The Transvestite Who Helped Stage the Ideological Takeover of Scotland

You've been played folks

Perhaps it’s appropriate that the national animal of Scotland is the unicorn. An animal associated with mythology and magic, for dreamers and weavers of tales. An animal that inspires its citizenry to spin stories like candy floss floating in the ether and enmeshing itself in whatever it comes across. When considering the capture of our arts institutions by the pantheon of critical social justice issues remember this. What you see is theatre, all of it. Perhaps we’re a nation destined to be enamoured by the artifice.

The damsel looks wholly unimpressed. That this was communicated via thread however IS wholly impressive. (The "Lady and the Unicorn" tapestries are a set of six medieval tapestries, also known as "La Dame à la licorne" in French. The tapestries were created around 1500 and are now displayed at the Musée de Cluny in Paris.). Masterful.

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I apologise for delay in posting. With my imminent return to the states in July I am spending a lot of time organising mine, my son and our two cats move back. And nothing (NOTHING) is straightforward. (try transporting two cats over the ocean and you will see!!!). Also our fridge died this weekend (timing!)…. Turns out a 26 year Scottish residence is not something easily wound down...

In addition, this particular piece of writing (which I will release in parts due to the depth of it) has been challenging to pull together and make coherent for non-Scottish theatre artists. Also due to my personal involvement in much of it. Seeing the wood through the trees and all.

I feel absolutely that what has happened in our Scottish cultural sector relevance to the wider world cannot be understated. What we see in the myopia of the web of power in the Scottish Arts scene has tremendous impact. As indicated in my previous piece regarding the kick back and doubling down by the arts sector on the Supreme Court ruling of the definition of ‘woman’ ‘man’ and ‘sex’ -a change in law is not enough for us to regain our balance point as a liberal society, unless the culture shifts, we remain on quicksand.

Not even your Lee Press on Nails will save you from reality gentlemen.

In the Cancelling of the American Mind Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Shott point out the following speech protections which are *legally* afforded to citizens in different countries:

“Everyone should be guaranteed freedom of thought and speech”

“Citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, the press assembly, demonstration, and association’

“Everyone has the right to express and disseminate his or her thoughts and opinions by speech, in writing or in pictures or through other media, individually or collectively.”

Can you imagine where these ‘free speech protections’ come from? Russia, North Korea and Turkey. The law is simply not enough. We need to change the culture around these issues. Only real relationship building will shift things. Theatre and the arts are the centre point of that. Looking at the history of art forms that have survived and thrived over hundreds of years and you will see that they

1. are rooted in place and

2. serve the communities in which they live.

This was a large part of my research I did prior to my cancellation. Tango, Flamenco and Odissi dances are just three art forms which have survived for hundreds of years. Why? Because they are rooted in place. They are informed by the actual physical environment where they are practiced and developed. Because of this they have a distinct nature relevant to their geographic and anthropological environment. They are informed by the weather, by the types of spaces that are available to dance be it tarmac or sand, by the types of instruments that are common etc…. And they depend on their continuance via real time relationships in common spaces.

I traversed the globe for over 20 years looking at various dances and building my own ‘community of dance’ here in Pollokshields, in Glasgow. I did so very successfully. But the ‘establishment’ does not seem interested in that. Like our politicians they have forgotten their duty to serve. They are also rarely ‘in place’ more concerned with the issues ‘out there’.

Check out the latest agenda points from Glasgow’s City Council meeting. Palestine and Trans Rights.

Not only do Glasgow City Council’s virtuous manifestations have ZERO impact on the international stage they draw valuable resources away from what is needed here. Consider that Scotland is the drug death capital of Europe. Or that our economy is in tatters. Or that our education system is failing fast.

This is a map from the report “Measuring the Social Impact of Scotland’s National Performing Companies” produced in March 2024. The report tracks the *impact* of the National Theatre of Scotland, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet. It is worth noting that I live next door (actually) to Scottish Ballet but you’d never know it. Maybe it’s because they are so darn busy flitting all over the globe. I certainly have no experience of their ‘social impact’, maybe more like ‘anti-social impact’ - in that there are no dance classes available to me or my neighbours.

Scottish Ballet do, however have a touring program which goes into schools called ‘Safe to Be Me’ - a pseudo psychological social emotional learning well-being program that starts with the premise that children are not safe. It also pushes pronouns and wrong body ideology. Is it about dance? No silly! Why would they do that? Much better to make dancers into therapists getting children to open up the intimate details of their lives in a public setting and then tick some boxes on a form about how they’ve helped poor communities. And pat themselves on the back.

The fact is our national arts bodies are so disconnected to the world here - rather they have become talking shops for ‘correct’ viewpoints as laid out by the United Nations, the World Health Organisation, The World Bank et al. Colonised ideologically by these supranational organisations they regurgitate the scripts laid out and lose their unique local imprint. Not unlike the ‘new Main Street’ with the predictable layout of Starbucks, Tesco, and H&M et al cultural producers are cookie cutter franchise owners of culture as set out by the brand owners. It is a familiar bait and switch -they do exactly what they rail against with their talk of decolonisation, anti-racism, equity, climate catastrophe…. and (being oneself) in the name of ‘trans rights’. Because they are colonisers, racists, hierarchy creators, environment destroyers and mask makers.

In the oft quoted words of William Shakespeare

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players"

or in the film ‘The Truman Show’

"We accept the reality of the world with which we're presented. It's as simple as that"

If the keepers of the stories edit out all but a narrow sliver of the the reality pie, we may be fooled to thinking ‘this is all there’ is.

