Paris Lees, Darlington nurses, Simone Biles: Nutmeg's week

This happened this week

We all know what’s going to happen, it’s just a case of when

And this is from the latest episode of Points of View, which praises another BBC programme, Springwatch, which, as discussed last week, has gone a bit trans activist lately. It’s another ‘woman’ randomly chosen by the BBC who happens to be a bloke.

It was, of course, yet another week of gender propaganda at the BBC. Zoe Watts is a cross-dressing man with a long history of extreme violence, particularly aimed at women who know that men are not women. The BBC called him a ‘woman’ in the headline about his latest trial. It later changed the headline, without stating that it had or why, but the article continues to refer to Zoe with female pronouns and at no point states that he’s not actually a woman.

This is ‘Zoe’ by the way.

BBC News also interviewed cross-dressing judge Victoria McCloud, again, who demanded that women act as human shields for men like him.

What it Feels Like for a Flop

The new BBC Three drama based on Paris Lees’ autobiography, What it Feels Like for a Girl, is one of the worst things that has ever been broadcast*. It seems to be sinking without trace in terms of ratings and viewer interest. Reviews in the media have been absurdly positive and it’ll undoubtedly get at least one BAFTA nomination, but no one outside of the captured television industry is paying much attention.

There is no merit in watching all six-plus hours of this series, believe me, but it is unintentionally honest about the antecedents of ‘gender transition’ in men. Perhaps this honesty is another reason even the ‘LGBTQIA+ community’ hasn’t quite received it as the ‘witty’, ‘joyful’ rite of passage story the BBC’s Media Pack tried to define it as. Rather, some troons have objected to the idea of a male actor (Ellis Howard, who does a very good job portraying a young gay man) playing the Paris Lees character, Byron.

For the most part, this unnecessarily long series based on Paris Lees’ autobiography, is simply a narcissistic fantasy. Why the BBC decided to dedicate so many hours of screen time to various scenes of transvestites dancing in clubs is difficult to understand. Perhaps it thought we needed to see more ‘trans joy’ on screen. It should be to the programme’s credit that there is no TikTok-style fast cutting between scenes, but the seemingly endless, repetitive scenes are an endurance test rather than a relief. This story simply didn’t need so much time to unfurl itself, and the production team at the BBC must have known this.

In short, the series is ostensibly about a gay boy, aged 15 to begin with, growing up in Nottinghamshire. His background is one of moderate neglect, although he doesn’t seem to go without material things. Byron is beaten up by other children for being gay and his father is disappointed he didn’t fight back.

After an incident where Byron agrees to be paid for a sex act on a much older man in a public toilet, he starts to make money from prostitution. This is presented as a positive experience for him, which allows him to break away from his home life and stop having to steal money for cigarettes. The programme’s approach to the exploitation and sexual abuse of Byron by adult men is tongue-in-cheek. There is even a surreal scene involving Byron in his school uniform dancing with his ‘clients’. It should be noted that Paris told a fawning Lorraine Kelly recently that his ‘primary objective’ when creating and co-writing this series was ‘entertainment.’

There is no moral core to this show, which is also lacking in Lees’ book. Byron doesn’t feel exploited by his pimp and lover, Max. He tells us he enjoys both the ‘work’ and the feelings of power and powerlessness it invokes. This is not a wholly uncommon response in victims such as Byron, but the fact that both Max and Byron are played by adults who are far older than the characters they are playing serves to normalise the relationship between them. Max is played by a man in his late 20s but is intended to be 19, and Byron is 15 but played by a 28–year-old. To complicate things further, the real ‘Max’ was 21 when he groomed and exploited a 13-year-old Lees, according to the book. The casting of similar-aged adult actors in the show has them looking like a legitimate couple and, perhaps deliberately, removes the shock the viewer might otherwise feel. Lees and the show runners obviously knew they could only be honest about the reality of Byron’s situation to a point.

The show does not moralise about the rights and wrongs of Byron’s choices, or the choices that are made for him. Occasionally, there is a hint that Byron is haunted by his past, but it’s fleeting and the trajectory of the show remains the same. As a whole, the show’s view of ‘child prostitution’ and prostitution in general is a positive one. It opens the door for Byron to his new, glamorous life ‘as a woman’ and his friend Sasha (a transvestite) also enjoys doing ‘sex work’. There is no sense of morality in this series because Lees isn’t capable of having that kind of perspective on what may have happened to him. It isn’t an artistic choice on his part because he genuinely seems to think child prostitution is fine and being objectified is good. He has openly said that he finds being catcalled and ‘treated like a piece of meat by men’ to be ‘sexy’. He also claims he didn’t realise what had happened to him as a child was abuse until he read a review of his autobiography. This is a sad admission and one which doesn’t seem to have bothered the BBC, which seems to be happy for Lees to present his abuse as mostly enjoyable. A reviewer on Radio 5 Live claimed the absence of a moral voice in the series is not a problem because ‘we can do the moralising ourselves’. As Victoria Isherwood responded, ‘really? It’s shown on the BBC youth channel to a generation of kids groomed by easy access online porn to think abuse and self-objectifying is “normal.”’

