Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Category: Bullshit

Pernicious nonsense and other irritants

  • Profits of doom

    This graph is astonishing, if unsurprising: the UK press is publishing an average of 38 articles about trans people per day, most of them negative.

    Graph showing relentless rise of transphobic articles

    Writing in advertising industry site Outvertising, Marty Davies makes it clear that brands, via advertising, are funding this – and that online advertising incentivises it.

    “We’re finding ourselves funding a forever intensifying, never-ending campaign of hate against the trans community. The World Association of News Publishers assessed that over 50% of news publisher revenue comes from advertising. The ‘gender critical’ journalists are pumping out execution after execution of this hate campaign and are paid generously from our hands. This campaign is setting the news agenda and leading our whole media and politics to become infected by its poison.

    It’s important for us also to consider the role of our social platforms and broadcasters in this ecosystem. They also have questions to answer. TV and Radio broadcasters are platforming ‘gender critical’ voices unchallenged – framing anti-trans narrative as ‘legitimate concerns’. Sensationalist stories act like kindling for conversation across social platforms, allowing hateful views to burn like wildfire and become reinforced in algorithmic bubbles. Hate speech is commonplace and sanctions from platforms on users are slow if forthcoming at all. This commentary then provides content to be platformed and amplified by the media vying for attention to then sell on to us advertisers.”

  • Street of shame

    Private Eye magazine would like you to believe that the magazine is a brave outsider, fearlessly speaking truth to power and exposing media hypocrisy. The reality, of course, is that it’s part of the same incestuous bubble as the media it reports on.

    Here’s an example. Normally, a high profile left-wing writer leaving a high profile job amid multiple credible allegations of sexual harassment (the writer is reportedly known by many as The Octopus because of his behaviour towards more junior women), suggestions of an attempted management cover-up and apparently spurious claims of ill-health is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect the Eye to cover. Creepy men! Sneaky bosses! Lefty hypocrisy!

    But they haven’t covered it.

    In unrelated news, The Octopus writes for Private Eye and has done for years.

  • Number crunching

    “Average use of the word ‘trans’ in UK media stories about Brianna Ghey: 0.5

    Average use of the word ‘trans’ in UK media stories about Isla Bryson: 16,427.1

    The first is a victim of a terrible crime, likely targeted for being trans; the latter a perpetrator of a terrible crime, in which her trans status has no bearing.”

    – Andrew Carter

  • A terrible thing that didn’t happen

    On Saturday, the Daily Mail published a made-up story about something that didn’t happen. I know that is hardly news, but neither was the story. It’s just yet another made-up piece trying to spread fear of trans people, the kind of thing that ends up being quoted by politicians who want to remove our healthcare and human rights.

    The article isn’t so much a red flag as a flag shop that only sells red flags and that just got a big stock delivery from the red flag distributor. According to Tory councillor Ruth Sampson, she was in the ladies toilet of a pub when she had a conversation with a trans woman (who “towered” over her) about the absence of paper towels to dry their hands.

    The key assertion in the story is that in the absence of towels, the woman told the councillor that “I’m going to wipe my hands on my penis.” This, according to the councillor, is definitely a thing that actually happened, and it therefore proves that trans women should be excluded from the ladies and all other facilities they are legally entitled to use. To undermine this, said councillor immediately wrote to anti-trans Tory equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, rather than speak to the police, because that’s what you do, isn’t it?

    Unfortunately for the councillor, the trans woman concerned read the article too. And her side of the story is somewhat different. She had been attending a vigil in memory of a murdered trans girl, went to a pub afterwards, and in the bathroom conversation in question she said “oh, well I’ll just wipe my hands on my jeans then”, left, and thought nothing more of it.

    Which one do you think is most likely? That a trans woman, sad from a vigil and going about her everyday business, would decide to try and intimidate a random woman for no reason? Or that a young, grasping Tory councillor thought she’d try and raise her profile among her fellow Tories with a bit of the old transphobia that seems so popular among her elders?

    The article is a case study in subtle demonisation and defamation. She won’t face any consequences for adding to the anti-trans panic, and because the trans woman isn’t named the press regulations mean the Daily Mail won’t either. It’s all grist for the mill that wants to grind trans people into dust.

     

     

  • “What they want is not a dialogue.”

    This, by AR Moxon, is superb. It’s an evisceration of people who say terrible things and demand freedom from criticism or consequences.

    “they pre-suppose that some are allowed to speak, and others should not be allowed to respond.

    What they want is not more voices. They want fewer voices.

    What they want is not a dialogue. What they want is a monologue.”

  • “Forbidden knowledge”

    One of the many frustrating things about the current anti-trans moral panic is that supposedly reputable journalists are fuelling it with bad faith “just asking questions”, the answers to which are easy to find.

    This damning piece about the New York Times is just as appropriate to many other publications, including most of the UK press.

    “The ordinary liberal reader may be squeamish about this or that aspect of abortion, but they are fundamentally committed to the idea that abortion patients and their doctors are the ones best equipped to figure out what to do with a pregnancy. It is not the job of some outside party or institution—a controlling parent or spouse, a church, a Republican legislative majority, a major national newspaper—to step in and second-guess what they do with their bodies. 

    For trans care, this liberal theory of autonomy and decision-making is cast aside. The theoretical Times reader is ready to consume 15,000 words about the risks, controversies, and downsides of contemporary gender treatment because, at bottom, they are assumed to be dismayed by it all. An abortion patient is really pregnant, but trans youth—children who “say they’re transgender,” as the Atlantic put it back in 2018—maybe aren’t really trans, or wouldn’t be, if they had more time and better information.”

