Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

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Category: Bullshit

Pernicious nonsense and other irritants

  • Women, know your place

    The FT asks, “can you be a mother and a senior law firm partner?” It’s not asking whether women are capable of the job, thankfully; it’s a piece about the assumptions made about women that aren’t made about men.

    The generally accepted issue is the choice many women face between partnership — on call 24/7 and under pressure to generate business — or starting a family.

    The linked article quotes Farmida Bi of Norton Rose Fulbright:

    For example, partners looking to build a team to work on a deal may assume a mother will not want a demanding client calling at 2am, or to travel frequently for work. These assumptions are not made about fathers.

    As the article rightly notes, there is another assumption here: the assumption that 2am calls are necessary for that kind of work in the first place. But even if they are, there’s no fundamental reason why a woman would be any less suited to the role: it’s entirely possible that her partner is the one who looks after the kids while she’s fielding those oh-so-important calls.

    The FT piece is about the legal profession but conscious and unconscious bias affects women in all industries. The 1950s characterisation of rainmakers vs homemakers, of men as high achievers and women as marking time until they pop out a bunch of babies is partly why women are under-represented at senior levels in so many organisations, why women are more likely to work part-time and why women are more likely to work in lower paid jobs.

    Writer (and FT contributor) Sarah O’Connor recalls a conversation that perfectly illustrates the problem.

    I once asked the head of a law firm why his firm had zero female partners. He said “Unfortunately being partner just isn’t compatible with having a family”. He had a photo of his kids on his desk.

  • Playing with fire

    This is from BBC Question Time this week: the question was pre-vetted, selected for broadcast and posted on social media to get publicity for the show.

    Is it morally right for the nation’s broadcaster to imply that “LGBT issues” may be immoral?

    If you don’t have your thesaurus handy, here are some synonyms for immoral: Wicked. Evil. Depraved. Vile. Villainous. Degenerate. Perverted.

    Whether by accident or design, this is letting a handful of religious extremists set the terms of discussion (and it really is a handful: while this is being reported in the papers as muslims being intolerant, over in Germany every single muslim MP voted for equal marriage this week; in the UK in the same week, a whole bunch of Christian MPs voted against teaching inclusive sex and relationship education).

    It’s suggesting that there’s something inherently shameful about discussion of LGBT people, that children have to be protected from the very notion. The use of the word “exposed” in much of the so-called debate is telling, because there’s no positive connotation to the word. You’re exposed to unpleasantness, to sickness, to perversion. Nobody talks about people being exposed to family values.

    A reminder: you can’t catch being gay, or trans. If social attitudes could influence sexuality or gender identity there would be no gay or trans people. The only difference social attitudes make is to whether people feel it’s safe to be themselves.

    Another reminder: every school will have LGBT pupils and parents, and probably teachers too.

    This isn’t about an informed debate. It’s about a small bunch of intolerant yahoos trying to drag other people’s children back to the Stone Age. Some people out there think the world is flat, but we don’t have debates on whether we should stop exposing children to the fact that the Earth is a sphere.

    To adopt the position of bigots once would seem careless. To do it again and again… here’s Woman’s Hour.

    This tweet demonstrates another too-common occurrence: the so-called debate is about LGBT people and without LGBT people. That’s like running a piece on racism and only featuring the voices of white people (which happens a lot too). Woman’s Hour has been doing this for a couple of years now with trans people.

    Here’s the Today programme, also on Radio 4.

    We put the hateful Section 28 legislation to bed just under two decades ago, but thanks to right-wing fundamentalists and social media rabble-rousers there’s a concerted attempt to re-open a “debate” that was settled a long time ago: LGBT rights are human rights.

    I’m not the only person who thinks this. The BBC’s own journalists are appalled.

    BBC Breakfast presenter Ben Thompson said he had concerns with the phrasing of the question: “LGBT ‘issues’? Like what? That we exist? One of them, RIGHT HERE, is on your TV every morning … Would you ask if it’s ‘morally right’ to learn about gender/race/religion/disability ‘issues’?”

    BBC News senior foreign producer Tony Brown added: “Replace LGBT with black or Jewish and this question would never have been asked on national TV.”

    One on-screen BBC journalist said there was growing concern among the corporation’s LGBT employees about how the BBC debates such issues: “We are supposed to set things in context – but that doesn’t mean accepting a position that is wrong, or failing to call it out as offensive. We wouldn’t ask ‘Is terrorism morally justified?’

