For those of you in Bristol, there will be a Peace Picnic in Knowle West tomorrow. This has been prompted by a rise in hate crime in the community. Further details on Facebook. I won’t be there, but I will have Jaya Chakrabarti, and hopefully some of her fellow organizers, on the radio to talk about it on Wednesday.
Current Affairs
Today on Ujima – Cat Valente, Rape Prevention, Hate Crime & Brexit
Sorry about the weird company, Cat. That’s the way it goes with radio some days.
Today’s show began with an interview I did with Cat Valente at Finncon. As usual with such things, I was only able to broadcast about half of it. All of the in-depth writerly stuff got cut. The full thing will appear on Salon Futura in a few weeks. Cat and I seem to have done a lot of giggling in that interview.
In the second half hour I was joined by Charlotte Gage from Bristol Women’s Voice to talk about the “R U Asking 4 It” fiasco, in which members of Avon & Somerset Police were taken to task by a group of Bristol teenagers for entirely inappropriate comments on rape prevention. I should note that following the initial disaster the response of the police has been fantastic. Very senior people have got involved, and I understand that today another email went around the force reminding officers of the need to be on message over such issues.
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
Next up I spoke to Jennie Darch from SARI about the rise in hate crime following the Brexit referendum. SARI is a charity that specializes in helping the victims of hate crime, and there is no doubt that their case load has increased dramatically since the vote. Charlotte also mentioned women talking to BWV about a sudden upsurge in racist harassment.
I was delighted to see that during the music breaks Charlotte and Jennie were busy comparing notes and thinking of ways in which their agencies could work together to tackle this problem.
The final half hour was given over to vox pop interviews about Brexit that I collected at Finncon. My thanks to the many lovely people from around the world who were willing to share their views.
You can listen to the second hour of the show here.
The music this week was mostly on the theme of immigration. That included “Get Back” by The Beatles which was very much on an immigration theme before the Fab Four thought better of it and re-wrote the lyrics to be more politically safe (including some casual transphobia). The full playlist is as follows:
- Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On?
- Jama – No Borders
- Bob Marley – Buffalo Soldier
- Horslips – The Man Who Built America
- Tabby Cat Kelly – Don’t Call Us Immigrants
- Maryam Mursal – Lei Lei
- The Beatles – Get Back
- Fontella Bass – Rescue Me
The View From Finland
One of the benefits of being in a foreign country while British politics is going to hell in a handbasket is that you get a bit of perspective on the hideous mess.
Having been chatting with Aliette on Twitter over the weekend, I wasn’t in the least surprised to find that the Finns seem to think we are stark raving bonkers. I was also expecting hilarity at Boris’s view that the UK can somehow magically negotiate a better trade deal with Europe now that we have voted to leave the EU. I can assure you folks that Britain has no standing in Europe right now. The only negotiating stance we have is on our knees.
What I wasn’t expecting, but probably should have been, was newspaper stories about Finnish nationals in the UK being abused and attacked in the street. Finns are pretty quiet, unassuming folk, most of the time. It is hard to see how they’d upset people. But to a racist a foreigner is a foreigner. More importantly, Finns tend to be tall and fair-haired, and apparently that means that your average racist can’t tell the difference between a Finn and a Pole. I’m sure you can guess how that goes.
I expect to be spending the rest of my time here apologizing for the appalling behavior of my fellow Brits. I’m wondering if a fake Scottish accent would pass muster. Or American. I can do California.
Brave New World
Image edit by Jeremiah Tolbert
Mixing my SF metaphors here, but boy is this one right royal clusterfuck.
Not that I am surprised. I called it for Leave when the referendum was announced because I know that Rupert Murdoch rarely loses an election in this country. I’ve been hoping that people would come to their senses, but given the way the campaigns were conducted there was never much chance of that.
Personally I should be OK for a while. The trans awareness training that I do will dry up as people realize that they don’t have to care any more. However, the majority of my income comes from the USA and therefore I’m getting a substantial pay rise.
I also have some cash from when my mum died, and if the property market collapses, which it may well do, I may be able to afford a home of my own. But that’s longer term, what little pension money I have is disappearing rapidly, and my personal situation could become very precarious before too long. I don’t see much point in planning for a future that I may not have.
However, I am trying not to worry too much, because there are lots of other people I’m worried about.
I’m worried about all of the people who will lose their jobs as foreign investors pull out, the value of the pound plummets and trade barriers start going up against whatever remains of the UK.
