Modern Times
An Interview with Julie Burchill
I have been a huge fan of Julie Burchill since first reading her bold and acerbically witty writing years ago. For this interview, I didn’t sit down in a café to meet Julie—though I would have loved to. She tells me, “I prefer cold hard writing—I'm not a great one for chats!”
JV: I became neck-deep involved in the gender debate after reading two articles in January 2013: Suzanne Moore’s piece in The New Statesman, “Seeing red: The power of female anger,” wherein she writes, “We are angry with ourselves for not being happier, not being loved properly and not having the ideal body shape—that of a Brazilian transsexual” and your response to the attacks by the transgender lobby to her piece, “Transsexuals should cut it out,” published in The Observer. In your article, you refer to men who call themselves “transgender” as “screaming mimis” and “dicks in chicks’ clothing” and you went on to lament that working-class women writers like Moore and yourself would be “damned if we are going to be accused of being privileged by a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs.” Both articles received a fair amount of vituperation from the trans lobby and your piece was eventually pulled by The Observer with the editor issuing an apology and it was re-published by The Telegraph. Your piece is quite beautifully written and you describe the ire of this lobby that drove Moore from Twitter, all for her refusal to apologise for her article. Can you discuss your motivations behind writing this piece and the fallout at The Observer behind the scenes?
JB: I’d like to say that it was done in the spirit of a noble crusade but I was just showing off on Facebook while I waited for my husband to come and pick me up to go out. A commissioning editor from The Observer messaged me “Would you do this as a piece for us this evening?” And I remember writing back “Well, I’m going out in half an hour, so I’d want twice the money to postpone that.” For me, that was the most laughably comic and cowardly facet of the whole episode—that The Observer SAW me calling the transies names on social media and sked me to elaborate! And then the editor, John Mulholland, acts all shocked. He knew what he was getting!
JV: What initially struck me after the outcry over your and Suzanne’s pieces was the silence from the quite protected arena of academia. The first question I asked was, “Where are all the academics weighing in on this?” Why were tenured academics in the UK so silent on what happened?
JB: I didn’t go to university so I don’t have a clue about how academics think—but I did coin a phrase when I was young: ”Educated beyond all instinct and honesty.” This still sums up academia for me.
JV: To anyone from another planet, the misogyny of this movement is clear. Just exploring the “cotton ceiling” where lesbians report being pressured into addressing men as “women,” “she" and even as “lesbians,” and worse, many adolescent lesbians report being groomed into having sex with men who “identify as” sic “women,” the homophobia within this movement is as glaring as the misogyny. What do you think is behind the support of this lobby that for years has pushed this narrative of “gender identity” and the notion that men can be lesbians, to include publications like Diva and its editor Linda Riley?
JB: When I was a young girl about town there were three types of men: creeps, super-creeps, and the ones who said “I’m actually a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.” The third lot never got “any” as I recall. It’s equally insulting and amusing how this is now a right-on political stance when it’s nothing more than it ever was—an incel's final fantasy frontier. That’s what people have yet to realise—that “trans” is the first “liberation” movement driven by pornography. I only fancy a woman once every ten years so I’m not the BEST expert, but when females like females, it’s NOT “genital fetishisation”—it’s the way women feel and smell, as much as anything, These big Jessies can wear as many camisoles as they like—but men will always be nasty. And I say that as a man-fan! Though I couldn’t comment on this person [Riley], having never heard of her. I’d say generally desperation to be Down Wiv Da Kidz, to be “relevant.”
JV: Your latest book, Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics, takes up these events from early 2013 and you go into how the woke took over journalism. Journalists have been political mouthpieces for various ideologies even beyond gender identity. More bizarrely you have this dissonance between who these journalists claim to be and what they actually do. For instance, Ash Sarkar and Owen Jones, although claiming to be leftists, spend a remarkably minuscule amount of time writing on anything related to class, poverty, unemployment, the council housing crisis, and so forth. It’s almost as if being a leftist (or Sarkar’s infamous “I'm a Communist, you idiot”) exists in rhetoric only. When did you start to notice the spread of wokery in journalism?
JB: Not until The Observer tranny kerfuffle in 2013. Up till then journalism was just fun and games, for me!
