Gender

Transgender Day of Remembrance, 2017

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today is the day on which we remember all of those trans people whose lives were cut short by hate-motivated murders during the past year. Bristol’s official ceremony won’t be until Friday, which is just as well because I have Fringe to host tonight. However, I did want to do a post to remind you all of the occasion.

As usual, the statistics of the year’s murders can be found at the Transgender Europe website created for the purpose. This year the total number of murders is 325. That is up significantly from 295 last year. The increase is entirely due to a massive rise from 123 to 171 in Brazil. Most other countries have seen a fall, though the total for the USA has risen from 23 to 25.

Thankfully there have been no trans murders in the UK this year. However, given the amount of hate being pumped out by the mainstream media right now, I think it is only a matter of time before someone gets killed. I know that friend of Roz Kaveney’s was assaulted badly enough to need hospitalization recently, and the intensity of the rhetoric has been ramping up every week. I’m also seeing a lot of very upset young people on social media. It is one thing for me to be worrying about having all of my civil rights stripped away after a long and happy life; it is quite another if you are 19 or 25.

Unexpected TV

~ Cheryl


After the radio show yesterday I was having lunch in a cafe with a friend (plotting feminist revolution, as one does) when I got a message from the lovely people at ShoutOut Radio. Apparently the BBC were looking for someone to come onto Points West, the regional news program for the South West, and talk about trans issues.

So I got in touch with them to see what they wanted. As it turned out, they were running a feature on pioneering Bristol trans woman, Rosalind Mitchell. They wanted someone to comment on how things have changed for trans folk since she transitioned back in the 1990s.

That was an easy one for me except for the timing. I was due in Bath for a Women’s Equality Party meeting at 6:00pm. The show was due to air at 10:30pm, and I’d need to get a train home. Thankfully we were able to pre-record an interview and get me back to Temple Meads for the 10:22pm train. My thanks to everyone at WEP Bath and the BBC who helped make this happen.

Of course I wasn’t otherwise prepared. I’d managed to forget to pack a lipstick and didn’t find out about the mistake until I was at the WEP meeting and it was too late to go and buy one. My hair needed washing and I was wearing very much the wrong thing for hot studio lights. But I got it done.

If you have access to iPlayer you can watch the broadcast here up until 10:45pm today. Sabet Choudhury was great to work with, and I was pretty pleased with my responses. Sadly I still need a lot of practice on controlling my facial expressions while on TV. I frown way too much, mainly because I’m being serious. But every opportunity to practice is good.

Yesterday on Ujima – Babbers, Gender, History & World Fantasy

~ Cheryl

Yesterday’s show began with a chat with my Ujima colleague, Gail Bowen-Huggett. Gail is a great presenter who works on a show called Babbers. It goes out in the same time slot as mine, but on a Monday, and it caters primarily to older listeners. The Babbers team is looking to recruit new members, so Gail and I had a bit of a chat about what is involved in doing radio and how much fun it is. If you are over 55 and interested in getting involved, here’s some details of the awareness day that Gail and her colleagues are running.

The second slot should have featured another Ujima colleague, Angel Mel, but poor Mel has been struck down with the Dreaded Lurgy and consequently I had to improvise for half an hour. Fortunately I can rant for Wales about trans politics, and it is Trans Awareness Week, so I had plenty to say. Mainly it was about Trans Pride South West and about the forthcoming changes to the Gender Recognition Act.

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

At 13:00 I was joined by Leonie Thomas from Bristol University. She is an expert on the history of women in radio, in particular in the early 20th Century. She was there to talk about Una Marson who was the first black woman to front a BBC show. This is the YouTube clip that Leonie and I talked about.

Finally I had an interview with GV Anderson about her success in the World Fantasy Awards. You can find her award-winning story here.

Sadly the recording appears to have cut out after 38 minutes of the final hour. You can catch all of Leonie’s interview here. The interview with GV Anderson is not all there, but it was a pre-record and I have a rather longer version that I will put on Salon Futura fairly soon.

