Sex is a Biological Fact

Yet Tribalism Rules the Day

News headlines this week include groundbreaking findings from the NHS that sex (indeed) is real.

Well colour me surprised. It’s a good thing those experts got involved I was starting to have my doubts. I mean before this startling revelation I was beginning to think that 9.5 baby I popped out was merely because I felt female, not because I actually was female. Whew!

I mean it’s quite extraordinary how much effort it has taken to get our tax payer funded NHS to step up and state the blooming obvious whilst countless individuals have been harmed in the name of a political lobby, not least the most vulnerable- children. Reading the heartbreaking account of the 5 year old child in care who had been subject to horrific sexual abuse only to have her social worker tell her she could change gender ‘to be happy’ is beyond dystopian.

I reflect on this as I consider my own story wherein 80 members of the ‘dance community’ stood against me when I stated ‘sex was real’ and the head of the dance organisation The Work Room offered a grovelling apology to the trans brothers and sisters who might have been hurt by my words. It is interesting to note that one of the current member projects “Futuristic Folktales” promoted by said organisation explores ‘the trauma of the womb’ wherein fidget toys are offered to viewers who may be ‘triggered’ (by their own birth experience presumably, don’t tell my gargantuan lad, he seems pretty content at the moment…..).

What the juxtaposition of these two events represents in an extreme narcissism matched with tribalism at the core of our arts organisations. This is a toxic combination. Most if not all of those members who called me ‘alt right’ (amongst other things and probably many more behind my back), know that my work (which was utterly uncontroversial) was with children.

None of that matters - tribalism and protecting your corner is the order of the day. We can see this in the current fiasco of government wherein a political game of musical chairs is currently employed as Greens and SNP stage an elaborate (if unsurprising) dance to preserve their very big pensions. (£52k a year for nothing whilst many Scots struggling to put food on the table. Many -myself included- are enraged by this, as these politicians have consistently refused to represent the needs and interests of their constituents, in particular in relation to the safety and security of children. )

Greens are out……

…..and back in again…..

I will admit it’s a lonely road speaking truth to power, and it must offer (at least some) comfort going with the crowd. Jenny Lindsay wrote an impassioned twitter thread recently about her own hounding in the literary sector and the sheep-like response of those around her whilst her world crumbled for standing up for what was right. She didn’t have to do that. She could have ‘stayed in her corner’, drank her G&T on the weekend with other savants and been none the wiser.

But she didn’t. Thank God.

I am minded of Kellie Jay Keen’s ‘Let Women Speak Rally’ wherein a woman who had been forced to share a jail cell with a male identifying as female told her harrowing story of being in intimate quarters with a convicted sexual predator and no protection. His rights to claim “wrong body victimhood” trumped her right to be safe.

This was the ultimate outcome of comfortable individuals promoting their luxury beliefs. Whilst the ‘queer’ members of the arts community can waffle on about their ‘rights’ to ‘feel safe’ and in exploring trans-speciesism (the intersection between toads and humans -yes this is a thing) “regular” people are struggling to survive in the very basics of the physical world before them; paying grocery bills, keeping their kids safe, managing *actual* illness.

240,000, 22% of Scottish children living in poverty. But let’s focus on identity eh?

Lest you think I was making up the trans-species thing ^^^

This is not to diss contemporary art. I have a great memory of my first visit to MOMA in New York as a teen which cemented my love and interest for (a lot) of contemporary art. Here is a video I made during a 2021 dance residency at Jupiter Artland engaging with the work of Andy Goldworthy (Stone Coppice 2009) and Marc Quinn (Love Bomb 2006). I LOVED THIS.

The issue is not the art, it’s the lie of the art ‘community”. Whilst I can laugh about works exploring trans-speciesism or pieces that explore the ‘trauma of the womb’, I don’t have a problem with them existing. What I have a problem with is that there seems little diversity in thinking around these things. And that if you disagree it is seen as being disloyal. Disloyalty is personal. And this juxtaposition of ‘disagreement’ and ‘loyalty’ stifles artistic expression and growth. And ultimately (in my opinion) will not even sustain the artists promoting these things for any length of time.

I used to refer to the arts ‘community’ as if it were a ‘thing’. Having lived in an actual community for 20 years I can say categorically there is no “community” in the arts in Scotland. When my son was born no one from the arts ‘community’ was around making me cups of tea, picking up groceries. No one in the dance ‘community’ comes to litter picks, or engages on concerns with education locally. No one in the ‘community’ has any idea of the day to day of mine or my son’s life. Or shared interest in the day to day. That’s community.