I’m worried for the people in Northern Ireland who face a return to sectarian violence because of economic collapse and disagreement over union with the south.
I’m worried for all of the EU nationals living here who face losing their jobs, their college courses, and perhaps even their families because marriage to a citizen no longer confers the right of residency here.
I’m worried for the LGBT+ people who are less well off than me and who face the repeal of equalities legislation.
And most of all I am worried for people of color living in the UK (many of whom were born here), because the economic situation is only going to get worse, and the angry people who voted Leave will be looking to someone to blame. You can be sure that Murdoch will be busy deflecting their attention towards people least able to defend themselves.
The Europe Thing
Well, tomorrow (Thursday) we all get to vote. Then what?
Today The Guardian ran an article by a German music teacher who has made their home here for 18 years (look, singular they pronoun because the gender of the author isn’t specified). They worry if they will have to go back to Germany if the UK leaves the EU, and they worry that they might not want to stay anyway, because the atmosphere here has become so poisonous towards “foreigners”.
I’m afraid that my initial reaction to that article was to think that I have never felt welcome here. Sure I am a UK citizen, but every week something like this turns up in the newspapers reminding me that people like me are not popular with a large part of the UK public. I have plenty of friends here, but I am always worried that one day I’ll find a mob wanting to drive me out of my home, or that something like what happened with US immigration will happen to me here. In theory I have rights; in practice, who knows?
What rights I do have are mostly a result of rulings of the European courts. The UK and Irish governments both held out for as long as they could against allowing trans people legal gender recognition. The Leave people rail constantly against how the EU has “control” over British law, and how they want to be able to set their own laws free of European interference. What will that mean for me, and people like me, if Leave wins?
It is impossible to say for sure, but one of the leaders of the Leave campaign is Michael Gove, who happens to be the current boss of the Ministry of Justice. On his watch two trans women in prison have committed suicide and another, quite recently, was saved from a suicide attempt by prison staff. All three had been sent to male-only prisons. You will, I hope, forgive me for not having a lot of confidence in the future of my civil rights should Mr. Gove and his friends get to run the country.
Most people, of course, do not have my specific concerns. They are worried about the economy, about their standard of living. So much misinformation has been spread during the campaign that it is impossible to have a sensible discussion about the UK’s prospects as an independent country. Besides, economic forecasting is my job, I know how dodgy it can be. But one thing does seem clear to me: the Leave campaign is all about walls and ditches. It is an attitude of “I’m all right, Jack, and I will fight to protect what is mine.”
I can understand that people are worried, and want to hang on to what they have. I can also see that people have been very deliberately frightened by scare stories in the media. Personally, however, I have never been a fan of isolationism. I have, after all, lived in Australia and the USA as well as the UK. I have also spent a reasonable amount of time in others countries such as Finland, Canada, New Zealand, Croatia, Sweden, Denmark and France. I have briefly visited South Africa, India and Mexico, and I’ll be adding Spain to the list later this year. I have met lovely people wherever I have traveled.
The upshot of all this is that I have always believed that people of different countries, different cultures and different ethnic backgrounds can and should get along. Whatever problems we face on this small, watery rock adrift in the vastness of space, we are far better off facing them together than letting everything go to Hell and fighting over the scraps that remain.
The EU is far from perfect. Goddess knows I have uttered enough sweary words about their VAT laws over the past couple of years. But I also know that the VAT problem could have been much less serious had British officials been prepared to support and fight for micro businesses instead of taking every excuse to spread anti-EU sentiment.
We can, and should, do better than this. I’m not quite old enough to have lived through WWII, but my parents did, and a grew up with a strong impression of how awful that was. I did grow up under the shadow of Mutually Assured Destruction, and never did a political philosophy have a more appropriate acronym. I remember the sense of relief that everyone felt when the Berlin Wall came down, and I can’t quite believe how we have let all that hope and good will go to waste.
My choice tomorrow is pretty clear. I can vote to stay in a political institution that has promised to protect my civil rights, or I can vote for people who are threatening to take them away. That, as they say, is a no-brainer. That aside, it seems to me that the choice tomorrow is between sticking together in the hope that we can build a better world, or building a bunker in which we hope to hide from a world that is too terrifying to be part of. Again, I know which choice I would make.
When all else has been loosed on the world, Pandora, there is always hope. She will stay with you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
This, On Repeat, All Day
I get that people are angry, but they are not angry in a vacuum.
