Tag: Peter Tatchell

Peter Tatchell, again. He just will not stop doing this. It’s almost as if misogyny is powerfully addictive, harder to kick than opioids.

Tracy Single is 15th trans woman of colour murdered in US this year. The tiny minority of feminists who demonise trans women as a threat to non-trans women contribute to the toxic, hateful atmosphere that fuels prejudice, discrimination & violence against trans people.

It is shocking to hear all trans women vilified as would-be rapists, domestic abusers, misogynists etc. This echoes the blanket slurs against LGBT+ people by homophobes & against Muslims/Jews by the far right. I support both women’s rights & trans rights. So do most feminists. Bravo!

A black man is murdered, and somehow that’s not an occasion for condemnation of racist violence but instead for an angry rant about women who don’t agree that men are women if they say so. A black man is murdered so Peter Tatchell yells at women. Wtf???

The Open Letter by itself wasn’t enough, Alana Lentin also had to put out a “press release” about it, as if it were important. It’s more of the same shite but put into the third person to make it sound newsy and official and impersonal, the way Bill Donohue does with his absurd press releases.

(London, February 22) – Peter Tatchell’s actions in bullying and inciting a media furor against a student who criticized him in a private e-mail reflect a disturbing intolerance toward dissenting views, said 116 human rights activists and scholars in an open letter published today. The media coverage of the concocted controversy also feeds a national moral panic over inflated claims of “no-platforming” – a panic that actually contributes to silencing marginal voices.

See how that works? It sounds like journalism, but it isn’t, it’s just more bullshit from Alana Lentin, along with some of her friends who said things for her to quote.

‘Each generation has a moral panic about the one that follows it,’ said Sarah Brown, UK campaigner for LGBT equality and one of the 116 signatories. ‘Older activists and journalists are bullying a young person in the press, without a right of reply, over opinions expressed in private, all in the name of “free speech”. It seems some folks are short of both moral fibre and a sense of irony — but I’m pretty sure it’s not the young people.’

Not in private though, according to Peter Tatchell – he says she was showing them to other people.

‘If you think you are an ally, take criticism,’ said Roz Kaveney, writer, critic, and poet, and longtime advocate for transgender rights. ‘Allies who don’t take criticism get in the way at best. And allies who can’t take criticism display an arrogant sense of superiority.’

No matter how empty, stupid and malevolent the “criticism” is? Nope, not going to do that.

‘This incident points to a growing tendency to minimise the effects of discrimination on marginalised groups,’ added Alana Lentin, Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University in Australia. ‘Among liberals, for example, “postracial” celebrations of the end of racism are increasingly common, ignoring the persisting dynamics of white supremacy.’

You know what another growing tendency is? The one to minimise the effects of discrimination on women, ignoring the persisting dynamics of patriarchal dominance. I wonder why Alana Lentin didn’t mention that one.

I don’t really wonder. That was sarcasm. I think she didn’t because she’s part of it because it’s central to current trans politics: ignore the marginalization of women so that trans women can freely demonize and shun women and feminists.

Yet another Open Letter to Peter Tatchell – perhaps the most confused to date.

I am hosting this open letter on Peter Tatchell, Censorship, and Criticism written by concerned activists, writers and scholars. The letter has been signed by over 100 people. To add your signature, please email freespeechletter@gmail.com. Here is a link to a press release put out today, February 22 to accompany it

As human rights activists, writers, and scholars, we strongly condemn the actions of Peter Tatchell in bullying, vilifying, and inciting a media furor against a student who criticized him in a private e-mail. These attacks exemplify a pattern; Tatchell has repeatedly shown intolerance of criticism and disrespect for others’ free expression. They also exemplify a broader problem. A moral panic over inflated claims of ‘no-platforming’ reflects a persistent, deep resistance to diversity in intellectual and public life.

What? Objecting to no-platforming and/or related forms of shunning reflects resistance to diversity in intellectual and public life? As opposed to shunning itself doing that?

It all depends on which shoe is on which foot, of course. The words all depend on who is talking and who is the talked-about. I don’t have a single, firm, no exceptions view on no platforming and other shunning, because I think it depends, and has to depend. I think it’s ludicrous to shun Peter Tatchell while I don’t think it’s ludicrous to shun, say, Roy Warden. I think some protests are more reasonable than others. But I think it’s flagrantly absurd to claim that objecting to shunning people over minute differences reflects resistance to diversity as opposed to advocacy of diversity. I don’t buy the claim that you get more diversity in intellectual and public life by shunning Peter Tatchell.

