Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • “Q deserves to live”

    Mic Wright has published a typically opinionated post on Q Magazine, which he used to write for and which may have published its final issue.

    Q has been around since the mid-1980s, and that means it’s been a key part of my musical life since the time when music felt like it was the only thing that mattered. It was, and is, a wonderful magazine featuring some incredibly talented writers. But like many magazines, it suffered from a series of really terrible decisions that did permanent damage to the brand.

    Wright:

    When the history comes to be written — if it is ever written — the villains of the story will be execs. Suited and booted bastards who have no real interest in music, no understanding of its effect beyond graphs and demographic data. They were the ones who killed the music magazines with a late-90s and early-00s obsession for creating scenes arbitrarily and pumping out list after list after list. They — and their supine editor-in-chief minions — were the ones who spent thousands upon thousands on cover shoots with ‘stars’ that everyone hated.

    For me, Q became inessential in the early to mid 2000s when its reaction to the rise of online competition was to make the core product terrible. Instead of the great journalism I loved so much, journalism that made you excited about hearing new music or rediscovering music you thought you knew, the magazine became a collection of lists. It wasn’t quite “32 bands whose singers are quite tall”, but it wasn’t far off.

    As I wrote back in 2004:

    Q has fallen into the trap of thinking that the number of reviews (and lists, and songs) is all that matters, so an issue with 137 album reviews is much better than one with 122. It’s a trait shared by many other music mags too, many of which have reduced the per-review word count to enable them to squeeze more reviews into the same space and put the all-important “we review everything!” claim on the front cover.

    [monthly music magazines] should do what online media can’t do: provide readers with access to big-name acts and tell interesting stories. It could also dump the dross, and instead draw people’s attention to the music that’s worth bothering with – the four- and five-star records, not the two- and three-star ones.

    The shallow, list-based approach lasted for years and the magazine shed thousands of readers. Things started to get better in 2009 when Paul Rees became editor. Me again:

    I’d hate to see the freelance bill, but Rees seems to have looked up the Big Book of Good Music Writers, hired them, and given them enough space to do something interesting. The result is a magazine that’s as good as, if not better than, it was in its heyday.

    And it’s even better now.

    Wright:

    Q over the last five years under the modish captaincy of Ted Kessler, ably assisted by a gang of old and young lags, and a freelance pool that has become more diverse with each passing month, has become genuinely brilliant. The final issue, if it is the final issue, is a masterclass in writing about right now alongside genuinely powerful reminiscences of scenes and people gone by. Q deserves to live. I hope it gets a rescue deal like MixMag and Kerrang! before it, because to go beneath the waves because of an unprecedented economic crisis would be a tragic end.

    I’ve been Very Online since the 1990s, but I’m still a great believer in the power of magazines: I buy digitally rather than print these days, but whether it’s Cosmopolitan or Q, Total Film or Time, magazines deliver something valuable that even their online equivalents can’t. It’s not just the writing; it’s the curation, the presentation, the lack of distraction. Online reading is a speedy shower. Magazines are a luxurious bath.

    I’ve quoted Q co-creator David Hepworth before: a new issue of a good magazine feels like getting a letter from a friend. Q has felt like a friend for almost all of my musical life, and I’ll be very sad if I have to say goodbye.

  • “The extremism and the routine abuse of any woman online needs to stop.”

    The other day, I linked to the TIE Campaign’s messages about the onslaught of sickening abuse they’ve received from homophobes and transphobes. One of the people I quoted was their chair Rhiannon Spear, who is also the National Women’s Convener of the SNP, and she’s gone into more detail in a new blog post.

    Opponents to the GRA would have you believe that the women’s sector in Scotland does not care about the protection of women. That the first ever female First Minister does not care about the safety of women. That the woman at the head of legal of the Equality and Human Rights Commission doesn’t understand the proposed changes in the GRA and how they impact women’s sex based rights in the Equality Act. That women like me who support GRA reform do not care about the safety of women.

