2 1GT Wednesday December 2 2020 | the times

times

A

football pundit has

been suspended by

the BBC because he

used a phrase that

“didn’t meet the

standards we

expect”. What was

this foul hate

speech? Racism? Misogyny? Let’s get

him cancelled on Twitter and put dog

turds through his letterbox (I’m free

on Thursday, but can’t do Saturday).

Well. It seems he described a scuffle

between two players in a match

recently as — checks notes —

“handbags”. He also said another

player was a “drama queen”. He was

promptly relieved of his duties until

2021 and sent for retraining.

Oh. Usually I need a bit

more to work with before

I start smearing faeces on

people’s front doors, but,

hey ho, needs must. Is saying

“it’s all gone a bit handbags”

offensive then? I had no

idea. What is it — sexist?

Handbaggist? I trust the BBC

is, as we speak, erasing all

episodes of Shooting Stars

in which Vic and Bob held

up old lady handbags while

saying “Ooooooh!”, which

I must say always left me

feeling hurt and attacked

because I own two flap

shoulder-bags and a zip tote.

It transpired yesterday that

during another match, in September,

the pundit, Steve Thompson, 65, had

referred to the Lincoln City player

Lewis Montsma having been a former

model. “I was looking through my

‘gay monthly’ and I see he was a male

model,” he allegedly said. Now this is

obviously edging into homophobia

and I see the problem. So why not

discipline him back then for that

offence? Why, in classic BBC own-goal

style, wait another two months and

do it over a trifling matter? One that

has people screaming, “But this is just

woke PC bullshit”?

Because here I must throw in the

towel (apologies for triggering any

apollophobics) and confess: I say

“handbags” and “drama queen” all

the time and no one has ever been

offended. I say them to my husband,

my friends and my fattest cat, the

biggest drama queen I’ve ever met.

I suppose that’s my BBC career down

the khazi now, so in for a penny...

Sex life

scotched

once more

For couples who live

apart in Tier 2 and

Tier 3 the sex ban

continues. There was

a brief hiatus when

“established” twosomes

were permitted to meet

up and copulate

providing they wore

hazmat suits, didn’t kiss

(just like at a brothel!)

and promised that at no

point would they enjoy

it. But now the sex

drought is back. To

which husbands and

wives around the

country chorus: “Just

get wed! You’ll barely

notice the difference!”

It coincides with

news that Scotch eggs

have been officially

sanctioned by a

minister as a

“substantial meal”.

Which means you

can drink alcohol in

a pub if you order one.

Brilliant. I see exactly

what the government

has done now.

Because Scotch eggs

are obviously a rancid

abomination loved by

Alan Partridge and

Keith from The Office

that give you breath

like a skunk’s three-

day-old Y-fronts. If

everyone starts eating

them no one will have

sex with anyone at all

because we’ll all have

blowtorch halitosis.

Plus we’ll feel so

nauseous from the

blowback inside our

facemasks we’ll have

to go home and isolate.

Finally, some joined-up

thinking from

this government.

Emojis

fit for a

duchess

Huge excitement

has erupted after the

Duchess of Cambridge

accidentally revealed

her most-used emojis

when she flashed her

iPhone 10. I expect

there was relief from

the Palace when the

future queen’s choices

turned out not to

include the aubergine

(look it up if you still

don’t know what it

means) and relief from

Prince William when

there was no “finger

and thumb pinching”

symbol (often used to

denote “a weeny one”).

Why would she make

such frequent use of

the “vomiting” emoji,

the “sweary face”

expletive emoji and the

“gust of wind”, which

usually means a fart?

I’ve got it! It must have

been their turn to see

Prince Andrew.

“Big girl’s blouse” — I say that too

on occasion. I know Boris Johnson

called Jeremy Corbyn a BGB last year

when Corbyn was goading him to call

for a general election and, yes, he did

sound like a bullying public school

“watch me dip my penis in the soup”

show-off. But, sexist as it may be, the

phrase is excellent shorthand for

someone who, say, jumps on a chair at

the sight of a little mouse. It was used

by Hylda Baker in the 1970s sitcom

Nearest and Dearest. She would

call her brother a “big girl’s blouse”,

while he called her a “knock-kneed

knackered old nosebag”. Burn the

tapes! Burn them now!

I suppose we should never again say

that a man has fallen “arse over tit”.