They are angry because their standard of living is falling, their jobs are disappearing, and their rents are skyrocketing.
They are angry because their social security benefits are being cut and they are fed a constant diet of newspaper articles and TV programs suggesting that other people are gaming the system.
They are angry because they are constantly being told that everything wrong in the world is the fault of other poor people who happen to look different, behave differently, or speak a different language, when they should be angry that social inequality is increasing at a rapid rate.
They are angry because the media will let any lie, no matter how outrageous and hateful, slide by unchallenged if it causes controversy and increases the traffic count on their websites.
Sure people’s freedom is at stake. It is at stake from people who want to take away their civil rights, take away their social security net, and put them on zero hour contracts; and who hope to distract people from these things by endless scaremongering about immigrants.
Stand up, people. It is time to take our country back from Rupert Murdoch and his minions.
Vigil Media Update
The BBC did make the vigil their top story again in the late evening news. There was an interview with the Elected Mayor, Marvin Rees, and while he’s not LGBT+ himself he’s not white so at least we got a bit of diversity in that way.
Made In Bristol also led with the story on their evening news (thanks Ellie!). Their only interview was with Daryn, so decent representation there.
Radio Bristol were at the event doing live video streaming. You can watch the first hour of the event here (sorry, it doesn’t seem to be available outside of Facebook). Sadly they ran into battery problems after an hour, so they missed most of the LGBT+ speakers. Thanks for trying, Caz.
Bristol 24/7 has a report on the event. It looks like their reporter left after the choir performance and missed most of the LGBT+ speakers.
The Bristol Post has a number of reports of the event, including one that proves that some people will pick any excuse not to mourn dead LGBT+ people. They also included this photo of the BGEN contingent.
Photo by Emma Lidiard
Bristol Stands With Orlando
Photo by Colin Moody
We got an excellent crowd at the vigil in Bristol this evening. I’m pretty sure it was over 1000. In fact we got so many people that the event rather outgrew the organization. The sound system that we’d been able to get hold of simply wasn’t powerful enough to reach the whole crowd. That’s one of the problems of trying to arrange things in a tearing hurry.
What we did have was great civic support: from the mayors (elected and Lord), the police, the Church of England and local Muslim leaders. That’s both good and bad. It is good to know we have the support, but of course it meant that most of the early speeches were made by people who have no connection to the LGBT+ community. Daryn Carter, the Director of Bristol Pride, was the only community member in the first round of speeches.
The media also turned out in force. We were the top story on the early evening edition of Points West (that’s only on iPlayer until tomorrow evening). I’m expecting more coverage in the late evening news. I think ITV were there too, as were the community TV station, Made in Bristol. Luckily for you, none of this will cover my part. The media were only interested in the great and good, in white gay men, and in Muslim clerics. Their knew what narrative they wanted to push.
The fine people of Shout Out Radio were also there, and are planning to broadcast much of the material in their show on Thursday. You can listen to that online, and on a podcast after the show.
So what did I say? Fortunately it is all written down because I needed top give the sign language interpreter some idea of what I was going to say. I may have deviated slightly in the delivery, but this is more or less what I said:
The atrocity in Orlando is unusual because of the number of people killed in one go. But homophobic, biphobic and transphobic murders are not rare. Every year over 200 trans people are murdered just because of who they are. The majority of victims every year are Latina women. It is therefore particularly disturbing that the attack on the Pulse club should have taken place on Latin night. Our thoughts are with Latinx LGBT+ people everywhere.
Our thoughts are also with Muslim LGBT+ people who are facing an additional dose of hatred because of this incident.
But I want to talk about religion more generally. Over the past couple of days I have seen young trans people talking on social media about how they have been disowned by their families, and how religion has been used as an excuse for abandoning them. I have also heard Christian preachers in the USA calling for violence against trans women who dare to use public toilets. It doesn’t have to be like that.
Last week on my show on Ujima Radio I interviewed a Jewish Trans Man, Surat Shaan Knan, who heads a project called Twilight People that highlights the lives of trans people of faith. The project is funded by Liberal Judiaism as well as by the Heritage Lottery Fund. There are Muslim, Christian and Pagan trans people involved in the project as well as Jews.
