Eleven eight

 One thing that is wrong with me is that I can't just ride with a convenient lie. That's a particular disadvantage when it comes to politics, where you *ought to* believe a certain thing because of the bad company you're in if you don't.

But stupidly, I'm committed to the truth. And this isn't something you just sit and *do*. It's something that happens to you. So obviously, I know that in the recent furore over the Olympic boxing, the boxer in question is male and shouldn't be supported by right-thinking people. After all, I doin't countenance men hitting women ordinarily, and whatever the reason for that -- probably just the ingrained sexism of a childhood in rural Cornwall -- it's meaningful to me.

Here are the facts as I understand them. Two boxers had aroused suspicion among their opponents. We should understand the world of women's boxing as a fairly closed circle. There's something of a "tour" and the women pop up at events all the time. And look, I'm well aware that there's a bit of a trope in which white people accuse women of colour of being manly, but I don't think this applies to boxers who spend time in each other's company. 

So the IBA asked the two boxers in question for a blood sample, which the boxers freely gave. It was tested in an accredited lab in Turkey and the result came back for both: XY.

The IBA did not straight away ban the boxers. In sport, you are rarely punished for the result of one test. The IBA decided to test them again. But it needed them to be under its "control". They don't have any jurisdiction over the boxers out of competition, any more than any body does. Boxing is not covered by WADA in this respect. 

The IBA told the IOC about the test but the IOC took no action.

So the next year it tested them again in India. Again they were found to be XY. The IBA banned them.

The IOC demurred from action and allowed the boxers to take part. It was satisfied that the national authorities of both boxers certified them as female and that is the IOC's criterion.

These are the facts. Nothing else is known as far as I'm aware. One of the boxer's fathers presented a birth certificate, which I haven't studied. I'm perfectly content that the boxer was thought to be female at birth.

None of this is very interesting. A lot of shit has been talked but the facts seem clear enough. These boxers are males but the IOC doesn't actually care. Some of the boxers' opponents have protested but there's nothing they can do.

***

What's interesting is how much misinformation there is and how quickly it spread and changed.

First, it wsa claimed that the boxers had been tested for testosterone. At one point, the IBA president had said the issue was high testosterone (which in a certain respect, it is) but he was put straight. No, they had not tested the testosterone. They had tested their sex. 

So the story was that they had high testosterone.

Then it was claimed the father had said Khelif, the Algerian, had a vagina. This is very unlikely to be true, but you can imagine that the baby was "sexed" in the same way any child is: the midwife looks for a penis, and if she finds one, it's a boy!

I don't know what condition Khelif has but it's likely one that left him with undescended testicles and a micropenis. That can be interpreted as "female" by an onlooker quite easily.

Anyway, it soon spread that he had a vagina.

Next up, people claimed he has Swyer syndrome. In Swyer, a baby is XY but has a defective or absent SRY gene, so it does not develop any male characteristics and can be considered female.

I should point out at this stage that human babies are not in fact "all female" in the first few weeks. But what is true is that our *default* is female. If the SRY gene does not operate, we develop as females, simple as that. 

Why can Khelif not have Swyer? Well, these are not just words. There are outcomes. Someone with Swyer will present as entirely feminine. They do not produce testosterone at an appreciable level so they will not be at all virilised at puberty. Khelif clearly is. Even if he was a female, he is one that has been strongly affected by testosterone. He is very well muscled, broad shouldered, flat chested. Of course, women can present that way but not women with Swyer.

Nor is he likely to have CAIS, which might have provided him with said vagina. In CAIS, a genetic male is not sensitive to androgens. But again, Khelif very much looks like someone who has responded to androgens during puberty. His voice is broken. His features are virilised, not just "manly". Still, it's not impossible, just extremely unlikely. And I do think we can apply Occam's Razor.

Next up, some claimed he had XXY chromosomes and this meant he would show up XY on a test. This is beyond nonsense. XXY males have Klinefelter's syndrome and are clearly male. They have penises and visible testicles. And they do not have XY chromosomes!

Along with bullshit about his genetic makeup, stories about Algeria's anti-trans stance also spread. Algeria would have killed him! It would not permit a man to pretend to be a woman.