    “I look at the care we take over our other reporting and this leaves me totally confused. We are meant to educate as well as inform.”

    There is something deeply wrong in that part of the BBC: it’s the same thinking that invites neo-Nazi group Generation Identity on to discuss the Christchurch massacre, the same thinking that enables former EDL leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, to portray himself as a free speech martyr instead of a vicious, hateful racist. Not all views are equal. We don’t invite the KKK on to talk about racism. Or at least, we don’t just yet.

    It strikes me that a big part of the problem is that the people making the decisions don’t have to live with the consequences. If, say, Jenni Murray pontificates on whether trans people are human, she isn’t going to suffer from the increase in hate crime that we’ve seen since mainstream media started echoing anti-trans bigots’ talking points. If Newsnight features former EDL people fanning hatred, their producers don’t need to worry about getting their heads kicked in on the way home. This applies to other media, of course, but the BBC is the organisation that sets much of the news agenda and frames much of mainstream political debate.

    Writing in The Guardian today, Owen Jones puts it very well:

    too many of those working in the British press act as hatemongers who play with matches then express horror as the flames reach ever higher

  • God’s money moves in mysterious ways

    OpenDemocracy previously reported the dark money being used by US evangelists to finance “grassroots” pressure groups. But the story is much, much bigger.

    US Christian right ‘fundamentalists’ linked to the Trump administration and Steve Bannon are among a dozen American groups that have poured at least $50 million of ‘dark money’ into Europe over the last decade, openDemocracy can reveal today.

    Between them, these groups have backed ‘armies’ of ultra-conservative lawyers and political activists, as well as ‘family values’ campaigns against LGBT rights, sex education and abortion – and a number appear to have increasing links with Europe’s far right.

    We’re talking in some cases about bona fide hate groups using money to push their agenda globally.

    The SPLC explains that “viewing homosexuality as unbiblical or simply opposing same-sex marriage” is not enough to be categorised as a “hate group”. Groups on this list go further – claiming that homosexuality is dangerous, linked to paedophilia and should be criminalised, disseminating “disparaging ‘facts’ about LGBT people that are simply untrue”

    This is, says SPLC, “no different to how white supremacists and nativist extremists propagate lies about black people and immigrants to make these communities seem like a danger to society”

    OpenDemocracy hasn’t traced the dark money to UK anti-LGBT groups yet, but it’s there: it’s a key reason we’re suddenly debating LGBT rights again.

    Joss Prior connects the dots between US fundamentalists’ dark money and UK anti-trans groups.

    All the anti-trans groups and agitators in the uk, have at some time or another set-up crowdfunders and raised thousands overnight. Quite often filled with significant anonymous donations of 100s or 1000’s.

    Ever wonder why there is a moral panic about trans people using toilets and sex-segregated spaces, even though trans people have had these freedoms since 2010?
    Its because the argument is lifted from a different legal landscape, and people are earning by sharing regardless.

    Back to the OpenDemocracy piece:

    “This is dark money coming into Europe to threaten human rights, and we’re not doing anything about it”, warned Neil Datta, secretary of the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development, describing the amounts of money involved as “staggering”.

    “It took the Christian right 30 years to get to where they are now in the White House,” he said. “We knew a similar effort was happening in Europe, but this should be a wake-up call that this is happening even faster and on a grander scale than many experts could have ever imagined.”

  • Stop us if you’ve heard these ones before

    I think what I hate most about bigots is their laziness. The stuff they write about trans people is just the stuff they said about gay people, with “gay” Tipp-Exed out and “trans” scribbled in its place.

    The Implausible Girl on Twitter has some examples. First, the silencing of people by a sinister lobby (2000):

    Evil activists “encouraging confused women” to join them in deviance (1990):

    Press regulators refusing to accept that newspapers are inciting hatred against a minority  while Murdoch-owned newspapers increase their abuse against that minority (also 1990):

    There’s so much more. How dare gay people compare their plight to those of genuine battles for civil rights? How dare gay people use people’s suicides to battle bigots? You get called a bigot if you disagree with science that says gay people are natural! Just because we say we hate gay people doesn’t mean we’re homophobic, it’s free speech! There are only two sexes, and no variation within!

    Last, but not least, here’s the mother of modern feminism admitting that she was wrong to battle against the inclusion of lesbians in the feminist movement for so many years. She had called them “the lavender menace” and claimed they were a danger to women and to feminism.

