The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest: The Stand Outs. Pt.2

A continuation of Part 1; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-2016-eurovision-song-contest-stand.html

Israel: This year they were represented by Hovi Star. Having provided the Hebrew voiceover for big Hollywood blockbuster animated movies such as "Frozen," "Inside Out," "The Lego Movie" and "Cinderella" this saw Israel dominate the animation trend.

The song "Made of Stars" seemed like a menacing reminder to Israel's prodominately Muslim Arab population that they will only ever be second class citizens in the Jewish state. As such Israel also dominated the immigration/integration theme by providing a prime example of how not to do it.

The Israelis then decided to start lapping everyone. Presumably because they got bored.

The video in support of the song featured dozens if not hundreds of small commercial drones. These are the type of things you can buy from any number of electronics/hobby shops or off websites like Amazon.

This type of drone has absolutely revolutionised the way people make television programs. Before if you wanted to include a grand aerial tracking shot in a program you would have to hire a camera equipped helicopter at a cost of around USD30,000 per hour. Nowadays you merely have to buy a small drone for USD2,000, mount a camera on it and you can use it over and over again for next to no cost.

As such through their use of drones Israel introduced an important talking point about the technical aspects of broadcasting that are important within the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) that stages the Song Contest.

As always when there is a new technology the widespread availability of drones has posed a lot of new questions for legislators about how to make sure they're used safely. The US has already introduced a registery of drones and their users while the UK Parliament along with many other European governments have established committees to examine the best way to regulate drone use.

In the background to Israel's semi-final and final performances there was a lot of discussion about whether the Israelis would be allowed to use their drones inside of the arena. As with Belarus' request to use live wolves the health & safety department said no. This led to another discussion about whether the effect the Israelis were going for could be technically recreated through the use of boom mounted or wire mounted cameras.

When it comes to Israelis and drone use they have something of a controversial reputation. This stems from their use of military drones to drop bombs on Palestinians.

Every time that happens - every two years or so normally - protesters immediately demand that governments stop selling weapons to Israel. In the case of the UK this is a particularly futile demand because due to their dominance in high-tech systems like drones and communications equipment Israel exports far more weapons to the UK than it imports from the UK.

One particularly unpleasent sounding military drone the Israelis have developed is the IAI "Harop." This is known as a Kamikaze drone because rather than dropping a bomb on its target and returning to base the Harop is the bomb. It's job is to fly into its target blowing it up. Although the guidance system is a lot more sophisticated this is not that different from the V1 Rockets Nazi Germany used towards the end of the Second World War.

The Harop recieved its first operational use in April 2016 when it was deployed by the armed forces of Azerbaijan against the armed forces of Armenia during the recent upsurge in fighting over the Nagorno-Karabkh Region (NKR).

I think a lot of lesser nations would have preferred to have glossed over this little detail and hoped no-one else brought it up. The Israelis though almost made it front and centre of their entry to raise the issue for discussion.

Hovi Star is male and proudly homosexual. A trained hairstylist an make-up artist he also seems to have quite a feminine demeanour to him. As such if you are new to Eurovision - i.e An American - you may have been tempted to suggest that maybe Hovi Star is transgendered. If you had the Israelis would have then proceeded to laugh in your face and make fun of you for knowing absolutely nothing about transgender rights.

Way back in 1999 Israel won the Song Contest with the post-transition female singer Dana International. As they went on to host the contest in 2000 this led to them spending more than a year fielding questions about transgenderism and transgender rights. Dana International was Israel's representative at the Song Contest in 2004. The week after this year's Song Contest Israel held the "Miss Trans-Israel Pageant" for post-transition Transgender women. It was won by Talleen Abu Hanna - a Catholic Israeli Arab.

As such I think it is fair to assume that there is very little that Israel doesn't know about trangenderism and transgender rights. In fact they seem to be getting a bit bored of it all.

What the Israelis will likely tell you is that there are just two genders; Male and Female.

However in much the same way you get babies born with only one lung rather than two or a hole in their heart sometimes you get babies born who are neither distinctly female nor male. Some of these babies are born with both sets of genitals and are known as hemaphrodites. In others the lack of a distinct gender is less obvious.