Now, not to impugn Algeria but that's obviously nonsense. There's no reason to imagine that Algeria is either all that integrated in its thinking or unwilling to go with the flow and just accept the gold medal. Algeria has only ever won a handful. 

And no, it's not going to kill its gold-medal helpful, or imprison him, or whatever people imagine, just because he tests male. What it's more likely to do, and Algerians on the whole seem to have done, is simply ignore it, call the IBA racist, and cheer Khelif on to glory. Or just ignore it. I haven't seen anything official from Algeria. Like any place, it's not a monolith. Women do not scuttle around the streets of Algiers in burkas. Or even hijab. It's not Iran (which also does not kill troons).

***

None of this really matters. But it's become a political thing. A lot of people on the "left" have taken Khelif's side and spread this bullshit because the right have of course taken the other side. But sometimes the right are correct about things, albeit rarely, and sometimes the "left" are just wrong. Their hearts are sometimes in the right place but often they just want a good reason for hating other people. Troon bothering has become one of those things.

It's a difficult subject because after all, who cares? There are men who don't like being men for whatever reason. Let them don a dress and call themselves Dolly and why should we care? It doesn't matter if they are following a fad, or have a mental illness, or are just made that way -- whatever it is, who cares? 

But it's not just that, is it? It's a brutal culture war. It's believe this or be burnt. It's get sacked if you don't agree that Sally is a woman. It's my primary schoolkid being taught that she has a "gender identity". It's drugs, surgeries and above all it's people screaming at each other. And above above all it's money. People make a lot of money out of it, pro and anti.

It's become something of a shibboleth of the "left". And you might ask, why do I keep putting "left" in quotation marks? Because there's nothing really left about hyperliberalism. The left traditionally did not in fact favour self-expression particularly. It saw it as a luxury that bougie people had the leisure to indulge in. But that strand of leftism that sees identity as important came to the fore as leftists realised how totally impotent they are, and how little the working class likes them or their politics. Leftism became a preserve of the middle class and became simply a marker of what fine people middle-class liberals are because they don't want to interfere with other people's individual expression.

Now it's become an entirely incoherent worldview that sees capitalism as an inchoate evil that somehow does not exist within people but controls them. A bit like evil in religion. But capitalism is not a simple force for bad. A lot of people have comfortable, happy lives within it. They cannot connect their own happiness and material wealth with the exploitation of poorer less happy people and the "leftists" can't either. Most of them have no answers except to destroy what there is and somehow imagine that socialism will grow in the rubble.

Having said that, there's no point getting all No True Leftist about it either. Leftist thought is worthless in today's world. It is largely too backward -- imagining that postcapitalist economies can be analysed as though they were the emergent industrial economies of the mid-nineteenth century -- or wishful -- don't ever allow yourself to get dragged into a conversation with an "anarchist" about how they will arrange the sewage in their brave new world. It is now itself just a luxury belief, just another way of expressing unease at a world in which you are somewhat, but not much, favoured. 

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:19 pm 0 comments

Ten Eight

I recently watched After Life. Like all things by Ricky Gervais, it's a little uneven, but it was in parts touching. One thing Gervais is good at is pointing at things and saying, Look what this is. Not really insightful but he does evoke recognition.

The main character's grief was not real -- didn't ever really feel real -- but what Gervais got right was the way grief can rob you of something intangible. I have felt it and that was why the show had meaning for me.

It doesn't make any difference that what you grieve isn't real. In the same way that my sisters make up versions of my mum that never really existed, I grieve for a wife I never really had. I have grieved for how she felt rather than how she was.

Sometimes I think about how we should be watching our child grow together, and how much giving that up ought to have hurt. But it didn't hurt her. It broke me in two but left her unmoved.  I don't know how you decide that. I still can't reconcile any of it; cannot really accept who she is.

It feels so important to me to love people that I cannot undersand someone who doesn't. Can't. Never will. I remember vividly her telling me that she had never felt love, and I didn't take that as a warning.

I was vain enough to think I was different. Now I know I'm not.

