Current Affairs

Coronavirus – Day #9

~ Cheryl

It was a beautiful spring day here today again so I decided to venture outside. I’m getting worried that all of the dry air from central heating isn’t doing me any good. And I need some exercise.

There were a lot of people out. Mostly they were walking dogs or small children, but there were also the inevitable joggers. The majority seemed to have no great interest in social distancing.

There were shops open. That included the convenience store just around the corner, and the small Co-Op about 5-10 minutes walk away. The latter had food and was very quiet so I popped in and got a few things. There wasn’t much fresh, but I did get milk, bread, tomatoes and mushrooms. That should help me through another couple of weeks at home.

I’d spent the morning going through the food cupboards. Inevitably I found a few things well past their sell-by date. That included a lot of half-used bottles of various chili sauces. I suspect they will kill most things, except viruses.

For dinner tonight I tried a new toy. I found this top-end mini-blender going half-price on Amazon and ordered one. I got to try it out this evening. I put in some banana yoghurt, some frozen blackberries and raspberries, and some fruits of the forest juice. The end result was delicious. At some point I plan to try it with mango yoghurt, tinned peaches and orange juice, which I suspect will also work well.

Finally a bunch of British writers have been providing ebook stories, podcasts and so on for free to give folks stuck at home something to read or listen to. The BSFA has a page linking free SF&F stories. I’ll try to get something out from Wizard’s Tower this week. Alternatively, if you are into long reads, Galley Beggar now has an ebook store and you can get Ducks, Newburyport for only £2.50, which of course I have done.

Coronavirus – Day #8

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

Today I got a message through the door from some people down the street. They are looking to put together a little community support group. I gather this sort of thing is happening all over the country, which is heartwarming. Unfortunately I’m not much use in such things. Firstly, as I may have the virus, I should not be socialising. And second, my first thought on seeing it was that if I got to know the rest of the people in the street then pretty soon they’d all know that I was trans and I’d have to find somewhere new to live.

I’m continuing to get “helpful” messages from all sorts of corporations. I use scare quotes because today I got messages from two different delivery companies. Both said they were introducing new procedures to avoid contact and that I should go to their website to enter my preferences. In both cases the website is not set up to enable you to do that.

As the day job hasn’t been chasing me today, I’ve been able to spend another day on Wizard’s Tower work. I’ve done most of the work on layouts for the new Tate Hallaway book, Unjust Cause, so that will be coming your way some time in April.

I have also been doing some testing with Zoom. Going into Bristol for a radio show is not a good idea, so I’m hoping to do some interviews remotely and put together a pre-record show. The plan for the April 1st show is to talk to a bunch of people from different countries around the world about how people are dealing with the pandemic where they live. So if you have always wanted to be on the show, this is your chance. Let me know.

Today’s cooking was proper store-cupboard stuff. Tuna, tomatoes, and some spices makes a great pasta sauce. Serve with conchiglie, obiously.

Coronavirus – Day #7

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Today I went out. In the car. My car has dodgy electrics and, if left to her own devices, will develop a flat battery in a week or two. So I have to run her regularly. As long as I stay in the car I am still self-isolating. It was good to get out.

Interestingly the roads around here did not look deserted. There were cars on the road, and people walking around town. My local Tesco looked quite busy, which suggests that they may have food.

I think I am finally beginning to understand this virus thing. This article by a GP was a big help.

As was a Twitter thread by a professor from Yale that, annoyingly, I can no longer find.

Here’s where I think we are:

1. The virus is massively contagious, at least in part because no one has any immunity, but also because most countries have been way too slow to respond.

2. The vast majority of people who contract it will survive. I now suspect over 99% because I think we are massively undercounting the number of people who have it.

3. Typical symptoms are an infection of the upper respiratory tract which leads to a dry cough.

4. It only gets bad if the infection migrates to the lungs and you get pneumonia and need to be on a ventilator.

5. The biggest danger is that large numbers of people need hospitalisation at the same time, because of the rapid rate of infection, and that health services are overwhelmed. This is why slowing the rate of infection is so important.

6. People with a mild case of the virus will take days, maybe even weeks, to recover. That’s partly because this is a new thing that our bodies are struggling to find antibodies for, and partly because we don’t have medication to help (or the capacity to provide it to so many people in such a short time).

7. But people are recovering. We don’t as yet know whether those people are immune, and if so how long that lasts, but as the stock of recovered people grows we should be able to start getting the global economy back on its feet.

8. Our ability to understand and cope with all this is critically dependent on testing so that we know who has the virus and who has recovered from it. The UK government is still reluctant to spend money on testing.

