RÓISÍN MURPHY

it’ll eventually be reported as SINGER HOUNDED BY VILE SOCIAL MEDIA TROLLS

the ‘sing it back’ hitmaker has been SLAMMED by transgender activists online for expressing her views on controversial ‘puberty blocker’ treatments for teens

followed by a quote from some dickhead from the lgb alliance

Transphobia is also being weaponised against the Scottish government led by the SNP who is pro-trans, by the unionist parties UK branch (atm Scottish Labour still supports trans rights as do ScottishLiberal party. Its political opportunism mainly and its certainly creating moral panic in Scottish newspapers and especially the BBC. However there are anti-trans forces within the SNP waiting to take over.

I don't know who the person behind this account is but this is not leading me to expect an apology any time soon:

Roisin Murphy pic.twitter.com/vgpWEhZbfc

— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) August 24, 2023

India Willoughby is a well known person in the UK

Transphobia is also being weaponised against the Scottish government led by the SNP who is pro-trans, by the unionist parties UK branch (atm Scottish Labour still supports trans rights as do ScottishLiberal party. Its political opportunism mainly and its certainly creating moral panic in Scottish newspapers and especially the BBC. However there are anti-trans forces within the SNP waiting to take over.

― Toshirō Nofune (The Seventh ILXorai)

my understanding (i'm in the us and tend to avoid reading the news if at all possible because self-care is important to me) is that sturgeon was actually forced out of office due to her support of trans rights? which is probably the most demoralizing news i've heard out of the uk in some time :(

Nah, although the usual suspects were using trans issues as a wedge to undermine her, she left because of an ongoing investigation into fraud with the SNP's finances, leading to her husband's arrest

Whilst I do appreciate that the appalling war against trans people is heading in some very dangerous directions and is a real and concrete threat to the health and lives many, Im not sure comparisons with a genocidal famine that killed or displaced 2.5-3 million people are appropriate in this context.

droid it's 4 in the morning, i'm not sleeping, again, and i'm trying to get myself back to sleep by talking about things, and i see you coming up here and saying that you don't think what trans people are going through is _really_ genocide. why? why do you think this is a good idea? trans people _are_ suffering from genocide, right now, i'm telling you this as fact, now. i didn't before, i merely drew a comparison, and that alone, that was apparently enough for you to take offense on behalf of the victims of the potato famine. what do you want me to do? do you want me to justify or explain to you trans genocide? is that my responsibility, to persuade and convince you that we are being displaced and killed, systematically, as a result of deliberate policy decisions?

if anybody's being "inappropriate" here, i'm not entirely sure it's me.

i'm going to go to try back to bed. not sure how successful i'll be.

(funnily enough i did write a 3,000 word essay on the topic of trans gendercide - and "gendercide" is not a word i made up, it's an established term in genocide studies - back in february. i think it's one of my better essays. droid, you can't read it, but if anybody else wants to, i'll be glad to send a copy.)

Im not asking you to explain anything, nor am I denying anything, nor did I mean to cause you any distress. Im just suggesting that there may be more appropriate comparisons to be made. BTW, we dont call it the 'potato famine'. It is simply the famine, or the great hunger, An Gorta Mór.

The Potato Famine was also catastrophic in the Scottish highlands which led to the displacement of thousands. It seems to be actually forgotten about in Scotland.

Im not asking you to explain anything, nor am I denying anything, nor did I mean to cause you any distress. Im just suggesting that there may be more appropriate comparisons to be made. BTW, we dont call it the 'potato famine'. It is simply the famine, or the great hunger, An Gorta Mór.

― droid

Fair enough. I apologize. I apologize for comparing the genocide my people are currently going through with the genocide your people historically were subjected to. The point wasn't to make a direct comparison in any case, it was to suggest a _larger pattern of behavior_, that British empire, by whatever name, is intrinsically linked to genocidal practices both historical and current.

those screenshots above aren't from india willoughby, they're from someone named Kabira (kabiraexplainsitall).

thanks, i did wonder whose words those were

I do want to, at some point, educate myself more about the great hunger. I'm a white American, but my great-great-grandfather was one of the people displaced by it. Came to America, where he died in an insane asylum. Those of you who think this fact explains a lot about me are probably right. :) I have/had some relatives who have more of an interest in their family history than I do who are/were pretty knowledgeable on the topic, but I admit that's not one of the topics I've learned a lot about myself.

