Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

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Author: Carrie

  • This is where your debate leads

    In response to Transgender Day of Visibility yesterday, I saw multiple social media threads hijacked by cisgender straight man, many of whom demanded to know why we needed transgender visibility day but not straight pride days. They demanded to know: what rights don’t trans people have?

    How about the right to live free from abuse and violence?

    This happened yesterday, while grown men were posting vomit emoji in response to transgender day of visibility posts.

    In Essex, a transgender teenager was verbally abused by three teenage boys, who slashed the teenager’s face. The victim was treated in hospital for their injuries.

    This is what dehumanising LGBT people leads to: a frightened kid surrounded, abused and slashed on a Sunday afternoon.

     

  • “Let it all burn down”

    In an extract from his upcoming book Ruined By Design, Mike Monteiro explains the problem with social media and how it ruined the early promise of the internet.

    The people who built Twitter (and other services) were a bunch of young men. This is important.

    More accurately, they were a bunch of white guys. Those white guys, and I’ll keep giving them the benefit of the doubt and say they did it with the best of intentions, designed the foundation of a platform that would later collapse under the weight of harassment, abuse, death threats, rape threats, doxxing, and the eventual takeover of the alt-right and their racist idiot pumpkin king.

    Women are woefully under-represented in the tech sector; ethnic minorities and LGBT people are barely on the radar. So straight white guys build systems that enabled such horrors because as cisgender straight white guys, they haven’t experienced the things that women and minorities experience in life and online.

    Incidentally, nobody is saying there’s anything wrong with being a cisgender straight white guy. That’s not what Monteiro is saying, and it’s not what I’m saying. The point here is that people build stuff based on what they know.

    Monteiro:

    All the white boys in the room, even with the best of intentions, will only ever know what it’s like to make make decisions as a white boy. They will only ever have the experiences of white boys. This is true of anyone. You will design things that fit within your own experiences. Even those that attempt to look outside their own experiences will only ever know what questions to ask based on that experience. Even those doing good research can only ask questions they think to ask. In short, even the most well-meaning white boys don’t know what they don’t know. That’s before we even deal with the ones that aren’t well-meaning. (I see you, Travis.)

    You don’t ask “could this be used maliciously by abusive exes?” if you haven’t fled an abusive ex. You don’t ask “could this be used to target gay people?” if you haven’t been targeted as a gay person. And so on.

    Twitter never built in a way to deal with harassment because none of the people designing it had ever been harassed, so it didn’t come up. Twitter didn’t build in a way to deal with threats because none of the people designing it had ever gotten a death threat. It didn’t come up. Twitter didn’t build in a way to deal with stalking because no one on the team had ever been stalked. It didn’t come up.

    This is one of the key problems with the internet as it is today: it’s been largely built by and for cisgender straight white guys. So for example Facebook enforces a real-name system that bans pseudonyms because cisgender straight white guys don’t need to hide their identities – but women fleeing abusive exes and LGBT people often do. Again and again we see platforms used maliciously because the people who built those platforms didn’t imagine such abuse, and don’t seem too keen on policing it either.

    Technology is often portrayed as an unalloyed good, disrupting moribund industries and giving power to the people. But all too often it gives power to the wrong people: the oppressors, not the oppressed.

    We designed and built platforms that undermined democracy across the world. We designed and built technology that is used to round up immigrants and refugees and put them in cages. We designed and built platforms that young, stupid, hateful men use to demean and shame women. We designed and built an entire industry that exploits the poor in order to make old rich men even richer.

    One of the most telling signs that something is very wrong with social media is the flood of tech firm media founders and executives who won’t let their own children go online much, or at all. As Monteiro says:

    When we refuse to let our own children use the fruits of our labor while still cashing the checks we’re earning by addicting other people’s children — all the while rending our garments over “what’s happening to kids today!” — we need to burn all our work down.
    Nothing is happening to the children. We are doing something to the children. Let it all burn down, and let those that come after us sift through the ashes to learn from our mistakes.

