Letters to the Editor: Giving a Platform

Sent to the I's 'Voices' section, in response to an article on the recent All Party Parliamentary Group report on prostitution.

I would like to congratulate your paper on balancing your article on the parliamentary report on prostitution (March 3) with the views of an actual sex worker. The voices of sex workers are those that should be heard the loudest in this debate, and all too often they are ignored or sidelined. There is significant criticism of and opposition to the Nordic model from sex workers and former sex workers, including journalists, activists and academics, both in the UK and abroad, that simply cannot be dismissed (as it often is) as apologia produced by sex industry insiders.

Letters to the Editor: Veganism not the Answer

Sent to the I's 'Voices' section, in response to a letter suggesting that 'switching to a vegan diet would help stop global warming'.

Mark Richards' suggestion in his letter published on the 30th September that we should switch to a vegan diet to save the environment demonstrates a marked ignorance of basic principles of agriculture.  Here’s two experiments: first, try living on grass. You can’t, because your body is not adapted to gain enough nutrition from it. Next, try growing food crops on land normally used for pasture. This may be possible…with the use of increased levels of agricultural industrialisation, massive quantities of nitrate fertiliser (having liberated our manure-producing animals, commercially viable organic farming becomes nearly impossible) and the wholesale destruction of ancient hedgerows…oh wait, weren’t we supposed to be saving the environment?

 

Letters to the Editor: More Disrespect for Chelsea

  Sent to the I's 'Voices' section, in response to continued misgendering of Chelsea Manning.

I was pleased to note that you decided, in today's edition of the paper, to print a letter, similar to the one I myself sent in yesterday, condemning your own editorial choices with regards to reporting on Chelsea Manning's decision to live as a woman. I was significantly less pleased to see this letter printed across from an article that consistently referred to Pvt. Manning as 'He' and 'Bradley'. Clearly, myself and other correspondents have bought this matter to your attention, and you have acknowledged your faults, yet you continue to do nothing to correct them. Let me offer a possible course of action. Presumably your writers, editors, layout staff and so on use computer text editors to produce your paper? As any of the 16 year old children who attained a passing grade in GCSE IT last week might be able to tell you, the normal shortcut for 'find and replace' is ctrl+h in Windows or Linux and cmd+f in Mac OS.  Changing 'He' for 'She', 'His' for 'Her', 'Bradley' for 'Chelsea' etc. would take you less than a minute and cost nothing, whilst putting your paper on an ethical level above the one it currently occupies, next to such august publications as The Sun and the Daily Express.

Letters to the Editor: Respect for Chelsea

 Sent to the I's 'Voices' section, in response to an article misgendering Chelsea Manning.

I was disappointed, though, I must confess, not particularly surprised to read the i's take on Chelsea Manning's recent public declaration of her decision to live as a woman. This is not something that comes as a surprise to anyone following the case, particularly what has been reported outside the mainstream media. What is disappointing is your paper's decision to disrespect the wishes of Pvt. Manning by referring to her as 'He' and using the name 'Bradley'. Pvt. Manning is a young person who has been treated extremely harshly by her own government for doing something many people consider heroic, and has taken a courageous decision in coming out as transgendered. The least the i, an ostensibly liberal newspaper, could do is respect her wishes and refer to her by her preferred name and pronoun.