Yesterday I happened to tweet that I couldn’t join in the Day Without A Woman strike because I had trans awareness training to do. Somewhat to my surprise, I was approached by a journalist and asked for more information. You can see the results of that here (scroll down).
Nice job Isha, thank you.
International Women’s Day is coming up tomorrow. I’ll be in Bristol doing training, then in Bath for their Reclaim the Night march, so I’m unlikely to get any blogging done. So I am doing something today instead.
We’ll hopefully see the Wonder Woman movie later this year (and fingers crossed DC won’t have butchered it the way they have done with other major releases recently). Diana first appeared in a comic in 1941, but she is not the first Amazon princess to have captivated America. The photo below is of a 24-year-old Kathryn Hepburn taking the part of Antiope in a stage play in New York in 1932. Antiope was a younger sister of Hippolyte and therefore Diana’s aunt. She famously was either kidnapped by or ran off with Theseus and became Queen of Athens. The play was a huge success and led to Hepburn being spotted by a Hollywood talent scout.
I’m way too busy to spend a lot of time deconstructing the latest furore over the realness or lack thereof of trans women. However, I did want to post part of the speech I made at the Women’s Equality Party event in Bristol a week ago. Here you go:
Related to that, I want to put an end to the nonsense idea that there is a right way to be a woman. When I started gender transition back in the 1990s, if I had turned up for a psychiatric appointment dressed like this* I would have been told to go home until I had learned to wear a dress like a proper woman. Trans women have fought long and hard against that sort of stereotyping, and you should too.
Women can be engineers, they can play rugby, they can cut their hair short, and they can wear blue. Being a woman, or a girl, is not about performance, and it is absolutely not about the toys you play with as a child. Far too much nonsense is talked about this in the media. That nonsense is harmful to all children, but it is particularly harmful to transgender children, and to children who don’t want to be forced into gender stereotypes but have no desire or need for gender transition. Putting an end to gender stereotyping is, I hope, a cause that we can all agree upon.
Sadly all too many female British media pundits are all too fond of defining what a “real woman” is. And it is not just the likes of me that they go after. One of the main reasons that I don’t listen to Woman’s Hour on Radio 4 is that whenever I have had to tune in (usually because they have been talking nonsense about science fiction and why it isn’t for women) they have had features intended to shame women in some way. Just like the women’s sections of mainstream newspapers, they are overly fond of telling women that everything they are doing is wrong, particularly mothering which it seems almost impossible to get right. If you took these people seriously you’d end up with the opinion that everything bad in the world is somehow the fault of bad mothers.
So I find it particularly galling to have a Woman’s Hour presenter wag her elegantly manicured finger at me and tell me that I know nothing about feminism. I might not be an expert, but I’m damn sure that feminism involves more than looking down your nose at other women and telling them that they are doing woman wrong.
* I was wearing trousers (by Monsoon), a t-shirt and a jacket (by Ann Taylor). According to ancient Greek historians trousers were invented by the Amazons so that they could ride horses more easily. Real men, the Greeks insisted, wore short skirts; with no underwear.
Yes, I know, International Women’s Day is actually on March 8th. However, Bristol Women’s Voice has a big event planned at M-Shed over this coming weekend, and I wanted to preview that. Here’s a look at yesterday’s show.
First up I was delighted to welcome Rina Vergano who, together with her colleague, Jane Flood, will be putting on a performance entitled Hags, Harpies and Harridans. Naturally we talked about witches, crones, social attitudes towards older women and so on. I wish I could be there to see Rina and Jane in action, but of course I’ll be in Liverpool talking about Romans.
We had a quick leap both forward and backward in time for the next segment. On IWD itself Bristol Museum will be hosting an event called Intrepid Women Travellers. My friend Jean Burnett, who is an expert on the lives of Victorian women adventurers, will be speaking about Maria Caroline Bolitho, who crossed the Himalayas on horseback. Jean came in to tell me about Bolitho, and to discuss so of the other women whose lives form part of the event. For your entry fee you will also get a private tour of the Adela Breton exhibition (now moved from Bath), which I highly recommend. Sadly I’ll be at a Reclaim the Night march in Bath that evening.
