Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

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Category: LGBTQ+

  • Is the government going to break another promise?

    I mentioned in a previous post that the UK government promised to ban dangerous “conversion therapy”, a form of psychological torture, two years ago.

    Today, the UK House of Commons posted on Twitter:

    How does #conversiontherapy affect the #LGBTQ community? Should it be made illegal? What would that mean to you? ‪@HoCpetitions‬ is investigating a petition calling for the practice to be made illegal. Click the image to share your insights

    You’d think they’d be aware of the Memorandum of Understanding On Conversion Therapy In The UK, which was signed by NHS England, NHS Scotland, The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, The National Counselling Society, The Royal College of Psychiatrists, the UK Council For Psychotherapy and many others.

    As it explained:

    All the major psychological professional bodies in the UK have concluded that conversion therapy is unethical and potentially harmful.

  • “LGBT lives are being lost”

    Lockdown has acted as an amplifier for many social problems. One sign of that is the increase in LGBT+ people struggling with suicidal thoughts.

    BBC News:

    In total, eight charities told BBC News they had seen an increase in LGBT people accessing their support for suicide prevention.

    The LGBT Foundation has received more calls about suicide “than ever before”.

    Mermaids, which helps young trans people, has had to alert police following concerns about callers wanting to kill themselves

    We know – and the government knows – that LGBT+ people suffer disproportionately from mental health issues due to multiple factors: discrimination, lack of family support, long waiting lists for essential treatment, social isolation and so on. Lockdown has stopped many essential support services, and it has of course also stopped the social contact and face-to-face support that some people find life-saving. Charities are trying to fill the gap, but many of them were desperately understaffed and underfunded long before lockdown.

    Various branches of the UK government have spent the last month wrapping rainbows around their Twitter logos and proclaiming their support for the LGBT+ community. But it’s an empty gesture when again and again the government fails to keep its promises to LGBT+ people. It launched an LGBT Action Plan specifically to reduce suicides among LGBT people back in 2018 and has not implemented any of it. A year ago it announced a “rapid evidence review” of LGBT suicide. That hasn’t started. And two years ago this week it promised to ban conversion therapy, which has a horrific effect on LGBT+ people’s mental health. It hasn’t kept that promise either.

  • It’s never “just a joke”

    I wrote about The Last of Us Part 2 the other day, and one of the things I mentioned was its portrayal of LGBT+ characters. One thing I didn’t mention was that their very existence was enough to rouse an army of entitled man-babies to scream about political correctness destroying video games, as they have with many other video games that had the temerity to centre characters who weren’t straight white male “bros”.

    I also didn’t mention the way LGBT+ characters are portrayed in other video games. This is from the marketing around GTA V, a very popular title that will be re-released for next-generation consoles next year. It’s considered one of the jewels in gaming’s crown.

    It’s nighttime in the game and the streamer, playing as a middle-aged man, approaches a group of people standing outside of a club. They’re all broad-shouldered with cut biceps, and they’re wearing an assortment of wigs, crop tops, mini skirts, lace stockings and bikini bottoms. Chest hair pokes out from some of their shirts, and under layers of dramatic makeup, a few jawlines are dusted with stubble. The tight clothing highlights obvious crotch-level bulges.

    The streamer’s character walks up to one of these NPCs and says, “Hello, sir. I mean, madam. I mean, whatever.” He turns to another and says, “Well, hello, mid-op.” And then a third: “Hey, you need to keep taking your hormones!” And then he pulls out a crowbar and beats one of them to death.

    The defence? It’s satire. Just a joke. And anyway, the game doesn’t discriminate: you can beat cisgender sex workers to death too.

    Let’s see how the audience responds to such clever satire.

    …there are dozens of videos featuring GTA V players happily hunting down and killing trans characters, because they are trans.

    What you see on screen is a reflection of the lack of diversity behind the scenes. The games industry is largely male (over 70% of employees are men), and the Scottish developer of GTA is no exception. Engadget reports that in 2019, women who worked for GTA V’s developer earned 29.3% less than their male colleagues for similar jobs and 91.2% of senior positions were held by men. Those figures were significant improvements over previous years.

    When the only perspective you have belongs to straight white guys, the only perspective that matters to you is that of straight white guys. So your co-founder isn’t being ironic when he says GTA V tells “nuanced stories” and doesn’t trade in “archetypes”. There are nuanced stories, but only for the characters that are straight, white, cisgender and male.

