Aphra Behn: “There's no sinner like a young
saint!”
Hej Hei alle sammen!
So after months of soul-searching and thinking "oh
should I just hold my tongue and appear invisible just because I've
committed the grave sin of loving to wear 60's style shift dresses and glossy
expensive earrings all the morrow long", I've finally decided to bite
the bullet and create a regular Twitter account and blog. I was inspired by Vivienne Westwood's call for intellectuals to unite on university campuses across the breadth of the UK, from St Andrews all the way down to the University of Kent but I feel that intellectuals can come from all walks of life and can include alumni (York) as well as the current crop of hard working "sehr klug" (German for ultraclever) students!
The main
reason why I've chosen to add my own voice to the already "buxomly
filled" world of social media is because I think rural transgender
issues in Lincolnshire and the East Midlands have been ignored for
far far too long! It just so happens to be the case that I'm dyspraxic and
have a mild form of dyslexia, so I hope to inspire those with
learning disabilities to have the confidence to express their views,
regardless of what others, especially self confessed pundits might say about their
method of delivery, choice of lexis or minor English syntactical
inaccuracy! None of these really matter in the world of personal blogging! Finally, I want to have the freedom to be satirical in my transgender analysis of myself as I go through my journey, and want to be able to draw on my Scandi heritage to do it! I'm a "besserwisser" at heart and that's how I'm going to stay!
When certain pundits try and speak about rural issues,
transgender "problems" or learning disability definitions (which is extremely rare these days as the ultra Conservatives think equality issues have been settled post Equality Act 2010 and Same Sex Marriage Act 2013), they seem to
conflate, over generalise and then ignore them as being of "little
concern to the general UK, European or world population at large". I've
found that most equal opportunities activists wanting to explain specific transgender issues so
as to add positively to the general debate get patronising,
egotistical, predominantly patriarchally inclined savants with
their "omnipotent, omniscient blinkering loudspeaker" blasting bile
at full volume at them so as to dismiss their valid and possibly
valuable contributions straight out of hand. It's becoming quite an automated
process, with these status-quo but no so “Status Quo cool” voices
doing their "Little Lord Fauntleroy says No" act, defining me as a Social Justice Warrior or SJW and
concluding that I am not “one jots” worth listening to.
The strange thing is that these critics of SJWs seem to
miss the key point of social media activism; that it is often not
just to highlight an individual's personal story so as to make them
"Tweetfamous" or "Instafamous" and allow them to attend glamorous but vacuous celebrity parties in £1000 Versace dresses and £2000 Gucci shoes, but to highlight issues and
causes that they feel need to be highlighted and examined within a
variety of modern communication platforms. The days of people being
glued to Auntie Beeb for 4 hours a day after slogging their guts out at work or feeling
compelled to listen to the drudgery of lengthy Londoncentric radio debates of a Thursday evening are long
gone! Social media platforms like Twitter allow previously
disenfranchised individuals to have their say, and to give them the confidence to know that the messages they are trying to convey
are equally as valid as anyone else's on that platform. Pundits,
particularly conservative ones don't seem to like us mere mortals all having the
technical ability to establish a Twitter account and use it at will in the first place unless you're over the age of 34 and based in a semi detached house down Aylesbury way but
this IS 2016 and they should understand that people do wish to
communicate and engage in a multitude of ways as and when it suits them.
Some Twitter users and bloggers like myself don't
really care how many followers they have on any given day. We're not
glued to our frontispiece looking at the counter go up or down 300
times an hour! We also don't particularly care whether our tweets or
comments are deemed sentient enough to be read out loud on TV to be opened up to "polite" scrutiny! However, we do want to encourage debate among a widest network as possible, and are more than happy to show agreement or disagreement with certain tweets or blog posts, even if they may offend others who have chosen to follow our account earlier on in that account's history.
We don't care if people decide to block us at will because that's part of what being on a democratic communication network such as Twitter is all about, but don't expect us to block you back in an angst ridden "toys out the pram" manner when the going gets tough and you can't seem to see the flawed logic in your argument stream! We
cherish the freedom to tweet on the issues AS THEY HAPPEN, whether
watching programmes, attending debates or even during our office
lunch hours! It's quite refreshing when you can engage in a debate with
followers and others on Twitter; it can lead to better awareness of
an issue for some, despite the risk it may lead to hatred and bile being spurted by
the other side. Maybe these self-righteous media hound sages hate the fact that some Twitter
commentators are quick witted and can see the semantic or pragmatic holes in their
argument, (usually based on the fact that people can relativise facts and use them to suit their own line of argument...everyone does it) so their "secret weapon" is to call you out as
being “misinformed” or “shallow” or even "egotistical".
I mean what is the point of Twitter if nobody is allowed to comment
freely, address issues which matter to them, connect with those that
represent their views if they wish and hopefully inspire those who are currently
locked out from key debates? Especially those political debates that will determine the future of our "green and pleasant land"!
So yes folks, you guessed it! I'm going to own that SJW
label that certain Twitter commentators want to give me, with the pride and dignity it confers! I'm also coining
a new term, that I'll explain further in a future blog post, that of
the Conservative Justice Warrior, or CJW! Believe me, these people
are so bigoted and willing to defend the patriarchal status quo at
all costs it makes Donald "I'm LGBTQI friendly but only when it suits
my political advancement amongst independents" Trump's equality arguments look like Hillary Clinton's years of
"supergeeky supercharged superready" foreign policy arguments!
WATCH THIS SPACE!!!!!!!!!
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