    Instead of critically engaging with why I and many others support GRA reform, opponents now want you to believe that I am a threat to women and girls. That I am a predator, that I groom children and at worst I am a paedophile. We have reached a point where trans women are openly equated to predators and their allies are accused of being paedophiles and child groomers.

    This rhetoric is not normal and cannot become normal.

     

     

  • Everyone is awful

    Seven years ago, I wrote about my love for New Model Army, a post-punk band from England.

    I got into New Model Army in Kilbirnie Library, in the late 1980s. I was going through a bit of a punk/new wave thing at the time, and the library’s collection of vinyl LPs included one whose cover was a painted leather jacket, the words “only stupid bastards take heroin” disguised but still recognisable on the shoulders. That’ll do me, I thought.

    In the decades since I’ve bought a lot of their records and merchandise and been to lots of their gigs. But no more, because the person who designed their record covers and their merch – someone I’ve met, someone I chatted to briefly in my previous life, someone whose art I’ve worn on my chest – turns out to really hate people like me and is very vocal about it.

    So a band whose gigs used to feel like sanctuary – a band whose own Twitter bio says “we welcome everyone – equally” – is now a band I can’t go and see anymore, because rightly or wrongly I now worry that some of the band’s fans will share those views. I’m sure most don’t. But it only takes one person to beat you up.

    It’s not the first time a band I loved has turned out to be problematic. The drummer of Teenage Fanclub (not the original one everybody liked) is similarly obsessive, and I’m told that the main songwriter in that other famously nice and decent band, Elbow, has also been venomous about people like me. So that’s two more former loves whose logos I won’t wear and who I’m not going to pay to see any more.

    It’s as much a practical decision as a moral one. For me, gigs are an important release. They’re a source of joy, an opportunity to escape from the stresses and strains and sadness of everyday life. It’s impossible to have that transcendence when every time you look at the stage you see someone who doesn’t just hate you, but who spends an inordinate amount of their time trying to encourage others to hate you too.

    Art can’t offer escapism when the artist is one of the people you’re trying to escape from.

    And it’s not just transphobes. People are awful in all kinds of ways, and the older I get the more I discover that people I revered or whose art really connected with me were terrible. It sometimes feels like somebody is going through all the records, films and books that mattered to me and poisoning them. That sensitive author? Beat his girlfriend. That delicate lyricist? Howling racist. That comedian? Sexual predator. The soulful songwriter? Rapist.

    I know I’m not the only one to do this: now when someone tells me to check out a new band, a new author, a new comedian, the first thing I search for isn’t their material. It’s whether they’re problematic. All too often, they are. And that applies even at a local level. I was speaking to a promoter the other day who has a never-book list of artists proven to be problematic for reasons ranging from sexual predation to Nazism. It’s a long list.

    The artist is not the art, I know. But the artist can poison the art. I can’t watch Louis CK now I know what he did to women, or watch the UK version of The Office without seeing Ricky Gervais the transphobe rather than David Brent the character, or feel the connection with the songs of The Smiths since Morrissey’s racism became apparent.

    I feel it most in music, because music is such a personal thing: the good stuff becomes more than just a soundtrack. It becomes part of your identity. Part of your life. So when the people who make it turn out to be terrible, that news feels personal too. The more their art mattered, the more it feels like a betrayal.

    I’ve joked before that being trans has saved me a lot of money, because I don’t knowingly spend money on people or things that are problematic. But I’d much rather have music than money.

  • “You are part of the problem”

    This, by Patrick Benjamin, is superb: Dear White People, If You Have Ever Said Any Of These Things Then You Are Part Of The Problem.

    These riots are happening because no matter how black people have said it: taking a knee, marching the streets, bumper stickers, banners, signs, or chants, you still don’t get it. That doesn’t mean you’re bad people. That doesn’t mean you’re racist. It only means you’re white. And that’s not a crime, any more than being black is. The difference is, police aren’t going to shoot you in the street for it.