I certainly have the respiratory infection and cough, but nothing else. A lot of the problem with the cough is that a badly inflamed respiratory system is easily irritated, and that leads to coughing, which is a further irritant. Hydrating more seems to help. I have also found that sucking a Fisherman’s Friend is a good way to calm things down so that I can get back to sleep.

On the food front I am now out of most fresh fruit and veg, but I have canned and frozen so I’m not worried. I also have the ability to make yoghurt so I am going to experiment with smoothies. I ate the last of the curry tonight, so will be going onto fish and pasta for a while before the haggis. It is nice to have time to cook.

But I am also very bored of being sick. I should be exercising more, but any sort of physical exertion is a bad idea right now.

Coronavirus – Day #6

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Hello again. How is everyone? Here it has been another day of feeling low-grade sick but perfectly well enough to do things. It has been a quiet time on the day job, and therefore I have devoted my time to Wizard’s Tower. I have at long last found the time to build a proper accounting system. (One that I hope Kevin could take over should anything terrible happen to me.) We’ve sold a shit load of books over the years.

Oh, and I have see the cover for Unjust Cause, the new Tate Hallaway novel. No reveal just yet, but suffice it to say that Lyda and I are absolutely delighted.

Today has also been a day for organisations to email me and talk about their plans for coping with the crisis. It is encouraging to see everyone from stores to financial institutions to travel companies are at least thinking about the situation and trying to do their bit.

However, it is small companies that I’m most worried about. They are much more vulnerable to economic shocks, and they are the least likely to be helped by our mendacious government. Wizard’s Tower will be fine because we have no employees or premises, but there must be loads of organisations out there hurting badly. It is difficult to know who to help first. If you need books, and who doesn’t, then please try to buy them from a local, independent store. My good friends at Mr. B’s are one option. I had a package from them today and will be spending more money with them soon.

Coronavirus – Day #5

~ Cheryl

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about symptoms, I recommend this post over at the Long Now Foundation. It backs up what I said yesterday about us not really understaing the virus very well yet. The fast-and-stealthy scenario that suggests the virus is a) much more infectious, and b) much less deadly than we think does fit a lot of the facts.

In the meantime there’s some potentially good news from Japan about a possible treatment that will help people survive if they do get a bad case.

Today has been a day for more stuff being cancelled. Both Ã…con (May) and Cymera (June) will no longer take place this year. There’s no word of a decision as yet on Finncon (July) or Worldcon (August).

The spectacularly malevolent British government continues its efforts to have the world’s worst response to the crisis. One of the major drivers of social inequality in this country is the move into buy-to-let by the wealthy. What this means is that even moderately rich people have one or more extra properties that they own and rent out. You can get a lot more income in rent than you have to pay out in a mortgage, even after paying a rental management company to do most of the work. A side effect of this is that it has become extremely difficult for young people to get a start on the property ladder. People who own rental properties will mostly have voted solidly for the Tories, and Johnson is paying them back by giving them protection while forcing renters to get into debt. It is straight up class warfare, not an attempt to manage the crisis.

Fortunately, though my work for The Diversity Trust has totally dried up, I still have plenty of work from my energy economics consultancy. I won’t have a problem paying the rent, and could even buy food if that was possible. (I don’t know, I haven’t been to Tesco since Friday, but my Twitter stream is full of photos of empty supermarket shelves and people complaining that they can’t get deliveries.)

Tesco, incidently, have just emailed to explain the various measures that they are taking to deal with the crisis. Good to see them taking steps to prevent panic buying.

And talking of work, there’s Wizard’s Tower to be taken care of as well. Which means that these little babies have arrived. I have sent a set off to Juliet for approval, so it won’t be long before they are available for sale.

And then the hardcovers. Honestly people, just wait until you see the hardcovers.

Coronavirus – Day #4

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

Today I thought I would talk a bit about symptoms, because I’m confused. I have been sick for almost 2 weeks now. The last time I went out for work was the 5th. I did a brief shopping trip on the 7th. Aside from that I have been self-isolating. I have not had any flu-like symptoms, but I did gradually develop a cough which has stubbornly refused to go away. Are these virus symptoms? Who knows?

The problem is that this is a very new virus and we don’t know a lot about it. What we do know is that people are reporting very different symptoms. Some of the rich people reporting that they have tested positive say they have no symptoms at all. Other people have reported very servere flu-like symptoms that required hospitalisation. So is this something that many people will just be carriers for? Or is it something that can hang around in your body for days before things start to get serious? Is that why the self-isolation period has been extended to 14 days in the UK?

The really annoying thing for me is that during the day I generally feel fine save for the occasional cough. Today I logged a 7-hour day on the day job. But after a few hours sleep I wake up feeling dreadful. It takes me an hour or so in the morning to get going. It is all very weird.

