Last Friday I had a day in London which I spent mainly doing research in the British Museum. Part of that involved following up items in R.B. Parkinson’s fine book, A Little Gay History. However, I found that several of the items in it are not currently on display, and I found quite a few more than might have been featured.
This post is photo-heavy and quite long so I am putting the rest of it behind a cut.
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Photo by Laila El-Metoui
Here’s me last night doing my stand up and be mouthy routine at the London Metropolitan Archives. I was talking about an app I’m writing for the Twilight People project. It will be a while yet before it is ready for the public. That’s partly because there’s a bit of a learning curve in going from writing solely for Windows to writing for Android and iOS as well, and partly because there will be a lengthy consultation process for determining exactly what material from the project we use. However, I am quite pleased with how it is doing. Software skillz: I haz them.
Here’s another book with a trans character in it. This one was very different. As I note in the review, blink and you will miss the fact that the character is trans.
On the one hand, that’s not good because it means that there are aspects of being trans that don’t get explored. If it is too easy to be trans in an SF or fantasy world then the problems faced by trans people don’t get discussed. For quite a long time I worried that this book might be one of those. But then I finally worked out why (I think) Max Gladstone chose to use a trans character as the protagonist (yes, the protagonist) of Full Fathom Five, and then I was very happy that he had done so.
Full Fathom Five is an interesting book in other ways too. It is mainly about things like offshore banking, the difficulties faced by small nations trying to stay independent in a world run on trade, and the power of faith.
You can find my review here.
I am continuing to work my way through books that do interesting things with gender. The latest victim subject is Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer. This is a book that attracted a lot of critical attention when it came out, and deservedly so as it does a lot of interesting things. My review is very long.
The book doesn’t do too well on the gender front. It is one of those SF novels that tries to speculate about the future of gender without bothering to engage much with what people are saying about their genders now. How it does on political philosophy, which encompasses the main thrust of the book’s argument, is still open to question because there is at least one more book to come.
You can find my review here.
One of the delights of doing trans awareness training is having a multi-cultural class and meeting people who know more about trans life in their own culture than I do. As a result of yesterday’s course I found out about this fabulous video in which a group of hijra do a traffic safety promotion. Thanks Bhavna!
These days we see less outright hostility to trans people in the media, but a great deal more concern trolling. Much of this takes the following form:
Trans people are bad because [long list of things that most trans people do not believe or do]. I would be much more inclined to support trans people if [list of things that most trans people believe and do].
I keep meaning to write things debunking this nonsense, but I have better things to do with my life and to be honest the whole thing gets very tiresome after a while. Fortunately I can rely on other people to do the job for me.
The most recent fuss has been to do with trans kids, because when it comes to concern trolling there’s no better line than, “Won’t someone think of the children?” The articles have centered on the claim that 80% of kids diagnosed as being trans “grow out of it”. I have written about this before, but it is a meme that has an enormous amount of tenacity.
The general thrust of the articles is as follows:
The vast majority of kids diagnosed as being trans grow out it, so huge numbers of cis kids are being misdiagnosed as trans. We must stop all treatment for trans kids so as to avoid any risk of a cis kid being forced into transition.
Of course they don’t put it so bluntly, but that’s what they want to happen, and why they want it to happen.
Part of the problem here is the question of what we mean by the diagnosis. Edition IV of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association had a 5-point test for being trans. One of those is the obvious one of, “Repeatedly stated desire to be, or insistence that he or she is, the other sex.” However, the DSM rules allowed doctors to diagnose a kid as trans if only 4 of the 5 criteria were met. So it was possible to diagnose a kid as trans even if they did not, in fact, identify as trans. See Kelley Winters for more on this issue.
There’s a lot more that I could write, but Julia Serano has done it for me, and as usual has done it far better than I ever could. This essay is rather long, but it puts the whole fuss into context and whacks all of the necessary moles. Doubtless, as in a game of whack-a-mole, they will all pop up again, but at least we now know what to do to them.
While I am on the subject of trans kids, you may have been me tweeting appeals for the crowdfunding campaign for the Gendered Intelligence Trans Youth Camping Trip. They are in the final week of the campaign, and today they finally hit their target. However, they could probably do with a bit more just in case someone has to back out.
