Damian Barr

[AbsintheFriends]

I know there's loads going on at the moment, and Damian Barr is just one bearded misogynist in an increasingly dystopian world, but he's the one who kicked up a huge self-righteous fuss about Baroness Nicholson and got her ousted from her position at the Booker Prize on the grounds of homophobia and transphobia. Who would have imagined that such a zealous icon of ideological purity would turn out to have said things like this??

twitter.com/MLagouste/status/1278345389150662658

(Oh yes. Any one of the several million of us on FWR who has seen a bearded misogynist hiding behind a trans-rights banner...)

He was only a reformed sinner atoning for his past misdeeds.

Suddenly the TRAS are overflowing vessels of forgiveness and understanding - it was completely fine to use this slur seven years ago.

But not ok to vote against gay marriage as a conservative? If he can change, surely so can the Baroness?

Ugh . I am seeing this unfold. I have mutual friends. They are mostly backing him up and patting his back. Not all of them though, interesting to see the big names amongst our acquaintances who have gone awol.
Not sure his position has legs long term.

Well.

I was a follower on Twitter - when he locked his account previously I was still on the list, but now I’m not “confirmed” which = locked out. My only possible crime is liking JKR tweets. Not even the contentious ones, tbh! Or maybe something biologically interesting I didn’t previously know about fetal cells that wasn’t trans related, just fascinating.

I’m not 100% unsympathetic to him, or actually even the Booker thing (though I think it was a badly conducted witch hunt I don’t disagree in principle with the prize’s handling by ‘cancelling’ ALL their trustees, even non-‘problematic’ ones) and I thought Sarah Perry’s tweets were fair enough in an offend-all-sides way.

So I’m pretty weirded out to be blocked, really.

His ability to get a job will be unaffected, btw. This will be a ‘vicious/calculated/nasty pile-on’ and his defence will be a) he’s same-sex attracted and the Baroness was not, therefore she wasn’t qualified to have an opinion on LGBTQ matters whereas he’s allowed to speak jokingly as ‘part of the community and b) he’s sorry for an ill-judged tweet about suicide and he’s since listened and changed.

The double standards will be ignored by the literary community as he’s well loved. His apology will be enough.

Pfft.

The prevailing TRA narrative is that Damian has 'grown' and 'learned'. He doesn't use that bad word anymore.

Whereas uppity JKR just wouldn't change her language. She wouldn't be told that the word 'woman' is just as disgusting and offensive and unacceptable in the modern world as the word Damian Barr flung around so flippantly. Therefore JKR is a monstrous transphobe.

Ah, JudgeDredd - the nonpologie indeed. As I said - he’ll be forgiven & double standards ignored. Crucially, he’s of current use to the litweary world, whereas the Baroness is not useful any longer, her time has passed. She’s a white privileged woman, he’s a white working class gay man. He trumps her in the identity stakes.

He's really gone full Non on the non-apology hasn't he? He runs past the word apologise at the top then it's deflection all the way - it's transphobes fault for digging up the tweets (not his for posting them) and circulating them (he would never sink so low!) and he's never had anything but respect for the trans community (even when he was denigrating them with a hateful name and mocking a suicidal trans person)

To quote a phrase I hate, Bros before hoes

I see this in work. I have worked for big corporates for years. The result of the years of agitating by (as was) LGB groups has definitely resulted in more visibility including in senior roles for gay men.

Out lesbians are few and far between.

It's all about men. Men supporting each other. Patriarchy, see.

I'm not at all surprised at the difference in the reaction. Not at all.

I think we need to understand that the double standards that have been such s terrible thing for women and girls all over the world for do long and are still in play, apply here to.

There is no point in saying look at what they say look at what we say. It won't work.

However, gains have been made. And never forget that the majority of the population think this is utter bollocks. Including men. Although they have huge form for turning away from things that happen to women (rape, DV etc) they will be unable to brush this away as it cuts across the whole population.

Having said that. The men I have spoken to have mixed views. Mainly depending on where they are with a woman who talks about this/ whether they have kids.

Men on the whole automatically side with men, and only get pissed off when it affects 'their' property. So that's at a very local level not a concern across the board.

I think most of them will go along with it. I don't see men marching about DV or rape or CSA. 'women's issues' for some reason, not societal issues.

Dunno. Sorry stream of consciousness.

Point is we can't count on men to do anything as a group.

But we have made gains. Don't forget that.

Did anyone archive his tweets?
Oh yes. Everything was cached

Can delete. Can hide. But it matters not.

<a class="break-all" href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qiuHhUWjTvAJ:twitter.com/damian_barr%3Flang%3Den+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qiuHhUWjTvAJ:twitter.com/damian_barr%3Flang%3Den+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=safari

To be clear - I didn’t cache, it was on the twitter linked in this thread.