Doubtless a whole lot of clever medical people are working on this, and they are certainly getting plenty of data. We will know a lot more soon. In the meantime I think all that we can do is assume that we know nothing. I’m sorry if that’s scary. Please remember that the vast majority of younger people will survive this, even if old folks like me don’t. But if you can keep to yourself then I think you should do so, until we know more about what is safe.

Other than that, isolation is trucking along as expected. I ate the last of the fresh tomatoes today and will miss them, but I have other fresh fruit left. I also used the last of the fresh meat making a curry that will last until the weekend. I have a haggis in the fridge. That’s good until early April. Other than that I shall be pescatarian for a while. I’ll be intersted to see how that turns out.

Coronavirus – Day #3

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

It was a beautiful day here today. After a couple of days staying at home I would have loved to go for a walk. However, isolation is isolation. Of course all I have is a cough, and some of you might think it would be OK for me to go out with a mask, but such things are hard to get here. Pharmacies didn’t routinely stock them to start with, and now you can’t get one anywhere. In any case, our health service doesn’t trust people to use masks correctly, or to remember not to touch people. Their advice is that if you have any symptoms at all then you should stay at home for at least 7 days. So that is what I am doing.

And today that stay-at-home period has been extended to 14 days.

All of which is causing people to wonder how long this is going to last. When I went shopping last Friday I figured I needed food up until the end of April. That now looks like an underestimate.

The big issue today, however, is the rest of the government’s idiotic announcement. Most countries around the world have been ordering big gatherings not to take place, and ordering venues to close. Heck the Irish government has ordered pubs to close, just a few days before St. Patrick’s Day. That’s a measure of how seriously they are taking the need to prevent infection. Here our government has just advised people not to attend large gatherings.

The key difference here is “advised” rather than “ordered”. If an event or venue is ordered to close by government then it can claim on insurance. If all that happens is that the punters don’t turn up because they have been advised not to go, then there is a problem. Right now all sorts of businesses around the UK, from theatres and concert halls, to pub and restaurants are facing ruin because their custom will plummet and there is nothing that they can do about it.

To bring it closer to home, consider a science fiction convention. Swecon, which I was due to attend, was cancelled on government orders. That means that they did not have to pay for the venue. CostumeCon 38 in Montreal was cancelled on government orders the day before it was due to start. Kevin, who is on the board on CanSMOF, had been quietly worring to me about it all last week. But the government intervention saved them from a financial disaster. In the UK I expect Eastercon to have almost no attendance. Hilton are fully refunding hotel bookings, but because the event hasn’t been banned they won’t refund the function space rental, because they can’t claim on their insurance. The convention may also be on the hook for failing to deliver enough hotel bookings, such targets normally being part of convention hotel contracts.

There are still a couple of weeks to go before the con, so it is possible that someone will step in and save them. But Bozo is way out of his depth, and Cummins, who pulls his strings, is actively malevolent, so I don’t expect anything to change.

Anyway, time to worry about how far into May I can last without leaving home. And sadly that probably means no Ã…con for me. The rest of Europe may be coming out of the crisis by then, but I can’t see the UK doing so.

Coronavirus – Day #2

~ Cheryl

So far so good. Aside from not going out, today has been a pretty normal Sunday. I did some housework (cleaned the fridge!), did some reading and writing, and got caught up on Formula E. I’m slightly bemused by all of the people on Twitter wondering what they are going to do when they are stuck at home.

The other thing that I did today was go over a draft of a new will. That’s not because I’m expecting to die imminently. It occurred to me a few weeks back that I really should make provision in the will for Wizard’s Tower. The lawyers sent me a draft, and it has taken me a couple of weeks to get around to reading it.

Of course if I do get the virus my chances are good, but not great. Given average worldwide figures I probably have about a 1 in 30 chance of dying. That’s a damn sight more likely than winning the lottery. So I’m not being blasé about it.

This being Britain, Land of Transphobia, the anti-trans brigade are going off on social media about how it is important to know your “biological sex” when going to the doctor. But of course by “biological sex” they mean chromosomes, which have very little effect once you have been born. Interestingly mortality among men is higher than among women, and that’s despite women doing a lot more of the healthcare. An article in The Lancet suggested a number of gendered explanations for the difference, including men being more likley to smoke, and women being less likely to have to go into an office or other workplace in order to keep their job. Being a life-long non-smoker, and a self-employed work-from-home person, I have a more feminine social profile.

But who knows? I’ve had pneumonia in the past. That might make me more vulnerable. Worrying over percentages like this is pointless. My life has got less busy all of a sudden, and while I will miss the foreign trips I am determined to enjoy the additional relaxation time. Back to reading, I think.

