Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

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Author: Carrie

  • As seen on TV

    The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, has produced a new report detailing the 60-plus organisations set up by the Christian Right to spread mis- and disinformation about LGBTQ+ people, and about trans people in particular. It’s a damning report, as you’d expect, and it also features a lot of organisations that will be very familiar if you read the newspapers, listen to the radio or watch TV in the UK: many of them were set up specifically to launder hateful bullshit through the mainstream media, a goal that mainstream media has been happy to help with.

    According to the SPLC, these organisations are:

    …dedicated to changing who LGBTQ+ people are and limiting LGBTQ+ rights by promoting conversion therapy, de-transitioning, bans on gender-affirming health care, bans on transgender people playing sports, censorship of LGBTQ+ topics in public schools, bans on public expression of LGBTQ+ culture like drag performances, and other politically motivated attempts to erase LGBTQ+ identities.

    …Anti-LGBTQ+ organizations use pseudoscience to attack not only affirming medical practices, but almost any social, religious, commercial or governmental affirmation of LGBTQ+ identity and LGBTQ+ representation in popular culture. With the help of right-wing and extremist social media personalities, anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience is sold as “proof” that a conspiracy of “leftists” is infiltrating schools with “Marxist gender ideology,” indoctrinating kids and even turning them transgender and that transgender identity is spread through “social contagion” when schools accept and affirm LGBTQ+ children.

  • “Who needs this?”

    There’s a lovely piece by the equally lovely Robin Ince about creating things and asking yourself a simple question: who needs this?

    It’s something I think about a lot, and like Robin says “my favourite thing about the arts is the potential of connection.” When I write a book or a song, what I want to do more than anything else is to connect with somebody.

    I’m very lucky in that I sometimes get to see those connections: sometimes I’ll play a song and see people react to it, or I’l do a book thing and get to talk to people afterwards. I’ve joked that the latter is very dangerous, because it can make you think you’re Bono. But to have someone tell you that your book (or any other thing you’ve created) has been meaningful to them is an astonishing, beautiful thing.

    Ince:

    What I love to see is arts and artists that are full of love, that enhance, that make people feel happier to be alive, that offer people new ways of thinking and being.

    The older I get the more I feel the same too. I’ve done the hack work, the low hanging fruit, the lazy gag and the easy laugh. But while there may be money in it there’s no skill in it, no fun in it and no love in it. As Robin puts it:

    I think there is more bravery in showing love than shouting hate.

  • When left turns right

    One of the interesting and frightening things we’ve seen in recent years is people who would consider themselves left-wing not only turning right, but turning far right. Some of the most extreme examples do so after public humiliation destroys their credibility – Naomi Wolf is a good example of that – or after online criticism hurts their ego. Some do it after losing faith in specific institutions, or to seek the Murdoch dollar or MAGA votes. And often, they take many people with them.

    This excellent piece by In These Times looks at what happens when the left turns hard right.

    It’s easy to dismiss many of these high-profile defectors as crackpots or spotlight-seekers, as never truly serious in their political principles or as plain grifters. Because of course there is money to be made by saying, “Once I was blind, but now I see.” It permits the Steve Bannons of the world to affirm their political faith not as an argument, but just the truth. But, in some ways, the peculiarities of the celebrity drifters are beside the point.

    The point is who they bring along.

    One of the key points in the piece is that there’s a pipeline between being a controversialist and becoming a fascist, and it’s a pipeline we’ve known about for a very long time. “Strategic irony” is a well-worn tactic of the far right: what begins with “edgy”, taboo-busting humour or saying the supposedly unsayable soon becomes a lot less funny. As one of the people quoted in the piece puts it, you can only be ironic for so long; you can only post so many George Wallace memes before you start thinking that two sets of water fountains aren’t a bad idea.

  • It’s all connected

    Charles P Pierce is one of my favourite writers on politics, particularly US politics, and this piece on the links between US right-wingers and growing intolerance and violence in other countries is typically astute.