  • The Last of Us Part 2 is a flawed masterpiece

    I finished playing The Last of Us Part 2 yesterday. It made me cry, a lot. I think it’s a masterpiece.

    I agree with Eurogamer’s Oli Welsh, who wrote:

    It gets messy and problematic, and neither side comes out unscathed. But, by taking some big gambles, the developers land decisive blows that will send you reeling.

    …You will be halfway through the game before you understand what it’s actually doing and more than that before you really begin to feel its dread pull. Towards the very end, it is devastating.

    It’s ostensibly a survival horror game: your job is to battle your way through various kinds of enemies to reach your goal. TLOU2 does it with incredible skill – some of the set-pieces are truly exceptional, and it’s extremely tense and often downright terrifying. But what makes it different to other post-apocalyptic video games are two things: the characters, and the violence those characters commit and suffer.

    The writing and acting in TLOU2 is exceptional, and for once the key characters aren’t grizzled muscle-bound men . Most of the important characters are women, and those women are portrayed as real and complex people, not stereotypes or equally lazy “sexy women who KICK ASS!” fantasies.

    Welsh again:

    This is a game about women – not about the female experience per se, but a game in which almost all the notable characters are women and in which they are not only shown exhibiting great capability and physical prowess, but also contending with dark impulses typically ascribed to men: trauma, obsession, rage and revenge. It is also a game featuring LGBTQ+ relationships and characters in a prominent but matter-of-fact way – it’s not a big deal, they are just there.

    TLOU2 is a game about violence. I was trying to think of a cinematic analogue and I thought of Clint Eastwood’s classic western, Unforgiven. Like TLOU2 it subverted the tropes of its genre, in that case the Hollywood western; like TLOU2 it used the violence to hold up a mirror to the audience. In a genre where you’re supposed to cheer when the hero kills somebody, Unforgiven wanted you to question it. In a key line, Eastwood’s protege The Kid kills somebody for the first time and finds it hard to process. Eastwood’s character, Munny, tells him:

    “It’s a hell of a thing, ain’t it, killin’ a man. You take everythin’ he’s got… an’ everythin’ he’s ever gonna have…”

    TLOU2 takes a similar theme but amplifies it. It is a very, very violent game, but that violence is sickeningly realistic and has very serious consequences. I can’t go into detail without spoiling key plot points but by the end of the game I was sickened and horrified by the violence; in one battle, a scene that in other games would have you pumped full of adrenaline, I wept.

    Walsh:

    it isn’t until the game’s final stretches that it gathers its true power, as you approach a point that is all the more horrifying for its total inevitability.

    It’s a huge roll of the dice from the developers, but it works, and the pay-off is almost indescribable. It would be too much to claim that you will never feel the same about video game violence again, but the shock is profound and discomfiting.

    There are many flaws. There’s a section right at the end that feels like an afterthought and which lacks the characterisation of the rest of the game. Sometimes it’s a little heavy-handed with its message. And because the writing is so good, on the odd occasion it isn’t so impressive it’s really noticeable. But you won’t be thinking about that when the final credits roll. Chances are you’ll be like me, sitting on the sofa, tears streaming down your face.

    The Last of Us Part 2 is the most incredible game I’ve ever played. I never want to play it again.

     

     

  • “The religious right has turned its sights on a new secular bogeyman”

    An interesting and balanced article in that hotbed of radical leftism, the Financial Times: The front line of the new gender wars. It looks at the Catholic Church’s war on so-called “gender ideology” and how it’s been picked up by right-wing populists and religious conservatives worldwide. The article attempts to give context to the culture war in which trans people find their very existence weaponised.

    From the US and Brazil to Poland and Hungary, tilting against “gender ideology” plays to a particular constituency: disaffected voters who perceive they have been marginalised due to identity politics gone mad, and that their needs have been subordinated to the interests of outsiders, be they foreign or dark or queer.