The playlist for the show was:

  • Jamiroiquai – Cosmic Girl
  • Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive
  • Janelle Monae featuring Erykah Badu – Q.U.E.E.N.
  • Sylvester – Mighty Real
  • Duke Ellington – It Don’t Mean a Thing
  • Maya Angelou – Stone Cold Dead in the Market
  • Earth, Wind & Fire – Fantasy
  • Bat for Lashes – The Wizard

My next show will be on December 6th and will feature Jonathan L. Howard talking about his latest book, After the End of the World.

New Gendered Voices Magazine

~ Cheryl

Earlier this year I attended a really great conference at Bristol University called Gendered Voices. The group that puts it on also publishes a magazine, and for the latest issue they kindly asked me to contribute an article. So I wrote them something on trans people in the Inca Empire. They also put me in the cover collage, which is dedication above and beyond the call of duty.

There are lots of other really interesting articles in the issue, and you can read it for free, here. Enjoy!

Seven

~ Cheryl

Is the number of trans people elected to political office in the USA yesterday. Helen Boyd has the full list. That’s a nice little black eye for the whiny child in the White House.

As usual the media has been talking all sorts of nonsense about people being the “first”, as if trans people were only invented yesterday. Monica Roberts has a nice post on the history of trans people in US election.

Of course none of those people were elected to a position in national government. However, seven also happens to be the number of trans people worldwide who have achieved that honor. Again Monica Roberts has done the research.

The UK is somewhat behind the curve on this. Indeed, we are in serious danger of going backwards. The Scottish Government released some (excellent) proposals on reform of the Gender Recognition Act today. Westminster is expected to follow suit. Because there will be a public consultation, there will also be a very well-funded campaign aimed at getting the government to scrap the Act altogether. The flood of (deeply dishonest) news articles about trans people we have been seeing over the last few weeks is just the softening up operation. I’m afraid I will have to be asking for your help in the near future.

Not Korean Enough?

~ Cheryl

Book Twitter today, in between the excitement over the US elections, has been busy fuming over this tweet:

https://twitter.com/necrosofty/status/927993475026563072

It is a particularly crass example of something which I fear is rather more common than we’d like to think, particularly in literary fiction (or at least fiction that thinks of itself as literary). It is also an example of the sort of thing I was talking about in my paper at the conference in Italy.

Now of course I was talking about trans people in fiction. How does that relate to Koreans? Well, in the case above what I think the editor is really saying is not that Chang’s characters are not Asian enough, but that they don’t sufficiently conform to the editor’s stereotypical idea of what a Korean-American character should be like. In other words, the editor doesn’t want authentic Asian characters, what they want are characters that will appeal to the book’s presumed straight, cis, able-bodied, white audience, of whom the editor assumes themself to be typical.

The same is true of trans people trying to write authentic characters. Here’s a quote from Meredith Russo, author of If I Was Your Girl, after she was asked in an interview to give advice to trans authors who want to get published.

Like, right now, the story that the cis world is most ready for and willing to accept is like “The Danish Girl”. It’s like “hello, I am a trans person, hello, I am a boy who thinks he is supposed to be a girl. Here’s me dealing with it. Here’s a very heavy emphasis on how all my cis friends and family feel about it. I might die. I’ll probably be heartbroken at the end.”

See the similarity? Russo is saying that publishers don’t want authentic trans characters, they want characters that conform to a cis readership’s expectations of a trans character. Nicola Griffith tells me that disabled people face similar issues.

The good news is that, with the small sample size I have of recent YA books about trans people (the subject of my paper) it seems much easier to get an authentic portrayal published in genre fiction. My theory is that’s because the publishers of genre fiction don’t think that character is all there is to a book. They are happy to buy a book on the basis of the plot, and not worry whether the readers will demand certain narratives for the characters.