I can only see the first page, but I guess it means that someone, somewhere has a whole cache of his twitter.

We still have screenshots.

@RoyalCorgi

Just imagine if JK Rowling had written a tweet laughing at a trans person's failed attempt at suicide. Just imagine.

Exactly. This man will get away with it by playing victim and saying he's learned and the TRA will be forgiving and pander to his sob story because double standard. If they do I will go full Galadriel with the ring.

@ShinyFootball

I think we need to understand that the double standards that have been such s terrible thing for women and girls all over the world for do long and are still in play, apply here to.

There is no point in saying look at what they say look at what we say. It won't work.

However, gains have been made. And never forget that the majority of the population think this is utter bollocks. Including men. Although they have huge form for turning away from things that happen to women (rape, DV etc) they will be unable to brush this away as it cuts across the whole population.

Having said that. The men I have spoken to have mixed views. Mainly depending on where they are with a woman who talks about this/ whether they have kids.

Men on the whole automatically side with men, and only get pissed off when it affects 'their' property. So that's at a very local level not a concern across the board.

I think most of them will go along with it. I don't see men marching about DV or rape or CSA. 'women's issues' for some reason, not societal issues.

Dunno. Sorry stream of consciousness.

Point is we can't count on men to do anything as a group.

But we have made gains. Don't forget that.

As you say we can't rely on men to take a stand on this apart from subversive heroes who still remember they had a mother like @Glinner. However at the point on dating sites they get catfished, at the point where the TRA starts to harass men in power that aren't spineless idiots we will start to see a lot of pushback.

Men are way more into lying on dating sites than women.

And they have been lobbying men in power for years.

Sorry I know it's a negative message but look how it's playing out.

I’m doing my really super surprised, super shocked face now that not only does beardy bloke who fronted a witch-hunt to hound an older woman out of a public role turn out to be a raging misogynist and hypocrite, the fauxpology he comes out with manages not to mention his vile misogyny or hypocrisy at all 😳 amazing, again!

Of course he’ll be forgiven for laughing at a trans person trying to kill themself, he’s learned and grown and he’s firmly onside now and only transphobes would bother to bring that up years down the line! It was just some stupid words! Who cares?

As for the misogyny, there’s just nothing to apologise for, clearly. That’s just how you talk about women.

theyre already lining up their excuses for him.

what he said was really cruel though.

its not about what was said though is it, its who said it- and he and munroe are the good guyx here.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

Whore and bitch. So much woman hating. Shon reckons he’s an ally - I think that says quite a lot about how Shon views women too.

Shon "be as slutty as you can as early as you can" Far?

Shon "get tits and suck dick early" Fae?

Gosh, I'm shocked

Yeah and Barr never said sorry for using words like whore a lot

Oh is that because he was talking about women

Women don’t matter to Barr

Agree that if any one of us had used that word it would be screenshot all over twitter within seconds as evidence of how we're hateful bigoted witches.

But yeah, blokes do tend to stick together against the crazy bitches so literally none of it surprises me either way.

The nice thing about this saga is his mask has slipped now and he will never again be able to crow from his lofty place of patriarchal privilege.

That is a silver lining. This was my prediction yesterday:

I think what will happen is that he will simply ignore the grossly offensive tweets, maybe tackle some mild ones, and out of a sense of chummy propriety none of his peers will be impolite enough to mention them.

Although that wasn't exactly the boldest prediction imaginable I'm still very surprised at how effective his ally-Teflon has been.

I’ve been pondering the life and death of Robespierre...

I’m so sad, we followed each other on Twitter before all this and he was good mates with Deb Orr despite holding different views. I kept following throughout his campaign last week then saw he’d unfollowed me. I didn’t agree with what he was doing at all, I don’t agree with Baroness Nicholson’s on gay marriage either.

This has all got completely damaging, it must be devastating to have all this hate directed at you.

I think the TRA’s are having a great time however watching the battle and the damage.

And let's all note the very special stunning bravery of issuing the nonpology at what, just after midnight?? For maximum sweeping under the carpet effect so he can wake up to a shiny new morning when the publishing world that holds him as its darling has already moved on.

What heroes these moral crusaders are.

These tweets are many times worse than anything tweeted by e.g.Meghan Murphy or Claire Graham, but they have been left on his timeline for years.

I don't know how many followers he had on twitter at the time, but his first book was published in 2006 and his most famous book 'Maggie and Me' was published in 2013, so arguably he had a higher profile than Claire Graham at the time that he was tweeting - yet his tweets don't matter?

The only difference seems to be that he isn't a woman expressing an opinion on sex and gender.

Even if you try to defend him by saying that gay men have a particular way of talking that other people don't understand and that it is a result of dealing with their oppression... that doesn't explain why it's offensive for a woman to simply talk about the nature of sex based oppression.