Gender

Schools & Families Day – Museum of London

~ Cheryl

Sir Derek Jacobi learns his lines
The final part of my weekend in London was the Schools & Families Day put on by Schools Out at the Museum of London. Whereas on Saturday I had been mainly supporting trans friends, and speaking myself, on Sunday I got to see new stuff. I had a fabulous day.

One of the first thing I noticed on arrival was a book stall. It turned out to be run by Letterbox Library, who specialize in books for children that have equality and diversity themes. I immediately encouraged them to get in touch with Fox and Sarah about stocking Are You a Boy or are You a Girl?, but I was delighted to see that they had 10,000 Dresses and I snapped a picture to send to Marcus Ewert. The day sort of took off from there.

Stuart Milk was due to read from the children’s book about his uncle, so I wandered along to say hello and ended up doing gopher work as he was expecting some people to come to interview him. I was passing through the museum lobby when I spotted a familiar looking gentleman looking a bit lost. So I introduced myself and took Sir Derek Jacobi up to where our event was taking place. He was due to read some children’s books later in the day, and to my delight he picked Marcus’s book as one of the ones to use. I snapped the picture above and sent it off to go viral, which it duly did.

Then it was back to the lecture theatre to catch up with Juno Dawson. I’d not read any of her stuff before, but having now heard some of it I can thoroughly recommend it. She’s also lovely. We had a bit of a chat about transitioning in the public eye.

Sir Derek was up next, and I managed to get a quick chat with him. I told him how his old friend Claudius had been responsible for making the Rites of Attis part of the official Roman Religious Calendar. (There’s even an official Castration Day, when Roman trans girls got their op done.) His readings of the kids books were fabulous. There was video taken, so hopefully one day I’ll be able to share his reading of 10,000 Dresses with you.

Little did I know that Chris Riddell was also in the audience. He did a few sketches, including this one (thanks to Marjorie for the link):

Next up I went to see a great presentation by Subodh Rathod about gender fluidity in Hindu religion. Vishnu has a female avatar called Mohini who is, naturally, incredibly beautiful. She has a famous dance. Obviously Mohini is of great interest to the hijra community. Subodh was assisted by Kali Chandrasegaram who performed the dance at the end of the talk.

That was at least 2000 years of living trans history right in front of our eyes.

Sir Derek Jacobi learns his lines

I also got to meet the fabulous Juno Roche, got to hear my new pal Laila El-Metoui talk about the amazing work she does on diversity in adult education, and saw the Gay Men’s Choir perform. All in all, it was a pretty fabulous day.

Huge congratulations to Niranjan Kamatkar and his team for putting on a great weekend, and to Sue Sanders for the fabulous work that she does making these things happen. Bristol has a lot to live up to. No pressure, eh?

LGBT History Festival, Up and Running

~ Cheryl

The London Hub of the 2016 National Festival of LGBT History is well and truly underway. On Friday night we were at Islington Town Hall for the Civic Launch. It was splendidly municipal bling. Roz Kaveney was a star for reading a poem rather than giving a speech, therefore helping get the event back on track after various political people had droned on a bit. The rendition of Labi Siffre’s “So Strong” by the Diversity Choir that closed the evening was superb.

Today we were at the V&A. I attended talks by Stuart Milk, Sabah Choudrey, Fox Fisher and Bisi Alimi, all of which were very good. My apologies to Jana Funke and Travis Alabanza, both of whom I would have loved to see, but they were scheduled against each other and that was the only time I had to sit down with Stuart and go over plans for his visit to Bristol.

Fox had an amazing piece of film with him. If you have seen the My Genderation films you may remember one about an young trans lad called Ruben who was filmed just before he stared on testosterone. Fox has now done an update a couple of years later. The contrast is amazing, as is what has been done with the footage.

By the way, I understand that Sarah Savage will have some previously unseen film footage in her talk at Bristol in two weeks time.

I did my Michael Dillon talk. It wasn’t the best talk I have ever done, but it seemed to go down OK. Also I got some really exciting news about Dillon after the talk which I hope to be able to share soon.

