Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • Doing their sacred duty

    Yesterday, three UK newspapers said that the killer of hatemonger Charlie Kirk was pro-trans on their front pages. The Daily Telegraph had the headline “Charlie Kirk suspect ‘left gun with trans message’”. The Sun front page said that “Ammo ‘carried pro-trans message’”. The Times front page headline was “Trump ally’s killer left ‘transgender ammunition’”. Other papers carried the same story inside their print versions and online.

    None of those reports were true.

    There was no trans message, pro- or otherwise.

    And crucially, all of the newspapers knew that, because long before they had gone to print the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the wrong information, had started walking it back.

    The messages on the ammunition were memes from far-right internet culture and shitposting; the one supposedly relating to trans people was the code to call in a bomb in the video game Helldivers 2, which is a popular meme in the alleged killer’s online world.

    We know that many people don’t read beyond headlines, and on the rare occasions that newspapers retract stories they do so in very small boxes buried deep inside the papers. So three of the UK’s biggest papers told everyone passing newsstands yesterday that trans people were connected to a brutal murder. And that lie will now be repeated endlessly as yet another reason to fear and hate trans people.

    Trans people have no comeback for this, because the code of practice newspapers pretend to follow doesn’t allow groups of people to complain: you can only make an actionable complaint about hate if it names a specific person. So if The Times says that Trans Person X did a thing, and that isn’t true, Trans Person X can complain. But if The Times says trans *people* did a thing, and that’s a lie, there’s no comeback. And of course there’s no legal redress either.

    The Onion has a famous headline: It is journalism’s sacred duty to endanger the lives of as many trans people as possible. And that’s exactly what the press is doing here.

  • “A community living in fear”

    Transactual’s doing great work about terrible things right now. Its new report details how LGBTQ+ people are living in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, and it’s clear that the UK has become a terrifying and hostile environment for many of us. The report says:

    • “some trans people are planning to flee to safer countries
    • many expect to lose their jobs
    • yet more fear being driven out of public spaces by a constant stream of humiliation
    • people are telling us of panic attacks and being afraid now to go outside. There is a widespread feeling that this a breaking point; culmination of a decade of growing hatred and persecution
    • there is frank discussion of suicidality directly linked to this ruling and the policies it will enable
    • We are getting anxiety from gender non-conforming people about being policed at every turn ‘like it’s the 1970s’
    • there is much sorrow and anger from cis women that this has been done in the name of “protecting” them from their sisters.”

    It’s notable that the report also includes lots of contributions from cisgender people (ie, people who aren’t trans) such as partners and parents of trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people, and from women who are just appalled at the scapegoating and harm being done in their name.

  • A good letter

    The Quakers in Britain have published their response to an activist’s demand that they segregate trans women in their premises and at their events. It’s a masterclass in how to respond to bigots’ unreasonable, aggressive and unlawful demands, and an excellent example of a very British form of literary work: telling someone, very politely and at great length, to go fuck themselves.

  • Shut it down

    I can barely read this NYT piece about the generative AI chatbot that helped a teen kill himself because it’s so upsetting. Content warning doesn’t begin to cover it.

    Without ChatGPT, Adam would still be with them, his parents think, full of angst and in need of help, but still here.

    This isn’t your typical “new tech is scary” story. God knows I’ve read enough of those since I started in tech writing in the 1990s. There is something uniquely dangerous about generative AI chatbots, and the industry knows it.

  • What it’s like

    What’s it like to be a woman (trans or otherwise) or non-binary person since the EHRC tried to segregate trans people? Transactual’s new report goes into detail and makes grim reading. It’s based on hundreds of testimonials and shows that the EHRC interim update, and bigots’ misrepresentation of the Scottish Ministers verdict in the Supreme Court, is already resulting in harassment and threats of violence against cisgender (not trans) and transgender people alike.