Italy Part 5 – In Search of Galli

~ Cheryl

As I reported last night, I spent most of Saturday looking around Roman ruins and museums. Part of this was just me geeking out over the history. I couldn’t quite get to stand on the Rostra, the platform in the Forum where Roman orators made their speeches. It is a bit old and rickety now, and anyway if they let any old visitor stand on it there would soon be nothing left. But I did get very close to it. I also got to see how gargantuan the imperial palaces are, even after 2000 years of wear, being sacked, and being robbed for their stone. And I got to see magnificently over-the-top things like the Hall of Emperors and the Hall of Philosophers in the Capitoline Museum. Rome has so much ancient statuary that they don’t know what to do with it. Some of the rooms in the Capitoline have the air of an antique shop.

What I was mainly looking for, however, was material connected to trans Romans. That’s a much more challenging quest. I didn’t get to see the Temple of Cybele on the Palatine Hill because the Christians demolished it in 394 CE. All we have left are a few artist’s impressions from the time. But I did get fairly close to where it would have stood, and I must say it had a splendid view. It would have been nice if there had been more signage to tell you where various old buildings stood, but the site is huge and I can understand why they concentrate on places that are still (partially) standing.

There is a Temple of Cybele in much better repair out at Ostia, the port of Rome. However, it takes the best part of a day to get out there and see stuff, so I didn’t have time to make that trip.

One thing I did succeed in doing is finding the bust of Elagabalus in the Capitoline Museum (he’s in the Hall of Emperors along with all of the others). The Capitoline is also supposed to have two images of galli (trans women priestesses), but I couldn’t find either of them. They may have been moved out to other museums, or have been put in storage. I don’t have time to find out.

A word of warning if you are visiting Rome. Many of the attractions require you to buy a ticket in advance and some, such as the Villa Medici, will only let you in as part of a timed guided tour. That’s what happens when you have a city that is overrun by tourists. I will know better if I visit again. Also everything is closed on Monday.

Obviously I am a little bit disappointed not to have seen everything I wanted to see, but quite frankly the city is so overwhelming that I don’t care. I have way more than those reasons for wanting to come back.

Italy Part 3 – The G-Book Project

~ Cheryl

I’ll write more generally about the conference later, but right now I want to talk about a specific project that the MeTRa Center here is spearheading because I think that it is very important.

The G-Book Project is a joint initiative by academics and librarians in Italy, France, Spain, Ireland, Bulgaria and Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is funded by the Creative Europe Culture Programme. The project has three main objectives:

– To support the circulation of “gender-positive children’s literature” at the EU level;

– To stimulate and encourage local librarians to stock such books; and

– To raise awareness in local communities about the importance and benefits of such books.

What do they mean by “gender-positive”? Primarily they mean books which avoid harmful gender stereotypes of the “girls can only do these things, boys can only do those things” type, but instead are empowering for all children. That will include positive representation of LGBT+ people and relationships.

One of the outcomes of the project will be an online database of recommended books, split into two age groups of 3-5 and 6-10 years. Other outputs will hopefully include reviews, support material for teachers, parents, etc., and interactive aspects such as games and an interactive story.

Naturally part of the work will be to find suitable books to include. That may be more challenging in some of the target languages than others, but hopefully that will also spur translations. I will be pestering some of you about this over the next few weeks.

And yes, I know, Brexit stupidity means that there is no official UK involvement, but thanks to our Irish pals books in English are eligible.

Romans, Historians and Me

~ Cheryl

Out there in Internet Land there is a website called Write Where It Hurts. It bills itself as, “A Community for Scholars doing Deeply Personal Research, Teaching, and Service.” Inevitably that means a lot of trans stuff. One of the things they want to do is to get trans people writing critical reviews of research about trans people done by cis people, because this is very much a thing that needs to be done.

