Op-eds

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

Common Riding

The IRA's 1916, the Orange Orders 12th July is the Scottish Borders 1514. I customized the lyrics from Cranberries' “Zombie” to express my opposition to Common Riding, a practice that is exceedingly uncommon in the Scottish Borders.⁣

Another hand rises high,
A flag is swiftly taken.
And when violence causes celebration;
Why are we mistaken?

But you see, it's not me,
It's not my family,
In your head, in your head,
They are fighting.

With their daggers and their swords,
And their swords and their daggers,
In your head, in your head,
They are crying.

In your head, in your head,
Zombie, Zombie, Zombie.
What's in your head, in your head?
Zombie, Zombie, Zombie.

Another neighbour's breaking,
The heart is taken over.
When violence causes celebration,
Why are we mistaken.

It's the same old theme since 1514.
In your head, in your head,
They're still fighting.

With their daggers and their swords,
And their swords and their daggers,
In your head, in your head,
They are dying.

In your head, in your head,
Zombie, Zombie, Zombie.
What's in your head, in your head?
Zombie, Zombie, Zombie.

Because this is a draft, I will be improving the context. Common riding is a form of backward nationalism that is rooted in the seething verse incantations of Anglophobia.⁣

Ancrum

On June 6, 2024, I relocated to the village of Ancrum and signed a Secure Tenancy Agreement with SBHA at an empty residence. 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. I haven't lived in a permanent residence since I was eleven years old. I was placed in foster care fifty-two times, first with foster parents, then in children's homes, then with family friends, and finally to homeless housing in a DSS resettlement unit in Leicester. After surviving my mother's paranoid schizophrenia during my early years, I developed an uncontrollable fight-or-flight response and Borderline Emotional Personality Disorder, which caused me to fluctuate between people and cycle through “here I go again” vagrancy for the majority of my life. Searching for a sense of community, I joined the New Age Travellers from 1990 to 1993, the Road Protesting Movement from 1993 to 1998 to find a sense of purpose, and Ruskin College in 1999 to get an education.

From 2002 to 2006, I lived in a terraced house in Herne Hill, London. From 2008 to 2009, I travelled to India. After being homeless in London for two years, I decided to live an adventurous life, which included walking the UK's coastline and finishing the Munros. I would camp in lightweight tents and seek refuge inside bothies when experiencing exposure. A decade later, a defining moment occurred on the Ladhope golf course when my trembling hands became frozen and stuck to tent posts. I realized that I was no longer present or in any place; I had descended into a state of zombification that was causing me to fade into nothingness. Initially, the Scottish Borders Council was unhelpful, although they eventually became supportive. Despite providing emergency housing, the Scottish Borders Council was initially ineffective and threatened to move the housing authority to Cornwall. Once I had spent a week or two in a “crash pad” flat in Church Square, Galashiels, I was provided with a local connection and relocated to Silverbutthall, Hawick. There, I waited for eighteen months before being rehoused in Ancrum. Due to flooding caused by the previous tenant's relatives failing to turn off the house water mains, I had to wait an additional three months while the plastering, floor, and celling were replaced.

When I was living in Hawick, I met my partner Charlie while hitchhiking along the A7. It had been five years since I had shared my life with someone else. Charlie, a lifelong farmer and former antiques dealer who operated a shop in Selkirk, assisted me in the furnishing of my home and in various DIY projects. Charlie lives in a lovely farmhouse and would be delighted to have me move in, but I wanted to be independent and settled after 34 years without a permanent residence. Sam, a delightful support worker, was the only individual in Hawick who expressed interest in communicating with me during my eighteen-month residency. Consequently, I had hoped that Ancrum, due to its diminutive size, would be an exception. This was not the case; ingrained phobias and sharp-edged, ill-considered judgments rendered places and individuals inaccessible.

I endeavored to establish a correspondence with the village shop; however, I was met with a social normality facade that masqueraded as genuine, and was protected by partisan contempt of silence, which allowed for the deformation of character. By utilizing transactional analysis, a theory and method of psychotherapy that investigates the manner in which individuals communicate and interact with one another, it is feasible to penetrate this veil of wanton ignorance. A different world in Ancrum is revealed when communication is perceived more than merely verbal, as it is accompanied by a deeper resentment that is rooted in fear, loathing, and envy. it is not merely a form of xenophobia that is narrow-minded. After a meeting of the Ancrum Community Council, I received a Facebook message explaining a malicious conjuring of stigmatizing misconceptions.

