Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • Baa baa bullshit

    When I was young, the press routinely made up stories about the “loony left”. Probably the most famous one is the story that nurseries were getting kids to sing “baa baa green sheep” instead of “baa baa black sheep” because the nursery rhyme was racist.

    It sounds ridiculous, I know, but it was a deliberate campaign against the Labour Party and other progressives. British tabloids ran some 3,000 news stories about such “loony left” ideas between 1981 and 1987; the vast majority were either partially or wholly fabricated and were targeted against the handful of London councils under Labour control.

    Very similar stories were fabricated about the European Union too, most notably by a young journalist called Boris Johnson. 

    This week, the Daily Mail ran a front page story about the charity Oxfam banning the words “mother” and “father”. The Times and other right-wing papers ran with it too, and it was the topic of angry discussion online and on shows such as Good Morning Britain.

    You can guess where this is going.

    Oxfam hasn’t banned anything, and it hasn’t told people that they can’t say mother or father. In a piece of guidance specifically referring to the use of language when you’re talking to trans and non-binary people,  it recommends using gender neutral language if you’re unsure what terms the people you’re talking to prefer.

    If you look at the document it’s very clear that that’s the case, but the version used by the newspapers has been deliberately cropped to remove the context by its source, a high profile anti-trans activist and friend of JK Rowling. In some cases, at the very end of the article in the bit most people don’t read, the newspaper reports admit that the document doesn’t say what the article’s entire premise is based upon. But they got their headline, and that’s what matters when you’re waging a war on human rights.

    “Oxfam tells staff: stop saying mother and father”, The Times thunders.

    It’s baa baa bullshit.

  • I’ll go full diva any day now

    I’m excited, delighted and absolutely stunned to be nominated in the 2023 British Book Awards, aka The Nibbies, for book of the year in the Discover category. When I see the company Carrie Kills A Man is in, I can only assume that somebody has made a terrible mistake. But until that’s discovered, I’m going to become even more egotistical and insufferable than I already was.

    Crap jokes aside, I am incredibly grateful not just to team 404 Ink but to everybody who’s helped spread the word about my book. As I keep on saying, book people are the best people.

  • Another smoking gun

    This, by Jude Doyle, is horrifying: more email evidence of how the Christian Right is pulling the strings of the anti-trans movement, this time in pushing the narrative of “detrans” people or “detransitioners”, people who undergo (or sometimes just propose to undergo) transition and then change their minds. The piece describes a huge and highly effective media machine that takes care of every detail, right down to writing the words it wants detransitioners to mime.

    At the beginning of her gender-critical career, Shupe’s public voice was more or less her own; that is, she actually gave the interviews and wrote the blog posts that appeared under her name. As Shupe entered the world of the Christian right, however, her voice was increasingly retooled or outright manufactured by her handlers.

    Sullivan quickly took over Shupe’s public image, instructing her to refer all requests for interviews or public appearances to him. In an email chain dated April 2019, he told her not to talk to a Washington Post reporter he deemed trans-friendly, and directed her to what he called “good Catholic media sources.” In another April 2019 email, Sullivan provided Shupe with what he called an “outline” for an op-ed, along with instructions for pitching: “You should shop it to the main liberal papers offering it to each one for 24 hours before offering it to a new one. After about four or five, you could then offer it to some more ‘conservative’ papers until you get one to bite.” The “outline” provided by Sullivan was a full essay of 1,609 words. One sentence was typed in red, indicating that Shupe should fill in the details herself. 

    This is clearly happening in the UK too.

    If you’re a reader of the (Glasgow) Herald, this bit might jump out at you:

    “ADF has some excellent writers familiar with the length and style that appeals to op-ed page editors, who could take even a very rough sketch or outline of thoughts from you—or just talk with you—and then create a draft that I think you will be very happy with.” 

    The ADF’s Lois McLatchie has popped up in The Herald’s pages several times recently as a columnist, and her columns are very good at what they do; unfortunately what they do is attempt to excuse the inexcusable and wage war on human rights. That The Herald publishes them without context is an indication not just of how effective the ADF’s machine is, but also how debased our journalistic institutions have become.

    The piece makes it clear, yet again, that none of this is about “protecting children” or “protecting women”. It’s a religious war.

    “I was gradually waking up to the fact that, you know, I was just a useful idiot, are the two words I would use,” Shupe tells me. “I got the vibe that they wanted me to help them, they wanted me to use them, but they wouldn’t trust somebody like me around their kids.” 

  • Incompetence and malevolence

    A superb piece by Parker Molloy on the awful people dominating the discourse around trans people.

