Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

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Category: Bullshit

Pernicious nonsense and other irritants

  • Words have consequences

    The Daily Mail:

     

    Elsewhere in an American high school, members of staff attempt to break into a locked toilet stall because a trans  teenager is in it. In a different school, a lesbian student is beaten up because of her boyish presentation. In October a lesbian woman was kicked out of a bowling alley for looking ‘too masculine’. The same thing happened in North Carolina in June, when a lesbian woman was thrown out of a bathroom by the police: “You got no ID? Get out!” In May, a woman was harassed in a toilet because she was wearing a baseball cap: ‘the woman went up to Aimee and said “you’re disgusting” and “you don’t belong here” before flipping her off.’

    This is what happens when you demonise people, when you tell people that someone’s very presence is a threat to you and to your children. For some people, “looking a bit trans” is sufficient grounds for action against a complete stranger who’s minding their own business.

    It’s not just people like me. It’s particularly horrific for refugees, especially since the whole Brexit mess began. The Overton Window, the range of political discourse that’s considered acceptable in society, has moved so far to the right that supposedly mainstream political parties are echoing the manifestos of the BNP and other far right groups from previous decades. What used to be unacceptable racism is now “asking difficult questions”.

    That demonisation has consequences big and small, and it always, always ends up with people getting attacked. For example, this week we saw horrific footage of a Syrian kid being “waterboarded” by bullies; it’s the latest in a campaign of abuse that’s seen him being doused with water, verbally abused and his hair set on fire, as well as physical violence. His sister has been bullied too.

    The same Daily Mail that’s so concerned about Rain Dove was also concerned about this kid: after years of demonising refugees, the Mail can’t imagine why anybody would pick on a child just because he’s Syrian. The Sun thinks it’s a shocking crime too. That’s the same Sun that paid Katie Hopkins to call immigrants “cockroaches”.

    You’ve got to admire the process here. First of all, newspapers help to create a climate of fear and hatred. Then, they get to run shocked stories when people act on that fear and hatred.

    These publications aren’t just reporting hate crime. They’re fostering it.

  • God, save me from your idiot followers

    SNP MSP John Mason is outraged by plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act.

    In a letter to Glasgow’s Herald newspaper, Mr Mason says he is deeply concerned that Scotland is “trying to override science” by recognising that trans people exist.

    I’ll save you the scientific evidence, which I’ve linked to endlessly, and simply post this example of Mr Mason’s other robust pro-science views.

    Update: Just after I posted this, the following article from Tidsskriftet (the Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association) appeared in my news feed.

    the ideas of purity that are partly rooted in national conservatism and partly in religious fundamentalism are not echoed by science.

    The timing amused me. Maybe that was part of God’s plan.

  • How advertising regulation doesn’t work

    Last month, the extremely dodgy anti-trans group Fair Play For Women dropped a five-figure sum on a full page advert in the Metro claiming that reforms to the Gender Recognition Act would threaten women’s safety. It was cynical. It was designed to whip up hatred. And it was absolute bullshit.

    Some of us complained to the Advertising Standards Agency, which regulates print advertising. They’ve just sent me their verdict.

    With regards to the complaint you made, also along with several other complainants, we understand that you are concerned that the ad misleadingly implied that women will be at risk as a result of the Gender Recognition Act consultation. After assessing the ad in light of this concern, we think it may have broken the Advertising Rules on misleadingness and we have taken steps the address this.

    Unfortunately the verdict is irrelevant and the steps – telling the group not to make such claims again – are pointless. The advertisement ran, the government consultation is now closed. Trans people were silenced; unfortunately the bigots weren’t.

  • Twitter’s cowardice is all about one man

    No, not its boss, Jack Dorsey. This guy.

    Twitter doesn’t want to move against hatemongers such as Alex Jones because if they do, it begs the question: why not Trump?

    The short answer is: $2 billion.

    That’s how much the Trump account is believed to be worth to Twitter, which is why it hasn’t blocked him despite him frequently posting abusive and threatening tweets and occasionally making nuclear threats to world leaders. That’s all fine, because Trump is “newsworthy”.

    Dorsey mouths platitudes about freedom of speech, but his only concern is Twitter’s freedom to make money.

  • Can you trust tabloid “video game addiction” stories?

    Two days ago, the Daily Mirror ran a horrifying story of video game addiction. “Fortnite Made Me A Suicidal Drug Addict”, the headline screamed.

    It was harrowing stuff describing “video game hell” that led to an abortive suicide attempt.

    Was it exaggerated? It certainly looks that way. Eurogamer is on the case.

    There’s no evidence to suggest the Mirror’s Fortnite story was fabricated. But when you pull back the curtain and discover how these types of articles are put together, when you understand how some mainstream journalism works, it’s hard not to wonder about the motivations of the parties involved.

  • Mobile phones still don’t cause cancer

    No it can’t.

    When it comes to conspiracy theories, there are two kinds of theorists: the batshit insane, and the people who genuinely believe they’ve stumbled on a conspiracy.

    There was a good example of what I assume is the latter last week in The Observer, which published an astonishing piece about the link between mobile phones and cancer. It turns out that mobile phones really do cause cancer, and there’s a global conspiracy to cover it up.

    No they don’t, and no there isn’t.

    This is something I know a fair bit about, because I’ve covered the subject a lot over the last two decades. Whether it’s phones or wireless networks, every now and then someone comes along and misunderstands the science to conclude that our brains are being cooked and there’s a conspiracy to cover it up.

    Part of the problem is the word “radiation”. We assume that all radiation is ionising radiation, the kind that gives you skin cancer. But radiation also includes the radio waves that bring you Radio Scotland and the light waves coming from your light bulbs.

    The radiation from phones and wireless routers is very low powered, non-ionising radiation. As far as science is aware, there is no possible way the radiation from these devices can cause cancer.

    The Observer has run a follow-up piece this week, this time by somebody who knows the science. It gives the authors of the previous article a very polite but very thorough kicking.

    That the authors attribute this lack of evidence for their claims to the machinations of a nebulous big telecoms is indicative of a mindset more conspiratorial than sceptical… Scaremongering narratives may be more alluring than the less sensational, scientific findings, but they are not harmless. We need only look at any vaccine panic to see the cost in human life when superstition outpaces science. In an age where misinformation can perpetuate rapidly, it can be difficult to parse fact from fiction, but it’s imperative that we hone our scientific scepticism rather than succumb to baseless panics – our very wellbeing depends on it.

    If you’re a journalist considering writing an “ordinary thing causes cancer!” piece it’s worth applying Occam’s Razor, which suggests that the simplest explanation is the most likely. Which is more likely: a) there’s a global conspiracy that’s willingly sacrificing thousands or even millions of lives and which has operated for decades without leaving any evidence whatsoever, or b) you’ve got it wrong?

    A journalist’s job is to report what the evidence says, not to cherry-pick the evidence to support the story the journalist wants to tell.