I have written them a piece about Roman history which, for length reasons, has been divided into two parts. Modern historians can be quite clueless when discussing trans issues, but with Rome we have the additional complication that almost all Roman texts that have come down to us were written by well-to-do, white-ish men who lived in a society that could be deeply misogynistic. They are not exactly reliable when it comes to matters of gender, any more than Caesar could be trusted when describing the barbarian depravities of the people he wanted an excuse to conquer.

Part 1 of the essay concerns the Emperor Elagabalus, who allegedly offered a massive reward to any surgeon who could transform him into a woman. Did he really say that? Or was that just a story made up to discredit him? Do our own feelings about such a statement make us more or less likely to believe that he really said it?

Part 2 will appear next Wednesday. It is rather more spicy as Nero is in it. I’ll be talking mainly about his wife, Sporus who, depending on how you read the history, was either a pathetic victim of the Emperor’s depravity, a scheming gay man, or a trans girl who was made an offer that she couldn’t refuse.

Writing to Empower

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

This week is Diversity Week at Bath Spa University. There are lots of good events happening, and today I went along to a creative writing workshop on “Writing to Empower”. The tutor was Tanvir Bush who, in addition to being an author and lecturer, is also something of a disability rights activist. Prior to that she worked with people living with HIV/AIDS in Zambia, the country where she grew up.

We covered a lot of ground in the course, and one of the things we were given to look at was Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”. King has been arrested for non-violent protest in Alabama, and he’s writing to a bunch of white pastors who have chosen to side with Governor Wallace rather than the black community. The letter is unfailingly polite and magnificently snarky at the same time. That guy could sure write. But what really struck me about it is how similar the discussion was to what we have today. People try to protest injustice, they get labeled as violent extremists by the government, and the nice, middle-class liberals throw up their hands in horror at the terrible tactics being used.

Here’s a brief extract from the letter.

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I feel your pain, Dr. King. These days I have come to the conclusion that the biggest stumbling block in the path towards trans rights is not the TERFs, or the religious fundamentalists, but celebrity white feminists. There are, of course, many women who are hugely supportive of the trans cause. However, those who have a platform, those who are likely to be listened to by government and large swathes of the population, are in this country unwilling to risk themselves to defend us. Part of this is due to relentless campaigning by the TERFs, and part of it is due to the constant attacks on trans rights in the media. All of it is due to a fear of being tarred by association.

There’s no question about the cause. A huge amount of what the trans community needs was set out, and backed with piles of evidence, in the government’s Transgender Equality Report. We know what needs to be done. But without political will nothing will be done. There are no votes in pleasing the trans community alone, there are too few of us. If the government comes to see feminism as hostile to trans people, because the only cis feminists they ever hear from are TERFs, then trans people don’t stand a chance.

I still believe that equality is better for everyone. But once you accept that equality is like pie, that giving equality to trans women means taking it away from cis women, you are accepting that only certain people are deserving of equality. That’s a very dangerous road for anyone, let alone feminists, to walk down.

The Aromantic and Asexual Speculative Fiction Database

~ Cheryl

Truly, there is such a thing. This is a long way from my area of expertise, but I know that it is very real for other folks and diversity is all about accepting that some people are not like you. There’s quite a lot of works already in the database (including some from big name writers as well as those specifically working in the ace and aro fields), and the people running the database as hoping to hear from authors who think that their work would qualify for inclusion. To learn more, go here.

Wonder Woman – The Extras

~ Cheryl

The Blu Ray disc of Wonder Woman promises more than 2 hours of bonus content. That’s small by Lord of the Rings standards, but quite impressive otherwise. So what do you get in all that?

To start with there is all the usual stuff. The Director, Patty Jenkins, talks about her vision for the film. There are extended scenes, and a blooper reel. The main thing you learn from this is that Gal Gadot has an absolutely amazing smile that she doesn’t get to use much in the film. We also got some contributions from Greg Rucka and Liam Sharp, who were the creative team on the comic when the film came out. I’ve known Liam for a long time and it is great to see him doing so well, and producing such amazing art.