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
For the second hour I was joined by Sian and Gabby from Bristol Women’s Voice. We discussed many of the other events that will be happening at M-Shed on Saturday. One of those is a workshop on self-confidence hosted by a new friend of mine, Angie Belcher. She’s a stand-up comedian, and she hosted the Women’s Equality Party event I spoke at left Saturday. I can assure you that she has no lack of self-confidence.
Sian also reported on a move by the Bristol Post to switch their Women of the Year awards ceremony from the Marriott City Centre because of the hotel’s hosting of an event with Floyd Mayweather, a former boxer who has been convicted of domestic violence and appears totally unrepentant. BWV has been campaigning against the Mayweather event, and I’m pleased to see them getting support.
This reminds me that someone in Brighton has decided to invite Germaine Greer to speak at an IWD event. Naturally there is a campaign against this too. Fox Fisher has a petition. You can sign it here.
Finally on the show I was delighted to welcome Jen Grove who, together with Jana Funke, has done superb work in organising LGBT History Month events in Exeter. Jen and Jana are part of an all-woman take-over of Phonic FM, one of Exeter’s community radio stations, on IWD. Jen was actually at Ujima so she could record an interview with me in one of our studios for this. I got my own back by dragging her onto my show.
One of the things we talked about was PHSE lessons, which are of course of interest to LGBT historians. Fortuitously yesterday happened to be the very day that the Government announced that they would make PHSE “compulsory”. Quite what this means is open to question. It sounds like religious fundamentalists will still be allowed to remove their children from such lessons, and as yet there is no guarantee that LGBT+ issues will be on the curriculum. However, kids desperately need these lessons, and far too many schools are currently providing nothing at all.
Yesterday evening I was part of an event about gender put on by Medsin, a nationwide group for medical students. I was delighted to find Natalie from T.I.G.E.R. on the programme with me. T.I.G.E.R. does great work in Bristol schools teaching kids about gender and relationships. Hopefully the new regulations will allow schools to make use of organisations such as theirs.
You can listen to the second half hour of the show here.
The playlist for yesterday’s show was as follows:
Next week my colleague Miranda Congdon will be taking the helm and looking back on the history of Fem FM, a feminist radio station which operated in Bristol in the 1990s. My next show will be on March 15th.
Last night I was in Exeter helping my good friend Surat-Shaan Knan do an event about his amazing trans people of faith project, Twilight People. In the process of that I discovered that he has a new project just starting. It is called Rainbow Pilgrims, and it is all about LGBT+ migrants. The primary focus will doubtless be on refugees and asylum seekers, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear from LGBT+ people who have migrated without being in fear of their lives.
You can find out more about this exciting new project at the website. Please note that, while it does talk about oral history, there is no requirement to give one to be involved. Fleeing your home and traveling to a foreign country because you are afraid of being killed is a deeply traumatic experience and no one should be pushed into reliving that. There will be other ways of participating.
Given the current desperate situation in the UK for LGBT+ refugees and asylum seekers, this is a very timely project.
Yes, I know, total overload. But this one is happening in Bristol on the evening after the gig at the Watershed, and they only want me talking for 5 minutes. I can do that. Besides, very good cause. Also it is an open mic. So if you are in the Bristol area, and identify as a woman, please come along and tell us what sort of things you want. You can book (free) tickets here. It’s more on the door, so book now.
Tuesday night at Bristol University was fabulous, and I met some great people. That may result in some more events later this year.
But today’s news is that I will be chairing the “Language and Representation Within LGBT+ Culture” event at M-Shed on the evening of the 22nd. This is being staged by the Young Festival of Ideas and Freedom Youth. It is their show, I’ll just be there to keep things running smoothly and (because young people are massively tech-savvy) manage the social media input during the event.
You can find out more about the event here, and book (free) tickets here.
