Carrie Marshall's Blog

The EHRC, which hates trans people, has leaked its trans guidance to The Times, which hates trans people, in an attempt to bully the Equalities Minister into approving it. But no amount of positive spin can hide the fundamental point: the EHRC wants trans people’s rights to access spaces to be dependent on how they look, and enforced by the public.

They’re demanding a permanent, state-sanctioned witch-hunt by sour-faced curtain twitchers and SAVE ARE KIDS roundabout painters for whom anyone tall, butch, unconventional, not pretty enough, not white enough is Goody Proctor dancing with the Devil.

Séamas O’Reilly wrote about this in the Irish Examiner earlier this year. As he says today, “Trans people and their cis women allies have been sounding these alarms for years. It now seems clear that the UK government took all these dire warnings as policy proposals.”

We might also consider what this means for the millions of cis women who do not fit the standard, sexist notion of “femininity” which logic dictates they must be checked against… Too tall, perhaps, too strong-jawed, or short-haired — anything that one patron, one witness, one supermarket or leisure centre security guard might consider cause to question their femininity.

And how might they prove their “real” gender?…The only way any of the absurdities of this ruling make sense, is if its aims are exactly what they appear to be: A punitive attack on the rights and dignity of trans people divorced from any real-world concern about safety or women’s rights, designed to demoralise and punish them simply for the crime of existing.

This, despite the abundant and obvious evidence that it will lead to more harm and distress for all British women, cis or trans, as a consequence. We must surmise that the pain and humiliation of all people is worth it, so long as trans people feel it most fiercely.

This is the world view of the people popping champagne outside the courts, or cackling with glee on their superyachts, rejoicing as Keir Starmer says “trans women are men” while demanding he roll back trans rights even further, and apologise for ever advocating for them in the first place.

The same people who’ve so thoroughly debased this debate that sensible moderates can profess nothing but mealy-mouthed agreement alongside quiet calls for “calm” and “dignity”, without realising this is offering us a choice between those who light cigars as they legislate trans people out of the public square, and those who say they’re awfully sorry while they do the same.

Section 28, the law that prohibited the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools and libraries, was scrapped on this day in 2003 (three years after Scotland repealed the local version, Clause 2A). I’ve written about it a few times now, including in the anthology Twenty-Eight.

Section 28 came into force just as I was leaving school, so it didn’t affect me directly. But the climate that created it – the viciously anti-LGBTQ+ newspapers, the viciously anti-LGBTQ+ politicians – damaged an entire generation of queer people. As I wrote in my contribution to Twenty-Eight:

Section 28 was largely a creation of the right-wing press, and many of the people, publications and proprietors who contributed to the anti-gay panic back then are at the forefront of the anti-trans panic today…

It’s all so horribly, sickeningly, wretchedly familiar. Once again we are told we need to “protect children” from a sinister “lobby”, an evil “ideology”. And once again that poisonous narrative is peddling hatred towards the entire LGBT+ community. Just look at how supposed “reasonable concerns” about trans kids’ healthcare have become death threats to Drag Queen Story Hours, at the widespread use of “groomer” against LGBT+ people and allies online, at the growing number of reported anti-LGBT hate crimes. What’s printed in tabloids and broadsheets is amplified on the streets. And as US Republicans are currently demonstrating in states such as Alabama and Arizona, Tennessee and Texas, worse is coming.

Abolishing Section 28 didn’t abolish homophobia, transphobia or any other -phobia. It just told the people who had those views, that quarter of the population that voted to keep the clause, to be quiet about it. And now those people are being given permission to be loud all over again.

I wrote that in 2022. There’s no joy in being able to say “I told you so”.

I took part in this year’s Aye Write! book festival with a different hat on: I was there as a host rather than a panellist.

I was asked to chair three very different events: with former pop star Anthony Kavanaugh, aka Kavana, to discuss his memoir; with Mae Diansangu, Louise Welsh and Lewis Hetherington to discuss the queer spaces anthology Who Will Be Remembered Here; and with debut novelists Seth Insua, Michael Amherst and Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin to talk about their books Human, Animal, The Boyhood of Cain and Ordinary Saints. And I was absolutely terrified, because hosting is way beyond my comfort zone: I’m used to being the panellist, not the host.

