Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

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Category: Bullshit

Pernicious nonsense and other irritants

  • Staged to invoke rage

    This report by the Los Angeles Blade should – but probably won’t – make UK anti-trans activists think about what they’re doing and who their friends are. It’s an investigation into the alleged sauna incident I wrote about the other day, which was used by neo-Nazis as an excuse to crack heads and stab people.

    There is increasing doubt among law enforcement and staff at the Wi Spa whether there was ever was a transgender person there to begin with. Anonymous sources within the LAPD tell the Blade they have been unable to find any corroborating evidence that there was a transgender person present on that day.

    …Treatment at the Spa is by appointment only, and most of its transgender clients are well known to the staff.

    …[the video creator’s] Instagram account is almost exclusively Christian memes, which begs the question why she chose to go to a high-end spa well known for being LGBTQ friendly. During Cubaangel’s video, no transgender person can be seen, and no other witnesses have come forward to confirm the allegations made. It’s also not the first time Wi Spa has been targeted for catering to transgender people.

    It seems increasingly likely that the supposed event didn’t happen at all, or that it was staged by an anti-trans activist.

    The video quickly made the rounds in far right, and Trans-Exclusionary Feminist (TERF) sites. Anti-trans “feminist” websites like Mumsnet, Ovarit, and Spinster were sharing content by far right provocateurs known for disinformation, like Ian Miles Cheong, by June 27th.

    …The anti-trans protest was a mix of religious fundamentalist street preachers, QAnon conspiracy theorists chanting “save our children,” and Proud Boys… Right wing personality Andy Ngo, who coordinates with far right groups when they’re looking to engage in violence on camera, was also there.

    Andy Ngo’s content was the content shared by UK activists and at least one high profile Guardian writer.

    All of this fits into an emerging pattern of the alt-right, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, violent far right groups like the Proud Boys, the religious right, and anti-trans “feminists” collaborating and coordinating

    We’ve been trying to warn people about this for years, but how do you get the media to cover it when their friends and colleagues are the people doing it?

    Update: surprise surprise, the US religious right have their fingerprints all over this.

    The people behind this escalating campaign, then, are known disinformation purveyors allied with open white supremacists who — as they have done for several years now — created optics-heavy, broadcast news-friendly chaos in order to push a specific agenda.

  • Careless Wispa

    Over the weekend, Allison Bailey from the so-called LGB Alliance proved how divorced anti-trans activists are from the reality-based community. On discovering a Wispa bar and a lemon in her garden, she immediately came to the obvious conclusion: trans activists were trying to kill her dog.

    Nobody, least of all trans activists, was trying to kill her dog.

    The chocolate and lemon had been thrown there accidentally by the kids next door, who came round to apologise.

    It’s funny in a bleak “this clown is taken seriously by the UK press and the BBC” kind of way. But it also demonstrates the lunacy and paranoia of the anti-trans movement. Bailey’s ridiculous claim will become another anti-trans “fact” trotted out on social media and probably mainstream media too for years to come.

  • Fairy tales

    Remember when The Telegraph used to be a serious paper? Now it’s reduced to this.

    The story is based on claims by one anonymous woman who claims that the children’s channel CBBC somehow turned her child trans. The age of this child? 19.

  • You can’t trust this story about the National Trust

    The National Trust did no such thing. It merely told its volunteers that if they wanted to wear face paint or glitter to mark Pride month, they wouldn’t get into trouble for doing it.

    See also: Stonewall supposedly banning the word “mother” or any of the other anti-trans culture war stories infesting both right- and left-wing media.

    This isn’t just disgraceful. It’s dangerous. This week in Hungary, the “anti-woke” government – of which Spiked and other right-wing bullshit factories are very fond – brought in some of the most repressive anti-LGBT+ legislation we’ve seen outside Russia to widespread public support from people who’ve been consistently lied to about “gender ideology” and “woke” policies.

