On Being Pigeonholed: in which I empathise with @timfarron

[miss_s_b]

I self identify as feminist. This means I quite often get randomly ascribed opinions to which I do not subscribe - I am in favour of positive discrimination, for example, or I am a man-hating¹ hairy-legged¹ lesbian¹. These descriptions are almost alwast phrased more as accusations than anything else, and are clearly meant to be Bad Things.
I self identify as bisexual. This also means I am randomly ascribed lots of opinions and behaviours, some of which I do and some that I don't, but which are almost always painted as negative by the person who assumes that if you're bisexual you MUST be X, Y or Z.

Tim Farron self identifies as Christian. Quite a lot of evangelical Christians are homophobic. On a couple of occasions, Tim has said or done something which borders on not-nice-to-gays without meaning to⁴, and this has been correlated with his Christianity and built up into a big accusation of homophobia. The latest example of this is that he has been name-checked, along with Paul Burstow and Alan Beith, on a list of people who have accepted interns from a group which campaigned against the repeal of section 28 and sponsors events to "cure" gay people. Tim has assured me that he knew nothing about any of this until the last 24 hours⁵ and he's going to look into what the causes of it were, but really, I think a big cause of it is that he's been accused of being homophobic before, and the more often he is accused, no matter whether the accusations are justified or not, the more the mud will stick, and the more people will mutter "no smoke without fire" and like phrases. I've been guilty of this reaction myself, and for that I apologise.

Now, I can't get inside Tim Farron's head and find out whether he really does hate the gays or not, but I can't help but think that even if he does, it's his actions he should be judged on, not his private thoughts. If it were me that had my name on that epetition, I'd be making very public protestations of innocence, because lots of people take silence as aquiescence. But not everybody does things the way I do, and I am reluctant to endorse the taking of silence as aquiescence when that's the sort of thing that leads to rapists getting away with their crimes...

Anyway!

tl;dr: I empathise with Tim Farron being ascribed views he says he doesn't hold, and I am reminding myself of Rumpole's Golden Thread: innocent till proven guilty, EVERY TIME.

---

1, Clearly, it is masochism that makes me live with two of them, and voluntarily spend time with many more.
2, as it happens, in the winter I do tend to be hairy-legged, but that's because I am LAZY, not because I am feminist
3, Because, clearly, having regular sexual relations with multiple men is overridden by labelling myself with a WORD.
4, Or at least, this is what he says, and who am I to question his word?
5, via DM on twitter, and again, who am I to doubt his word?

Comments

[fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com]

Yes, exactly! This is what I was trying to get in when waffling on about patterns and when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife.

[miss_s_b]

I figgered as much. This is my BUT SAYING THINGS IN 140 CHARACTERS IS HAAAAAAAAAAAARD response.

[fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com]

Tho I should add for wishy-washy/balance/fence-sitting purposes that if this had been some sort of blatantly racist conference I suspect all the MPs would be leaping away from CARE like scalded cats. So it'll be interesting to see what they do.

[fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com]

Although having said *that* (god I am an artist at this) none of this is really the interns' fault, and I imagine there are (or at any rate should be) rules in whatever contract they've got which safeguard them from being dropped part way through for reasons not connected to their performance.

[strangecharm]

I think this goes a good way towards explaining why, as you said, these things keep happening to him.

[trialia]

I'm afraid my instinctive response to the whole "but I didn't mean it that way!" shtick, as an Aspie who is frequently misunderstood & has learned this lesson the very hard way, is this: intent is not fucking magical.

Once when you're in a fairly public important position is bad enough, but gets the benefit of the doubt from me. More than once, I start to question. More than three times, prove to me by some action that your apology is actually meant or I'm gonna stop accepting them as being pointless.

[moonhot97]

I was at the 1991 NUS Winter Conference. Tim Farron was on the NUS National Executive then and made a caustic snappy comment to one of the delegates from my college, who was openly gay. I don't remember if my colleague's sexuality was referenced, but Farron's comment was offensive enough for another delegate to demand that he apologise (he refused) and for my colleague to confront him backstage when the interval began and give him a piece of his mind.

Know where you're coming from about not treating silence as admission though.

Thank you for highlighting my petition

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Miss S B,

Thank you for highlighting the petition I started. I did not know Tim Farron had been accused of homophobia before.

I started the petition because I found out that my own MP, David Burrowes, has had an intern from CARE. I found out that CARE sponsored a conference on gay cures in 2009 and that one of the Directors and Trustees of the Charity organised the so called "gay leper" event in January this year.

I emailed all the MPs with the evidence and asked them if they would consider distancing themselves from the charity, as a result of its links to the gay cure event.

The only MP I heard from was David Lammy - who, like Tim Farron, is a Christian. He immediately said he would not have another intern from CARE because of their "extreme views".

As I did not hear from anyone else, I set up the petition.

There was no malice in the petition, which now has over 8,800 signatures. I am a Christian and a very active member of my local church and a member of the Parish Council. I was not targetting anyone because they are Christian.

The petition simply asks MPs to consider distancing themselves from the charity and asks them not to accept material support from the organisation in future.

Kind regards


Phillip

Re: Thank you for highlighting my petition

[miss_s_b]

The petition simply asks MPs to consider distancing themselves from the charity and asks them not to accept material support from the organisation in future.

Which, of course, Tim Farron has doen.

Re: Thank you for highlighting my petition

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for your reply.

Tim has said on Twitter that he will not have a CARE intern next year, but he has not made a public statement to that effect.

He has also said on Twitter that he will look into other sources of funding for paid interns beyond that, but hasn't made a public statement to that effect.

I hope he will make a public statement confirming these Tweets - and clarifying whether or not he might have a CARE intern after next year - as his Tweets so far still seem to leave the door open for that to take place. Many people (including nearly 9000 who signed the petition) and perhaps more, would be very keen for him to make such a statement!


Many thanks


Phillip

Re: Thank you for highlighting my petition

[miss_s_b]

While there is a part of me that thinks but twitter IS a public statement, I do think he could have handled the communications of this better :/