Things have got better, of course. In the 1950s life was much more difficult for trans people than it is now. The pioneering trans people, Michael Dillon and Roberta Cowell, both have Bristol connections. Dillon lived here, and began his transition here, during the second world war. Cowell didn’t live here, but she did visit Bristol because she and Dillon had a friend in the city, a man of the cloth who saw in them people in special need of God’s love because of the difficulties they faced in their lives. That man was Arthur Russell Millbourn. He was Canon of Bristol Cathedral.
It is great to see Christian and Muslim church leaders here today. I hope that faith leaders all over Bristol will follow Canon Millbourn’s example and embrace the LGBT+ people within their communities.
God is love. It’s man that kills.
I had a number of things in mind when writing this. First I wanted to emphasize that Orlando was an attack, not just on LGBT+ people, but specifically an attack on Latinx LGBT+ people, a group that already bears an unfair proportion of the violence against our community. Second I wanted to acknowledge that, although the attack did not target Muslim LGBT+ people, they have suffered disproportionately because of it, in particular from many people who claim to be supporting the LGBT+ community.
Mostly, however, that speech was for two young trans friends of mine — one Muslim and one Jewish — whose tweets over the past two days have been particularly heartbreaking. I wanted to make it clear to the religious leaders in attendance that it is not enough to offer sympathy; it is not enough to open their doors only when a tragedy happens. They need to reach out to LGBT+ people and set and example to their congregations, many of whom are still full of hate for us.
It isn’t hard. All you have to do is open your heart to God’s love. She’s waiting for you.
Thanks are due to Alex Raikes, Daryn Carter, Leighton Deburca and Berkeley Wilde for their hard work in making the vigil happen. Thanks also to the lovely people of BGEN who brought the flowers and placards from their Bath vigil last night to pretty up our event. Special thanks to Des and Heather of BristolCon and their fabulously stylish friend for looking after my stuff while I was on stage, and to Lexi for looking after my trans flag.
FYI, you can see Bristol Cathedral through the trees to the right of the photo above. Nothing like centering your narrative in the landscape.
Orlando Vigils
The lovely folks from BEGN staged a vigil for Orlando in Bath last night. I couldn’t be there because of the Fringe event, but I will be at the Bristol vigil on College Green tonight. Full details are available from the Bristol Pride website, including the fact that I’m giving a speech. Don’t worry, it will be very short. The instructions say 2 minutes max. Putting my flash writing skills to work.
Yesterday on Ujima: Carers, Harassment, Flash, Trans & Faith
Yesterday’s show on Ujima began with a celebration of Carer’s Week. Caring for relatives or friends who are unable to look after themselves is an activity that falls disproportionately on women. With the current fashion for austerity politics, social service safety nets and support for carers are both being cut back. I talked to Jan from the Carer’s Support Service and Fadumo, one of her clients.
From 12:30 Frances and I took a look at some of the issues surrounding the recent campaigns to combat internet harassment. It is a sad commentary on how politics is done these days that the main political parties (Conservatives, Labour and LibDems) have to run their own campaign separate from that run by the minor parties (Women’s Equality Party, Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru), but that’s where we are.
Then again, I don’t think that the major parties would have done anything had WEP not come up with the idea. That makes it an example of how having WEP around forces the bigger parties to pay attention to women’s issues. Of course the big party campaign has Twitter, Facebook and Google as partners. That pretty much ensures that they won’t come up with any meaningful action, and of course the PR disaster of the Demos report they used has pretty much derailed their campaign.
Anyway, congratulations to the LibDems who have decided to back both horses and who on Monday are putting forward some amendments to the Policing and Crime Bill that will specifically tackle the issue of revenge porn. See here for how you can pester your MP to support this.
Ultimately, of course, what we need is a change in social attitudes, and that can only come about through education. Later in the year I will be doing a more in-depth show focusing on the campaign for compulsory personal, social, health and economic education in UK schools. That’s something that even Teresa May supports, so how lefty and progressive can it possibly be?
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
At 13:00 I was joined by Kevlin Henney and Freya J. Morris to preview this year’s National Flash Fiction Day. Both of them had brought stories to read.
Finally from 13:30 I was joined by Surat Shaan Knan of Liberal Judaism. Shaan is a good friend of mine and the person behind the Twilight People project. Obviously we talked about trans people and faith. Many thanks to Shaan for coming all the way from London to be on the show.
You can listen to the second hour of the show here.
