Cross-dressed: offence-seeking transgender group calls police on children’s hospice charity race
Not funny. Not funny at all
How thin is your skin? The Telegraph reports on “the Charity race for children’s hospice where runners dress in drag is ‘a hate crime’.
If dressing up a woman is hate crime will Dame Edna be summoned before the Beak?
A charity fun run that invited men to dress up as women is being investigated by police after a transgender charity claimed the dress code constituted a hate crime.
We’re offended that transgender is being confused with transvestite.
Officers were asked to look into the ‘Dames on the Run’ race – where men run dressed as women to raise funds for a children’s hospice – by a transsexual support group.
Chrysalis Transsexual Support Groups say the five kilometre run, organised by Derian House Children’s Hospice, in Chorley, Lancashire, is “dehumanising”.
It is.
Anorak has long wondered why some men seize the chance to dress as women – always tarty ones, too. If asked to dress as awoman to save a child’s life, I’d pull on Comfi-Slax and a smart tank top over a crisp white shirt in tribute to the BBC’s ubiquitous Clare Balding.
They are now attempting to stop the run, due to take place in October, which raises money to support the hospice that looks after sick and terminally ill children. Steph Holmes, of Chrysalis, said: “We get enough confusion with the word transgender, which mixes us up with transvestites.”
Yeah. That was our point, too.
“Transvestites certainly don’t dress for comic purposes and I don’t get up in the morning and think ‘what can I put on today to give people a laugh?'”
What about if it’s for charity? What then, Steph?
“This race pokes fun at cross-dressing and, by association, us, reducing us to objects to be laughed at.”
We’re laughing now, Steph. You’re a witty one, alright. Your parody is a bit to knowing to rival the aforesaid Dame for belly laughs, but the intelligensia and the student Unionists should get it.
“Dehumanising us this way gives carte blanche to those that would do us physical harm, much like the gay bashers of old.”
Raising money for sick children is dehumanising. Steph’s a bit edgy for mainstream tastes, but we’ll go with it.
“It’s a small step from ridicule to persecution. The current stats suggest a 34 per cent chance of beaten up, raped or killed for being trans. We do not need to give the bigots any more ammunition.”
If you want to rape the charity runners, you’ll have to catch them first.
“I am sure that Derian House didn’t intend to give offence. The very fact that its a children’s hospice should make them sensitive to potential bad publicity and the effect that this has on young trans people.”
At which point we’d take this as a cue for young trans person who also happens to be desperately ill to say how offended they are. If Jerry Sadowitz is looking for a new gag, this might be it. The desperately ill transgender person could go into a long riff on how they’d like to murder everyone on the Derien House money raising committee but lack the strength to do so. Sadowitz would rattle a tin and invite anyone who cares to give money and thereby hire an assassin to help out the poorly young transgender victim.
That for later. For now a spokesman for Derian House says: “Oh, just F*** off.”
No. They don’t. They say:
“As a children’s hospice, we deal with highly sensitive and emotive issues all the time and would never have considered organising a fundraising event that might cause upset or offence. Dames on the Run was conceived as a fun event, drawing on the much-loved Pantomime Dame character that is part of our theatrical heritage and supported by hundreds of thousands of people in every year.
“It was intended appeal to the fathers of desperately sick children, who do so much to hold their family together in the face of their child’s devastating illness and who ask for very little support in return.
“We wanted to provide an opportunity for them to participate in a fun-packed event and encourage other men to show their support and raise vitally needed funds for the hospice.
“We were shocked to receive a complaint, and our chief executive wrote immediately to apologise for any offence caused and assure her that none was intended.
“She has accepted an invitation to visit the hospice on Monday.”
We then her from Lancashire Police, who say:
“We are aware of and investigating an incident that was reported to us as a hate crime on Thursday.”
And that’s the biggest joke of the lot.
Posted: 23rd, August 2015 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
