DONALD Trump has become the hero of those who are opposed to the pressing problem of ‘men in women’s bathrooms’. The problem is so pressing that Squinter never heard of it before the Daily Mail decided it was a problem some six or eight years ago. But regardless of how often women actually encounter men in the bathroom when they nip into a public loo, it’s undeniable that increasing numbers of people view it as one of the great issues of the day.
And for those who view it as a problem, Donald Trump is one of those seen as most likely to put things right. He wasted no time in putting his anti-Trans agenda into action, signing a Presidential Executive Order that claims to re-establish the supremacy of “biological reality”. Even those who might look askance at Trump and his precarious relationship with the truth are doffing their caps to him, delighted and relieved that – despite his many faults – he’s on the right side of history when it comes to beards in the birds’ bog. In Trump’s brave new world, women’s spaces are will be reserved for women. Except, of course, when it comes to the Tango Tyrant himself.
The opening paragraph of his Executive Order reads: “Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers.”
“Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.” Those were the words of Donald Trump when in 1997 he walked into the dressing room of a beauty contest he was overseeing. Mariah Billado said Trump caused a panic when, without prior notice, he entered the changing room, where contestants were in various states of undress. Three other contestants corroborated Billado’s testimony, variously describing Trump’s dressing room invasion as “shocking” and “creepy”.
That’s bad, but it gets worse. The competition was the ‘Miss Vermont Teen USA’ and the contestants in the dressing room that Trump entered were minors, aged mostly 15 and 16. So not only is Trump accused by multiple women of invading women’s private spaces – he’s accused of invading the private spaces of underage girls.
Ah, yes, the cry goes up. Trump gets accused of all sorts of things. Comes with the territory when you’re popular and successful. Putting aside the fact that Trump’s been found guilty in court of many of the things he’s been accused of, let’s see if we can find any further evidence that the Wotsit Weirdo is only concerned about keeping other men out of women’s spaces. Or why not aim higher than further evidence and see if we can find rock-solid proof that Trump used his position as a beauty pageant impresario to wangle his way into the women-only spaces that he’s now sworn to protect.
Eight years later, in a 2005 interview with shock jock Howard Stern, Trump reminisced fondly about his years as the CEO of the Miss Universe competition.
“Well, I'll tell you the funniest is that before a show, I'll go backstage and everyone's getting dressed, and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it. You know, I'm inspecting because I want to make sure that everything is good.”
Truth is, having Donald Trump as the planet’s foremost defender of private female spaces is like having Fred West as the planet’s foremost defender of lodgers. And it’s all being wearyingly replicated in the case of Conor McGregor and Irish immigration. Many of the same female space-defenders who trot out the “Trump might be an adjudicated rapist but…” line are now simply changing the name: “McGregor might be an adjudicated rapist but…”
As long as they pick on Trans people and blame everything on the Moozlims, there’s a lot of people willing to overlook a lot of bad behaviour.
In public and in private.
Welcome to LOL 1690, ladies and gentlemen
LEE Reynolds and Pete Shirlow are two nice guys. Squinter’s never met them, but he gets on well with them online and they seem like the kind of unionists who might actually understand that staving off a united Ireland involves a lot less of the same instead of more of it.
They’re embarked on a series of meet-the-people events which they’ve entitled ‘Safeguarding the Union’. They probably won’t admit it, but it’s a homage to the Ireland’s Future initiative, which for some years now has been convening public meetings designed to appeal to as broad a range of people as possible. Particularly unionists.
But Lee and Pete have twice already displayed evidence of blindspots which illustrate how hard it’s going to be to get the DUP and TUV to come up with new thinking: If a pair of forward-thinking unionists can’t identify glaring examples of things that are likely to alienate nationalists and republicans from their gatherings, how hard is it going to be to get the union’s staunchest to throw their arms open to all?
Take the Safeguarding the Union logo, for example. They’ve decided to cut the Teddy Bear’s head off in the style favoured by unionist parties down through the post-partition years. There’s no call for it, of course, for if the map was to include Britain and all of Ireland there’s barely a unionist of any stripe who would notice, much less complain, as long as there’s a line drawn on the border. Cutting out the 26 counties, on the other hand, winds up non-unionists no end; firstly because, as already touched upon, it’s a classically exclusionary symbol; and, secondly, it’s a denial of people’s status as Irish citizens and Irish passport holders.
LOYAL: Can Orange halls be neutral venues?
Squinter doesn’t think that Lee and Pete set out to wind anybody up by plumping for the Floating Loyal Ulster image. And he’s certain that they’re serious about getting a broad range of society into their Safeguarding the Union tent, but their failure to understand it as a seriously alienating factor suggests that a lack of empathy for things Irish is not confined to boneys and bands.
Which brings us to the choice of venues for their town halls, as the Yanks like to call them. The most recent was yet again in an Orange hall – Tandragee this time – and again there seems to be little or no appreciation of what it means for a non-unionists, nationalists, republicans or Catholics to attend a political event in a place owned by an organisation which exists – altogether now – to “oppose the fatal doctrines and errors of the Church of Rome”. And why the Orange Order doesn’t allow women in either is still a mystery.
In a chat about the wisdom of holding hands-across-the-divide Safeguarding the Union events in Orange halls, Pete told Squinter the Orange Order is a “faith-based” organisation; which is true, but rather in the same way that Twelfth bonfires are “pallet-based” events. Which is to say that when you mention the Orange Order to your average Catholic they don’t immediately think of the purity of the reformed faith any more than they think of boneys as tributes to wooden freight devices. If Our Wee Country was a cold house for Catholics for many long years, Orange halls are veritable igloos. But your average united Irelander isn’t going to put on gloves and a North Face puffer jacket – they’re just not going to enter.
Perhaps Lee and Pete don’t feel that way. In fact, Squinter’s fairly sure that they don’t feel that way. And that, of course, is the problem. A problem doesn’t stop being a problem because somebody says it’s not a problem. If that were the case then the Titanic would have been a troop ship in World War One.
All aboard the bleat bus – again
DUP leader Gavin Robinson hasn’t exactly found a hill he’s willing to die on, but in Irish language signs at a bus station it appears he’s found one where he’s willing to lie down and have a nice nap.
Gav told the party faithful that he intends to put down a marker when it comes to ‘Fáilte’ and ‘Slán’ on the signage at Grand Central Station, but since he’s on record as saying that the political institutions will not be collapsed on his watch, it’s difficult to see where he goes if – as expected – the signage eventually goes up.
TICKETS PLEASE: Gavin Robinson waiting on a bus on the Falls Road
The truth is that the act of seeming furious is the point; the process of communicating fury is the point. The DUP is currently gathering pace on its journey towards electoral catastrophe and Gav has decided that out-TUVing the TUV is the way to fend off what currently appears inevitable.
The fall of the House of Paisley didn’t come so much as a shock to the party as a thundering kick in the ging-gangs; indeed, such was the extent of the trauma inflicted on the party that it finds it hard if not impossible to see that its decline is being brought about by a myriad of varying ailments, many if not most of them local, or even hyper-local. It’s a bit like if you fall from a high height – one injury’s going to hurt a lot more than the others, but if your cracked skull is hurting more than your two broken legs, that doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to walk.
Sticks and stones, Gavin. Sticks and stones.
