Feminism

Bath Does Diversity

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

Yes, yes, I know. Diversity in Bath generally means something like whether you would allow people to have Merlot with Sunday lunch rather than the more traditional Claret. However, yesterday the Bath Children’s Literature Festival ran a “Daily Telegraph Debate” on the subject of diversity in children’s books. “What could possibly go wrong?” I wondered. I was also pleasantly surprised.

Although the event was billed as a “debate” it turned out to be anything but, at least to begin with, because all of the members of the panel were convinced of the need for more diversity in books for children. We live in a very multi-cultural society, and it is just plain daft that the majority of books published for kids cater to middle class white children from wholly cisgender, hetero-normative backgrounds. The situation is even more stark in the USA. A recent Nielsen survey has revealed that only half of child readers under the age of nine are white.

The panel was made of of Lorna Bradbury (Daily Telegraph book reviews editor, Chair), Liz Kessler (author, also lesbian person), Shannon Cullen (Random Penguin, Kiwi) and Bali Rai (author, also non-white person). Basically Lorna asked the questions, Shannon tried hard to convince is that that the publishing industry was doing all it could, Liz was kind and conciliatory, and Bali did the Angry Brown Person thing. Bali was awesome.

There were some slight mis-steps, most notably when Bali appeared to give the impression that sexuality was a choice. When called on it he immediately realized his mistake and apologized for his poor use of words. Aside from that you might have come away with the impression that all was rosy and multi-cultural in KidLit land. Certainly the Bath Chronicle did.

It wasn’t until we got to audience questions that we actually got some debate, and mostly that centered around what doing diversity actually means. If you have read my essay on writing trans characters over at Strange Horizons you’ll be aware that there can be a great deal of difference between writing a trans character and writing a trans character that trans people are actually likely to identify with. That sort of problem doesn’t just happen with trans folk. It can happen with just about any “minority” group if the books being written are all written by, and intended to appeal to, middle class white folks.

Where I got involved was when the panel started talking about “universal stories”, because so often that is a code term for “stories that white people can relate to”. Of course things like falling in love, having parents die, and so on can happen to anyone, but the way we tell those stories can be very different. Someone mentioned that if you have a story about aliens visiting Earth, why couldn’t they drop in on a Somali family rather than a white one? Well, there’s Lagoon, a book that I dearly love. It is a book about an alien invasion that happens, not in New York or London, but in Lagos. Nnedi has made no compromises in writing it. It is a book full of Nigerian people and full of issues of interest to Nigerian people. I’m delighted, and somewhat surprised, that it got published in the UK and USA. It is not what most people would think of when they talk about “universal stories”.

Bali made a very similar point when he noted that he’d been taken to task by white editors over the language his characters use. He knows far better than they do how kids of South Asian ancestry living in Leicester actually speak.

Of course it isn’t easy making diversity happen. We are very lucky to have people like Shannon championing the diversity cause within publishers, but she can’t just publish what she wants. She has to work withing the constraints of the industry. Go back and listen to Kristine Kathryn Rusch in the Coode Street podcast I linked to yesterday for an industry insider’s view of how changes in the structure of the book industry have resulted in an obsessive focus on best-sellers.

As a publisher myself, and as someone with a lot of friends in the business, I know a bit about how things work. When you ask publishers why they don’t publish more of a particular type of book they’ll probably note that they don’t get enough submissions of that type from agents, and that they have trouble placing such books with the major bookstore chains. Let’s look at both of those issues.

Yes, publishers could go out and look for the books they want, but they use agents for a reason: it saves them lots of time and effort. Agents, of course, may have fixed and erroneous ideas of what publishers actually want. And they may not have the right clients. Bali made the point that most of the non-white writers he knows are self-publishing rather than going through the traditional publishing route because they assume that the overwhelmingly white publishing industry won’t be interested in their books. Shannon was impressively voluble on the subject of helping writers who are not from white, middle class backgrounds to navigate the gatekeeping process so that people like her get to see the sort of books they want to publish.

At the other end of the process, failing to impress the buyer from Waterstones or Barnes & Noble can be the kiss of death for a book. That’s less of a problem if you are Random Penguin and can offer to throw a fortune at marketing a book, but a real issue for smaller publishers. The bookstores, on the other hand, will say it isn’t their fault. They know what sells and what doesn’t, and they have to make a living just like anyone else. If the only people coming into their shops are middle class white people, they will only stock books aimed at middle class white people.

Now of course the reason other people don’t go into bookstores might just be that the shops only stock books aimed at middle class white folks. However, some of those middle class white people claim to be pro-diversity. Here’s Lavie Tidhar:

He has a point. It is all very well campaigning for more diverse books on Twitter, but you have to buy them too. Six weeks ago I re-issued Colin Harvey’s novel, Damage Time. The lead characters are a Muslim man and an intersex woman. Colin could have done things a bit better, but how many books do you know of with intersex characters who are key to the plot and have agency. I wrote a blog post about why I was republishing the book. Want to guess how many people bought the book on the strength of that?

Zero.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch on Coode Street

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

As everyone knows, no women wrote, or even read, science fiction before 2014. Indeed, historians disagree as to whether women even existed prior to the 21st century. Maverick historians like Amanda Foreman have advanced the theory that the human race would not exist if there were no women around to have children, but for those most part this idea is given no more credence than similarly far out concepts such as evolution and “round Earth” theory.

