Free speech with responsibility 2

To my present regret, I let myself be hustled into unpublishing nine posts which some readers took issue with. Some of these persons, but not all, used language which I found threatening: and I thought of people who might also be threatened, by their association with me - including the other Lucy Melford, no connection with me at all, an ordinary non-trans woman with a family who posts on Facebook. There was a serious danger that she might be mistaken for me, and bombarded with messages that would upset her. This kind of thing does happen. Anyway, I decided to take these posts down, and remove the controversial words from the public domain. But it bothered me that I had given way. My language in these posts hadn't been intemperate. They hadn’t been my finest writing either. But mostly it wasn't free speech's finest hour.

The Leveson Enquiry into UK press standards, commissioned by the UK government, has now reported and made recommendations for the government to consider. For a very long time the British Press had misbehaved by misreporting 'news' about various people, and had taken more and more advantage of its 'right' to a free voice. You have to bear in mind that in the UK there is no 'Bill of Rights' and the general position is that one can say what one pleases until it runs foul of the laws of slander and libel, or contravenes legislation such as the Official Secrets Act. It's a prohibitive regime in which a great deal is nevertheless permitted, rather than a positive regime in which anything goes. Leveson was proposing a minimum legal framework for the press to work by. If adopted, it wouldn’t mean an immediate return to the typical laws on sedition current in the 1700s; but some of cautious disposition regard any legislation in this area as a creeping denial of freedom of expression. They may be right: it depends on how far you trust the integrity of the government, its regulatory arms, and the courts.

You can see a clear danger here: if the press can be curbed, why not the rest of us? Publishing on the Internet is no different from publishing in print. It seemed to me that a personal call for moderate messages, expressed in moderate words, was well in order, to help protect all who have something to say.

The people who really make the rules are the people in power. If the membership of that ruling clique is skewed in the wrong way, so that one section of society has unfair sway, then - in societies where the popular vote can change things - it has to be the ordinary people's fault if that clique carries on.

If, for instance, you are a feminist, I say this: let your message be heard in full, as much and as often as you like, but express it in terms that the ordinary person can understand and vote on. In other words, set up the Women's Party, publish your manifesto, and contend in public elections. I'm serious. In theory, as there are more women alive than men, you ought to win every election, every time.

The problem for feminists, and trans people, and indeed every kind of minority, is that we are all on the margin of society and therefore seem odd and strange to most, and certainly misunderstood. The greater part of society can get along without thinking about us at all; and even if aware of us, most people are largely indifferent. That isn't going to change without a lot of well-directed effort. It's a hard thing to accept, that most of our current posturing and debate and learned articles matter not a jot to the ordinary people in this country. They are ignored because they are fringe. That’s why it pays to become mainstream.

I absolutely agree that the strange labels we use are very unhelpful. The ordinary public doesn't know them. I don't for instance think the ordinary public even has any true notion of what a 'modern second-wave feminist' stands for. Let alone what 'white racist heterosexual homophobic autogynephile' could mean, and I'm sure it's possible to locate corresponding phrases in the published posts of trans and other groups. It's all a woeful use of English. Presumably stuff like this isn't intended to be read by the ordinary public, but if there is a hope that the public at large will understand this kind of thing, then the hoper is being unrealistic. 

The public exasperates the trans community mightily by not distinguishing between 'trans', 'transgender', 'transsexual' and 'transvestite'. Although in a way they are right. They are all of them artificial words whose meaning is hardly fixed or abundantly obvious. But an umbrella phrase like 'non-standard social-role variant' is too general to mean much. Tough women who lead governments, and effeminate men who lead fashion houses, might all be to some degree 'social-role variant'. But so would Hitler and Gandhi, Florence Nightingale and Greta Garbo, Queen Elizabeth the first and Queen Elizabeth the second, Batman and James Bond. A label like that doesn't get to the heart of what kind of people they are, what makes them tick, and what they are capable of achieving. 

We should ask ourselves: if we do have a message worth propagating, how can we get it across to the plain man or woman waiting in the rain for the bus, with a worry on their mind? 

We have all become lost in a mire of unnecessary terminology. It reflects the tribal tendency to fragment into little groups. It’s a jargon we could urgently do without. We all need a lucid common language, so that meaning and understanding can cross boundaries.

I don't myself use the word 'cis' because it's not a word that ordinary people use. My neighbour next door would look at me very oddly if I used 'cis' when chatting to her. I don't even like the sound of it. I can't of course speak for ordinary natal women, but I will readily accept the suggestion that they dislike it. And certainly can't see the need for it. I can easily see why.

It’s wrong to speak of 'the trans crowd' if it were a vast army of similarly-minded people. I’d say it was in fact a very diverse array of individuals, male and female, bound together only by The Process, the years-long bid to transition to their own personally-desired state. There is indeed a small number of vocal politically-aware persons who do their best to educate and defend. And there are indeed some crass hotheads who will react to any provocation. But the trans people I personally know all want a quiet life, a useful life, a life with personal ambitions and interests, and are not members of any mass movement. Although it’s not rare for trans people to blog, it isn’t normal to do it, and most of my friends don't. They seem to prefer Facebook, but that's another story entirely!

Bottom line: at the end of the day, we are all just 'people'. And we all need to get on with each other. Now isn't that true?