Coronavirus – Day #1

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Well, here we are, living in our very own science fictional dystopia. All of my near future travel plans have been cancelled (thankfully with no loss of money). That means no Swecon convention in Stockholm, and no Moving Trans History Forward conference in Canada. It also means no holiday with Kevin. Most of my forthcoming meetings and training gigs have also been cancelled, and I expect the rest of those in March to follow suit quickly. I also expect Eastercon to be cancelled, and I have very little else booked until the last week of April. I also have plenty of work that I can be doing at home, and enough savings to survive a few months. Having a very small home with very low rent has its advantages.

So I am well set up to self-isolate and not risk helping spread the virus. I have had a mild cold all week, but nothing like flu symptoms. Nevertheless I have been keeping to myself as much as possible so as not to worry people. From now on I stay at home. It will be an interesting experience, and I thought I should document it. If nothing else it will be useful research fodder for anyone writing dystopian fiction in the future.

Obviously I will run out of fresh food (meat, fruit & veg) in a week or so. But I do have enough dried, tinned and frozen food to last much longer. I also have a large bottle of vitamin pills that I bought when Hard Brexit was a worry. And of course I have plenty of coffee, tea and whisky.

I don’t expect to be missing the social contact. Most of my friends live far away and we communiate mostly via email and social media. If I need other voices, I have plenty of things I want to watch on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Disney+ launches here in just over a week.

What does concern me is staying fit. My home is very small so there’s not a lot of room to exercise. Time to put the Wii back into action, I think.

My other concern is what sort of world I will emerge into when this is all over. Unlike most world governments, the people in Westminister are currently planning on letting the virus run riot through the population. Indeed, they are encouraging this. The theory seems to be that healthy, productive citizens will contract the virus, recover, and become immune, whereas the elderly and infirm will die off leaving the population fitter and healthier as a result. That’s the sort of nightmare nonsense I expect to find in a Charlie Stross novel, not in real life.

It is not a case of hoping no one that you know dies. It is a question of wondering which of your friends and relatives will die.

So it is all a bit up in the air. We do indeed live in Interesting Times. Stay healthy, people. Here’s hoping that once we have got through this people will see the likes of Trump and Johnson for the amoral opportunist charlatans that they are.

A Favour, Please

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

So, there you all are twiddling your thumbs and wondering what to do as the long days of self-isolation stretch ahead of you. Yes, you should be reading books, but hopefully you have time to do something quickly for me.

As you may be aware, governments in the UK have been consulting on changes to the Gender Recongition Act. This is because the current system for obtaining a revised birth certificate (and with it a new legal gender) and a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) is so complex, difficult and expensive that most trans people don’t bother. Changing your ID such as passports and driving licences is much easier, and who ever looks at a birth certificate anyway? But government officials are concerned that many people have ID in one gender yet are legally a different gender, and they want to change that by making it easier for trans folks to make the legal change.

There were a couple of consultations last year, one in Scotland and one in England & Wales. The Scottish one showed 60% of respondents in favour of a change. Westminster has refused to publish the results of their consultation and the new government apparently has no intention of going ahead with the process, but the Scots have published a bill and opened a consultation on that. The consultation closes on Tuesday (17th).

You might wonder what this has to do with you, as most of you are not Scottish. Well, the Scottish government is welcoming input from all around the world, and you can bet that the anti-trans extremists will be doing their best to flood the consultation with responses favouring their view. Trans people in Scotland have been subjected to weeks of relentless and hostile media coverage, and risk losing their civil rights altogether if this consultation produces a negative result. (Transphobes within Westminster are already calling openly for the repeal of trans people’s civil rights.)

The good news is that the consultation is very easy to fill in. There are just five questions. There’s also a fair amount of background information to digest, but I’ll try to summarise things briefly here.

1. All that this affects is the birth certificate. That has almost no effect on day-to-day life. It governs what gender you can get married in, and what gender you are recorded as when you die, but very little else.

2. Scotland will requre a Statutory Declaration to change your legal gender. A false declaration counts as perjury, which is a serious crime with stiff penalties. It will not be possible to change your legal gender on a whim, or easily change back afterwards.

3. Similar systems are already in place in Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, Norway and several other countries outside of Europe.

4. If you have any concerns regarding the safety of women as a result of these changes, please read this article from The Scotsman which summarises the responses of women’s servces in Scotland to the initial consultation (spoiler, they were all supportive of the changes).

Question 1 asks, “Do you have any comments on the proposal that applicants must live in their acquired gender for at least 3 months before applying for a GRC?” Simply saying No would indicate that you have no concerns, but a message saying that you support the changes would be helpful.