JV: Welcome to the Woke Trials which addresses this kerfufle was originally supposed to be published with Hatchette. After what you call your “drunken stupidity on Twitter,” the publisher cancelled your contract in the winter of 2020 for alleged transphobia. You discuss this in your book’s introduction also noting how Hatchette had already asked to remove the word “Woke” from your book’s title. Then in 2021, Hatchette launched a partnership with “All About Trans” and donated £10,000 to Stonewall UK. Were you surprised by the cancellation of your contract and the revelation of Hatchette’s political and economic gestures made towards this lobby?
JB: I was a little surprised but not for long. I’ve been told my entire life: “You can’t say that!” It was just more of the same.
JV: You were raised in a communist household and a lifelong Labour Party supporter. What can be done to repair some of the damage done in the name of progressive politics? One point you make in your book is that the current narrative of “progressive” politics is divisive and highly racialised, and extremely privileged. You criticise the world outlook offered by the woke where you are either a villain or a victim. Even if many people love being victims, this is a highly anti-intellectual posture to take on since power does not tend to operate like a 1950s western where we are either wearing white or black hats and where words must be redacted because they might possibly “trigger.” Where does this helicopter parenting turned socio-political narrative come from?
JB: Having come from such a working-class background, one of my greatest strengths as a writer is incomprehension at the behaviour of the bourgeoisie, and an inability to obey their rules. Woke is just another way of seeking to control the proles, but wearing a rainbow-flag hat.
JV: Why have editors allowed journalists to engage in political activism where wokery has become so pervasive?
JB: I think a lot of them are scared of their own children. And the trying-to-be-relevant thing again—a lot of the idiots who run the papers now would sign their own death warrants if they thought it would get them a pat on the head from the Wokerati.
JV: You’ve been denounced by liberal broadsheets, targeted by a protest staged outside the Observer offices in January 2013, reported to the police, and condemned by politicians like Lib-Dem MP Lynne Featherstone who accused you of “inciting hatred” with calls in the House of Commons for you to be sacked. Jeremy Corbyn's then brosocialist Labour Party and grassroots movement Momentum had a huge hand in advancing gender ideology within its ranks and fomenting this fiction as real upon the public stage. All that happened within Labour seemed to mirror what was going on within The Guardian and its staff ranks. It is manifest that media and political organising are embedded within each other, but this creates huge conflicts of interest for media outlets that ought to be holding power to account for their words and actions instead of sending them messages for their teleprompter. What are some solutions to this problem whereby the public doesn’t know the difference between fake news from fact-based coverage?
JB: I don’t have a clue! It’s very funny though that the newspapers are pandering to people who don’t buy newspapers—talk about a Dance of Death. When the Telegraph sacked me, that didn’t win them one extra reader, But I know for a fact that it lost them quite a few.
JV: As a longtime Labour supporter you have witnessed its many changes for several decades. What has happened to the left in Britain where words are now seemingly more important than material reality?
JB: Ruined by the bourgeoisie—like everything, including sandwiches.
JV: How do we return to a political topography where we might see our common humanity rather than individuals who are earmarked as “good” or “bad”; worthy of being heard or de-platform-able; books worthy of selling to booksellers being pressured to remove certain books; and the NSU which ought to be invested in opening up discussions instead of censoring and closing down debate?
JB: I’m not sure things will ever go back to the sensible, sexy, sophisticated way we were at the turn of the century—I think the West is done. I’m sorry for the people yet to come, yet extremely grateful I got to live my life as a writer when I did, from 1976 to the present day. I’ll be 63 this weekend and I can’t believe all the fun, money and freedom I’ve had during my long, louche career—enough for nine lifetimes!
JV: Happy Birthday! What has age taught you for the better and the worse?
JB: That life is generally a comedy—not a tragedy. Certainly mine has been! If you can laugh at yourself, you’ll never be bored.