But there are other things too. There’s a section on the training that the Amazons went through. I had no idea that many of the people playing the Amazons were top-class professional athletes. That didn’t excuse them from a formidable training regime. Just watching all of those women working to get themselves to a peak of physical fitness was hugely impressive.

Then there is a segment called “The Wonder Behind the Camera”, which is partly the creative team on the movie talking about their work, but also follows a group of teenage girls who want to get into the movie business when they have a day on the set. It is inspiring stuff.

My favorite segment, however, is one called “Finding the Wonder Woman Within”. It is a series of interview snapshots with a bunch of high profile women: women from Hollywood, women writers, women from NASA, sports stars such as Sloane Stephens and Danica Patrick. All of them talk abut what it means to be a wonder woman, and the theme is very much one of the battle for equality. Nothing is actually said about the child occupying the White House, but it is very clear that everything he stands for is under fire here. All of this is set to a backdrop of some amazing poetry from Mila Cuda, who is the Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate.

I’m not quite sure what I expected from this disk, but I’m damn sure I didn’t expect to find terms like “gender identity” and “non-binary” being bandied about in the extras for a superhero movie.

Well played, women of Hollywood. Well played indeed.

I, Replicant

~ Cheryl

Well, BladeRunner 2049 was interesting. It is visually stunning though, as has been noted elsewhere, very white and rather full of naked boobs.

What struck me most about it, however, probably won’t strike most of you as important, because you haven’t spent your entire life being told that you are not “real”.

I felt rather sorry for Joi, even though she’s a manufactured stereotype virtual sexbot. I don’t suppose I would have fallen in love with Ryan Gosling, because he has all of the emotion, charm and charisma of a congealed lump of lard in the bottom of a roasting tin waiting to be washed up. He seems to have taken the idea of playing an emotionless, baseline replicant very seriously. But I certainly related to her desperate desire to be real.

The main point, however, is that trans people are replicants. We look like humans, we feel like humans, we bleed like humans, but we are constantly told that we are not “real”. We live among you, and most of the time you can’t tell one of us from one of you. Yet many of you hate us, claim that we are dangerous, and want to get rid of us. If we do ever come to the attention of the authorities, we are probably doomed. And we don’t have super powers to make up for it.

I miss you, Roy Batty.

OutStories AGM

~ Cheryl


Everything went smoothly yesterday. Our cunning plan of having the AGM coincide with a really interesting talk ensures that we always get a quorum for the one important meeting of the year. My thanks to Dr. Jen Grove for a fascinating talk, and to the Institute for Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition at Bristol University for providing us with the venue and refreshments.

I’d like to pay particular tribute to my friend and colleague, Andy Foyle, who stood down from his role as co-chair at the meeting. Without Andy, OutStories wouldn’t exist, and he’s the only professional historian among us. He has done amazing things for the organization in the passed, and we will very much miss his presence.

Jen’s talk covered a range of topics, from why a Platonic Relationship is so called, to the wisdom or lack thereof of using the Greek tradition of pederasty when advocating for LGBT+ rights today. I have an audio recording of the talk, and I’ll be releasing that, along with the slides, once Jen has OK’d the rights on all of the images she used.

One thing that struck me from the talk was the misogyny of EP Warren (the talk’s subject) and other 19th century gay activists. John Addington Symonds once wrote that he considered himself more manly than straight men, because he did not consort with women. Warren refused to allow women into his home (except for servants, of course).

This seems rather odd to me, because both men idolized the Greek tradition of the symposium. Yet when we see such events depicted on vases they generally have female figures in attendance on the men (see the example above). Generally such figures are assumed to be hetairae (high class sex workers), which would suggest that these gatherings were not, in fact, bastions of homoerotic activity. Bi erasure much?

What amused me most about the talk, however, was the revelation that Warren had been furious when his beloved Oxford University had allowed its Dreaming Spires to be polluted by the presence of female students. My mirth was, of course, a direct result of the fact that Germaine Greer has just been complaining bitterly about Oxford allowing trans women to attend a women-only college. Gender separatists with daft notions of biological essentialism are the same in whatever era you find them.