  • Belief

    Over the next few days you’re going to hear a lot about Maya Forstater, the contractor who took her former employer to a tribunal after they didn’t renew her contract. Forstater is vocally anti-trans and claims that she was discriminated against because of this.

    The tribunal found that Forstater’s views, which she claimed were a protected belief under the Equality Act, were not worthy of respect in a democratic society. Forstater appealed and a judge ruled yesterday that unless you’re actually advocating for a Final Solution, your beliefs are not relevant to your employment – unless, and this is crucial, those beliefs lead you to abuse other people.

    This has been predictably misinterpreted by the transphobe crowd, who believe they’ve been given carte blanche to abuse trans people in the workplace. But the judgement does not say that. In fact, it specifically says that trans people are protected from workplace discrimination and malicious behaviour, and that having a protected belief is not a get out of jail card for harassment or hostility.

    This is not new. Lots of cases have said that yes, vile views are protected beliefs under the EqA; no, that doesn’t mean you can be a dick to people at work.

    Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube summed up the verdict and the anti-trans mob’s reaction perfectly:

    Judge: “Yeah so you’re free to believe the moon landing was fake and you can maybe even work at NASA if they’ll have you, but you can’t keep calling Buzz Aldrin ‘a lying piece of shit who fucks dogs’ to his face okay?”

    MF: “Ah, my beliefs about the “Moon” have been vindicated!”

  • “Rhetorical horseshit”

    Former Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger gave an interview to The New Statesman in which he happily claimed that kids today are easily triggered snowflakes who can’t handle robust debate. If you’re thinking that’s the kind of crap you’d expect from a columnist in the right-wing press, you’re not the only one: journalist Mic Wright thinks so too.

    Rusbridger’s worldview has become increasingly indistinguishable from the ‘free speech’ teethgnashers at titles like The Times and The Daily Telegraph. A man described by the former Observer editor Roger Alton as “admired, but not hugely loved”, Rusbridger is a creature of the establishment who still thinks himself a radical.

    The argument Rusbridger is putting forward is simplistic and, in my opinion, wrong: the only way to defeat vile speech – misinformation, propaganda, hate speech and so on – is with more speech. That may be true in the debating halls of a university but it absolutely isn’t true in the wider world, where misinformation, propaganda and hate speech thrive and have demonstrable real-world effects.

    I’m currently reading How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley, which goes into some detail about the dehumanisation of minorities. One of the examples he uses is the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, which has been ongoing since 2016; Facebook was instrumental in sowing the seeds of hatred. Here’s the New York Times:

    They posed as fans of pop stars and national heroes as they flooded Facebook with their hatred. One said Islam was a global threat to Buddhism. Another shared a false story about the rape of a Buddhist woman by a Muslim man.

    The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country.

    Members of the Myanmar military were the prime operatives behind a systematic campaign on Facebook that stretched back half a decade and that targeted the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority group.

    Wright:

    The veneration of debate by people like Rusbridger always forgets a crucial element: Power. Debates do not occur in some kind of pocket dimension where every speaker has the same level of social, cultural, and economic capital. The former editor of The Guardian, sat in the comfortable surroundings of an Oxford College which he runs will obviously love debate because they are never about his right to exist. It’s a party game for him, not an existential question.

    I’ve written about this before. The people who commission click-bait columns about minorities, who frame people’s basic human rights as merely one side of a debate, who knowingly platform bad actors because it’s good for ratings or page views… these people are isolated from the consequences of what they do and the views they broadcast and give legitimacy to. They are not the ones who will be discriminated against, the ones whose rights are threatened, the ones who will experience aggression and even violence. For them, it’s just another item.

    As Wright says, “The liberal delusion that debate can and will solve everything is insidious.” By framing matters of life and death as a parlour game, people like Rusbridger help hatred to flourish.

  • Stick your rainbow

    I wrote a piece for T3 about Pride Month and the way some tech firms’ support for the LGBT+ community doesn’t go beyond putting a rainbow on their social media logo.