    When you’re discussing a topic solely on the grounds of whether or not someone is allowed to talk about something, you’re able to completely sidestep ever having to address the actual content. If you want to have a “discussion” about something, then discuss it.

    But instead, these guys all stand around having a “discussion” about whether or not they’re even allowed to have discussions, despite regularly having this content-free meta-debate in front of massive audiences that critics can’t match.

    It allows them to avoid ever having to actually say anything. And they know it.

    It’s a typically good, well-researched and cited piece, and it goes to the heart of the problem over the so-called trans debate: it’s not a debate. One side publishes or broadcasts a constant flow of bullshit, and as soon as they’re criticised they retreat behind their cancel culture wagons.

    And that’s because all of these stories “just asking questions” aren’t about trying to figure out a world where we can all exist, but what society should do about us and tous. We are not included in this discussion, and our efforts to participate in it at our smaller blogs and newsletters, etc. never gain traction. Instead, it’s, “Hey, look, a trans person tweeted an insult at me, see how unreasonable they are?”

    We have a right to be a part of this conversation, and when we push back on things like publishing a glowing review of a book written by an anti-trans activist that’s filled with straight-up false information that demonstrates that the book hasn’t been fact-checked properly (see? there’s that word again, properly) and is written by someone who is friendly with the author, it’s not us saying, “OMG, you’re not allowed to write about this! OMG! Stoppppppp!” it’s us saying, “You’re not upholding even the tiniest, most minimal standards. You are letting your biases run wild and you are failing at the very concept of journalism.”

    Not to mention that a year later, the author of that book (that got the glowing NYT review) would call trans people “a huge problem to a sane world,” “damaged,” and then say she wanted “reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition.”

    As Sally Claire recalls her university journalism tutor saying: “If someone says it’s raining, and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true.” Too many journalists would rather brick the fucking windows up so nobody can call out their incompetence and malevolence.

  • We don’t want to die

    I’m aware that I’ve written a few posts recently about the deaths of young trans women, largely from suicide. Let’s look into that a little bit.

    There’s a famous statistic that says 41% of trans people have attempted suicide at some point in their life. It’s from a US study of trans people, and the number is often used online by anti-trans bigots urging us to “join the 41%”. There’s quite a lot of literature on this subject now, and if you do a literature review you’ll find that the numbers are pretty consistent: globally, 32% to 50% of trans people say they’ve attempted suicide at least once. The number of people with ideation, which is when you make plans but don’t go through with them, is higher still.

    That’s much, much higher than in the wider population. Sticking with the US, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that 4.3% of Americans said they had had suicidal thoughts in the previous year.

    So. For the population as a whole, suicidal ideation affects 4.3%. For the trans population, more than 41%.

    What’s the difference? Here’s a clue. In the latest study of trans and non-binary youth in the US, the study found that people who underwent affirming healthcare – such as hormone therapy – had a lower rate of suicidal ideation than the wider population: just 3.5%.

    What’s the difference between 3.5% and 41%? Support. Many older trans people have encountered all kinds of issues around being trans: staying in the closet for years, difficulties in obtaining healthcare, societal disapproval, familial ostracism, loneliness, discrimination, hate speech, sexual assault… you know the kind of thing.

    But when trans people are supported, given the healthcare they need and the support they deserve, they get happier.

    From the study:

    During the study period, appearance congruence, positive affect, and life satisfaction increased, and depression and anxiety symptoms decreased. Increases in appearance congruence were associated with concurrent increases in positive affect and life satisfaction and decreases in depression and anxiety symptoms.

    Healthcare in “making people better” shocker.

    The problem isn’t who we are. It’s how so many of us are treated because of who we are. That isn’t an us problem. That’s a you problem (or if you’re one of the good people, a them problem). Trying to “eliminate transgenderism”, or just turning a blind eye to the destruction of our rights and healthcare by those who want to, has a body count.

  • Her name was Eden

    I don’t usually post content warnings but be aware that this story is really horrific. I’m writing it on the basis of information collated by Eden’s friends and by journalist Erin Reed. If more details emerge to confirm or contradict the details here, I’ll update the post.

    Her name was Eden Knight. “Eden was funny, sharp, well-read and concerned with making the world a better place,” her friends say. She lived in the US, where she appeared to be living her best life. Two days ago, she killed herself.

    Eden came from a rich Saudi family and was attending college in the US. She came out as trans during COVID. And in Summer 2022, she explained in her final note, she was approached by a friendly “fixer” hired by her family who said his goal was to find a way to rebuild the bridges burnt between her and her parents. The fixer also suggested he could solve her immigration status, as she was living in the US illegally.

    “I thought this was impossible,” she wrote. “I’m transgender and they are strict conservative Muslims, but I decided I would give it a shot because it can’t hurt right lmao?”

