It feels increasingly as though we’ve elected the Pink Mafia
The government’s main items of business in its first 100 days are civil unions for same-sex couples, and changing the law to allow transgender people to marry somebody of the opposite (formerly the same) gender.
I might be getting a little confused, but doesn’t the civil-union move render the transgender move redundant?
It’s about time they remembered there are some other people out here.
These things needed to be done, but cut the fanfare and don’t forget that this month thousands of people are pouring out of sixth form, vocational colleges and the university, looking for work.
I see from this picture that only certain gay supporters of the Labour Party appear to have been invited to the celebration. I get the feeling that the Labour mayor of Zurrieq, Ignatius Farrugia, wasn’t asked despite being as camp as the proverbial row of tents. Not considered smart enough, I imagine.
And Jason and Ronnie would have loved to be there, but you know what the situation is. Things are a bit tense right now.
25 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Yes, you’re getting confused. Civil unions allow a partnership of two people of the same sex. The transgender case rectified an anomaly in the law whereby a person who is recognised in all other instances of the law as belonging to one sex could not marry a person of the opposite sex. Considering the two policies address two completely separate groups of people, I don’t see how you think one affects the other.
[Daphne – I forget you speak Globish, not English, TL. It’s very tiresome. My point was ironic: that if a transgender woman is prevented from marrying somebody on the basis of her gender at birth, the same-sex civil union does the job instead.]
Don’t patronise. Your point is not ironic, it’s misinformed and insulting. A transgender woman is a woman, not a man, and so a law regulating same-sex unions does not apply to a heterosexual transgender woman anymore than it does to you. I know to you homophobia and transphobia are just more toys in your arsenal, but I’d expect somebody of your intelligence to have a bit more responsibility.
[Daphne – It’s you who are doing the irritating patronising, TL. I am perfectly well aware of what ‘transgender’ or ‘transsexual’ is, and was probably aware long before you, given that the first Maltese man to have the operation, almost 40 years ago now, was the brother of one of my closest friends. The reason I am easy-going about such things, and not po-faced about them, is because I take them for granted as part and parcel of life.
What I find almost sadly hilarious is how very daring and outre some gay people and those who ‘champion’ them think they are: ‘Gosh, we’re gay in public, how brave and cool and hip.’ I just consider it normal, and that’s not a contradiction in terms. I joke about gay people because I joke about straight people. It’s all the same to me, just as it should be. Isn’t that what you want?
Learn how to laugh at yourself. Women have had to do it for yonks. Dumb blonde and Essex girl jokes? Imagine what would happen if we have a whole genre of humour called ‘dumb screaming queen’ jokes, or the ‘transgender man who couldn’t figure out how to change a lightbulb’ jokes. But it’s assumed that straight women will be the butt of all humour.
If I were gay, I would just get on with it and not turn it into a drama or my persona and identity. But that’s just the way I am, and I know for a fact, because they are people I work with or who are friends, that there are many gay men and women who do think and behave that way and who can’t stand the dramas and the attention-seeking.
And in any case, you are wrong. A transgender woman remains, biologically, a man. That is the fact on which this whole controversy hinged, and why the court rulings contradicted each other: one court went with the outward physicality, another with biology. You can change the physical structure and the emotions and personality and feelings may be those of a woman, but the chromosomes, which can’t be changed, remain those of a man. It is the chromosomes which – and here I want to make it clear that this is a biological and not social point – make us male or female. The skeletal structure, too, remains that of a man. If a transgender woman dies in a fire or some other destructive conditions, her body will be identified unequivocally by the forensic pathologist as that of a man. Quite a few thrillers and mystery novels have been built around this fact.
I have no problem with people marrying whosoever they wish, because I don’t think it makes any difference to anyone else, so why should anyone bother to interfere. But science is science.]
Prosit Daphne.
May I add that it is all thanks to Maria Stevens and that great Quaker women’s centre of learning Bryn Mawr.
It all revolves around X and Y.
Everything else is utterly irrelevant.
[Daphne – And isn’t there something to do with the relative length of the index and middle fingers, or am I mistaken?]
