Transgender Groups to Protest at High Profile London Awards Ceremony Against Stonewall “Bigotry”

Transgender Groups to Protest at High Profile London Awards Ceremony Against Stonewall “Bigotry”

http://ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/08/Nov/0401.htm

LONDON, November 4, 2008 – An unprecedented protest is to be staged on Thursday outside the £125-a-head “champagne and canape reception” for the Stonewall awards at the V&A Museum in London by transgender groups, who will be joined by gay and lesbian activists.

They are outraged at the nomination of what they call “the notoriously transphobic Guardian writer Julie Bindel” for Stonewall’s Journalist of the Year award – and the silence from established ‘trans’ campaigning groups.

In what they see as a major embarrassment for Stonewall over it’s controversial nomination, over a hundred people are expected to be attending the protest from all over England and will be waiting outside the V&A for the arrival of the guests, which is expected to include celebrities such as actor Richard Wilson, who is hosting the event and award nominee and Daily Mirror agony aunt Miriam Stoppard.

Under pressure from sections of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to retract the nomination, Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill labelled any retraction of the nomination an “empty gesture” and nothing more than a “publicity stunt” when speaking to some of the many people who complained to Stonewall.

“Beyond vague reassurances added quietly to their web site that the nomination does not endorse all the views of the nominees, Stonewall itself has failed to comment publicly on the issue, further calling into doubt their already shaky credentials as so-called ‘champions of diversity’,” the London Transfeminism Group said in a statement issued last night.

Veteran campaigner and journalist Roz Kaveney also spoke out against the nomination.

“[Bindel] is advocating talking therapies for trans people in a way that almost entirely parallels the advocacy of talking therapies by the Christian right as a way of extirpating all LGBT people,” she said.

“If she does not understand that, as a lesbian, she is a turkey advocating Christmas for turkeys in an adjacent bit of the farmyard, then she is being obtuse; what she is doing is betraying not only the trans community but the entire LGBT community, and it is wrong to honour her for her other work when there is this colossal stain on her career.”

Julie Bindel became notorious within the transexual community for her controversial January 2004 article in the Guardian, Gender Benders Beware, which resulted in an apology from the newspaper and carefully worded apologies from Bindel herself for the tone of the article.

She caused further controversy by proposing the motion Sex Change Surgery is Unnecessary Mutilation for a "Hecklers" debate on BBC Radio 4 in 2007.

As a result of her controversial views, the National Union of Students LGBT Campaign voted to "No platform" her - i.e. their officers would never share a platform with Julie Bindel.