  • Two days today

    It’s Mother’s Day today (hi mum!), and it’s also international transgender day of visibility. The former is a celebration of mums; the latter, a celebration of their sons and daughters. I know Mother’s Day can be hard for some women, cisgender or transgender: not everybody who desperately wants to be a mum can be one, and of the people who are parents not everyone gets to spend today with their children. I hope that if you’re one of the people who finds today difficult you find a way to be good to yourself today.

    International transgender day of visibility is about raising awareness. It’s about reminding people that we are sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers. We are your friends, your colleagues, your next door neighbours. And it’s also about raising awareness of the discrimination and intolerance transgender people still face; intolerance that may well be in the pages of the newspapers you read today.

    This, from BBC’s The Social, is wonderful.

  • Playing with fire

    This is from BBC Question Time this week: the question was pre-vetted, selected for broadcast and posted on social media to get publicity for the show.

    Is it morally right for the nation’s broadcaster to imply that “LGBT issues” may be immoral?

    If you don’t have your thesaurus handy, here are some synonyms for immoral: Wicked. Evil. Depraved. Vile. Villainous. Degenerate. Perverted.

    Whether by accident or design, this is letting a handful of religious extremists set the terms of discussion (and it really is a handful: while this is being reported in the papers as muslims being intolerant, over in Germany every single muslim MP voted for equal marriage this week; in the UK in the same week, a whole bunch of Christian MPs voted against teaching inclusive sex and relationship education).

    It’s suggesting that there’s something inherently shameful about discussion of LGBT people, that children have to be protected from the very notion. The use of the word “exposed” in much of the so-called debate is telling, because there’s no positive connotation to the word. You’re exposed to unpleasantness, to sickness, to perversion. Nobody talks about people being exposed to family values.

    A reminder: you can’t catch being gay, or trans. If social attitudes could influence sexuality or gender identity there would be no gay or trans people. The only difference social attitudes make is to whether people feel it’s safe to be themselves.

    Another reminder: every school will have LGBT pupils and parents, and probably teachers too.

    This isn’t about an informed debate. It’s about a small bunch of intolerant yahoos trying to drag other people’s children back to the Stone Age. Some people out there think the world is flat, but we don’t have debates on whether we should stop exposing children to the fact that the Earth is a sphere.

    To adopt the position of bigots once would seem careless. To do it again and again… here’s Woman’s Hour.

    This tweet demonstrates another too-common occurrence: the so-called debate is about LGBT people and without LGBT people. That’s like running a piece on racism and only featuring the voices of white people (which happens a lot too). Woman’s Hour has been doing this for a couple of years now with trans people.

    Here’s the Today programme, also on Radio 4.

    We put the hateful Section 28 legislation to bed just under two decades ago, but thanks to right-wing fundamentalists and social media rabble-rousers there’s a concerted attempt to re-open a “debate” that was settled a long time ago: LGBT rights are human rights.

    I’m not the only person who thinks this. The BBC’s own journalists are appalled.

    BBC Breakfast presenter Ben Thompson said he had concerns with the phrasing of the question: “LGBT ‘issues’? Like what? That we exist? One of them, RIGHT HERE, is on your TV every morning … Would you ask if it’s ‘morally right’ to learn about gender/race/religion/disability ‘issues’?”

    BBC News senior foreign producer Tony Brown added: “Replace LGBT with black or Jewish and this question would never have been asked on national TV.”

    One on-screen BBC journalist said there was growing concern among the corporation’s LGBT employees about how the BBC debates such issues: “We are supposed to set things in context – but that doesn’t mean accepting a position that is wrong, or failing to call it out as offensive. We wouldn’t ask ‘Is terrorism morally justified?’

    “I look at the care we take over our other reporting and this leaves me totally confused. We are meant to educate as well as inform.”