There was a kind of nasty exchange about the potato famine over on the popjustice forums, someone mildly pushing back on someone who said she just should have sat down and ate her potatoes. The other person said they just would appreciate not using that as a retort and many others didn't want to hear it, and dismissed it as even being a slur.

I don't think even as an Irish American I quite understand just how much British people will still use that in a demeaning way against people from ireland, and how much it hurts. I think contextually it's a lot different, being Irish in the UK versus being Irish-american in the United states, where that kind of racism at that group has evaporated.

Kate I know you weren't doing that, just figured I would chime in on that topic because it was referred to in that other forum.

contextually it's a lot different, being Irish in the UK versus being Irish-american in the United states, where that kind of racism at that group has evaporated.

The famine insult isn't just hurled at Irish folk in Scotland. Its used against any Catholic. As a Kid I didn't even understand what they meant when someone would shout the famines over so go home. I thought they meant to stay in my own house.

What made it even worse was when I found out it affected Scotland too and our ain folk would still say it. Most of them dont know when you tell them, but they still don't care due to their blind hatred of Catholicism.

There was a kind of nasty exchange about the potato famine over on the popjustice forums, someone mildly pushing back on someone who said she just should have sat down and ate her potatoes. The other person said they just would appreciate not using that as a retort and many others didn't want to hear it, and dismissed it as even being a slur.

I don't think even as an Irish American I quite understand just how much British people will still use that in a demeaning way against people from ireland, and how much it hurts. I think contextually it's a lot different, being Irish in the UK versus being Irish-american in the United states, where that kind of racism at that group has evaporated.

Kate I know you weren't doing that, just figured I would chime in on that topic because it was referred to in that other forum.

― omar little

right, when i actually take time to think about it droid is totally right... i got a bit of a temper and i took what they were saying in totally the wrong way. god, if barbara were around to hear me refer to the famine as "the potato famine" she would Have Words with me.

my grandfather's generation (including barbara) did face anti-irish/anti-catholic prejudice, but my historical understanding is that the kennedy assassination pretty much put a stop to that. (it's kind of astonishing how much there was in 1960... nixon ran a lot of pretty openly anti-catholic ads against kennedy, there were suggestions that if kennedy was elected the pope would secretly be running the country, because, you know, kennedy was _super fuckin' devout_).

and honestly, i do have a certain amount of internalized sort of bigotry of my own. i thought about my anger and i've heard my family talk about having an "irish temper" but the truth is that i don't have an irish temper, i have a fuckin' american temper... ime americans tend to be far more temperamental and quicker to anger than just about anyone...

Correct and fwiw am aware that certain Irish-Americans have tried to leverage their historic oppression to silence black people

this is absolutely appalling to me fwiw... stuff like americans making a big deal about "no blacks or Irish signs" while completely ignoring things like the 1863 new york draft riots... like the first rule of allyship is _don't compare your oppression to other people's oppression_, i knew better, just wasn't at my best!

i grew up in family that made a big deal of their irish heritage at least in part to avoid acknowledging their whiteness... i have a lot of respect for ireland but as far as my irish heritage, its biggest direct impact on me is that i have liver spots at the age of 47, lol.

To circle back to the actual subject of this thread, her appeal is so niche, relatively speaking, that I wonder how much her career might be affected by this?

― ydkb (gyac)

my general impression is that people with niche appeal are _more_ affected by it. partly because they're more precariat anyway, and partly because you have a less broad fanbase. alice cooper, i figure he's going to be less affected by it than murphy... my observation is that when this kind of stuff goes down, women and gender expansive folks are held to a higher standard than men, as well. i'd expect her to do a lot better in the uk, where transphobia is more mainstream, than in the us.

a huge of Cooper's fanbase will probably never even know the whole interview happened tbh

Most of my reading on the famine has been academic, but I would recommend John Kelly's The graves are walking and the Atlas of the great Irish famine as probably two of the major works.

