Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

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Category: Bullshit

Pernicious nonsense and other irritants

  • Happiness is not a cold scalpel

    Last night I read a post by a trans woman that made me sad. It was intended to be supportive – it was written as a kind of open letter to trans women who compare their appearance to other women and find themselves lacking – which is why I didn’t give it a kicking in the place where it was posted. But I think it’s worth talking about here.

    The poster wanted to tell trans women that happiness and self-acceptance are possible. All you need to do is “pass as cis” – that is, look like a particular kind of cisgender woman. And to do that, all you need to do is lose a ton of weight, take a ton of hormones, have facial feminisation surgery and undergo three rounds of vocal feminisation surgery.

    That might have been the route to happiness for the poster, but it might not be for anybody else.

    Take facial feminisation surgery, aka FFS. The poster had a well paid job and was able to pull together around £15K for their FFS (which suggests they didn’t have many treatments; you can easily spend many times more than that). Some people will never be able to afford that.

    And of the people that can afford it, some of them will not get spectacular results because the surgeons can only work with what they’ve got. If you look like me, a chin reshape or a brow reduction is not going to make you look like Audrey Hepburn.

    It’s the same with hormones. For some people HRT’s effects are minimal; their effectiveness depends on a whole host of factors, particularly genetics and age. Age is a big one, so telling late-transitioning trans people that HRT will definitely have magical effects is untrue. And even minimal effects may be many years in the future: not only do hormones work slowly but the wait to even start treatment can be very long. In some parts of the UK you can expect a wait of around five years between being referred to a gender clinic and getting a hormone prescription.

    Last but not least, there’s weight. The poster asserted that losing weight has a massive feminising effect, but again that depends on the face and body you have. Some people find that losing weight makes them look more masculine, not less.

    Of course if that’s the case they could always have facial feminisation surgery… and we’re back to the start again. There’s always one more thing you need to do before happiness is yours.

    Let’s pretend I have the desire and the resources for facial feminisation surgery (spoiler: I don’t). What if after a brow reduction, or chin recontouring, or a hair transplant, or a nose job, or a tracheal shave, or a lip lift, or cheek augmentation, I still don’t look or feel pretty?

    What if I’m still clocked because of the things surgery and hormones can’t change: the width of my shoulders, the breadth of my ribcage, the length of my torso, my centre of gravity?

    What if something goes wrong with the surgery – many FFS providers specifically advertise their ability to fix other surgeons’ mistakes – and I can’t afford to get it corrected?

    What then?

    I’m not suggesting that FFS, HRT and other things can’t have positive effects on how you feel about how you look. Of course they can. Some people have these things, look amazing and feel fantastic. I don’t endure two hours of painful facial electrolysis every week for a laugh: I do it because having a stubble-free face is important to me.

    But the idea that there is a particular standard of beauty (thin, pretty, usually white) and that if you just starve and carve yourself enough to meet it then happiness will surely be yours is a pernicious myth that has caused a great deal of harm to very many women.

    Cosmetic surgeries will not necessarily make you any happier or deliver the results you want, and nobody should be telling anyone that they will.

  • False flags

    Here’s a great example of how anti-trans activism works.

    On social media, some anti-trans activists are posting about stickers that prove how evil trans people are. The stickers, which were first spotted in Torquay, have the phrase “genital preferences are transphobic” over a rainbow flag.

    The stickers were made and posted by an anti-trans activist trying to discredit trans people.

    The phrase on them is an anti-trans trope: in much the same way homophobes want you to think that gay men want to have sex with your children, transphobes want you to think that trans women want to force you to have sex with them even, or especially, if you aren’t into trans people. It’s a vicious libel, and I’ve written more about where it comes from here.

    Some of the better known anti-trans groups have condemned the stunt, so for example the LGB Alliance has said “if it is true that agents provocateurs are posting these stickers in an attempt to exacerbate our divisions, we certainly condemn it.”

    But really, the arsehole making the stickers is just doing a crude version of what the anti-trans groups and activists do every day. They make false allegations about what trans people think, who trans people are or what healthcare trans people get, and they then call on everybody to condemn trans people (and often, to demand the removal of their rights) based on those false allegations.

    How many articles have you read about the supposed prescription of cross-sex hormones to children, which doesn’t happen? About children being given gender reassignment surgery, which doesn’t happen? About trans women being predators, which the religious right made up? That’s much more deserving of your condemnation than a couple of stickers at the seaside.

  • Here come the thought police

    A new report says that right-wing academics are being silenced by the thought police. Inevitably they’re talking about that silencing on the front pages of right-wing newspapers.

    Here’s Newsweek.

