Light The Beacons, Let Helen Belcher Know: I Have A Sob Story (Trans Complaint Ecology #2)

Let's talk about prejudice, trauma and suffering. And Helen Belcher. 

The Old Boy's / New Ladys' Network (Trans Complaint Ecology #1)

Helen Belcher, Sophie Cook, Katie Neeves, Claire Prosho - birds of a feather, flock together. In conference foyers, complaints departments and on the radio.

I'm, mad, me. And I don't mean like Laurie Penny, I'm-"a wild and untameable trauma-twitchy anarcha-feminist" pansexual gender-queer - but married - to a man?!  

No, my affliction is far more niche. 

I'm mad about a certain trans rights activist who, unusually, is a married father, involved in the media, the Lib Dems and tech. 

Oh, you guessed it - it's Helen Belcher (pronounced "Bell-chair" by posh people on the radio). 

And I know it's stupid, but there's a phenomenon broader than even him at play here: the swift rise to prominence, the plaudits, connections, uncritical press and near identical politics and stories. So much for unique identities!  

It's almost as if, rather than a painful journey which needs numerous legal protections and a fastidiously obliging society, it really functions as a transition-career-rejuvenation pipeline.  

I'll be hammering my girlish Belcher fanzine into shape for the foreseeable, as he's a prolific prodder of pies, so much I end up in lots of different places with just too many thoughts in my little head. And some of those places, as I explained in Light The Beacons, are angry, bitter and full of burning self pity. 

But for now let's begin with the coterie of fellow family men-turned-late-middle age transwomen, starting with Sophie Cook (links to an earlier blog). 

Cook, a married father who's wife stayed, was catapulted into political relevance, replete with media coverage, Ted Talks and book deals because, well, transition. 

After a life of photographing Bournemouth football club and Pete Doherty, Steve (as he was then) felt intensely sad, alone in a Midlands' Ibis hotel. There was no possible alternative account for it - Steve was a lady. 

So, swathed in dresses and hair weaves, he twirled and spun and ultimately shed his cocoon, re-emerging metamorphosed. An ex-man. Sophie. 

Praise the Lord, he was supported by his club and fans, and even ran for Parliament soon after:

When Cook stood for MP, despite bracing himself “for a renewed onslaught of hatred” the response was surprising:

“Something unexpected happened. Instead of the abuse, I was greeted with love and support" 

 

And while he was warned he'd never be accepted:

"most attention [was] due to my profile from working in football and TV"

Isn't this evidence that everything is in fact not so bad? Are they allowed to say that? It seems like no, that's the last thing they would say. 

On his Ted Talk, Cook fires off a few one-liners with a blokey irreverence that's not unlike Ricky Gervais. Look at the title of his talk - 'Grab Life By The Balls". Ha. Such a good sentence; I enjoy humour jokes, one's which we can all relate to.

He seems pretty robust, but one look at Cook's twitter or the above blog will show you where Cook's sensitivities and priorities lie. That is, when it comes to the darker aspects being a woman can entail - domestic and sexual abuse - he's pretty damn competitive. 

So that resilient, go-lucky veneer isn't so tough. Sadly, it appears Cook is very much embattled. Abuse, that he must turn into entirely illegible collages. Men saying things behind him in the street that could be mean and could be directed at him. 

The fact you can't even have sex with someone while keeping you're biological sex private, without being accused of deception. TV segments on rape crisis centres which open with interviews with "cis women" when in fact transwomen get raped - even by other women. Yeah.

It's a strange dichotomy, is it not, that these often large, confident, opportunity-grasping males who speak assertively and without pause or inhibition, detailing depression and disenfranchisement, find a rizla-thin skin and whole new, booming career when they trans? 

There's also Katie Neeves - another photographer, delivering important, edifying insights about wearing his sister's knickers with an endearing, grinch-like grin. 

In the image above we can witness Neeves' absolute last day 'pretending to be a man'. Apparently he would have dropped the pretense earlier, but clipping the hedge behind him would be impossible as a 'woman', what with the necessary girly accoutrements - I shit you not. Do not inform Charley Dimmock. 

