The Daily Telegraph - Saturday

Way of the World Michael Deacon

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Fran Itkoff, a 90-year-old woman from California, has volunteere­d for a multiple sclerosis charity for over 60 years. Last month, though, she was abruptly fired. Why?

According to Mrs Itkoff, it’s because she didn’t understand what “gender pronouns” were.

One day, she claims, a colleague at the National MS Society told her to add her pronouns to her emails – but she had no idea what the colleague was on about. When the colleague explained that she should add a signature reading “she/her” in order to be “inclusive”, Mrs Itkoff said she still didn’t understand. Shortly afterwards, she received an email, informing her that her services were no longer required.

Since this story came to light, the charity has been facing a furious backlash. In response, it has issued a statement saying Mrs Itkoff “was asked to step away from her role because of statements that were viewed as not aligning with our policy of inclusion [...]. As an organisati­on, we are in a continued conversati­on about assuring [sic] that our diversity, equity and inclusion policies evolve in service of our mission.”

How lovely to hear. To help that “conversati­on” along, here’s a little idea for the charity to consider.

If you want to be “inclusive”, don’t exclude 90-year-old women for the crime of failing to subscribe to the latest progressiv­e ideologica­l trends, especially when those trends have no clear relevance to the “mission”

(helping people with multiple sclerosis) you exist to pursue. Because, if you do exclude 90-year-old women – or, for that matter, anyone else – on this basis, people might think you’re actually not very “inclusive” after all. In fact, they might think you’re a pack of stuck-up bullies.

Just a thought.

Sir Bob Geldof is even angrier than normal. Just for One Day, a musical telling the story of Live Aid, recently opened in London. And, in a disparagin­g review, a critic from

The Guardian described it as “the apex of the white saviour complex”.

The use of this term “white saviour”, Sir Bob feels, is highly objectiona­ble. “It’s the greatest load of b------s ever,” he fumed in an interview on Thursday. “Are the only people allowed to react to an African famine black?”

Well, that does seem to be what the term “white saviour” implies. In which case, it’s a puzzling sort of criticism. Most people in Britain, I would imagine, think it was actually quite admirable that Bob Geldof and many other Western musicians took it upon themselves to raise millions of pounds to help save the lives of starving children in a land thousands of miles away. If the starving children felt patronised by these efforts, I don’t recall them saying so. And I don’t think I saw any footage of Ethiopians waving placards that read “WE DON’T WANT YOUR CHARITY” or “YOU KNOW WHERE YOU CAN STICK YOUR FREE FOOD, GELDOF”.

I wonder what The Guardian would have said if, when the Ethiopian famine began, Sir Bob had said: “Sorry, I’m not raising a single penny for these starving children – because they’re black. And no other white people should raise money for them, either. We should only help our fellow whites. That’s why I’m organising the biggest rock concert ever, to raise millions of pounds exclusivel­y for white causes. It will be called ‘White Aid’.”

Would The Guardian’s writers have applauded him for this noble rejection of white saviourism? I suppose we’ll never know.

Over the centuries, countless words in the English language have changed meaning – many of them in surprising ways. “Silly”, for example, used to mean lucky. “Nice”, meanwhile, used to mean foolish.

And “bully”, believe it or not, used to mean sweetheart.

Perhaps the most fascinatin­g example of all, though, is “subversive”. Once upon a time, “subversive” meant rebellious, radical, determined to overthrow the establishe­d order.

In 2024, by contrast, it means rigidly conformist.

At least, that’s the only conclusion I can draw from the breathless­ly gushing cover feature on Kristen Stewart, the former star of the Twilight films, in the latest issue of Rolling

Stone. Throughout the feature, the magazine’s interviewe­r is keen to impress upon us just how “subversive” the actress is. “By now,” we’re told,

“it’s pretty well-establishe­d that ‘subversive’ is Stewart’s thing.”

In the opinion of both interviewe­r and interviewe­e, this subversive­ness is perfectly illustrate­d by the photo shoot she did to adorn the magazine’s cover. Ms Stewart, explains the interviewe­r, “wants the cover image to send a clear message” – which is that she’s “flipping the gender script”.

Having seen the image in question, I find this a somewhat surprising claim. Because, as far as I can make out, it appears to be a photo of a slim, attractive, scantily clad young actress revealing her cleavage, flat midriff and naked thighs while putting a hand down her pants on the cover of a magazine that is read overwhelmi­ngly by heterosexu­al middle-aged men. Which I’m fairly sure has been “the gender script” ever since men’s magazines were invented.

If Ms Stewart wanted to “flip the gender script”, I would have suggested wearing, say, a big, baggy jumper. Underneath an even bigger coat.

Or at the very least, a pair of trousers.

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