Two reversals, one concerning illness, one gender, and ending up with a plate of baked beans.

1. The Liverpool ME/CFS service: an apology

First item concerns one of the highly disturbing job adverts for the new UK CFS/ME centres I included excerpts from halfway down this entry.

Many ME/CFS sufferers will know that a recent job description for trainee CFS therapists in Liverpool has caused distress and offence to patients. It contained information stating that therapists might be exposed to verbal aggression from ‘some clients with CFS’. As the Clinical Lead ultimately responsible for the job description I apologise unreservedly for this statement (though I was not aware of the wording until after the document had been released). Although incidents of this nature are very rare in any patient group, some might think it fair to mention their possibility to trainees joining
a therapy service for the first time. Nevertheless, the explicit reference to verbal aggression in the context of ME/CFS was bound to be seen by the patient community as an assault on their integrity. The suggestion that there might be at any stage a breakdown in trust within the client-therapist relationship was deeply destructive and in no way reflects the true ethos of the ME/CFS service either locally or nationally. If there were any point in raising the issue of inter-personal difficulties, it would be to ensure that trainee therapists have insight into their own limitations and can recognise and ameliorate any signs of overwhelming distress in their clients. The job description has been withdrawn, and in due course will be re-written with advice from patient representatives, emphasising the collaborative nature of the patient-therapist relationship. If this relationship can be further strengthened and developed, then perhaps some good will come from this unhappy episode.

The Liverpool ME/CFS team are passionate about their role in assisting patients recover from this destructive and neglected disease. Our main concern is that patients who might otherwise find our service helpful will now feel reluctant to use it. May we reassure all our clients, present and future, that we will continue to strive for the highest standards of care, and for the best possible relationships between staff and patients.

Dr. Fred Nye.
Clinical Champion, Liverpool ME/CFS Clinical Network Co-ordinating Centre

What I see in the apology above is a mealy-mouthed damage limitation exercise by someone trying to distance themselves from a PR mistake, rather than actually saying what was said in the job descriptions was wrong: it was “badly put”. The use of the adjective “distress” immediately puts us on a back foot as the meek, over-sensitive and tender ill, and why is he addressing us as patients? If you live in Liverpool, “potential patients” might just work; or “potentially less likely patients”. The “althoughs” and back-coverings in the mail are enough to convince me this is just PR. One can imagine what will be said behind closed doors to the interviewees about “the fuss” with the original job description, and how it just confirms the diagnosis of somatic disorder. I might sound a bit angry, bitter or sarcastic, for which I apologise, but really, this wind of change we’re catching sight of in the UK is simply terrifying.

I’d concur strongly with the opinions expressed in this mail to CO-CURE:

Could any “explanation” from Dr Nye be considered acceptable? No, of course not, because it is patently obvious what the mind set of Pauline Powell’s clinic is and that what is required are not “apologies” or “explanations” but a radical shift in attitude, and nothing less than a full investigation
into the model of care which has been adopted for this service and is in the process of being implemented – but not just in this clinic and in Epsom and St Helier, but throughout the rest of the country.

2. Julie Burchill vs. Germaine Greer

This one’s much more fickle and childish on my part. Germaine Greer and Julie Burchill have separately contributed in various ways to consistently encourage transphobia, try to place us in positions of public ridicule, and generally be plain nasty just to carve out their own careers.

A few examples. Julie first:

… And, yes, I know that they’re not the same, but may I say that I feel even less patience with transsexuals. Male to female transsexuals are Michael Jackson to the transvestites Ali G; not content even to dress up temporarily as the Other, they presume that its authenticity can be theirs through a few cosmetic adjustments.

… Transsexualism is, basically, just another, more drastic twist on the male menopause, which in turn is just another excuse for men to do as they please.

Queue up Germaine to join in the kicking:

… I should have said ‘You’re a man. The Female Eunuch has done less than nothing for you. Piss off.’ The transvestite (sic) held me in a rapist’s grip…. Knee-jerk etiquette demanded that I humour this gross parody of my sex by accepting him as female, even to the point of allowing him to come to the lavatory with me.

She goes on in her book “The Whole Woman” (chapter: “Pantomime Dames”) to mock AIS intersex women as being “failed males”, saying that they should go be males instead of living as women. Further, she asks why no one asked ‘real’ women whether they accept trans-women as ‘one of them’, handing the keys to gender prison to those she deems fit.

Both miss entirely the irony that they, as feminists, are demanding of others a level of physical appearance in order to conform to their own stereotype of “woman”, which is what I’m sure they felt they were fighting against all the time; seem blissfully unaware that 50% of transpeople are male-bodied; and fall into classic essentialism by arguing that there is an “essential” woman’s experience, and policing it.

Julie Burchill is sometimes funny in a tabloid way when she’s not mocking minorities in danger of imminent physical threat.
Greer’s contributions a few decades ago to feminism seem to have wound down to snipey pieces on late night BBC2 and stomping out of reality TV shows saying she didn’t approve of them anyway (having taken the cheque). All’s the more pity because of their contributions in the 70s and 80s, to snappy punky journalism, and feminism in that order. Their fire went out, long-distance sight dimmed as it does with age, and they ended up joining the mob, I guess. One does wonder what their reactions would be to an article claiming some black people “weren’t really black”, using them for a bit of humour, and then suggesting that “real” black people should be asked permission for those concerned to identify as such.

Anyway the point of this is really just to be snippy. It’s nice to see Julie Burchill turning on Germaine Greer: “My feminist hero has become a rancid bore”; in which she accuses Germaine of being “offensive” amongst other things, which is a bit rich as it’s her own raison d’être.

If you want a quick dip into some intelligent dissection of Germaine’s flopsy philosophy on this, you might want to take a look at a short discussion on the livejournal transacademic group; for some more in-depth discussion, see: Gender Basics & Transgenderism (a third of the way down) by Lynn Conway, and some of the links above.

For a even more ridiculous position look no further than the Guardian yet again, to an article by Julie Bindel, trying rather desperately to fill Other Julie’s shoes in more ways than one. One wonders why The Guardian of all papers seem to be ploughing this furrow of transphobia with such determination. For commentary on this piece of nonsense, you could take a look at this discussion on Barbelith, and Charlotte Cooper’s article Oh Julie!, which is a more succinct summary than I could manage, drawing much the same conclusions I’d draw about Burchill and Greer’s flailing of wings:

But times are changing. I was a fledgling queer in the 80s when women like Bindel were lionised for their “uncompromising” tranny and bi-baiting dogma. Now, in 2004, it must be quite a shock to find out that they are no longer at the top of the lesbian food chain. They’re finding it out the hard way.

To top it off, the excellent Ms Cooper ends up trying to resolve the situation by challenging Ms Bindel to:

a public wrestling match. With me. In bikinis. In a gigantic tub of baked beans. You know I’ll win because I’m bigger and stronger than you and I can wrestle like a motherfucker.

Yay Charlotte!