Question 2 asks, “Do you have any comments on the proposal that applicants must go through a period of reflection for at least 3 months before obtaining a GRC?” Personally I think this is rather silly, but equally it can’t do much harm. If you don’t want to go into the arguments you can safely answer No here.

Question 3 asks, “Should the minimum age at which a person can apply for legal gender recognition be reduced from 18 to 16?” Under current NHS guidelines you can begin medical transition (by taking hormones) at 16, so of course 16-year-olds should be able to change their legal gender along with everything else they will be changing.

Question 4 asks, “Do you have any other comments on the provisions of the draft Bill?” At this point it would be very helpful to ask the Scottish Government to do something for non-binary people. I have worked a lot with organisations from hospitals to domestic violence refuges, and for all of them the lack of any legal recognition of non-binary gender makes it very hard for them to make appropriate allowances for non-binary people.

Question 5 asks, “Do you have any comments on the draft Impact Assessments?” If you are a woman, this would be a good place to say that you do not think that your rights or safety are in any way threatened by the existence of trans people (which is basically the conclusion that the Scottish Government came to).

Some alternative advice, along with discussion of the issues, is available from Mermaids.

The online consultation is available here.

There is no guarantee that the bill will go forward if the consultation delivers a positive result. The anti-trans lobby has plenty of money and powerful friends. But if the consultation delivers a negative result then trans rights in the whole of the UK will in serious danger of being repealed.

Where Are We Now?

~ Cheryl

Most of you will probably be aware that the UK will now formally leave the European Union by automatic operation of law at the end of January. Lots of people, however, including many within the UK, are uncertain of what this actually means. I must admit I’m pretty confused myself at times. But there are helpful explainers on various websites which seem to more or less agree.

The important point is that while the UK will reach the point of no return on January 31st, nothing much will change. There will be an 11 month (at least) Transition Period during which life will carry on pretty much as before. You can find explanations of this at The Institute for Government and the BBC.

Most importantly, there will be no immedite change to international trade, and no change to freedom of movement, during this period. Those things will only happen at the end of the Transition Period on December 31st 2020.

Equally I suspect that there will be little in the way of changes to UK equalities law during the Transition Period. In theory, at least, we are still subject to EU law. I can’t see the government wanting to make an issue of this, because they have made it clear that they want to pretend that we are already fully out of the EU as of the end of this month, so they won’t do anything that makes it clear that we are not.

Of course, as we have seen in the USA, it is entirely possible for government to ramp up discrimination against minorities without changing the law. I expect there to be a raft of government notices that target Muslims, trans people, EU citizens and so on. But this will not be anywhere near as bad as will happen once EU law is off our statute books.

So basically we have a year of being in a sort of dreamlike state where we are on a train, heading for a precipice in 11 months time, but the government will be telling us that everything is fine because we have aleady passed the precipice and gravity has not taken effect.

I guess we should be using that time to get stuff done.

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

~ Cheryl

I was feeling a bit guilty yesterday being so happy about the Galley Beggar fundraiser because there are so many people in dire poverty in the UK. Now that they’ve reached their target, Sam and Ellie are directing people to this fundraiser which is raising money for the Trussell Trust, a food bank charity. They’ve been going for longer, and have raised considerably less money.

But the scale of the problem was brought home to me later yesterday when I saw news of an important court case. An anti-trans activist had gone to court to claim that her belief that I, and women like me, are “really men”, is a protected belief under the Equality Act, and that she has the right to tell us so to our faces whenever she wants. Freeze Peach and all that. The judge threw the case out, in no uncertain terms.

But the point is that in order to bring this case the woman has raised £80,000 through crowdfunding. And she’s already raised a similar amount to appeal the case. One of her vocal supporters is JK Rowling, so there’s clearly no practical limit to the money she has access to in order to pursue this case. If she can’t win in the courts, I’m sure the current government will be only too happy to change the law for her, once we are no longer beholden to the EU.

So there you have it. £160,000 raised to bring legal cases so that people can have the right to harrass trans folks. How much good could that money have done for food banks? Or for women’s refuges, or rape crisis centres? Where are those three ghosts when you need them?

Election Week

~ Cheryl

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that we have a General Election happening here in the UK. I’m over 60 years old and I have no hesitation in saying that it is the most important General Election of my lifetime. If the Tories are still in power on Friday the consequences for anyone who isn’t a moderately well-off straight, cis, able-bodied person of English descent will be quite terrible. They will be particularly bad for people of colour, people who moved here from Europe and their families, and for trans people. They have, of course, been terrible for the very poor, for disabled people, and for anyone associated with the Windrush generation, for some time.