    Earlier this year, a damning study by GLAAD confirmed what marginalised people already know: every single major social networking platform is “categorically unsafe” for LGBT+ people. But hey! They’ve put a rainbow on their logo!

    If tech firms really mean it, we need them to do more than post platitudes. We need them to make their platforms safe for marginalised people by actually enforcing their policies against harassment and hate speech. We need them to stop financially supporting anti-LGBT+ politicians in order to get tax breaks. We need them to donate to LGBT+ organisations and advocacy groups who can make a practical difference in the lives of the people who’ve been affected negatively.

    But most of all, they need to hire and promote LGBT+ people – particularly people who are also marginalised by race, class, disability or gender. Good decision-making will only come from people who really understand the problems, and who understand the positive and negative impacts of their decisions.

    But if you think the tech world is bad, they’ve got nothing on the Tories. Today the Government Equalities Office and the Conservative party have posted their scheduled Pride tweets despite being demonstrably anti-LGBT+. It’s particularly galling to see the GEO claiming credit for equal marriage in Northern Ireland, something the Conservatives and their DUP allies fought tooth and nail.

    As I wrote in my piece:

    it’s a hollow, selfish gesture: the aim isn’t to help LGBT+ people, but to burnish the corporate image. Telling the world that you agree LGBT+ people exist means nothing when LGBT+ people’s rights, healthcare and safety are under unprecedented attack worldwide.

    And it means even less when you’re the ones doing the attacking.

  • Eighties! We’re living in the eighties!

    Back in the 1980s, various fundamentalist right-wing loons decided that the board game Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal music were corrupting the minds of children. Apparently the game was “an occult tool that opens up young people to influence or possession by demons.” This obvious lunacy came from the religious right, but it was laundered by the press who published such nonsense without investigation or criticism.

    In 2021, various fundamentalist right-wing loons are claiming that the board game Magic: The Gathering and Japanese anime cartoons are corrupting the minds of children and turning them trans. This obvious lunacy comes from the religious right, and will no doubt soon be laundered by the press who’ll publish such nonsense without investigation or criticism.

    Far-fetched? Just last month one of the leading anti-trans groups told the UK government’s Women & Equalities committee that people become transgender because they’re being hypnotised by “sissy porn” on YouTube. This group has been endorsed by all the leading anti-trans groups and many politicians too.

  • When the facts don’t fit, fix the facts

    One of the problems with the Christian Right’s claims of trans kids being rushed into surgery is that trans kids aren’t being rushed into surgery. And that’s inconvenient when you’re trying to pass anti-trans legislation on the basis of protecting children from exactly that.

    What’s a bigot to do?

    Simple. Redefine the definition of kids to include adults.

    I’m not kidding. In North Carolina, anti-trans Republican lawmakers have classed adults aged 18 to 21 as minors.

    This enables them to do two things. One, claim that minors are being given cross-sex hormones and/or surgery, medical procedures that are indeed available to adults aged 18 to 21. And two, if the legislation is successful it means they can block healthcare for some adults as well as all teenagers.

    The proposed legislation – which, thankfully, is unlikely to pass – makes it very clear what the real agenda is behind all of this. In addition to banning healthcare for trans people, it would also compel state employees to notify their parents in writing if their child displays “gender nonconformity” or expresses a desire to be treated in a way that is “incompatible” with the gender they were assigned at birth. These bills, of which there are far too many, are based on deeply regressive stereotypes of masculinity and femininity that want to keep women barefoot and pregnant and LGBT+ people in the closet.

  • IrnBruKIP

    The rash of defections to Alex Salmond’s new ALBA party, which one wag on Reddit claimed stands for “all ladies beware Alex”, reads like a who’s who of transphobic SNP members.

    Their defections give the lie to the claim that transphobes were ever concerned about protecting women and girls. They’re right-wing reactionaries, happy to rally round a man whose own QC said he was an “objectionable bully” and a “sex pest” and whose online supporters are often viciously misogynist.