    There is something deeply wrong in that part of the BBC: it’s the same thinking that invites neo-Nazi group Generation Identity on to discuss the Christchurch massacre, the same thinking that enables former EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, to portray himself as a free speech martyr instead of a vicious, hateful racist. Not all views are equal. We don’t invite the KKK on to talk about racism. Or at least, we don’t just yet.

    It strikes me that a big part of the problem is that the people making the decisions don’t have to live with the consequences. If, say, Jenni Murray pontificates on whether trans people are human, she isn’t going to suffer from the increase in hate crime that we’ve seen since mainstream media started echoing anti-trans bigots’ talking points. If Newsnight features former EDL people fanning hatred, their producers don’t need to worry about getting their heads kicked in on the way home. This applies to other media, of course, but the BBC is the organisation that sets much of the news agenda and frames much of mainstream political debate.

    Writing in The Guardian today, Owen Jones puts it very well:

    too many of those working in the British press act as hatemongers who play with matches then express horror as the flames reach ever higher

  • Me and my shadow

    Me after another successful electrolysis session.

    Every week, I pay around £150 to lie on a table for two hours and have a procession of heated, electric needles jabbed into my skin. I’ve been doing it for about eight months now, and I’ve got at least another eight months to go.

    Electrolysis permanently removes facial hair, but for me it’s exceptionally painful even after applying anaesthetic cream and munching co-codamol tablets: for financial reasons last week I scheduled four sessions in a week instead of my usual one, and by the end of the third session I was writhing on the table, weeping and asking the technician to stop.

    I hate electrolysis and dread every session, but it’s a necessary evil. The world isn’t kind to bearded ladies, to people who don’t fit a gender binary; if like me you’re clearly trans rather than cisgender, you might feel that anything you can do to minimise unwanted attention is worthwhile for the sake of your mental and physical health.

    Here’s Lucy Diavolo, writing in Them.us:

    I’ve found that there is no correct color of lipstick that will make people stop seeing me as a man in a dress. Whether it’s the stubble on my cardboard box of a jaw, my big hands with hair between each knuckle, or the way my shoulders test the limits of my clothes, something always gives me away. And despite my best efforts at invisibility — wearing a healthy coat of foundation and bra pads that would make a 13-year-old embarrassed for me — I have always been painfully attuned to passersby who can’t accept what I’m serving at face value; who are clearly trying to figure out what they’re looking at, not who.

    That’s something I can really relate to: being seen as a thing, not a person. But where Diavolo lives, it’s more than just a look.

    Strangers ask me if I’m a dude. They make lewd comments about me on the street and online. I once heard a stranger loudly tell his friend that I was his “favorite kind of boy in prison.” All of these comments mean the world I walk through is littered with eggshells, and my only hope of not stepping on them with bare feet is to somehow fly like a bird.

    Trans women are regularly and loudly criticised by anti-trans activists for supposedly perpetuating feminine stereotypes (but also for not living up to feminine stereotypes – it’s as if they just don’t like trans women!). But for many of us, the stereotypes aren’t just about personal expression. They’re about survival.

    If the world around us didn’t single people out for not conforming to the stereotypes, we wouldn’t try so damn hard to live up to them.

    I hate electrolysis. I hate trying to change my voice. I hate feeling that in the days running up to electrolysis, when I can’t shave, I have to present as a gender I don’t feel comfortable in. But these things are necessary in a world that doesn’t like people who aren’t one thing or the other, that looks at us as things rather than people, that feels it’s okay for complete strangers to get in our faces and destroy our days. The closer we cleave to either gender binary, the more chance we have of strangers leaving us the hell alone.

    Diavolo:

    As much as I never want to be clocked as trans again, I’m far too proud of who I am to give up because I can’t achieve full stealth. I’ve seen too many people spend decades in hiding only to lose the families, careers, and lives they built when they decided to finally come out.