Classical Erotica in Bristol

~ Cheryl


This is to remind you all that the OutStories Bristol AGM takes place tomorrow in The Old Council Chamber, Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, Bristol. Our guest speaker will be my good friend, Dr. Jen Grove, who will tell us all about E.P. Warren, the man after whom the Warren Cup (pictured above) is named. It is free to attend, and it is only from 2:30pm-5:00pm so there is plenty of time to pop into the Zine & Comics Fair as well. Full details here.

Well Done B&NES

~ Cheryl


Yesterday I represented The Diversity Trust at a small celebration at Bath Guildhall to celebrate the fact that Bath & North East Somerset Council is once again #1 on the Stonewall Education Index. Huge thanks to Chair of the Council, Cherry Beath, for organising this, and special thanks to Kate Murphy for piloting the whole effort.

Given the level of hysteria being whipped up against trans people, and trans kids in particular, at the moment by the mainstream media, it is really encouraging to see a local council put so much effort into safeguarding trans kids (as well as LGB kids). Here are a couple of examples as to why this is important.

Firstly here’s a study showing that pressure to conform to gender stereotypes is causing mental health problems in young people the world over. That, of course, doesn’t just apply to trans kids, but the fanatical insistence on biological determinism by anti-trans campaigners doesn’t help.

And secondly here’s an academic paper showing that treating trans kids with love and respect, rather than forcing them into cruel “conversion therapy”, significantly improves their mental health. You wouldn’t think that needed saying, but the number of news articles and social media posts we have had recently accusing loving parents of trans kids of “child abuse” for failing to try to “cure” them is just horrific.

So well done, B&NES, and thank you! You are making a significant difference to the lives of local trans kids.

Scythians at the British Museum

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments


As I had to be in London all day Saturday I took the opportunity to travel a bit earlier than I needed on Friday and check out the new Scythians exhibition at the British Museum. This was a research trip, because many people believe that the Schythians were the original source of the Amazons legend. More of that later. First the exhibition.

The most obvious thing you see when you go in is that this exhibition was mounted with the assistance of the Russian government. Many of the items on display are from the Hermitage, and there is a lot of material about how early research into Scythian history was encouraged by Peter the Great. There’s even a big portrait of Peter to emphasize the fact. Of course Scythian territory is now almost entirely within the Russian Federation, which is a bit of a nuisance for those of us who can’t read academic papers in Russian, but I rather suspect that the Scythians are “Russian” in much the same way as the Celts are “English”.

The other obvious thing is that the Scythians were very fond of bling. There is loads of lovely gold jewelry on display. Personally I prefer some of the horse coverings. The Scythians clearly felt that their horses should look as good as they did.

I very much enjoyed getting to see all of this, but I was a little disappointed with the way that the write-ups tended to reinforce Western ideas of gender stereotypes. There are a couple of places where the text mentions that Scythian women rode horses, and could be fierce warriors. However, Scythian women are almost always shown wearing full-length dresses which are completely impractical for horse riding. Where a set of women’s leggings are displayed, they are described as “stockings”.

There is also an unspoken assumption throughout the text that warriors are men, despite the fact that large numbers of burials of Scythian women have been found with horses and weapons. One does have to be careful not to assume this means a “warrior grave”, but some of these women show clear signs of being wounded in face-to-face combat (as opposed to being cut down while running away, which is the usual way of dismissing wounds as evidence of women warriors).

I couldn’t see any mention of the Amazon legend in the exhibition, though a couple of books on the Amazons were on sale in the gift shop. The exhibition book excuses this by quoting Herodotus as saying that the Amazons regarded themselves as distinct from the Scythians. However, the term “Scythians” is about as precise as the term “Celts”. It refers to a group of peoples united by common language and culture. It seems entirely likely to me that all Herodotus meant by this was that the Amazons he met refused to acknowledge the local Scythian king as their overlord.

