The tiger in high heels gender wars and political image making
This is the introduction, the full article with images was first published in The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper on November 25th 2024, which forms part 2 of Soldier Monika published the week before:
https://theprisma.co.uk/2024/11/25/the-tiger-in-high-heels-gender-wars-and-political-image-making/
Following the therapeutic benefits from making the film, Monika discovers that the outside world is riddled with double standards, even within minority groups. Her constant search for acceptance in political groups is moderated and she achieves a clearer vision of the world and its shortcomings: “Better be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not”.
Graham Douglas
Taking part in making the film as herself was a challenging process, but it had a therapeutic effect that allowed Monika to have an open conversation with her mother and to relate to people she knew in right-wing groups without an inner need to feel loved by them.
Ideological purity proved a standard she refused to conform to. She was famous both in Queer circles and among right-wing anti-Covid Vax activists for her books. She is now over 50, yet her teenage history with hooligan groups proved dangerous when it was discovered at an LGBTQ+ centre where she used to give readings from her books. She was told not to return.
She had made serious social contributions in her fight to change the law on gender changes, but this was only appreciated by a minority on the Left; this time she was ‘too individualist’ politically to be accepted as authentic, and again the hooligan phase was resurrected.
And in the Army, proud of its newly minted openness to Gays and Trans people, when she declared herself Trans she was moved away from the ranks to a desk job.
So much hypocrisy coming from the unrecognized fear of difference, even among minority groups, shines a light on the pain suffered still after the personal changes she has gone through on her journey of self-acceptance. Images are often preferred to dealing with reality and its contradictions