I have another event booked now as well, but I’m not sure if it is open to the public so I can’t say anything yet.
Problem Daughters, the new anthology from The Future Fire, will amplify the voices of women who are sometimes excluded from mainstream feminism. It will be an anthology of beautiful, thoughtful, unconventional speculative fiction and poetry around the theme of intersectional feminism, focusing on the lives and experiences of marginalized women, such as those who are of color, QUILTBAG, disabled, sex workers, and all intersections of these. Edited by Nicolette Barischoff, Rivqa Rafael and Djibril al-Ayad, the anthology will be published by Futurefire.net Publishing and is currently being crowdfunded. I spoke to Rivqa about the project.
Cheryl: Hopefully we all agree on the need for better representation of marginalised women in SF&F, but what does this project mean for you personally?
Rivqa: If I had to summarise it in a word, I’d say “listeningâ€. Although I exist in some intersections, I don’t consider myself marginalised overall, but nonetheless I have had frustrating experiences where things I’ve said about my existence have been ignored (from “no, I’m not interested in hearing about Jesus†to “no, just because you’ve decided I’m being oppressed by men, doesn’t make it trueâ€). It’s exhausting enough as an occasional experience, let alone as the constant one I see women of colour living through just on Twitter (for example).
So I think making more spaces for those voice to be heard, and listened to, is the crux of what we’re aiming to do, and I hope we can succeed in that.
Cheryl: One of the problems of introducing specific types of person into a story is avoiding objectifying them by focusing on what makes them different. Do you have any advice for writers as to how to avoid this?
Rivqa: Exoticisation is definitely something that can happen accidentally, as well as maliciously. It’s always valuable to remember that we’re adding to a body of work, that the tropes we’re using (even if we’re subverting them) don’t occur in isolation. Research and sensitivity readers can be really helpful. In my own reading, I’ve found that writers who are marginalised tend to write “the other†more sensitively than those who are not, but it’s not a given.
I’m reminded of Nalo Hopkinson’s words in her WisCon 2016 Guest of Honour speech: “It’s no crime if your first thought is a deeply problematic one. It’s possible to gaze calmly upon that thought, recognize it for what it is, let it waft on by, and follow it up with a different thought, or a positive action.†Maybe in a first draft, we reach for the easiest, most convenient backstory for a character or solution to a problem. That’s just the starting point. Editing is hard, but in most cases it’s what makes a story great, and it’s crucial in this respect.
Cheryl: Even though we are seeing an increasing number of people of colour writing SF&F, the settings of stories still tend to feel very Western in many cases because so many of the standard tropes were developed by Western writers. Do you hope to combat this?
Rivqa: Definitely. I think that the anthology as a medium is ideal for this. There’s a lot more latitude in a short story to play with structure and still be satisfying to a reader who’s new to non-Western narratives. I hope that for some, it’ll serve as a gateway into works that might be more challenging to their sensibilities! We’re putting our call for submissions out as far and wide as we possibly can, and I hope we’ve made it clear that we don’t expect a particular “type†of story. We don’t have rules about how many acts a story needs, whether there should be conflict, or… well, anything structural, really. We are also accepting poetry, which can, of course, tell a story in completely different ways again.
Cheryl: One of the excuses used for not including marginalised people in stories is that their very marginalisation makes it hard for them to have adventures. To me that sounds like there is a need to imagine how society can be different. Will you be encouraging that sort of work?
Rivqa: Yes, absolutely. There’s a common perception that utopias are boring, but a setting can be wildly different to our reality (or realities, really) while still presenting challenges to characters. That said, I’m not sure how valid that excuse is, and I for one am also interested in stories that challenge that very limited definition of adventure. Conflict (if it’s even needed in a story; see above) can be on any stage or scale. The only limitations here are those self-imposed by writers, and I hope we’ve made a welcoming space where they feel comfortable shedding some of those.