Nevertheless, people like Foreman keep coming up with these crazy ideas. Recently the Coode Street Podcast interviewed Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who is utterly convinced that women not only read science fiction in the 20th century, but actually wrote it as well. You may think that this is controversial, but Ms. Rusch does have a fairly convincing argument. Failing all else she does a really good rant. I recommend it.

I’ll probably write more about this later. I think I want to listen to it again and take notes. I’ll probably also be dropping Ms. Rusch an email. In the meantime you might want to check out her new website which is devoted to her Women in Science Fiction project.

The Ascent of Woman, Part 4

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

So there was another episode of Dr. Amanda Foreman’s wonderful documentary series This one took us up to the present day, and focused on revolutionary movements. It also took us back to Africa, which I was very pleased about.

Foreman started off with the French Revolution and the pioneering feminist, Olympe De Gouges. Sadly it turns out that Napoleon was a right misogynist, and between him and the Jacobins women ended up worse off after the Revolution than before it. And that despite them playing a key part in the Revolution via the March on Versailles.

Women also played a key part in the Russian Revolution, and for a few glorious years under Lenin Alexandra Kollontai made Russia a world leader in women’s rights. Sadly the men gradually took back control, and Stalin was having none of that feminism nonsense. Foreman got to interview Pussy Riot, which was interesting.

Meanwhile in the USA Margaret Sanger was pioneering the concept of birth control, and managed to find a wealthy backer to finance the development of the contraceptive pill. Apparently in the bad old days of the early 20th century the US Postal Service regarded mention of contraception to be “pornography”, so mailing leaflets about it was a felony.

Eventually we arrived in Africa and an interview with Lindiwe Mazibuko who was once Leader of the Opposition in South Africa, and another with Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka who heads up women’s issues at the UN. We had some very brief mention of South America thanks to the liberation movements there, but it was very superficial. It is such a shame that they only had budget for four programs.

The overall thesis of the program was that we are moving into a time where social revolution will be driven by women, and will take place through education rather than bloodshed. It is a lovely idea, though I am not entirely sure I believe it. There are other things going on in the world that worry me deeply. At one point Foreman noted, “When a country is in crisis one of the first things to go are women’s rights”. There are plenty of countries in crisis right now, and more being added all the time.

Then again, she also said, “True revolution comes not from the death of millions, but from the death of prejudice”. That’s such a cool sound bite that if I was her I’d already be asking for it to be on my tombstone.

Foreman did a Q&A on Twitter after the show, which is storified here thanks to Gabrielle Laine Peters. The main point of interest is that she’s working on a book, which I will pounce on the minute it comes out.

I have all four programs recorded on my Sky Box. I might just watch them all again if I can find the time.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to persuade Dr. Foreman to do an interview for Women’s Outlook.

The Ascent of Woman – Part 3

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The third and, it seems, final part of The Ascent of Woman was broadcast last night. This one looked at more recent times, but continued the international flavor. There were six women featured in all, some of which were very familiar to me and others who were not.

First up was Empress Theodora of Byzantium, whom you all should know as she has been the subject of fine novels by Guy Gavriel Kay and Stella Duffy.

Then there was Hildegard of Bingen, who among other things was the first person in the world to write down musical compositions. The section in which Amanda Foreman chats to a German nun about Hildegard’s writings on the female orgasm is priceless.

Christine de Pizan is another character who should be well know as she is widely cited as the author of the first work of feminist philosophy. Her two books on The City of Ladies were apparently very popular with women politicians of the time.

Given that this was a BBC series, we had to have one British woman in it. The honor went to Queen Elizabeth I, and was accompanied by some rather jingoistic nonsense (not from Foreman) about the primacy of Shakespearean English in world literature.

After that it was off around the world again, and two women who were much less familiar to me. The first was Roxelanna, the chief wife of Suleiman the Magnificent. She is believed to have been a Russian rather than a Turk, and she played a very powerful role in the governance of the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman was no mug, of course, but together they made an exceptionally capable couple.

The final slot went to Nur Juhan who was the chief wife of the Mughal emperor, Jahangir. I knew next to nothing about her before the program, but like Roxelanna and Theodora she appears to have been an exceptionally capable politician and indispensable to her husband’s rule.

Overall I was really pleased with the series. It did turn out to be mostly a story of specific women rather than a history of womankind, but I loved the international focus that it had. I’m disappointed that it didn’t cover the Americas and Africa (save for a brief mention of Hatshepsut), and I’m sure than Foreman could have filled an entire season had she been given the budget. But it is a start, and judging from my Twitter feed something that has captured the imagination of women viewers.

I’d say “more please”, except that we actually have more, just not from the same person. There’s another post coming.

Today On Ujima – Feminism and Fringe

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Yeah, I have been back on the radio again. Paulette is still in Jamaica so I was allowed to put the whole show together myself. What I wasn’t expecting was that I’d end up learning to be an engineer on the job. I’ve had a bit of training on the desk before, but this is the first time I have actually done it live myself. There were a few very minor gaps in the flow where I had a panic as to which button to push, but mostly it was very smooth. Huge thanks are due to my colleague, Jack, who was keeping an eye on me and pointing out when I had forgotten something.

