Author: Cheryl

Coronavirus – Day #91

~ Cheryl

Dear Goddess, that was a long day. I spent 6.5 hours on Zoom in a virtual academic conference during the day, and a further 2.5 hours on Zoom in Virtual Ã…con in the evening. I am all Zoomed out.

It was a lot of fun, though. My thanks to both sets of organisers.

I gather from Twitter that today has been a day of nation-wide activity by the All Lives Matter movement (who don’t actually care about your life unless you are white, cis and straight). They claim to have been responding to planned attacks on war memorials by “BLM thugs”, but no such attacks appear to have taken place, and the BLM people are entirely bemused as to where the idea came from. These brave defenders of Britain’s legacy in WW2 have been keen to demonstrate their admiration for Winston Churchill by, er, giving Nazi salutes.

From what I’ve seen on Twitter, these protesters are all of a certain type. They are all white, they all appear to drink copious quantities of lager while on duty, and their bodies indicate that this has been a life-long habit. I have only seen one woman amongst them, and she was wearing an anti-trans t-shirt.

I am fully expecting tomorrow’s papers to be full of stories of how these brave warriors fought off violent mobs of dark-skinned “antifa” rioters, with no help from the traitorous police.

I should note, by the way, that one of the people I was talking to today is Polish. He tells me that in Poland government ministers are openly declaring that LGBT+ people are “not human”. I guess that makes a change from “tank-topped bumboys”.

Coronavirus – Day #90

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today has been pretty horrible for a variety of reasons that I won’t bore you with. Suffice it to say that I think we have passed a tipping point of sorts in that public opinion in the UK has swung so far against trans people that many people who used to be allies will no longer be prepared to stand up for us because it is too politically risky to do so.

On the other hand, I get to spend tomorrow at an academic conference on queer history, which should be a lot of fun.

Elsewhere, people continue to die in large numbers. However, I’ve seen some interesting research that suggests that wearing face masks is more effective than social distancing at preventing the spread of COVID-19. If that’s true it would be very helpful in getting the world back to normal again.

Free Webinar on LGBT+ in the Workplace

~ Cheryl

On Tuesday next week (12:30 UK time) I will be a guest on a webinar run by Benefex, a company that helps employers make better use of their employees by treating them better. Given the current atmosphere in the UK, I have no doubt that it will be highly contentious. It might even get me on the front page of The Times again. We shall see.

Anyway, if you are interested, you can sign up for free.

This Week on Ujima – C-19, Genetics and #BLM

~ Cheryl

As I mentioned yesterday, my Ujima show for this week got postponed until yesterday morning thanks to technical issues. It is now available on the Listen Again service, and you can find it here. That page might not say it is Women’s Outlook, but that’s because it is an automated system.

I only had one interview this week. It is with Professor Julian Gough who used to be at Bristol University and is at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge (MRC). He’s involved in a project to look at possible genetic links to COVID-19 susceptibility. This is obviously of interest at Ujima because of the much higher death rates in people from non-white ethnic backgrounds.

There’s a potentially contentious issue here because of the focus of people like Cummings on eugenics, but that’s medical nonsense. All human DNA is very similar. The difference between individual humans is around 0.1%, and we are only 1.2% different from chimps. So the racist nonsense that somehow white people are completely different and massively superior to all other humans is just that, nonsense. However, as Professor Gough explains, some genes are linked to specific diseases (breast cancer, for example), and sometimes those genes are more prevalent in some ethnic groups than others. Furthermore, if there is a C-19 gene, it might not be ethnically linked, but instead be widespread throughout the population, because we already know that systemic racism is a major cause of health inequalities.

A key part of Professor Gough’s work is that he needs data, and you can help. Or at least you can if you have had your DNA sequenced. It doesn’t matter whether you know whether you have had C-19 or not, or even if you’ve had no symptoms. And it doesn’t matter where in the world you live, because the pandemic is global. So if you have DNA data, Professor Gough would love to hear from you. You can join the project here.

By the way, I did ask about data security. UK universities are very strict about such things. Your data is far more at risk from the private companies that do the seqencing than from the MRC.