Never again say a man has his

“knickers in a twist” because this

suggests that women get more het

up than men and, worse, might imply

that he wears ladies’ underwear

beneath his tracksuit. Although if he

does that’s absolutely fine too. I didn’t

mean to imply it wasn’t. Please don’t

cancel me. I have mouths to feed.

These phrases are part of our

rich linguistic heritage, the little

flourishes that go to the nub of a

subject and evoke exactly what is

meant. Must we ban “fishwife” (sexist);

“mard-arse” (insensitive to grumpy

people); “tosser” (stigmatises

masturbation!); “wet lettuce”

(anti-salad)?

Incidentally, when I was growing

up, adults said, to indicate a scowling

person: “He/she had a face like a

blistered pisspot.” I thought it one

of the best phrases I had ever heard.

Still do, actually. Why would it be

blistered though? Can anyone help?

Carol Midgley

Upset by ‘handbags’ at

football matches? Oh,

stop being a drama queen

S

tanding outside the High

Court, Keira Bell said that

she hoped the court’s

judgment marked the end

of gender clinics “playing

God with our bodies [by]

experimenting on the

young and vulnerable with

untested, harmful drugs”.

With her deep masculine voice,

facial hair and the loss of her breasts

to a double mastectomy, Bell bears on

her own body the scars of irreversible

treatments she began at Tavistock’s

GIDS (gender identity development

service) clinic at the age of 16. This

quiet, reserved young woman, now 23,

took on the NHS and publicly funded

activist groups such as Stonewall and

Mermaids — which successfully

lobbied for medical interventions in

ever younger children — and won.

In particular, yesterday’s judgment

on puberty-blocking drugs will

reverberate around the world. Judges

ruled that a 13-year-old was “highly

unlikely” to have the competence to

understand their effect on future

fertility and sexual function, that they

were “doubtful” that a 14 or 15-year-

old could knowingly consent, and that

these drugs were so “experimental”

and “truly life-changing” that it was

“appropriate” for doctors to seek a

court order before prescribing them to

a 16 or 17-year-old. In response, GIDS

announced a moratorium on

prescribing blockers and NHS England

will declare that under-16s will not

receive them without a court order.

Bell’s story echoes those of

thousands of teenage girls who now

make up 75 per cent of referrals to

GIDS and gender clinics worldwide.

As a little girl growing up in

Letchworth, she was a tomboy who

loved football, superheroes and TV

wrestling. She hated dresses, preferring

clothes from the boys’ range, and her

friends were mainly male. “No one

tried to change me and I didn’t feel

any discomfort in my body,” she says.

“Lots of adult women would say, ‘Oh,

I was like that at your age.’ ”

Yet Bell’s home life was turbulent.

Her “quite distant and very religious”

Christian father left when she was

four, leaving Bell and her sister with

their mother, an alcoholic. “We didn’t

speak about her problem, but we were

both embarrassed and didn’t bring

friends home.”

Then Bell started high school and

“there was that parting of the ways

you get at puberty”. Her male friends

no longer wanted to know her, while

she felt a growing pressure to be

“feminine and girly and to fancy boys”.

Feeling stuck in the middle, judged for

her “butch” appearance and struggling

with the realisation that she was

attracted to girls, she grew socially

awkward and isolated. By 14,

increasingly anxious and depressed,

she stopped going to school.

“I just stayed at home, locked in my

room, playing video games,” she says.

“And on the internet I read lesbian

bloggers, but felt something else was

wrong with me because I was so

uncomfortable with my body and

puberty and becoming a woman.” On

YouTube she discovered US trans

activists. “I thought, ‘That’s me. I need

to do this, to medically transition to

make myself better and live my life as

I’m supposed to.’ ”

Bell asked friends to call her Quincy

and use male pronouns, while secretly

buying a breast binder to flatten her

chest. Then at 16, when home life with

her mother deteriorated, she begged to

move in with her father and his new

partner, who, seeing she was troubled,

suggested she see a GP. She was

referred to GIDS.

“I had a one-hour appointment and

it was very general, surface-level stuff.

t

‘I couldn’t sit

by while so

many others

made the

same mistake’

At 16 Keira Bell was prescribed

puberty-blocking drugs. Now, at 23, she

regrets it. She tells Janice Turner why

she fought a High Court battle to make

it harder to obtain the treatment