    Again, I can relate. I’m proud of who I am – but unlike Diavolo I can’t wear my transness as a badge of pride just yet; I can’t proudly flout gender norms and say to the world: “I am the gender ideologue the pope has warned you about and the burden the president can’t abide.” I’m just trying to make it through the days, and right now that’s hard enough.

  • “It seems you have been leading two lives, Mr Anderson.”

    The Matrix, a fun if daft bit of sci-fi, is 20. Lots of publications are running retrospectives on its impact, which was significant: among other achievements it introduced the world to the concept of “red pilling”, where you take the red pill and finally see reality.

    Red pilling is a trope among far-right goons and anti-LGBT men’s rights activists. And that’s funny, because the red pill is estrogen.

    The Matrix was written and directed by the Wachowskis, who came out as tran women in the years afterwards. While I think Marcy Cook’s analysis of the film as a protracted trans coming out story is perhaps a little keen to see everything through a trans lens, there’s clearly a whole lot of trans going on: the film is about someone trapped in a soul-sapping life who only discovers their true self after popping the aforementioned red pill. Back in 1999 in the US, the most common prescribed estrogen pills were red.

    Cook:

    “It seems you have been leading two lives, Mr Anderson.”

    One of these lives is cisgender and one is real, a very obvious comment on that fact that many trans people do lead two lives for potentially decades. Before transition, trans people are always playing two roles, attempting to fit into cisgender-normative society, playing along for appearances just like Neo at the office. We are often not out to everyone at once; sometimes no one else knows or only friends know, or we hide the fact we’re transgender from work.

    “One of these lives has a future, and the other … does not,” Smith says with finality.

    Once you realise that The Matrix is at least partly a trans allegory, the clues are everywhere. Here’s the guru figure, Morpheus:

    “What you know, you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life—that there is something wrong. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.”

    Queer people have a long history of hiding their stories in plain sight, and The Matrix definitely fits into that tradition: if you’re queer and an artist, it’s really hard not to let your own life bleed into the art you create – but if the cultural environment around you is intolerant and ignorant, as it certainly was for trans people in 1999, then you code it, camouflage it, present it in such a way that your fellow travellers can still see it but your enemies can’t or won’t.

    “I can’t go back, can I?” Neo asks, his voice plaintive.

    “No. But if you could, would you really want to?” replies Morpheus.

  • God’s money moves in mysterious ways

    OpenDemocracy previously reported the dark money being used by US evangelists to finance “grassroots” pressure groups. But the story is much, much bigger.

    US Christian right ‘fundamentalists’ linked to the Trump administration and Steve Bannon are among a dozen American groups that have poured at least $50 million of ‘dark money’ into Europe over the last decade, openDemocracy can reveal today.

    Between them, these groups have backed ‘armies’ of ultra-conservative lawyers and political activists, as well as ‘family values’ campaigns against LGBT rights, sex education and abortion – and a number appear to have increasing links with Europe’s far right.

    We’re talking in some cases about bona fide hate groups using money to push their agenda globally.

    The SPLC explains that “viewing homosexuality as unbiblical or simply opposing same-sex marriage” is not enough to be categorised as a “hate group”. Groups on this list go further – claiming that homosexuality is dangerous, linked to paedophilia and should be criminalised, disseminating “disparaging ‘facts’ about LGBT people that are simply untrue”

    This is, says SPLC, “no different to how white supremacists and nativist extremists propagate lies about black people and immigrants to make these communities seem like a danger to society”

    OpenDemocracy hasn’t traced the dark money to UK anti-LGBT groups yet, but it’s there: it’s a key reason we’re suddenly debating LGBT rights again.

    Joss Prior connects the dots between US fundamentalists’ dark money and UK anti-trans groups.

    All the anti-trans groups and agitators in the uk, have at some time or another set-up crowdfunders and raised thousands overnight. Quite often filled with significant anonymous donations of 100s or 1000’s.