    Women of all kinds, not just trans women, are being harassed and threatened with violence simply for trying to exist – and because there are so few trans women in the UK and so much rabble-rousing reporting in the press, self-appointed crotch cops are picking primarily on non-trans women who they’ve decided don’t look womanly enough. That typically means women who aren’t slim, young, white and perfectly, stereotypically pretty.

    From the executive summary:

    Frequently, people trying to follow the guidance given to them are prevented from doing so or experience harassment and threats of violence as a result of being ‘in the wrong bathroom’.

    Trans and cis people continuing to use the spaces they belong in have faced harassment and threats of violence from both venue staff and vigilante toilet police, including men coming into the women’s bathroom in order to harass someone they suspect is trans.

    Many butch cis lesbians and intersex people in particular reported increased instances of harassment and exclusion due to not “looking like a woman”.

    Many people report being excluded and bullied out of workplaces, being forced to choose between their mental health and dignity or their livelihood, and fearing for their ability to support themselves.

    People also report being outed by having to stop or start using different bathrooms or by HR staff who are communicating changes in policies in targeted ways.

    Trans people report being suddenly excluded from social spaces and clubs which have been safe previously, and now avoiding going out or only going to places confirmed as trans inclusive.

    The changes are reported as empowering bullies who are already engaged in campaigns of harassment against trans people.

    In both workplaces and otherwise, people were asked invasive questions about genitals, asked to produce Gender Recognition Certificates, and exclusion was frequently justified based on people’s perceptions of whether the trans person passed or based on what genital configuration they had; “you can’t use this until you are post-op”.

    This is exactly what the EHRC intended. The EHRC’s guidance is not fit for purpose, is wrong in law, and is championing discrimination – and the Labour government, no friend to LGBTQ+ people, is complicit.

    The people being hurt by state-sanctioned bigotry can’t wait years for the European Courts to find what we already know is true: the EHRC is in flagrant breach of multiple laws and is attempting to deprive trans people of their internationally agreed human rights. And by doing so it’s placing all women, trans men and non-binary people in danger.

  • Whose voices matter

    You may have seen coverage of the Polari Prize protest, in which almost all of the first book prize nominees and many of the main prize nominees have withdrawn in protest at the inclusion of the anti-trans writer John Boyne.

    Boyne, a self-proclaimed “TERF” who just happened to sanitise his social media a few days before his inclusion was announced, is well known for being anti-trans (and anti-other parts of the LGBTQ+ community and their supporters). Just days ago in a newspaper interview he compared women supportive of trans rights to the character from The Handmaid’s Tale who is “ready to pin a handmaiden down as her husband rapes her.”

    This is the same Boyne who had a very public fight with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust memorial museum, which said that his book The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas “should be avoided by anyone who studies or teaches the history of the Holocaust” because the book is based on “historical inaccuracies and stereotypical portrayals of major characters that help to perpetuate dangerous myths about the Holocaust”. He brought the same rigour to his more recent book about a trans child, a book whose message could best be described as “trans bad. Don’t be trans.” The criticism of that book sent him down the anti-trans rabbit hole he was already leaning into.

    Including him in a prize supposedly celebrating the entire LGBTQ+ community is rather like nominating Andrew Tate for a feminist award – and his response to the protest makes that clear. His response uses the tactic favoured by abusers, DARVO – deny, attack, reverse victim and offender – to try and paint himself as an innocent little boy besieged by sinister forces, and he doubles down by saying that if a minority’s human rights are perceived to conflict with those of the majority, the minority’s rights don’t matter. For anyone to say that is incredible. For a gay man to say it is indefensible.

    In all the coverage of the protests not one of the authors or judges who withdrew, or the hundreds of writers and publishing workers who have signed a letter protesting Boyne’s inclusion, has been given the opportunity to comment. Instead, Boyne and his beloved JK Rowling are getting all the column inches with lurid claims of what the Telegraph describes as being “cancelled” by “trans zealots”.