The rest of the show was taken up with me pontificating about statues taking dip in Bristol harbour, and playing lots of civil rights songs by Black artists. Here’s the playlist:

  • Tracy Chapman – Taking about a Revolution
  • Tom Robinson Band – Long Hot Summer
  • David Byrne – Hell You Talmbout
  • Bob Marley – Slave Driver
  • Black Roots – Bristol Rock
  • Amaal Nuux – Last Ones Down
  • The Specials – Racist Friend
  • Eddy Grant – Boys in the Street
  • Beyoncé – Freedom
  • Jimmy Cliff – Peace Officer
  • Prince – Baltimore
  • Alicia Keys – We Gotta Pray
  • Stevie Wonder – Living for the City
  • James Brown – Black and I’m Proud
  • Otis Redding – Change is Gonna Come
  • Janelle Monáe – Hell You Talmbout

Silence is the Enemy, and Sound is the Weapon.

Coronavirus – Day #89

~ Cheryl

Bleargh. Aside from a half hour break to cook dinner, I have been in Zoom meetings from 13:00 to 19:30 solid. That’s a lot of staring at people’s faces.

The radio show did run in the 10:00-12:00 slot today. I’ll do a proper post about it tomorrow.

If anything exciting happened in the outside world, aside from various transphobes venting bile, I was too busy to notice.

I can haz sleep nao?

Coronavirus – Day #88

~ Cheryl

Apparently Bozo has made some complicated announcements about “social bubbles” or some such. I do live alone, but I have no one I could form a bubble with. In any case, given the insane levels of transphobia in the UK these days, I feel much safer self-isolating. That way no one can feel threatened by my “violent” presence.

Wizard’s Tower and BLM

~ Cheryl

Lots of organisations have been posting statements about how they intend to be better at supporting people of colour, and in particular Black people, in the future. Many of those, I suspect, will prove to be PR exercises, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that I haven’t yet said anything about Wizard’s Tower, so here we go.

None of the novels we publish are by people of colour. Nor, to my knowledge, are there any stories by people of colour in any of the anthologies that we publish. There are people of colour in the non-fiction parts of Adventure Rocketship, for which we have the ebook rights. I’m very pleased about that because the book is about the intersection between science fiction and music.

I would very much like to publish more work by people of colour, but when someone, anyone, comes to me and inquires about getting published my first reaction is always to ask them if they are sure, and can they not get a better deal with someone else. There are plenty of very talented people of colour out there, and they should be getting published by mainstream publishers, not having to resort to a tiny outfit like mine.

I will note that I have one anthology of translated fiction in publication, and have another two hopefully forthcoming this year. That’s something else that is a hard sell with bigger publishers, but I’m always happy to look at.

I try to do the LGBT+ stuff too. Lyda, of course, is a lesbian. Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion II has three stories by trans people in it. If you have books that bigger publishers won’t touch because of queer content, do come to me. Ditto any other marginalised theme.

It is embarassing not to have any writers of colour on our books. All I can say is that it is not by design. Given the way that publishing works, a whole bunch of the writers of colour who are being taken on by the big companies right now will get dropped after a couple of books. If that happens to you, do come to me for future projects, because rescuing mid-list writers who have been dumped is what Wizard’s Tower was set up to do. If you are not published yet, keep an eye on any anthology projects we might announce, but have ambition. You can crack professional markets. Go for it!

No Show

~ Cheryl

Today’s radio show did not air as planned. I don’t know exactly why, but getting the show scheduled does involve a bunch of computer stuff. Also Ujima staff have been run ragged over the past few days because of the whole Colston issue. I think the show will air at 10:00am tomorrow, but regardless of when it does it will be available on the Listen Again system. I will let you know when that happens.

Coronavirus – Day #87

~ Cheryl

I did my weekly trip to Tesco today. The stocks appear to be fairly normal now. There are plenty of types of flour in stock. I didn’t see any yeast, but I didn’t look very hard. A few more people were wearing masks, but its still a very small proportion of the total.

The after effects of Sunday’s events in Bristol continue to ripple around the world. Kevin tells me that we were on CBS radio news yesterday. Meanwhile in Europe statues are falling.

In the Belgian city of Ekeren, a statue of King Leopold II, the man responsible for the atrocities in the Congo, has been taken down and is being sent to a museum. It looks like it was sprayed with paint during protests over the weekend.

In London a statue of a slave trader called Robert Milligan has been removed from West India Quay. I got that info from a tweet by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, so again this was an official removal.

It sounds like civil authorities are trying to head off any further statue dunking by pre-emptively removing potentially controversial figures. Result!