    To this constituency, the special pleading of an entitled minority threatens to encroach on the wellbeing of the majority. What makes the politics of this so complex, in the US and the UK at least, is that people putting forward this argument find themselves aligned with some feminists.

     

  • Hateful words lead to hateful acts

    The TIE Campaign is a wonderful organisation that campaigns for more inclusive education.

    The TIE Campaign posted this yesterday:

    We are a charity which works with schools, teachers, and educators to tackle prejudice-based bullying. We provide anti-bullying sessions and gender stereotypes/equalities workshops to schools, and produce resources to include LGBT people and history in the curriculum.

    …For a number of months, we have been receiving the most hurtful – and dangerous – posts and messages from individuals who appear to be opposed to LGBT themes being included within education. We have never had to deal with anything like this before.

    …We cannot continue to sit by as individuals do this to us. Trolling is one thing – but what they are doing is dangerous, prejudicial, and hateful. Please report tweets like this if you see them. We cannot address this alone.

    …LGBT people and charities are regularly called groomers, pedophiles, abusers. This is unacceptable and horrific.

    …It’s not just us. Many LGBT organisations have been receiving this for months; as have national women’s charities, youth organisations, politicians. Lying like this about people or groups on social media is dangerous & can have serious consequences. It needs to stop.

    Please do read the whole thing. It’s horrifying, and utterly typical of the abuse LGBT+ organisations and supporters of LGBT+ equality receive on social media. And it’s increased dramatically in the last two years.

    Here’s Pink Saltire:

    This type of abuse is commonplace towards LGBT+ groups and has a real impact on us all.

    Sisters Scotland:

    The online abuse, slander, misrepresentation and lies that the LGBT community face on the daily destroy lives. It bleeds from online toxicity in to abuse in the media, and straight into abuse in the workplace, at home, in the streets. These prejudiced narratives pushed influence the narratives lived by the LGBT+ community. Their voices and strength are crushed under the weight of this. It’s up to all of us to ensure we give that strength back, that we raise those voices, make them louder and challenge those that seek to silence them.

    Dr Rebecca Crowther of LGBTI Scotland:

    It claws in to our personal social media accounts too & of course our minds, our mental health, our bodies. I couldn’t & wouldn’t type some of the names I’ve been called. I could never share the mysognynistic homophobic bullying & gaslighting I’ve received. That all of us have.

    And the worst part? Nothing I have received even compares remotely to the horrific bullying and abuse my trans siblings have been subject to.

    SNP women’s convener and TIE Campaign chair Rhiannon Spear:

    Constantly being called a pedophile or a child groomer because I support LGBT rights cannot become normal + I refuse to let it become normal.

    We are seeking legal advice + will take action where we can.

    The rhetoric needs to change.

    Abuse against LGBT+ people is rising in the UK, and that rise corresponds to the increasingly violent rhetoric being used about us and our allies in print and on social media. The people calling LGBT+ people and charities paedophiles on the internet are just echoing what high-profile Twitter accounts and newspaper columnists are saying. Violent words ultimately lead to violent acts.

  • These days, if you say you’re a bigot, you’re arrested and thrown in jail

    Former comedy writer Graham Linehan’s Twitter account was finally closed this weekend. The move came a week after another nasty troll, Katie Hopkins, lost her account for the same reason: repeated violations of Twitter’s hateful conduct policy.

    The stories are almost identical, but the reporting isn’t. And the best way to demonstrate that is to show you the way the same outlets reported the stories in their headlines.