Black 47 is very good, its entertainment, but as visceral cinematic portrayals go it cant really be beaten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pSGZt-mhSY

The level of ignorance from the British on the topic is unfathomable, but TBF, the same could be said of a surprising amount of Irish people.

I would say that is happening to trans folk is different in many ways, but one important aspect is that its trans-national and unbounded by religion, ethnicity or nationality, so they are not a distinct 'people' as such. They belong to all of us.

Kinda hard to predict how her career would go at this point especially since this hasn't been picked up by anyone really, yet. But it will get picked up. And yeah it's not like she is a mega star, she is strictly a cult figure and her lgbtq fan base is a huge part of that. One feels like they had her back and kinda helped her to that upper level of cult success. So this is certainly more of a betrayal. And it's just so dumb, what she said was completely flawless and Ill informed but people say idiotic things and they can come back from them. She just doesn't seem to have any interest in doing that or acknowledging the hurt, which is the worst part.

Just want to push back on the idea that the SNP are pro-LGBT rights when they've been home to Joanna Cherry and taken cash from Brian Souter. They did the bare minimum around GRA and they only look good because the bar in the UK has been otherwise set very, very low.

Murphy's career is built on being a hipster gay icon. She's not going to come out of this well at all. I had a look at the Popjustice thread and it was full of people cancelling their pre-orders of vinyl releases of Hit Parade etc. Homobloc cancelled their "Non Stop Roisin Machine" disco event at the weekend.

The reason this feels so galling is that she's pretended to be on "our side" - just Google the words "Roisin Murphy gay icon" and you'll see quotes from her saying she feels like she's a superstar when she walks into an LGBT venue. But she clearly doesn't have any interest in actually supporting or respecting the audience that she's aligned herself with. At least with someone like Azealia Banks, awful as they are as a person, they've never tried to pretend to be something other than themselves. As a gay man, I don't want to be pandered to, and that's why I've felt more affinity with Murphy than your megastar pop divas like Lady Gaga, but now it feels like I've been taken in by some interesting videos and absurd fashion, and exploited as an audience.

Booming post boxedjoy, fuck RM

Haha I didn't mean what she said was flawless I don't know where that came from, I meant thoughtless

I mentioned this above, but I always got this really uneasy feeling that she was just an absolutely unapologetic narcissist, and as much as I love that last album and seriously it was my favorite of that year, I always had that feeling about her. This reaction she has had thus far to what occurred is kind of exactly what that type of person might do. I hate it when I have things like that confirmed.

Kinda hard to predict how her career would go at this point especially since this hasn't been picked up by anyone really, yet. But it will get picked up

Presumably she'll have a shitload of interviews lined-up to tie in with the new record, be interesting to see how those go

wanted to add that other than the nasty bit about potatoes, the popjustice thread is definitely full of righteous reactions, and a lot of sentiments similar to what boxedjoy feels -- the sense of being used, conned, and exploited. it feels like theft in a way, and maybe now it's seen as all having exclusively been at the service of her pursuit of queen status. don't want to necessarily have this all be coming from a place of confirmation bias obv but it seems to fit now.

I wonder if this is just an attempt to gin up publicity for the album.

I wonder if this is just an attempt to gin up publicity for the album.

No artist is that stupid. "I'll set my existing audience on fire in order to gain a whole new audience of bigots and scum!"

Oh, I think there are plenty of artists that stupid. I guess it's up for debate just what kind of stupid Roísín is.

I would argue that an intrinsic difference between Lady Gaga and Roisin Murphy in all of this is that Gaga had mass appeal across multiple demographics and chose to foreground the arty queer demographic as her primary brand and molded most of her artistic outreach to that group while RM only had the arty queer demographic as her audience and seems to be operating under the idea that she will always have it regardless of what she says or does

I’d also argue that former Christian pop singer Katy “I Kissed a Girl”/“Ur So Gay” Perry seems to have figured out how to be a better ally than RM

i think she's the kind of stupid/callous where she's calculatedly not acknowledging it and hopes no one will notice it happened in the first place.

