Author Archives: Zoe OConnell

Opinion: The Burchill controversy – a mixed blessing for the trans community

By Zoe OConnell | Tue 15th January 2013 - 12:44 pm

I have followed recent mainstream media events unfolding around the transgender community with a mixture of excitement, anxiety and sadness.

Excitement, because it is rare that trans issues get coverage that isn’t designed to portray us as perpetrators of some hideous evil. Even though the stories started with biased coverage in the Guardian about a doctor under investigation by the General Medical Council, it turned into something more positive when the #TransDocFail hashtag lead to LibDem Councillor Sarah Brown discussing the issue on BBC Radio. Even the continuation of bad reporting had a silver lining, when Julie Burchill’s

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged julie burchill, suzanne moore, transgender and transphobia | 2 Comments

Opinion: The Four Boxes – why the student occupation should be denounced

By Zoe OConnell | Sun 14th November 2010 - 2:05 pm

There is a rather American saying which runs along the lines of “We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury
box, and the ammo box. In that order”.

It becomes a good way of putting Wednesday’s violence in context, particularly for those that are trying to argue some similarity between the suffragette movement and student fees. That movement had no choice but to resort to violent occupation because the very thing its members were campaigning for was access to the ballot box.

But rather than the entire NUS executive distancing themselves …

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged higher education, nus, tuition fees and universities | 120 Comments