  • No rush

    Countering the constant flood of anti-trans bullshit is a Sisyphean task that many of us simply haven’t the time or energy to deal with, but a particularly egregious example is doing the rounds right now and it’s important to debunk it.

    The lie: the Scottish gender recognition reform bill was rushed through by the Scottish Government.

    The reality: as Nancy Kelley from Stonewall demonstrates, this is one of the most consulted on bills in Scottish Parliamentary history.

    • 5 years and 2 months of discussion and debate
    • 3 large scale consultations, amassing over 43,000 responses with a large majority in favour of reform
    • 67 hours of parliamentary debate and evidence gathering (during which anti-trans groups did not provide any evidence to substantiate their lurid claims)
    • 25 hours of parliamentary debate on proposed amendments at stage 3
    • A clear parliamentary majority in favour of reform at every stage of the bill

    As Kelley writes:

    This is one of the most consulted on bills in Scottish Government history. This is democracy and devolution in action. This is implementing a fundamental human right for trans people in Scotland. To consider triggering a constitutional crisis to block it is shocking.

  • It was never about sports

    This, by Erin Reed, is a good analysis of the Alliance Defending Freedom’s war on trans people and its use of a gullible/complicit media.

    A ban on gender affirming care is not the endgame here. With attacks on gay people rising through book bans and Don’t Say Gay or Trans bills, all LGBTQ+ rights are in the crosshairs. Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project makes that clear when he claims that the debate over gay marriage was a sham and that “essentially we went from Obergefell and gay marriage to now sex changes for gay minors, hormone treatments, and puberty blockers.”

    The ADF is a key driver of the anti-trans movement in the UK and in Scotland too, with its representatives given columns in the Scottish and national press without any explanation of who they are and what they represent; they typically provide witnesses in anti-trans legal cases too, such as the (now reversed) ban on puberty blockers in the UK.

    The anti-trans movement in the US is a Christian Right assault on LGBT+ people. And so is the UK one, although it tries to convince itself otherwise. Whether it’s Scottish Nationalists standing with the right-wing Christian fundamentalists, bored millionaires publicly supporting avowed anti-feminist Christian theocrats or self-proclaimed left-wing writers throwing themselves into the warm embrace of the Daily Mail, The Times and The Telegraph, anti-trans bigots in the UK are doing the work of the religious right.

    A key part of the Christian Right’s strategy is to frame trans people’s basic human rights as a “debate”, in much the same way creationists pushed the idea of “teaching the debate” as a way to get fundamentalist religious beliefs into classrooms. As Katelyn Burns writes in Xtra, that “debate” is no such thing: it’s a constant barrage of anti-trans propaganda. Whether due to malevolence or incompetence, supposedly liberal journalists are doing the devil’s work.

     

  • “How come you never thought it before?”

    There’s an article in today’s (Glasgow) Herald claiming that a ban on conversion therapy will “criminalise parents”, throw psychotherapists in prison and have you arrested if you question your child’s gender or sexuality.

    It’s nonsense, and it’s based almost entirely on baseless claims by the Christian Institute – the same Christian Institute that the same newspaper described as anti-LGBT “Christian Fundamentalists” in 2017 when it had yet to join the anti-trans culture war.

    As The Herald reported back then:

    The charity has previously campaigned against gambling, abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality, opposing same sex marriages and seeking to raise the age of consent. The charity once produced an organ-donor style plastic card that read: “In the event of my death, I do not want my children to be adopted by homosexuals”.

    None of that context is in today’s piece, despite being extremely relevant. It’s almost as if that’s a calculated editorial decision.

    This column, from the Belfast Media Group, is doing the rounds today although it was published last summer.

    if you are indeed one of those suddenly convinced that the trans issue is desperately worrying, ask yourself this question: How come you never thought it  before?

    Is it a coincidence that you suddenly started thinking and fretting about it at exactly the same time as the Tory press started to fixate upon it at a time when the Conservative Party is in dire trouble?

    You never cared about trans women in toilets, even though they’ve been there for decades and never did you any harm. You never cared about trans women athletes because they’ve been competing in the Olympics for 20 years. You’re only worried about them now because the right-leaning media is telling you to. Last time it was migrants. Time before that teachers. Time before that junior doctors. Time before that judges. Time before that people on benefits. Time before that gay people and HIV. Time before that… 

    When we do ban conversion therapy, like so many other countries have done and will do, it’ll become very clear that the fundamentalists lied. But don’t forget who passed them the mic to spread those lies.

  • Flip your wig

    Here’s a photo from the GRR Bill debate in the Scottish Parliament yesterday.

    The response on Mumsnet, aka Prosecco Stormfront, was swift. “They can’t help themselves,” one poster wrote. “…it’s typical male pattern aggressive sexualised behaviour”.

    Others agreed, until they realised that the protester isn’t a trans woman; she’s an anti-trans woman, Elaine Miller of For Women Scotland. Miller decided that she’d flash her (fake) pubic hair in front of an audience including schoolchildren. If it weren’t for the fake pubes, that would have been an arrestable sexual offence.

    You’d think that effectively committing a sex crime in the Scottish Parliament – it wasn’t initially obvious that Miller was wearing a wig over tights and initial reports claimed she was flashing her genitals – would be newsworthy, and I have no doubt that had Miller been a trans or non-binary person she would be all over the front pages and leading the broadcasts today. The fact that she isn’t speaks volumes.