    The focus on such a narrow demographic doesn’t just affect what you see on screen. It affects who gets hired, who is valued, and who can get away with toxic behaviour.

    Gaming has a problem with toxic men. Women have been trying to speak out about sexual harassment and abuse in and around the gaming industry for many years, and they were met with horrific online abuse as a result. Here’s Vox:

    In the fall of 2014, under the premise that they were angry at “unethical” games journalists — a lie that persists today — thousands of people in the games community began to systematically harass, heckle, threaten, and dox several outspoken feminist women in their midst, few of whom were journalists. The harassment occurred under the social media hashtag “Gamergate,” which is still a hotbed of debate and anti-feminist resentment today.

    …One of the most frustrating things about watching Gamergate unfold is that the seeds of it had been in place for years. Targeted online harassment against women had been occurring for years, across numerous communities, from men who spent years harassing one woman who complained of getting hit on at a professional conference to harassment of actors for playing unlikable women.

    Here’s the New York Times on the latest attempts to detoxify the industry:

    More than 70 people in the gaming industry, most of them women, have come forward with allegations of gender-based discrimination, harassment and sexual assault since Friday. They have shared their stories in statements posted to Twitter, YouTube, Twitch and the blogging platform TwitLonger.

    …This isn’t the first time gaming has been said to be having its #MeToo moment. Last summer, several game developers went public with accusations of sexual assault, harassment and abuse, and were met with a swift backlash from the gaming community.

    The article quotes researcher Kenzie Gordon:

    The gaming industry is particularly conducive to a culture of misogyny and sexual harassment, Ms. Gordon said, because straight white men have “created the identity of the gamer as this exclusive property.” When women, people of color or L.G.B.T.Q. people try to break into the industry, she said, the “toxic geek masculinity” pushes back in ways that often lead to sexual abuse and bullying.

    Gaming studios are often reluctant to defy those fans, Ms. Gordon said, but recently it has become clear that there is a demand for a variety of video games that appeal to all types of people, which requires more diversity among game designers and could necessitate changes in the industry.

  • “Dear Baroness Nicholson”

    This, by Munroe Bergdorf, is really something.

    While this poisonous conversation may constitute an amusement to those who are in a position to pit their privilege against a minority, for people like me, it is an extremely painful onslaught on the very core of who we are.

    It would be insulting your intelligence as well as my own and the intelligence of those who follow us both, to suggest that your tweets were posted in error. They were not out of character for a high profile politician who has a long and proven record tweeting what I consider to be cruel taunts and unfounded allegations against trans people, including a child, and trans organisations such as Mermaids, for whom I am a proud patron.

    …I worry that your activity during the last few hours speaks to the truth behind your apology. That you are more concerned for your own reputation as complaints gather and grow by your name than you are for any need to reconcile our considerable differences.

  • Toxic, yes. Debate, no

    Jayne Ozanne and Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah talk about trans people’s fears about GRA reform in The Guardian. It’s a perspective that the UK edition of the paper rarely allows into its pages.

    …people must have an equal opportunity to be heard, particularly by those in power. Few trans people have access to national news platforms to counter the views laid against them. If we listen only to the loudest voices, or worse, silence those we don’t wish to hear, things can quickly turn toxic.

    A prime example of this toxic discourse is how the conversation about “single sex spaces” for women has evolved. Trans women have been safely accessing these spaces for years. We are deeply concerned that leaked proposals calling for trans women to be barred from these spaces will ultimately victimise all women, trans or otherwise.

    …we too have received hateful rhetoric for being lesbians and feminists. But this vitriol pales in comparison to that experienced by our friends in the trans community, who suffer prejudice and discrimination on a daily basis.

     

  • “The extremism and the routine abuse of any woman online needs to stop.”

    The other day, I linked to the TIE Campaign’s messages about the onslaught of sickening abuse they’ve received from homophobes and transphobes. One of the people I quoted was their chair Rhiannon Spear, who is also the National Women’s Convener of the SNP, and she’s gone into more detail in a new blog post.

    Opponents to the GRA would have you believe that the women’s sector in Scotland does not care about the protection of women. That the first ever female First Minister does not care about the safety of women. That the woman at the head of legal of the Equality and Human Rights Commission doesn’t understand the proposed changes in the GRA and how they impact women’s sex based rights in the Equality Act. That women like me who support GRA reform do not care about the safety of women.