I’m glad I said yes, though, because books and book people are often fascinating – and that was definitely the case for all three events here. And we were blessed with three very excellent audiences too, so the events were a real joy to host.

I’m done hosting for now, but I’m not done with book events: I’ll be at Sunny Govan Radio to talk about my own books later this week, and I’m doing a talk with students next week. Or at least I will be if my voice holds out: the downside of doing literary festivals at this time of year is that everybody involved comes out of the event with a stonking head cold.

There are some fascinating reports in the latest edition of the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, including a piece about the LGB Alliance’s Role in the UK Media’s Anti-Trans Moral Panic and this in-depth analysis of radicalisation on sites such as Mumsnet.

It describes how posters attempt to reframe themselves as victims rather than victimisers, to depict themselves as brave, marginalised people silenced by assorted imagined oppressors rather than the vicious bullies they have so gleefully become.

This isn’t a new observation, of course: we’re familiar with DARVO (deny, accuse, reverse victim and offender) as one of the most favoured tactics of the genital-obsessed weirdos and grifters. But this is much more in-depth.

we encountered story after story of posters who—as they became further entrenched in GC [“gender critical”, aka transphobic] community practices—found themselves alienated from their families, friends, and coworkers.

These heartwrenching narratives intentionally confuse the axes of oppression.

The tragedy of GC members’ vacillation as victim-aggressor is that GCs claim that they are the ones being oppressed even as they publicly dramatize, with pride, their harassment of strangers and coworkers and the emotional abuse of children and partners.

The BBC has been captured by the sinister trans lobby, a new report being pushed by the right-wing press claims. The report, by Michael Prescott, provides no convincing evidence of that – because of course it isn’t true. The BBC is one of the main vectors of anti-trans propaganda, taking its cue (and many of its contributors) from the right-wing press. And it’s been doing it for years, laundering the bigotry of genital-obsessed weirdos as “reasonable concerns”, publishing and then defending groundless stories such as claims by sexual predators and anti-trans activists that trans women are rapists, and adopting the language and dog-whistles of the genital-obsessed weirdo brigade, such as “biological women” and “sex-based rights”. The brief window when trans people could get a fair hearing or accurate, informed coverage from the BBC closed a long time ago.

Prescott’s view of trans people and the wider LGBTQ+ community is clear from his report: he reports as fact unsubstantiated and frankly ridiculous claims that there’s a rogue unit of LGBTQ+ people censoring the BBC’s news output; a feature about a trans wrestler is described as “gushing”; he claims there are too many stories featuring drag queens; and he is irate that the BBC dared to include a trans woman in a discussion about the Cass Review. He says that “too many of its staff have never considered the idea of “gender identity” to be either spurious or offensive to many people.” Those “many people”, of course, are the genital-obsessed weirdos.

It’s not a report, it’s a whinge by someone who believes the BBC simply isn’t vicious enough towards marginalised people. And it’s being used as part of a culture war campaign to push the BBC even further to the right.

Various newspapers report that Glasgow councillor Chris Cunningham has disputed the terrifying 200-years-plus predicted waiting times for Glasgow’s Sandyford clinic, claiming that the waiting time is six to seven years. And that means he’s either ignorant or deliberately misleading people, and so are the newspapers – because the evidence shows that if you’re referred to Sandyford today and the clinic’s desperate, years-long understaffing isn’t addressed, you’ll wait your whole life for an appointment that will never happen.

Cunningham is quoting the text published on the Sandyford’s website, which says:

We are currently allocating appointments to those referred during the following periods:
Adult Gender Service Waiting list: November 2018
Young Person Gender Service Waiting list: November 2019

But the report that he’s disputing isn’t about the wait time for people who joined the waiting list six or seven years ago, some of whom – but not all of whom – are finally getting first appointments. It’s about the wait time for the people being added to the waiting list today.

Thanks to freedom of information requests we know that the Sandyford clinic is barely seeing anybody. It saw fewer than 24 new patients in a year while over 500 new patients were added to a waiting list that now exceeds 4,000 people.

What happens to waiting lists when more people are added than you’re seeing? They get longer.