Anyway, the show began with discussion of the current furor in the UK over the election of Jeremy Corbyn to be leader of the Labour Party. As I said on the show, I’m not a Socialist, but the behavior of the mainstream media, the right wing of the Labour Party, and even the Prime Minister has been so childish that you can’t help but have sympathy and respect for Corbyn. I’m not surprised that there has been a flood of people joining Labour since he was elected. My colleagues, Judeline and Jack, offered their opinions.

Next up I talked a bit about the Ascent of Woman documentary series that is airing on BBC 2 at the moment. I’ve talked a lot about it here already, so I won’t go into that again.

After the news we were joined by Tom Parker and Jasmine Atkins-Smart of the Tobacco Tea Theatre Company. You may remember Tom from his appearance at BristolCon Fringe. The they have been up in Edinburgh performing in a play called The Accidental Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in which Tom played Doctor Watson and Jasmine played Sherlock. We chatted a bit about what it was like being at Fringe as performers, about the theatre scene in Bristol, and about Sherlock as a cultural phenomenon.

Next up we were supposed to have Cezara Nanu of Bristol Women’s Voice talking about modern slavery. Sadly she had caught a chill, probably from running the Bristol Half Marathon on Sunday (where she was raising money for refugees) so we gave the actors a little longer and then covered the slavery issue as well as we could by ourselves. Judeline and Jack had done some great research.

Finally we touched on an issue that arose out of the media panic over Mr Corbyn, the idea of women-only railway carriages. That naturally broadened out into the topic of safe spaces in general. I chipped in with the issue as to whether trans women were allowed in women’s spaces, and put poor Jack on the spot as our representative of men.

If you want to listen to the show you can find the first hour here and the second hour here.

The playlist for the show was as follows:

  • Tracy Chapman – Talking ’bout a revolution
  • Bob Marley – Revolution
  • Elvis Costello – Watching the Detectives
  • Isaac Hayes – Shaft
  • Mavis Staples – Eyes on the Prize
  • Nina Simone – Young, Gifted and Black
  • Duke Ellington – Take the A Train
  • John Coltrane – Blue Train

The Ascent of Woman, Episode 2

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The latest episode of Amanda Foreman’s Ascent of Woman series focused on Asia. It began with a celebration of the Trung Sisters, two Vietnamese women who rebelled against the conquering forces of Han China. The sisters were not just heroes of Vietnamese nationalism, they were heroes of feminism, because women were allowed to hold positions of power in traditional Vietnamese culture, but not in China.

It was, apparently, all the fault on Confucius, who was very fond of saying the women are inferior to men. Later Confucian scholars even manage to subvert the traditional symbolism of ying and yang, claiming that the masculine yang was more powerful than, and superior to, the feminine ying. Confucius does not come out of the program very well.

Fortunately for Chinese women there was always the option of Buddhism. Empress Wu, the notorious but highly capable Chinese ruler during the Tang period made extensive use of Buddhism in her struggle against the patriarchal Confucians.

The high point of the program was the point where Foreman visits Japan and gets to see what is believed to be the actual inkwell with which Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji, the first novel ever written, over 1000 years ago. Foreman was visibly moved by the experience. Quite right, I would have been too. Here it is.

Murasaki's inkwell

Harking back to yesterday’s discussion of translations, doubtless F R Leavis would have condemned Murasaki’s work for failing to convey a sense of Englishness. Well sod that. I particularly liked the Japanese author and nun that Foreman interviewed who claimed that Genji was a feminist work because in it the male hero, Genji, has relationships with many women and none of them are made happy as a result.

The final segment of the program focused on the practice of foot binding which was once commonplace in China and survived right into the 20th century. Unsurprisingly, this was the aspect of the program that the newspapers chose to focus on when reviewing it. Stories of mothers doing unspeakable things to their daughters for the sake of fashion appeal so much more to the tabloids than tales of women like Murasaki doing amazing things. Also it allows British readers to feel smugly superior to the barbaric foreigners. But, as Foreman said to me on Twitter, it got the series talked about, and if that meant a whole lot more people watching it that was a good thing.

I have no idea whether you can watch the series outside of the UK, but it is available on iPlayer and TunnelBear is your friend.

The Ascent of Woman

~ Cheryl

The BBC has started a new, four-part documentary series called The Ascent of Woman. The title is, of course, a reference to the legendary 1973 series on the history of science, The Ascent of Man, fronted by Dr Jacob Bronowski. This series, fronted by Dr. Amanda Foreman, is more of a cultural history, specifically about the role of women in society.

It is, fairly obviously, a feminist history. One of Foreman’s objectives is to highlight great women of history. She’s also trying to explain why women have been so badly thought of, particularly in Christian and Islamic society. I was pleased to see her finger Aristotle, who really does have a lot to answer for. An expert on ancient Greek culture that she talked to in the first program said that the position of women in Athenian society, that supposed bastion of democracy, was analogous to that in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

From our point of view, however, a particularly interesting point made by Foreman regards the origin of literature. There are lots of ways in which women have set firsts in the arts. Mary Shelley is widely regarded as having written the first science fiction novel. The honor of being the world’s first novel appears to belong to the Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th Century. It is also worth noting that the first written musical compositions were produced by Hildegard of Bingen. But who was the world’s first author?