I’m delighted to see so much discussion of tactical voting happening on social media. I hope it works. Personally, however, there is little I can do. For most of my life in the UK I have lived in constituencies where it would take a political earthquake of immense proportions to unseat the incumbent Tory. I have comforted myself with the thought that having so many Tory voters in one place is a good thing for the rest of the country.

In my current constituency, the sitting MP, who is Brexit Party in all but name, got 60% of the vote at the last election. The next best performance was by Labour who got 26.5%. It is probable that some of those Tory voters will follow the lead of John Major and Michael Heseltine and vote for the LibDems, but I can’t see half of them doing so. I normally vote Green, but will be voting Labour this time just in case.

The opinion polls have all been uniformly depressing and point to a significant Tory majority. I am hoping that they are as wrong as the rest of the mainstream media coverage of the election. But even if we do end up with a coalition government led by Labour the prospects for trans folk don’t look good. Diane Abbot and Dawn Butler have been very supportive, but John McDonnell has made it clear that he expects Labour to roll back trans rights. I think the best we can hope for is that they will have far too many other things to be doing before starting on us.

This certainly isn’t the sort of situation I expected myself to be in at this point in my life. But then again when I began the transition process I didn’t expect to live much longer anyway. To have survived for 22 years has exceeded my wildest expectations. So I’m going to try to keep busy and not worry too much about things. I will trust those of you who have a more useful vote to do the right thing. And I plan to thoroughly enjoy the holiday, because it will probably be the last one I get to spend in this country.

We Were Proud

~ Cheryl

Last week saw the 4th anniversary of Trans Pride South West (TPSW), our local celebration of trans pride which sprang from Sarah Savage’s visit to our LGBT History Month event in 2016. I’m not involved in the running of it, but I do get involved in various parts of it.

This year, for the first time, we had a march. That began with a gathering on College Green in front of City Hall, and that meant speeches. We had some political representation. Carla Denyer, the Green Party candidate for Bristol West, was there. She was accompanied by a bunch of young party members, and by Baroness Bennett, so the Greens really put some effort behind us. The Liberal Democrats sent along James Cox who had kindly stood down in Bristol West in order to give Carla a better chance of getting elected. Sadly there was no official representation from Bristol Labour, though Kaz Self from the TPSW committee did make a speech on their behalf. There was also a representative from the Women’s Equality Party, which was of course me. So yes, I did make a speech. No one laughed, except when I wanted them to, which I am taking as a win.

From there we marched up Baldwin Street towards the city centre. We had space in The Station, a former fire station on Silver Street for a Community Day. There were just under 200 people (and three dogs) on the march, which was very good for a cold and wet November morning. I was very pleased to count at least 16 people of colour among us.

The Community Day had a lot of stalls. I was representing OutStories Bristol. The photo above shows me at my stall along with Spencer from TPSW and Alex from the hate crime charity, SARI. The Diversity Trust also had a stall. The event was very well attended. Indeed, around 13:00 you could barely move in the room. I think the committee might need to look for a bigger venue next year.

I was somewhat worried that there might be some attempt by right-wing groups to disrupt the march, but everything went off very smoothly. Clearly the anti-trans fauxminists are easily put off by a little rain.

I had to rush off immediately after the event ended as I was giving a talk in Brighton on the Sunday, so I didn’t get to chat to people at thing were winding down, but I’m very happy with how things went and I’m looking forward to TPSW being bigger and better next year.

Today on Ujima – PapayaFest, Discrimination at Work, Fungi & Ellen Datlow

~ Cheryl

I did a radio show today. Here’s what went down.

I started out with a visit from my good friend Tamsin Clarke. We kept our clothes on this time. As you may recall, Tamsin is from Venezuela. She has been putting together a festival of Latinx culture called PapayaFest. It will feature Tamsin’s theatre productions and a great line-up of bands and DJs. Because Tamsin has such great topics for her plays we ended up talking about Simón Bolívar, matriarchal families and the current state of feminism in Latin America.

Next up I was joined by Karen and Erin from Bristol Law Centre. They have come up with an interesting new way of funding employment discrimination cases and they wanted to get the word out there. I was pleased to be able to point out what good work they do, and how necessary they have become because of the current government’s actions designed to make recourse to the law something that is only available to the very rich.

Guest three was my friend Esme who has got involved with mushrooms. They really are fascinating life forms, and most people have no idea how many types of fungi there are, or how crucial they are both to the ecosystem and to many modern industries. There will be a Fungus Day at Arnos Vale Cemetery on Saturday, which I’d be very tempeted to go along to if I wasn’t booked elsewhere.

And finally I ran part of the interview I did with Ellen Datlow at TitanCon. This extract includes how she got her job at Omni, what “best of the year” means, who is the only writer ever to have scared her, and why she once turned down a story by Margaret Atwood. The full interview will run in Salon Futura at the end of the month.