The clearest message in the show seems to be that normal life is boring. The dullness of Byron’s mother’s accountant boyfriend and Byron’s dowdy female school friend is briefly contrasted with the high drama and ‘glamour’ of the transvestite clubbers. Lees’ hatred of women is especially noticeable in the depiction of women in a club who Byron says are ‘always called Hannah’ and appear to be wildly envious of the brick-shaped men in dresses. Even these rude and envious women begrudgingly tell Byron, who is wearing a dress for the first time, that he has better legs than them. In fact, all female characters in the majority male cast exist to notice how superior Byron is in every way. His mother, grandmother, his female probation officer and two female teachers tell him how clever he is at every opportunity. If they aren’t fawning over his intellect (he has read Homer and Shakespeare), they’re lining up to act as his healers. When Byron has a drug-induced breakdown, the band of transvestite ‘sisters’ he discarded his female friend for are nowhere to be seen and his grandmother cares for him until he abandons her again. She finally fulfils her mission when, as she lies dying in hospital after diagnosis of aggressive lung cancer, she manages to affirm Byron’s delusion that he is now a ‘beautiful girl.’ This is the second time this year that the BBC has broadcast a cross-dressing boy visiting his dying grandmother in hospital, and in both cases we’re meant to feel good because she doesn’t ‘misgender’ him before dying.

Women aren’t only envious or nurturing in Lees’ mind, though. From the beginning there is a sense that violence against the ‘vulnerable’ group of men in dresses is inevitable, and that surely it will come from one of Byron’s ‘clients’ or his father. Nope. A short, middle-aged woman is responsible for badly beating an exceptionally tall transvestite and smashing up his flat because he slept with her ‘heterosexual’ nephew. This episode echoes the hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer, in which the transvestite partner of the main character is shockingly beaten by the middle-aged woman who is stalking him. Despite being based on a true story, this apparently never happened as the transvestite and the stalker never met.

Ironically the male characters are more fleshed out in What it Feels Like for a Girl, but many of them function to affirm Byron’s superiority and powers of sexual attraction. Once Byron has been degraded enough by the abuse of much older men, he starts dressing as a woman. This move marks the ultimate in degradation for him because he tells us he aspires to be a female ‘slag.’ Scene after scene of parties and clubbing ensue, all involving ostensibly heterosexual men lusting after the group of granite-jawed transvestites and only realising their error when faced with a penis. There is even an entire scene devoted to a discussion of how to break it to men that you have a penis before sex. This isn’t intended as comedy but it’s by far the funniest bit of the show. Perhaps this is what Lorraine Kelly was referring to when she said she ‘belly laughed’ while watching it.

Lees’ attitude to gay and bisexual men is even more disturbing. Any man who recognises that Byron is a boy in drag and is still sexually attracted to him is characterised as a pervert. This isn’t because Byron is underage or still a teenager, but because they have seen through the womanface. One such man wants to have ‘gay’ sex with Byron and a transvestite friend, which annoys them enough that they agree to the encounter only to sexually assault the man with a toilet brush. This is portrayed as funny, although ‘straight’ men who behave in the same way but don’t acknowledge Byron’s maleness are ‘rewarded’ with sexual favours. Internalised homophobia is another one to add to the long list of things Lees sadly doesn’t recognise as a factor in his desire to ‘be a girl.’

Byron’s attitude to men and women reveals that his slow transition into ‘Paris’ is based on an enjoyment of being objectified and even ‘violated’ by men. It’s also, as in many cases, an escape from a criminal past. Detail of the crime is sparse both in the show and in real life, where the specifics have disappeared from the internet. Lees admits he spent time in a unit for young offenders after committing a robbery. We see Byron in the show being coerced by another pimp / lover character, Liam, to take part in the robbery of a paedophile. Lured by the promise of hiring Byron, who has just turned 16, the man is robbed of his credit cards. Byron drains the man’s accounts of cash, while Liam holds the man at (fake) gunpoint. There is no physical violence. Byron then confesses to the police but is ignored because he’s on drugs. When Byron is finally caught there are no courtroom scenes and we don’t find out how the police became aware of the crime, since the victim would have been unlikely to report it. Instead, we are ‘treated’ to several more clubbing scenes because Byron is taking his mind off his fate.

He is sentenced to two years in jail, which we are told is partly because the judge was ‘having an off day.’ We never see Liam or the victim again and aren’t told what happened to either of them. Byron’s time in a young offenders’ institute is dominated by his close attention to Nadia, a man who dressed as a woman and won Big Brother in 2005. The other inmates look like the 25-year-old models and stage school graduates they undoubtedly are. Of course, the handsomest of the boys wants to have sex with Byron as soon as he arrives. His superiority to everyone else is emphasised again with scenes of Byron taking part in education classes and applying to universities. The governor tells him he is ‘different’ from the other boys and has a chance of making something of himself. Every moment stretches out for what feels like millennia, presumably because we should be grateful to be in Byron’s company.

