Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

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Author: Carrie

  • “Hot takes and salacious hate-reads”

    There’s an interesting piece in The Guardian by Andrew Marantz about trolls, technology companies and how both have helped to fuel the resurgence of the far right. He argues that part of the rise is because journalism and traditional media was spectacularly unequipped to deal with it: the desire to remain neutral that’s appropriate for writing about tariffs and treaties can be exploited by “a racist movement full of creeps and liars”. You see a similar dynamic in bigotry, climate change denial, anti-vaccination and so on where extremist views are presented as one perfectly valid side of an equally balanced argument.

    Neutrality has never been a universal good, even in the simplest of times. In unusual times – say, when the press has been drafted, without its consent or comprehension, into a dirty culture war – neutrality might not always be possible. Some questions aren’t really questions at all. Should Muslim Americans be treated as real Americans? Should women be welcome in the workplace? To treat these as legitimate topics of debate is to be not neutral, but complicit. Sometimes, even for a journalist, there is no such thing as not picking a side.

  • “I can’t be the only one who’s told a dental receptionist I’m here for my tooth hurty”

    Journalist Pete Paphides asked his followers:

    Is there an aspect of your work that involves dealing with the public? Is there a particular thing that people say to you all the time whilst thinking they’re the first person to have said it?

    And oh my God, the replies. You’ll recognise yourself, and you’ll cringe.

  • Hashtags aren’t healthcare

    It’s #timetotalk day today, a day when people are encouraged to open up and talk about mental health. I’m not going to be negative about it – the organisations involved are good ones and I’ve written a lot here and in my songs about the importance of opening up about sadness, anxiety and other mental health problems. But without action, talk doesn’t change anything.

    I lost two friends last year, both of whom were having mental health problems, and at least one of them had opened up about it. I know that because I was one of the people he opened up to, and we talked a lot about the problems he was having getting the right support and medication from his doctor. He took his own life shortly afterwards.

    Never mind #timetotalk. How about #timetofundmentalhealthprovision? #timetostopstarvingmentalhealthservicesoffunds? #timetoinvestinchildmentalhealthservices? #timetodosomethingaboutgenderclinicwaitinglists? Not as catchy, I know. But much more accurate.

    This, by Hannah Jane Parkinson, is from 2018 but it’s just as powerful and as relevant today (content warning: self-harm).

    [it is] infuriating to come home from a secure hospital, suicidal, to a bunch of celebrity awareness-raising selfies and thousands of people saying that all you need to do is ask for help – when you’ve been asking for help and not getting it.

    …The truth is: enough awareness has been raised. We – the public, the health professionals, the politicians – need to make our words and actions count for more.

    There’s no point in asking for help if there’s no help available.

  • Adult kids say the funniest things

    I’ve written before about dubious “the sinister trans cult stole my children” articles: all too often they turn out to demonstrate that some parents find it easier to blame sinister, shadowy forces than their own shortcomings when their grown-up children cut all contact. But I’ve rarely seen an example as downright awful as this one.

    This is from The Christian Post last year, and it’s being widely circulated again by anti-trans types. I’m not linking to it because it’s just hateful and packed with some really, really unpleasant stuff.

    The “kids” are in their twenties and thirties. The “anguished mom” is “tormented Lynn Meagher”.

    Meagher lost contact with her son for nearly a decade after he came out as transgender. She reconnected with him in 2013, which was a struggle because she didn’t feel she could call him “she” or a woman, and use his preferred female name while remaining true to her beliefs — particularly that sex cannot be changed and no amount of cosmetic surgery can alter biology.

    “I did the best I could to have a relationship with him where I just loved him for himself, and was hoping that we could just disagree on what we disagreed with and love each other anyway,” Meagher said.

    Got that? I just want to love you for who you are, except for the “who you are” stuff. Incidentally, did you count the deliberate misgenderings in those two paragraphs? I make it eight.

    The thing about grown-up children is that they can speak for themselves. Here’s Meagher’s daughter, posting in November in a discussion about the article.

    She didn’t lose me to a cult. She lost me to her racism (she’s a Proud Boy). She lost me to her abuse (she threw me against the wall so I would stop crying). She lost me to her transphobia (she collected signatures for the anti-trans bathroom petition). She lost me to her greed (she stole survivors’ benefits the federal gov’t gave me to buy herself fur coats and a car). She lost me to her cruelty…

    The Proud Boys are a US far-right group. If they’re not actually neo-Nazis, they’re incredibly good friends with many people who are.

    Just in case you had any doubts about this woman’s eligibility for the Mother of The Year award, here’s a message from her son, responding to an article critical of his mother.

    thank you thank you thank you for addressing her, her hateful rhetoric, and the article she wrote (which was originally uploaded with mine and my siblings full names, and was found when a friend of mine had searched my name for my top surgery fundraiser, basically outing me as trans to future employers. it makes my situation more manageable to know that people see through her BS, even without knowing about the emotional/religious abuse and physical violence she inflicted on all of her children and husband for years. thank you.

