A few weeks ago, my friend Chris made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. His comedy troupe, Improv Killed My Dog, were going to parody the trailer for the new film Yesterday. Did I fancy doing the music?
I did.
In the original, the hero wakes up one day and is the only person who still remembers The Beatles. In this version, the band is… you’ll find out.
I had so much fun doing this. Partly because it’s a cool challenge to recreate the sound of another band, but mainly because I kept bursting out laughing at Chris’s spot-on impressions of the singer.
I’ve written before about what appears to be a failure of basic journalism standards at The Times and Sunday Times under editor John Witherow. A new report suggests it’s even worse.
The report has the rather unwieldy title Andrew Norfolk, The Times Newspaper and Anti-Muslim Reporting – A Case To Answer, and it makes some very serious allegations. According to the campaign group Hacked Off, the detailed report describes a pattern of anti-Muslim reporting that looks distinctly malicious and which the toothless press “regulator” IPSO is both unable and unwilling to act upon despite clear breaches of journalistic standards.
That pattern is obvious in its reporting of trans issues too. The Times and Sunday Times are obsessed with trans people, running more than 300 anti-trans articles in a 365-day period. As with anti-muslim reporting and opinion, the coverage is careful to attack organisations and vaguely defined groups – activists, the trans lobby and so on – rather than individuals so that Clause 12 of the editors’ code doesn’t apply.
Clause 12 ostensibly covers discriminatory reporting, but only if it’s directed at identified individuals – although even if newspapers do attack specific individuals  IPSO can usually be relied on to take the newspapers’ side. IPSO usually takes an interesting view of Clause 1, accuracy, too: it’s repeatedly said that false claims don’t count as inaccurate because the writer really believed they were true.
Witherow seems to have done his best to try to make it appear as if O’Donnell’s barrister, Robin White, was a silly woman who just didn’t understand how journalism worked. However, what emerged under her admirably rigorous questioning was an all too clear picture of editorial standards at The Times, one which surely goes some way to explaining both why Norfolk’s articles were thought fit for publication in the first place and why the paper has resolutely refused to acknowledge their manifest shortcomings.
As Petley points out, the viciously anti-trans columnist Janice Turner has form with anti-muslim and anti-islam columns too, and Witherow’s claim that he knows nothing about her is clearly untrue.
One of the columnists cited by White was Janice Turner, whose many negative articles about trans people (sample headlines: ‘Children Sacrificed to Appease Trans Lobby’ and ‘Trans Ideologists Are Spreading Cod Science’) have caused widespread fury in LGBT circles. Given that she is not simply one of the paper’s leading columnists, but a particularly notorious one, who has also come under fire for her comments about Muslims and Islam, Witherow’s claim that ‘I don’t know anything about her’ simply beggars belief.
Petley doesn’t pull his punches.
It may seem a long way from articles about Muslims to articles about trans people, but both reveal the same things about the state of journalism at The Times, and, by extension, across much of the mainstream national press: the routine demonising of minority groups, with little apparent concern for the consequences; a cavalier attitude towards accuracy and truthfulness – particularly important journalistic qualities when the subjects in question are as sensitive and controversial as these; and an arrogant and dismissive stance towards any form of criticism, entailing a concomitant refusal to acknowledge any sense of journalistic accountability or responsibility.
I mentioned the gap between firms’ embrace of the Pride rainbow and their actual actions the other day. Here’s a great example.
I was in a minor car crash on Friday, and over the weekend various companies – my insurer, the repairer and the car hire firm that’s sorting out the courtesy car – all phoned me. Each one of them had the same details, Ms Carrie Marshall, and every single one of them called me sir, mister, mate and man throughout the phone calls.
Today I went to pick up the courtesy car, presenting fully female, and admired the Pride lanyards worn by all the staff.
All the staff including the guy who took me to the car while variously calling me sir, mister and man.
I’m not hugely bothered by this (although obviously I’m a little bit bothered or I wouldn’t be blogging about it) because it’s very common. All too often, sir/madaming happens based on what I sound like, even when the paperwork and my actual physical presentation tell a different story.
But it does illustrate the problem with Pride marketing. If the rainbow isn’t reflected in the interactions between your staff and LGBT+ customers, it’s meaningless.
The photo above was shared on social media yesterday; it’s from the Spice Girls gig in Manchester. Apparently there were similar scenes at last night’s Pink concert in Glasgow, where not one but two security guards were posted outside the gents to stop women from using the cubicles.
SNP MSP Joan McAlpine spent much of it indulging in the “legitimate debate” she’s so fond of by circulating faked tweets in order to create a social media pile-on against a trans ally and human rights campaigner.
At the actual event some anti-trans activists came along to shout their “reasonable concerns” at the marchers.