Byron’s final transformation from part-time to full-time transvestite at the very end of the series is treated as a profound moment but doesn’t really register. The ending, in which Byron (now calling himself Paris) starts a degree at Brighton University sums up Lees’ deluded narcissism, and the narcissism inherent in transgenderism. Byron / Paris arrives in a lecture theatre, takes a seat and immediately gets the attention of a male student who asks him his name clearly thinking he’s talking to a woman. The lesson here is that if you want to escape normal / boring life, a criminal history or an unwanted sexual orientation you can do so simply by putting a wig on. There is no mention of becoming a lifelong medical patient or the many surgeries Paris put himself through in order to look less male. This is the message the Radio Times, and Lees himself, think ‘will save lives’.

And at the same time that the programme was aired, the BBC also broadcast this interview with another celebrity man who spends several minutes explaining why he’s a ‘girl’.

* This is subject to change. There is a similar film coming out shortly on Munroe Bergdorf’s childhood life, which only gets three stars in The Guardian, while Jordan Gray’s Transaction (see below) comes out later this month. What it Feels Like for a Girl is arguably worse than Smoggie Queens though, but maybe not as bad as the low-budget Ginger’s House.

The NHS cannot accept that the Darlington nurses have won

The Darlington nurses won a huge victory when health secretary Wes Streeting personally intervened to force the Darlington NHS Foundation Trust to act lawfully and provide single sex changing facilities at Darlington Memorial Hospital. The trust has apparently failed to comply with the ‘timetable and directions’ of the tribunal instigated by the nurses when they were told to be ‘more inclusive’ of a man sharing their changing facilities. Shockingly, the trust even re-published the unlawful policy which allowed men to use women’s facilities if they say they are women, in apparent defiance of the law and the advice of the Royal College of Nursing.

The group of nurses wrote to Wes Streeting who ordered NHS England to urgently resolve the matter so that the women would have a proper single sex facility to change in. They had previously been provided with an office space to change in if they wanted privacy from the man called ‘Rose’ who had intimidated and frightened them in the women’s changing room. The resolution the NHS has in mind seems to be actual single sex facilities alongside a third, mixed sex facility for those who don’t feel they need privacy from the opposite sex.

Bethany Hutchinson, a Darlington nurse and president of the Darlington Nursing Union says, ‘we hugely appreciate the action initiated by Mr Streeting, NHS England and the RCN, who have promised a way forward to restore our safety and dignity within the workplace in line with the law. We should never have had to take this action, but such has been the capture of the NHS by Stonewall on these issues that we faced no choice. We thank everyone for the amazing support and promise that we will not stop until this action is extended urgently to female workers across the NHS without any unnecessary delay. We hope that Wes Streeting and his team put into action what they have promised.’ The Darlington nurses stress, however, that ‘this is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.’

And it certainly isn’t the end. After Streeting’s intervention, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust posted a seemingly defiant message on social media. It said its board and executive team had met with ‘the LGBTQ+ Staff Network to show their full support. Together, we’re committed to shaping an inclusive workplace’.

Meanwhile, the father of Rose, who is also a nurse, is currently on trial for paedophilia offences.

And a man whose trial has just finished is Alan Eccles. He was a former partner at Brodies, a Scottish law firm that provides legal advice and representation to people like Rose who say they are ‘transgender’. He’s avoided jail despite being convicted of … sexually abusing children.

Positive news

A reader messaged asking for more positivity on this page, and as soon as she asked for this, something extraordinary happened.

Conservative podcaster Matt Walsh explains the whole story here. But in short: Riley Gaines criticised a school for winning a girls’ softball competition, even though the success was down to having a boy as the pitcher. This resulted in the gymnast Simone Biles attacking Gaines on X, and accusing her of ‘bullying a trans person’. It’s what happened next that’s interesting. Social media reacted by excoriating Biles. It was so severe that she issued an apology in which she tried to clarify that she was ‘not advocating for policies that compromise fairness in women’s sport.’

As Walsh says: “Five years ago Simone Biles would have received unrelenting praise and Gaines would have been banned from the internet. In 2020 Graham Linehan was permanently banned from Twitter for tweeting ‘men aren’t women though’. That’s not what happens anymore.”

And in more positive news, the sitcom Transaction will start airing on ITV later this month. Starring Jordan Gray and Nick Frost, who’s been criticising JK Rowling while agreeing to appear in the next Harry Potter series, it’s about a transgender supermarket worker and his relationship with his bumbling boss.

If the trailer is anything to go by, it’s going to be very bad.

See you next week!