IMPORTANT - This was taken in April - please do not cut hedges at this time of the year, it tends to eviscerate nesting birds as strimmers become an impromptu bird blender - this is not a Jack Monroe hack, and I do not have a PayPal.

Like Cook, Neeves was also a married father and his wife also stayed. In fact, cursory Facebook searches make it clear he was in fact married, or renewed vows, less than a year before he exited manhood. 

In his blog, and everywhere else, he explains - to what I can only guess is a horrified audience - just how senseless and archaic our binary notions of sex and gender are:

"I was assigned male at birth, based purely on my sex characteristics (as is still the established practice)" 

Looking closely, you can still see elements of Neeves' earlier caterpillar state. The notion that these men 'discover' they are trans, or even discover that they are women, rather than accepting transition is the best option to manage dysphoria, troubles me

Neeves clearly sussed his opportunity to benefit from the media buzz early on, having announced his final life stage on LinkedIn, and launching his new, trans-based venture very soon after, having documented everything in advance. Despite allegedly fearing for his career. 

Now, he has a new career, giving trans awareness talks, advice and media interviews. 

Neeves is also not afraid of ball-based puns, although I imagine that both he and Sophie will complain about the use of male pronouns. In my defence, I counter, as a red-blooded heterosexual female, I am the victim, because bollocks are the aesthetic equivalent of dead body smell and they keep wafting that shit at me. 

Swinging his racket on Talk Radio Neeves begins the familiar ordeal, this time on Ian Collins, claiming JK Rowling is taking advantage of the poor public education of sex and gender. This is a bold move for a man who starts his story with the above quote, insisting his sex was 'assigned' based on... his sex.

He launches into a monologue of quickfire TRA cliche bingo as if in a memory test. He talks about nature being 'messy', attempting a coquetteish giggle and flutter while citing 'the things between' our legs and ears, and claims we "all begin as female", as something - mumble - something - maternal hormone levels and "depending on how male we get". It's a spectrum! 

In my mind, I see a broken Robert Winston on a hallucinogen-fuelled derangement spiral, swirling scotch around a tumbler and uttering obscenities. 

And it doesn't stop - "and then we have chromosomes..." and "many people can have extra chromosomes" these people "are called intersex" "they amount to just under 2% of the population.." 

He says he knows 'intersex' isn't trans, but he 'needs' to explain all this first. 

What he achieves is complicating the shit out of everything, and thoroughly washing JK Rowling from our minds so he can eventually come to a stop - with us gasping with relief - assuming he probably made some point that reflects badly on her.

He previously accused Rowling of inciting suicide in a shameless, self-promoting open letter: "Sadly, your diatribe directly caused some trans children to self-harm and others to attempt suicide" he ventured, without evidence, below a portrait of him appearing as a happy Gail Platt at a local church coffee morning.

I may be preaching to the choir here, but I am fucking done with agenda-driven activists hijacking the unspeakable tragedy of suicide, seemingly just to affirm the validity and importance of their padded bras.

Neeves' whole shtick rests upon listing enough weary tropes, with enough speed and fluctuating tone, to suggest something original may have been said. It's a dull, inauthentic gish gallop interspersed with uncomfortable testimonials of what people on reddit call gender euphoria. 

Page 3, at 52?! Much laughs on Neeves' blog

He promotes himself as light-hearted and jocular on his site, but it all manifests as a bit of a grotty jolly rather than an educational mission. 

There is also the same habit of brethren new-age car dealer and shadow crawler, one Jeremy Kyle, delivering entirely regular sentences as if they are jokes. For example, he remarks 'jestingly' to Ian Collins that as many people are 'intersex' as are redheads, but not necessarily the same people. A resigned Collins obliges a fleeting, meaningless chuckle, because he's a professional and besides, looking at his defeated visage, nothing matters anymore, anyway . What even is laughter - what does it mean? 