    That last one makes an important point. Unlike being lesbian, gay, bi or trans, being ignorant and hateful is something you can change.

  • Preying on people with cancer

    The Cancer Act 1939 is one of the few pieces of legislation that outlaws pseudo-scientific medical bollocks. As Cancer Research explains:

    At its heart, the current incarnation of the Cancer Act is designed to protect cancer patients and the public from being bombarded with adverts for cancer treatments, from any source, including medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies, alternative practitioners, or anyone else.

    One of the reason the act exists is because charlatans prey on people with cancer. If you’re convinced that you’re going to die, or that the treatment that may save you could be almost as bad as the disease, you’re a soft mark for sharks peddling expensive miracle cures.

    Maybe the Mirror’s lawyers should have a word with its editorial team. This article is appalling.

    Terminally ill mum who hid cancer claims tumour shrunk 75% after ‘alternative care’

    After a friend told her about an alternative cancer treatment centre called ‘Hope4Cancer’ in Cancun, Mexico, Kate re-mortgaged her home and dug into her life savings in order to afford the £35,000 three-week program.

    And following her first treatment in late October, Kate was amazed after scans revealed that the tumour on her lung had shrunk by 75 per cent – going from the size of an apple to the size of a grape – while there is now zero traces of cancer in her lymph nodes and limited cancer in her liver.

    There’s just one little problem with all of that. From the same article:

    I was put on a target therapy drug called Alectinib

    Over to you Clive Peedell, NHS consultant clinical oncologist with a particular interest in lung cancer:

    Sorry, but as a lung cancer specialist, I can confirm that this story is nonsense. The lady was on alectinib, which is a highly effective targeted therapy used in ALK+ve lung cancer ie her dramatic response had nothing to do with the alternative therapies.

    So what we have here is an advert for a bullshit facility in Mexico that takes enormous sums of money from people at their most vulnerable. Sadly the Mirror could argue that this is editorial, not advertising, and therefore exempt from prosecution under the Cancer Act. But while it may comply with the letter of the law, it certainly doesn’t comply with its spirit.

    Then again, it might not comply with the letter of the law after all. Cancer Research again:

    The Cancer Act still covers social media and any websites that are accessible within the UK, if they’re aimed at the general public rather than the specific groups of people mentioned above, and Trading Standards can still choose to prosecute people advertising through them.

  • The damage done

    Last year, anti-trans rabble-rouser James Kirkup wrote an article in The Spectator about the terrible rise of trans rights. Today, IPSO forced The Spectator to admit that the lurid claims at the centre of the story were complete and utter bullshit, invented by the writer. This happens an awful lot with trans stories: many of Andrew Gilligan’s lurid claims in The Sunday Times have been quietly rescinded too.

    The article was a cover feature; the admission that it was based on bullshit is buried in a corner; the damage was done a year ago and no amount of corrections will undo it.

  • Just an ordinary day

    How’s your day going?

    Just after midnight, I saw The Economist tweet this.

    It turns out that the article was about Japan, and it has since been corrected with a less inflammatory headline. But as the writer Diana Tourjeé pointed out, “should trans people be sterilised?” is part of the regular media discourse on trans people alongside whether we should be banned from public toilets, whether we should be allowed to participate in sports, whether we should be acknowledged in the history books and in education, whether we should be allowed in homeless shelters, whether we should be given life-saving healthcare, whether we should be allowed correct identity documents, whether we should be allowed to serve in the military, whether we should be given normal health screening, whether killing us should be a hate crime, whether we should be allowed to adopt or raise children, whether we should be protected from discrimination. After all, “they chose this. They are sick. They are perverts. They are not normal.”

    Responding to the thread another journalist, Katelyn Burns, noted that “Every single one of these questions in this thread has been the subject of major media coverage, op eds in large publications, or proposed in legislation over the last 6 months.”

    On my way back from the school run, I listened to Radio Scotland where the discussion was about gender neutral toilets, a largely cost-based decision by local councils building new schools. Much of the discussion was about trans people; online, some listeners condemned the PC agenda, trans people etc. One approvingly shared links to news articles about parents getting “LGBT rights classes” dropped: “We desperately need a revolution” against LGBT people, he said.

    Back home, on Twitter I saw Andrea Leadsom apparently supporting parental “choice” about whether or not children get to know that LGBT people exist, and I saw footage of Donald Trump nodding approvingly while Brazil’s bigoted president said he and Trump stand “side by side” in the war on “gender ideology”. Gender ideology is a meaningless phrase beloved by the hard right to describe all kinds of things they disapprove of: trans people, mainly, but also equal marriage, immigrants and women’s reproductive rights.