And when I say I'm not, it's like something in me has been extinguished. My belief in my own worth went out like a pilot light in a hurricane. I feel like my whole self drained away, down the plughole, and I wasn't able to find anything to rebuild it with.

I hoped that given time, I would recover. But maybe that would have needed stability that I just don't have. Maybe I have to accept that the stability is not just a thing others give me -- not just a product of a good job and a girlfriend or whatever I imagined it might have been. It's a thing inside yourself.

***

The worst thing is that it made me feel hollowed out and I couldn't refill myself. So I feel I have nothing to offer. I feel I deserve it. Where once I would have believed I was a stained glass window and pieces of a particular colour were broken and then another and then another, now I just think I'm the same grimy uncared-for glass it seems everyone sees.

In After Life, Ricky Gervais' character is perceived by everyone around him as special. But he isn't. He's not kind, not witty, not willing to be a good talker. There's no reason that people should see him that way but Gervais writes it like that. He responds to other people in the end, proving their belief in him well founded. Or well founded ish, let's say. There is no twist. It ends happily. Gervais is not a particularly good storyteller so it's ultimately predictable that he'll have a happy ending.

Maybe I will. Maybe I need to recover and stop lying to myself that I have recovered first. But I don't know how I can. I don't know how you fill yourself if you've been drained away like so much dirty dishwater.

posted by Dr Zen @ 3:36 pm 1 comments

Twenty-five six

When I recently lost my job, one of my acquaintances rather unkindly asked why I had failed to keep it. Did I just lack people skills? In fact, I do, but that wasn't the problem. I'll tell you about my second day at work and you'll see that my people skills were not the issue.

So there was a dinner. All the middling important coaches were invited and so was I. This was a horrifying prospect for me: to be in a room with 30 people, none of whom I knew. Still, here I was. But I had been told the wrong time and everyone was already there, except my boss, who would turn up late.

I walked in and took a free seat at the end of one of the tables. No one said anything. I didn't know a single person, including the woman who would be my direct boss. I hadbeen introduced to her but she didn't bother saying hello. She hadn't saved a seat for me so she could talk to me about who was there. She didn't acknowledge me then or at any point in the evening. So number one, disrespect starts at the top and drips downhill. My direct boss, let's call her Mrs Boss, had just shown the entire room that I wasn't someone she had any respect for. My job role must be unimportant and I must be worth very little in the organisation. 

She didn't tell me how the food worked and everyone else was being served. So I had to ask a serving person, which was mortifying. They told me I'd have to go to the bar and order. So I walked back out and ordered, then walked shamefully back past a whole room ignoring me. I wonder whether the people skill I lack is the ability to crack jokes as I walked past them.

So Mr Boss turns up, and he gives a speech in which he managed not to thank any of the coaches. He had a weird little rant about how if any of the parents didn't want to fit in with the club, well, they could just go. Then eventually he sits down and then he notices I am there. 

Oh, everyone, he says, that's Dave. Stand up, Dave. (I stand, and smile.) Dave's our communications guy.

And that's it. He doesn't tell them that I'll be doing a magazine, that they should cooperate, anything. He doesn't give them my number, my email, anything. He never did btw. And I was never given theirs either, except one by one. 

Now, I want to do an aside here. It's about being a journalist on a new beat. Which is what this was like. It's hard. It's not something I've often had to do. But imagine being at a new workplace. You're led around, right? And introduced to everyone and they say hi, you say hi. It says to them, here's someone you should welcome. So it's important when you start a new beat that that happens. That people are introduced by a trustworthy person. If not, you have to do it and everyone you try to do it with thinks you're someone who couldn't be trusted or you're of no account.

One way you can do it yourself is you are given a list of contacts. The outgoing journalist/editor hands you a list of people with their numbers. So even if they don't hand over properly, they at least tell you who you should contact. You don't have to guess or scrape around for names. 

When I worked for the newspaper in Ipswich, the previous editor was really angry with the boss. I would come to understand why but the outcome for me was that he didn't hand me jack shit. I had no contacts and I was in a city I didn't know my way around, doing a job I'd never actually done before.

