks history with people fighting over parking spaces, so grievous that my neighbour had a CCTV camera installed over looking the car park to protect her.

Transpeople

Transpeople (inclusive of non-binary and third gender peoples) have been present, with varying societal recognition, in every civilisation since antiquity, both ancient and modern. Mythological figures include: Ardhanarishvara, a Hindu deity depicted as half-male and half-female - Male Ila, a deity in Hindu legends associated with the Buddha, is known for sex changes - Ishtar ancient Mesopotamian goddess of war, love, and fertility s described as transforming men into women - Solar deity Attis, mythical consort of the Great Mother of the Gods (Cybele), in Phrygian and Greek mythology castrated himself, became feminine. Attis represented regeneration, the fruits of the earth, which die in winter only to rise again in the spring - Hermaphroditus was a dual gender identity of Ancient Greece. Since time immemorial, throughout history Transpeople have had significant cultures and vibrant traditions all over the world, present day include: The Hijra hold a significant spiritual and cultural role in Hindu society, they include individuals assigned male at birth who dress and live as women, and or may be born intersex; Hijra are socially and habitually inclusive of LGB peoples. In traditional Samoan society, Fa'afafine are assigned male at birth but are raised to embody both masculine and feminine traits. They have a unique gender role within Samoan culture. The Bugis people of South Sulawesi recognise multiple genders beyond the binary, including the Bissu, who are considered a sacred gender that embodies a balance of both male and female aspects. Located in Mexico are the Muxe, they are individuals assigned male at birth who live their lives in a female manner, often engaging in traditionally female work and relationships. Calalai and Calabai in the Bugis culture, and the Sekrata in Madagascar are also examples of cultures recognising gender identities beyond the binary.

Transphobic critics often alienate transpeople as unnatural, but this stigmatising assumption could not possibly be further from the truth, as transsexualism is very much present in nature. In aquatic life fish known as sequential hermaphrodites (fish changing sex in some unspecified time in the future during their lives), examples include Clownfish, Kobudai, and Gobies. Living in vibrant coral reefs, bluehead wrasse fish stay in harems with an unmarried dominant male and a couple of ladies. If the male disappears, the biggest lady undergoes a dramatic transformation to become the brand-new male, entirely with a colourful blue shade. Bluestreak cleaner wrasses live in harems with one major female and many smaller males. If the largest female dies, this male will change sex to become the new female. Several wrasses exhibit sex change upon social cues, which is either stimulated by the death of a dominant female or the emigrating snails. Most snails are hermaphrodites, and are able to lay eggs and also fertilise them, allowing all eggs made by the snail to be fertilised even when a mate can’t be found. Similarly to snails, starfish, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins are also hermaphrodites laying eggs that can be fertilised by any member of the group. At present there isn't any way to ask an animal its gender identity, so in animals sex change is assumed an unconscious process. Animals that go through sequential hermaphroditism do so because it gives their population a better chance of survival. Gynandromorphs are organisms, primarily found in insects, crustaceans, more frequently observed in butterflies, dragonflies, and birds, that exhibit characteristics of both male and female sexes often manifests as bilateral differences, often with one half of the body displaying male traits and the other half displaying female traits. About one in one thousand hens can have male features such as a rooster's comb and a defensive leg spur in one side of their bodies and dainty, henlike features on the other; having a mixture of genetically male and female cells.

Historically, within this civilisation prejudice against transpeople was most prevalent, as a form of state repression in Nazi Germany, from the years 1933 to 1945. From the end of World War I until 1933, transgender people enjoyed previously unprecedented freedoms and rights. Large leaps were made in transgender medicine and transgender culture flourished in Berlin. But the NAZIS, fearful of scapegoat minorities, under a policy of “lives unworthy of living.” (Lebensunwertes Leben) NAZIS exploited and expanded "safe spaces"; removing societal recognition until alienated minorities were pushed into concentration camps. According to historian Laurie Marhoefer, "The Nazi state reserved its worst violence for trans women."; the Museum of Jewish Heritage further elborates stating the German government "brutally targeted the trans community, deporting many trans people to concentration camps and wiping out vibrant community structures." . One of the first and largest NAZI Youth book burning events was inflicted against Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish German physician, sexologist and LGBTQ advocate. On the May 6th, 1933, his Institute for Sexual Research (perhaps the world's first gender identity clinic) was raided, resulting in over twenty-thousand book of non-conformist history, collected by Hirschfeld, being thrown out into the street and burned on a tower bonfire, as a public spectacle of intollence. Working with Berlin's police department Hirschfeld and the Institute for Sexual Sciences had initially issued a number of transvestite passes to trans people in order to prevent them from being harassed or arrested by the police. Under NAZI Party rule Hirschfeld’s likeness was reproduced on Nazi propaganda as the worst kind of offender, being both Jewish and homosexual; Hirschfeld fled to Nice, France, but died (whilst still on the run) of a sudden stroke on May 14th 1935, his partner Karl Giese committed suicide. In 2022, the Regional Court of Cologne ruled that denying that transgender people were victims of the Nazis qualifies as "a denial of Nazi crimes", which in Germany may be prosecuted as a crime.

Late November 2024 a scornful group of trans-exclusionary radical feminists (acronym: TERF) as appellants calling themselves Women Scotland Ltd took respondent Scottish Ministers to the Supreme Court. These TERFS sought to amend the interpretation of the 2010 Equality Act to exclude Transpeople from identifying as Male and Female. On April 16th 2025 the supreme court judgement tore up the Gender Recognition Certificate (equivalent to Hirschfeld's transvestite passes), excluding Transpeople's gender identity from inclusion of single sex public spaces (public toilets, hospital wards et al.) not in line with their birth assigned "biological" sex; and also in some instances Transpeople being prohibited from entering any public single sex space. After the Supreme Court case, our so-called Equalities Minister, Bridget Phillipson, said “the ruling was clear that provisions and services should be accessed on the basis of biological sex”, and the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said he no longer believes that trans women are women: “A woman is an adult female, and the court has made that absolutely clear.”. This policy change will affectively sanction a form of mass state reversion therapy (similiar to that in Republican America) against the gender identity of Transpeople. In a 2002 case called “Goodwin”, the European Court of Human Rights said: “A conflict between social reality and the law arises which places [a trans person] in an anomalous position, in which he or she may experience feelings of vulnerability, humiliation and anxiety” and found the UK in breach. Following that case, the UK introduced the Gender Recognition Act to make the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe compliant.

This anti-transgender movement rebranded as Gender Critical because too transphobes were using "I can't be a TERF because I'm not a feminist!" as a 'gotcha' response to being called out as a TERF. Forstater's denied period poverty, and teamed up with Caroline Farrow of the international far right theocratic group CitzenGO. Posie Parker (Kellie-Jay Nyishie Keen-Minshull) known for popularising the anti-trans slogan "adult human female", and describes herself as a woman's rights activist, but says that she is "not a feminist". During her livestreamed announcement to run for MP of Sheffield Central in opposition to Eddie Izzard she called the Islamic hijab "atrocious" and a "tool of oppression".