Godfrey Elfwick

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Portland, Oregon It was a bright April morning and the sun shone benevolent golden rays upon me as I strode purposefully up the steps to the door of a house in the London district of Islington. Pressing the Victorian brass doorbell, I heard the comforting chimes of Toto’s ‘Africa’ emanating from within and nodded my head in approval. After a few seconds the door was opened by a charming white-passing transracial man who called himself Babatunde (I later found out his birth parents had named him Rupert). He graciously invited me into a spacious studio apartment decorated with tribal carvings from Ikea’s African Solnedgång collection.

  Portland, Oregon Allow me to introduce myself. I am Godfrey Elfwick. I am a genderqueer Muslim atheist. I am also WrongSkin, which means I was born white but identify as black (West Indian to be precise). I came out on Twitter as transrace in January 2015. When Rachel Dolezal confirmed her WrongSkin status later that year, it was a great comfort to me to learn I was influencing others to be proud of their transethnic identities. I only wish this level of awareness had been around in 1990. It would have been so much easier for Vanilla Ice. Living with so many levels of minority status can be extremely difficult. As a biologically born white male who identifies as a black woman, I am constantly vilified.

In a devastating put down on Twitter yesterday, Hillary totally slayed like a kween when she responded to a tweet posted by the so-called ‘president’ Donald Trump. As you can see, Hillary beat Trump at the amount of likes her reply to him received by almost 11k! Admittedly after 23 hours, Trump's tweet had garnered more retweets, but seeing as Hillary’s was posted a full five hours AFTER his initial post and, he had the advantage of a head start. My prediction is that by this time tomorrow, Hillary will have bypassed Trump in both likes and retweets, and boy, will he have egg on his face…which for once would account for his orange complexion (because of the yolk, you see).

It’s the news every LGBTQ individual has been waiting for. The penguin community has finally openly embraced non-binary and genderqueer identities by allowing keepers at The Sea Life Centre in London to bring up a penguin baby as gender-neutral (presumably until they are old enough to decide themselves whether to go ahead with hormone treatment). I am tremendously excited at this news and will be monitoring the progress of the infant over the coming years. According to experts, pre-pubescent penguins are naturally gender-neutral. You could prove this by dressing a penguin who was assigned female at birth in a pink frilly dress, they will show their discomfort by violently flipping around in the water until the dress falls off.

'If the city was not going to help us clean up trash, well -- by golly -- we went out there with 170 volunteers. We cleaned up 12 tons of trash in 12 hours,' tweeted @ScottPresler this Wednesday. MAGA-worshipper Scott was referring to a cleanup he organized on Monday in West Baltimore, a place Trump had previously referred to as ‘rodent infested’. Scott and 170 volunteers cleared away trash, trimmed down plants in overgrown alleyways and swept the streets while updating their progress on his Twitter feed. When they had finished, the neighborhoods were clear of garbage for the first time in 11 years. What on Earth was he thinking? Is there anything more patronizing than a Trump supporter assuming poor people, (particularly poor people of color) need help in some way?

Refusing to wax a woman’s balls is transphobia at its most blatant… and yet here we are, in 2019, still disrespecting trans women’s rights by denying them a smooth nutsack. I’m referring of course to the recent publicity surrounding Jessica Yaniv, a stunning and brave trans woman who has filed complaints against more than a dozen female waxers with the Human Rights Council in British Columbia. And what is the justification these women have attempted to make in order to disguise their obvious bigotry?

For the past few days, people across all social media platforms have been gleefully posting images depicting an older version of themselves, using an app called ‘FaceApp’. This application uses AI technology to predict the aging process of an individual based on whatever image is loaded into it. This latest social media craze is problematic for many reasons. For one, white people posting photos of their aging faces only serves as a depressing reminder of how long many of them will live. It’s almost as if they are taunting us with the prospect of a future that will always be dominated by white privilege.

For the past three years my best friend Andromeda has been an inspiration to me. Xe moved into our student lodgings after xer’s student loan payment was delayed. We got on so well, I never asked xer to leave. Xe was always a tad distant and would often leave the flat for a few days without telling me where xe was going, but I never questioned xer because xe was a free spirit, and I suspected xe might be polyamorous and perhaps had several multigender relationships on the go.Andromeda was always very supportive of my transracial status and we’ve spent many an evening together feasting on rice and peas while smoking weed and listening to Vanilla Ice.

As a resident of the UK I knew very little of the Fourth of July until very recently when I read an article in Salon about it. For my fellow Brits, here’s a short summary of why the US celebrates Independence Day based on what I’ve learned from reading mainstream publications and watching a few historical movies...In the 1400s an Italian man named Columbo (no relation to Peter Falk) set out to discover America, but he ended up landing at The Bahamas instead and spent the next several years discovering its exotic beaches, aquariums, and bustling nightlife before dying of scurvy or something.

Like Kath Barbadoro, I am incandescent with rage that Louis C.K. is getting on with his life and continuing his career despite the fact he did things that were completely abhorrent, acknowledged them when called out, apologized for them, had a movie and several lucrative shows canceled and didn’t work for around eight months. None of this should let him off the hook. He should not be able to just return to a career he is good at. In her article, Kath writes: 'When he disappeared from the public eye, his defenders and fans wondered if his career was over. Then he began popping up on stages around New York City less than a year later.

On Thursday night in London, dozens of brave Greenpeace climate change activists infiltrated a posh dinner for toffs in order to draw attention to evil weather. Instead of listening to their howls of distress at the destruction of the planet, the political elite chose to carry on with their meal which I have no doubt included a plate of ‘Clubbed Baby Seal avec Strangled Fox Cub Tears’.

Yesterday a hero appeared in our midst. A valiant warrior armed only with a cold milk beverage. Not since the Normandy Landings have I seen such bravery against an impending Nazi invasion. Over here in the UK we have our own version of Donald Trump. His name is Nigel Farage. Like Trump he is a hideous Nazi, Hitler incarnate. A walking harbinger of xenophobic hatred, spewing fascism and racism. He is the cause of Britain’s pain and division. He was the one who decided that we should hold a referendum on whether to leave the glorious EU. It’s the mark of a typical fascist authoritarian to inflict democracy upon the ignorant masses. The result of that hateful vote has split our once tolerant and peaceful country in two.

Alyssa Milano is a Hollywood actress, singer and activist, perhaps best known for her roles in box-office hits such as Embrace of the Vampire, Dinotopia: Quest for the Ruby Sunstone, and Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2. On Saturday, Alyssa posted the following call to arms from her 3.5million follower Twitter account: https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/1127040792281767936 She was applauded and supported by the pro-choice movement, and by feminists and feminist allies from all over the media. On the face of it, you might think she was being incredibly brave and progressive. But let me tell you...

Over the past few hours I’ve been forced to endure the ignorance of regressive ‘logic’ on the television, in newspapers, magazines and across social media platforms: ‘Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have had a baby boy!’ If I went into detail about how many ways that sentence is incorrect, I’d need to write a novel the length of which would rival Tolstoy’s War and Peace. For the more progressive thinkers out there, no explanation is necessary and so this article is for you alone. Anyone who believes that men have penises and womyn have vaginas should close this browser window, leave their house, travel to the nearest coastal town and throw themselves into the sea.