    There is an experiment of sorts taking place in American colleges. Or, more accurately, hundreds of experiments at different campuses, directed at changing the consciousness of this entire generation of university students. The goal is to eliminate prejudice, not just of the petty sort that shows up on sophomore dorm walls, but the grand prejudice that has ruled American universities since their founding: that the intellectual tradition of Western Europe occupies the central place in the history of civilization. In this context it would not be enough for a student to refrain from insulting homosexuals or other minorities. He or she would be expected to “affirm” their presence on campus and to study their literature and culture alongside that of Plato, Shakespeare and Locke. This agenda is broadly shared by most organizations of minority students, feminists and gays. It is also the program of a generation of campus radicals who grew up in the ’60s and are now achieving positions of academic influence. If they no longer talk of taking to the streets, it is because they now are gaining access to the conventional weapons of campus politics: social pressure, academic perks (including tenure) and — when they have the administration on their side — outright coercion.

    Surprise! The Newsweek article is 30 years old. It’s from December 1990.

    As media researcher Becca Lewis notes on Twitter, “it’s really incredible how identical the talking points are, thirty years later.”

  • Na-na-na-na Facts Man!

    This, by Annie Lowrey, is fantastic.

    You have met Facts Man before if you have spent any time online in the past half decade or so. He’s inescapable. He podcasts. He makes YouTube videos. He traffics in Medium posts. He burns up Facebook. And he loves—loves!—Twitter.

    What does he serve up there? Truth. Facts. The overlooked and the undercovered. The unvarnished and obvious conclusions that the media do not want you to believe. The conclusions that the social-justice warriors and sheeple professors will not let you reach. The conclusions that mere mortals, including lauded subject-matter experts and the people who have actual lived experience of the topic at hand, have not yet grasped.

  • Taylor Swift is trans

    According to some people on the internet, that is.

    Owl Stefania in Metro:

    On this occasion, the conversation that caught my eye involved discussions and videos about celebrities who are allegedly ‘secretly transgender’.

    This included names like Taylor Swift, Meghan Markle, Holly Willoughby, Jodie Whittaker, David and Victoria Beckham, Keira Knightley, and all of Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriends.

    The site in question is a UK one, or it would also have included Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and pretty much any other Black female celebrity or athlete too. I saw a post today that roped in Marilyn Monroe because she clearly had a “male spine”.

    The people posting this shite are the same people who want to police who can and can’t use public toilets.

  • “So much ignorance”

    When people scaremonger about proposed legislation, it’s a safe bet that they are ignorant of the existing legislation and of similar legislation in other countries: if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be scaremongering.

    The manufactured controversy over Scotland’s proposed hate crime legislation – a controversy largely fuelled by religious groups and the right-wing press – appears to fit the pattern. It’s focused on the offences of “stirring up hatred”, which we’re told will be the end of civilisation as we know it.

    Here’s lecturer and commentator Andrew Tickell, who knows a thing or two about the law.

    The debate on Holyrood’s Hate Crime Bill is eminently necessary and important – but by gum, it is already characterised by so much ignorance about (a) what the law already is and (b) often misplaced hysteria about what the law will be if this Bill is passed.

    For one thing, for the various unionists going crackers, it is probably important to know that the headline offences of stirring up hatred on the grounds of race, religion and sexual orientation are already criminal offences in England and Wales under the Public Order Act 1986.

    That’s the thing about bringing legislation in line with other countries: when people tell us the sky will fall in, we can see if identical legislation caused the sky to fall in elsewhere.

  • The people who love to hate

    Yesterday, the Scottish Daily Mail ran a front page story damning Scotland’s proposed new anti-hate crime legislation.

    The source of the story is Lois McLatchie, who the Daily Mail says “works with the UN Human Rights Council”.

    That’s a very clever way of implying she’s part of the Council. She isn’t; in fact, she is part of an organisation that represents pretty much everything the UN HRC stands against. McLatchie lobbies the UN Human Rights Council, because she’s the legal analyst for ADF International.

    ADF International is an anti-abortion, anti-LGBT hate group.

    Founded by some 30 leaders of the Christian Right, the Alliance Defending Freedom is a legal advocacy and training group that has supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia; and claims that a “homosexual agenda” will destroy Christianity and society.

    ADF also works to develop “religious liberty” legislation and case law that will allow the denial of goods and services to LGBTQ people on the basis of religion. Since the election of President Trump, ADF has become one of the most influential groups informing the administration’s attack on LGBTQ rights.

    It’s hardly surprising that the ADF is against any legislation that might suppress its ability to spread hate. And it’s also unsurprising that the Daily Mail would happily jump into bed with the Christian Right yet again: its anti-trans campaigning frequently platforms evangelical groups from the lunatic fringe, and might well fall foul of any anti-hate speech legislation. But giving the front page to the ADF is a new, chilling low.

    The US Christian Right operates globally, pouring its considerable resources into overt and covert campaigning against women’s rights and LGBT people’s rights. It’s connected to the violent anti-LGBT movements in Eastern Europe. It tried to influence the Irish referendum on women’s reproductive freedom. It’s trying to influence, and appears to be funding moves against, a whole swathe of legislation in the UK and in Scotland. And it’s increasingly indistinguishable from the far right.

    The Daily Mail, once again, is dining with the Devil.

  • Hypocrites

    Over the past few weeks, some very wealthy writers have been very vocal about the importance of free speech. People should be free to voice their honestly held opinions, they say, no matter how offensive or hurtful those opinions may be.

