Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • 100,000 grieving families

    You don’t need me to tell you that Boris Johnson lied when he said the UK government had done everything possible to minimise the COVID-19 death toll.

    There is a reason we have a death toll exceeding 100,000 while New Zealand has 25, Vietnam 35 and Taiwan 7. As Devi Shridhar writes in the Guardian, we didn’t close our borders, we abandoned community testing, we didn’t lock down quickly enough, we didn’t have enough PPE for key workers and our government messaging has been incoherent and incompetent. So many of the UK’s deaths were completely preventable.

    But this is not just about the Government’s incompetence and corruption. It’s also about a media that’s consistently failed in its most basic function, which is to hold power to account. For more than a year, too much of the press has been more interested in parroting the government line, platforming cranks and giving airtime to dubiously funded pressure groups than holding our failing government to account.

    Journalist Mic Wright:

    Every newspaper front page that heralded ‘Independence Day’ last summer when the first lockdown was eased, every headline that passed on the government’s message that people should get back to offices, every report that passed on demands from bloviating backbenchers and astroturfing groups of suddenly ‘militant’ mums contributed in its own way to reaching that number that is so abstracted in today’s newspapers — 100,000 people have died.

    Every puff piece about Boris Johnson and his cute little family, every shot of his future mother-in-law coming to Downing Street, every photo spread about their dog, every column that made excuses for Dominic Cummings, sneered at ‘hipster analysis’ in the early days of this avoidable disaster, or told us about ‘Dishy’ Rishi and how much he cares, contributed to 100,000 people dead.

    Every jingoistic throwback pun to a war that none of us fought and to a history that most people misremember contributed to 100,000 people dead, ever ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ promo plastered on a tabloid front-page, every syllable uttered by political hyena Matt Chorley played its part, every Rod Liddle column, every Fraser Nelson quote, every Sarah Vine column oscillating between bafflement at government policy and insidery snideness, every story that poured more shame on celebrities and influencers than the government that got us here shares a piece of the blame.

    None of these people will be held to account.

  • Drama

    I’ve watched two very different dramas this week: a theatrical monologue and a TV series. Both were very emotional experiences.

    The monologue was Overflow, written by Travis Alabanza and performed by the mesmerising Reece Lyons.

    It’s a one-woman show about a trans woman hiding in the ladies to escape violence. It’s not always an easy watch but it has important things to say about allyship, about prejudice and what it’s like to be young and trans. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck after watching it: it dug up a lot of big emotions.

    Here’s The Independent’s review of it.

    Overflow explores the problematic concept of allyship. The word “ally” isn’t just something you call yourself – it’s about what you do. In a passage reminiscent of Burgerz, Rosie weaves through anecdotes of well-meaning cis people who have failed to act when it mattered most. Top of the list is lifelong friend Charlotte, described ironically as “the best cisgender woman to ever exist and ultimate ally and protector of the trans”, who doesn’t stand up to transphobic rhetoric when she encounters it in the world. This brings up complex, burdensome questions about friendship, like: “Can I be friends with someone who is friends with someone who is transphobic?”

    The TV series? Like every other LGBT+ person in the UK, I suspect, I binge-watched It’s A Sin, the new drama by Russell T Davies. The Guardian called it a “masterpiece”; it’s a very powerful drama about the AIDS crisis. That means of course it gets very dark and very sad, but before that darkness descends it’s also one of the most joyous portrayals of gay people’s lives I’ve seen on screen.

    It’s also deeply upsetting, especially in other people’s reactions to the characters: this was a time of outspoken, vicious homophobia and anti-gay sentiment soared during the AIDS epidemic. Much of that was driven by the press, which demonised gay men and in the case of The Sunday Times under the editorship of Andrew Neil, claimed that AIDS couldn’t affect straight people.

    Here’s writer Russell Davies:

    Q. Do you think there are parallels between how HIV Positive people were treated in the 80s and 90s and how trans people are treated now?

    Yes, it’s the story of The Other. The heartbreaking thing about the arguments about trans people is that the numbers are so vanishingly small. And if you know any trans people you cannot recognise this portrait of them as predatory and violent and self-seeking or self-serving. It’s heartbreaking to see this get out of control.

    Guardian writer and right-wingers’ favourite hate figure Owen Jones posted a jokey tweet suggesting that transphobes should be banned from liking It’s A Sin. But behind the joke is the unpleasant fact that the very papers whose arts critics praised the programme also employ the columnists who incite fear and hatred of trans people. Many of the people who are so viciously hateful of us are just as hateful of gay men and women. They’ve just learnt not to say that bit out loud.

  • The reality-based community

    Last week, vocal anti-trans bigots and a fair few UK journalists (*standup comedian voice* not that you can always tell the difference, amirite?) claimed that appointing one of the most equal and diverse administrations we’ve seen meant that, er, President Biden was worse for women than Donald Trump. They even had their own social media hashtag, #BidenErasesWomen.

    The reason for this is because Biden’s initial raft of executive orders included restoring very basic legal workplace protections for LGBT+ people – protections that fall short of the legal protections LGBT+ people have here in the UK. Once again the fury in response to the move demonstrated that the people claiming to care about protecting women only really care about hurting LGBT+ people, particularly trans women.

    A new survey by IPSOS asked over 500 Americans for their views on Biden’s initial executive orders. 83% approved of the LGBT+ protections: more than approved of his reponse to COVID-19, his mask mandate, his rejoining of the World Health Organisation, his recommitment to battling climate change or anything else.

    What you read in the papers does not reflect the views of the reality-based community.

  • Why British media is so transphobic

    This, by VS Wells, is very good.