Still on the subject of kids, you may remember that I had some young people doing their National Citizenship Scheme training on the radio show last week. Part of the NCS programme is that the kids should do a community project that raises money for people in need. This year two groups (not in Bristol) have chosen to raise money for GIRES, an excellent organization that does great work for trans people. You can find their campaigns here and here.
Here is the last of the book reviews I promised you of books with trans characters in them. This one is a Tiptree winner, and oddly enough the one that I was least impressed with.
This review is fairly spoilery. It has to be that way, otherwise I could not explain the problems I have with it. So if you are spoiler averse, don’t click. To read what I have to say about the book, click here.
There will be more trans-related book reviews coming soon, but we are now into August and it is Women in Translation Month, so I need to swap obsessions for a while.
Continuing my reviews of books featuring trans characters, today I am taking on what appears, at least in my little corner of the world, to be one of the most talked about books of the year. If you see someone raving about how good this book is, listen to them.
Oh, and it is a novella, so it is a nice, quick read. There’s not much pain on the “to read” pile.
I wouldn’t need to talk about it, except that it has a trans character so I have to. You can find my review here.
Fox Fisher has posted his video report on this year’s Trans Pride. I have embedded it below. I’m somewhere at the back of that huge crowd outside the Marly at the beginning, but otherwise the film is entirely Cheryl-free, so it is safe to watch.
As promised, I have posted another review of a book containing a trans character. This one is very different from The Fifth Season. Masks and Shadows is set in our world, in the 18th Century, and therefore has to navigate the actual social attitudes of the time. Stephanie Burgis has achieved this by making clear just how vile the behavior of rich aristocrats was at that time.
By the way, some of you might wonder at my inclusion of eunuch at trans, particularly one who still identifies as straight male. However, people of the time regarded eunuchs as a third gender, and they suffered social discrimination regardless of how they identified.
The book is also interesting because it is, in part, about the history of music. Burgis has played in orchestras, and studied music history in Vienna. The story is set in the Eszterháza Palace and Joseph Haydn is a major character.
I really enjoyed this book. It has a gorgeous cover too. You can find my full review here.
Tegan and Sara have a new video out. The song is called “Faint of Heart”, and the video features a whole lot of young LGBTQ artists cosplaying famous pop icons. Being an old lady, I don’t know who most of the kids are, but according to this post we have: Cooper Treibel as David Bowie, Tyler Ford as Prince, Ella Giselle as Madonna, Dominic Ravina as Elvis Presley, Olabisi Kovabel as Grace Jones, Eli Erlick as Sara, and Ni Ching-Marino as Tegan. Ella, of course, was on Season 2 of I Am Cait. I’ll have to check the others out.
If you look carefully you can find Tegan and Sara in the audience shots. And if you know what you are looking for you can also find two fine trans actresses: Angelica Ross and Jen Richards (stars of the Emmy-nominated Her Story). The producer, Devon Kirkpatrick, gave them roles as two mothers helping their kids make the costumes. That is a wonderful thing to have done. Well done to everyone involved.
Update: The ever reliable Mey over at Autostraddle has done a post about the video. She knows far more about the young stars than I do. As I suspected, most of them are trans-identified in some way. Even the director is trans. Thank you again, Tegan & Sara.
I have been reading books, honest. Quite a few of them, in fact. There are lots of books featuring trans characters being published right now and I need to keep up. Finding time to write reviews is another issue, but as I have an essay to write I should get some thoughts into electrons.
Today, therefore, I wrote four book reviews. I’ll publish them over the next week. Given the previous post, and the fact that the Hugo voting deadline is this weekend, I am starting with The Fifth Season.
I am happy but unsurprised that Jemisin has done some good work with trans characters in the book. She knows what she’s doing. Having read the book I am also unsurprised at how well it is doing in this year’s awards.
You can find my review here. I can haz The Obelisk Gate nao, plz?
The very talented Kate Adair, who has a regular slot on BBC Scotland’s The Social, has produced her take on this year’s Trans Pride. I have a brief interview with Kate in my audio collection from the weekend. Large parts of it involve Kate and I still giggling over this.
Or possibly not. But I am on video interviewing Sophie Cook, who is the new anchor for The Latest TV, the community TV station in Brighton. Whether any of Sophie’s coverage of Trans Pride, including her interview of me, will make it into a broadcast is unclear, but my interview of her was filmed, and Sophie has kindly put it on her YouTube channel.