Cheryl: It is great that The Future Fire is doing this book, but I see a lot of people on social media, particularly younger people, complaining about how poor diversity in SF&F is. I suspect this is because they only see books that get into chain stores. How can we effectively promote the fine work being done by small presses and/or get more diversity into mainstream publishers’ output?
Rivqa: I’m not a marketing expert, and publishing as a whole isn’t in the best place. Mainstream publishers don’t seem to want to take risks, and they often view marginalised writers as a risk. I don’t think there’s going to be any revolution in this respect, but I’m hopeful that positive changes will happen over time. In the past couple of years I’ve watched the diverse book blogging community grow, and Patreon is gaining traction. I think a lot of people still see diverse books as a fad, but I hope we’ll reach a tipping point where they’re just normal, because they should be.
In terms of small press, I think building community is the most important thing. A few years ago I had no idea that book-focused spec fic conventions existed, and I had nothing to do with book Twitter (or any other social media) even though I was getting back into writing. Small presses are never going to have a huge advertising budget, so word of mouth is the key to getting people in — or at least, it was for me. Sharing our love for books that reflect our reality (even through the lens of spaceships and magic), requesting books from libraries… all of that kind of thing helps build us all up. It’s always lovely to see small press publishers and authors recommending others’ works; I can only hope that this synergy will gain momentum.
Rivqa Rafael is a queer Jewish writer and editor based in Sydney. She started writing speculative fiction well before earning degrees in science and writing, although they have probably helped. Her previous gig as subeditor and reviews editor for Cosmos magazine likewise fueled her imagination. Her short stories have appeared in Hear Me Roar (Ticonderoga Publications), The Never Never Land (CSFG Publishing), and Defying Doomsday (Twelfth Planet Press). In 2016, she won the Ditmar Award for Best New Talent. When she’s not working, she’s most likely child-wrangling, playing video games, or practising her Brazilian Jiujitsu moves. She can be found at rivqa.net and on Twitter as @enoughsnark.
Well done, everyone, we will have a book! The Call for Submissions is here. The deadline is March 31st, so I have a vague chance of being able to find the time to write something. Hopefully those of you who are less busy will send in lots of great stories.
Meanwhile the crowdfunding campaign is still going. More contributions means a bigger and better book. Let’s keep going and make Problem Daughters a really amazing production.
One of the things I have noticed over the weekend in the responses to the Women’s March is a bunch of women people complaining that they felt excluded by all of the signs talking about vaginas, uteruses and so on. I’d like to talk about that for a while.
First up, trans women were welcome at the marches. (Sex workers less so, but that’s a different conversation.) Janet Mock, Raquel Willis and Julia Serano were all on platform. I don’t know of any trans women who were invited to speak at UK marches, and would like to hear if any were, but at least there were some in the USA. Also there were many trans women marching, and many trans-supportive banners.
Obviously I understand that a huge crowd of women being very positive about body parts that you desperately wish you had, but don’t have, can be very triggering. On the other hand, there are plenty of cis women who can’t conceive for one reason or another, and I didn’t see any of them complaining about the reproductive rights signs.
The reason why there were so many signs talking about vaginas and uteruses is because Trump brags about his sexual assaults, and that he can get away with them, and because he and his cronies are planning an all-out-assault on women’s reproductive rights. That’s what those people were marching about, and they have every right to do so.
OK, I understand that trans rights are under assault as well. People were marching about that too. But that march wasn’t all about us. To put it another way, would you complain about all the people with Black Lives Matter signs because you are not black?
It’s all too easy these days to condemn any popular political movement because it is not aligned 100% with your concerns and beliefs, but where that gets us is all of the angry left wing people who refused to vote for Hilary because, “she’s as bad as Trump”.
Of course there is also the point that anyone claiming that “trans women” are excluded by signs about vaginas is saying that you can’t be a trans woman if you have a vagina. In which case, who’s being exclusionary now? Mostly I suspect people didn’t think of this, but some of us remember the 1990s.
Finally, a little bit of inclusion. Here’s Raquel getting all of the points across on MSNBC. Great job, sis. And thanks for reminding me that I’m not the only one who can’t force herself to smile all of the time while on TV. Doing TV interviews is really hard.