Wow TL gone quiet! Very interesting angle, Daphne.
An excellent, most lucid comment. It deserves to be posted as a separate entry. Just about a week ago I had an argument precisely about this issue:
“A transgender woman remains, biologically, a man. That is the fact on which this whole controversy hinged, and why the court rulings contradicted each other: one court went with the outward physicality, another with biology.”
Some people just fail to make the distinction between the biological and emotional-behavioural issues, and this has been further complicated by the contradictory court rulings.
As you say: Science is science and it is simply ridiculous and totally incongruous to change a scientifically- and physically-proven X into a Y.
I definitely agree with you that people need to take it down a notch and learn that a joke’s a joke.
But it’s ridiculous to call a transgendered woman a man, or even to label her in any legal sense as a man.
[Daphne – ‘Transgendered woman’: there is no such thing. That’s just what this whole issue is about. You are either a woman or a man.]
She lives in society as a woman, she is perceived to be a woman by others and her gender, her identity, is female. It’s impractical to label her as a male and creates a host of problems for her. She is a woman.
She should be able to marry her fiance, if he actually is her fiance, as a woman, not as a biological man.
The PN were supposed to introduce civil partnership/union during their last term in office, but they dragged their feet and let gays down. I agree with Labour on this issue. This was discrimination which needed urgent attention.
If the PN spent as much energy on fighting the plight of Joanne Cassar (the transgender person) in court, they would have had enough time to enact civil partnership.
The PN are pseudo-Christians, trying to please the Church-going voters. Unfortunately they got it wrong and now we have Labour in power because of their head-in-the-sand attitude.
I find DeMarco’s apology about the way the PN treated Joanne Cassar as an insult to her and not an apology. He had better shut up and say nothing.
Ignatius Farrugia is an embarrassment to Dr Muscat. I bet you Dr Muscat keeps him at arms (or farther away) length.
Mr Zammit Tabona looks as though he would really like a civil union with the prime minister.
How ‘civil’ is civil?
My thoughts exactly
He must be feeling in safer hands now and it gives him a stronger sense of security.
All this is cheap politics – revolutions of sorts! No one prevents same sex couples to be together and draw legal arrangements between them.
X’inhu liebes ezatt Felix the choreographer?
Ezatt. Jekk se tilbes qmis biex ixxammarha, wiehed m’ghandux jaghzel qmis ta’ dik it-tip – sabiha u eleganti, l-ingravata taqbel ecc, tintlibez minghajr glekk u tghaddi – imma li meta ixxammarha, jidher l-abjad tal-qmis.
F’okkazjonijiet ta’ dawk it-tip, il-qmis ma tixxammarx qisna sejrin il-bahar.
Mill-banda l-ohra KZT eleganti wisq, qisu sejjer Mediterranean Cruise.
Dar-ritratt ezatt juri, x’socjeta ghandna.
Nixtieq inzid nghid li kulhadd libes sew. Prosit u najs.
Ma tantx jidher li kien hawn il-faqar f’dal-pajjiz.
Kollha qishom sejrin weekend break. Jidhru relakx, ghax il-gvern illi jemmnu fih, relaxed.
So Ignatius shaved all his body hair in vain after all…
Waxed.
Is that Toni Attard?
Both Zapatero and Hollande had civil unions high on their agendae. The next thing we know both Spain and France had millions of unemployed on their hands. When governments give priority to things which, quite frankly, are not bread-and-butter issues, that is the result.
Agree with you 500%. first things first and not these. X’naqbad nghidilhom?
And who’s the bird on the far left of the photo? Don’t tell me she’s a lesbian. What a damn waste.
Ara Felix hemmhekk – qisu tifel ta’ 13 meta mar fuq date ma l-ewwel crush tieghu.
Kulhadd ileqq u mxammar.
Don’t you just love Kennit (now il-Pufta tal-Maktur) trying hard to appear riveted while revealing his undiluted adulation of Joseph Muscat? And Felix and his partner keeping a decent distance (ghax mhux puliti bhal Kennit) wearing what appear to be Laura Ashley prints?