The core problem here, as with other gender clinics, is desperate understaffing, and that’s something we’ve known about since at least 2016: as The Guardian reported over nine years ago, gender clinics were already struggling to provide healthcare for what everybody knew was only a tiny but fast-growing proportion of the trans population because of a lack of capacity, and of suitably trained and qualified staff.

The charity GIRES said at the time that the most conservative estimate of the trans population would mean around 130,000 people seeking medical assistance from a system already struggling to cater for just 15,000 people; the actual numbers could be much higher, with figures from other countries indicating that roughly 1% of people are trans.

We could have fixed the roof when the sun was shining, but of course we didn’t. So what everybody said was going to happen happened.

I referred myself to Sandyford in 2016 and had my first appointment in 2017, a wait of eleven months.

Had I referred two years later, in 2018, the waiting time had grown from 11 months to seven years – so if I were one of the lucky few, I’d be getting a first appointment round about now.

And if you’re being referred to the same service today?

The 2016 Guardian report cites concerns that some trans people might have to wait 4 years for a first appointment. Today, the average UK wait time based on current clearance rates is 25 years. If you’re referred to Sandyford today and nothing changes, you can expect a first appointment in 224 years.

The NHS waiting list target from referral to first appointment is 18 weeks.

We know the solution to this, because it’s in effect in many other countries: basic healthcare like HRT is prescribed and monitored by ordinary GPs through an informed consent model, not through the bottleneck of overloaded and understaffed clinics. GPs have capacity issues too, I know, but not remotely on the same scale as the gender clinics.

The only difference between the prescription and monitoring of my HRT and that of any other women is that my GP refuses to do it.

There’s a good piece by Doc Impossible on Stained Glass Woman about the other kind of surgical recovery: your mental recovery, and how to try and help yourself handle the aftermath of what is a very big deal. Surgical recovery isn’t just physically difficult and debilitating; it’s very tough on your mental resources too, and post-surgical depression is very common (after all kinds of surgery, although this piece is talking about gender-affirming surgeries). Many trans people are already quite isolated in their everyday lives, and that makes being housebound for a few weeks and unable to go far for a while afterwards very, very hard.

I had major surgery in February and I’m still recovering from it: physically, because it takes a very long time to heal; mentally, for many of the reasons outlined in the Doc’s post, and financially, because I couldn’t work for 1/12th of the year; we freelances don’t get sick pay or holiday pay, so time not working is time not earning. And as ever, I think I’ve had it easier than many people.

I came out as trans nine years ago this week, and I think it’s interesting to look at the transition – not mine, but the transition in the Scots press’s reporting on LGBTQ+ issues and trans people during that time.

Here’s a fairly typical piece from The Herald in the summer of 2016, which covers “culture war” issues but makes it very clear that the anti-LGBTQ+ voices are an unrepresentative minority; it gives more space to the people trying to make the world better than to the ones determined to make it worse.

Today, The Herald (and The Scotsman, and most of the wider media) is editorially anti-LGBTQ+, its columnists rabid and its online comments cesspools.

What’s changed? I’d argue that a big part of it is because the ad money and profit that used to keep newspapers publishing now goes almost entirely to Google and to Facebook’s parent, Meta. Online ad revenues are in freefall, with more and more outlets competing for less and less money. And many newspapers are now owned by companies that care little for journalism, companies that consolidate and cut until all that remains of once-great publications is their masthead.

That has left newspapers, already experiencing plummeting circulations as print media dies, desperately trying to attract online page views by any means necessary.

The Herald doesn’t publish ABC circulation numbers any more, but in 2023 its circulation was just 12,928 – down from 28,900 in 2016. The Scotsman is similarly reticent, but in 2022 its average circulation was under 9,000 people – only half of which were over-the-counter sales; many copies are given away for free in hotels and airports.

Many newspapers have pivoted to a digital-first strategy based on turning journalists into “content providers” and “more closely mirroring social media” (in the words of the chairman of The Scotsman’s parent company) rather than traditional journalism.

This is something I wrote about in Small Town Joy in the context of local papers not covering local music any more (with some exceptions): local newspapers in Scotland will barely or rarely cover local artists but will publish online articles about US pop star Taylor Swift in the hope of attracting rogue Google traffic.

There was a particularly ghoulish example of that this week when the Ardrossan & Saltcoats Herald, a very small circulation newspaper only covering the north west coast of Ayrshire in Scotland, was publishing agency stories online about the terrifying hurricane in the Caribbean, which is quite some distance away from readers in Kilbirnie.