    The article notes that our anguished mom has made lots of new friends, not just from far-right groups but also some of the leading lights of the UK anti-trans movement. They gave her “lots of hugs.” Which sounds like more love than she ever gave her children.

  • If the Starbucks Mermaids advert was real

    Starbucks’ lovely and groundbreaking advert, which features a young trans man summoning up the courage to ask for his new name on his coffee cup, is important: as I’ve written before, representation matters. Seeing someone like you in mainstream media, in this case on a major TV channel, can help you feel that you’re not alone. I had a good cry when I saw it.

    There’s been a somewhat mixed response online (discounting the obvious fury of the Prosecco Stormfront mob on Mumsnet) because of course, Starbucks is a big company that’s hardly known for its positive effects on the world around it. But if it’s going to be throwing its money around on advertising anyway, I’d much rather it threw its money at adverts like this one and at charities such as Mermaids, which this campaign is supporting.

    My own reaction is amusement, because when I first used my new name in a Starbucks things didn’t happen quite like they did in the advert.

    Barista: What’s the name?
    Me: Carrie.
    Them: Gary?
    Me: No, Carrie.
    Them. Sorry, Karen.
    Me: No, sorry, it’s Carrie.
    Them: Kerry?
    ME: No. Carrie. With a C.
    Them: Ciara?
    Me: No. Carrie. C-A-R-R-I-E.
    Them. Carrie?
    Me: Yes, Carrie. Like Carrie Fisher. Yes.
    Them: OK. (Writes “Harry” on cup)

  • What doesn’t hit print

    I linked to a Roy Greenslade piece the other day about the way UK newspapers invented a so-called immigration crisis. In it he wrote:

    If you want to understand the populist media’s underlying agenda then you have to look not only at what gets published, but what doesn’t.

    Here’s a great example of that. Every single time an anti-trans pressure group or disgruntled axe-grinder makes unsubstantiated claims about the supposed dangers and alleged overprescription of puberty blockers, it gets printed in the Daily Mail, The Sunday Times and other print publications.

    Last week, a massive, reputable study with a huge sample size reported that puberty blockers are safe, reversible and in many cases life-saving. They have proven positive effects on teens’ mental health.

    Not a single UK newspaper has mentioned it.

  • Fun with official application forms

    I sent off my application for my Gender Recognition Certificate this week. So far it’s cost me £140 for the application, £48 to get a statutory declaration notarised, £30 for medical reports and £7.40 in postage; they’ve asked for additional evidence so that’s another trip to the Post Office today. It’s good to finally set the wheels in motion; I’ve had to wait more than two years to do so because I need to provide documentary evidence that I’ve been living as me for that period.

    Under the proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act I’d still have to provide most of the things I’ve had to provide, but I wouldn’t have had to wait three extra months for a psychological report and I wouldn’t have had to pay £140. The postage bill might be a bit lower too.

    That’s pretty much the only difference between the system we’ve had in place for sixteen years and the proposed reforms to it.

    Here’s what my GRC will enable me to do in everyday life:

    • Nothing.

    GRCs have nothing to do with everyday life. They’re about changing your birth certificate’s gender marker and nothing else. That is relevant to me should I remarry, and it changes what it says on HMRC’s computer and may impact my eligibility for certain benefits in the future. It used to affect the state pension but I’m too old for it to have any effect on mine.

    Here’s what impact my GRC will have on the toilets I use and the single-sex spaces I access:

    • None.

    It’s got nothing to do with any of that. That’s all covered by the Equality Act, which is not going to change.

    Whether it’s reformed or not, the Gender Recognition Act has no connection with what toilet I use, which spaces I’m permitted to access or the legal definition of men, women or anything else. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either misinformed or malicious.

    Unfortunately the misinformed and the malicious are currently flooding the Scottish government with submissions demanding a halt to any reform of the Gender Recognition Act. It’s an odd thing to target, but it’s enabled them to flood mainstream and social media with increasingly outlandish claims about the supposed dangers of trans women (never trans men) as part of a wedge strategy to weaken the wider LGBT+ community.

    You can help battle the bigots by completing the gender recognition consultation. Feminist group Sisters Scotland have produced a really good guide for anybody who wants to be an ally to trans people, and you’ll find it here.

    Trans and non-binary people are being targeted in mainstream and social media with inaccurate information and campaigns to deny their human rights.  In solidarity with our trans and non-binary siblings, we urge trans allies to respond to this consultation.

    …the main Scottish feminist charities already implement policies that are inclusive of trans women and they agree with the joint declaration of support for GRA reform issued by several Scottish women’s charities.

    It’s a good guide to what the current law actually is, and what minor changes are being proposed.

    Incidentally, if you’re wondering why I’m not waiting for reform before applying for my own GRC, it’s because I’m not confident that any reform is going to happen any time soon. In England, the government ran a consultation on GRA reform in 2018 and still hasn’t published the results; in Scotland, we’re now in the middle of the second consultation on the same issue because a bunch of bigots didn’t get the result they wanted. With pretty much the entire mainstream media happily demonising trans people and demonstrating complete ignorance of the law, I’m not feeling very optimistic right now.