The playlist for the show starts with a Muhammad Ali tribute and then goes into a funk festival:
- R Kelly – The Greatest
- James Brown – Make it Funky
- Patti LaBelle – Lady Marmalade
- AWB – Pick up the Pieces
- Parliament – Children of Productions
- Prince – Alphabet Street
- Janelle Monáe – Dorothy Dandridge Eyes
- Chic – I Want Your Love
Because of Finncon I won’t be on air again until mid-July, but hey, that is a good excuse.
Music for Wednesday
That’s R Kelly with a the song from the soundtrack to the 2001 movie Ali (starring Will Smith, obviously). I’m astonished at how many of the songs about Ali are by white people. Even the chart-topping “Black Superman”, which Ali allegedly hated, was written by a white guy for all of its reggae rhythms. I’m glad I found something I can use.
I have this weird vision of Ali and Spartacus sitting down together to have a little chat and see who really was the greatest. I expect that Ali will win, because while he might have been a brilliant fighter he didn’t believe in killing people.
How to do Toilets?
Yesterday I took myself off to Wales for a trip to the Hay Festival. While I was there I had need to do what our TERFy* pals describe as an act of rape — I used the ladies’ toilets. They were, of course, single stall with a full-height lockable door. But they came in little portacabins with two or three stalls and a washroom area each. One of the ones I found also had this:
I know what you are thinking here. Clearly someone knew I was coming. Except that if you have been paying attention over the past 10 years or so you will know that my trying to use one of these those things would be pure comedy gold. My friend Kate Adair was also at the festival. She’s a talented video maker and has a job operating one of the festival cameras. With regard to the “what’s in your pants?” question, she recently explained all most eloquently, for the BBC, no less.
So no, I don’t think those urinals for for trans women. What appears to have happened is that Hay had rather more boy loos than it thought it needed, and not enough girl loos, so it re-purposed a cabin that had both stalls and urinals to be cabins only. Those urinals were cordoned off, and the sign was presumably to deter any gentlemen who might ignore that cordon.
It makes for a great photo, though.
* Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, for anyone still wondering.
Sophie Walker in Bath
The other event in Bath this evening was a visit from Sophie Walker, the leader of the Women’s Equality Party (and recent candidate for Mayor of London). I may have more to say about this tomorrow when I have a bit more time and can talk in detail about how WEP works as a party. For now all I want to say is that Olly and I were impressed. (We had sent Ceri home because she’s sick.)
The bottom line is that WEP knows it has to appeal to a broad audience to succeed. It can’t be a major force in UK politics if it only appeals to cis straight white able-bodied middle class women. Olly and I talked to Sophie and Halla, her chief policy advisor, about trans issues, and it is clear that they are on board. What they need to do, and presumably need help with, is to reassure the many rank and file members, and prospective members, who have been taken in by the appalling lies spread by Sarah Ditum and her ilk. That, I am sure, can be done.
In the meantime there is lots of important work to be done, particularly with respect to the e-Quality campaign. I spent part of the evening plotting with Jess from the Bristol branch. Expect a special radio show later this year.
I should note that no political party is perfect. WEP’s policy on sex work is, IMHO, absolutely wrong. But Sophie knows this is a contentious issue. As with the trans thing, there is education to be done. Unlike the trans thing, I’m not best placed to do it. (Looking at you, Brooke.)
Oh, and there was talk of a WEP football team. Not involving me, I hasten to add.
WEP’s e-Quality Campaign
I have email from the Women’s Equality Party. Tomorrow they are launching a new campaign called e-Quality. It is aimed at tackling the issue of harassment and bullying of women online which, unless you have been living in a cave for the past few years, you will know has become a major issue.
It’s not just fanboy tantrums over girl gamers or the all-women Ghostbusters movie we are talking about here. As this Telegraph article points out, girls as young as 11 are becoming victims of revenge porn attacks. Any woman who pokes her nose above the parapet is deemed fair game. I have no idea how people like Brianna Wu and Laurie Penny cope with the level of shit directed at them on a daily basis.
Wisely, in my view (and I’ve been saying this on the radio show for some time), WEP is making a core part of its platform a demand for compulsory sex and relationship education in schools. This is something that was proposed earlier this year, with the backing of both the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, and the Home Secretary, Theresa May, but was vetoed by the Prime Minister. The work that groups like TIGER do in Bristol is invaluable, but right now schools can just ignore such issues and let me media do all of that side of kids’ education.