Tomorrow I’ll be off to the Museum of London where I will hopefully get to meet Juno Dawson. Sadly Gandalf appears to be off the bill, but the Emperor Claudius will be there instead.

Launching Twilight People

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Twilight People collage

I am in London, for their leg of the 2016 National Festival of LGBT History. The first event was last night at Islington Museum. It was the opening of Twilight People, a photographic exhibition of trans people of faith.

The show has been put together by my friend Surat-Shaan Knan, who is amazingly good at magicking up funds and volunteers for this sort of thing. The photography is really good, and it is fascinating to read all of the stories about the intersections between gender journeys and journeys of faith. If you happen to be in London, do pop in and take a look.

The people in the exhibition come from a wide range of backgrounds including Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Paganism. There are, of course, a lot of faiths missing, but Surat-Shaan can only work with people who offer themselves as volunteers. Hopefully he can add to the mix in time.

I am particularly impressed with Liberal Judaism for all of the support that they give to Surat-Shaan in his projects.

I managed to snag a couple of interviews while I was there. One is with Christina Beardsley who is a Christian minister. The other is with the Deputy Mayor of Islington. Shaan dear, you owe me an interview, and I owe you coffee.

Tonight is the Civic Launch of the London weekend. Roz Kaveney is one of the guest speakers.

LGBT History Month Is Here

~ Cheryl

It is February. The insanity is starting. I am going to be so busy over the next four weeks.

I’ll have more about my schedule in a later post, but write now I want to draw your attention to a magazine that Schools Out UK has produced to send around the country. There’s an online version of it available here. Congratulations to my pal Adam Lowe for doing a fine job with the layouts.

The magazine runs to 64 pages it in. Much of it is ads, which supports it being given out for free. However, there are lots of interesting articles. It includes messages of support from a bunch of VIPs. There’s some guy called David Cameron in it, and Jeremy Corbyn. And Nicola Sturgeon, of course. And then it gets down to the substances with things like a Bowie retrospective, an interview with Bisi Alimi, and an article by me about trans people and religion. I’m on pages 26 and 27.

Writing serious historical stuff for a magazine like this is a bit hard. I kept wanting to put footnotes in. I believe that there will be an HTML version of it available soon, with links and a recommended reading list. I’ll let you know when that goes up.

The Mind LGBT Conference

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I spent yesterday in Bristol at a conference run by Mind, the mental health charity. It was specifically aimed at reducing suicide among LGBT people. There were a lot of local activists there.

The morning session was basically talking heads, including a prerecorded video from Stephen Fry. My colleague, Berkeley Wilde, from The Diversity Trust got to do the local people bit. The headline speaker was a young lad called Owen Jones. He was very good, even if he did look to me like he ought to be in a boy band.

The main messages that came out of the morning were that LGBT people suffer mental health problems at a far greater rate than straight people; that bi and trans people have it worse that LG people; and that austerity measures are significantly reducing the amount of money available to tackle this. Not only that, but services to LGBT people (and other minority groups) are being reduced proportionately more than for other groups. The government apparently has a policy of “mainstreaming”, by which they mean closing down specialist services for minority groups and incorporating that coverage in general services, which then fail to provide the specialist treatment that minorities need, and may be actively hostile to them.

All of the big shots and much of the audience evaporated after lunch, but the best point of the day was made in the final session by Alessandro Storer, Mind’s Equality Improvement Manager. He noted that because LGBT people suffer mental health problems at a much higher level than the bulk of the population, they are actually a core constituency for mental health services. Dropping services for them, while keeping services for people who need them less, makes no sense.

Of course, as Berkeley never tires of saying, we need good academic studies to make this point. Thankfully a lot more work is being done in this area these days. I particularly recommend this study done by Scottish Trans in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University.

One of the things I had been interested in was how inclusive the event would be. The speakers made an effort to mention bi and especially trans people, so the awareness was definitely there. However, the event was very white, and we didn’t get to an actual trans speaker until late in the afternoon. A brief shout out to my new pal Jacqui here, of whom more later, but the only speaker to get a standing ovation all day was Erica from Ystradgynlais Mind. Welsh trans girls FTW! What a shame half of the audience had gone by then.