Coronavirus – Day #86

~ Cheryl

Social media is still buzzing away talking about dumping statues in the sea. I’m pleased to see that Avon & Somerset police are defending their wise decision not to attack the protesters in an attempt to save a statue of a slave trader. I’m sure they prevented a lot of violence, injury and damage to property by doing so. I’m also pleased to see Mayor Marvin and city notables such as Thangam Debbonaire MP and Cleo Lake standing up for them. I believe that Kerry McCarthy MP was trying to do so in a Law & Order debate in Parliament today, but the Tories have so thoroughly manipulated the parliamentary process that she probably didn’t get a chance to speak.

In stark contrast the government has been spitting furious. There’s no doubt that the likes of Bozo and his Home Secretary, Priti Patel, wanted the police to attack the protestors so as to precipitate a violent confrontation. Sadly the Police Federation has not behaved any better. And Bozo had the cheek to say today that Britain is “not a racist country”. In a YouGov poll released this evening 33% of respondents said that they thought we should have statues honouring slave traders.

In the midst of all this I have been putting together a radio show. There might be rather a lot of civil rights protest songs in it.

Coronavirus – Day #85

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Well, what a day!

Things began overnight with a certain very rich writer of dubious children’s books spouting transphobia over her Twitter feed. I had to unfollow and block one person, but in general I was very proud of the way my own personal social media bubble rallied round. Good show, people!

Just about when that was starting to die down, the Black Lives Matter demo began in Bristol. I wasn’t able to attend, and indeed many of the Black people I know stayed away because of health fears. Cleo Lake and some other community leaders organised an online protest with the hashtag #BristolTakeTheKnee, which I participated in. And then I got on with some work.

The next thing I knew, people had toppled the statue of Edward Colston and dumped it in the harbour.

For those of you who don’t know, Colston made an huge fortune from slave trading. He did pay some of it back by donating money that helped the city, but that’s no excuse for all the lives he destroyed. However, because of that philanthropy he had various things in the city named after him, and a statue erected in his honour. Much, if not all, of this was done in late Victorian times long after the slave trade had been abolished and when the white population of the city had managed to forget its horrors.

The Black people of Bristol did not forget. For decades now they have been campaigning to have Colston’s name removed from the city. Many of my friends from Ujima have been involved in that. Members of the white establishment have fought them every inch of the way. Last year the concert hall agreed to change its name, but attempts to even acknowledge Colston’s unsavoury habits on the plaque on his statue were ferociously resisted. We all know what happens when attempts at calm and reasonable protest are blocked.

A couple of things are worth noting. Firstly the actual act of toppling the stautue seems, from the video I have seen, to have been done by young white men. When Tim Maughan wrote about the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft in Infinite Detail he wasn’t joking, and didn’t make it up. Secondly, while Avon & Somerset Police maintained a presence at the demonstration, they did not attempt to intervene or attack the crowd. Those responsible for actually toppling the statue will be investigated, but public safety was maintained and there was no violence. This sounds very different from what police in London and Manchester have been up to.

The government is, of course, livid. I would not fancy being Marvin Rees (the Mayor) or Sue Mountstevens (the Police Commissioner) tomorrow morning.

I understand that the BBC has given air time to both David Olusoga and to my friend Olivette Otele, both of whom are more than capable of explaining just why so many people in Bristol want Colston gone.

And now I have to make a radio show. It will air on Wednesday, but I should deliver it by the end of tomorrow. And I won’t have time to do any interviews. I have been collecting civil rights songs to play.

Coronavirus – Day #84

~ Cheryl

It rained quite heavily today. Clearly the English summer has arrived. Are we back to “normal”? Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, I spent the day reading, writing a paper about Roman philsophers, cooking, and attending an online event. I don’t feel like I’m missing out by not leaving home.

This weekend people seem more angry with the Unpresident than with Bozo, which I’m sure will be a great relief in Westminster.

Coronavirus – Day #83

~ Cheryl

Who would think that radio and TV could be so tiring? Today I recorded an interview for next week’s radio show, and did the broadcast with Dan mentioned in the previous post. Then I collapsed and slept for a couple of hours. Part of me suspects that if I was back having to travel to meetings I would not be coping at all well.

Anyway, stuff got done. Hopefully people will be entertained by it.