Obviously we don’t know. People will have been telling stories around camp fires since before the dawn of civilization. However, we do know the name of the first person to sign their name to a literary work. She was Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon the Great who ruled over the Sumerian Empire in the 23rd Century BCE. She was also High Priestess of the Moon, and the most important religious leader in the country. Enheduanna wrote a considerable amount of religious poetry, mostly in praise of the goddess Inanna (Ishtar).

So there we have it. Women writers, they have been at it for more than four millennia. Perhaps it is time for people to notice that we exist.

Reinforcing the Binary

~ Cheryl

One of the things that really annoys me about the way that trans women are treated is the way that we are constantly called out for “reinforcing the binary”. I think we can all agree that having rigid gender stereotypes that force everyone into strict and distinct roles as either Real Men or Real Women is a bad thing. However, the way this discussion is framed is very different in the case of trans women than it is for everyone else.

I should note here that I’m not too upset about non-binary people who accuse trans women of reinforcing the binary. The trans community is very diverse, and in every sub-group there are those who insist that everyone else is “doing trans wrong”. This is more about bolstering their own self-confidence than anything else. There are groups of binary-identified trans women who say awful things about non-binary people too. I try hard to let everyone be trans in the way that is most comfortable for them. I mean, why exchange one set of enforced stereotypes for another?

No, the people I am talking about call themselves “feminists”, though in my book one of the last things that feminism should be about is policing other women’s behavior. They are generally academics, probably into gender studies or something similar, and they may well have spent far too much time misunderstanding Judith Butler. For them, everything that trans women do is wrong.

Wear pretty clothes? Reinforcing the binary. Wear makeup? Reinforcing the binary. Wear our hair long? Reinforcing the binary. Read romance novels? Reinforcing the binary. Are attracted to men? Reinforcing the binary. Go on a diet? Reinforcing the binary. Have any sort of cosmetic surgery? Reinforcing the binary. Enjoy crafts such as embroidery or knitting? Reinforcing the binary. Cry? Reinforcing the binary. The list is seemingly endless.

And let’s not even think about anything to do with children, because that would be all, “Urgh! Paedo!!!” Right?

Such discussions are generally accompanied by talk about how trans women seek to “pass” as female, couched in similar terms to the way a black rights activist might talk about a neighbour who tries to “pass” as white. In other words, it is a deception, a bad thing.

Trans women are, of course, under tremendous pressure to “pass” as female. The doctors and psychiatrists (most of whom are men) on whom we rely for treatment tend to withhold it if they think we fail to conform to their idea of how women should look and behave. Well-meaning friends and family are forever nit-picking our supposed performance because they are convinced that we can’t possibly have any idea how to be women, even when we are a damn sight more fashionable and stylish than they are. And of course if you are out in public and look visibly trans then your chances of getting beaten up or even killed are massively higher than if you look gender-normative. For trans people, and particularly trans women, “passing” is a matter of personal safety.

Women who are assigned female at birth generally don’t get called out in the same way. They might attract attention if they dress like Barbara Cartland, or if they drone on about how women should stay at home and have kids rather than get jobs. But for the most part they are allowed to do feminine things because their femininity is deemed innate and natural, whereas ours is deemed fake.

Trans men don’t get called out for reinforcing the binary very often either. They can grow beards, watch sports, drink beer, work out and do all of those supposed manly man things without attracting anywhere near the same level of opprobrium. It is past time that many feminists took a good long look at how they accept default male behavior as “normal” but decry default female behavior as “fake”. It is not for nothing that Julia Serano invented the term, transmisogyny, to denote the particular hatred of trans women that happens precisely because our behaviour is deemed feminine.

What comes across very clearly in all of these denunciations is that these “feminists” believe that trans women have no right to behave in a feminine manner because we are not “really” women, we are just men who are playing a role. They don’t want us to “pass” because they don’t want us to, in their eyes, get away with having other people think that we are women. When I hear “feminists” denounce trans women for “reinforcing the binary”, this is what I hear them actually saying:

“We don’t want you deceiving people, we want you to look like the men you really are.”

Well you know what they can do with that attitude, don’t you.

“One problem with that view of social construction is that it suggests that what trans people feel about what their gender is, and should be, is itself “constructed” and, therefore, not real. And then the feminist police comes along to expose the construction and dispute a trans person’s sense of their lived reality. I oppose this use of social construction absolutely, and consider it to be a false, misleading, and oppressive use of the theory.” — Judith Butler.

Women and Hugos Update

~ Cheryl

I got a comment from Nicola Griffith on yesterday’s post, and I want to make sure that you all see it as it is very interesting. This is the meat what she said:

Catastrophic drop-offs happened in lots of genres, I suspect. I haven’t pulled the data together yet properly but a glance at Edgar info from the 20th C shows a similar–though I wouldn’t swear to the exact timing–effect. (I haven’t even begun to ask questions such as: “Who/how many joined crime fiction organisations?”)

Obviously there’s a lot of work to be done yet to tease out what is going on, but having drop-offs in the number of women winning awards in multiple genres at the same time points to an external explanation to what is going on. Yes, that lets me off the hook, but you have to wonder what the heck is going on. Is it a cultural rise in misogyny? Is it publishers reacting to bad economic conditions by publishing fewer women?