For me the highlight of the day was the workshop on reducing stigma. It was run by a group called The Outsiders who specialize in human libraries and the like. You may remember that I did a human library thing last year.

The subject of the workshop was an idea called SoMe. That’s short for Social Media, but also works as a thing about identity. What happens is that you get a bunch of volunteers, each of whom produces a SoMe Profile about themselves. Attendees at the event can then choose to have a one-to-one chat with one of these people.

The idea here is to make a personal connection between the attendees and someone who represents the group whose social profile you are trying to improve. In our case that was people who had suffered mental health issues. The point of the SoMe profile is that, as an attendee, you can choose to talk to someone who sounds interesting to you, possibly someone with him you have a lot in common. That makes it much easier to get into a conversation with them, and to sympathize with them. I got to talk to Peter, who is autistic and a science fiction fan, and to Jacqui who is a young trans woman.

I must admit that the idea seemed a bit mad to be at first, but it worked really well. So well, in fact, that I want to talk to Berkeley about doing this sort of things as a trans awareness exercise in Bristol. Obviously we’d need a bunch of trans folk as volunteers, but that’s a good thing because the trans community is massively varied. I’m painfully aware that I’m something of a stereotype.

All in all, it was a good day, even if most of the messages coming out of it were somewhat negative. At least there were a lot of people there determined to do something about that. Also the chocolate brownies were superb.

The Cis Gaze at Work

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Bad toilet signage
Today The Guardian has an article titled, “Top 10 books about gender identity”. It is written by a cis person, for cis people. Here’s why.

Let’s start with that photo, which gets bathrooms wrong in just about every way possible.

No, wait, let’s start with the fact that it’s a picture of a bathroom being used to illustrate an article about books. OK, so I have been guilty of reading on the loo from time to time, but surely books and toilets are not that closely related, are they? No, of course not. Trans people and toilets, on the other hand, well there’s your word association test right there. Mention trans people and what comes immediately to mind for way too many cis people? Toilets. That’s what we are about: threatening their toilets.

Next up, why is this a combined trans and accessible toilet? Accessible toilets are there for a reason, because some people need them. Putting a trans sign on the accessible toilet will mean lots of able-bodied people using that toilet when they don’t need the special facilities.

And the sign, what does it mean? As far as I can see it says, “this is the toilet for trans people, because we don’t want you perverts in our toilets.”

Look, I have been using women’s toilets for over 20 years. No one has complained. I have not sexually assaulted anyone in the process. I do not appreciate being told that I now have to use a different toilet because trans people are suddenly in the public eye and loads of people have become obsessed with bathroom panic.

Of course there are some trans people who do identify outside of the binary, and would prefer a separate toilet. That’s fine, but that’s not what that sign says.

It does of course say “inclusive”. As far as I can make out that means “inclusive of all the icky people we don’t want in our toilets”. I am only mildly surprised that there wasn’t a little picture of a woman in a hijab along with it.

On now to the article. Top ten books on gender identity, eh? Are any of them written by trans people? Well if they are there are no names that I recognize. Those books I do know about are written by cis people. I’ve only read one of them, but it is #1 on the list, and it is a book I absolutely do not recommend as being good about gender identity.

There is a trans person in Luna, by Julie Anne Peters, but the book isn’t about her. It is about Luna’s sister, Regan, and how hard it is on a girl to have a trans sibling. There’s no question that Regan is the character we are supposed to sympathize with, and given Luna’s behavior at times that’s not hard to do. Thankfully for Regan, the book has a happy ending. Luna comes into some money and is able to leave home. Great.

Looking at the descriptions of the other books, most of them focus on how awful trans people’s lives are. Which of course they are at times, but the message I’m getting here is that trans people are pathetic individuals whom we should all pity because they are so tragic. Could we maybe have something a little bit positive?

This is probably a good point to give another recommendation for Vee’s great article on the “acceptance narrative” that informs so many books about trans people. That narrative is popular because it allows cis people to feel squicked out by trans folk and tells them that’s OK. That’s the sort of book about trans people that cis people seem to want to read. It is certainly the sort of book that publishers want to publish, which perhaps says rather a lot about the attitudes of commissioning editors.

