Bergdorf in The Guardian

[PenguinFlipper]

Puff piece on Bergdorf. www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/feb/11/munroe-bergdorf-interview-model-writer-trans-activist-memoir

Weirdly doesn't mention the NSPCC cutting ties with Bergdorf over safeguarding concerns www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48643467. And while discussing the Scottish GRC bill, fails to mention at all the controversy over rapists and other male sex criminals who say they're women being placed in women's prisons. Perhaps the journo's Google is broken?

Depressingly Bergdorf was bullied as a child for being an effeminate gay boy. "I was too girly for the boys".

How have we got to the point where homophobia is so rife that medicating / operating on unhappy people and helping them pretend they're the opposite sex is preferable to accepting them as gay? And then demonising anyone who doesn't want to join in the pretending?

Bergdorf seems to have had a hard life. I wish it had been easier with support for Bergdorf to accept Bergdorf's self as a gay man. In Bergdorf's own words: "How many people are going to die, and how many people are going to end up in situations like I’ve been in where they can’t love themselves, because the environment they are in encourages them to hate themselves?".

Of course, abuse of anyone including trans people is wrong and sounds like Bergdorf has had a truckload. I hope Begdorf does love Bergdorf's self. But I worry if Bergdorf has assigned happiness to other people accepting Bergdorf as a woman, because it's a belief not everyone shares, and I don't think it's abusive to state that men are not women. In fact, I think it's of critical importance.

Why? This is another quote from Bergdorf in the article:

white “existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour”

You can also apply that to sex:

"Male existence, privilege and success ... is built on the backs, blood and death of women."

If we accept that, then the oppressor (men) should never be allowed to identify as the oppressed (women).

I'm not sure Bergdorf appreciates Bergdorf's male privilege in claiming that trans-identified males are women.

That's a great piece by Hadley. Shame on The Guardian that she couldn't write it when she was employed by them.

What an excellent piece of journalism

Meaning the Hadley piece, of course

The Hadley Freeman article is excellent and the Barnes book sounds very important.

The Graun are just an embarrassment at this point.

So pleased that Hadley Freeman now works somewhere that appreciates her.

Off to preorder the Barnes book now.

Imagine if the same were true for other minorities, she says. “We’re not looking to white people to be the authority on the black experience.”

Exactly. Imagine if we were looking to male people to be the authority on the female experience! ....oh.

It would be funny if it weren’t so depressingly true!

Just so sick & tired of these characters. The whole charade, starting with the UBER pretentious name, the victim back story, the drugs, cross sex hormones, facial surgery, wigs, insistence on BEING a woman, the exceptionalism treatment in media, the 'modelling' contracts, the Loreal contract.

Why did they not stand by sacking him when he went on a vicious rant about white privilege and woman privilege. Utter typical example of toxic male shitishness.

Self gay conversion is not something to encourage and internalised homophobia should be warned against not actively encouraged as a cult behaviour.

I agree with Monroe actually that it's no-one's business what surgical interventions they have on their genitals. The surgery is grim and if someone wants to keep their genitals as they are then that's much healthier.

I make no distinction between a trans person who has had surgery and one who has not in any case. Neither has become the opposite sex. A transwoman with an inverted penis is not closer to being a woman than a transwoman with intact genitals. A transman with a tube of flesh sewn above where their vulva used to be is no closer to being a man than one without.

I also agree with pp that Munroe's story is depressingly typical. I feel so sorry for feminine little boys. It must be very, very difficult to grow up with your self-esteem and self-worth intact.

I also think it's hard to be a highly effeminate gay young man, particularly just now. I can see why you might think that transition might give you something easier, particularly if you are also struggling with internalised homophobia.

Did anyone see Loose Women with Monroe on? I have just watched it and I am really shocked.