The one thing that is certain is that the work Nicola and her colleagues are doing looks like being invaluable. Hooray for them!

Women and Hugos – Mea Culpa

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

Nicola Griffith is continuing to mine data about women and literary awards, now with the help of a bunch of eager volunteers. She has a new post up on Charlie Stross’s blog, and it includes the following fascinating chart made by someone called Eric.

Women and Hugos chart

The chart is using female membership of SFWA as a proxy for the number of women writing SF&F. It is not perfect but I’m happy with the assumption.

What we can see here is that from the foundation of SFWA through to around 1995 the proportion of women getting Hugo nominations tracked fairly well with the proportion of women actually writing. From around 1995 to 2006 there is a catastrophic drop-off in the number of award nominations, after which things pick up again.

One interesting thing to me in all this is that 1995 to 2006 is the period in which I was publishing Emerald City. So, by the standards of proof used by tabloid newspapers, clearly the decline in the number of female Hugo finalists is all my fault.

Or maybe not. Correlation does not imply causality and all that.

Rather more interesting is there seems to be a ceiling beyond which women are not allowed to go. If we get over 30% of the finalist slots there’s a backlash. The effects of Puppygate are not shown on the chart, but I’m sure you can all envisage what they will be.

The good news is that our ceiling appears to be considerably higher than the 17% reported by the Geena Davis Institute in its famous study of women in movies. Even so, a ceiling is a worrying thing, and I’m now eager to dig further into the results for the 1995 to 2006 period to see if there are any obvious drivers (other than me) for the collapse. I’m asking myself questions such as, Is the same pattern seen in the Nebulas? and, Is there a corresponding rise in women in the fantasy novel category of the Locus Awards?

Not that I have time to do any digging right now. Is someone else does it, I shall be very grateful.

A Little Feminist Ranting

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

My latest column for Bristol 24/7 is now online. It is basically a response to a (female) conservative MP implying that trying to get more women on the City Council would mean that they would not be getting elected on merit. As if the current system where almost everything in the country seems to be run by white men is somehow fair and just. Meritocracy my arse. But I’m not allowed to use that as a title in a newspaper.

The article also contains a few thoughts on the statistical probability of the books on Waterstones’ SF promotions tables being fairly chosen.

Today on Ujima – Fashion and Feminism

~ Cheryl

First up on today’s Women’s Outlook show was fashion designer, Kieran Mceleny. He’s just 19, but he staged his first fashion show aged just 16, and established his own label a year later. That’s pretty darn impressive, if you ask me.

If that wasn’t enough, Kieran also models some of his own clothes, even if they are intended for women. He’s trained as a dancer, and has the effortless grace and control of poise that you’d expect from someone with those skills. He identifies as a gay male transvestite, and we had a little chat about labels within the vast and complicated trans umbrella.

Unfortunately there was a mixup with the arrangements for our second guest, Christina Zaba. My deepest apologies to her for that. Thankfully we have been able to reschedule her for two weeks time. Also thanks to Kieran who agreed to stay on and chat for another half hour.

By the way, Kieran has a crowdfunding campaign going to allow him to hire a venue for a Christmas fashion show. As he lives fairly locally to me, I’m hoping it will happen.

Also, for all you drag queens out there, one of the things Kieran does is make totally over the top dresses for ladies like you. He does understand your requirements.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

For the second half of the show I was joined by Sian Webb of Bristol Women’s Voice. We talked initially about the fact that Bristol does poorly compared to the rest of the UK on the issue of the gender pay gap. Sadly one of the likely explanations for this is the city’s concentration on engineering and IT, both of which professions are somewhat hostile to women. Of course it is a very complicated issue. We also talked a but about Italy, which does much better than the UK, but probably only because it has far fewer women in employment.

In the final half hour Sian was joined by Bristol’s Assistant Mayor, Daniella Radice, and we talked about the campaign to get more women elected to Bristol City Council, which you may recall me tweeting about last Wednesday when I attended the official launch. I have an article about that due up on Bristol 24/7 any day now. I’ll point you at it when it goes live.

The playlist for today’s show was as follows:

  • Love Will Save the Day – Whitney Houston
  • Love Will Save the Day – Koko Jones
  • Where Have All the Flowers Gone? – Savage Rose
  • God on Our Side – Bob Dylan
  • Respect – Aretha Franklin
  • Independent Woman Part I – Destiny’s Child
  • Doubt – Mary J Blige
  • Sisters are Doing It for Themselves – The Eurythmics

Koko Jones is an African-American trans woman and a top class percussionist. Prior to her transition she worked with many great acts, including Whitney and also the Isley Brothers. She has a solo album out titled Who’s That Lady, and I warmly recommend it. Here she is playing the title track.

Today on Ujima – LGBT Rights

~ Cheryl

Today’s show was a Diversity Special put together for me by my friend Berkeley Wilde of Diversity Trust. With Berkeley in the studio were Sarah-Louise Minter of LGBT Bristol, Lesley Mansell of North Bristol NHS Trust, Mitch McMorrow of Bristol City Council (and Shout Out Radio), and John, a young, black gay man from Bristol.