    This week, the same writers have sent their lawyers after multiple people and publications whose honestly held opinions are that the wealthy writers are transphobic.

    Those opinions are honestly held. But they are not held by people who are wealthy. And that means the people they criticise can, and do, use the threat of financial ruin to silence them.

     

  • Death by numbers

    On Twitter, Dan Barker has posted an interesting thread showing how terrible reporting becomes conspiracy theory nonsense.

    It begins with The Telegraph. Its science editor reported that lockdown could cause as many as 200,000 preventable deaths, and the headline was clear:

    The same claim was then posted by other news outlets citing the Telegraph. For example, Metro’s headline was “Coronavirus lockdown could cause ‘200,000 extra deaths’”.

    Remember, most people who share news stories on social media don’t read beyond the headline.

    This is important, because as Baker demonstrates, people are taking the headline and using it in anti-lockdown posts such as this one.

    First of all, that’s not what the article says. It is not a report about actual deaths. It’s a report about predictions of possible deaths in a very specific scenario.

    And secondly, the Telegraph has framed the story in what appears to be a deliberately misleading way.

    As Barker points out, the report this story is based on isn’t just about lockdown. The figures it quotes are from predictions based on “protecting the NHS” – that is, cancelling other healthcare to prioritise COVID-19 cases.

    The report asked the question: what would happen if prioritising COVID cases meant cancelling 75% of elective treatments, such as cancer treatments and other life-saving surgeries?

    That’s where the 200,000 figure comes from. It’s a worst-case scenario that says up to 25,000 people might die because their treatments were delayed; in the medium to long term, such delays could kill up to 185,000 more.

    So in this scenario, if we protect the NHS from being overwhelmed and have to do so for a long time it might – might – cost over 200,000 lives.

    And if we don’t?

    We’ll kill a million and a half.

    It’s there in the report, and in the Telegraph article, which notes that:

    …nearly 500,000 people would have died from coronavirus if the virus had been allowed to run through the population unchecked. And there would have been more than a million non-COVID deaths resulting from missed treatment if the health service had been overwhelmed in dealing with the pandemic.

    So protecting the NHS would kill 1.3 million fewer people than doing nothing.

    And yet this report is being used to fuel anti-lockdown sentiment when a second coronavirus spike in England, and the need for at least local lockdowns, is highly likely.

    Barker:

    In other words: The report implies lockdown could save hundreds of thousands of lives – the opposite of the headline.

    Newspapers are very keen to blame social media for spreading conspiracy theories, but many of those theories originate from newspapers and their online offshoots. Some of the most enthusiastic conspiracists are well known media figures: for example, one of the people currently pushing the “lockdown will kill 200,000 people” narrative is Toby Young.

    Many of the worst conspiracy theories circulating online originated in print.

    Here’s Marianna Spring from the BBC, who got chatting to two young men outside Topshop this week.

    Also an anecdote – while I was recording this on Oxford Street, two guys in their twenties started talking to me.

    Without me even explaining what the report was about they told me they wouldn’t be getting a coronavirus vaccine because it was a plot to microchip everyone.

    The roots of that conspiracy theory are in the anti-MMR vaccine scare, which predated Facebook and Twitter: it spread not on social media, but in the pages of the Daily Mail, The Sun, The Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. The anti-vaxx movement it spawned is already responsible for thousands of preventable deaths; as it evolves into COVID vaccine denial it could kill thousands more.

  • Facebook is spreading hate

    Last year, Ofcom found that 49% of the UK population used social media to access news reporting; the Pew Research Center reported a similar figure, 55%, in the US.

    Much of the news people see and share on social media is highly partisan, and it’s often highly inaccurate too. Right-wing bullshit factories have come to dominate the online news sphere.

    A new study by Media Matters shows how that affects people’s knowledge and understanding of trans people.

    NBC News:

    Anti-transgender Facebook content shared by right-wing news sources generated more engagement than content from pro-transgender or neutral sources combined…

    “Facebook users are getting a totally biased and factually inaccurate understanding of the multitude of issues that impact trans people”.

    Sigh.

    Of the top ten sources of trans-related news, seven were avowedly anti-trans; of the 66 million shares, 43 million were of content from anti-trans websites such as the Daily Caller.

    This is an American study but the phenomenon is global: the vast majority of trans-related articles and opinion pieces I see shared by British people on social media, particularly Facebook, are from right-wing publications based either in the US or the UK.

    Gizmodo:

    we know from a 2019 Pew Research poll that Facebook has a nearly even split—35% and 34% respectively—between users that consider themselves some sort of liberal or some sort of conservative. But we know from other research that those with a conservative bent are more far likely to share (and fall for) news articles that reinforce their preexisting point-of-view, even if they’re sensationalistic or downright debunkable. 

    …because a good half of Americans get at least some of their news on Facebook, that means that the bulk of people are reading stories about the transgender community that, again, paints them as icky leches on society, instead of just normal people living their normal lives.