Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • This is what self-ID is all about

    I got a message from my lawyer today: my divorce paperwork has been curtly rejected by the relevant court because the introductory page uses the pronoun “she” to describe me; the court wants it to be “he”. This is despite the accompanying evidence of my name change in the form of my amended birth certificate, deed poll and so on.

    So I have a choice: change two words and resubmit the paperwork, adding a bit more cost and a bit more time to a process that already takes too long and costs too much.

    Or I can provide a Gender Recognition Certificate and leave the filing as-is.

    Except I can’t. Despite living full time as me, having an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria and undergoing supervised medical treatment, I can’t apply for a GRC for at least another year – and when I do, I’ll have to pay £140 for the application and various other fees to get the necessary evidence from my GP and the gender clinic. As I’m sure you know from painful experience, doctors’ letters don’t come for free.

    And the panel may decide to reject my application anyway. There’s no right of appeal, and no guarantee that your application will be granted even if you cross every T and dot every I. If the panel says no you need to go through the whole process all over again.

    This is what the proposed move to self-declaration of gender (and the actual move to self-declaration that has already happened in many countries) is designed to address.

    It’s important to reiterate this: self-ID is purely about paperwork. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether I can use the ladies’ (I already do), whether the gender marker for me on my passport or on the NHS computer says “F” (it already does), whether I’d be sent to a female prison if I turned into an axe murderer (I probably would, but these things are assessed on a case by case basis).

    It’s about paperwork.

    It’s about being able to get the Royal Bank of Scotland to change the gender marker on my bank accounts, something that to date has taken seven months and is still ongoing. It’s about having a little bit of paper that tells a court clerk that I don’t have the same name and pronouns I was given at birth. It’s about removing cost and complexity that doesn’t need to be there and making the world a little bit less shitty.

    If you’d like to know more about the issue, Stonewall has a good explainer here.

  • Promises we can’t keep

    I blogged a few days ago about the problem with mental health services: it’s all very well to urge people to get help, but the help needs to be there for them.

    This excellent piece by Vic Parsons explains how the system is failing many LGBT people.

    People are still being left in limbo, on waiting lists, for more than two years – largely because of the tiny pool of resources.

    I live in Scotland, where the NHS is considerably less beleaguered than it is in the rest of the UK: there are fewer people in the whole of Scotland than there are in London, and as a result our services are under considerably less pressure. But even then things move glacially slowly.

    I had an initial assessment for counselling services yesterday, some 19 months after I first self-referred to the Gender Identity Service (in Scotland you don’t need to go through a GP to access such services). The counsellor felt I’d benefit from six sessions or so, and put me into the system. I can expect my first appointment approximately nine months from now.

    That’s February 2019, from a referral in October 2016.

    I’m not in crisis. I’ve already had private counselling that I found very helpful; counselling I was fortunate enough to be able to afford. And I’m currently being treated via a private GP, again because I’m fortunate enough to be able to pay for it. But a system that effectively forces people to go private or go without treatment is a system that’s broken. It’s particularly bad for trans / NB people, but it’s bad for everybody.

    As Vic Parsons writes:

    I know that I can wait for that appointment. But what if I was a teenager, young and alone and afraid?

  • White van, tran

    When I came out as trans, I joked that I did it because I wanted to get yelled at in the street by people in vans. But until last night on the way to the pub, it had never actually happened to me.

  • Words as weapons

    The Onion has had to publish its article again:

    This week’s school shooting is in Texas where – surprise! – the shooter is a straight white man who hates women.

    The Texas school shooter killed a girl who turned down his advances and rejected him in front of class before massacring seven more classmates and two teachers, it’s been revealed…

    Shana Fisher, who turned 16 just days before she died in the attack, had been fending off advances from Pagourtzis for months.

    It’s the same old story. Boy meets girl. Boy won’t take no for an answer. Boy murders girl, classmates and teachers with assault weapons.

    We’ll have the usual post-event analysis where various people try to blame everything other than violent men with easy access to military weaponry (although one post on Twitter really nailed it: in response to “What will it take to change the laws to prevent more killings like this?” he replied, “One shooting by a black student”).

    But this is really simple. Some men believe they are entitled to women’s bodies, and they become furious if they don’t get their way. In a culture where easy access to weaponry is seen by many as a basic human right, that results in mass shootings.