Update: I’m getting reports of some marches that were hostile to trans folks. Obviously where that was the case people have every right to protest exclusion. Austin, I am deeply disappointed in you.
Yesterday was fun, right? We had the Orange Puppet crying into his golden champagne flute. But it was only a start. A march like that won’t get rid of Trump, it won’t even slow down the political change that he is planning to bring in, because right now he has the votes he needs in Congress to force that through.
My feeling is, and I accept I’m a long way away from the US these days, that what US politics needs is people calling their CongressCritters, incessantly. They need to know that people are behind them, because right now they are terrified of Trump’s supporters. All those people that the Republicans have been spending 8 years encouraging to buy guns? They are Trump people now.
As for the UK, one very positive thing you can do is join WEP and get involved. WE only have around 65,000 members right now. Almost twice that went on the London march alone. We need your help, and we need you to vote whenever you get a chance. Not necessarily for us because WE won’t have candidates everywhere, but for people who are prepared to stand up against Putin, Trump and May.
The other thing that you all need to do is foreground people from marginalized groups. It is true that the majority of marchers yesterday were middle class, middle aged and white. For now that meant that the police were afraid to brutalize the marchers. Had that march been predominantly people of color, or even white students, there would have been tear gas and baton charges, and the media would have been full of stories about how angry and violent the march was.
So we were allowed to march in peace (for now). What we do, when given that opportunity, is foreground those people who would not have been allowed to march in peace. Like this.
Ah, no actual punching, then. Got it.
It is a great book too.
I am way too busy to get to any marches today, but we do what we can.
I have no idea who created this image, but well done whoever you are.
Update: Via Sarah Ann Watts on Facebook I have learned that the artist is Hayley Gilmore.
With Paulette having retired, we need to put things in place to ensure the continuation of the Women’s Outlook show. I can’t do it myself because I have too many work commitments. But today I was delighted to welcome to the studio three women who are interested in working on the show as presenters. They are Isadora Vibes, Kamaljit Poonia and Esme Worrell. I spent the first hour getting them to introduce themselves and talk about one of their areas of experience.
Isadora is a poet and has been on the show before. She talked about the forthcoming In Between Time Festival, which looks amazing.
Kamaljit has a long career in equality and diversity work. She has been involved in the Bristol Race Manifesto project (which parallels the work Berkeley and I have been doing on an LGBT Manifesto) and she gave an update on that project.
Esme is, among other things, a stripper. We chatted about sex work, which as you will know is a topic of great interest to trans activists because so many trans women can’t make a living any other way.
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
The second hour began with a visit from Gabriela Staniszewska who is an award-winning director of short films. She’s based in Bristol and I was delighted to find out that she specializes in science fiction and horror. We got on famously.
Finally I welcomed my friend Russell Thomas who runs the Ground and Burst cafe in Bristol that majors in smoothies. Russell is trying to get people to eat more healthily by eating fruit rather than processed sugar. I was very hungry by the time I had finished talking to him.
You can listen to the second hour of the show here.
Here’s the playlist. Obviously there was a Bowie song on it.
I’m not entirely sure what will be happening for the next few weeks while folks get trained up. I have some work engagements on Wednesdays that I can’t get out of. But I will definitely be back on February 15th with an LGBT History Month show.
Here’s a new crowdfunded anthology you may want to back. It is called Problem Daughters, it will be published by The Future Fire, and the editors will be Nicolette Barischoff, Rivqa Rafael and Djibril al-Ayad. The official pitch (taken from their announcement) is as follows:
Problem Daughters will amplify the voices of women who are sometimes excluded from mainstream feminism. It will be an anthology of beautiful, thoughtful, unconventional speculative fiction and poetry around the theme of intersectional feminism, with a specific focus on the lives and experiences of women of colour, QUILTBAG women, disabled women, sex workers, and any intersection of these.