And so it was around this point I realised I couldn't bear to listen to anymore, as the urge to pause on a still, find my steel toe caps, and run out to the street for a bit of curb stomping catharsis was rapidly passing the threshold of resistable. 

On his website, Cool2BTrans, (ingeniously named to appeal to the youth, with its street vernacular, substituting numbers as words) Neeves sneaks in some infamously dubious stats on trans people and suicide, just one paragraph down from "being trans isn’t anything to feel sorry for".

He says he wants to help lower suicide rates, although I imagine profits well from his talks (reviewed with caustic excellence by Sarah Summers). Could Neeves attend a talk, perhaps by The Samaritans, explaining the (frankly, crystal) consequences of this kind of rhetoric? My guess is no. 

If there's one cardinal rule when speaking publicly about suicide, it's that attaching it to specific circumstances, simplifying the reasons for it and speaking of it as an understandable response to particular emotions is intensely dangerous and reckless. Transgender Trend do brilliant, much needed work here. 

Sadly, Neeves is far from alone in this. 

Claire Prosho is one funny, but decidedly buzz-kill, fish. An electric eel, perhaps. 

The "senior investigative reporter" at Steph's Place, now rebranded as Translucent (and pulling on the heartstrings of even a cretin like me, since they themselves angered the trans-stasi - a story for another day) Prosho has a background I know nothing of. 

Prosho's talk "The Radical Idea Transgender People Are People" - somehow suggesting we didn't already fucking know this - stacks up the tragedy tropes like nobody's business, and indulges us with a strikingly original take on the origins of transphobia:

Ahh, yes. All from the far-right internet cliques. Like, for example, Mumsnet. 

This would work if Prosho was describing abuse from incels, neo-fash or whatever. But still, it's awful, and I cannot imagine how it is to face such vituperation. 

Gotta give it to Prosho, however - he's quite the raconteur, treating us to exceptional, visceral fly-on-the-wall insight into his intense misery. 

A prime specimen in Prosho's fight for trans equality is the intractability of society to accept him:

"I use the gender neutral title Mx. And a while ago I needed some new glasses. So off I went to the opticians and while registering my details I found there was something like 50 titles to choose from, but not one gender neutral option. I felt pressured into using Mr."

"And, despite telling them I wanted women's glasses, I was ignored and taken to the men's section instead. And when I insisted they listen to me, they acted shocked, and a little bit confused"

I wish I could adequately convey the gravity of delivery here, I guess you need to watch it or trust me, it is heavy. You get the feeling life is an unabated drag. 

 

The battle is immense:

This minor farce, to Prosho, is erasure, but quite why someone who insists he a woman feels the need for the additional stipulation of gender neutral prefixes, or, when 'pressured', falls back onto 'Mr', is beyond me. Like Neeves, Prosho has become an expert, just by accepting his 'true self'. 

I know a lot of transsexuals, they did what they needed to manage dysphoria and want to be over the bureaucratic fuckery, not seeking out new battle grounds. 

Prosho's Ted talk is gripping. It's the discordance: his scowl from the stage, proclaiming fragility and persecution, with the comportment of a jobsworth ticket inspector experiencing the absolute worst day of his entire fucking life. 

He exudes a deep disapproval of existence itself; cradling the microphone with manicured hands, a curiously trim waste and great, hunched shoulders, gruffly reeling off a series of perceived slights and 'facts' he clearly finds outrageous or unconscionably cruel. 

 

🎼 Hello darkness, my old friend 🎶

He also commits the suicide gambit, crudely and brazenly;

It's

 

It's a startling juxtaposition: the husky voice, the humourless visage; the talk of people not accepting others for "who they truly are" inducing the perplexed and defeatist expression of an elderly bulldog, confronted with the brutal reality dinner tonight is very delicious indeed, but only if you can scale a climbing wall to get it. 

Having lost people to suicide, and watched people I love try to regain themselves after the suicide of a loved one, this makes me very angry. 