You can hear the whole show via Ujima’s Listen Again service here.

The playlist for this month’s show is as follows:

  • Simón Díaz – Caballo Viejo
  • WARA – Leave to Remain
  • Rodrigo y Gabriela – Hanuman
  • Elsa J – 9 to 5
  • Carlos Santana – Flor d’Luna
  • Janelle Monáe – Mushrooms & Roses
  • Sade – Nothing can come between us
  • Michael Jackson – Thriller

Reflections on Belfast

~ Cheryl

I have been to Belfast three times this year, most recently for TitanCon. Each time I have been I have seen more evidence of increasing sectarian activity.

The hotels that Kevin and I stayed in were right in the city center close to the Europa. They were also just a short walk away from a notoriously Protestant area which was festooned with flags. The Union Jacks and Ulster flags are expected. The flags of the British Parachute Regiment are a particular political protest related to a criminal trial of a soldier. The Donald Trump MAGA flag was a reminder that nothing in this world happens in isolation any more.

Back in the days of the Troubles, the American-Irish community was known to have raised funds for the IRA. Now it seems like we have Americans providing funds for the other side of the dispute as well.

Belfast is a lovely city that has blossomed since the Good Friday Agreement. It would be a tragedy to see it collapse into sectarian warfare again. Unfortuantely that seems to be what some people, including some people in the current UK Cabinet, are hell-bent on making happen.

Today on Ujima: Section 28, Masculinity, Hugos & Silence

~ Cheryl

It was a radio day for me today. I barely got the show together in time having been away over the weekend and had much of yesterday hijacked by the Hugos, but I got there in the end.

In the first half hour I played an interview I did over the weekend with Sue Sanders, the founder of Schools Out and LGBT History Month. There has been a lot of talk here in the media about the need for a return to something called Section 28, which attempted to ban the mention of anything to do with LGBT people in schools. Thankfully Parliament has refused to turn the clock back, but lots of the people I get in training courses have never heard of Section 28 so I figured that having Sue, who was in the forefront of the fight against it, explain what went down, would be useful.

Next up I had a studio guest, Elias Williams of ManDem, an arts organisation for young black men. Last week I had been on a panel on the future of feminism at UWE (along with the brilliant Finn McKay). Elias had been on it too, and having heard him speak I knew I wanted him on the radio. Young black men are routinely demonised in the media, and it is wonderful to have someone so articulate and sensible standing up for them.

In the third slot I rambled about the Hugos. There are loads of black writers on the ballot this year, and people of colour in general. In particular 3 of the 6 Lodestar finalists are written by black women, and the Campbell finalists are mostly women of color, and one non-binary person of color. This is very promising for the future.

And finally I played part of my interview with Rachel Rose Reid from the LGBT History Month event in Bristol. This was about the Arthuian legend, Le Roman de Silence, which is basically 13th Century French feminist fantasy. It really is remarkable how modern the themes of that book are. I note that Rachel will be in Bristol again with the show on April 28th. Sadly I’m teaching one of Cat Rambo’s writing courses that evening. She’s also in Frome on the 12th, but that’s sold out. Phooey.

You can listen to the whole show via the Ujima Listen Again service here.

The playlist for the show is as follows:

  • School Day – Chuck Berry
  • We Are Family – Sister Sledge
  • It’s a Man’s World – James Brown
  • Word Up – Cameo
  • Pynk – Janelle Monáe
  • Crazy, Classic Life – Janelle Monáe
  • Mirror in the Bathroom – The Beat
  • Ali Baba – Dreadzone

My thanks as always to Ben, my engineer, and to all of my guests.

Gaming for Mermaids

~ Cheryl

As many of you will know, I am a big fan of an organisation called Mermaids. They are a support network for trans kids and their families. Just the sort of thing I wish had existed when I was young and struggling with my identity.

Over the past few months they have come under intense attack from anti-trans extremists who have tried to paint them as a cult that is pushing children to transition. They have also been horribly misrepresented in the media. Recently the Daily Malice was actually forced to apologise because they had edited a comment from Mermaids. The original said that waiting times for medication caused distress to young people, but the Malice ran it as saying that it was the medication that caused distress. That was so blatantly dishonest that even the normally tame and toothless media regulator, IPSO, called for a retraction.

Before the Holidays news broke that Mermaids had been awarded £500,000 by the Big Lottery Fund. This was met with outrage by anti-trans extremists who organised a campaign to bombard the Fund with complaints, as a result of which the grant has been suspended pending investiation. I don’t hold out much hope because if there’s one thing that bureaucrats hate it is negative publicity. I suspect that it will be almost impossible from now on for a UK-based charity to get a grant for work with trans people.

