Don’t you feel sick each time a criminal gets off with a perfunctory slap on the wrist – or even without one?
That happens, for example, to burglars, who, on average, commit dozens of break-ins before they’re even arrested, never mind convicted.
But, as a progressivist of long standing, I don’t mind that very much. After all, burglary is only a crime against property, which is, as we all know, theft. Hence a burglar does what the government should really do for him: redistribute wealth.
To be fair to the government, it does try, but only half-heartedly. People still have some wealth left, and that’s what burglars prey on. If our government did its job more efficiently, those poor lads would have nothing to burgle and would thus be saved from a life of crime.
But not to worry, this oversight will be sorted out when Jeremy Corbyn moves his Trotsky portrait into 10 Downing Street, which, the progressive in me hopes and the realist predicts, will happen soon.
Meanwhile I can’t get too worked up about yet another toff on £3,000 (!) a month losing the TV he purchased by squeezing the lifeblood out of the united workers of the world. What does get my goat is lenience shown to crimes against the very essence of our progressive ethos to which I’ve pledged eternal allegiance.
Such as that heinous crime of misgendering, for which there can be no excuse in this world, nor any redemption in the next (if you happen to believe in such reactionary hogwash, which no progressive person like me does).
And please don’t tell me you don’t know what misgendering is. By acknowledging such ignorance you’ll only brand yourself as a fascist, and that’s putting it mildly.
Misgendering, in case you’re indeed such a ghastly person, is describing a transgender person by the personal pronoun that had been appropriate until that free and commendable choice was made.
Let’s stop beating about the bush (no pun intended). Referring to a woman who was wrongly born in the body of a man as a ‘he’ is a crime worse than burglary or mugging.
The repossessed I-Phone or watch can be replaced, but the emotional trauma caused by criminal misgendering leaves a lifelong wound that’ll never stop festering. Therefore this crime should be treated as something falling just short of murder – and prosecuted with the full severity of our new-fangled law.
Alas, our government is lamentably soft on this offence, and the miscreant can only get two years in prison at most. That’s laudably longer than what most burglars get, but clearly not long enough.
Still, it’s better than nothing. Yet – and I weep even as I write this – nothing is precisely what the Catholic journalist Caroline Farrow got for the crime of misgendering she had committed on twitter.
Yes, according to the statement issued by Surrey police at the time, “A thorough investigation is being carried out to establish whether any criminal offences have taken place. A 44-year-old woman has been asked to attend a voluntary interview in relation to the allegation as part of our on-going investigation.”
A voluntary interview, officer? This, although a burglar caught after merely his 25th act of redistributing ill-gotten gains has handcuffs slapped on? Miss Farrow should have been arrested and held on remand without bail.
But wait, I still haven’t described the enormity of her crime. The tweet in question was posted after Miss Farrow appeared on ITV with Susie Green, chief executive of Mermaids, a transgender charity that recently received £500,000 of lottery money.
When Miss Green’s son was 16, he decided to become Miss Green’s daughter. Since Britain still hadn’t become sufficiently progressive to legalise such conversion at such a young age, Miss Green took her son – as she then was – to Thailand.
There the procedure was still legal then, which it no longer is because the Thai government has since betrayed its multicultural virtue and reverted to pre-progressive legislation.
Anyway, Miss Green’s daughter Jacqui (as she now is) became a full-fledged woman, as feminine in every respect as, say, Penny Mordaunt and more so than Andrea Leadsome.
Yet that unrepentant papist had the gall to refer to beautiful Jacqui as – hold on, let me compose myself – a ‘he’!
And look at her feeble, pathetic defence when justly brought to account: “I have pointed out to the police that I am a Catholic journalist/commentator and it is my religious belief that a person cannot change sex.”
Excuse me? She openly admits to a crime against everything progressive people like me hold dear and then puts forth some antediluvian superstition as a defence? How brazen can one get?
Next thing you know she’ll start citing scientific evidence about all those chromosomes. XX – you’re a woman; XY – you’re a man, that sort of thing.
Don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a chromosome. But even if they do exist, surely they can’t override that most sacred right of our progressive world: freedom of consumer’s choice.
We’re free to choose our socks, CDs, cars, alfalfa over meat – and certainly our sex… sorry, I mean gender. (One sometimes finds it hard to keep up with our rapidly changing language, but keep up one must since all change can only be for the better.)
And anyway, as a Catholic, which Miss Farrow claims she is, she ought to believe in free will and the primacy of consciousness over physicality. Even at her barely post-pubescent age, Jacqui struck a blow for the triumph of the will – Leni Riefenstahl, eat your heart out.
It saddens me to report that justice wasn’t done. Though investigated, Miss Farrow wasn’t prosecuted for her crime, partly because her victim didn’t want to give her a public platform from which to air her incendiary views.
My preference would have been for that evil-doer to be clapped into prison and ideally gang-raped by transgender women whose raping tools haven’t yet been removed. Oh well, there’s always next time…
…As you realise, I’ve written this in jest. But do you also realise that the same sentiments are now routinely expressed in our mainstream press, with most of the opposition silenced? That’s progress for you.
When Bertrand Russell announced his first child, a friend said, “Congratulations, Bertie! Is it a girl or a boy?”
Russell said, “Yes, of course. What else could it be?”
Sexual confusion occurs especially in the arts. I was at a meeting at the local council gallery last week and the art director was very excited about an upcoming exhibition from a woman who now identifies as a man. The second time the director referred to the artist as “she” I interjected, “can’t you just say “it”? But judging by the work he/she produced I should have suggested she merge the front of the pronoun “she” with “it”.
Anyone should be assumed guilty and treated as guilty until proved guilty. Shades of Robespierre and Lenin, let alone Jezza’s hero Trotsky.