That’s really what this is all about. In the same way that many men won’t read books about women, many white people won’t read books about non-white people, and so on, many cis people don’t want to read books about trans people. They might want to read books about cis people having to come to terms with the existence of trans people. That’s what The Guardian means when it talks about books being good on the subject of gender identity.

Oh, and to all of those people thinking, “but we must have an easily understood sign for a toilet that can be used by anyone,” what’s wrong with a little picture of a toilet?

Our Stories, Our Lives

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Because even I need a break sometimes, I just binged on a TV show. All six episodes. Don’t worry, though, they were only about 10 minutes each. It didn’t eat my entire evening, though I may need a bit of time to calm down.

Her Story is a show put together and starring a bunch of queer women, principally — least from my point of view — Jen Richards and Angelica Ross. You may remember me nagging you about the Kickstarter campaign. It is a short series about the love lives of two trans women: Violet, a waitress with a controlling boyfriend; and Paige, a high-powered attorney. Jen and Angelica take the lead roles. Given how short it is, much more detail than that risks spoilers, but along the way the show tells you a great deal about the reality of trans lives.

The operative word there being “reality”. This is not some exercise in cis gaze, putting the weird trans folk on screen so that “normal” people can see how tragic and pathetic we are. This is actual trans people condensing lifetimes of hurt into an hour worth of TV that they hope will educate people. Whether it will or not, I don’t know, but it sure is real.

It took me a while to get up the courage to watch it. Watching Tangerine made me nervous, but Her Story scared me a lot more. I’m way too privileged to completely see myself in Sin-Dee and Alexandra. Vi and Paige, on the other hand, are both women that I could have been. They do things I have had to do, that scared me horribly at the time. Watching the show simultaneously reminded me how lucky I have been, and how much I miss Kevin.

I could put my critic hat on and pick a few nits with the show, but I’m not going to. Firstly, for what it is — something produced on a shoestring, many of whose crew are new to the business — it is damn good. Secondly it gets the important bits right. And, as I’ve just been saying to someone on Facebook, the show totally makes you care about the characters and want things to turn out well for them.

Here’s hoping something bigger happens as a result. I note that Eve Ensler has an Executive Producer credit, and in fact Laura Zak who co-wrote the show with Jen, and has a major role in it, is Ensler’s campaign manager, so there’s contact to influence there. Her Story isn’t going to win awards. Those are reserved for cis white people, it seems. But it is helping change the world, which is a much more important thing.

You can watch the whole of Season 1, for free, here.

Oh, and that taking a break? I lied. I needed to watch this show for a talk I’m doing later in the year.

With Enemies Like These…

~ Cheryl

There used to be a time when trans people had a decent class of enemies. If we did get mentioned in the media those quoted would be highly respectable. Psychiatrists would explain how we were mentally ill and in need of incarceration. Chief Constables would explain that we were a danger to public decency. Politicians would ask why no one would think of the children that we were so obviously endangering. And archbishops would pray for our endangered souls.

Those days, it appears, are gone. These days we have the TERFs, whose submission to the Transgender Equality Inquiry was so bizarre that it left the MPs in no doubt as to who was unhinged here.

Fortunately for the TERFs, they do have allies. G*merG*ate loves them. And now, apparently, so does Jeremy Clarkson. All they need is Donald Trump and they’ll have a full house.

No wonder people are saying that being trans is a fashion. Who wouldn’t want to be hated by such people?

Best Trans Fiction of 2015

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The lovely people at Lethe Press are already well known for producing the Wilde Stories and Heiresses of Russ series of anthologies which collect, respectively, the best gay and the best lesbian speculative short fiction of the year. Now at last there will be a trans-themed companion series. Transcendent, edited by K.M. Szpara, will look for the best speculative short stories featuring trans characters. The call for submissions for stories published in 2015 is here.

Please note that this is a “best of” series. They want reprints, not original fiction. Pay is correspondingly lower.