To me, the ultimate opt-out has been a frequently ruminating thought throughout my life, and I don't know if that's so rare. 

But I do know that those who actually do it tend to enter a tunnel vision that blinds almost everything else from view. That tunnel vision is a temporary madness that can be thwarted by something as simple as automatic sparks on a gas cooker, or having to visit several shops to get enough over-the-counter drugs. 

It's not a simple thing, but it is often rash. 

If I thought using preferred pronouns had a detectable impact on suicidality, I would use them, although I'd still push for acceptance that 'misgendering' ie correctly sexing, is not necessarily an antagonistic act.

I don't believe it, though, and am loathe to crumple at what we dinosaurs call emotional blackmail. So, instead I'm left with absolute contempt for the audacity and recklessness of what I believe is a cynical move to flatten any criticism or pushback as they aggressively grab for anti feminist, anti woman policy and legislature. 

These men-to-transwomen are assertive and successful, but somewhere along the road acquired the emotional delicacy of freeze-dried butterfly wings. 

Simultaneously, however, their lives seem to flourish - new meaning, purpose; new community and, still, devoted wives. Prosho is still married. In fact, he claims it was his wife who prompted his transition, confronting him with his hotel dress-up photos he (claims) he never looked at, asking him to consider how happy he looked. I wonder how proud and vindicated little wifey felt, gazing at him up on the stage floor? 

Now, these career transwomen become experts. Advisors, ambassadors, champions, advocates. They do talks, become Stonewall experts, 'educators', media pundits and panelists - often with the shit-fit veto rights of A-list celebs. 

They undoubtedly had a period of feeling the fear, and did it anyway, but this narrative facilitating a rejuvenated - or entirely new - career, it goes unmentioned. 

It's a fascinating phenomena that sits on the boundaries of histrionic egocentrism, turmoil-driven evangelism, entitlement and resentment, denial and calculated, prospector-like machinations. 

It's a desire for recognition, a doomed quest for an acceptance which feels too far from reach, because in truth, the struggle for it is within. 

It's born-again ideological fervour with authoritarian impulses and a hair-trigger reflex that extinguishes any need for justification, except for when that justification is not sought. 

People who have been victims do not, in my experience, use that vulnerability as a shield and battering ram. It's an incongruous sight, where such fragile sensibilities are pitched alongside bellicose complaint, finger jabbing condemnation and a certainty anyone listening will see it as they do. 

I must remind myself to try to view this with my cynicism suspended, because, as I'm often reminded, I am not trans and apparently cannot begin to imagine the suffering of being so. I continue to try and raise my feminine instinct to nurture and relate, but somehow I appear to have a blind spot for the sincerity and authenticity.

How To Civilise Your Elders - Coercive Control

Follow up to How To Civilise Your Elders - The Air Horn Lie 

Published in the last week of 2022 was this typically lightweight, "cheery" site filler, the story of How I Deradicalised My Terf Mum, by Rivkah Brown at Novara, that [Bastani] bastian of alleged-Left media, fulfilling the faux-cialist need for political instruction, fluff and moralising screed.

They're really cool at Novara: all edgy polemics, yoof culcha, swishy hair and fierce street smarts.
It's a whole lifestyle, just like the actual communists would have. Ya get me?


Fellow kids

It may be worth pointing out that, though, that this kind of story - the genre of personal account by pseudonym - is often the work of a journalist without a story, and based on little more than an overheard conversation on the night bus.
Still, it's always telling that the 'bigot' relatives in these stories are pushovers, who, rather than tell the autocratic protagonist to go fuck themselves, fold at the pressure.
Even in their fantasy battles, the baddies are as affable and forgiving as a beaten puppy.

So, whether this story has any basis in fact is questionable, but either way this smarmy, intellectually vacuous article is, if true, a disturbingly manipulative account of the psychological abuse of a woman by her own children. One who's only crime is reticence in affirming her child's metaphysical belief

How To Civilise Your Elders - The Air Horn Lie

All over the media are authoritative voices with bold sound bites and superior, all-in-one political positions that you too can cut out and keep.