The news from the outside world is that the R number in the south west has crept above 1. R is a measure of the nuber of people infected by each infectious person, so an R above 1 means that the number of cases is accelerating. This is not good.

I know that there is a major Black Lives Matter demonstration planned for Bristol on Sunday. Folks, if you are at all at risk, please don’t go. The City Council (which of course means Marvin Rees and Asher Craig, both of whom are Black) has this suggestion for showing solidarity on social media instead.

The Dan & Cheryl Show

~ Cheryl

Today I did my thing with Dan Vo for the Queer Britain Lockdown Hunt. It was a lot of fun. I covered a range of queer history books ranging from the 20th Century back to the 2nd. I also mentioned four science fiction and fantasy books. They were:

  • Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
  • Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
  • Friday by Robert A. Heinlein
  • Triton by Samuel R Delany

Obviously there’s a huge amount of queer SF&F that I could have mentioned, and I tweeted about several others, but those four had interesting stories. To find out why I chose them, you’ll need to watch the show.

Coronavirus – Day #83

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

I’m sure I accomplished some things today, but almost none of them were things I had planned to do. There was unexpected Diversity Trust email, unexpected death of a friend, and two good TV documentaries that I had expected to be an hour long and were both two hours. Oh well, I have at least finished the Wizard’s Tower accounts for the month. Now I need to get to bed so that I’m awake to record an interview and to do the thing with Dan tomorrow.

The biggest news in the outside world is that the NHS has updated its guidelines on the provision of cross-sex hormones to trans adolescents. Current regulations say that these can be prescribed at age sixteen, generally after a long period of assessment by the youth gender clinic. The new guidelines are almost laughably unscientific.

They talk about how this treatment might have irreversible effects such as breast growth (in trans girls) or the voice breaking (in trans boys). You don’t say? That’s kind of like saying that cataract surgery can have the irreversible effect of better eyesight.

They note that such treatment might lead to infertility but should not be used as a form of contraception. Really? Who on earth would use it for that? I know that oestrogen is an active ingredient in the birth control pill, but would anyone seriously think of using testosterone?

And finally they talk darkly about the lack of knowledge of the long term effects of such treatment. Well hello! 26 years and counting. And I’m not the only one. There are plenty of us about, many of whom have been on hormones for far longer. But of course no amount of actual evidence will stop these people from scaremongering.

There are two things that we can take from this. The first is that the outcome of the the judicial review into the operation of youth gender clinic has already be decided at a political level. The clinic will be found to be operating unsafely, and it will be shut down, regardless of how much evidence to the contrary is presented, and how many young lives it has improved.

The second is that it won’t stop with kids. The idea that giving trans people hormones is “unsafe” clearly doesn’t only apply to teenagers. GPs now have a carte blanche to refuse to supply them to adults as well. It won’t be long before the adult gender clinics are threatened with closure as well.

On #QBLockdownHunt Tomorrow

~ Cheryl

Those of you who have been following the Queer Britain Lockdown Hunt on Twitter will know that each Friday Dan Vo has been getting people to search out particular items of significance in queer history. We’ve done badges, we’ve done postcards, we’ve done t-shirts and fliers. But tomorrow the object will be books.

As you can imagine, that’s right up my street. Dan has kindly invited me to join him at 3:00pm to chat about books. I’ll be showcasing some science fiction novels of significance, and also some books from much further back in time that are important to queer history.

Dan also has several other guests through the day, including the fabulous Diana Souhami who has written several books on the lives of famous lesbians. The full details are in the tweet below.

Farewell Milena

~ Cheryl

In the midst of all of the pandemic crisis, normal threats to health haven’t gone away. I got word this afteroon that my Croatian friend, Milena Benini, died today of lung cancer. It was apparently very quick — only a couple of weeks from diagnosis to death — and having had two parents die of cancer I am convinced that quick is good. Milena had two daughters aged, I believe, 17 and 23. They were a lot smaller when I visited her on one of my trips to Croatia a few years back.

Milena was a fine writer of science fiction. She has a story in Kontakt, the anthology of Croatian SF&F that I published through Wizard’s Tower. I understand that she had her first published story when she was aged just 14. She was also a staunch feminist, and fond of whisky. Needless to say, we got on very well.

That’s about as much information as I have right now. If you knew Milena, or admired her work, I’m sure that more information will be coming from Croatian fandom in due course.