Also the requirement is that the story should contain a trans character of some sort. The author does not have to be trans-identified. However, the editor is someone I would trust to filter out anything hamfisted or offensive.

The call for submissions is a classic example of the dangers of trying to list every sort of identity you want to include. It manages to not list how I identify, and it includes at least one category that will have some activists furious. Don’t try to cover all of the bases, folks, it always ends badly. Thankfully I know it is being done in good faith.

I don’t have anything to submit from 2015, but I will have at least one story from 2016 because I have sold one with a trans character to Holdfast Magazine. So I want this thing to be a success, OK?

Diversity Trust Winter Newsletter

~ Cheryl

It is kind of incumbent on me to recommend organizations that I work for, especially when I am a Director of said organization, and therefore I commend to all of you the Winter Newsletter of The Diversity Trust.

There is a big article about me in there (showcasing one of Lou Abercrombie’s wonderful photos), but there’s a lot more than that. Most significantly I’m by no means the only trans person available to do training. This is definitely a growth area, and thanks to the Transgender Equality Report it will doubtless continue to grow. The other article I would particularly like to draw your attention to is the one about Hannah Jaine’s work at Ashfield Prison. I am in awe of what Hannah has achieved there.

Well Done, Passport Office

~ Cheryl

I have to go to Canada in March for a conference and to visit some clients. As my passport will have less than 6 months validity left I need to renew it. Any interaction with officialdom is a scary thing for trans people. Last time I needed a new passport I went in person to a passport office with a ton of documentation, just in case. Everything went smoothly. This time I was pleased to discover that the Passport Office actually has a special leaflet explaining the situation for trans people.

Some of the language is a little clunky — I can see the more shouty trans activists getting upset by the term “acquired gender”. However, the process itself seems straight forward. For people applying for their first passport, the leaflet makes it clear than you can get one in your correct name and gender, even if you don’t have a Gender Recognition Certificate (though you will need a letter from a doctor in that case). As for people like me, the leaflet says:

You should fill in the application form using details relating to your acquired gender and reflect both your current name and any other previous names you have used in your acquired gender in section 2. You do not need to include any previous names in your birth gender.

This is good, because the question on the form about previous names is very scary. That comment makes it clear that the deadname is not required.

The leaflet reassuringly makes clear that even if you did have to include evidence of a change of name and gender, this will not appear on your documents. In the FAQs at the end it states:

All records held by Her Majesty’s Passport Office are protected in line with the Data Protection Act. We have protections in place in our policy, systems and procedures to ensure any record relating to a previous gender is only made where absolutely necessary and such records are protected from inappropriate access or disclosure. This applies regardless of whether you have obtained a Gender Recognition Certificate or not.

Obviously there are still issues here. The leaflet is written within the current framework of the Gender Recognition Act. Hence the need for medical evidence of a permanent gender change, and the lack of non-binary options. But given those restrictions it does very well. Which just goes to show what can be achieved if only people care enough to try.

Trans Inquiry – A Little Backlash

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

It was entirely expected that the media would use the publication of the government’s Transgender Equality Inquiry Report to say terrible things about trans people. Here are a couple of examples of the sort of thing they get up to.

Firstly poor Jack Monroe got ambushed on Channel 4 News last night. Jack turned up expecting to talk about the report, and was instead forced to “debate” a well-known TERF on the subject of whether all trans people are rapists.

Of course Channel 4 billed this as a “debate” between a trans person and a feminist, as if TERFs speak for all feminists. Which is kind of like asking someone to debate Donald Trump and billing it as a debate with “Americans”.

The claim that trans people are rapists comes, initially, of course from Janice Raymond. However, she was talking purely symbolically. She believes that merely by taking on the public appearance of a woman I am “raping” all women. These days the TERFS prefer to quote a Swedish study from 2011 which they say comes to all sort of horrible conclusions about trans women.

Sadly for them, the author of the study doesn’t agree with the TERF interpretation of her work and is rather annoyed about how it is being used. In this interview with The TransAdvocate she explains what her work actually shows.

