RÓISÍN MURPHY

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

I’m sorry. I’ve learnt my lesson. I will now continue being transphobic in private.

xpost - she is on Team Terf, she's just mad this blew up

The phrase "fixed views" suggests she ain't changing her mind, no sir.

Ivy is right

This is what happens when you challenge puberty blockers for kids. This woman now in the public square being pilloried and forced to lick everyone's boots, but it won't ever be enough. This is the 'cancel culture' they claim doesn't exist. https://t.co/ecGVOfXA9q

— Milli Hill (@millihill) August 29, 2023

that's the biggest non-apology ive seen from a non-politician for a while. I'm not a fan at all of her music but I feel sorry for those who are.

xpost - she is on Team Terf, she's just mad this blew up

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 29 August 2023 14:40 (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Team Terf don't accept private members, they demand you become a tedious bully in public.

"I completely understand that for others activism is their true calling, and is necessary and legitimate in a democracy" is not a message for trans activists, it's a message for anti-trans activists.

Meaning, she's with them on this but she's not going to be an activist with them

Wow...if nothing else, this can't have been vetted by her management, which is pretty crazy.

The bit about never aiming at any demographic is so cock eyed I can’t believe it. It must’ve really grated to see so many LGBTQ people coming out against her that it almost sounds like a deliberate attempt to distance herself from that audience.

Unless I’m really reading it wrong.

Far too much of it reads like it was written in code

'I understand fixed views are not helpful' is a very odd thing to write, to highlight just one.

camaraderie I don't think we are reading the same statement

"hey can we just, like, forget i said all that bigoted shit" doesn't come across to me as an apology, more like... a saving throw against her fanbase. i don't expect it to work. not sure what she's gonna do after her saving throw fails. what's michelle shocked been up to for the past ten years?

sucks for her fans. is all.

especially galling to end the thing with “I’m just a musician, not an activist ;)” when your music and aesthetic has been laser-targeted at the queer community

Anyone casually using TRA in a post is already wormholes.

"I'm sorry I got revealed as an ignorant bigot but I promise to only have these views in private, and besides I don't make music for the people who enjoy my music, but please stream my new album"

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/29/roisin-murphy-apologises-puberty-blocker-trans

Her PR people getting to work

Nice to see these lines in the Pitchfork news item:

In the statement, Murphy does not disown the comments themselves, which misrepresent the prevalence and harm of puberty blockers, but says she will “now completely bow out of this conversation within the public domain.”

...

Many trans people report severe hurdles in obtaining puberty blockers and subsequent gender-affirming treatment. Among those prescribed puberty blockers, the risk of suicidal ideation significantly decreases, as shown in research reported by GLAAD.

Also, an odd note: "Her publicist would not confirm that today’s statement refers to the viral comment."