    As should be clear by now, this slouch toward authoritarian government is an interconnected, international phenomenon. It is a shadow government driven by conspiracy and empowered paranoia. It has power and reach. There is legitimate money behind it. If there is a central point, it’s probably in Russia, but liberal democracies have proven perfectly capable of ignoring the threat until it reaches full roar.

  • Be better

    Science writer Ed Yong’s coverage of COVID was superb, and his reporting of long COVID even more so. In a thoughtful piece for the NYT, he explains how journalists should and could do better: Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me To Be a Better Journalist.

    Covering long Covid solidified my view that science is not the objective, neutral force it is often misconstrued as. It is instead a human endeavor, relentlessly buffeted by our culture, values and politics. As energy-depleting illnesses that disproportionately affect women, long Covid and M.E./C.F.S. are easily belittled by a sexist society that trivializes women’s pain, and a capitalist one that values people according to their productivity. Societal dismissal leads to scientific neglect, and a lack of research becomes fodder for further skepticism.

    …How could so many people feel so thoroughly unrepresented by an industry that purports to give voice to the voiceless?

    As Yong explains, some of the defining characteristics of journalism can make it a powerful enemy of people who are suffering.

    many journalistic norms and biases work against us. Our love of iconoclasts privileges the voices of skeptics, who can profess to be canceled by patient groups, over the voices of patients who are actually suffering. Our fondness for novelty leaves us prone to ignoring chronic conditions that are, by definition, not new.

    …We are not neutral actors, reporting on the world at a remove; we also create that world through our choices, and we must do so with purpose, care and compassion.

  • Pain is privileged

    There’s a good piece in Nieman Labs about the biases, often unconscious, that mean journalists adopt the evangelical right’s framing when it comes to reporting on trans people.

    How else to explain the tens of thousands of words this year and last devoted to questioning whether trans people have too much access to health care, rather than to understanding the forces behind legislation to deny us that care? How else could a major news organization devote a major investigative report on the sliver of trans people who regret their transitions rather than on the many tens of thousands who don’t have the opportunity to transition to begin with? Or how else could an in-depth story about a clinic faced with an increase in trans minors question whether those minors really needed care rather than focus on how the healthcare system was failing them.

    One group’s pain is privileged; the other’s, invisible.

    The reporting over “detransitioners” is an excellent example of that. The number of people who detransition – that is, abandon their transition altogether and return to living in their assigned gender – is vanishingly small, and largely consists of people who found that prejudice, discrimination and bullying, and in the UK the decades-long waiting lists for even the most basic treatment, made their lives hell to the point they had to once again hide who they are in order to survive.

    Those stories should be told, but they’re not; instead, media focuses on the even tinier number of celebrity detransitioners, the three or four people touring the globe with the evangelical right who demand an end to all trans healthcare because they made bad calls as grown adults.

    Exceptions make the news. Of course they do: as the adage goes, dog bites man isn’t news; man bites dog is. But what the press is doing around trans people and detransition is to tell you that it isn’t safe to let your pets out of the house at all because the streets are full of rabid dog-biting hordes ready to chomp on your chihuahua, munch on your mastiff or chow down on your chow chow.

    The number of people who regret transition surgery are far fewer than the number who regret any other form of surgery; the number of people who regret transition are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction compared to the number of people who find that it improves or even saves their lives. But only the celebrity detransitioners get the column inches and the airtime, almost always unchallenged.

    The Nieman Labs piece uses an analogy:

    If you’re covering access to abortion care, do you sic your crack investigative team on the sub-1% of women who regret their abortions, or on the multiple attempts to deny them care?

    This is exactly what happens with trans people.

    I think there are two problems with the article, though. The first is that it doesn’t take into account how much journalism is actually churnalism, based not on reporting or research but on regurgitating press releases and talking points from pressure groups. Sometimes that regurgitation is down to pressure: in many newsrooms and production studios people are overworked, underpaid and don’t have the time to check whether a group is astroturfed, let alone whether the contents of its press release are factual. It’s why anybody with a logo, a Twitter account and an axe to grind can get on the BBC or in the pages of the press as a supposed authority.