  • This is the future bastards want

    And so it begins. South Dakota has made the first step towards making evidence-based medicine illegal. Doctors who try to help trans teenagers face a year in prison. Another seven US states are set to follow suit; anti-trans groups in the UK want similar bans here.

    As Christine Burns MBE put it:

    Can we all agree now that trans people and our allies aren’t “overreacting”, “misunderstanding” or “making stuff up” about the true intentions of those ranged against us? Making laws to prohibit doctors from providing evidence-based treatment is not normal and people will die.

  • “We are living in Bigot Christmas”

    Ellie Mae O’Hagan writes about the “anti-woke backlash”. She argues that in the 1990s and 2000s socially liberal values became the “new normal”, with even the Conservative party becoming nicer and introducing legislation such as equal marriage. It seemed unimaginable at the time, but that consensus is unravelling very quickly.

    …as the tide of 90s social liberalism has ebbed, it has also revealed another group of people (primarily older, white homeowners and pensioners) who had never bought into the consensus in the first place, and are aggressively hostile to its newer, more radical iteration.

    We all know a member of this demographic: alienated by the modern world and displeased by change, they are fond of complaining that “You can’t say anything any more!” – even as their opinions are widely reproduced in the nation’s print media.

    And the nation’s print media are happy to pander to them, not least because they’re the demographic that still buys the nation’s print media and that advertisers most want to reach.

    Having spent so long feeling silenced by the liberal consensus, people in this group have been given a new lease of life by the right’s new insurgents. Not only were they correct all along; they were actually victims, zealously persecuted by an oversensitive and censorious society. It is this righteous indignation that lends their antipathy to wokeness a defiant and almost celebratory quality. As a friend of mine puts it, we are living in “bigot Christmas”.

    As O’Hagan points out, if this group’s claims of persecution were really true the country and the world would look very different. But just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean people don’t believe it.

    O’Hagan’s piece isn’t an attack on those people. It’s a warning to the rest of us, because the so-called anti-woke are often “parroting arguments that are largely advanced by the far right”. And they’re winning.

    Progressives need to wise up to the fact that they are losing this argument and decide what they are going to do in response. If they don’t, they may soon find that the future they always assumed was theirs is being made without them.

  • They are coming for your children

    Katelyn Burns reports on the coordinated assault on trans kids’ healthcare by right-wing US lawmakers.

    eight state legislatures — including Missouri, Florida, Illinois, Oklahoma, Colorado, South Carolina, Kentucky, and South Dakota — have already introduced bills this year that would criminally punish doctors who follow best practices for treating adolescents with gender dysphoria. In South Dakota, for example, doctors who prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones could face a $2,000 fine and a year in prison under the proposed law. South Dakota’s version of the bill was even prioritized and became the very first bill of the decade to pass out of committee… should any of the bills become law, they would effectively cut off many adolescents from medically necessary and, often, life-saving treatment for gender dysphoria.

    …Bills banning trans care for kids are the new bathroom bills, part of conservatives’ larger culture war against trans people. Conservative media and politicians have been fanning the flames for this fight for years in hopes of rallying the base over a non-existent threat — a threat that only puts trans lives in danger.

    Whenever the religious right realises a tactic isn’t working, it finds a new one. When it lost its war on equal marriage, it changed tactics and started attacking trans people – it’s no coincidence that the current media obsession with trans people began after 2017, when various evangelical groups agreed and began to implement their new focus on demonising trans women.

    At first, they tried to make people scared of trans women in public places, but the public is well aware that you’re more likely to be sexually assaulted by a Republican politician or evangelical rabble-rouser than a trans person. So they refined that one and started to say that predatory men would pretend to be trans so that they could start acting like Republican politicians.

    That didn’t fly either, so it’s time to kill some kids.

    Puberty blockers are rarely prescribed. When they are, they save lives.

    Study after study have shown that affirming trans and gender-diverse kids in their self-exploration improves mental health and lowers suicide risk. The affirming model, which allows children to explore their own gender identities at their own pace and can include puberty blockers, has been recommended by nearly every major American medical association, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the Endocrine Society, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and many others.

    But of course, bigots don’t really do facts – especially when there are votes to be won.  “Your children are under threat from minority X and only I can protect them” may be one of the oldest and most despicable political tactics in the book, but it works so it’s being rolled out again. Under the pretence of protecting children, these yahoos are quite happy at the prospect of killing quite a few of them. What’s a few more dead trans kids to people who wish trans people didn’t exist at all?

    We’re starting to see exactly the same thing shift in strategy happening here in the UK, although not from openly evangelical and/or right-wing groups: from the same anti-trans activists who previously parroted the evangelical right’s previous attack lines and whose suspiciously well funded pressure groups didn’t exist before the evangelicals started their war on trans people in 2017. Many of those groups have overt or covert links to the US evangelical group The Heritage Foundation, which plays a key role in the US bills.

    What conservative lawmakers are doing with their legislation is removing parents’ and kids’ choices altogether, forcing their own political ideology on the medical choices of private citizens.

    This is a murderous ideology that chants “think of the children!” while trying to ban healthcare that keeps some of them alive.