    Instead of critically engaging with why I and many others support GRA reform, opponents now want you to believe that I am a threat to women and girls. That I am a predator, that I groom children and at worst I am a paedophile. We have reached a point where trans women are openly equated to predators and their allies are accused of being paedophiles and child groomers.

    This rhetoric is not normal and cannot become normal.

     

     

  • Everyone is awful

    Seven years ago, I wrote about my love for New Model Army, a post-punk band from England.

    I got into New Model Army in Kilbirnie Library, in the late 1980s. I was going through a bit of a punk/new wave thing at the time, and the library’s collection of vinyl LPs included one whose cover was a painted leather jacket, the words “only stupid bastards take heroin” disguised but still recognisable on the shoulders. That’ll do me, I thought.

    In the decades since I’ve bought a lot of their records and merchandise and been to lots of their gigs. But no more, because the person who designed their record covers and their merch – someone I’ve met, someone I chatted to briefly in my previous life, someone whose art I’ve worn on my chest – turns out to really hate people like me and is very vocal about it.

    So a band whose gigs used to feel like sanctuary – a band whose own Twitter bio says “we welcome everyone – equally” – is now a band I can’t go and see anymore, because rightly or wrongly I now worry that some of the band’s fans will share those views. I’m sure most don’t. But it only takes one person to beat you up.

    It’s not the first time a band I loved has turned out to be problematic. The drummer of Teenage Fanclub (not the original one everybody liked) is similarly obsessive, and I’m told that the main songwriter in that other famously nice and decent band, Elbow, has also been venomous about people like me. So that’s two more former loves whose logos I won’t wear and who I’m not going to pay to see any more.

    It’s as much a practical decision as a moral one. For me, gigs are an important release. They’re a source of joy, an opportunity to escape from the stresses and strains and sadness of everyday life. It’s impossible to have that transcendence when every time you look at the stage you see someone who doesn’t just hate you, but who spends an inordinate amount of their time trying to encourage others to hate you too.

    Art can’t offer escapism when the artist is one of the people you’re trying to escape from.

    And it’s not just transphobes. People are awful in all kinds of ways, and the older I get the more I discover that people I revered or whose art really connected with me were terrible. It sometimes feels like somebody is going through all the records, films and books that mattered to me and poisoning them. That sensitive author? Beat his girlfriend. That delicate lyricist? Howling racist. That comedian? Sexual predator. The soulful songwriter? Rapist.

    I know I’m not the only one to do this: now when someone tells me to check out a new band, a new author, a new comedian, the first thing I search for isn’t their material. It’s whether they’re problematic. All too often, they are. And that applies even at a local level. I was speaking to a promoter the other day who has a never-book list of artists proven to be problematic for reasons ranging from sexual predation to Nazism. It’s a long list.

    The artist is not the art, I know. But the artist can poison the art. I can’t watch Louis CK now I know what he did to women, or watch the UK version of The Office without seeing Ricky Gervais the transphobe rather than David Brent the character, or feel the connection with the songs of The Smiths since Morrissey’s racism became apparent.

    I feel it most in music, because music is such a personal thing: the good stuff becomes more than just a soundtrack. It becomes part of your identity. Part of your life. So when the people who make it turn out to be terrible, that news feels personal too. The more their art mattered, the more it feels like a betrayal.

    I’ve joked before that being trans has saved me a lot of money, because I don’t knowingly spend money on people or things that are problematic. But I’d much rather have music than money.

  • “The religious right has turned its sights on a new secular bogeyman”

    An interesting and balanced article in that hotbed of radical leftism, the Financial Times: The front line of the new gender wars. It looks at the Catholic Church’s war on so-called “gender ideology” and how it’s been picked up by right-wing populists and religious conservatives worldwide. The article attempts to give context to the culture war in which trans people find their very existence weaponised.

    From the US and Brazil to Poland and Hungary, tilting against “gender ideology” plays to a particular constituency: disaffected voters who perceive they have been marginalised due to identity politics gone mad, and that their needs have been subordinated to the interests of outsiders, be they foreign or dark or queer.

    To this constituency, the special pleading of an entitled minority threatens to encroach on the wellbeing of the majority. What makes the politics of this so complex, in the US and the UK at least, is that people putting forward this argument find themselves aligned with some feminists.

     

  • Hateful words lead to hateful acts

    The TIE Campaign is a wonderful organisation that campaigns for more inclusive education.