    Also on Twitter, I saw that one Scottish school has canned its inclusive education because of it featured this poem:

    Despite my best efforts my news app continues to show me right-wing newspapers, one of which is defending a woman who accused the CEO of trans charity Mermaids of “mutilating” her child and promoting “child abuse”. Almost all of the press and TV coverage has portrayed this not as vicious libel, but as a nice Catholic lady being victimised for using the wrong pronouns.

    This is exceptionally common online: anti-trans activists will conduct a prolonged campaign of bullying against trans people or allies, and when it gets bad enough for the police to get involved they run to the papers claiming they’re being picked on for using the wrong pronouns. The police don’t give a shit what pronouns you use, but they do investigate harassment and malicious communications. The misreporting simply fuels anti-trans hatred.

    My news app also gives me the terrible news that not only is Ricky Gervais still alive, but that his latest material includes more stuff punching down on trans people.

    All of this before 11am on an entirely typical day.  I am so, so tired of this.

  • Criticism of sex education, and why it’s wrong

    There’s yet another worrying development in the parents vs education story: Conservative politician Andrea Leadsom says that parents should get to decide when their children “become exposed to that information”.

    Writing in the TES a few weeks ago, Natasha Devon explains why the “kids are too young” argument and two others are wrong.

    When it comes to same-sex relationships, it’s interesting (in a disturbing way) how many people think of them as somehow inherently sexual, in a way heterosexual partnerships are not. Most schools now have several pupils with two mums or two dads. It’s important for all children to be exposed to representation that reflects this, in the same cartoon-character, age-appropriate way heterosexual parents are.

    Children are not being taught about what people do in bed. As Devon writes:

    Sex education at the age of 4 is generally restricted to a “pants are private” message and to helping children understand consent and that they must tell if someone touches them inappropriately. I think we can all agree that they’re never too young for that.

  • “The lucrative gas-lighting industry”

    Writing in New Socialist, Pete Mitchell does a thoroughly entertaining demolition of two books making the culture war argument that “the left” is somehow silencing free speech. The whole thing’s worth a read but I particularly liked these bits:

    In Lukianoff and Haidt’s account, college students aren’t distressed because they’re facing unprecedented debt and insecurity, because those safety nets they had are being stripped away from them, because they can no longer look forward to a recognisable future – or indeed because white supremacists keep trying to gather on their campuses to intimidate them, while their parents’ generation stands around finger-wagging about the importance of robust debate – but because they’re decadent, attached to their phones, full of self-pity, over-indulged and lacking in will.

    The well-worn argument here is that millennial snowflakes refuse to be exposed to opposing views from people who disagree with them.

    As anyone who’s spent any time around these debates knows by now, those “opposing views” usually turn out to be some variation of exactly the same one, and the “people who disagree with you” are always some variation of the same person: a well-paid white man who isn’t sure where all these women and brown people and queers came from but has some ideas about where he’d like to send them.

     

  • Stop us if you’ve heard this before

    On Twitter, users mimmymum and the implausible girl have shared a few newspaper clippings about the dangerous people tricking their way into bathrooms and locker rooms, demanding inclusion in education and other terrifying things. No, not trans people. Gay and lesbian people.

    Irony fans will appreciate this first one, about Martina Navratilova, because her recent comments about trans people have – surprise! – been used by anti-LGBT politicians to support anti-trans legislation.

    The fonts make me think it’s The Sun. It claims that because of lesbian athletes like Navratilova, “young girls were scared to go into tournament changing rooms” and were “being led into homosexuality.”

    This is a letter to the Daily Utah Chronicle in 1998 about whether gay people should be allowed to work as changing room attendants.

    This is from the Edwardsville Intelligencer in 1977. It’s not that gay people are wicked, it’s that they’re sick and should be kept away from children.

    1974, the Philadelphia Daily News.

    The Vancouver Promise, 1973, suggesting that homosexuality is spread by social contagion. The same argument against trans these days is called Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. It’s still bullshit.

    The Indianapolis News, 1974:

    The Ottawa Journal, 1979:

    And way back in 1956, the Coos Bay Times on the fact that gay people aren’t really gay; they’ve been talked into it, and will revert to being normal if they’re kept away from evil gay influences.