By definition these transgendered people are neither hetrosexual nor homosexual. Instead they are forced to adopt the gender the feel most comfortable with and try to live their lives accordingly. Although as with homosexuality I want to avoid over medicalising it being transgender is technically a form of developmental disability presenting all the obstacles that come with living with a disability. As such transgendered people do need special protection and support as they live their lives.

Transgenderism isn't even a particularly new phenomenom. The Indian sex manual Kama Sutra actually has an entire section dedicated to sexual relationships with transgendered people. That was written way back in 400BC, some 2,400 years ago. Therefore transgenderism is actually something so old we seem to have forgotten about it amid the mists of time.

Transgenderism however is extremely rare. Even the most liberal studies place instances of transgenderism in the general population at less than 0.03%.

However in the early part of this year a number of US universities including the formally prestigious Yale published a guide to the nine different genders it now recognises.

To use the correct medical and scientific terminology this is; "B*llocks. Utter F*cking B*llocks."

The problem seems to stem from the fact that growing up gay is difficult. Although it is more prevelent than transgenderism homosexuality only occurs in about 1 to 3% of the population. However as with all statisical averages this does not mean that 1 in every 100 people is gay. In fact it is entirely possible for a school to have only one or absolutely no gay students.

Being that one in a thousand can be extremely isolating. Particularly during puberty when all of your peers are obsessed with chasing girls or being chased by boys.

As such young gay people are forced to establish their own identity rather than going with the flow of what everybody else is doing. This is compounded by the fact that very often young gay people choose to leave their home towns to live in areas where there is a higher gay population.

As with students going away to university moving to a new town also forces to reinvent your identity. Whilst doing this is becomes all too easy to over analyse your personality traits.

So for example if you are a girl who likes having sex with girls you might get to thinking that you're a bit of a boy. After all it's boys who traditionally have sex with girls. Likewise if you are a boy who is camp and a bit flamboyant you might get to thinking that you're a bit of a girl. After all it's traditionally girls who are obsessed with fashion and crying over nonsense.

However having personality traits that do not correspond with traditional gender roles is not the same thing as being transgendered. Nor is it an excuse for not having much of a personality.

This brings me onto the gender-neutral bathrooms debate that the US has become obsessed with of late. As far as I tell this has absolutely nothing to do with either transgenderism or transgender rights.

Instead you've got the gay-rights-for-gays mob. Having achieved marriage equality these sad and lonely people have committed themselves to turning every bathroom in the nation gender neutral. That is because in gay clubs and bars you have gender neutral bathrooms. After all forcing gay men to go into the bathroom with gay women rather than lots of gay men makes the whole process distinctly less sleazy.

However you've got the other 97% of the population for whom the current gender segregated bathrooms work just fine and something the trade union movement have actually battled for over many years. Plus there is a bit of a public safety issue because what might be appropriate for an over-21's gay bar is less appropriate for the bathroom in a toy store.

As for the genuinely transgendered it strikes me as something of a moot point. Due to it being so rare it is extremely unlikely that your average American will meet a transgendered person at any point in their lives. Let alone when they're using the bathroom.

Also a genuinely transgendered person would have gone through decades of psychological screening to confirm their transgendered status followed by years of expensive and painful surgery. As in the fleeting privacy of a trip to the bathroom its unlikely that anyone else will notice that they're transgendered. Let alone challenge them.

As for the people who use terms like; "Non-binary Gender" or "Pangender" I think that societal pressure plays an important role in forcing them to grow up and get on with it.

So by laying this transgender trap the Israelis were preparing to have a big old laugh at US President Obama's expense.

Obama then proceeded to walk straight into that trap by declaring that he was going to sue a number of US states over gender-neutral bathrooms during Eurovision in an effort to Pinkwash his reputation amongst the Song Contest crowd.

Intrestingly France also appears to have fallen into the trap.

The video for their song "J'ai Cherche" featured a boy learning ballet and a girl learning Taekwondo is a reversal of traditional gender roles. Although male ballet dancers can play very masculine roles the boy in the French video was shown very feminely apply make-up in front of a mirror. The implication being that he was transgendered.

Invoking the astronomical theme of Made of Stars the French song featured lyrics such as; "Split into two hemispheres // Like a mistake of the universe" which seemed to allude to terms like non-binary gender.

After all as anyone whose crossed the equator knows the division of the earth into hemispheres is far from binary.

20:35 on 6/6/16 (UK date) spellcheck pending.