Sophie has also posted this report including interviews with other attendees of Trans Pride.
Photo by Sarah Savage
That’s another Trans Pride successfully concluded. Well, concluded for me, anyway. Lots of people are still enjoying the evening gig, but my feet have given up on me as I spent all day wandering round the event talking to people and getting interviews.
The photo above is from the march. Having outgrown yet another park, this time we were in Brunswick Gardens. For those of you who know Brighton, that’s the park just off the sea front which is surrounded by a huge Georgian terrace, just west of the Metropole. It was a great location, and it meant that we got to march a long way along the sea front in full view of lots of tourists. Everyone seemed either bemused or was very supportive.
I got a lot of great interviews with people, including a group of Buddhist trans people who are from the same order that Michael Dillon joined all those years ago.
As usual there were lots of stalls, mostly promoting support services for trans people. However, we are starting to see more celebratory activities as well. My favorite new stall was E-J Scott’s Museum of Transology, which bills itself as, “A mobile museum that collects and exhibits trans peoples’ stuff.” E-J is encouraging trans people to donate things that have a personal connection to their lives. Of course he’ll end up with the biggest collection of used fake boobs in the world, but hopefully he’ll get other stuff too.
This year the music was interspersed with spoken word performances, which meant we got a full set from the amazing Alice Denny. However, my favorite bit of the stage entertainment was Ren Stedman. He’s a great singer-songwriter in the classic tradition of the angry young person with a guitar. And he’s a lovely bloke too — gave me a great interview.
Also on my interview list is the fabulous Sophie Cook who is the news anchor for Brighton’s community TV network. I consider myself now well and truly out-classed in terms of trans local media stardom. Hello, Made in Bristol TV, we are behind the curve. Get yourselves a trans presenter pronto.
The weather was good. Early on it was bright and sunny, and I was a bit worried it would be another day of heatstroke and sunburn. However, it had misted over by midday and the sun didn’t get out again until late in the afternoon. I got a light touch of sun walking back to my hotel because I was going east and there are bits of my back that I can’t reach with the sunscreen, but it was much better than it might have been had the sun been out all day.
Sarah Savage tells me that numbers are up at least 50% on last year. They should be OK in Brunswick Park for another year, but after that they might have to move again. I bumped into a friend from Bristol who is now living in Essex and she told me that Brighton’s Trans Pride is a bigger event that Essex Pride, which caters for the whole LGBT spectrum.
Mostly the day was very positive, but the reality of trans lives is never too far from the surface of the party. While I was having lunch two women came and sat next to me on the bench. At first I thought they might be mother and daughter, but it soon became clear that they were therapist and trans girl. You try not to overhear, but emotions get loud and it soon became obvious that this was a conversation involving family abuse and self-harm. At least one person had come to Trans Pride looking for help. I hope she found what she needed.
Ujima’s time as a reigning National Diversity Award champion is coming to an end. In 8 weeks time new winners will be crowned for 2016. The shortlists have just been announced and once again I know some of the people involved.
In LGBT Role Model we have Lee Gale, who is a fantastic trans awareness trainer. Lee works much harder than I do, traveling all over the country to do training. He’s a lovely bloke too.
In LGBT Organizations we have Mermaids (who are awesome), Gendered Intelligence (whom Lee works for), and Trans Pride Brighton, which is the event I am attending this weekend. Lee is here, of course, and he’ll doubtless be helping with the GI stall tomorrow. It’s all happening here.
Finally in the Multi-Strand Organization category we have Off the Record Bristol. They are the people who run Freedom Youth, our LGBT youth group. My friend and colleague, Henry Poultney works for them. Of course they do other stuff for young people too, which is why they are multi-strand. I can’t comment on that, but their LGBT work is awesome.
Best of luck to everyone.
A lot of people these days think that “activist” means someone who sits at home monitoring social media all day and making angry tweets about the state of the world. Of course a lot of good activism can be done online. The campaign to get Tara Hudson moved to a women’s prison was done mostly that way (plus a lot of phone calls), and it was a lot of hard work. But you also have to get off your arse and do things occasionally.
Case in point. Last night, after the radio show, I attended a meeting at the offices of Bristol City Council. It is part of an ongoing initiative in Bristol and surrounding areas to draw up what is currently being called an “LGBT+ Manifesto”; that is a statement of the particular needs of LGBT citizens, and ideas as to what should be done to meet those needs. Along with a couple of other trans folks (hello Henry & Lexi), I have been asked to be on the steering committee.