JV: I feel similarly, although you and I share an experience of having lost a child—yours an adult, mine an infant. Indeed, our sons' deaths were worlds apart in nature. Still, the effect of losing a child rips the soul—even those of us who are fighters. I had the most unexpected reaction to my son's death: amnesia. I spent weeks obsessing over the moment when George W Bush choked on the pretzel—why didn't he die, but my child did? I remember the couple that committed suicide, jumping from Beachy Head with the body of their five-year-old son two days after his death from meningitis. I wondered why I didn't wake up five minutes earlier, ten minutes earlier. From there was only my trying to recuperate lost memories and trying to see some sort of way to move through the immense nothingness. Then one day while driving about the outskirts of Montréal, I realised at a certain point that I had no bloody idea where I was going. I was utterly lost, so I stopped the car and I looked up: there was a street sign that read "Boulevard Céline-Dion." I knew I was fucked, but I still burst out into laughter. I think that was the sign of a spark still left in me. What kept you afloat after the loss of your son?
JB: For years I've been interested in the Stoics—especially Epictetus, as he started out as a slave—and their most interesting ideas are about the stupidity of self-pity and introspection. When my son died, I lost the use of my limbs for two weeks and had to lie flat in bed—any movement would bring intense pain. All I did was cry. But then, after two weeks, I got up and went into the world. I wrote a long piece about Jack for the Sunday Times and gave the fee—I think £5000—to suicide charities. And I started my job at the MIND shop, which I do every morning to this day. I don't feel ruined or wrecked by Jack's death. If anything, I have more relish for life, as I've seen how it can be snuffed out.
This quote from Marcus Aurelius sums up how I feel: “It’s unfortunate that this has happened? No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it.” Some people never recover from the loss of a child and I don’t judge them. But I have.
JV: Where do you see Owen Jones when this thread of wokery dies its well-deserved death?
JB: I would LOVE to see him “settle down” with Sam Smith so they can bleat at each other indefinitely and leave the rest of us in peace!
JV: The other day, I shared one of your articles and someone posted a response saying that they really enjoyed your piece, adding something to the effect of, “But I disagree with her argument on Ukraine…” We see this a lot when people post pieces with a disclaimer, “Sorry it’s from the Daily Mail…” These have become social media patterns which, like “trigger warnings,” lay out this expectation that we must only share articles that will 100% please people or be from “certified” lefty sources. A large part of me feels that we have lost the pleasure of simply reading. Logically, nobody will please people in every facet of their articles, each and every time. And with social media having become the public square for many, people often skim articles to find a factoid they can use to win a Twitter argument. Appreciation of style, narrative, and of differing opinions has waned in this world os social media one-upmanship. Has social media ruined reading?
JB: I think people with closed minds were with us long before social media. Personally, as I am so secure in my beliefs, I love to watch things like Novara media. But I appreciate that snowflakes could never do this in reverse.
JV: Lockdown was an unmitigated disaster from top to bottom and it was driven by the elites who counted on the poor to shut up and lock step. Given the “rules,” what choice did anyone really have? How did you spend lockdown?
JB: I had fun as I live apart from my husband but nearby—three blocks away. I liked sneaking back from his place before dawn, it made a long marriage very exciting. I was against lockdown because of the awful effect I knew it would have on children and young people but personally it was a good thing for me, as I am an incorrigible social butterfly who LIVES in bars/restaurants—and finally I was FORCED to stay in and write. I wrote Welcome to the Woke Trials!
JV: Throughout 2020, I pitched articles to leftist publications on the economic and mental heath repercussions of lockdown to receive one reply after another from editors refusing to consider any pitch of this nature. I was told constantly that they didn’t want to appear “anti-lockdown.” I was floored. The left pretty much vanished as right-wing media was more critical of lockdown and covered class issues more consistently, even if superficially. Meanwhile Guardian readers ordered in Deliveroo using the working class as their virus-catching surrogates. We have just lived through two plus years of house arrest and so many on the left have zero idea—nor do they care—about the harm their pro-lockdown support caused. Now these neoliberal folks pretend that everything’s OK. You stated earlier that the west is doomed, but isn’t the lack of healthy scepticism and critical thinking driving this?
JB: Yes, absolutely. The descent of the species is well underway, and I fully expect mankind to be sitting around campfires grunting at each other in a hundred years time. I was so lucky to live modern times!
I love Julie Birchill thanks for this interview
I lived in London in the 80s and admired Julie Burchill’s rebel attitude then, even when I didn’t always agree with her. I loved that she was so completely brave and honest in stating her views. I admire her even more now taking on the quite terrifying wokerati!