I think I did okay by the way. I phoned what people I could. I didn't have much time because I had to fill the paper. I told the bosses that I needed support so that I could build contacts but they just lied to me about getting more help. I say they; I mean Mr Boss. Yes, he was involved in the newspaper.

So when I started at the football club, it was the same thing. The right thing to do would have been to take me round the club and introduce me to everyone. I mean, they had all the coaches in the room at this dinner. Mrs Boss could and should have taken me from person to person. Worst case, she could and should have given me a list of contacts. (I did say, oh, I'll need a list of numbers for everyone and she said yes, later.) Instead, I just did it. I got all their numbers. They told me what they did -- which was meaningless to me because no one explained the structure. But no one bothered explaining any deeper than that because they had at least subconsciously filed away that I was not worthy of respect. I chatted with a few of them as best I could.

So I did the right thing, I think. I said hi everyone, I'm David and I'm here to tell your stories. Please feel free to share with me what you want our families to know. I don't bite, hee hee. 

Stony silence. And yes, maybe I should have had a card to hand out with my name and number but I didn't think. I hadn't been told who would be there and I was too nervous about going to think about what I should do. And of course I hadn't realised I would need it. I thought Mrs Boss would give me everyone's number. I thought there would be a list.

A couple of months later, I asked Mrs Boss what is going on for Mother's Day, because she'd told me to do a story about Mother's Day. Oh, it's on our social media, she said. I would like to know what social skill would have got her to bother to write me an email maybe even once a week telling me what was going on because she never did. I was supposed just to find it out. And this woman had once been a sports editor, so she knew very well how it works, and she knew this wasn't it.

I wish the dinner had been an aberrance. But it wasn't. I also went to the club's preseason camp. This time, Mr Boss didn't bother even telling people what I was there for. He didn't introduce me to anyone there (none had been at the dinner). I had to just "get talking" to them. People who know me will realise how painful this was for me. If you don't know me, I'm sure you'd find me personable. I'm nice. I can talk about normal things. But I'm not very good at striking up conversations or approaching people I don't know. So I got talking to the head coach, but I didn't understand what he was because no one had explained the structure. Should I have asked? Yes, but Mrs Boss was "too busy. I'll do it later". Later never came. I get that she really was busy. I understand that she just didn't have time for something she really didn't see as important. At this camp, a dude gave a talk. So my boss, obviously he introduced me to the guy so that I could interview him for the magazine, right? Wrong. He didn't bother. When I interrupted them to introduce myself, he mutttered something about how I was Dave, communications, and I smiled and took the guy's number and email. He ignored three emails and eventually said he would be out of town and he'd get back to me. He never did. He never sent me the PowerPoint he'd presented with. He never bothered. My boss had shown I wasn't worthy of respect.

So why do I think I lost the job? Well, maybe there is an element of the fact that Mrs Boss for whatever reason didn't like me. She never expressed anything. But it's possible. Sometimes there's a competence element with people. They have a skill and they don't like other people having that skill because it calls theirs into a tiny bit of question. I don't know if that was a factor but she was the kind of person who hoarded information. It's why she never gave me a list of numbers, I think. So I'd have to ask over and over and over, and she'd be sour about it, as though I should have just found them out myself. 

You can't find things out yourself. I mean, you can, but it takes time. You can't know them on day one. The guy at the newspaper, he thought I should go door to door and ask people what they wanted to see in my paper. 

It's one of the worst things in this life that I couldn't just say, Dave, you're a fucking idiot. Because he was. And so is Mr Boss. But they're idiots who have some money and in this world, that makes them men who can treat you like shit. And my acquaintance? She thinks you should grovel to these people and worst thing is she's probably right.

But the truth is, Mr Boss wanted people to tell him how clever he was that there was a club magazine and not enough of them did. He never acknowledged it. He never told me he'd read it, liked it or even knew of it. I sent him match reports every week. He never even acknowledged receipt. I lost my job because this guy, a three-pound testicle in a one-pound sack, a joke of a man with no knowledge of football and no love of the game, but whose son was quite good at it, has no respect for anything or anyone that doesn't make him feel like a big man. I don't know what people skills can help you with that.

posted by Dr Zen @ 2:05 pm 0 comments

Twenty-two six

 When you have loved people, and it's not been worth enough, or even, not worth anything at all, you start to think your loving is not worth anything at all.