…I heard shouting, and I looked to the corner to see who that was. I’m used to being shouted at by the fringe Christians, so I looked over to see if it was them (again).
It wasn’t. It was a small group of white, ostensibly middle class cis women screaming hate at us. At Pride – an event that was initially a response to police brutality against mostly black trans women.
…I’m a cis lesbian, and because of this sort of behaviour, I am scared to go the public bathrooms much of the time.
I am routinely challenged when trying to go to the toilet and I am anxious every time I walk into the women’s changing room at the gym.
I was once followed into the toilet in a pub in Cowdenbeath by a man who tried to kick the door down and attack me because, y’know, women’s safety.
That was the most serious attack, but it was by no means an isolated incident. The attack by the anti-trans protesters yesterday was part of that continuum of violence.
No trans woman has ever made me feel unsafe. They have always respected my boundaries and my dignity.
These people yesterday made Pride an unsafe place for women like me, and for my trans pals and allies.
The piece is based on a single study, albeit one that draws on multiple others and widely accepted social phenomena. The short version is that trans people get shot by both sides.
transgender individuals can be perceived as simultaneously transgressing the gender norms of BOTH binary genders. For example, a trans woman (i.e., someone assigned male at birth who now identifies as a woman) is transgressing male norms by identifying as a woman, but also may be seen as transgressing the norms of being a woman by not appearing feminine enough. Indeed, other research has found that transgender women are particularly at risk for prejudice and violence due to society’s general tendency to police femininity and to punish transgressions of misplaced femininity.
That’s something you see a lot of in anti-trans faux-feminist circles, where trans women are simultaneously mocked for not measuring up to standards of stereotypical femininity and condemned for trying to measure up to standards of stereotypical femininity.
I thought this bit was interesting: for some people, the most threatening trans people aren’t the genderqueer ones or those who look visibly trans. What makes them upset and angry are the people who “pass”, who appear to be the gender they are rather than the one they were assigned at birth.
if you yourself are a man and hinge a great deal of your identity on being a man, what does this piece of your identity really mean if someone born female can ‘pass’ as being just “as much of a man†as you?
Thus, the more an individual strongly believes in the gender binary, the more threatening transgender individuals (especially those who ‘pass’) are to that individual’s own personal identity as either a man or a woman.
The article gives an example.
imagine that you are a police officer and that being a police officer is central to your identity. Then imagine that the category of a police officer was replaced with “Security Professional,†and that this new category would include police officers, security guards, and installers of home security systems. This experience would trigger high levels of distinctiveness threat in police officers whose identities were highly enmeshed with being a police officer… with nothing left to distinguish them from a mall cop or a summer student installing home security systems.
Not a perfect comparison, I know: it’s more like expanding the category to include “police officers who don’t have exactly the same background as you” rather than less qualified people. But you get the point.
It’s awfully reminiscent of some of the pushback against equal marriage: I’ve heard many people claim that “if gay and lesbian people can marry, that somehow makes marriage worth less.” It doesn’t, unless you believe that being married makes you better than people who aren’t and that letting others marry makes you less special. And if that’s the case, it says a lot more about you than it does about gay or lesbian people – especially if you’re driven to oppose, vote against or campaign against giving the same rights to those people.
Today, the Scottish Government and the SNP effectively threw trans people under the bus. After a lengthy public consultation that found the general public and women’s groups overwhelmingly in favour of its proposals for gender recognition reform, the next step is… to water down the proposals and have another consultation and maybe water them down some more.
It’s a terrible decision: the Government has capitulated to the bigots, ignoring the results of its own consultation. It has backtracked from its manifesto commitment to bring gender recognition in line with best practice to proposing a minor tweak to the current system, reducing the recognition criteria from two years to either six or nine months (six months living full time plus a three month waiting period, or three and three; it’s unclear at the moment) – something that bears no relation to international best practice.
I’m not going to dwell on it, on the affirming message it sends to the bigots or on the inevitable uptick in anti-trans abuse it’s going to engender. Instead, I’ll tell you a story.
Every year a man, a religious man, stands at the entrance to Glasgow’s Pride event. Through his microphone he shouts fire and brimstone, punishment and damnation. And every year the crowd of beautiful LGBT+ people, of families and of allies grows larger, and louder, and more vibrant, and more diverse, and more beautiful. Few notice him. Even fewer care.
So let the bigots shout. Let them shout until their eyes pop and their throats rip and their lungs burst. Let them shout at clouds and at crowds and at a world that’s leaving them far behind.
All they have is hate.
We have love.
And love will win.
The love my friends and family have for me, and that I have for them, does not require a certificate.
Music fans of a certain age will recognise the name of Ian Penman, one of the best writers ever to work for NME (the NME of its glory days, not the shallow lifestyle brand of today). Here, the London Review of Books gets him to review two biographies of Prince. It’s an incredible article about an equally incredible story.