    The media is complicit in this. Not just in its gun fetishism, but in supposedly intelligent titles lauding the likes of Jordan Peterson – who this weekend was arguing in favour of “enforced monogamy” as the cure for male violence against women –  and debating whether men have a right to sex.

    Dimitrios Pagourtzis certainly thought he had a right to sex, and when the woman he wanted to have sex with said no – not just once, but repeatedly, over several months – he slaughtered nine people.

    All ideas are not equal. Some are dangerous. And media has a responsibility to consider that. And yet all too often we get pieces that read like “Hooray for the blackshirts”, the Daily Mail’s 1930s ode to the rise of fascism.

    Still, it wouldn’t happen now, would it?

    This is from yesterday’s Sunday Times on Twitter. The print piece was headed “Heil Hipsters”.

    The article itself may have been reasoned and rational, although as it was by noted fantasist Andrew Gilligan I doubt it. But as one Twitter user posted in response:

    What the fuck are you playing at?

    The Times’ original tweet has now been deleted, but it shouldn’t have been posted in the first place. As British Future director Sunder Katwala responded:

    While @thesundaytimes can report on the very fringe middle-class professional banker seeking to relegitimise racism for a better spoken far right, its perhaps best not to tweet it out like its some celebrity fashion shoot.

    As he points out, the “breathless national reporting about [the] rise of hipster racists” lacks context. These are extremists, a tiny minority, but their views are dangerous. And their mission is to normalise racism. Presenting them as normal people is exactly what they want.

  • Your da’s writing for The Herald again

    Brian Beacom caused online outrage recently when he wrote a column in the (Glasgow) Herald dismissing Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer win in the music category. To paraphrase: black people’s music isn’t proper music.

    Today, he’s marking mental health awareness week by saying that the cure for mental illness is to “grow a pair”. If you need further evidence for the prosecution, he warmly references right-wing dingbat Jordan Peterson.

    I’m not linking to it because that’s the whole point of the piece. It’s an attempt to monetise outrage, to say something horrible in the hope it’ll get traffic and therefore generate ad revenue. Beacom has previously claimed that alcoholism isn’t a disease; I can’t wait for next week’s piece when he explains that people in wheelchairs are lazy.

    It’s a business model that’s becoming much more common in our brave new ad-funded world. The online business world used to call its model “clicks and mortar”. Now, it seems, it’s adopted “pricks for clicks”.

    (“Your Da” is a Scottish social media meme; it’s our equivalent of “gammon”.)

    Update, later that day:

    The Spectator lives down to its reputation again. The headline has since been changed.

  • Tired and emotional

    The writer Tess Stenson posted something to Twitter earlier that really resonated with me.

    When I first joined Twitter, many moons ago, I pointedly decided not to turn my feed into a trans feed. I joined so I could promote my upcoming book, and franky, I didn’t want to bore people with those issues.

    As Tess goes on to explain:

    With the rise of the alt-right, and right wing politics dominating the political discourse, and an increased awareness of trans people (that part being a very good thing, mind), the more transphobic elements in our society have only got louder.

    Factor in the bullshit being spouted about Gender Recognition Act reform and the dread hand of the religious right using trans people to try and divide the LGBT community and trans people are under attack constantly.

    I’m aware that I post more trans stuff here and on Twitter than some people might like, or be comfortable with. But Christ, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the stuff I wade through each and every day.

    I see more than most because I’m a news junkie. Every single day – and I really mean every single day – my news reading app delivers dozens of anti-trans pieces published in mainstream US and UK publications. The vast majority of them are either misinformed or misrepresenting easily verifiable facts, and some of them are downright hateful. And the news app also gives me lots of the more right-wing publications, which are even more hateful.

    This stuff comes to me. I don’t go seeking it. Algorithms decide that because I’m interested in trans rights, I want to see a gruesome, uncensored photograph of a trans woman hacked to death with a kitchen knife. That because I’m interested in legal protections for trans people I want to read endless news stories about trans women murdered in North and South America. That because I’m interested in LGBT issues I want to read right-wing columnists calling me subhuman. I block, and I block, and I block, and the tide just keeps on coming.

    And then there’s social media. Going on social media while trans is electing to pour an enormous bucket of shit over your own head. When I follow a Twitter link to, say, a Sky News piece about an upcoming documentary about a trans person I know not to look at the replies or the comments under the video. It’s just an ever-growing litany of bigotry and hatred.

