26-03-2013, 02:16 AM
I'm not defending Littlejohn's style, but it worries me that the trend nowadays whenever someone says something unkind the instant response is "let's fire him!". What happened to the freedom of the press? In the UK we're already in danger of implementing press regulation for the first time in nearly 400 years, something which the American press has been flabbergasted about.
We need to remember that it is just as repressive to stop people we don't like from expressing their views as it would be if they were in power shutting down sites like these.
Just to be clear, I'm not defending anything that was said by the conservative press, but I do think that press censorship is the first step towards a communist-style totalitarian state, and firing someone for what they wrote is a form of censorship.
Getting back to the case in hand, the petition did not provide all the details of this case. As I have a real distrust of petitions like this, I thought I'd check out the facts.
It turns out that the teacher was employed by a faith school - something that may not be wholly familiar to people from the United States. The UK has an established church, and there is no separation of church and state at the moment (though they are pushing it as far as they can). Therefore it is possible for parents to send their kids to a state school that embraces the teachings of the Church of England. Regardless of how forgiving Christ was, these schools will naturally appeal more to conservative parents, as the non-immigrant population here has become much more secular over the last 40-50 years.
The teacher, in my opinion, did not get good advice. The school was naturally encouraging, because to do otherwise they would have fallen foul of our stringent Equality Laws, but that is the nature of unintended consequences. If they had not been worried about that, they might have warned the teacher that the parents may have had a bad reaction.
Yes the teacher was within rights to leave at the end of one term/semester as Mr Uption and return the next as Miss Meadows, but human nature is what it is... laws don't change it. The parents were upset and the newspapers got wind of it. The Daily Mail is a conservative newspaper and Littlejohn gave a conservative opinion.
The teacher was apparently stressed out by the constant presence of reporters. I just googled "Nathan Upton" "Lucy Meadows" for the period November to end February, and there are loads of results, so not just the Daily Mail. Littlejohn is a bête noire of the left-wing press, so he is getting the blame. I don't believe that a suicide note was left pointing to him in particular.
If this teacher had left the school, got FFS and was able to pass in stealth mode, this would not have happened.
I think the teacher was ill-advised to go for transition. The UK does not fund facial feminisation, which as I have said before, I think is far more important than genital surgery, particularly if you want to be able to pull off a role as a women in front of an audience. The end result was, I'm afraid, not good, in that it is easy to see a male face and hair here.
I suspect it was dissatisfaction with the end result (and possibly classroom reaction?) coupled with the publicity that was more likely the cause of the suicide.
Until society gets used to the sight of obvious men dressed like women, or we start funding facial feminisation surgery, this will continue to happen.
The therapists and counsellors need to throw away their political correctness and be more honest about the kind of life these poor folk are going to experience, and encourage them to explore alternative solutions like dealing with the dysphoria symptoms first.
The ones I feel most sorry for are the wife and child. I wonder how much she was told before committing to marriage and childbirth?
I wonder what the counsellors told her? Did they warn her of the possibility of adverse publicity?
This was a tragedy on multiple levels.
B.
We need to remember that it is just as repressive to stop people we don't like from expressing their views as it would be if they were in power shutting down sites like these.
Just to be clear, I'm not defending anything that was said by the conservative press, but I do think that press censorship is the first step towards a communist-style totalitarian state, and firing someone for what they wrote is a form of censorship.
Getting back to the case in hand, the petition did not provide all the details of this case. As I have a real distrust of petitions like this, I thought I'd check out the facts.
It turns out that the teacher was employed by a faith school - something that may not be wholly familiar to people from the United States. The UK has an established church, and there is no separation of church and state at the moment (though they are pushing it as far as they can). Therefore it is possible for parents to send their kids to a state school that embraces the teachings of the Church of England. Regardless of how forgiving Christ was, these schools will naturally appeal more to conservative parents, as the non-immigrant population here has become much more secular over the last 40-50 years.
The teacher, in my opinion, did not get good advice. The school was naturally encouraging, because to do otherwise they would have fallen foul of our stringent Equality Laws, but that is the nature of unintended consequences. If they had not been worried about that, they might have warned the teacher that the parents may have had a bad reaction.
Yes the teacher was within rights to leave at the end of one term/semester as Mr Uption and return the next as Miss Meadows, but human nature is what it is... laws don't change it. The parents were upset and the newspapers got wind of it. The Daily Mail is a conservative newspaper and Littlejohn gave a conservative opinion.
The teacher was apparently stressed out by the constant presence of reporters. I just googled "Nathan Upton" "Lucy Meadows" for the period November to end February, and there are loads of results, so not just the Daily Mail. Littlejohn is a bête noire of the left-wing press, so he is getting the blame. I don't believe that a suicide note was left pointing to him in particular.
If this teacher had left the school, got FFS and was able to pass in stealth mode, this would not have happened.
I think the teacher was ill-advised to go for transition. The UK does not fund facial feminisation, which as I have said before, I think is far more important than genital surgery, particularly if you want to be able to pull off a role as a women in front of an audience. The end result was, I'm afraid, not good, in that it is easy to see a male face and hair here.
I suspect it was dissatisfaction with the end result (and possibly classroom reaction?) coupled with the publicity that was more likely the cause of the suicide.
Until society gets used to the sight of obvious men dressed like women, or we start funding facial feminisation surgery, this will continue to happen.
The therapists and counsellors need to throw away their political correctness and be more honest about the kind of life these poor folk are going to experience, and encourage them to explore alternative solutions like dealing with the dysphoria symptoms first.
The ones I feel most sorry for are the wife and child. I wonder how much she was told before committing to marriage and childbirth?
I wonder what the counsellors told her? Did they warn her of the possibility of adverse publicity?
This was a tragedy on multiple levels.
B.