But, you'll say, you have children. You love them. Everyone knows you love them. But then you think, my dad will say he loves me but he doesn't. He just thinks he should. Do I just think I should?

Why secondguess yourself though? You feel it and it's it up to you?

But some people didn't think that was worth anything. You can't escape that. What use is love if no one feels it?

***

Tonight I stroked my baby's cheek and I said, I love you the most, and I meant it.

And she said, I love you too, barely awake.

I remember when that was impossible. For a year and a half, I wasn't part of her life. For another at least a year, I couldn't touch her. I couldn't hug her, not because her mum would claim that I was sexually abusing her, although she might have done, but because I cared that I should never force it.

That was love. You have no idea how painful that was. I would rather A had stamped on my nuts. 

I feel bad when I think about how happy she would be that I am lonely and sad. I don't wish it for her. To be honest, I don't think about her enough. I only ever think about an idea of her. 

She has nothing to do with me and Miggins. I refute her story of Miggins. I deplore her story. Miggins is a charming child. She's a heart tugger. She is not trouble.

Imagine having a child and creating trouble out of it.

***

Sometimes I do think, no one will ever love me again. And that does make me sad. But not as sad as thinking I will have no one to love. 

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:11 pm 4 comments

Twenty-one six

It's ironic, isn't it, that autistic people are supposed to be so self-centred (which we aren't) and people think that means we don't need other people (which we do). We're seen as not understanding social dynamics (if we're high functioning enough, we understand them very well) and consequently being unsociable (but we vary just like you do).

I like being with people. I remember my mum used to say, Oh, you love your own company. But it was more that I could fill time when I needed to. I preferred to play with Eric to anything else. I'd spend whole days with him. The problem that I sometimes face, and I expect this is fairly common, is that I can't ignore how people are.  I am constantly trying to figure out what they're doing and why they might be doing it. Most people don't bother with either question. They more intuitively know what other people are doing and because they share an emotional language, they know why they're doing it. Or feel it. And that's probably where the difference lies: they feel it and I know it.

The difference isn't always apparent to people. I seem normal. But there are sometimes gaps between people's understanding of what's happening and what is actually happening. Sometimes a peson interprets what you say or do as though you were them. Or sometimes, and this is going to seem strange to most people, I interpret them honestly and it doesn't coincide with "the language". Because people often act with a disregard for others that ought to be shocking but it isn't. It's not part of their emotional arsenal even to feel shocked.

This is why people say autistic people don't have empathy and they're right. It's become common for autists to claim they're more empathetic than normies. But they're not. Empathy is the name for understanding of the shared emotional vocabulary. It's not actually fellow feeling. Autists feel bad for you. Normies want to be seen as feeling bad for you. These are different things. A normie will deploy a stock phrase, a poor you, an I'm sorry. Autists don't say they're sorry (why would they be sorry?). They sometimes don't express sympathy in a way you'd expect. They look for practical ways to fix your sadness.

***

So it's hard to explain how lonely it is to other people. They think, Just make friends. But I don't know how. I don't know how to pass time with people I don't know very well. These days, I struggle to pass time with people I do know. What am I supposed to talk about? I don't do anything. I don't know anything new. I listen to history podcasts, which no one is interested in. And no one is interested in me anyway.

I think that's the worst of it. I think I realised when I had a close shave a couple of months ago that people would utter the stock phrases and then never think about me again. 

I think it also hurt me that my friend V doesn't want to talk to me any more. She'll say, Oh I'm just busy. But we don't really get so busy we can't chat, do we? She used to fill time with it. She'd call me on her way to work every day. She still goes to work.

