Scooby Doo, Oxfam and The Sexular Age

Let’s call this The Scooby Doo moment. You know the show that started in the 70s? Crazy kids in a van called The Mystery Machine, with a dog called Scooby Doo (Arf-Arf!)? Always turning up at haunted houses or the like, exposing the evil criminals hiding behind scary ghoul masks, or dressed up as werewolves. I’m sure those kids were all on Scooby snacks.

And that classic line at the end of the show when all was exposed, and truth and justice prevailed: “And I woulda gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!”

Well in a classic signal that the Sexular Age has over-reached itself, we get this image below in the printed material of pressure group Stonewall’s “diversity and inclusion” program rolled out at UK-based charity Oxfam, specifically aimed at ensuring staff used the right pronouns, and pointing out the perils – and evils – of refusal.

And guess what? It’s all Scooby Doo at twenty paces! It’s layered on with a thickness that Shaggy would be proud of, and that bookish Velma would tsk tsk” at. And that vixenesque Daphne might squeal at.

I mean, have you seen a more evil cohort? Or a more caricatured one! And that evil henchwoman in the middle with the TERF badge and the flaming red hair (to match the all-round flaming red eyes!). It looks a little like, a little like this woman:

Oh, wait, my goodness? It’s the witch herself! The woman that struck so much terror into people with her refusal to be cowed by The Sexular Age, that there was a whole podcast about it. And it would be hilarious if they weren’t so deadly serious. But then that’s the thing about propaganda from the likes of Stonewall: it’s never very subtle. It’s all hook-noses and moneybags and grimacing smiles that just personify evil. A bit like this really:

I’m just hoping that right-thinking people of all political and sexual stripes see what is going on here. It’s a true case of “othering”. And by that I mean, the very crowd that constantly calls people out for “othering” needs to look in its own backyard. I hope they can see that when JK Rowling is eventually knifed by a deranged and hateful ex-fan, that there was a breadcrumb trail that led to the witch’s house, and it was laid by the likes of Stonewall.

But perhaps, you protest, that’s how all the characters are depicted in this cartoon. Surely it couldn’t all be so obvious? Well, here’s the right crowd to belong to:

Now that looks like heaven doesn’t it? As far away from a scary graveyard with a night mist rising from a nearby marsh as you can get. And what else might be rising from that spooky marsh? A nuclear family that goes to a local church perhaps who send their kids to the local faith-based school? It’s enough to send Scooby jumping into the arms of Shaggy, (all in a very heterosexual way of course).

Now at this point in the blog post you might be saying “Perhaps you need to back off a minute!” But let me ask another question: At what point do right minded people start pushing back on this and say ‘Enough is enough’? If that’s actually the kind of material that global organisations not only permit in their boardrooms and training venues, then where next? How more would you need to dehumanise someone before a stop is put to it? And I know that Stonewall was begun for that very reason. Yet here we are some forty years later, and they drink the Kool Aid they claim to be protecting people from.

The ironies abound of course. Oxfam has just gone through a whole trainwreck of a process in which it was discovered that their staff in Haiti were using the money given by people around the world to fund the 2010 earthquake relief, to source prostitutes and pay for orgies. It clearly lacks the moral insight to figure out how to deal with this issue, even at the same time it’s asking the mums and grandmas who’ve been supporting its stores for years, to keep sending their hard earned pennies.

Stonewall of course, is taking no prisoners. Here’s how The Times of London reported their strategy at Oxfam:

Copies of the presentation were sent to staff who did not attend the meeting. A separate slideshow also sent out features a section entitled: “What pushback do we anticipate?” Responses include: “Media leak/hostile sharing”, “complaints from staff who feel their behaviour/beliefs are being policed” and “awkward questions from supporters, volunteers, etc.”

So the organisation knows it’s got issues. But if it can ensure that those who reject its ideology self-censor or are suffocated by the corporation’s fear and silence, then it will have won. The ghouls and werewolves can inhabit the office.

Thankfully newspapers such as The Times have actually started to push back. The Times is also the newspaper that went in with the hard questions around The Tavistock Centre, to the point that the government shut down the “affirming only” clinic and started an investigation.

But really, the cartoonesque approach to this issue shows that the Sexular Age is taking no prisoners. It’s got ideological zealotry baked into it, and that’s no surprise given the academic neo-Marxist framework from which it comes. Sure the cartoons are all full of colour and rainbows, but Stonewall’s view of the world is completely black and white, good and evil, ally or enemy. Yet somehow they’re going to bring the world together in peace and love. As with all Marxist ideologies, the only way to make such an omelette is to break a few more eggs than is necessary – just to make sure.

And Oxfam’s response to the pushback, not just from The Times, but from all around the UK? Read it at length:

“Tackling discrimination of all kinds is core to Oxfam’s mission of ending poverty. We know from our work around the world that discrimination — whether on the basis of race, gender and sexuality — is often a major obstacle in people’s efforts to build a better life for themselves. At heart, training shop staff about how best they can welcome people of different identities and our work fighting for women’s rights around the world are both about respecting people for who they are. We are proud of our work helping women make their voices heard everywhere from parliaments to peace processes and in working with communities to tackle domestic violence, to take just two examples. It is only when we respect and uphold all human rights that we can overcome poverty.”

In other words, blah, blah, blah…

How can you argue with such noble sentiments? Well it turns out you can, especially if you know that tyrants (the irony of Oxfam being the tyrant here), swamp people with fine-sounding words to obfuscate meaning, rather than reveal it. These are weasel words, empty slogans couched in motherhood and apple pie that no one can disagree with. Yet it’s sheer propaganda that when pushed out in mass volume is designed to drown out any critique of what is actually going on. You can say what you like about Oxfam, but wherever it went it seems to have picked up some handy lessons from the despots who make Oxfam’s core business (if it is their core business any longer), so necessary. How can Oxfam even begin to think about ending poverty on the doorsteps of others, when, after reading such cant, we realise that Oxfam is poorer, more naked, and more blind, than those it purports to help.

What’s even more scary is that somewhere in the Oxfam head offices some HR department types were sitting down with some diversity engagement types, poring over these cartoon grotesques and going “Hmm, yes, this looks the type of thing that will fly!”

I hear people say to me (and it’s usually from behind the back of the couch as they’re peering over it watching a particularly scary Scooby Doo scene), that this hard-edged trans ideology will burn itself out. No. No it won’t. It won’t burn itself out. It will be put out by brave firefighters such as JK Rowling, and several (female) journalists from The Times itself, who exposed what was going on at Tavistock.

I hope when the true monster is unmasked, and we see the frightening, yet still stonewalling, face behind the beautiful, coloured mask, that we can hear the words “And I woulda gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.”

At the end of the day, we’re either going to be Scooby Doo types, or the nervous nellies behind the couch watching the show, hoping that someone will turn up and sort it out. I know which one I’d rather be. There’s no mystery in it at all, just a lot of hard, thankless work. Are you up for it?