I’ll have quite a bit more to say about this in the coming weeks, but in the meantime here’s an interview with Rivqa from Stephanie Saulter’s blog.
The crowdfunding page is here.
In the wake of last week’s protest at City Hall regarding provision of priority housing for women who are victims of domestic violence, I devoted most of this week’s show to the issue. For the first hour I was joined in the studio by representatives of Sisters Uncut and Bristol Women’s Voice. We also used material from last week’s parliamentary debate on the Istanbul Convention and information provided by the Women’s Equality Party. It was a really good discussion and it provoked quite a bit of audience feedback.
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
In the second hour I was joined in the studio by my colleagues, Frances and Judeline, both of whom gave personal stories of their experience of domestic violence.
In the final half hour we wished happy birthday to our producer, Paulette, and also wished her well in her forthcoming retirement.
You can listen to the second hour of the show here.
Quite what Paulette’s retirement means for the future of the show, I am not sure. I have told the station management that I’m willing to commit to one show a month, but I can’t do more than that because I need to earn a living and I have three businesses to run. However, thanks to the magic of the internet (technology gods willing) I should have shows on Dec. 28 and Jan. 4. These will just me playing some favorite pieces of music; in particular longer stuff that I can’t use on a normal, chat-based show.
It being that time of year, the playlist for yesterday was all Christmas music:
I spent all of Saturday in Bristol at LaDIYfest, a one-day feminist conference. Most of the day was taken up with workshops at Cafe Connect. In the evening there was a gig at Roll for the Soul, the bicycle cafe.
First up in the workshops was Laura Welti from Bristol Disability Equality Forum. That organisation is the disability equivalent of LGBT Bristol, so Laura and I have very similar experiences of dealing with the City Council and we had some useful conversations. Hopefully I learned a few things, but it is really hard to fund accessible venues in central Bristol without paying a fortune for the rental.
The second workshop featured Camille Barton who was talking about white allyship. Like me, Camille has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it was a great relief to me to have her confirm my suspicion that racism in the UK is often just as bad as it is in America; it is just more polite. Camille is already working with Ujima as part of our Arts Collective, and I’m hoping she will be able to come on my show in the New Year to talk more about her work.
Then there was me. The fourth workshop of the day was cancelled so I had plenty of time to talk. Nevertheless I see to have hit the 45 minute mark almost spot on. There were some really great questions — more than 15 minutes worth — and it was really pleasing to have such an engaged audience. There were a few people there who identified as trans in various ways, which was also pleasing. None of them told me that I was wrong, which was a great relief.
Part of me desperately wanted to go home and sleep, but Ren Stedman was playing in the gig so I made my way into town, had dinner at Tuk Tuck, and settled in for the evening.
Roll for the Soul is a great location, but perhaps not ideal for music. It is a cafe, decorated with cycling gear and the occasional actual bike. It was not designed for acoustics. Some acts did better than others.
First up was Pik-C who has a very interesting voice. I really liked her stuff.
Violet Scott sounded good too, but she was clearly missing her band. If I have understood stuff on Facebook properly they disbanded recently.
Emily Magpie makes really interesting music. Unfortunately it is the sort of music that needs you to listen closely to it, which is hard to do in a busy cafe where lots of conversations are going on in the background.
The members of Drunken Butterfly were also involved with organising LaDIYfest so they had a lot of their friends around to support them. It was great to have an actual band performing, but they had quite a bit of trouble with the tech and I don’t think they ever got the sound mix right.
The lesson, I think, is that for a venue like that you really want the person-with-guitar type acts. Fortunately that’s just what the headliners were.
Sadly I had to leave part-way through Ren’s set because of trains. But we did get to catch up beforehand and he has a very interesting potential project in Brighton that I want to learn more about. You can listen to him here, and buy his music here. One of the songs he did on Saturday was also in his set for Bristol Pride. It is called “Love Wins”. Here he is on the main stage in Bristol.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay for Lilith Ai, but here’s an example of her music.
All in all it was a pretty good day. The organization was a little wonky at times, but that’s volunteer-run events for you. I’m certainly happy I did it.