Even here, he glows distantly like a quasar; it’s hard to make out the lineaments of a true inner life. There is a hummingbird effect: he keeps so busy you can’t see through the blur to make any sense of why he behaves in the ways he does, or makes the decisions he does. A workaholic who writes endless songs about how much he just hangs out. A perfectionist who releases way too much sub-standard work.
It’s funny how privilege tends to make people lucky.
Game designer Owen Goss injects a healthy dose of reality into the “if I can do it, you can too!” school of careers advice. As he points out, privilege and luck have a huge role to play.
Indie games are a hard thing to make a living at. And yes, I’ve worked very hard to keep doing what I do, but so have the myriad of other indies who haven’t been as lucky and weren’t able to keep doing it full-time. I know how lucky and privileged I’ve been, and I’m very grateful.
It’s the same in my line of work. I got into tech journalism by accident: the right idea to the right person in the right mood at the right time. I got into broadcasting by being in the right place at the right time; into copywriting because I knew the right people, and so on.
We like to kid ourselves that we’re where we are by virtue of our God-given talent and our work ethic, but a lot of it’s just luck.
And the more privileged you are, the luckier you tend to be.
I’ve written about privilege before. It’s the advantage you have in life from not being something: not being a woman, not being black, not being poor, not being LGBT+ and so on. It doesn’t necessarily mean that your life is great; just that those particular factors – your gender, your colour, your class, etc – don’t make it worse.
And I’m enormously privileged. I’m reasonably well educated. I had parental support when I was starting off, and when I hit financial problems that would otherwise have forced me into a different line of work. I haven’t been taken less seriously or harassed because of my gender, refused opportunities because of my colour, discriminated against because of my sexuality, unable to take advantage of educational opportunities because of my parents’ income. Nobody was able to discriminate me because of my gender identity because I didn’t come out as trans until I already had a career.
Privilege is the secret of many people’s success. There was a hilarious example of it yesterday, someone who’d paid off a huge pile of debt: “If I can do it, anyone can!”
The article detailed how the person’s parents bought them a flat which they rented out while living with their parents, using the rental income to drive down the debt.
“If I can do it, anyone whose parents buy them a house and let them live rent-free while they rent it out can!” is slightly less inspirational.
It’s the same in work. “If I can do it, anyone can!” often turns out to rely on a whole network of privilege and tons of luck. And even if you do get in, there are still factors affecting you that might not affect others, factors that can prevent you from building a career in that sector.
One of the biggest ones is money. Some sectors simply don’t pay enough for people to make a full time living from them.
Let’s take my official line of work as an example. I’m a freelance tech journalist, but actual tech journalism is a very small part of what I do now.
That’s because you can’t make a living from it any more.
The rates I’m being offered now are at best 1/3 lower than they were when I started 20 years ago; the length of articles being commissioned has been cut by 2/3. The time involved is unchanged.
When I started off in tech writing in 1998, you’d write a 3,000 word article and be paid somewhere in the region of £420 for it. Now the article, which requires the same amount of work, is £120. You’re often working for well below minimum wage.
And of course the world is a bit more expensive than it was in 1998. Back then the average UK house price was £65,221. Today it’s £226,798. Rents have soared similarly. The average annual gas bill in 1998 was £331 and electricity £388; now they’re £564 and £552. Petrol was 60p a litre; now it’s nudging £1.30.
When I started as a tech freelancer, you could make a living doing it. Now, you mostly can’t. Wages are so low that it’s something you need to do as an add-on to your main career, which in my case is a mix of commercial writing, book publishing, broadcasting and the odd bit of talking. Some of my peers moved sideways into education or PR.
Not everybody has those options.
Again, I’ve benefited from luck. Luck to have got into freelance tech journalism when it could still pay the rent. Luck to have found alternative forms of work before the money started to dry up. Luck to have the particular mix of skills and experience and contacts that gets you hired for copywriting gigs.
This isn’t a whinge. I’m lucky and privileged. And that’s my point.
I think we’re doing younger people a disservice if we don’t admit the power of privilege and luck in our narratives. If we perpetuate the idea that you can do anything if you just try hard enough, we’re ignoring the many factors that hear you say “Yes I can!” and reply “No, you can’t.”
Look at it in wider society, not just my line of work. We’re ignoring the structural factors that affect women and people of colour, the lack of representation, the discrimination and harassment, the old boys network, the problem of low wages and all the other factors that mean other people can’t simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Many of those factors can be challenged and changed, but they won’t be if we pretend they don’t exist.
Many of us, me included, are guilty of thinking the playing field is level because it worked for us. And that means all too often, when we say “I did it and you can too!” what we really say is “I’m okay! Screw you!”