The problem is, of course, that anything the anti-trans side does will be front page news in the national media and discussed in pearl-clutching tones on the BBC, whereas anything trans folks do, even if it has massively more support, will be ignored. But we do have support, and that was proved this weekend.

A wonderful young man who goes by the name of Hbomberguy has been playing Donkey Kong non-stop on the gamer streaming service, Twitch. I think he’s done his bit now, but the fundraiser he set up for it is still going. Thus far he has raised over $160,000. That’s incredible. Mostly it has come in small donations from thousands of people.

While the money is hugely welcome and will be put to very good use by Mermaids, the campaign is also enormously valuable for the morale boost it has given the trans community. We’ve taken an incredible battering over the past year. The Times and Sunday Times alone averaged almost one anti-trans article a day in 2018. The toll this has taken on trans people’s mental health has been very obvious. To wake up this morning to parents of trans kids saying how happy what Hbomberguy has done has made their children has been hugely heartwarming.

The campaign on Twitch is still running and will be open for several more days if you want to contribute. Alternatively you can donate direct to Mermaids here. And of course there may be trans groups local to you who are desperate for funds.

Convention Circuit

~ Cheryl

There are lots of conventions happening this month. I am going to be at some of them. SF&F people will be able to guess which ones. I’m not saying much more than that, because over the past week or so anti-trans activists have taken to turning up at events where prominent trans women are speaking with the intent of disrupting them, and of obtaining audio or video recordings that they can edit creatively and then put online. Probably I am much too small fry for them, but I did have one event disrupted last week so I’m not going to make things easy for them.

This is also a good moment to remind you all that the Government’s consultation on the Gender Recognition Act closes tomorrow evening. They will have received large numbers of responses from “concerned citizens” demanding that all of my civil rights be taken away. If you have time, please respond. Even if you don’t understand any of the other questions, it is important that you tell the Government that they need to consider rights for non-binary and intersex people.

Today On Ujima: Students, Clothing, Theatre & Feminism

~ Cheryl

Today’s show began with two wonderful guests from the University of the West of England. Noor and Josie are part of a small group who are pioneering an organisation called Equity within the university that will help Black & Minority Ethnic students get the best out of their education, and find good jobs afterwards.

As we all know, the academic system, and the jobs market in the UK, discriminates against anyone who doesn’t fit the default stereotype of white and male. However, much can be done by finding role models, or as I prefer possibility models, that give people the confidence that they can beat the system and suceed in life. I’m delighted to find that UWE is the first university in the country to actively try to help BAME students in this way. If you happen to be a Person of Colour who works in or near Bristol, please take a look here to see forthcoming events where you can help inspire these students.

Now if only we could do something similar for trans students…

My second guest was Jo-Jo from the gender-neutral clothing company, Max Tariq. It is, apparently, Bristol’s first and currently only such label. Jo-Jo and I chatted about the philosophy of gender neutral clothing. We discussed how such clothes could be for anyone who foudn them attractive, and how “gender neutral” doesn’t mean dull and vaguely masculine. We also talked about making clothing climate-neutral.

The Listen Again system is still playing up occasionally. You can listen to Noor & Josie here. Jo-Jo’s interview got dropped, but I have the archive recording and will be putting him up on the podcast soon.

Next up was Yasmin from the Mandala Theatre Company. She’s putting on a play called Castaways at The Station (the old fire station building in which Ujima’s studios are located) tomorrow night. It is a pay what you can afford event, so money is no excuse. If you want a ticket, or just to learn mre about the play, go here.

I kept the final half hour guest-free because I wanted to have a bit of a rant about the whole Kavanaugh debacle over in the USA. I chose some powerful feminist music to go with it. Along the way I also managed to talk about the WASPI fiasco with women’s pensions, and the awful two-child limit on tax credits.

You can listen to the second half of the show in full here.

Not included, because I am slightly nervous about the lyrics, was the new Amanda Palmer song, “Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now”. The video, which is absolutely NSFW, is here.

The playlist for the show is as follows:

  • Big Mama Thornton – Let Your Tears Fall Baby
  • Bessie Smith – Alexander’s Ragtime Band
  • CN Lester – White wedding
  • Prince – Raspberry Beret
  • Minnie Ripperton – Young, Willing and Able
  • Erykah Badu – Drama
  • Janelle Monae – Americans
  • Lady Gaga – ‘Til it Happens to You
  • Alicia Keys – Superwoman
  • Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive

The first two tracks are, of course, a nod to Black History Month. The Gaga song is particularly powerful and I’m glad I found it.

I’ll be back on air in two weeks with my friend Olivette Otele to do Black History Month properly.