April Fools

Welcome, thank you, please send common sense

I’ve had an ear worm all week…“Bye, bye, Miss American Pie…”.

Don McLean’s been on loop.

I knew the song’s about the plane crash that killed Don’s musical heroes, but until I sat down to write this I couldn’t have told you that it’s also about cultural change and disillusionment - perhaps I subconsciously understood that because today, 1st April 2024 is a significant day in Scotland and I certainly feel disillusionment.

“Bye, bye, all the harridan’s sighed…we took the many to the levies but the levies were high. Them good old boys pumping tricks and their lies, singing these are days of sci-fi, these are days of sci-fi”

My government has brought in new legislation, the Hate Crime Bill, which protects people against “hate” but does not define what hate is and excludes women from those protections.

It’s a very interesting time in Scotland… in the sense of the (possibly apocryphal) Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”.

All I wanted to do was fix fannies*, I never had any activist or political tendencies at all. I’m a physio, specialising in women’s health and was first chastised for wrong-think about 10 years ago when I accidentally wrote a stand up show for the Edinburgh Fringe about pelvic floors which sold out, got repeated 5*, won an international comedy award, and established that you could use comedy as a health promotion tool. Not too shabby for someone who’d never even been to the Fringe before she was in it.

Some of my professional peers viewed stand up about pelvic floors as, well, vulgar. They were right, of course…but, it turns out that vulgar works. Women who didn’t know anything about fanny physio learned that they didn’t need to put up with leaking, sexual dysfunction and pain and came to clinic. Good, right? Well, opinions (continue to) vary, but, I reckoned that as long as I only said things which are evidence based and that could be defended in court, then, I could say whatever I liked…

…a habit which is probably at the root of my today-problems.

About 6 years ago I again upset colleagues by saying you can’t build effective health services for women without defining who women are. I thought it reasonable to remove males who viewed themselves as women from services designed for broken fannies - the males don’t have fannies ergo the service isn’t for them. For reasons I still can’t understand my professional peers thought this was an appalling thing to think, and worse to say out loud. Cue a 4 day pile on, attempts to have me disciplined and me considering whether I’m the bad guy.

The last few years of trying to unpick the conflict between the rights of women and people with a gender issue has led to me, a (self identifying) mild mannered, conformist, well behaved, polite, overly educated, urban, heterosexual, professional, woman - to be viewed by some, well, quite a lot of people, as a modern-day heretic.

I never expected I’d grow up to be punk. Hilarious, 5*.

I’ve not quite worked out what my aims for this substack are. My raison d’être is female pelvic health - I’m evangelical about telling women what they can reasonably expect from their genitals in the course of their lifetime because, here’s a radical notion, I think women matter.

I’m concerned about services for people with gender issues - like many others I think we are facing the biggest scandal in healthcare we have ever seen and it genuinely keeps me awake at night, so I expect I’ll wang on about that a bit.

These are political issues, and while I’m far from an expert, I have learned how local government jigsaws with national and international - and that women’s issues, particularly women with disadvantages, are largely ignored at every level.

I’m interested in humour as a tool, I established it can be effective in health communication even if other people do it and aren’t talking about fannies. Humour’s fascinating - Professor Scott's work shows its role in relationship-building, and that includes building those which are therapeutic, allegiance, familial or activism based.

The subversive aspect of crafting might show up - not least with the speedy sewing of a cuddly hate monster. I like knitting a LOT.

There’s a podcast function, which is handy as I have 90 odd drafted episodes but no tech competence. So, no excuse now.

Thanks to Red Tent Collective and Milli Hill for the hand holding/kick up the sheuch** to get me on here.

This is a quickie - I need to go and learn a script for tonight’s gig. Comedy Unleashed are in town so comedians will be committing hate crimes/free speech in plain sight on a still-secret stage tonight. I’d like to think the reason it sold out in 9 minutes is because Edinburgh REALLY loves “free thinking comedy” - but, I suspect that buying tickets is an act of protest in itself.

I’ve got as many minutes on stage as it took to sell out to say, well, whatever I like, as long as it’s funny. And what I like are facts, freedoms and fannies. If talking about those is now an arrestable offence, well so be it, a jury of my peers can figure out what to do with me. I’m not being wheeshed***

I sometimes slip into Scots vernacular and make no apologies for that. Scots dialect has all the best words, if I spot them I’ll put the translations below.

I grew up in Alloway, a wee town on the West Coast of Scotland, so we got a lot of Burns at school. This song was performed by Sheena Wellington at the opening of Holyrood, fitting as it’s about equality and social injustice, which is what the Scottish Parliament was supposed to be all about. How the hell did we get here?

Midge Ure, "A man's a man for a that" (lyrics)

Today, April Fool’s Day is the day that the Scottish Enlightenment died.

We are still a nation of men being equal, but, some are more equal than others. Two sexes are bad but 4000 genders are good. There is more than one type of freedom, but if you're living in a female dystopia, you don't necessarily want to look at another one.

There would be a joke in that, but right now it feels only like being smothered by a tragedy.

A man IS a man, for a that - he is equal in Scots law to anyone else in society, but my government says that if he thinks he has a gender then he can have extra rights to intrude on *my* rights to privacy, dignity and safety.

I’m not having it, because I know that a man, for a the makeup, spinny skirts, strength, pace, and force of feeling, is a man for a that.

Do your pelvic floor exercises - we’ve got a long road ahead and it’s going to be busy, I can’t guarantee we’ll have time for pee stops.

Thanks for reading. It’s going to be fun.

*fanny - idiot, vagina, pejorative ("He's a wee fanny.") If you are from North America and you think that “fanny” means “bottom” then, well, I hate to say it, but, you’re wrong. It is my mission to correct that, and also rogue use of “z” where it’s meant to be an “s” and restore “u” to its rightful place. I’ll get started on that just as soon as I’ve sorted politics, fannies, gender and got the ironing done…so you enjoy the misplaced fannies while you can, pal.

**sheuch - bottom, but, specifically your bum crack - not buttocks, not anus.

***wheesht - an onomatopoeiac word that your mother would hiss at you when you were behaving in a way that wasn’t socially appropriate, eg too loud, too wriggly, too whiny for church. #WomenWontWheesht has become a slogan, a refusal to shut up despite the government’s commitment to ignoring us.

**** animal farm, Handmaid’s Tale, Charlie Brooker