Nevertheless, this paper keeps on getting cited in anti-trans articles and interviews. Last night it was quoted on Channel 4 by Julia Long, and Jack, having been ambushed, didn’t have the evidence to hand to refute it.

Julia Long, by the way, is one of the TERFs who picketed a London Dyke March in 2014 because Sarah Brown had been invited to speak.

Jack had agreed to appear on the programme for free but Long had apparently asked for a fee:

https://twitter.com/MxJackMonroe/status/687762934081142784

I put out to tweet linking to the TransAdvocate article asking Channel 4 to tweet the link themselves to show how their guest has misrepresented the paper she was quoting. They did not do so. They did link to a Huffington Post article about the show, but that too failed to expose Long’s dishonesty.

Naturally TERFs on Twitter thought they could “disprove” the TransAdvocate piece by quoting the original paper.

Meanwhile I understand that several media outlets have been going on about “sex changes for children”. This, as always, is nonsense. No one gives puberty blockers to a 4-year-old. Unless if course they are actually going through puberty in which case doctors would have no hesitation in prescribing them. Interestingly doctors give out puberty blockers like candy to girls whom they think are developing too quickly, but still claim that the same drugs are too dangerous to give to trans kids.

Also, puberty blockers merely delay puberty. They do not cause a “sex change”, no matter how often tabloid newspapers say they do.

One statistic you will hear quoted in these debates is that 80% of trans kids “grow out of it”. This one is quite dangerous in that it is almost true. The majority of kids who exhibit some sort of gender-variant behavior in childhood grow up to be cis adults. But that includes girls who like playing sport and boys who don’t like playing sport, both of which groups are likely to be viewed as “gender variant” by parents brainwashed by the Pink & Blue nonsense.

If you look only at those kids who express a very strong desire to transition socially, pretty much none of them grow out of it (as far as we can tell, given the small numbers involved). Equally some of the kids who “grow out of it” may end up identifying as non-binary but not want any medical intervention, or may identify as one of LGB. Medical treatment should only be given to kids who need it, and the job of the doctors is to sort out which ones do, not to refuse to treat any of them.

Saying that you shouldn’t treat trans kids because most children who exhibit some gender-variant behavior grow out of it is rather like saying that you shouldn’t treat brain cancer because most patients with a headache can get by on painkillers.

Here’s an actual gender specialist making the same point.

Trans Inquiry – A Step in the Right Direction

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The report of Parliament’s Transgender Equality Inquiry was published overnight. As is inevitable with such things, it is a mixed bag. Some of its findings are very welcome; others could do with improvement. However, this is still a momentous occasion. To see an official government report open up like this brings tears to my eyes:

Fairness and equality are basic British values. A litmus test for any society that upholds those values is how far it protects even the most marginalised groups. Britain has been among the countries going furthest in recognising lesbian, gay and bisexual rights, but we are still failing this test in respect of trans people, despite welcome progress.

One of the things that quickly becomes obvious reading the report is that the committee found they had opened a can of worms. They realized that they knew very little about non-binary identities, and even less about intersex people. Much of what they say in the report is a call for more investigation and fact finding. This will obviously be disappointing to many people, but at least it is a start.

When reading through such documents it is always wise to take account of the language that is used. When a government report says that someone “must” do something that has a very different weight to saying that they “should” do something, or that it is “recommended” that they do something. Of course the Inquiry doesn’t have the power to compel anyone to do anything, but what it says has weight and will be difficult for people to ignore.

Amongst the things the report says must happen are the following.

With regard to the government it says that it:

Must advance the Transgender Equality Action Plan, and conduct a wholesale review of issues facing non-binary people.

This is basically Maria Miller (chair of the Inquiry) asking Nicky Morgan (Minister for Women & Equalities) for permission to carry on working on trans issues. The report adds that the government:

Must make a clear commitment to abide by the Yogyakarta Principles and Resolution 2048 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

This doesn’t actually do anything, but signing up to these two declarations of principle will make it harder for the government to backtrack on or ignore trans issues in future. Significantly the report also says that the government:

Must look into the need to create a legal category for those people with a gender identity outside that which is binary and the full implications of this.