Yeah I buy that

Feel pretty bad for Ninja Tune who've supported trans artists in the past (Octo Octa, I Jordan) and don't really deserve to have Murphy shit on them

What was the backstory of her saying Popjustice had "bullied" her in the past?

Upthread, someone qt-ed India Willoughby’s grabs from Kabira, who used to work as RM’s stylist. Kabira is trans, but their work together predates the transition. I knew K back then and if she is saying RM was awful, then she was awful. K retreated from fashion scenes for a while after their collaboration, and concurrently clearly had gender stuff to work through. As one of the first people to have interviewed RM back when Moloko started, I wouldn’t have marked her out as someone who was an ally to LGBTQI people at all. I’m kind of amazed she was taken up by the community tbh.

Another person collaborating with RM recently is Theo Adams, who has always been genderfluid and part of the scene that spawned Kabira and many other LGBT/POC teens who went straight from school to clubs, fashion and performance. I wonder if Theo will take action now?

I would say that is happening to trans folk is different in many ways, but one important aspect is that its trans-national and unbounded by religion, ethnicity or nationality, so they are not a distinct 'people' as such. They belong to all of us.

― droid

the nature of what's happening to trans people is really interesting because it's such a multifaceted phenomenon, one that i struggle to find adequate words for. i'll start with this: the present-day eradicatory policy of the uk towards trans people is a replication of the hegemonic policies and attitudes towards trans people for the first 35 years or so of my life, and in essential continuity with eradicatory policies towards gender expansive people exhibited throughout the history of colonialism.

that's the term, i think. eradication. when i was born, colonialism had achieved more or less complete eradication of gender expansiveness on a _basic conceptual level_. i was born as something approximating transgender at a time when my gender identity had been reclassified as, was universally accepted as, a... sexual fetish. goddamn, i have no idea what to compare that to. i mean that's just fuckin' _weird_.

it's impossible to measure the true impact of that eradication. we can see only the barest traces in what i've taken to call "trans ghosts" - things that could have been trans, except that transness, or any concept roughly analagous to transness, didn't exist on a basic conceptual level at that time, in that place.

i still see it today. there are a lot of people who don't have the opportunity to recognize the _possibility_ of gender expansiveness. "the three times in my life i wore a dress were the happiest times in my life", says a passing acquaintance who will never wear a dress in his life again. is there any justifiable reason, any reason at all, why he shouldn't, why it's not something that would even _occur_ to him to do?

our lives are invisible and uncountable, but so are many of our deaths. a lot of us are bullied into suicide, either individually or institutionally. the sole blame is placed on the victims. more than that, the people who bullied them into suicide use this as "evidence" to pathologize our identities.

i don't think this is necessarily unique. i think other marginalized groups may suffer this as well. for a long time, trans people have lived invisibly and died invisibly. for decades, i did as well. i don't know how to explain what it's like to be alive and yet not exist. i don't know how to conceptualize it. it's just what i experienced, is all.

I wonder if this is just an attempt to gin up publicity for the album.

If her gambit is manifesting a huge crossover moment, it ain't gonna happen with that hideous album art.

pic.twitter.com/CljLn95Ytd

— Róisín Murphy (@roisinmurphy) August 29, 2023

This might be the wishy washyest non mea culpa I've EVER read

well that's dismal

Yeah. "Sorry I got caught."

i don't feel that this is a particularly sincere apology but 'i stepped out of line and will now shut up forever on this' is a lot better than you usually get from someone going down the transphobia rabbit hole. hopefully she keeps to her word there

stretching the definition of the word “apology” to even call this an insincere one. hope she has a nice time making music for absolutely fucking no one from now on

"I understand fixed views aren't helpful" = "Well, we don't agree, so fuck you."

yeah it isn't great, but it will piss off the transphobes no end, so some positives to take here

This is how you apologize when you still think you’re right

how will this piss off transphobes? more evidence for them that they’re being forced into silence by those hateful trans ppl

it will piss them off because they've spent a week assuming she's joining Team Terf