    Sky News:
    – Katie Hopkins permanently banned by Twitter for breaking ‘abuse and hate’ rules
    – Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan banned from Twitter after trans comment

    RT.com:
    – Katie Hopkins permanently suspended from Twitter to keep platform ‘safe’ from ‘hateful conduct’
    – Twitter permanently suspends ‘Father Ted’ writer after he replies ‘men aren’t women’ to pro-trans tweet

    Guardian:
    – Katie Hopkins permanently removed from Twitter
    – Twitter closes Graham Linehan account after trans comment

    Daily Mail:
    – Katie Hopkins is BANNED from Twitter for breaking rules on hate speech
    – Father Ted creator Graham Linehan is suspended from Twitter after stating ‘men aren’t women’

    As you can see, each publication has framed the two stories very differently, and that’s apparent in many more publications than the ones I’ve quoted here. When Hopkins’ tweets have been referenced in headlines, if they were mentioned at all, they were usually prefixed with words like “vile” and “hateful”. There’s no such context in the headlines about Linehan.

    Maybe that’s because all of those publications have run anti-trans story after anti-trans story, anti-trans column after anti-trans column.

    Quick question: who claims that trans rights advocates are a front for a sinister cult sacrificing your children: the washed-up comedy writer or the award-winning newspaper columnist?

    Trick question. It’s both.

  • I wish everyone would watch this

    This is the trailer for Disclosure, a new documentary on Netflix helmed by the incredible Laverne Cox. It’s ostensibly about the way trans people have been represented (or in the case of trans men, not represented) in film and TV, but it’s really about what it’s like to live in a world that constantly tells you you’re not welcome.

    It’s an American programme, and that means there are some differences between it and any UK equivalent. For starters, it got made. And it provides proper representation of all kinds of trans people, not just unrepresentative rich white women. But its US focus means there’s no room for the portrayal of trans and gender non-conforming people in other countries, such as Little Britain, the IT Crowd and what felt like all TV comedy in the 1970s and 1980s in the UK.

    It’s an intelligent, insightful programme: rather than damn programmes or films outright, many of the contributors explain how on the one hand a portrayal was appalling, but on the other it was the only time they had ever seen someone like them on screen.

    But even those stories are often heartbreaking. Imagine how it feels to finally come up with the courage to tell your best friend that you’re trans and to be asked, “what, like… Buffalo Bill?”

    Buffalo Bill was the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs who murdered women and wore their skin like a suit.

    Over the course of the programme a clear theme emerges: the way trans people are portrayed or erased on screen has a powerful effect on how other people see us, and on how we see ourselves.

    It also makes a strong case that the portrayal of trans people as deceptive and disgusting is directly connected to the violence many trans people experience, particularly trans women of colour in North and Central America. In just the last week, my news app has brought stories of three trans women’s murders: one shot in the face multiple times after revealing her trans history; one found dumped by the side of a motorway; and one dismembered and thrown into a river. A cisgender man is in custody accused of her murder and mutilation.

    I cried quite a lot watching this, and for me there were two scenes in particular I wish everyone could see. The first is a simple montage showing some – not all, but some – of the films where a man’s discovery that a woman he liked was trans caused him to vomit, something that started in The Crying Game and was then amplified sadistically in many comedy shows and films; and the second is Jen Richards trying not to cry as she talks about how her family told her she would only be welcome if she did not come as herself.

  • Brendan O’Neill’s big stupid head

    It’s the sensation that’s sweeping the nation: posting puerile Photoshops of Brendan O’Neill’s big stupid head every time Spiked runs one of his big stupid articles.

    Tom Whyman explains.

    The Brendan O’Neill forehead meme is perfect – one of the few perfect memes this year has produced (as er, Esquire of all places has correctly pointed out). Formally, it works because – a bit like the Galaxy Brain meme – it has the scope to get exponentially ever-more ridiculous, as O’Neill’s forehead expands to become larger than the Hindenburg; larger than most skyscrapers; larger than the Earth itself. Recent attempts by O’Neill, clearly rattled by the meme, to shield his head with a hat have been easily incorporated – who knows where it might go next.

    …[By] refusing to take O’Neill seriously, and turning him into a figure of fun. It responds to his unreason exactly as it should be responded to: with some (much more playful and funny) nonsense of its own. There is no point engaging with this clown, the Forehead Meme communicates, he must be mocked and scorned from public life.