Julie Burchill lights the blue touchpaper..

[Prospero]

Burchill has made a long and profitable career out of being offensive and controversial. She seldom has anything of substance to say but has a great glibness and facility with the type of writing which is, sadly, all too prevalent today. Once upon a time she was a rock critic for the NME but then moved into her present mode. She has worked for just about every national newspaper in the UK - bar the FT. I still recall one of her most offensive remarks many years ago was a suggestion that many young women yearn for a taste of "negroid knob." So her latest little piece of attempt to outrage is not surprising.

[londonpirate]

Burchill has made a long and profitable career out of being offensive and controversial. She seldom has anything of substance to say but has a great glibness and facility with the type of writing which is, sadly, all too prevalent today. Once upon a time she was a rock critic for the NME but then moved into her present mode. She has worked for just about every national newspaper in the UK - bar the FT. I still recall one of her most offensive remarks many years ago was a suggestion that many young women yearn for a taste of "negroid knob." So her latest little piece of attempt to outrage is not surprising.

She is a vile attention seeker who abandonned her two children and supported the iraqi war (if I remember correctly while welcoming the fact it was done for oil).
The Observer disgraced itself by allowing such an article to be printed. It seems that transsexuals and (muslims maybe) are the last minorities that can be attacked in such a vitriolic way in the mainstream media.

[londonpirate]

@robert Louis



I agree her original comment was throw away and silly but not that offensive. But when Moore was challenged on twitter about this she responded with the same kind of vitriolic hatred that Burchill later displayed. She here

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/01/11...-stop-digging/

There is certainly a school of thought in feminism that results in this hatred of Trans women, she the work of Janice Raymond - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Burchill and Moore are obviously fans.

What s ironic is that its mainly women who took issue with Moore's comments on twitter, burchill lies when she says her master was attaked by "trannies"

[sophiebendable]

I had never heard of any of these bitches before, but I understand Burchill is basically a British Ann Coulter?

Also, while I agree the "Brazilian transsexual" comment was not THAT bad, Suzanne Moore's response to being called out about it on Twitter was pretty offensive as well as the follow-up she wrote for the Guardian.

And if you want to understand why her original comment caused such outrage, you'll have to read it in the context that trans women in Brazil have one of the highest murder rates of any group of people anywhere on earth. It's appalling. Given this as well as all the other shit we face everywhere, it's hard to imagine any non-trans woman wanting to switch bodies with a Brazilian transsexual.

And even disregarding that, I don't see how a body that still has some masculine features and has had to correct many more through cosmetic surgery could possibly be considered a feminine ideal. It's pretty obvious to the women living in those bodies that they don't meet the insane standards set for women in the media no matter how hard they try.

And finally, to act like all trans women even have the type of body she was referring to is clearly absurd. I'm 5'8" (tall, but not really tall), have natural B cups, and average width hips for a woman (37"), so I guess I don't have a typical transsexual body in her (incredibly uneducated) opinion.

[Jericho]

And if you want to understand why her original comment caused such outrage, you'll have to read it in the context that trans women in Brazil have one of the highest murder rates of any group of people anywhere on earth.

Call me insensitive, but when i read that in the blog i thought bullshit, and i still think it's bullshit...Why would you even put it in that particular context?

Unless of course, you're looking to be offended.

It'd be like me saying I hate my nose...I look like a fukkin New York Jew!
...And then someone bring up the Holocaust!

Y'know, fuck the rational arguments against it, lets go straight for the jugular!

[sophiebendable]

Call me insensitive, but when i read that in the blog i thought bullshit, and i still think it's bullshit...Why would you even put it in that particular context?

Unless of course, you're looking to be offended.

It'd be like me saying I hate my nose...I look like a fukkin New York Jew!
...And then someone bring up the Holocaust!

Y'know, fuck the rational arguments against it, lets go straight for the jugular!

As a trans woman, it makes complete sense to me that other trans women reading that sentence would relate it to that. Compared to many of us I'm not at a particularly high risk for violence (being white has a lot to do with it), but I still constantly think about the statistics and incidents I've heard of both from friends and in the news. The specter of violence is a constant psychological weight whenever I'm in public, on the train, walking down the street, etc. A lot of the point of hate crimes is to create this atmosphere of constant fear in the victimized group.

So yeah, I wouldn't expect YOU to have had that association at all. The shame is that Suzanne Moore, after this was explained to her, was unable to make the connection to her own experiences as a woman who frequently writes about rape culture and show some empathy in her response.

[jennylicious]

Call me insensitive, but when i read that in the blog i thought bullshit, and i still think it's bullshit...Why would you even put it in that particular context?

Unless of course, you're looking to be offended.

It'd be like me saying I hate my nose...I look like a fukkin New York Jew!
...And then someone bring up the Holocaust!

Y'know, fuck the rational arguments against it, lets go straight for the jugular!

The fact that arse augmentation is called 'The Brazilian Butt lift', and it was this particular procedure that was part of the image Suzanne wanted to convey in her imagery, then it was a reasonable descriptive device. It's not perfectly accurate, and it was a bit glib, but it didn't deserve anything like the attention it got.

Yes, there is a high murder rate, but they also have the highest number of TS supermodels, so to concentrate on a crime statistic to stereotype Transgenders in Brazil is only half the story. Their increasing success in the fashion industry suggests that they aren't the victims as they are being presented. In fact, with that amount of exposure, they may earn themselves more acceptance than in any other country.

If any one was particularly offended by the article, it should have been for all the Transgenders in Brazil who have died injecting silicone into their body.

Of course women can have that body if they are willing to die for it.

[robertlouis]

Burchill has made a long and profitable career out of being offensive and controversial. She seldom has anything of substance to say but has a great glibness and facility with the type of writing which is, sadly, all too prevalent today. Once upon a time she was a rock critic for the NME but then moved into her present mode. She has worked for just about every national newspaper in the UK - bar the FT. I still recall one of her most offensive remarks many years ago was a suggestion that many young women yearn for a taste of "negroid knob." So her latest little piece of attempt to outrage is not surprising.

All the more surprising therefore that a left of centre newspaper like The Observer should give her a platform for her rant. That said, the comments section on The Guardian website (shared with The Observer, its sister paper) was nigh on unanimous in condemnation of what Burchill had written, and all the posts came from men and women - that is to say, nobody self-identified as transsexual.

On the other hand, it was reprinted on The Daily Telegraph site by Toby Young, another wilful controversialist, and the comments there were just as ignorant and objectionable as you would expect from that source.

The upside is that the storm has at the very least raised awareness of the issues transsexual women and men face on an everyday basis. Hopefully that's also the last time Burchill will stain my Sunday morning reading.

[brooksglass]

She was horrid to her ex-husband Tony Parsons, He had to look after their children himself and all she did over the years was publicly slag him off whilst he moved on with his life, she likes to stir things for a reaction so this article does not surprise me.

[loveboof]

I agree with Jericho. It was the first thing I thought when I saw it too! The Brazilian ts murder rate has nothing to do with Suzanne Moore's initial jokey comment.

The reason it is being cited is to bring an emotional weight to a weak argument.

I didn't find Suzanne Moore's follow up article to be offensive either. I can see how a person who has already decided to be offended could pick holes in it, but I understand what she is trying to say in it.

However, Julie Burchill's article is intentionally offensive! She even says at one point in brackets 'at least I'm not calling them shemales', but then goes on to use the term shemale (and shim) later on. That is undoubtedly willful.