We covered a lot of territory: legislation, hate crime, services for young people, the 20th birthday of Freedom Youth, services for old people, LGBT celebrities, the need for monitoring, Ireland finally getting legal recognition for trans people (today, well done, TENI!), the plight of LGBT asylum seekers and probably a whole lot more that I have forgotten.

You can find the first hour of the show here, and the second hour here. And by the way if you want to listen to my Pride coverage it is here — sorry about the Dr. Flex billing, the Listen Again system is automated and doesn’t cope well with unusual scheduling, and thanks to the good Doctor for the use of his slot.)

The playlist for today’s show was as follows:

  • Secret Love – The Vinyl Closet
  • Doubt – Kele Okereke
  • It Must Be Love – Labi Siffre
  • Feels Good – Rahsaan Patterson
  • Bleed Like Me – Garbage
  • Q.U.E.E.N. – Janelle Monáe (feat. Erykah Badu)
  • Talking ‘Bout A Revolution – Tracy Chapman
  • I Will Survive – Gloria Gaynor

On next week’s show I’ll be having a chat with a teenage fashion designer, Kieran Mceleny; catching up with friend of the show, Christina Zaba; finding out from Sian Webb why Bristol lags behind in the gender pay gap stakes; and talking to Assistant Mayor Daniella Radice about the 50:50 campaign for female representation in the City Council that was launched today. There may be a bit of feminist ranting.

A Little Trans History

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Recently BBC4 showed a history documentary called “Spitfire Women”. It is all about the women pilots who flew for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) during WWII. They were not allowed to fly combat missions, but equally men could not be spared to move planes about the country (specifically from factories to airfields). Women who could fly, including Amy Johnson, persuaded the government to let them help the war effort by getting this job done. Eventually they got to fly Hurricanes and Spitfires.

I was planning to watch this at some point because it sounded like an awesome piece of feminism. There’s no reason why women can’t fly fun aircraft. A Spitfire is even more fun than a pony. Also a bunch of 80-something women talking about being hell raiser pilots in WWII was guaranteed to be fun (and a perfect appetizer for episode 1 of Agent Carter). But then I got email from Juliet McKenna alerting me to the fact that one of these women was actually a man.

Jonathan Ferguson was born in Lurgan in Northern Ireland in 1915. He was assigned female at birth, and named “Irene Joy” by his parents. By the time he got into the ATA he was already open about his gender identity. Judging from the photos here, there were a few lesbians in the service as well as a few girls who enjoyed their sex symbol status. Jonathan apparently didn’t stand out too much, and the one woman who talked about him sounded very supportive.

Jonathan stayed in the RAF after the war, but must have eventually moved to a desk job because when he transitioned socially in 1958 he was described as a government scientist. I haven’t yet found much news about him online, but the story did make the Palm Beach Post, which wryly noted that Jonathan got a pay rise simply for announcing that he was a man, because men got paid more than women in the Civil Service.

When I get time I intend to follow the story up and see if I can find out more. According to the program, Jonathan has died. I’m wondering whether he got to meet Roberta Cowell, because she flew Spitfires in combat (and ended up a PoW). Not that it would be been much fun for him, if her treatment of Michael Dillon is anything to go by, but maybe their shared love of planes would have helped bridge the gap. If anyone out there knows anything about Ferguson, please get in touch.

50 Voices for Malcolm X : Movement for Change

~ Cheryl

Giving it the full title here, 50 Voices for Malcolm X : Movement for Change was a civil rights event staged over three nights in the Studio at Bristol Old Vic. The show was staged by Ujima Radio to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Malcolm X. We note with pride that Bristol is the only city in Europe to be home to a community center named after the legendary civil rights leader.

The structure of the show was 5-minute performances by a variety of artists, each with a different take on civil rights issues. The performances included spoken word, music, dance and film.

I was unable to be there for the Thursday and Friday shows as I was in Brighton, but the idea was to have different people on different nights. Some of the audience came to all three events.

The Saturday show was topped and tailed by Ujima director, Roger Griffith, reading from the speeches of Malcolm X. In between we had a range of performers, several of whom we have had the pleasure of interviewing on Women’s Outlook.

The first session included material from Shawn Sobers from the Haile Selassie House in Bath. Shawn spoke eloquently about the issue of names. Many Caribbean and African-American people bear last names derived from the slaver families who owned their ancestors, which is clearly problematic for them. I was pleased to hear Shawn talk about how the name “Sobers” is no longer associated with slavery, but rather with the finest player ever to grace a cricket pitch.

Also up in the first session was Joseph Langdon reading a powerful piece written by the brilliant Jamaican/British playwright, Alfred Fagon. Those of you who follow Women’s Outlook may remember my talking to James Peries of the Old Vic about Fagon back in 2013. James was the director for the 50 Voices show and he did a fabulous job of putting me at ease and giving me advice on my performance.

Next up was Michael Jenkins from 8th Sense Media. He’s making a film called Black Soldier, White Army, about Patrick Cyrus, a black British soldier who served in Northern Ireland. From the clips we saw it looks like being a very powerful film.