This morning I headed into Bristol and gave a trans awareness course to teachers at a local school. They were lovely people, very keen to help trans kids. Berkeley and I have been invited back in September to do some more work with them.
Immediately after the course I went back to Temple Meads and took a train to Brighton, where I am now. Tomorrow I am attending a conference run by Brighton & Hove City Council. This will report on their groundbreaking Trans Needs Assessment, which grew out of Trans Pride and has now been going for a couple of years. We’ll hear how the city is responding to that survey, what various agencies like the local police and health services are doing, and where it will be going next. I’ll be bringing all of that information back to the LGBT+ Manifesto group in Bristol.
And on Saturday I’m attending Trans Pride, which for me means doing interviews, and chatting to various people about ongoing projects. Hopefully I will get time to hang out with some friends too.
The nice LGBT police people seemed to enjoy my talk. It was great to catch up with Surat Shaan Knan and see the new pop-up version of the Twilight People exhibition. There were at least two trans people (serving police officers) in the audience.
The conference was in the Guildhall in the City of London. It is a very impressive space. I haven’t had time to process my photos yet, but hopefully I’ll have some for you later.
We also had a lovely party last night. One of the advantages of hanging out with gay people is that they have no qualms about playing Wham. Whatever else you might think about George & Andy, “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” is a great dance track. (And no, I can’t hit that high, I don’t have that vocal range.)
Today I took myself off to the British Museum to see the Sunken Cities exhibition. This is material from the Egyptian cities of Thonis (called Heracleion by the Greeks) and Canopus. It is amazing, if you like that sort of thing, which I do. The quality of the artifacts is superb, because they have been preserved under the sea rather than out in the open getting weathered, smashed and stolen.
The exhibition traces the history of Egypt’s incorporation into the Mediterranean world from the first use of Greek soldiers by the pharaohs through the conquest by Alexander to incorporation into the Roman Empire. The religious history over this period is fascinating, with Egyptian gods first being mapped onto Greek religion and then incorporated into the religious use of the Empire. I’ll have more to say about this in a separate post.
And finally I paid a brief visit to Forbidden Planet and came away with a pile of books. Chief among this was Seanan McGuire’s novella, Every Heart a Doorway, which is utterly delightful and thoroughly recommended.
Sorry about another apparent clickbait headline, but that’s exactly what I will be doing.
This morning I RT’d the tweet below. Yes, there is such a thing as a police LGBT conference. The 2016 event is taking place in London tomorrow. I’m going to be one of the guest speakers. I’ll be telling them all about trans people in antiquity. Should be fun.
https://twitter.com/ASPoliceLGBT/status/753507085652992000
As I have probably mentioned before, one of my TV addictions is music documentaries. Recently I have been watching a few about electronic music. Now when you think of the history of electronica you probably think of people like Kraftwerk and Gary Numan, but synthesizers had been about in popular music since the 1960s. Historically, of course, it can be dated back at least as far as 1928 when Léon Theremin patented his truly bizarre musical instrument. Two early pioneers of the use of synthesizers in rock and pop were Pete Townshend and Stevie Wonder. But the synth-only album was quite another thing.
My favorite synth composer from when I was a teenager was Isao Tomita (and I’m playing Snowflakes are Dancing while I write this). But he wasn’t the first on the scene. Back in 1968 Wendy Carlos had an unlikely commercial hit. She had realized that the metronomic precision of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach was perfect for synthesizers, and created an album called Switched on Bach which reached #10 on the Billboard album chart and has sold over 1 million copies.
Although she produced several other classical-themed albums, Carlos’s career quickly moved sideways into films when she was hired by Stanley Kubrick to write the score for A Clockwork Orange. She re-united with Kubrick to score The Shining, and was later hired by Disney to produce a soundtrack for Tron. That’s not a bad career for a woman composer you have probably never heard of.
If you find an early copy of Switched on Bach you may see it credited to someone else. That’s because, back in the 1960s, in addition to becoming a pioneer of electronic music and a pop sensation, Wendy was also undergoing gender transition. Trans women are awesome.
Oh, and Wendy is still with us. There’s someone I would love to meet.