As the gutter press has long demonstrated, one of the most reliable ways to make money from journalism is to make people angry and confirm people’s prejudices. That’s particularly true online. A nice article won’t have people battling in the comments section all day long and won’t be shared in furious Facebook posts or excerpts on X, but one demonising asylum seekers or trans people or the “woke” will. The newspapers know this, which is why they have embraced a business model I call The Three Cs: clicks and comments from… you can guess the third c-word.

It’s an evolution of the old mantra, “if it bleeds it leads”: fill the page with rage.

This is doing terrible damage.

Those papers may not be bought by many people, but they are read religiously by the researchers and producers at the BBC, who scan them for stories to fuel that day’s phone-ins and magazine shows and who have their writers in the “usual suspect” database of rent-a-gobs (a database I was also on for over two decades: once you’re on it your phone rings regularly). And they are read religiously by politicians, and by the people who want to influence those politicians, and shared by the people on social media who want to make you furious and hateful. So they’re a central part of the outrage industry that gives disproportionate attention to some of the very worst people and helps push their agendas.

The outrage industry is most damaging to the people being demonised, of course. But it also damages wider society.

We are becoming an angrier, less tolerant, more selfish country. And our newspapers and broadcasters are playing a huge part in driving that change.

If you want to worry about transitions, worry about that one.

There’s a nice piece in Glamour featuring nine “ground-breaking” trans women from the worlds of fashion, music, publishing and activism as part of their Women of the Year special.

I think the photography may be as important as the article, as it helps disperse the pervasive myth that trans women are “hulking” and highly masculine (not that there’s anything wrong with being big or masc-looking. But it’s a trope the genital-obsessed weirdos want to push: the whole “scary man in a dress” image they love to repeat).

Shon Faye:

[…] trans people – and especially trans women – are facing a committed attempt from anti-trans pressure groups and right-wing politicians to make exclusionary policy the default across British public life including toilets, changing rooms, leisure facilities, workplaces, hospital wards and crisis support services. The intention is clear: to drive us out of public life to repress, then deny our existence. This political attack on trans lives comes alongside rising hate crime and increasingly poor healthcare access for trans adults, with a blanket ban on access to medication for trans people under 18. With trans women widely vilified in mainstream media on both sides of the Atlantic, the misogynist violence we experience – often at the hands of the same men who desire and objectify us (‘trans’ is the fifth most popular porn category in the UK) – is driven further underground.

Today’s “completely manufactured anti-trans bullshit” takes us to Dundee, where an anti-trans activist has taken great exception to a Hobbycraft shop assistant’s “no TERFs, no Tories” badge to create predictable media outrage. It’s yet another example of DARVO – the abuser’s creed of “deny, attack, reverse victim and offender”, where members of a movement that demands the oppression and elimination of others claim victimhood – and the fact it’s so predictable is why I’m more annoyed at the badge wearer than the bigot.

The last thing you should be doing when you’re under attack is give ammunition to the people attacking you.

I don’t think people shouldn’t wear political badges. My everyday bag and most of my guitar straps are covered in them. But what’s absolutely fine when you’re on a stage, off duty, or if you run your own business – your bar, your bookshop, your coffee shop – becomes something different if you’re an employee of someone else’s business. Especially a larger business with a fairly high profile and no doubt a detailed uniform policy. I can’t think of any retailer with a uniform policy that allows staff to wear badges telling specific kinds of customers to fuck off.

There’s hypocrisy here, of course. There always is with the genital-obsessed weirdo brigade, who like their Christian Right pals want the freedom to abuse others in public and in the workplace without consequences. But it doesn’t matter, because this is not about anything other than the genital-obsessed weirdos looking for easy PR wins. And that’s exactly what they’ve been given here.

This is going to play out like every other such case. We’ll get crybully op-eds slagging off Hobbycraft for being “woke”; we’ll get Hobbycraft issuing a grovelling apology; we’ll have more articles implying that trans people shouldn’t be hired by anyone; we’ll have increasingly emboldened genital-obsessed weirdos going to various customer-facing businesses looking for trans people to abuse. So things for trans people become just that little bit worse than they already were.