Naga’s earpiece and other mysteries

“We’re all being told about how we must think about trans gender, trans people whatever it is that used to be known as gender dysphoria and the attempt to de-pathologist this, i.e. make it not into a disability - or a mental condition - it’s turned from that  - it’s turned from asking that people be tolerant, understand it, seek treatment etc etc, -  it’s turned into something that we’re all being told what we have to think about it, how to behave, that we’re phobic if we do not agree with whatever the new definitions are, that we have to sort of lie to ourselves and lie to other people. I am in a state of pretty deep confusion.”

So said The Conservative Woman’s Kathy Gyngell as she faced the wrath of the PC police on Sunday Morning Live.  As soon as she said it, she must have realised that she would henceforth be described by the twitterati as ‘that vile woman who called gender dysphoria a disability’. 

This was not just any old gaffe. It was a gaffe within a gaffe.  Any fule kno that in these enlightened times you can’t say ‘disabled’. It’s “differently-abled”. 

Of course, lumping trans people together with differently-abled people does, itself, transgress political correctness now that ‘trans’ has become a normal condition, like it or lump it. 

Interestingly, one of the trans spokespersons on SML did call it “a medical thing” and nobody pulled her/him up for misspeaking. (I wonder if you can call it a ‘disorder’? I shouldn’t think so. )

I found the trans person with the non gender-specific name “India“ altogether a bit of a bully. 

The other representative of gender dysphoria bore a striking resemblance to Lily Allen, but with a Milo Yiannopoulos hairdo. Having a high pitched, feminine timbre to her/their voice, and being slight of build didn’t add to the machismo of Jack, the female-to-male representative of trans people. 

I do find it odd that so many male-to-female transitioners seem to equate womanliness with things like ‘going shopping’ and bonding over a spa day. That girlie stuff kinda seems to me wholly like a man’s idea of femininity. By that token I have been in the wrong body for some considerable time. I certainly don’t regard shopping as recreation, don’t fancy spa day, don’t have long, painted fingernails because my hands do actual work.   When do I have to ‘come out’?

Did you think that Kathy Gyngell was the most interrupted panel member? That’s addressed to Craig, who knows about that sort of thing. Naga’s earpiece must have been red-hot.  You could almost see the smoke. 

Which brings me to the whole point of this post. There’s something fishy about Sunday Morning Live. 

Not just the way Naga cut short Kathy G in such an abrupt fashion, which, if I’m not mistaken, happened more than once. You could almost hear a voice screaming down the earpiece “Shut that vile woman up!”

No, it wasn’t that. It was the weirdly surreal moment, which Craig highlighted in his earlier post., when Tommy read out a comment, (accurately for once) from the screen. It was signed by the woman who was sitting in the studio right in front of him. Just how and when are those emails collated and selected for broadcast. “We want to know what you guys think” pleads Naga. Do you really?

How could Khola Hasan be there in the studio, live, while simultaneously emailing SML in the guise of a random listener? Unless there are two separate, entirely coincidental Khola Hasans, it reeks of falsity. It’s reminiscent of the rigged telephone voting that got the BBC into trouble not so long ago.

As for Sharia councils and religious divorce, the lady in question said some sensible things. She criticised certain practices, explaining that they were cultural rather than religious. That they were nothing to do with Sharia courts, and for that matter, not representative of true Islam. That I am willing to accept. 

However, it seems that  ‘Muslim women’ (whom some people seem to regard as a separate  and distinct species - as though being born Muslim was a matter of fate rather than something from which one could opt out)  need their religious marriages to be dissolved “religiously”. 

Khola  explained that these are not civil marriages at all. “Religious marriages are nothing to do with English law” she said. Sharia courts empower women because Islamic scholars can grant a religious divorce without the permission of a man.  (Whereas without Sharis courts a religious Muslim man can do what he feels like)

Everyone on the panel, including Tom from Spiked, thinks Sharia councils should be allowed to exist; “there’s nothing wrong with that” he said.

Baroness Cox says she doesn’t want to abolish Sharia courts, her objection is only that “as they stand, they are discriminatory”.  

Faeeza Vaid, a feminist, believes that abolishing Sharia councils would lead to further victimhood of Muslim women.

What I fail to grasp is why religious marriages (a one-way street as far as divorce is concerned) are even taking place in Britain, let alone given tacit legitimacy. They don’t give the married couple any of the benefits or legal protection that civil marriages do, and if they break down it’s usually the woman who is left at the mercy of an unforgiving, male dominant, religious community - a parallel society ‘outside the law’.

Khola Hasan says “English law is not interested in religious law. English law does not accept religious marriages” So why does everyone else? 

Which brings me back to Naga’s earpiece; who was on the other end, and what were they up to?