In fact much of my 30 year work as a dancer explored that space where community (actual community) and dance mastery thrived. My residencies in Puri India studying Odissi dance and Flamenco in Andalucia, Spain (dances that survived and thrived in place for hundreds of years) largely inspired my 15 year dance practice in Pollokshields, where I live. A dance practice which *did* match community and mastery to great success.

Odissi dance Puri India, 2008

I live in an area called Pollokshields, an actual community and I do ‘everyday’ things with and for my neighbours. In a community there is a realtime need to ‘get along’ despite differences, of which there are many. Without the overriding responsibility to ‘get along’ there would be realtime chaos (not perfect mind, but we do by and large manage). So we live alongside each other with different ideas about many things. With different identities. With different life experiences. And the community is richer for it.

But in the arts we do not have community. Firstly because we do not have to share resources of the everyday. And this is significant. Unlike in Odissi dance, communities (which have survived and thrived for thousands of years) the real time lives of artists in Scotland are not relative. (note I am over simplifying to make my point)

What has formed in our ‘arts sector’ are tribes. Tribes are homogenous. Tribes are exclusionary. Tribes see outsiders as a threat. Whilst traditionally tribes would have developed from a common ancestry and lineage in genetic terms, modern arts tribes gather around common belief systems. These belief systems derive from critical theory as exemplified by cultural theorists such as Paolo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) and Judith Butler (Gender Trouble). Out of this vacuum difference is not tolerated as what connects members is (compelled) beliefs. Woe betide the person who falls foul of the parameters of the tribe.

But being in a community means you are sharing actual space and have to learn to navigate that *physical* reality together. A community can be made up of many different types of people and viewpoints that manage to coexist. One of the things I always loved about living in Pollokshields was the fact that people from so many different backgrounds were able to get on with things. As an artist living in that shared physical space, my role was not to divide or to categorise but to serve. How do I best contribute to this shared space?

I fear that much of the dialogue even in community arts in Scotland is not about service but about “saviourism”. Artists do not see themselves as being there to provide something needed to their ‘audience’ but to challenge and change the spaces they inhabit. This is telling. They view their ‘audience’ as groups needing to be saved. They view their ‘audience’ not as shared members of a community with shared purpose, made up of individuals each with his or her own dignity and gifts but as fallen souls needing to be taught ‘correct ways’ to be brought in alignment with the tribe. Dissonance is not tolerated.

Of course this shows a massive arrogance from the artist tribe. In James Thomson’s book ‘Performance in the Place of War’ he outlines three types of performance that thrive during war time. Performance that is part of the war propaganda, performance that is in opposition to the war propaganda and performance that aims to be a ‘neutral’ zone (performance for it’s own sake).

In terms of arts in Scotland it is clear that what is funded and supported via publicly funded bodies is of the first variety, merely an extension of a social engineering project of Scottish Government to get us in alignment with what they see as worthy.

But these things come at a great cost. In the case of trans guidance it creates a culture wherein a 5 year old girl is told she can ‘opt out’ of her sexual abuse trauma by identifying as a boy. It comes at a cost wherein kids are not taught foundational aspects of performance skills in the name of activism. It comes at a cost as the arts propaganda machine excludes worthy artists who do great work for not repeating approved mantras.

The arts in and of itself are potentially wonderful things. We are corrupting their power and purpose by allowing them to be relegated to propaganda campaigns that (in the case of the Cass Report or WPATH files as outlined in previous posts) create devastating harm. In terms of children we are denying them the space to learn things on their own terms, to acquire foundational skills and to be excellent.

We need to recognise, preserve and celebrate childhood. It is a wonderful time of life that is fleeting and precious. It will not come again.

FunForLife Project 2010 Sri Lanka

Thank you for reading. Thanks to my current subscribers and supporters. For new and unpaid readers - if you can please consider becoming a paid supporter of my work via becoming a regular subscriber or buying me a coffee! I have sacrificed everything in order to speak up about this. In it’s current form no arts organisation or arts body will hire me and for that things are very ‘close to the bone’ for myself and my son. I need to keep the pressure on, no one else is addressing the failure and abuses in youth arts.

Thank you.