I had come to this public meeting to voice my concerns about the village's excessively fast-moving cars… I was almost ready to say something when parents and their kids flooded the meeting. They asked that goal posts be put on the Ancrum village green just a few days after the village's annual “handba.” I refuted their motion, contending that Ancrum already possesses a football field and that the installation of goal posts would surpass the recreational activity of “kicking around” by establishing a defined boundary on Common Land. Even though the meeting's chair had never witnessed such numerous attendees, they proceeded to deliberate in a manner that was “nice to be nice,” as if consensus had already been reached.

I was thanked for coming, which was a courteous way of saying "goodbye." I assumed they had voted on the motion after I had left the community hall, so the decision remained unanimous. When the goal posts were announced on the Ancrum Village Facebook page the next morning, I voiced my objections in a comment. It was almost immediately followed by what I called a rabid pack of scornful hyenas trying to gaslight me with negative correspondence. They succeeded in their objective by subjecting me to an increasing number of obscene comments, which caused me to deactivate my account from the Ancrum Village page and block 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 permit the expression of alternative viewpoints, which results in a suppression of opposition that is comparable to xenophobic fascism. This suppression is achieved through the use of Zersetzung tactics, reminiscent of the STASI's methods in East Germany.

While I haven't hurt or wronged anyone in this village, kids run past sacred and scream whenever they see me. But no one in this village says that this behavior is wrong because that would make them even more socially unacceptable, which is spread by gaslighting moral panic. I am fortunate to have two amicable neighbors on either side of me who have come to understand, after a decade, that my mere presence within the village does not cause any harm; rather, it prompts their paranoid phobias and unwarranted prejudices. When I first moved into Ancrum, some residents asked me why I had fixed CCTV cameras watching my house. I didn't tell them that the cameras were there to protect me from gaslit abuse that could lead to a nervous breakdown. I enjoy gardening and living in my small home. If my house were moved to the end of the universe, nothing would seem different, but I would still live here because I am content with myself and have come to terms with the fact that I don't stigmatize people who disagree 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 of 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 despise 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 difficult to find along Ancrum's 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 the car park history with people fighting over parking spaces, so grievous that my neighbour had a CCTV camera installed overlooking the car park to protect her.

Street homeless, no place to go, from the beginning to the middle of the COVID pandemic. After eight exhausting months of living in a dystopian environment, I was put in emergency housing on a Cornwall caravan site. The Ancrum Pantry shopkeepers, Helen Ramsey and Lynsey Cargill, were granted MBE's for their "services to the community in Ancrum, Roxburghshire during COVID-19." I was taken aback by the news. In Gujarat, India, I received more than 100,000 Hindus and gave to charity, but when I returned to the UK, I received no royal recognition at all—just unadulterated stigmatising hatred. I was shunned and pursued by deprivation for decades, day after day, for weeks, months, and years. When I finally faced the decision to either fight or flee from lifelong sustained trauma, I settled in Ancrum. In this small village, which is home to 99% white European residents, I was stigmatised, humiliated, and labelled as a racist; I asked, "Where is the racism here?" Does racism follow me to this small village and turn it against me, as it did throughout the United Kingdom? Presuming the local shop usually being the first port of call for gossip; I asked Lynsey if she had overheard any accusations, but all she talked about was her daughter being in a mixed race partnership; I pondered on the possiblity of her daughter chanting "combat the racist" with my two door away neighbour Barabara, recorded via CCTV on New Years Day 2025.

Transpeople

Trans people (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 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 Trans people 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 trans people 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 at 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 in 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 can 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 on 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 trans people 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 elaborates 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 intolerance. Working with Berlin's police department, Hirschfeld and the Institute for Sexual Sciences had initially issued a number of transvestite passes to trans people to prevent them from being harassed or arrested by the police. Under NAZI Party rule, Hirschfeld’s likeness was reproduced in 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.

Lichtenburg concentration camp inmate Kurt von Ruffin, a German actor and opera singer, recalled camp officials often treating trans people with particular contempt. Incoming transgender women to the camp would be "stripped out of their women's clothes and then humiliated, insulted and beaten." Von Ruffin recalled hearing of one occasion when a transgender woman was forced to undress, then had her head forcibly shoved into a dirty latrine until she drowned. Lucy Salani was the only known Italian transgender person known to have survived imprisonment in the concentration camps, including the Dachau concentration camp. She died in 2023.

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 Trans people 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 Trans people'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 Trans people 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 (similar to that in Republican America) against the gender identity of Trans people. 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.

For J. K. Rowling, "sex-based rights" are not the right to be paid the same as men, to live without sexual violence or coercion, to share the burden of unpaid labour, to escape the motherhood penalty or have domestic abuse taken seriously. They are about the exclusion of trans women. Mind-blowing.

This anti-transgender movement rebranded as Gender Critical because too transphobia used "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".