    According to Eden’s note, the fixer and his associate took her under his wing. After a “traumatic event” he encouraged her to move from Georgia, where she lived, to Virginia, where she would be looked after by one of the man’s associates. Eden was initially pampered, but the tone began to change and Eden appears to have been subject to a clumsy attempt at conversion therapy. “I did not realize fast enough what was happening because I’m fucking stupid,” she wrote.

    After a few months “I realised I was entirely dependent on [the associate] for food and shelter.” The fear of deportation kept her from running away. “I did everything he asked,” she wrote. “I cut my hair, I stopped taking estrogen, I changed my wardrobe, I met my dad… my mom kept telling me to repent or I was going to helm and I did, I repented.”

    The associate booked Eden on a flight to Saudi Arabia and she was returned to her parents. After a month of apparent normality, things changed. “I was subjected to daily searches of my belongings, my mom searched all of my electronics whenever she got the chance. I was berated for being a freak when my mom found my private photos, my dad called me a failure and an abomination.” Her parents found her HRT on multiple occasions and confiscated it.

    “They have found my HRT again, and I am done fighting,” Eden wrote two days ago. “This time I am done. I am tired.”

    She ended her message with a wish. “I hope that the world gets better for us. I hope our people get old.”

    Her suicide note was posted online yesterday morning. In the afternoon, her family posted the official notification of her death. She was deadnamed and misgendered throughout.

  • A scandal at Sandyford

    The Sandyford clinic is where Glasgow’s gender clinic is based, alongside various sexual health and victim counselling services. I’ve been attending it since 2017, and I’ve been meaning to write a proper piece about it for some time: visiting in person, even before COVID, was like playing the abandoned-hospital level of a horror video game. Empty corridor after empty corridor, your footsteps echoing, sitting alone in a large waiting room wondering if the next person you see will be a psychiatrist or a serial killer.

    There were protests outside it yesterday by the loons and cowards of the Scottish Family Party, who said they were coming at 11am to brick up the entrance to protest its role in women’s reproductive freedom. In the end they arrived at 8am with cardboard boxes printed with bricks, took their photo and then hid at the Mitchell Library until the colourful and camp counter-protest – which attracted more than 100 people – was over, returning afterwards to take another photo at the wrong building.

    The moon howlers of the SFP weren’t there to protest its trans services, although I’m sure that was a bonus. But the Sandyford Clinic has been the subject of ridiculous scaremongering for years now, with anti-trans bigots and cynical Conservatives claiming yet again that the clinic is “experimenting on children” and fast-tracking them into surgery. The fact that children don’t get gender-affirming surgery and nobody is experimenting on anybody is an inconvenient truth they prefer not to address.

    This morning, The National newspaper printed a story about a scandal at the Sandyford. But it’s not the invented one of the bigots. It’s the real one anyone attending can tell you about.

    Just two psychiatrists, each working one day a week, cover adult services for the whole west of Scotland. The young person’s team is soon to consist of a single person, who will work half the week and cover all of the country

    I know both psychiatrists, and they appear to be good people. But they’re not magic people. They’re massively overworked in a department that’s desperately underfunded and understaffed. One position has been advertised for years now and nobody has applied, because who’d want to work in an environment like that?

    “There’s this massive waiting list and there’s going to be loads of scrutiny on you and people are going to be actively campaigning for your service to close down and there’s 1000 newspaper articles written about your client br every week. When you put it like that, nobody is going to want to do it.”

    When I self-referred to the Sandyford in 2016, it took 11 months before I was offered an initial assessment visit. Officially the adult waiting list is nearly five years long now. Anecdotally I’m hearing it’s even longer than that. And the lack of staff means the healthcare you do get is inadequate. Last May a really important appointment was made for me; nobody informed me about it and I didn’t discover it had been made until November. The earliest next appointment was in February.

    If this were any other branch of healthcare, the coverage would be deafening. But I think it’s a safe bet that the genuine scandal at the Sandyford, one that’s affecting the healthcare of a small but significant group of people, will get less coverage than any scaremongering. And that too should be a national scandal.

  • Murdoch’s minions want Section 28 back

    The Times has posted its latest culture war piece, in which parents are “shocked” by “graphic sex education in school”. Apparently “one mother says her son has ‘gone from finding out Santa Claus doesn’t exist to being told about anal sex’’, which is definitely a thing that actually happened.

    It’s a good piece to study if you’re interested in how culture wars are waged, though. The “graphic sex education” it talks about doesn’t exist, but the Times uses innuendo to suggest otherwise. The term “anal fun and frolics” that has The Times clutching its pearls is from a personal website written by an adult for other adults. The song about masturbation The Times refers to is from a different website, also by and for adults.