    Ever wonder why there is a moral panic about trans people using toilets and sex-segregated spaces, even though trans people have had these freedoms since 2010?
    Its because the argument is lifted from a different legal landscape, and people are earning by sharing regardless.

    Back to the OpenDemocracy piece:

    “This is dark money coming into Europe to threaten human rights, and we’re not doing anything about it”, warned Neil Datta, secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development, describing the amounts of money involved as “staggering”.

    “It took the Christian right 30 years to get to where they are now in the White House,” he said. “We knew a similar effort was happening in Europe, but this should be a wake-up call that this is happening even faster and on a grander scale than many experts could have ever imagined.”

  • Stop us if you’ve heard these ones before

    I think what I hate most about bigots is their laziness. The stuff they write about trans people is just the stuff they said about gay people, with “gay” Tipp-Exed out and “trans” scribbled in its place.

    The Implausible Girl on Twitter has some examples. First, the silencing of people by a sinister lobby (2000):

    Evil activists “encouraging confused women” to join them in deviance (1990):

    Press regulators refusing to accept that newspapers are inciting hatred against a minority  while Murdoch-owned newspapers increase their abuse against that minority (also 1990):

    There’s so much more. How dare gay people compare their plight to those of genuine battles for civil rights? How dare gay people use people’s suicides to battle bigots? You get called a bigot if you disagree with science that says gay people are natural! Just because we say we hate gay people doesn’t mean we’re homophobic, it’s free speech! There are only two sexes, and no variation within!

    Last, but not least, here’s the mother of modern feminism admitting that she was wrong to battle against the inclusion of lesbians in the feminist movement for so many years. She had called them “the lavender menace” and claimed they were a danger to women and to feminism.

    That last one makes an important point. Unlike being lesbian, gay, bi or trans, being ignorant and hateful is something you can change.

  • The edgy comedian

  • This is what trans looks like

    This is wonderful. Fed up with the difficulty of finding decent stock photography of trans and non-binary people, Vice/Broadly commissioned its own – and it’s made the photos available for free under a Creative Commons licence, so pretty much anybody can use them. The Gender Spectrum Collection is online here and features 180 photos covering useful categories such as relationships, work, school and health.

    Editor Lindsay Shrupp explains:

    Broadly editors have worked diligently to think more thoughtfully and critically about how we represent trans and non-binary people in our work. But even at our best, we have been limited by the stock imagery available to us. Today, we’re launching The Gender Spectrum Collection, a stock photo library of over 180 images of 15 trans and non-binary models, shot by artist and photographer Zackary Drucker, and made available to the public for free.

    Transgender and non-binary people are likely more visible in mass media today than ever before in history, but they’re often portrayed in ways that are misrepresentative, and at times outright destructive. Because only 16 percentof Americans say they know a transgender person, the majority of Americans understand what it means to be trans through the media they consume, making media imagery depicting transgender people particularly significant.

    This isn’t the first big name to offer good stock photos of trans people – Adobe Stock launched a decent collection last year and Getty has some nice shots too – but it’s significant because of the size and scope and the normality of it. Unlike other collections these are shots of normal people doing normal stuff.  The other stock libraries tend to be much more model-y, so for example the next two are from Getty:

    Portrait of happy transgender female with handbag and tattoo

    Portrait Of Transgender Couple Against Gray Background

    The Getty Images are great shots, but you’re not going to use them to illustrate a piece on, say, trans discrimination in the workplace or trans teens in school. Whereas with the Vice/Broadly collection, I’ve seen a few publishing friends nod approvingly at the images: these are photos that picture editors will actually want to use.

    I think the photos are great, and it’s particularly important to see people of colour and non-binary people represented: all too often, images of trans people focus on binary trans men and women. My only criticism is that the photos are very American, but then they’re from an American publication aimed at an American audience. It’d be nice to see a UK equivalent. I’m up for a bit of modelling if there’s a free makeover in it ;-)