Victim Voyeurism & Denial - Survivors, Sarah & Slander

I've read, argued, debated and questioned a lot online. I've noticed a particular contingent's praxis seem to be fixed around this formula:

A claim

for example "no one would..."

+

A scenario that's probably uncommon but far from impossible - in fact it almost certainly has already happened

=

The trans activist's whole fucking argument

(+ a sprinkling of moral opprobrium befitting the clergy to shift the decimal point, ramping up the hyperbole with misrepresentation of opponent and expressing incredulity at naysayers )

Examples being;

- 'No one would go through all of the effort to transition, just to attack women in the ladies!' ('all the effort to transition' being making an assertion or wearing a wig).

- 'No one would be put off by a door sign if they were intent on raping a woman in a changing room.'

- 'No one would claim to be transgender to escape jail.'

It's pitiful, because there are endless examples of the above occuring.

Oh, here's another common one:

- 'No one would lie about being trans and having been sexually assaulted to infiltrate a rape crisis peer support group.'

Firstly, let me be very clear: I am not saying that this is the motivating factor of the male person in Sarah Summers' rape crisis group.

Aside from Sarah's fear of this potentially being the case, I have no evidence to base that on.

Fetishizing the idea of being abused or suffering pain / a loss only possible for another group is far from out-there among those with paraphilias, though, and women who are afraid, uncomfortable, startled or maybe even going out of their way to welcome and accommodate could be extremely high up in the hierarchy of targets.

 

Article from 1989 on rape and rapists

A feature of autogynephilia is subverting cultural norms and breaching boundaries. Presumably, for a particular kind of sex offender that's a pretty critical motivation too.

I'm highly suspicious of any transwoman who would want to be in that situation. All of the transwomen I know suffer dysphoria. They would want somewhere to go, but to trigger a response due to their maleness is something they themselves would find traumatic, let alone the upset they would cause. I know, because I've spoken to them.


Autopaedophilia is an extremely common feature of paedophilia. It's an erotic target location error like autogynephilia, and can be seen frequently within online kink communities, with the trans community particularly over represented. Men dressed as babies in play parks; chat boards used by paedophiles will often be found to have many fantasy conversations where one man plays along as a child.

Or, even, baby animals - 

It's a common defence in child sexual abuse cases;
Former Labour Councillor Roger Spackman was found with over a million images of child sexual abuse after authorities targeted a paedophile chat room where he was pretending to be a young girl suffering sexual abuse in an "exchange of kinks".

He claimed it was due to his own history of abuse and gender dysphoria. He had found it 'therapeutic' to imagine being a little girl, which apparently entails being abused by adult men, and talking about it to other adult men for their masturbatory needs. What else are women and girls for?

Graham / Gillian Newley claimed to be looking at images of little girls being sexually abused as “she wanted to know what it would be like to be a female child as she missed out” and not for sexual gratification.

David Challenor is chock-full of depraved perversions. During the hideous, warped cruelty he inflicted on a little girl, he dressed in diapers, adult-sized baby clothes with bonnet and demanding to be called "Lucy."

Anthony Scales is another. 

And Jorven Seren. 

And Richard / Michaela Hammersley.

And these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, having collated The Rich Fantasy.

Or, how about Gabrielle Darone, joining groups for women suffering miscarriage to talk about how his inability to become pregnant is crippling him, and he doesn't have any other way of coping than to simulate a whole pregnancy and birth - to a still born baby (work commitments, obvs)?

That sort of depravity is far from rare among fetish communities and I'm afraid to say that the T crowd are often pretty into all that, whether it's "queering motherhood" or any number of other things.
Things associated with women; menstruation, pregnancy, birth and miscarriage can be, and is, a kink.

Pregnancy & Miscarriage

Birth 

(Warning - revolting subject matter) 

Menstruation - stealing used sanitary products

 (Warning - revolting subject matter) 

I'll spare you the grotesque images of men posing as if breastfeeding babies, but it's a thing... 