    So I switch off. Take a break. Try to make myself look nice, pick out something I think makes me look good. Head for the pub and after just twenty metres I’ve been mocked in the street by four shaven-headed, overly muscled lads because while most people are great, some people are pricks.

    Sometimes they mock you in the street, sometimes they stage whisper “that’s a MAN” in the pub, sometimes they call you perverts in national newspapers and sometimes they dedicate their life to trying to deny you healthcare (this NHS consultation was deliberately targeted by anti-trans activists promoting quackery such as discredited and dangerous conversion therapy; the report [pdf] makes that clear).

    Back to Tess’s Twitter:

    The strain of it all is immense. Pretty much every trans man, trans woman, and non-binary person I know has felt it.

    If you think it’s a slog to read about a tiny proportion of it, imagine what it’s like to live it.

  • I ham what I ham

    There’s a completely manufactured controversy brewing over the term “gammon”, which was first used to describe the angry, red-faced, right-wing men in the Question Time audience and has since become a catch-all term for the kind of people who wear MAGA hats, complain about immigrants and rant about Political Correctness Gone Mad in the comments underneath Daily Mail articles.

    According to Brendan O’Neill of The Spectator, who has bad opinions for money, it’s “typical of Corbynista intolerance.”

    That’s hogwash.

    It’s simply a pejorative aimed at the people who call anyone who isn’t an angry, red-faced, right-wing man a snowflake, libtard, cuck, cucktard, remoaner, trot, social justice warrior, traitor… you get the idea. People who revel in how un-PC they are.

    Anyone who tells you gammon is a racist or classist slur is telling you porkies.

    Related: These days, right, if you tell anyone you’re English, you get arrested, and thrown in jail.

  • Talk is cheap

    The death of Scott Hutchison has lead to a lot of discussion about mental health on social media, which is good and important. But what talking doesn’t do is fix an underfunded, overwhelmed health service.

    So you’re sad, and you talk to your friends, and you make an appointment with your GP. That’s all good.

    Now what?

    If your GP takes you seriously, and some don’t, you wait. You wait for months, sometimes years – my own mental health was tied in with the gender stuff and I’m currently 19 months into that system without any treatment; the various general mental health services have long waiting lists too.

    And when the wait is over, sometimes you still don’t get the help you need.

    The drugs didn’t work. Your counsellor is incompetent, tells you there are black babies in Africa who have worse lives (that happened to me), tells you they’re not going to record that you’ve been seriously considering suicide because it makes everything more complicated (that too), signs you off as sane and healthy because your six sessions are up and there’s no availability for any more. You’re not any better, but boxes have been ticked.

    And my experiences have been better than many people’s.

    It’s crucial that people aren’t scared to ask for help. But it’s crucial that when they do, the help is there. All too often, it isn’t.

    As Stephen Butchard points out, Scott Hutchison wrote very beautiful music that sometimes talked about his mental health issues, and he did so for two decades. But those issues still killed him.

    Talk is cheap, and doesn’t fix the cracks people are falling through.

    As I’ve written before, we need to do better, be better.

  • “Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”

    douglas adams inspired “Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy” H2G2

    I started re-reading The Salmon of Doubt, a posthumous collection of Douglas Adams’ bits and bobs, a few days ago; I didn’t realise it was so close to the anniversary of his death (May 11, today).

    I can’t overstate how much of an influence he was on me. Chances are if I make a joke, I’ve nicked it from him. I’ve definitely borrowed huge elements of his writing style, as have many of my writing peers. If you work in media or tech and you’re around my age, you’re a fan of Douglas Adams. Not being a fan is just unthinkable. And eventually you get old enough to have children, and you get to see those children absolutely howling with laughter at the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

    I could post Douglas Adams quotes all day long but I’ll just link to 42 of them.

  • After the ‘quake

    I wrote about Channel 4’s Genderquake debate a few days ago, and it’s safe to say the programme has caused a lot of controversy.

    The people who refused to take part were proved right: Channel 4 was trying to start a fight.

    Here’s a piece by Pink News on how the audience were told to behave.

    Audience members at a controversial televised debate about gender claim they were “encouraged to heckle” panellists, including transgender activists Caitlyn Jenner and Munroe Bergdorf, by the programme’s producers.