    What The Times is doing here, and not in a subtle way, is trying to make you scared of the queers again. The article opens with a 12-year-old apparently having a panic attack because someone told her trans people exist; the body copy’s deliberate focus on anal sex is code for The Gays. And telling people that the queers and the gays are coming for your kids is what brought us Section 28, which Murdoch’s minions clearly want to bring back.

    Update, 11 March

    The source of the story was The New Social Covenant Unit, an evangelical organisation co-chaired by Miriam Cates MP and Danny Kruger MP whose director Imogen Sinclair works for the Conservative Christian Fellowship. To describe them as social and religious conservatives would be an understatement.

    NSCU’s politics are stated in greater detail in their manifesto “12 propositions for a new social convenant”8. This manifesto is deeply socially conservative on the subject of marriage and family, claiming that marriage equality for same sex couples “removed [marriage’s] physical basis” and that the right of couples to end a marriage had “removed its emotional and practical basis, and voided the marriage vow itself”. The 12 propositions refer to the primary purpose of marriage as “regulation of baby-making”, implicitly valuing fertile, heterosexual couples over all other forms of families.

    The 12 propositions rail against immigration and “globalism”, promoting the antisemitic conspiracy theory9that “cultural Marxism”, purported to be an obscure school of political thought originating from largely Jewish academics in the 1950s, has infiltrated political and academic institutions with the aim of destroying the family and Western civilisation.

  • Fight club

    One of the key attack strategies of the anti-trans movement is to attack the idea of trans women participating in sports. It’s quite clever, because elite athletes are very different from us “normal” people: people like Michael Phelps or Sharron Davies are basically freaks of nature. Davies has been (wrongly) tagged on the internet as trans, which is quite funny given her anti-trans views.

    So if you can find an example of a trans woman competing at an elite level, you can quite easily persuade people that trans women are incredibly athletic and powerful. Rather than, like me the other day, spending three minutes trying to open a jar of garlic, hurting my wrist and bursting into tears.

    That process of picking an outlier and pretending they’re everywhere is pretty much what happened with Laurel Hubbard, the first and only openly trans woman to compete in an individual Olympic event in the 18 years since the Olympics opened their arms to trans people in 2004. She placed last.

    If we’re taking over sports we’re doing a pretty shit job of it.

    But of course, we’re not. If you look at the stories about supposed trans domination of sports, there’s no such thing happening. In every case I’ve ever seen, the trans woman’s success was either an outlier or wasn’t even success: I’ve seen many stories featuring aggrieved athletes complaining about trans domination when they and the trans person they’ve gone to the papers about finished very far behind many other cisgender athletes. But “I lost because I’m shit” doesn’t make for quite the same clickbait as “I was robbed of my rightful win by a trans woman”.

    But of course, transphobes’ feelings don’t care about facts. And I couldn’t have come up with a better example of that than the video currently doing the rounds that shows a trans woman absolutely destroying a cisgender woman in an MMA wrestling match.

    Here are some of the comments. The second one is from an American politician.

    “When a guy isn’t good enough to compete with the guys, it’s easier to pretend to be a woman.”

    “Who is responsible when a real girl gets hurt? How is this fair for actual females? Why do we not see women posing as men and stepping on the field as a linebacker? If you support this you’re as mentally ill as they are. If you’re silent then you support it.”

    “this is totally unfair to real women IMO.”

    “This is so wrong on so many levels. Men do not belong in women’s sport”

    There’s just one problem.

    Nobody in the video is trans.

    The supposed trans woman in the video is Gaby Garcia, a very successful MMA fighter from Brazil. She’s one of the most successful competitors of all time, in fact. And she’s cisgender.

  • Hate never dies

    This week, MP Jess Phillips spent over five minutes in parliament reading the names of women and girls murdered, or believed to have been murdered, by men. One of those girls was trans teen Brianna Ghey, whose alleged killers are awaiting trial.

    The furious, hateful, inhuman response from the “reasonable concerns”, “protect women” crowd managed to shock me, and I thought I was pretty much unshockable by now.

    Part of the fury is because the list that Phillips uses is compiled by a very vocal anti-trans activist; Ghey’s name was (rightly) added by the MP.

    As Trans Safety Network’s Jess O’Thompson writes:

    “It is deeply concerning that transphobic rhetoric in this country is so prevalent and so vile that gender critical activists feel bold enough to jump on the grave of a dead child… This is not about single-sex spaces or safeguarding – there is no way to be trans which is not an affront to them. This pile on shows the entire movement for what it is – a vicious attack rooted in the hatred of trans people and our community, even our dead children.”