Anyway, I am glad I went, and I did pick up a few valuable bits of information from the exhibition. Now I need to get round to writing a presentation for next February.

Today on Ujima – Art, Literature, Feminist SF and Vampires

~ Cheryl

Today’s show was full on culture, starting off with the fabulous Amy Powell from Bristol Art for All, an amazing organization that looks to provide cheap or free art courses that anyone can be involved in (even a total klutz like me).

Next up we had Amy Morse from the Bristol Festival of Literature previewing all of the fabulous events they have lined up for this year. The Festival is bookended by Bristol Horror Con (on Friday 13th, naturally) and by BristolCon (on the 28th). Of particular interest will be Stories of Strong Women – Unconventional Heroines on Friday October 20th. This features not only me, but also Lucienne Boyce, Virginia Bergin, Jean Burnett and Becky Walsh.

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

Talking of Virginia, she was my guest for the third segment of the show. Most of the discussion focused on her latest novel, Who Runs the World, which is a YA take on the classic “world without men” trope.

And finally I welcomed Anna and Orla from the Food and Theatre Company who specialize in immersive dining events. In October they will be staging Loco Lost Boys in the tunnels beneath Temple Meads station, where the audience can enjoy a fine meal and hopefully avoid becoming a tasty snack for the local vampires.

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

It being Black History Month, I decided to have all of the music from amazing black women who are no longer with us. We did the whole gamut from Josephine Baker to Whitney Houston. Here’s the playlist:

  • Aretha Franklin – Respect
  • Josephine Baker – Blue Skies
  • Billie Holiday – These Foolish Things
  • Big Mamma Thornton – Let Your Tears Fall Baby
  • Bessie Smith – A Good Man is Hard to Find
  • Ella Fitzgerald – Everyone’s Wrong But Me
  • Memphis Minnie – Doctor Doctor Blues
  • Whitney Houston – Love Will Save the Day

On the subject of Ujima, we are running a fundraiser for disaster relief in Dominica tomorrow night at the Watershed. It is 10:00pm – 1:00am, so not the sort of time I can be in Bristol, but if you are around please consider dropping by.

Trans in Academia Conference

~ Cheryl

On Saturday I was in London to give a paper at a very special academic conference. It was specifically for trans-identified people to talk about their research, and their experiences of life in academia.

Before I go any further, however, a brief word on terminology. The official title of the conference was Trans, Intersex and Gender Non-Conforming in Academia 2. I’ve been using trans as a very loose umbrella term because the whole thing needs a bit of unpacking. Firstly, while some intersex people do end up transitioning gender, many of them are perfectly happy with the gender they were assigned at birth. Therefore they should not be included in the term “trans”. Gender Non-Conforming is a relatively new term that is being used to indicate those people whose presentation is outside of social gender norms, but who are happy with the gender that they were assigned at birth. Again those people don’t strictly count as trans, but they are generally discriminated against as if they were trans. Yeah, I know, it is complicated.

I’m not going to say too much about individual papers and presentations, because the conference maintained a media blackout. Some of those presenting were concerned about their own safety, or the safety of their families, if it became known that they had attended. However, I can make one general point.

A lot of the issues we covered dealt with policy in various forms. There was policy to keep trans people safe in an academic environment, policy in the health service, and policy within areas control by the government (passports, prisons, legal gender recognition). In all of these cases it was very clear that there is a lot of good policy around, but that policy was useless if it wasn’t backed up by enforcement. All too often, policy exists, but most people ignore it, and those with the power to enforce it don’t have the will to do so.

Aside from that, I got to meet lots of interesting people, found some more trans historians, and had lots of conversations about science fiction. It was fun day, and the whole thing was very well run by Sahra Taylor. We need to do this again, and next time we need to make sure that Sahra (or whoever else is in charge) gets more support.