UK media have attacked Fran Cowling, National Union of Students (NUS) LGBT+ Officer (Women’s Place), for allegedly ‘no-platforming’ Tatchell from a conference on “Re-Radicalizing Queers” held at Canterbury Christchurch University. These reports are simply untrue.

The facts are these. Cowling was invited to attend the conference by the event organizer, another Canterbury Christchurch student. She declined. Her decision not to attend was informed by her belief that Peter Tatchell has engaged in problematic tactics and politics regarding Muslim, Black and trans communities, for which she provided evidence. Without permission, the other student forwarded this confidential email chain to Peter Tatchell.

Waaaaaaaaaait a second there. Slow down. Cowling was invited to attend? Well if she was invited to attend, why did she feel any need to “provide evidence” of anything? Why didn’t she just say no, or no, I can’t, but thank you? Why did she need to tell the organizer about her “belief that Peter Tatchell has engaged in problematic tactics and politics regarding Muslim, Black and trans communities”?

And note the awful, stupid, thought-free wording of that claim – note the pious way of lumping all those people together as “communities” and pretending Tatchell dissed all of them. Note the creep-word “problematic.”

In the following days, Peter emailed NUS demanding further evidence for this claim. NUS assured him he had not been ‘no platformed’ and that Fran’s decision was not an organisational one. Tatchell persisted, however, and on the afternoon of February 11 he demanded that Fran Cowling apologise to him and to the University for her private e-mail. Less than 24 hours later, NUS received a press request from the Observer: Peter had forwarded them the emails. They asked why he had been ‘no platformed’.

In the massive furor that followed Fran Cowling has been smeared, bullied, trolled, and harassed in the national press and on social media. Tatchell has personally vilified her and encouraged others to do so, writing in the right-wing Telegraph that she posed a threat to “enlightenment values.” Yet Tatchell was never censored. He spoke at the conference; he took his case to the Telegraph and Newsnight; he has not been “silenced.”

But he’s been accused of being “problematic,” and we know where that leads. It leads to being silenced. It leads to being discredited among the people Tatchell works with – his “community” if you like.

Peter Tatchell has little credibility as a free-speech defender.

• Tatchell has a long record of urging that public platforms be denied members of ethnic and religious groups, especially He has called for banning so-called “Islamist” speakers from Universities. He has even demanded mosques apologise “for hosting homophobic hate preachers” and give “assurances that they will not host them again.” Tatchell claims the right to decide who qualifies as a “homophobic hate preacher”; what counts is not inciting violence or any tangible threats to LGBT Londoners, but rather simply expressing religious opinions about homosexual acts. The peculiar urgency with which Tatchell targets Muslims lends credibility to the charge of racial insensitivity.

Wow. So Alana Lentin is saying “religious opinions” about “homosexual acts” are not something that should be protested or apologized for, while Peter Tatchell is. And then calling him racist for good measure.

This is not my Left. I shun it.

I was indignant on Peter Tatchell’s behalf (and on behalf of reasonable discourse, truth in accusation, and the like) on Sunday when I read that the NUS LGBT officer had called him racist and transphobic in emails to a bunch of people. But now…I’m disappointed in him, because he has failed to defend other people from dishonest accusations.

First, he was on Newsnight last night with Paris Lees. It’s not available in the US (so far at least) so I haven’t seen it, but I have a transcript of part of what Lees said:

PL: I think that, first of all I want to say that Peter Tatchell is not a transphobe, in my opinion, I think it’s, it’s, ludicrous to suggest that, he’s a national bloody treasure as far as I’m concerned, and he’s one of the few people who actually spoke up for transgender rights, with a public platform a few years ago when nobody was talking about this, and I’m very grateful to him for that. I think there’s a lot of anger towards Peter because of signing that letter, not just signing it but I think maybe your reaction afterwards wasn’t that helpful, and I think that, you know, to call him a transphobe is a little bit over the top, but…I think it’s…I think it’s really getting a little bit carried away, but…just to come to the issue of no-platforming, I think it’s unfortunate that Peter’s been involved in this debate, but more broadly – yes I do think it’s right that people shouldn’t engage with transphobes. I don’t think Peter’s one of those people, but I think there are certain people who, there’s just no point talking to them.

KM: But, but there is an argument isn’t there, ah and it has been…through politics and civil rights and gay right and women’s rights…uh, for years, is that you take people on in order to have that debate, and you win it.