    And the second problem is that the article talks about a particular type of journalist, the one who wants to do their job well, and I’m not so sure there are so many of those journalists left. Unfortunately with trans people, many of the people writing and speaking about us know exactly what they’re doing; the misrepresentation and disinformation is not accidental but intentional.

    How do you persuade journalists to report the truth when their social media followers, their book deals and their TV appearances depend on them doing otherwise?

  • “Do we have them castrated?”

    Byline Times:

    Just days after Rishi Sunak reportedly dropped plans to introduce a conversion therapy ban, Byline Times can reveal that a project of a charity registered in Northern Ireland held a conference in Poland where delegates heard about conversion therapy techniques, how fundamentalist Christian leaders met with British MPs and lords to convince them to fight against conversion therapy bans, and asked whether castration would get rid of “LGBT freaks”.

    One of the things this article demonstrates is how these hateful bigots pretend to be transparent but censor their own videos before publishing them and sharing them online; they’re very aware that without such self-censorship, reasonable people would be repelled.

  • “Irish dancing has fallen”

    Is there any sport that trans women won’t dominate with their superhuman strength, laser vision and ability to fly without wings? Apparently not: the latest news out of Bigot Central is that, and this is a direct quote, “Irish dancing has fallen”. Which is astonishing language considering the news item the post is sharing: in next year’s Irish Dancing World Championships in Glasgow, one of approximately 5,000 contestants will be a 13-year-old trans girl.

    “Fallen” is being used deliberately: it’s language usually used in war reporting to describe when a place is captured by the enemy, and it’s a favourite of the far- and religious right in their attempts to portray oppression as victimisation.

    This, like the attempts to remove trans women from snooker, darts and chess, is saying the quiet part out loud: the bans on trans people have never been about protecting women or protecting women’s sports from some supposed biological advantage. The motivation is identical to the moves to ban any books by or about trans people from schools and libraries: these people do not want trans people to exist in society in any way, shape or form.

  • Throw a block party

    As we once again move to new social networks, an old and very boring trope raises its head once again: is it okay to block people? And the answer, of course, is: no. It’s more than okay. It’s essential. Block early, block often, block the bigots and the blowhards and their fans and their followers, block for any reason you choose or for no reason whatsoever.

    Your social media feed is yours to control, and that includes deciding whose voices you want to hear.

    The “it’s bad to block” trope has been around at least since the 1990s when I first ventured online, and it’s the same bad faith argument it’s always been: usually deliberately, people pretend that the US first amendment applies worldwide and protects their right to be an absolute arsehole on the internet. It doesn’t, and it doesn’t. Your right to free speech doesn’t trump my right to completely ignore you.

    Here’s Joan Westenberg:

    There’s a crucial difference between silencing someone and choosing not to engage with them. Blocking someone isn’t about denying them their right to speak. It’s about asserting your right not to listen.

    Some of the very worst people online believe that they have the right to your attention whenever they demand it, and that alone is an excellent reason to block them. Because as Westenberg says, they are the weeds of your online garden. Time spent reading their unsolicited shit is time better spent on more beautiful things.

  • Ignorance is strength

    The Tory government have confirmed that they intend to ban conversion therapy but not for trans people: according to equalities minister Kemi Badenoch, providing a safe space for kids to explore their feelings about gender rather than mentally torturing them is the real conversion therapy.

    It’s egregious bullshit, of course, but it’s entirely in keeping with Badenoch’s war on trans people, a war she and Liz Truss have been waging for several years now.

    The idea that gender-affirming care is really conversation therapy is a fiction concocted by the evangelicals and parroted widely by their useful idiots. Once again, our politicians are happily dancing to the evangelical right’s tune.