Coronavirus – Day #82

~ Cheryl

Back to staying at home and working for me today: day job, Wizard’s Tower accounts, and some stuff with Mike Carey which will all come to fruition in due course.

It was Prime Minister’s Question Time again today, and once again Bozo lost badly. That’s despite the fact that he was caught cheating with an earpiece in so that aides could whisper appropriate responses to him. It won’t be long before he turns up roaring drunk and refuses to answer any questions ever again.

Meanwhile the plan to re-convene Parliament in-person has gone very badly wrong. The Business Secretary, Alok Sharma, has been taken ill and is being tested for COVID-19. If he tests positive that’s presumably a whole bunch of MPs needing to self-isolate, including all of the Cabinet. Jacob Rees-Smaug was apparently heard to say that there was nothing wrong with being undead, and the sooner the whole of Westminster followed his example the better.

Today on Ujima – A Nalo Special

~ Cheryl

I was back on the radio after two weeks off today, and I must admit that it is getting hard to find guests for the show. People are either run ragged or thoroughly depressed by the state of the world. Fortunately I had done those two interviews with Nalo for the One25 fundraiser, and I knew hardly anyone had watched them, so I was happy to run those on the show.

Before I did that, I spent some time reflecting on the current situation in the USA. My thanks to Lyda for sharing her experiences of Minneapolis after the first night of rioting. I figured that things would have got worse by the time the show aired. I don’t think I had quite expected 45 to declare war on his own people.

The show also has some new music from Labi Siffre and from Lianne La Havas. It also has two songs each from the fabulous Canadian women that Nalo introduced me to. Measha’s Brueggergosman’s version of “Both sides now” is a thing of beauty.

Oh, and I played a song for Bozo.

If you missed the show you can catch it via the Listen Again service.

Here’s the playlist:

  • Prince – When Doves Cry
  • Lizzo – Like a Girl
  • Bruce Springsteen – Streets of Fire
  • Bob Marley – Revolution
  • Gil Scott Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
  • Janelle Monáe – Americans
  • Andy Allo – When Angels Make Love
  • Jimi Hendrix – Angel
  • Measha Brueggergosman & Martin Short – Misty
  • Shakura S’Aida – Brown Sugar
  • Labbi Siffre – Why Isn’t Love Enough
  • Lianne la Havas – Bittersweet
  • Linda Ronstandt – Lies
  • Measha Brueggergosman – Both Sides Now
  • Shakura S’Aida – This is Not a Love Song

Here’s the song that I played for our abomination of a government. (The first one.)

If anyone has something they’d like to promote on next week’s show, please get in touch.

Coronavirus – Day #81

~ Cheryl

I made my weeky visit to Tesco today. All seems pretty much as usual, except that flour supplies are now almost back to normal. Hardly anyone is wearing masks, but at least people are being respectful of distance.

Today was a significant day in the history of the UK’s parliament. During the past few weeks of Lockdown, Parliament has been operating electronically. MPs have been able to debate and vote online. By all reports I have seen, this has worked very well. However, the government, in the person of Jacob Rees-Smaug, has seen fit to insist on a return to in-person meetings. This has had some very negative effects.

To start with, a number of MPs have been completely disenfranchised. That’s because they are elderly, disabled, vulnerable to infection, or caring for someone who is vulnerable. They won’t be able to attend or vote, and the people who voted them into Parliament are effectively disenfranchised too.

Secondly, the new voting system that has been devised to preserve social distancing takes around 45 minutes for a single vote (with MPs having to queue for most of that time, outside in the hot sun). That futher disenfranchises MPs whose health is not good, and it makes the act of voting such a nuissance that MPs will want to avoid it where possible. It also takes time out of the Parliamentary schedule, which makes it harder to scruitinise what the government is up to.

Many Tory MPs are reportedly furious about having to go through this rigmarole, but most of them voted for it anyway because it was only their personal inconvenience that mattered to them.

Practically speaking, of course, an 80 seat majority means that the government can do pretty much what it wants anyway. Not having a functional parliament simply makes it harder for the opposition to find out what they are up to and to challenge it. But we are well on the way to being a country where the Prime Minister, Mr. Cummings, can rule by dictat.

Still, at least it is all very British and civilised. It could be worse, we could have armed Trumpist militias terrorising the populous like they have in the USA.