I was up about half way through the first session, and it seemed to go quite well. I managed to remember almost all of the poem, just needing a couple of surreptitious glances at my notes along the way. The acoustics in the Studio are amazing. Those of you who have seen me on panels know that I don’t have a very loud voice and generally need a microphone even in small rooms. I was able to perform in the Studio without a mic. I’m sure that helped a lot. Anyway, people were very nice about my performance afterwards, so I guess I did OK. Can I call myself a performance poet now?

I was followed by Paulette, Frances & Christine from Women’s Outlook, and a few other people, talking about various campaigns centered around refugees rights.

Next up were two amazing performers: Glen Cook, known as The Singing Chef, and poet Miles Chambers. I guess Glenn could be described as signing Gospel, but really it was far more innovative than you would imagine from that description. I was really impressed with how well Miles had worked various key quotes from Malcolm X’s speeches into his poetry, and with the power of his delivery.

The second session featured performance poet Shagufta Iqbal with a great poem about being a Mother of Color. She was followed by photographer Benny Benn with a lovely montage of images (including pictures of Janelle Monae, and of T’Challa & Ororo). Then there was John Dior from a community youth group.

We also had Jay Kallias who is a Krump dancer. I had never seen Krump performed live before, and was seriously impressed. It is very different, and perhaps not that graceful, but very powerful.

My friend Adam Murray, who was part of the Afrofuturism project at Watershed, talked a bit about the current film series he has been involved in there. It is called Come the Revolution and features a number of fine films about black history.

A couple of ladies from the RISE community action group came and talked about their work. Once they were done, one of them, Nia Bimkubwa, treated us to a fine performance of “Love Will Save the Day”. This was essentially karaoke, in that she was signing with a backing track, but it was way better than what you’ll hear in clubs.

Also on the music side, we had Kizzy Morrell, whose show you may remember I was a guest on last year. Kizzy is also a professional signer, and she treated us to a wonderful rendition of “Georgia on My Mind”, again just accompanied by a music track.

My thanks are due to Roger for making the whole thing happen; the James, Sharon and the crew from Bristol Old Vic; to Julz for compering the evening with style; to DJ Style for the music; to the young lady who announced the performances (her name’s not on the program, Roger!) and of course to all of my fellow performers. It was a wonderful evening and I’m delighted to have been part of it.

A couple of people asked whether my poem was available online anywhere. I’ve sent Roger a few suggestions about doing a book. I also know that the whole thing was filmed. When I know a bit more about what is going to happen I’ll let you know.

Intersectionality At Work

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I’ll do a proper post about the 50 Voices event tomorrow. For now I want to talk a bit about why I was so pleased to be able to take part.

An event put on by Ujima Radio in memory of Malcolm X is pretty obviously primarily about civil rights for people of color. That’s not something that I have much of a place speaking about. What I can do is sympathize somewhat. I’ll never be able to know what it is like to be a person of color, but I do know what it is like to part of a marginalized social group. It is a different experience for me, but there are some commonalities.

As an illustration, take a look at this excellent article by Indigenous Australian writer, Ambelin Kwaymullina. I know even less about being an Indigenous Australian than I do about being of African descent, but two points in the article resonated strongly with me. Firstly Ambelin talks about the dangers of a single narrative, which is very much the point that Emma Hutson was making about trans people in her paper at the conference on Friday.

Secondly Ambelin says this about the fact that work by Indigenous writers will be mainly published (or not), read and reviewed by non-Indigenous people:

This doesn’t mean that non-Indigenous peoples cannot understand or appreciate Indigenous work. In fact, I’d suggest the very thing books are for is to challenge and bewilder and inspire us by opening windows into worlds other than our own. But it does mean that people outside the culture from which a book comes may well find it harder to understand, and may even feel uncomfortable or confronted by the extent to which a text does not conform to their pre-existing ideas of what it is to be Indigenous.

Exactly the same is true for stories about trans people. They are mainly published, read and reviewed by people who are not trans, who may well not understand the trans characters, and who may even be repulsed by the presence of trans characters in the work (not looking at any Puppies in particular).

Now, here are a couple of tweets about Sense8 by someone who ought to know better:

https://twitter.com/GWillowWilson/status/609583083956736001

https://twitter.com/GWillowWilson/status/609583155922604033

Why else would you watch a Wachowski production? Because they are the only people in Hollywood I trust to do a good story about trans people.

And I’m not the only one. Check out this extract from Janet Mock’s TV show, So Popular, in which she interviews Jamie Clayton about the series.

Ms. Wilson, of course, is famous for writing a superhero comic about a Muslim girl living in New York. Personally I can absolutely see the value in that.

I don’t know whether Wilson has watched Sense8 and hated it, or whether she just dismisses everything that the Wachowskis do out of hand, but I can assure her that Sense8 is important to trans people for many of the same reasons that Ms Marvel is important to Muslims.

Intersectionality is all about understanding each other’s experience of oppression, and respecting that experience. It is about helping each other, rather than trying to lever ourselves up on the backs of people even more marginalized than we are. The folks at Ujima gave me space at their event to read a ranty poem about trans rights. I am enormously grateful to them for doing so.

Fury Road – Brief Thoughts

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Wow. Two whole hours of solid stupid. As I said on Twitter last night, let no one now dare tell me that the plot of Jupiter Ascending makes no sense.

And this, remember, is someone who is a life-long fan of Formula 1. I like watching cars going round and round in circles.

