Mumsnet Talk

The problem with Julie Burchill's article is the sheer hatred she comes out with, the language and the sheer vitriol in it - it's basically an attack on the transsexual community and not one you'd expect to see for another oppressed community.

For those that can see beyond the end of their noses, a reference to Brazil might be due to the fact that it's one of the world leaders in terms of uptake of plastic surgery is synonymous with 'the body beautiful'.

(Btw, blog link re. Moran if it helps - therealsgm.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/caitlin-moran-excluding-wofc-isnt.html)

Sadly, kim, having read shedloads of vitriol on both sides of this one, I think it is exactly what you'd expect. That's the problem. She knew she was just going to make things worse and she went ahead and did it anyway.

From a NY Times article:

'Brazil has long had an international reputation as home of the body beautiful, a culture obsessed with beauty, vitality and health — and even if that standard is often more perception than reality, the country’s health and wellness industries are booming.'

Thanks for explaining, LRD, I appreciate it.

Francis Sedgemore has reported it as a hatecrime

I'm stunned the Guardian printed it.

No worries lizzie.

Beautifully selective quoting there.

I think I know what Suzanne Moore intended in that article - and it was a good article about body image and feminism. The reaction by the trans lobby was way OTT - that's something that happens nowadays with Twitter.

And LRD - yes, Julie knew what she was doing. I'm pleased so many people have attacked the article in the comments and the Guardian editor seems to be trying to distance the Guardian from the Observer.

It's just surprising the Observer would publish such a hate filled article when they are quite keen to censor other comments full of hate.

I can't be bothered to read the link but Julie Birchill is an arse and always has been. She just shouts attention-seeking contentious twaddle as far as I'm concerned, and prides herself on being obtuse.

So whatever it was she said, by default YANBU.

Wow what an appalling article by Julie Burchill. What on earth did she think she would achieve? I am really surprised it got published.

Are they? I just don't read Guardian comments any more - they are full of attacks on women. An awful lot of mainstream media is just so casually misognyistic it's almost difficult to register it.

THis is what Suzanne Moore said on the issue - "When I say "women", I don't much care if you were born or became one. I am with RuPaul: "Honey, we are born naked, the rest is drag." " It's a good piece.

I like the discussion on this thread. It seems constructive. It seems intersted in hearing a range of views, empathising, and working towards answers. Unlike (from what I can gather) the Twitter exchanges, and certainly unlike the Burchill article.

There is this awful dynamic in so many internet conversations that involves first of all a principle of uncharity, whereby you interprete your opponent's words in whatever way allows maximum imputation to them of wrongfulness (of whatever sort -- ignorance, prejudice, unchecked privilege, or a million other sins). That in turn is used as a way of asserting one's own superior concern for whatever isues are under discussion, and then the whole thing comes to be about which participant is most righteous. Instead of about the issues. It is paralysing.

And then editors come along to cash in on the tension, because they believe that the best way to "provoke discussion" (for which read "get plenty of hits/readers/etc) is to re-stage what has become a setpiece conflict. So all "discussions" come to be pre-framed as a clash between two sides (sometimes involving made-up categories like yummy mummies, Burchills's alleged community of academic middle-class transexuals) -- and once some copy-short journo has made up a dichotomy we all pile in and legitimise it by joining in the discussion on those flawed dichotomous terms online. Hopeless.

(I should have put an "and" after "yummy mummies" -- I didn't mean to suggest that yummy mummies are all academic middle-class transexuals.)

Susanne Moore should have just apologised for offending some unintentionally. Moved on, not pathetically tried to defend herself by being more offensive.

Who is she not to accept the word transphobia. And 'cut their dicks and be more feminist than me' is plain vile.

Julie birchill is just a nasty bit of work who thinks if she says she working class and under trodden she can say anything she like because otherwise you are being against working class women

I wish I could say I was both a yummy mummy and an academic middle-class transexual .

Life would be much more fun if there were yummy mummy academic middle class transsexuals. Though tougher to type about.

I think people do throw around the word 'transphobia' to mean 'anyone who disagrees with me', though. I don't see how what Moore wrote was transphobic, especially after her clarification. Ignorant about people who died in Brazil, yes. Transphobic? Not so sure.

If Julie Burchill still counts as working class then I shall reinvent myself as working class too.

I don't think sm should have apologised - she had nothing to apologise for.

But she expressed an opinion that hadn't been vetted by them first

I think Suzanne Moore wrote a good response article. She didn't mean any offense but I did not see any of her comments on Twitter - nor the attacks on her.

Julie Burchill is Julie Burchill. Maybe she should write for the DM?

The thing is, Julie Burchill isn't really known for understating her case, is she? I've been reading articles by her for 30 years, and I've never once thought, "Well, that was a fair, reasonable, balanced summing up of the arguments on both sides."

She's successful precisely because she's a professional controversialist and, not only that (because any idiot can be controversial) she has a gift for the barbed phrase, the cruelly but wittily worded comment that stings. That's why she carries on getting commissioned and why people keep reading her.

I think I'd err on the side of saying she should have, if Brazil is especially associated with transsexuals being killed, then the reference is going to upset people, because some people will have lost loved ones. This sort of argument typically does get some people saying 'professionally offended', but I think you can't choose what offends or upsets you. It wasn't an integral part of her argument, so I think she was right to explain that.

I didn't read her second piece as an out-and-out breast-beating 'oh my god, I was so wrong' apology anyway: it was explaining where she was coming from and it was very well put.

After that people should have accepted her point.

Maybe it takes someone like Julie Burchill to raise points, in her usual confrontational antagonistic manner, when other feminists are too wary of certain highly vocal groups to say what they really think.