Personally I think that the campaign should also target social media companies, particularly Facebook. It is becoming increasingly obvious that their “community standards” are being enforced by people who are misogynistic and transphobic. That may not be company policy, but it happens and you have to create a huge stink to get anything done about it.
While this is a specifically UK campaign, it isn’t a UK-only issue. This morning I saw an article from another SF-writing journalist, Kate Heartfield from Canada. She too was wrestling with the issue of the need to tackle certain issues as women, not as members of a political party, a position that WEP has to spend a lot of time defending.
There will be an online thing happening tomorrow morning with the hashtag #CtrlAltDelete. I shall be interested to see how that goes, and how much trolling it attracts. As Sophie Walker, the WEP party leader, will be in Bath on Wednesday evening, I should be able to get an up-to-date report on how things went.
Today On Ujima: Judy Darley, No More Taboo, Predatory Peacekeepers and Mike Carey
Well that’s a fair old mix of a show.
I started off with local writer, Judy Darley, who is running a literary fundraiser for St. Mungo’s, a charity that works with homeless people. The event is going to be in St. John on the Wall, a fabulous 13th Century church built into the old city walls. Pete Sutton is having his book launch there later in June, though I’ll miss that due to Finncon.
The second half hour saw a welcome return for Chloe Tingle who runs No More Taboo, a non-profit which promotes the use of cheap and recyclable sanitary products. The main project they are raising money for is in Nepal where, unbelievably, women who are having their periods are still shunned socially and required to stay out of the family home until they are “clean” again. You can find the crowdfunding campaign here.
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
My planned 3rd quarter guest had to cancel, so I took the opportunity of spending a few minutes talking about the Predatory Peacekeepers campaign. This is attempting to hold the UN, and the French government, to account for sex abuse carried out by “peacekeepers” in the Central African Republic. The petition I mention on the show can be found here.
Rant over, I went straight into my final guest interview of the day, which was with Mike Carey. He’s in town promoting his latest (and very good) novel, Fellside. Mike and I will be discussing the book at the Bristol Waterstones tonight. We managed to find the time to discuss the state of the Girl with All the Gifts movie (which will be out in September) and our love for the X-Men as well.
You can listen to the second hour of the show here.
The playlist for today’s show was:
- Papa Wemba – Show me the way
- Billy Paul – Me & Mrs Jones
- The Specials – A Message to you, Rudy
- The Selecter & Prince Buster – Madness
- Madness – Night Boat to Cairo
- The Beat – Mirror in the Bathroom
- The Bodysnatchers – Lets Do Rock Steady
- The Specials – Ghost Town
How To Do Government
Not a lot I can add to that, save to thank Brianna Wu for the image.
Bath, Fairies and Feminism
Today I was up early and off to Bath to catch some of the participants in Emma Newman’s Split Worlds Ball before they were too busy. It is an absolutely amazing event that Emma and her friends are staging. How they are going to manage a LARP with over 80 participants is a mystery to me.
Still, I know a few of the participants, so I will hopefully get reports back of how it went. Always assuming they survive the evening. You never can tell where the fae are concerned. I should have some audio, and a few pictures, but you know what fairies are like with electronic stuff.
Over lunch I headed off to Victoria Park for the joint BGEN/WEP intersectionality picnic. Quite a few more WEP members turned up this time, and BGEN was out in force as usual. Everyone seemed to get on very well, and the older ladies from the WEP appeared very keen to learn from us. Weirdly I found myself explaining what things like “no homo” and “friend zone” mean. I guess I’m not as out of touch as I think.
There was a great deal of excitement about how well Sophie Walker did in the London mayoral elections. Obviously no one expected her to win, but getting 2% of the vote is a substantial achievement for a party that is barely a year old. Next up, get more votes than UKIP.
That done, several of us trooped back into town to visit Mr. B’s and to do Free Comic Book Day. And then Olly and I trotted back to the Guildhall to catch some of the fairies. Olly, as well as being a genius radio comedy writer, is also a champion cosplayer. We had a great conversation about the difference between comic conventions and Worldcon and I got to show some of my old masquerade pictures.
I am now back home and not really fit enough for much except dinner and TV. If I had a bath I would be in it. Not complaining though, it is lovely to have warm weather at last. I think it might be safe to turn the heating off.