    The people who are protesting are doing so because they’re principled, and pulling out of the prize means sacrificing a potentially significant boost in sales. They are not bigots or bullies and they are not cancelling anyone. They are the ones whose voices are being silenced.

  • A law that doesn’t exist

    The Times reports that the EHRC guidance on trans people, to be published later this year, is going to ignore the 50,000+ consultation responses and will tell organisations not to let trans people use the correct facilities for their gender. It’s not a surprise, but it’s important to understand that what the EHRC is attempting to do here is invent a law that does not exist.

    Until now, the Equality Act has said that trans people should only be excluded from facilities if doing so is a proportional means of achieving a legitimate aim. And when the EHRC guidance is published, that will remain the case. What’s changed is how the EHRC is trying to spin it.

    The bigots at the EHRC, and their friends at the anti-trans pressure group Sex Matters and in the press, are trying to muddy the waters and make organisations believe that they *must* exclude trans people. But that’s not the law. The law says that yes, they can, if it’s proportionate and absolutely necessary. But they don’t have to, and they are certainly not breaking the law if they choose to offer gender-neutral facilities.

    The proposed new guidance is in breach of multiple laws and breaches multiple human rights obligations the UK is signatory to; it also completely disregards the European Court of Human Rights judgements that made the UK grant trans people legal gender recognition in the 2000s. It’s heading once again to the EU courts, where it will be destroyed. But that will take time, and the anti-trans thugs hope to destroy as many human rights as possible before that happens.

  • Hire education

    As the genital-obsessed weirdos demand a boycott of M&S for having a trans employee in a shop – I think this is their fourth M&S boycott, or maybe the fifth; it’s hard to keep track – it’s worth revisiting this HR News report from seven years ago, before the anti-trans industry started to demand illegal anti-trans discrimination in the workplace though lawfare and co-ordinated online abuse.

    In a survey of 1,000 employers:

    • 47% of retailers said they were unlikely to hire a trans person
    • 45% of IT businesses said they were unlikely to hire a trans person
    • 35% of leisure and hospitality businesses said they were unlikely to hire a trans person
    • 34% of manufacturing businesses said they were unlikely to hire a trans person

    Not hiring someone because they’re trans was, and is, illegal. Given that, it’s safe to assume that many other respondents wouldn’t hire trans people either but wouldn’t admit it publicly or privately.

    The survey suggested that many firms were simply ignorant of the law, and at the time the EHRC was trying to fix that. In recent years, however, it’s set out to misrepresent and mislead instead: instead of educating employers it’s demanding more discrimination, not less.

  • An appalling apology

    From the Daily Telegraph: Marks & Spencer has apologised to a mother for causing her teenage daughter “distress” after she was asked if she needed help by an Asian employee in its bra section.

    The retailer said it was “truly sorry” after the mother complained that her 14-year-old daughter had felt uncomfortable when they were approached by an Asian shop assistant in the lingerie area of the shop, where they were hoping to have a bra fitting”.

    Awful, right?

    The original article says “transgender” and “trans” rather than Asian. But that shouldn’t make the story any less horrific, or M&S’s apology any less appalling.

    There is no suggestion that the employee said or did anything wrong. The complaint is simply that a trans person has a job. And that complaint is backed by the implicit threat of billionaire-funded legal action that would be very expensive to fight. This is lawfare, and it’s designed to make companies and organisations fearful about employing any trans people in any capacity anywhere.

  • The body for bigotry

    Marcus Daniel has written a damning summary of how the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has been poisoned: what was created to promote equality has been cynically and deliberately infested with people who are bigoted not just against trans people, but against all kinds of marginalised groups. The result? An equalities body that’s actively hostile to equality; an anti-discrimination body that pushes discrimination.

    The EHRC was set up in 2007 to ensure there is no discrimination based on nine protected characteristics of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. It took over the responsibilities of existing separate commissions for for Racial Inequality, Equal Opportunities and Disability Rights. It’s fair to say it’s been downhill ever since.