And a major fetish:

As is the daddy/daughter / incest kink filth that sexualises the relationship between parents and children. 

If rape victim's statements were readily available online, does anyone doubt that this could result in their sharing and use among offenders or fantasists?

Is anyone doubting that the trophies collected by rapists aren't somehow linked to reliving the crime from the victim/survivor's perspective, and this could be aided by hearing victims - any victims - relive their own trauma?

When rapists were still permitted to cross-examine their alleged victims in court, what did we imagine they were getting out of that, aside from the obvious intimidation?

Or what about the proliferation of porn where its "authenticity" is pushed?
Why are sexually violent or transgressive porn genres (such as incest) so keen to assert their realness?

Why are real life horrors uploaded to platforms like PornHub? Why would anyone risk not just taking, but sharing the recordings of abduction and rape they committed, as happened to Rose Kalemba, Avri Sapir and god knows how many others?

Some are as depraved as Przemyslaw Jakubowski, who raped a woman, and then masturbated during her testimony in an Irish court.

The history of men finding incredible and disturbing ways to rape and abuse women, children or other men is huge. 

Pretending to have been or fantasising of being raped is also a known feature of autogynephilia.

Ted Bundy was an apparently dedicated and skilled suicide helpline volunteer.

Maybe it was due to his psychopathy, and his need for insight into how to act distressed convincingly. Maybe it was all part of his "upstanding citizen" schtick. Maybe he, as a sexual sadist and rapist serial killer, enjoyed hearing people's despair.

Speaking of helplines, let's talk about Chad Varah, the man who founded The Samaritans.

They were at the outset plagued by heavy-breathing harassers so much, and so many were repeat callers, they had to develop a protocol and call centre for people who were masturbating on the line. Often relaying graphic fantasies of having been assaulted in the past, Varah instructed they be redirected to a special division and volunteer force he created for them, 'The Brenda Callers'.

Interestingly, Chad described the wanking callers as “fetishists and transvestites.” Transvestites are something he mentioned a lot.

All the call handlers were women because, quelle surprise, the men wanted to hear a female voice.

"Another category was “sado-masochists”. Varah’s instruction was to listen to their stories of humiliation”

“The masturbation is part of a whole movement towards greater self-approval and confidence”"

"For transvestites, or what we would now refer to as cross-dressers, Varah’s approach was to reassure them that their pleasure was legitimate."

Varah also felt it was imperative some poor woman listen to the wanker, to reassure him and encourage him to form real life relationships, and those women who didn't want to listen should be support to those who did. 

Altruist projects in action always involve such high regard for women, huh. Always the ally, the collateral and damage control. Never the focus, the cause célèbre, or deserving. It's an endless, revolving queue of 'next time'.

Can we stop pretending that fantasies around rape, causing terror and pain etc are only practised by 'consent-proficient' ethical BDSM polygamists and age-play Redditors? Or that these bizarre and vomit inducing fetishes are vanishingly rare and no one would have the chutzpah to invade a rape support group? 

The notion that dark, boundary-breaching kink and criminality are poles apart strikes me as of equal legitimacy to the "drag hunters" with fox hounds and terrier men.

-

For me, the idea that a fetishist wouldn't find it arousing to hear female rape victims pushed to divulge their trauma is nothing but naivete. Or perhaps something much worse.

To suggest that Sarah is so incompetent she can sit with someone for an hour and not know the difference between a woman, a vulnerable transwoman presenting in good faith, and a creepy man in bog standard clothing who makes no effort at all, is insulting beyond belief.

But, this is always the starting and end point - denial, ridicule and angry counter-claim sliding to an eventual avalanche shedding of excuses, leaving just a blank-faced nonchalance, a slack jawed incredulity that anyone would have an issue with that anyway, as there is no subsection of men who would try to exploit situations. Women can, and should, just brush off their small town prudishness and put that man's recovery at the fore.

Now we have this gross facet of male fetishism established, I'm getting close to asking The Survivor's Network some questions.