The WEP and Me
Yesterday I headed into Bath. Part of that was to do some shopping. I had a copy of the new Johanna Sinisalo book, The Core of the Sun, to pick up from Mr. B’s. I’m very much looking forward to that one. I also discovered the Saturday market that they have in the old Green Park Station building (Green Park was the northern terminus of the Somerset & Dorset Railway, or the Slow & Dirty, as it was known in these here parts). There I found Somerset Charcuterie, who do some very nice salamis. I picked up packets of the Garlic & Black Pepper, and the Red Wine & Blue Cheese flavors, both of which are very nice.
The main point of the day, however, was to attend a meeting of the Women’s Equality Party. There has been some concern that the WEP might end up a White Feminist party. I was encouraged by the interview I did with Jess from the Bristol branch on Ujima a few weeks ago. However, the Facebook page of the Bath branch has seen a lot of TERF presence. There was some concern that these people might actually be members of the Bath group, as opposed to trolls. So I went along to a party meeting to see what these people were like.
I am pleased to report that I was made very welcome. I’m pretty sure that most WEP members are reasonable people who do want equality. I note also that Sophie Walker, the party leader, has stood up to TERFs in online discussions. And the leaflets they had at the meeting clearly said that the party welcomes member of all genders. No doubt the mob at the New Statesman will be doing whatever they can to change this, but for now the WEP appears to be shaping up quite well.
Students Are Awesome
These days if you read about British students in the mainstream press it is almost always in the context that they are a bunch of Fascist prudes hell-bent on preventing anyone saying anything about anything. That, of course, is because they have taken a dim view of the transphobic ranting of the likes of Greer and Bindel. I, am pleased to say, have not been “no platformed” by any students. Indeed, I was invited to speak at Kingston University last week.
The panel was about gender, and my co-panelists were Sabah Choudrey and Soof Andry. Yep, that’s two Muslims and me. And very splendid it was too. We had a very constructive discussion, and were well looked after (and fed) by the LGBT+ Society. Thanks are due to Jamie, Adam and the rest of the crew for doing such a great job.
Thanks are also due to Noorulann Shahid who arranged the whole gig but was unable to attend due to having to be at NUS Connference making history. First up, Conference elected Malia Bouattia, a Muslim woman, as President. Naturally all of the mainstream media are yelling “OUTRAGE!!!”, and while I recognize that Jewish students may have legitimate concerns I have little doubt where all of the journalistic outrage comes from.
In addition, Conference voted to create a full-time paid post of a Trans Officer. Back when I attended Conference just stating that you were trans would probably have got you thrown out, so this is a huge step forward. My congratulations to Noorulann, Jamie Cross and all of the other activists who have fought so hard for this.
SNP Commits to Non-Binary Recognition
This is not an April Fool. The Scottish National Party has promised new gender recognition laws in Scotland, which will include recognition for a third gender, if they are returned to power in the forthcoming elections in May.
This is, of course, Scottish law that we are talking about. They won’t be able to issue new UK passports, though if Scotland were to leave the Union at some future date an X on passports is certainly a possibility. However, the SNP is also the third largest party in Westminster with 54 of the 640 seats. I believe that the Liberal Democrats, who have 8 seats, are also in favor of non-binary recognition, which would mean almost 10% of Parliament supporting the cause. Clearly some of the Conservative and Labour MPs who sat on the Transgender Equality Inquiry support it too. Having the Scottish government officially recognize non-binary genders would be send a very powerful signal to Westminster.
The press in Scotland seems a bit confused. The Scotsman hails this as a “gay rights package”. Most people seems to be quoting the fabulous James Morton of Scottish Trans. Of course they are also quoting the Wee Frees. The Moderator, Rev David Robertson, has apparently accused the SNP of “working on the unproven and somewhat bizarre notion that children get to choose their own gender and sexuality.” What, you mean instead of having such things imposed upon them by adults? How bizarre!
The English press appears to have largely missed the boat (the story broke late last night). The Telegraph is on the ball and leads with the possibility that the new Scottish law will allow trans people to change their birth certificates (and therefore their legal gender) without medical approval. I’m not certain whether the Scottish Parliament can do that, but if they can it would be a major shot across Westminster’s bows because it would apply to anyone born in Scotland, regardless of where they live. (The USA has a similar issue in that all states, even North Carolina, have to accept birth certificates changed by other states.)
Anyway, I look forward to the anguished article in the New Statesman explaining how this is “child abuse” and expressing full support for the Wee Frees.
If you are a UK citizen and would like to remind Westminster of the important of non-binary gender recognition, the current petition can be found here.