PL: Well there is also an argument that marginalised people, you know, have been made to justify themselves and explain themselves over and over again, and there are, there are certain people, um, like Julie Bindel for example who, just aren’t willing to engage in debate, they’ve, they’ve heard the arguments and…that’s a very different kettle of fish from Peter, you know, this, they, you know, this person has made personal attacks on individual trans people before, has argued for conversion therapy which has proven to be very dangerous. Those sort of people shouldn’t be given platforms to re-air their prejudices.

Julie Bindel says those are lies, flat-out. She has debated many times, and she has campaigned against conversion therapy. Tatchell didn’t speak up.

Second, he had this piece in the Telegraph yesterday:

Free speech and enlightenment values are under attack in our universities. In the worthy name of defending the weak and marginalised, many student activists are now adopting the unworthy tactic of seeking to close down open debate. They want to censor people they disagree with. I am their latest victim.

This is not quite the Star Chamber, but it is the same intolerant mentality. Student leader Fran Cowling has denounced me as racist and transphobic, even though I’ve supported every anti-racist and pro-transgender campaign during my 49 years of human rights work.

Once again my credulity takes a beating, and nearly crumples under the blows. The LGBT officer of the National Union of Students has been emailing people to tell them she won’t share a platform with…wait for it…Peter Tatchell.

Peter Tatchell.

The Observer yesterday:

The emails from the officer of the National Union of Students were unequivocal. Fran Cowling, the union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) representative, said that she would not share a stage with a man whom she regarded as having been racist and “transphobic”.

That the man in question is Peter Tatchell – one of the country’s best-known gay rights campaigners, who next year celebrates his 50th year as an activist – is perhaps a mark of how fractured the debate on free speech and sexual politics has become.

Or how fucking stupid and mindless and vicious it’s become.

In the emails, sent to the organisers of a talk at Canterbury Christ Church University on Monday on the topic of “re-radicalising queers”, Cowling refuses an invitation to speak unless Tatchell, who has also been invited, does not attend. In the emails she cites Tatchell’s signing of an open letter in the Observer last year in support of free speech and against the growing trend of universities to “no-platform” people, such as Germaine Greer, for holding views with which they disagree.

Which does not make him racist or “transphobic.”

Cowling claims the letter supports the incitement of violence against transgender people. She also made an allegation against him of racism or of using racist language. Tatchell told the Observer that the incident was yet another example of “a witch-hunting, accusatory atmosphere” symptomatic of a decline in “open debate on some university campuses”.

It is. I have personal up-close experience of that atmosphere, and I can attest: they make this shit up. They invent it. They tell shameless lies. Like that shameless ridiculous lie that Tatchell “supports the incitement of violence against transgender people” – of course he fucking doesn’t! But I saw people telling the same lie about me, so I know it happens. Cowling isn’t particularly unusual that way.

One of the founding members of direct action group OutRage!, which caused a storm in the 1990s by outing establishment figures it claimed were homophobic in public and homosexual in private, Tatchell is used to being in the establishment firing line. But the original radical queer is now finding himself having to think long and hard about free speech.

In the recent furore over the Belfast bakery that refused to decorate a cake with a gay rights slogan, he stunned many by supporting the firm’s right to reject the customer’s order. Ashers bakery is appealing against a court decision that ruled it had discriminated against the customer by refusing to make a cake with the slogan “Support Same-Sex Marriage” because it went against their beliefs as Christians.

“If the Ashers verdict stands, it would mean a gay baker could be made to make cakes saying ‘I’m against gay marriage’,” said Tatchell. “A Muslim printer would have to publish the cartoons of Muhammad or a Jewish printer publish books of a Holocaust denier. So, much as I disagree with Ashers’ right to be homophobic, and I have spoken out against their anti-gay discrimination, they shouldn’t be forced to aid a political message they don’t agree with. I think it’s important to err on the side of freedom of expression and religion.”

He didn’t find that conclusion easy to reach.

But he insists his change of heart – he initially condemned Ashers – does not mean he has mellowed. In the past he has thrown himself in front of ministerial cavalcades, stopping the official cars of both John Major and Tony Blair with his placards, despite the best efforts of security officers, and pulled out banners of dissent under the noses of visiting dictators. He has helped track down a Nazi war criminal, has been arrested around 300 times and had about 50 objects smash his flat windows. He has also received such vicious beatings from the thugs of Presidents Robert Mugabe and Vladimir Putin that he has suffered lasting brain injuries.

But Fran Cowling sees fit to claim that he supports the incitement of violence against transgender people. It makes me sick.