JOHN CLIFFORD: TRANSVESTITE PLAYWRIGHT- WHERE EGO MEETS FETISH

In my last piece I spoke of the response of the ‘Arts Community’ to the recent For Women Scotland (advocacy group for women and girls) vs. Scottish Ministers judgement which clarified the meaning of the words ‘man’, ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ for the purposes of Equality law. In other words so-called ‘trans’ women are NOT women and so-called ‘trans’ men are NOT men and there is no such thing as non-binary. At the forefront of the response from the arts sector was a man (who play acts being female) named John (Jo) Clifford. Whilst John can coat his interactions with soft lighting and ‘gentle’ words he has been a dangerous foil in seeding trans ideology across Scotland and the total capture of the arts sector for nearly twenty years.

The book “Trans Britain: Our Journey From the Shadows” (2018) is a series of essays written by trans activists outlining landmark events which inserted and embedded gender ideology into UK politics and culture. It serves as a valuable backdrop in understanding the psychological takeover that has allowed wrong body ideology to infiltrate culture and governance. The book relates how the gradual massaging of personal relationships by powerful and emotive personalities behind the scenes gained the loyalty of those in positions of authority which consequently changed our culture. Who do you suppose features prominently in the Scottish takeover?

John (now Jo) Clifford.

The gradual infiltration of organisations, academia, governance and echelons of power gained influence via the avoidance of criticality as people strove to ‘be nice’. Prisons, women’s support services, feminist organisations were soft targets out of the eyesight of those in the leafy suburbs chatting over a G&T counting themselves progressive because they supported ‘John’s’ new identity as ‘Jo’.

Susan Dalgety

and Lucy Hunter Blackburn point out in their book ‘The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht’ that it was John Clifford who encouraged these organisations to see things through ‘an intersectional lens’ and that feminists need to be shown ‘the errors in some second wave feminist theories about trans people’.

Like our mythical unicorn the tale of ‘the female brain’ was first spun via theatre. Who better to propagandise wrong body mythology than a transvestite playwright?

John Re-brands Himself as ‘Jo’ and his career soars

John launched his new ‘trans brand’ with his play ‘The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven’ (2008). It is interesting to note that it also had a run at Glasgay, the biannual LGBT arts festival between 1993-2014. Was he the first (only) transgender artist? Was his involvement the catalyst for wholesale adoption of trans over all else but our cultural sector? And did this help the middle aged man boost what might have been a flagging career?

This play imagined the second coming of Christ as a transwoman. It was scooped up by the elite and activist class as ‘revolutionary’ gaining accolades and funding. Was it worthy of its praise, or just of its time?

One of the memorable quotes cited in reviews was ‘your parents may have conceived you doggy style’. Poetic it is not. Profound it certainly is not. Worthy of hundreds of years of scholarship and interrogation as, the Bible, let’s say? I doubt anyone would honestly think so. So what is it? Staring at us boldly beyond the #bekind facade lies a now familiar undercurrent in the trans movement. Fetish.

And therein lies (what I believe to be) John’s true motivation.

Following on the themes of sexual deviance and the Christian church, a year later John premiered another transexual play ‘An Apple A Day’ (2009). In it a church of Scotland minister visits a transsexual prostitute. John recounts speaking to a prostitute friend in the development of the story:

“A client came to see her one day and asked her to bite into an apple. It had to be a Cox’s Orange Pippin. Once she’d eaten it, he came very close to her mouth and asked her to burp. When she burped, he caught the smell of the apple on her breath and had an orgasm.
Then he paid her and left.

All I wanted to do was tell the story and explore both characters’ humanity.

I wanted it to be funny and moving and shocking and end with something transcendent.”

We can see how John obfuscates his fetish and the banality of the work through the use of buzz words like ‘humanity’ and the notion of ‘transcendent’. Let’s not confuse ourselves, there is nothing else in the work. It is vapid as the Scottish summer day is long, it lacks any depth, curiosity or humility. Dostoevsky it is not.

But this signalled a sea change from craft, legacy, history and serving the audience into a more insidious pathway of theatre of the self, smashing the past, and preaching to the converted. John’s work was part of the wave gathering pace in setting Scotland out on it’s ‘new progressive’ journey which brought us to where we are now.

LIVED EXPERIENCE, INNIT?

John’s new ‘trans brand’ playwriting signified the move from craft and the legacy of theatre to a more ‘experiential’ and (dare I say it) superficial, propagandist and emotionally manipulative experience. No longer was making plays about ‘playing’ but rather a testament to allegiance, wherein the self centred. The year 2008 is significant in that not only was it the year John premiered his transgender Jesus play but also the year Jackie Wylie took the helm of the arts venue the Arches.

The Arches was to become not just the turning point of change for much of the trans activism we see today but part of the wider infiltration and normalisation of queer theory into the public realm… including schools. It signified a move from what is here - as distinctly Scottish - to a focus on the European and International ‘experience’. Regular Scots need not apply.

Jackie Wylie & LJ Findlay-Walsh in 2008ish? Jackie took the helm of the Arches in 2008. LJ was her right hand in the venue. Jackie is now the Director of the National Theatre of Scotland (promoter of John Clifford and his works) and LJ heads Take Me Somewhere, the Arts Festival which (amongst other things) produced the porn film Rein with public funds. LJ also has a long history with transvestite John Clifford, as she was friends with his children growing up and was frequently in his home. Scratch the surface of the key individuals who have recreated the Scottish arts scene and you will find all paths lead back to the Arches….

Stay tuned for part two…..

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