Do people think you don't know? They're not honest with you and you're not allowed to say so. You can't express hurt. You're supposed to just understand and get on with your life. I don't know how you can do that. People have treated me in ways that I can't even understnad, let alone empathise with, and the worst thing is, I have to conclude I deserved it. Because it's another story that I won't get into just now, but I can never believe people are just shit. I have to believe they're good. So I deserve it. I deserve everything that happens to me and it makes me want to leave this world behind.

posted by Dr Zen @ 9:36 am 2 comments

Twenty six

Yesterday I read that S died. It was a couple of years ago but we fell out of touch. It was weird because it had been so intense between us and it just dissipated and I never really understood why.

Maybe because she asked me to save her and I wouldn't. I couldn't. I was married and that meant something to me. More than it did to the woman I was married to. She had no commitment to anything or anyone but herself. That grew over time and look this is weird. I know you'll think, well, that must be your fault in some way, it really was. But not how you imagine.

She had never been valued and my valuing her gave her the space to become who she really was. But who she really was wasn't that good of a person. I feel like that's probably true of all of us.

Sometimes I wonder who I really am. I'm so broken up and incoherent, I don't think I can know. I've often felt like if I could just stop and take a deep breath, I'd discover myself and I'd still be good. But I can't. It's like I'm on ice and I have nothing to cling onto. 

Now I'm going to be out of work again and that's going to be more struggle. It's a mix of bad feelings. The worst thing is it makes me feel I'm not valued. And these are people who I would never care about what they value in the first place. Like, if they ate pork, I'd want beef. The sheer fucking spectacle of a community football club, boasting in its media of how it's a family, just so welcoming, but perfectly happy to leave me, and the people depending on me, in desperate straits.

But that's life, isn't it? People can justify it to themselves and that's what they care about. So long as enough people kiss their arse because they do have money, that's what matters. 

***

S created value for herself by becoming a valued editor on Wikipedia. She was a talented researcher and writer so it made sense that when she turned her talents to Wikipedia she would do well. I could have done the same but I preferred trolling and fighting. Probably the distance between S and me was that she already valued herself and I don't. For some reason I can't. I do try to understand why not, and of course a part of it is that my dad didn't.

But is that enough to break your self-image? Maybe it is. They do say we're formed as children. And I was a quiet, gentle boy who was despised for everything he thought was good about himself. That's quite difficult to build on. I'm not exaggerating. I was bullied for being clever. I was honest but people don't like that: they prefer lies that are socially acceptable. I was kind to people who don't value kindness. I understood things and people in ways they themselves didn't understand and no one likes things they don't understand. I was polite and reserved, not someone who would push their way to the front. I loved music, poetry and sport, although I was not very good at it.

I didn't then and don't now have a "public hobby". I don't really like politics or political structures. I was never very good at talking about the small things and didn't understand why people wanted to. 

I don't know why S liked me. I don't think she had a strong grip on herself. Maybe I don't. I don't regret knowing her though. I loved her. I never met her in person but maybe that meant only that a meeting couldn't spoil things. And now nothing can because she is gone for good.

"It is an hour before dawn. I can hear the sound of the surf, I swear I can. But I am in the city, twenty kilometres from the sea.

posted by Dr Zen @ 1:17 pm 0 comments

On reanalysing passives

 Why is "Everton deducted ten points" correct and why was a pedant wrong to say it isn't? (In fact, he was wrong to claim "deduct" is not "ditransitive", which it clearly is.)

The usage the guy seems entirely unable to understand is common in English.

I had a parcel sent
Everton had points deducted

The past participle stands alone with the dative phrase removed, and as we often do with the passive, the agent deleted. This is very common in English. (The removed phrases are "to me" and "from them".)

The speaker then reanalyses the sentence as noun + adjective, a common use of past participles ("she is a woman scorned" feels more like "she is a scorned woman" than it does like "she is a woman who has been scorned".

These formations get very remote from their beginnings as a passive. "I have a spirit unbroken" is very clearly the same as "I have an unbroken spirit" but somehow more "poetic".

This is a longstanding process in English. You doubtless never consider whether "I ate some burnt toast" involves a passive but it's exactly the same as "I ate some toast that had been burnt".

When I say reanalysed, I mean, that as an infant, you remake the "rules" to understand (and generate) similar sentences in a different way.

posted by Dr Zen @ 11:02 am 0 comments