I guess, though, that Mad Max is more for fans of stock cars and monster truck racing, where half the point is that the vehicles should look ridiculous and get destroyed during the race.

Of course it was funny. Furiosa was (mostly) tougher than Max. A small group of women managed to defeat an entire army of Gamergaters, sorry Warboys. Women deserve a chance at all roles in life, including idiot car chase movies.

As feminist science fiction, however, I found Fury Road wanting. I note that when it came to actually having a plan, as opposed to just running away, it was Max who came up with it. I wanted to see more leadership from the women. And I wanted a plot that you could actually believe in, because if the plot is nonsense all you have done is blow a few raspberries at the Patriarchy.

It will doubtless get on my Hugo ballot next year, if only to annoy the puppies. There will be films and TV that I will have enjoyed more.

Me on Choice Feminism at Bristol 24/7

~ Cheryl

I have a new feminism column up at Bristol 24/7. This one is a bit theoretical, but basically it is all about one of the was in which white media feminists try to police the behavior of other women. So it would be “Up Yours, New Statesman” again. You can find the column here. Do please at least click through. As far as I know, I’m the only trans person in the country who gets to write a regular column on feminism. That sort of thing needs to be encouraged.

Talking of ever trans person’s least favorite newspaper, Amanda & Neil have an interesting blog post up about the process of editing their special edition. The whole thing appears to have been a little fraught, but at least they did print Roz’s poem, and they let Roz perform it live at the Hackney Empire gig last Thursday. I suspect that one or two people chocked on their lobster & Bolly over that.

Amanda Palmer at St. George’s

~ Cheryl

I have to confess that I am not in the least bit objective when it comes to Amanda Palmer. I have, after all, known her husband for over 30 years, and I have a great deal of faith in his judgement. I was a little nervous when he first told me about her, but having seen her perform live four times now I have grown to love this fierce, fearless and amazingly talented woman.

If you have been to one of Amanda’s gigs before, you’ll have a good idea of what to expect. There were piano songs and ukelele songs. But, as she often does, she opened up with “Wind that Blows the Barley”. St. George’s is a former church. It is known for its awesome acoustics. Singing unaccompanied shows it off at its best.

Of course there is a huge picture of Jesus at the back of the stage. Apparently when Richard Dawkins did a talk there he insisted on having it covered up. Maybe he was afraid it was watching him. Amanda had no such worries. She just played “Jump You Fucker, Jump!” from Peter Cook & Dudley Moore’s Derek & Clive album. That’s the one that sounds a bit like a religious chant and ends, “Aaaaaa-souls” (or something that sounds very like that).

God did not strike any of us dead.

Amanda then launched into “Astronaut” and “Ampersand”, which is enough to get any audience going, and built the show from there. This being Amanda, while she had some idea of what she was going to play, there was always going to be audience interaction. She took requests, and played most of them, even though these days her fans know what is coming and delight in asking for obscure songs from her catalog.

She played “Vegemite”, which made me very happy because I love that song. Sorry, Neil.

Of course the main distinguishing fact about this gig was that Amanda is five months pregnant, seriously in need of naps, and suffering from acid reflux. Most people would take that as an excuse for a little time off work. Amanda is not most people. She just adapted the show to take account of it. There was no crowd surfing. There was, however, a song about pregnancy.

The support crew for this tour includes Whitney Moses, who in addition to organizing the tour is helping Amanda out with all of the pregnancy stuff. Whit is also a really good singer. She and Amanda did a couple of duets, one of which was a song called “Pregnant Women Are Smug”. That’s by an American comedy duo known as Garfunkel and Oates, which is the name of the band (from Art Garfunkel and John Oates, whom they describe as “two famous rock-and-roll second bananas”). These ladies are hilarious, and just as potty-mouthed as Amanda. Here’s their version of that song.

If you liked that, go here and listen to some more of their work. I even laughed at the one in which they make fun of people who like sport. I especially laughed at “The Loophole”, but then I’m a sad history geek who understands how the meaning of the term “sodomy” has changed down the ages.

Thank you, Amanda. It was a great gig. You’ve made my heavy metal obsessed pal, Sarah, into an Amanda Palmer fan, and you’ve made me into a Garfunkel and Oates fan.

Not Sporting

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

For several years the University of Nottingham has hosted a Football v Homophobia soccer tournament. That’s certainly a good thing, as soccer is one of the major sports that still has a big problem with homophobia.

However, this year a trans man called Luke Hutchinson wanted to play. He discovered to his horror that in order to get permission from the FA to compete he would need to provide medical records and blood tests that would cost him around £70. These are, of course, FA rules that cover all amateur soccer. They are nothing to do with the university. Nevertheless they are strongly discriminatory against trans people. Luke decided to make a fuss.

You might have thought, given the purpose of the tournament, that the university would have had some sympathy. Even if they could not change FA rules, they might have tried to help trans players get tested, and highlight the problems with that. But you would have thought wrong. Instead, in a fit of pique, the university cancelled the tournament, blaming Luke and his supporters for getting them bad publicity.

And this, dear readers, is what happens when people run “anti-homophobia” events simply for the money and brownie points that it gets them. Hopefully Stonewall and whoever in government is responsible for assessing Nottingham’s equalities policy will give them a good kicking over this.