    The TIE Campaign posted this yesterday:

    We are a charity which works with schools, teachers, and educators to tackle prejudice-based bullying. We provide anti-bullying sessions and gender stereotypes/equalities workshops to schools, and produce resources to include LGBT people and history in the curriculum.

    …For a number of months, we have been receiving the most hurtful – and dangerous – posts and messages from individuals who appear to be opposed to LGBT themes being included within education. We have never had to deal with anything like this before.

    …We cannot continue to sit by as individuals do this to us. Trolling is one thing – but what they are doing is dangerous, prejudicial, and hateful. Please report tweets like this if you see them. We cannot address this alone.

    …LGBT people and charities are regularly called groomers, pedophiles, abusers. This is unacceptable and horrific.

    …It’s not just us. Many LGBT organisations have been receiving this for months; as have national women’s charities, youth organisations, politicians. Lying like this about people or groups on social media is dangerous & can have serious consequences. It needs to stop.

    Please do read the whole thing. It’s horrifying, and utterly typical of the abuse LGBT+ organisations and supporters of LGBT+ equality receive on social media. And it’s increased dramatically in the last two years.

    Here’s Pink Saltire:

    This type of abuse is commonplace towards LGBT+ groups and has a real impact on us all.

    Sisters Scotland:

    The online abuse, slander, misrepresentation and lies that the LGBT community face on the daily destroy lives. It bleeds from online toxicity in to abuse in the media, and straight into abuse in the workplace, at home, in the streets. These prejudiced narratives pushed influence the narratives lived by the LGBT+ community. Their voices and strength are crushed under the weight of this. It’s up to all of us to ensure we give that strength back, that we raise those voices, make them louder and challenge those that seek to silence them.

    Dr Rebecca Crowther of LGBTI Scotland:

    It claws in to our personal social media accounts too & of course our minds, our mental health, our bodies. I couldn’t & wouldn’t type some of the names I’ve been called. I could never share the mysognynistic homophobic bullying & gaslighting I’ve received. That all of us have.

    And the worst part? Nothing I have received even compares remotely to the horrific bullying and abuse my trans siblings have been subject to.

    SNP women’s convener and TIE Campaign chair Rhiannon Spear:

    Constantly being called a pedophile or a child groomer because I support LGBT rights cannot become normal + I refuse to let it become normal.

    We are seeking legal advice + will take action where we can.

    The rhetoric needs to change.

    Abuse against LGBT+ people is rising in the UK, and that rise corresponds to the increasingly violent rhetoric being used about us and our allies in print and on social media. The people calling LGBT+ people and charities paedophiles on the internet are just echoing what high-profile Twitter accounts and newspaper columnists are saying. Violent words ultimately lead to violent acts.

  • These days, if you say you’re a bigot, you’re arrested and thrown in jail

    Former comedy writer Graham Linehan’s Twitter account was finally closed this weekend. The move came a week after another nasty troll, Katie Hopkins, lost her account for the same reason: repeated violations of Twitter’s hateful conduct policy.

    The stories are almost identical, but the reporting isn’t. And the best way to demonstrate that is to show you the way the same outlets reported the stories in their headlines.

    Sky News:
    – Katie Hopkins permanently banned by Twitter for breaking ‘abuse and hate’ rules
    – Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan banned from Twitter after trans comment

    RT.com:
    – Katie Hopkins permanently suspended from Twitter to keep platform ‘safe’ from ‘hateful conduct’
    – Twitter permanently suspends ‘Father Ted’ writer after he replies ‘men aren’t women’ to pro-trans tweet

    Guardian:
    – Katie Hopkins permanently removed from Twitter
    – Twitter closes Graham Linehan account after trans comment

    Daily Mail:
    – Katie Hopkins is BANNED from Twitter for breaking rules on hate speech
    – Father Ted creator Graham Linehan is suspended from Twitter after stating ‘men aren’t women’

    As you can see, each publication has framed the two stories very differently, and that’s apparent in many more publications than the ones I’ve quoted here. When Hopkins’ tweets have been referenced in headlines, if they were mentioned at all, they were usually prefixed with words like “vile” and “hateful”. There’s no such context in the headlines about Linehan.

    Maybe that’s because all of those publications have run anti-trans story after anti-trans story, anti-trans column after anti-trans column.

    Quick question: who claims that trans rights advocates are a front for a sinister cult sacrificing your children: the washed-up comedy writer or the award-winning newspaper columnist?

    Trick question. It’s both.