Cackle cackle

 So here I sit, rubbing my hands in their tatty fingerless gloves, my cat hissing by the bubbling cauldron, and all the while cackling as my evil plan to transgenderify innocent youth takes shape. Another sweet-faced youngster appears in my crystal ball, his trusting eyes and placid demeanour signalling like a beacon that here is one who will be easy to corrupt, and, with a bound, I am on my broomstick and away to transform him into a girl ... hee hee hee! ha ha ha! cackle cackle - up away into the night where bats flap and owls hoot their complicit glee. And, as midnight chimes a new transgender emerges (...and scurries in high heels to the postbox and back!)

Well, as transphobes would have it, that's what I and all my trans friends do all the time. Because, you know, it's so easy to turn someone trans, you just pressurise them into it and then they're caught in a deliberately set trap of confusion and lies. Oh how wicked the transgender agenda is! 

Being wicked is fun! (Where's my pointy hat gone, though?)

 

But seriously, folks! Gimme a break! This age-old need for nasty people to find a target for their malice has now latched onto the trans community. It won't last and the public is actually more focused on rather more pressing matters, like how to pay the bills, and not get nuked. 

I guess the idea of witches is on my mind as we approach Halloween. There's a village not so far from where I live called Triora (pop. 369) where 'witches' were put on trial in the 1580s accused of having caused a famine. The priest asked his parishioners to denounce any wicked witches who might be bringing down the famine and eventually thirty women (and just one male, a boy) were imprisoned in local barns and cellars. An increasingly farcical series of trials with ever more senior magistrates ensued, especially as women of higher social status started to be implicated, resulting in the women - at least the ones who hadn't died of torture or suicide - being eventually taken to the capital, Genoa, where their fate is uncertain but it's more likely than not that they were quietly released, the local lynch-mob hysteria not being compatible with the rather better managed legal system of the capital and the more enlightened ideas of the High Renaissance. Modern scholarship suggests the food scarcity that brought about the accusations was probably caused by mismanagement of harvests and general meanness on the part of local landowners. Nevertheless, the witch trials have given this village a reputation rather like that which Salem, Massachusetts, got a century later. Triora is gearing up for its annual witch spectacular this weekend. Maybe I should go along and transform a few kids into transgender youth. Hey, it's the modern legend.

Triora today

 

If you are having some party time this Halloweentide, have fun. You're even allowed to crossdress and nobody minds. See, that's the wicked witches at work again!

Sue x