    A culmination of factors appear at play. Some point to the antiquated ideologies of a generation of journalists and publishers who have dominated the mainstream media. Others say it’s intrinsically linked to political leaders who have failed to denounce hate. No matter its origins, this rampant transphobia has become a nation’s accepted bigotry.

    The article rightly points out that the disproportionate influence wielded by a few well-connected people has been a significant factor.

    Media in the U.K. has long been white, wealthy and interconnected, and it’s within these circles especially that transphobia has “become very fashionable,” Jane Fae says. The chair of Trans Media Watch, a charity that advocates for better press coverage, Fae points to Ian Katz as an example: During his stints at the Guardian newspaper, BBC and Channel 4, each publication saw a rise in transphobic coverage. Katz is married to Justine Roberts, founder and CEO of Mumsnet, a website that’s become a hotbed of British TERFs. As writer Laurie Penny explains, “The ecosystem of liberal media and left-wing activism is smaller and more quarrelsome in Britain than it is in America, and a lot of people know each other, and a lot of [transphobia in media] comes down to in-group loyalty and personal drama.”

  • I for one am shocked

    Newsweek:

    Straight Pride Group ‘Super Happy Fun America’ Members Arrested Over U.S. Capitol Riot

    …Sahady’s group describes itself on Twitter as “a right of center civil rights organization focusing on defending the American Constitution, opposing gender madness and defeating cultural Marxism.”

    “Gender madness” refers to transgender identity and “cultural Marxism,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is a right-wing term with anti-Semitic roots that generally refers to identity politics, including antagonism against such groups as “feminists, LGBTQ people, secular humanists, multiculturalists, sex educators, environmentalists, immigrants, black nationalists, the ACLU,” the SPLC writes.

  • The NHS is getting information from US hate groups

    Thanks to a Freedom of Information Request, we now know the source for the recent change to NHS England information about puberty blockers.

    A US anti-LGBT blog.

    Christine Burns MBE, who was instrumental in the creation of the Gender Recognition Act, on Twitter:

    NHS England used justifications from a US hate campaign to alter its public facing web pages on puberty blockers, which were then cited in a Judicial Review

    As the account that published the FOI response explains, the website “is funded by US conservative think-tank The Witherspoon Institute. An anti-LGBT and anti-abortion far right group.”

    There’s a horrific mix of malevolence and incompetence around trans healthcare right now: incompetence within and malevolence without.

  • Conspiracy magnets

    Something that’s become really apparent in the final days of the Trump administration is that cranks of a feather flock together. If you believe that the US election has been stolen, chances are you also believe that the COVID vaccine contains microchips, and that furniture shop Wayfair traffics stolen children.

    Thanks to Twitter I discovered that there’s a name for this phenomenon: crank magnetism. As RationalWiki puts it:

    A sovereign citizen, a creationist, an anti-vaxxer, and a conspiracy theorist walk into a bar. He orders a drink.

    The reason for it is very simple. Believing in a conspiracy theory means denying evidence, denying authority, denying reality. And once you do that once, once you decide that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary the people in authority are covering something up, you’re much more open to the idea that they’re covering other things up too.

    To put it simply: once you believe they’re covering up one thing, it’s easy to believe that they’re covering up everything.

    For example, if you believe that mainstream medicine is covering up the efficacy of homeopathy or of ancient Chinese medicine, it isn’t much of a leap to believe that mainstream medicine is covering up the links between MMR and autism. If you believe that Big Pharma is being funded by the Jews to turn everybody trans, it’s hardly a stretch to believe that Big Pharma created COVID to sell vaccines or that those vaccines contain microchips.

    Once you deny one reality, you can easily end up denying all reality. You can see that in the COVID deniers, in the QAnon craze, in the ludicrous things people believe about marginalised groups.

    The conspiracies don’t even need to make sense, or fit with a coherent worldview. Studies have found that conspiracists will happily believe conspiracies that contradict each other – so if you believe that Princess Diana faked her own death, you’re also highly likely to believe that Princess Diana was murdered. The specifics don’t really matter: either way, there’s a cover-up.

    It’d be fascinating if it weren’t so frightening.

  • “When we give up on truth, we concede power”

    In the New York Times Magazine: The American Abyss, a longread about the attempted coup and what led to it.

    Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.

    Post-truth wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth.

  • Doing it for the kids

    My son and daughter go to different schools but right now they’re getting their education in the same location: my home. They’re both learning remotely, joining their classmates and teachers on Microsoft Teams and using things like my phone to take pictures of their work and upload it to the school.

    What’s really striking about this is how much work the teachers have put into it, how patient they are with the kids and how brilliantly they’re using the technology. Not all heroes wear capes.

  • Profiting from poverty

    Another day, another example of the private sector profiteering from poverty. This time it’s free school meals. Previously parents were given £30 vouchers to pay for their kids’ school lunches. Now, the lunches are provided for them instead.

    Just one problem. Instead of £30 of food, the packages contain about £5 worth of food.

    Bootstrap Cook Jack Monroe is rightly furious.

    The vouchers were a good idea. They were BLOCKED from being spent on age restricted products, like alcohol, lottery tickets, cigarettes. Despite this restriction, mouthpieces on Twitter with their own austerity agendas claimed that there was widespread misuse. With no evidence.

    …Because of a noisy few objecting with fabricated or v rare examples of an abuse of the system (rich when it’s usually coming from people who themselves abuse every financial loophole they can find…) the vouchers, which were a lifeline, have been replaced with a food box.

    …Its value at supermarket prices is under a fiver. To replace a £30 voucher.