AS THE UK re-aligns itself with EU food regulations (like 2016 never happened) marmalade is being relabelled. Marmalade to the Spanish and Italians can come from plums or figs and now the OG variety has to be relabelled citrus marmalade.
Despite demands for calm and mollifying reassurances given out that marmalade – as we know it – won’t change, there has been alarm and raised eyebrows. But with Keir at the helm, Britain will face up to the real threat of ending up with fig jam on our toast! And for once all sides, regardless of political colours, agree on the unacceptable risk level of changing the meaning and labelling of marmalade…
But we should not and will not waver from the deeper moral principle at play here – inclusion.
Inclusion of all fruits (which is a Very Good Thing) matters Vs exclusion of some fruits (a Very Bad Thing). And like most changes our recipes of life we need to understand the historical context.
Empathy and support for excluded vegetables has form. Any doubters can be easily silenced by taking them back to a dark exclusionary era of the 1980s. The Birds Eye Country Club advert (soon banned) depicted a horrific scene where entry was given only to beautiful peas but denied to imperfect peas, who stood outside crying. It was haunting and traumatising, but maybe the nation forgot.
Inclusion followed. A coincidence? I think not.
Young children who watched these practices have now grown and sworn ‘Never Again’. Now we try not to leave anyone behind. Not even full fat peas, be they processed or mushy. And we need a few language changes to show it.
Where marmalade needs clarity so too did ‘women’. Women are usually happy to share and so they are told not to mind if they too are relabelled. Now they are ciswomen (born female) so that transwomen (not born female) can get under the ‘woman’ umbrella.
Exclusion, it’s hoped, is over. Inclusion is working. Anyone who disagrees should be silenced through bullying threats and removed. Left outside in the cold. Called uggos. Not welcome. Oh wait.
Inclusion of plums and figs in marmalade? Quite right – remember, after all, that oranges are not the only fruit. But what if the lines get pushed out further to include, say, a carrot who wants to be a fig? And if that carrot demanded that transfigs are figs? And cisfigs should shush? What a ghastly sticky mess that would make.