Today was an important day in the House of Commons, seeing that very rare event, a private member’s bill passing second reading.
The bill in question was “Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill” which refers to ratification of the Istanbul Convention on Preventing Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. The British Government agreed to ratify the treaty in 2012, but since that time has done nothing. The bill, proposed by Dr Eilidh Whiteford (SNP, Banff and Buchan), is intended to encourage them to get off their backsides and do what they promised.
Although the bill was proposed by the SNP, it was supported by Labour, the LibDems and the Greens. It has also been the subject of a major campaign by the Womens’ Equality Party. The government has also tacitly supported the bill, and did so actively today in the person of Brandon Lewis, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, though some Conservative MPs did turn up to speak against.
Chief among them was Philip Davies (Con, Shipley) who fancies himself as the parliamentary representative of the Men’s Rights Movement. He is the chap who, whenever someone in Parliament mentions something about women, pipes up, “But what about the men, we are oppressed too!” Mr. Davies did his level best to derail the proceedings by droning on for well over an hour about how horribly men are oppressed. Thankfully he didn’t have the stamina to talk the bill out.
Getting private members bills passed is hard. The government schedules them for Fridays, which are traditionally the day on which MPs go home to their constituencies to deal with local business. Anyone wishing to speak and vote has to cancel their local business to be present. I understand that at least 100 MPs have to be present for the bill to be allowed to progress. The WEP campaign has focused primarily on persuading MPs to turn up. There was no point in hassling my MP because he’d only vote against if he was there. I’m disappointed in Ben Howlett, the Bath MP, who appears to have spent today doing constituency work. However, at least two of the Bristol MPs — Kerry McCarthy and Thangam Debbonaire — were present. Thangam had the dubious pleasure of following Philip Davies in the debate, and she did a magnificent job.
The full Hansard transcript is available here. On a quick read through I was particularly impressed with the speech by Helen Whately (Con, Faversham and Mid-Kent) who talks about her time volunteering at a homeless shelter before she became an MP:
On one of my most memorable nights doing that, I met a lady sleeping rough on the steps of a church in Brixton. As we took her to a shelter, I asked her about her circumstances. She told me that she was married but had fled her home that night because she was frightened of staying there; because of what her partner might do to her she was frightened for her life. She felt safer sleeping rough on the steps of a closed church in a dark and frightening park in Brixton than spending a night at home under her own roof.
Thankfully most MPs were impressed with this sort of testimony. The bill eventually passed its second reading by 135-2. Those voting against were the aforementioned Philip Davies and David Nuttall (Con, Bury North). The bill now has to go to the committee and report stages, and then come back for a third reading, before heading to the House of Lords where Mr. Davies will doubtless find rather more people sympathetic to his views.
There is, of course, a very long way to go yet, but today is a cause for celebration, particularly for WEP and this is something WE have made a big push on. Well done, team!
Tuesday evening saw the Annual General Meeting of LGBT Bristol, an organization of which I am a trustee. As is depressingly usual these days, traffic in the city was gridlocked in the early evening and Berkeley, who is the Chair, was unable to get there. So I found myself appointed Chair of Vice (or something like that) for the evening. Thankfully I have been very well trained by Kevin and chairing meetings holds no terrors for me.
One of the things I had to do was sign a Pledge on behalf of the organization. This is part of the Bristol Zero Tolerance campaign which seeks to eliminate gender-based violence in the city. You can find the text of the Pledge here.
The photo above was taken by Charlotte Gage of Bristol Women’s Voice who also runs the Zero Tolerance campaign. From left to right we have Ruth, David, me, Geetha and Sarah at the front; and Lexi and Lesley at the back.
It was a great honor to be asked to sign the pledge on behalf of the organization, and I’m delighted to have LGBT Bristol supporting such an important initiative.
By the way, Charlotte will be on my radio show next week. This news report should give you some context. I’m hoping that someone from Sisters Uncut will be joining us and the City Council has been invited to send someone along.