    That’s an interesting contrast to the programme as it was pitched to potential panelists. CN Lester:

    I was one of the dozens approached from March onwards by Channel 4. An email from the production company explained that it would be: ”nuanced intelligent discussion around gender, identity and society. We aim to shed light on such complex issues and ask important questions in a safe environment.”

    Lester declined to take part, guessing – rightly – that the programme wouldn’t be remotely like that.

    This is what the so-called trans “debate” looks like: people shouting “you’re a man!” and “penis! penis! penis!” at people who thought they were there for a “nuanced intelligent discussion around gender.”

    These are the “mums”. The women with “legitimate concerns”. The ordinary people who just want to have a “respectful debate”.

    It’s not just the fact that they heckled. It’s that they were specifically invited so that they would. Channel 4 appears to have deliberately invited bigots – some of whom are currently under investigation for hate speech, some of whom have been suspended from their political parties – and given then prominent positions in the audience. When they did what they were asked to do and heckled the panelists, they were allowed to remain in place for the rest of the programme.

    Imagine for a moment the programme was about the experiences of an ethnic minority and Channel 4 sat members of Britain First and the EDL at the front, letting them shout racial epithets throughout the programme.

    Jenny Boylan, a writer I very much admire, in the New York Times:

    This is what happens when we act as if the humanity of vulnerable, marginalized people is up for debate.

    The people doing the shouting are the same people you read about in the Sunday Times and other papers. They say they aren’t bigots, that they want the chance to have a reasonable debate.

    And when you put them in a studio they shout “Penis! Penis! Penis!”

    Boylan again:

    At the end of the “Genderquake” program, Ms. Jenner said, by way of conclusion: “We have to create a more loving society. We have to celebrate the differences in people. Show love toward one another.”

    The audience booed.

    Not the whole audience. You can guess which section.

    I’ve been asked by a few people why I post about trans things here. That’s why. Every day we are libelled in print, slandered on social media, accused of unspeakable depravity and evil by people who question our right to exist and who repeat long-discredited bullshit.

    Here’s just one example, from the supposedly LGBT-friendly Guardian this week. Gaby Hinsliff linked the issue of trans women being able to change their birth certificates with the vile attacks by Canadian sex offender Christopher Hambrook in 2012.

    It was discrimination law, not the recognition process, that came under scrutiny in Canada after serial sex attacker Christopher Hambrook attacked two women in domestic violence shelters in Toronto, which he’d entered dressed as a woman. (The state of Ontario had previously passed a bill prohibiting discrimination against trans people.)

    The law Hinsliff mentions wasn’t passed until six months after Hambrook committed his crimes. The non-existent link between Hambrook and anti-discrimination legislation was invented by religious conservatives to try and prevent the so-called “Toby’s Law” from being passed. It’s a favourite of the “Penis! Penis! Penis!” shouters too.

    Hambrook wasn’t trans, incidentally. He was a serial sex offender who’d been incarcerated for child abuse and who was freed despite being an obvious danger to women: other inmates complained about the violent fantasies he made them listen to. Yes, he dressed as a woman to access a women’s refuge; had it been a disabled person’s shelter he’d have rolled up in a wheelchair. The judge who finally sentenced him to indefinite imprisonment said that nothing – “no other measure” but permanent incarceration – could protect women from such a dangerous man.

    The number of trans women who’ve sexually assaulted people in toilets or refuges, worldwide, is zero. That’s why people keep bringing Hambrook up: if they had actual examples of trans people being evil you can be sure they’d use them.

    The Hambrook case is about many things: lax sentencing of dangerous men, sexual assault against women not being taken seriously enough by police, and so on. But it had nothing to do with trans people whatsoever.

    But, you know, another day, another insinuation that if you see me in the bathroom I’m there to rape you.

    We are getting tired of this shit.

    Lester:

    The question I’m left with: how much longer can this script play out? Is this still enjoyable for anyone apart from the fanatics who want to spew hate at trans women?

    …I don’t have a choice about living in a culture shaped by such a regressive, dehumanising script.

    Boylan:

    …transgender people don’t need any more think pieces about the legitimacy of our lives. What we need, and what we deserve, is justice, and compassion, and love. What we need is freedom from violence, and protection from homelessness, and the right not to lose our jobs, or our children, or our lives.

    That’s the sinister transgender agenda right there.