Given the way British law has been written over the centuries, this is actually a major undertaking, but one that has to be done if proper gender equality is ever to be implemented. There are far too any places in law where gender is used to differentiate between classes of people.

Moving on to the trans-specific legislation, the report says that the government:

Must bring forward proposals to update the Gender Recognition Act, in line with the principles of gender self-declaration that have been developed in other jurisdictions. In place of the present medicalised, quasi-judicial application process, an administrative process must be developed, centred on the wishes of the individual applicant, rather than on intensive analysis by doctors and lawyers.

This is extremely welcome. Sadly they are not prepared to extend the same consideration to young trans people, of which more later. They cling to an idea known as “Gillick Competence” which basically says that parents have the right to make decisions on behalf of their children. The only exception presented to this is the following:

The Equality and Human Rights Commission must be able to investigate complaints of discrimination raised by children and adolescents without the requirement to have their parents’ consent.

Which I guess is better than nothing.

The report thoroughly rubbishes the NHS. As various people have pointed out, this probably has as much to do with the desire of the government to sell off health services as it does with sympathy for trans people. However, this is useful:

The General Medical Council must provide clear reassurance that it takes allegations of transphobia every bit as seriously as those concerning other forms of professional misconduct.

That’s Parliamentary code for, “Oy, GMC, stop whitewashing transphobic behaviour by doctors!”

There is lots of additional comment about capacity in gender clinics, but no real idea how improvements will be achieved.

Turning its attention to the Ministry of Justice, the report says:

The Ministry of Justice must ensure that it consults fully with the trans community in developing the Government’s new hate-crime action plan, so that the proposals are well-targeted and likely to be effective in increasing levels of reporting. This plan must include mandatory national transphobic hate-crime training for police officers and the promotion of third-party reporting.

Whether they do or not is another matter, given the long-standing antipathy that the Minister for Justice, Andrew Selous, has for trans people. I’ll have more to say on hate crime later. Meanwhile, here’s a big one:

The UK must follow Australia’s lead in introducing an option to record gender as “X” on a passport. If Australia is able to implement such a policy there is no reason why the UK cannot do the same. In the longer term, consideration should be given to the removal of gender from passports.

This is very welcome. It is also evidence that the Inquiry Committee is listening. Some news reports suggested last week that Maria Miller wanted to call for removal of gender form passports immediately. A lot of trans folk were quite concerned about this. Long term I do think it is a good idea, but in the short term while proof of one’s gender is a social necessity having gender markers on passports is a good thing, provided that the X option exists.

By the way, Australians, please don’t take this as a slight. That comment about you guys being able to do it is an attack on the people in the Civil Service who have said that we can’t have X passports because the Americans would be upset with us. The Report is pointing out that you have done this without any adverse effects.

On education the report says:

Schools must understand their responsibilities under the Equality Act. They must abide by their legal responsibility to ensure that all staff receive sufficient training to ensure they are compliant across all protected characteristics, including that which relates to trans people, especially gender-variant young people.

Again there’s no ability to force them to comply, but that paragraph will be of enormous use to Mermaids when they find schools unwilling to accommodate trans kids.

We now come on to the things that people merely “should” do, or which are “recommended”. We start with the Equality Act.

The protected characteristic in respect of trans people under the Equality Act should be amended to that of “gender identity”.

This is very important. Previously the Act only protected people who were either proposing to undergo, were undergoing or had undergone medical treatment for gender issues. This change will extend protection to all trans people. The report also says:

We recommend that the Equality Act be amended so that the occupational requirements provision and / or the single-sex / separate services provision shall not apply in relation to discrimination against a person whose acquired gender has been recognised under the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

Again this is very important. The Equality Act tried to push back against the Gender Recognition Act by separating out trans women from the general group of women and stating that we could be legally discriminated against on that basis. As of now, the change above only affects those of us who have Gender Recognition Certificates. However, if the other recommendations of the panel to make GRCs easier to get are put in place then more people will be protected by this.

On sport the report says:

We recommend that the Government work with Sport England to produce guidance which help sporting groups realise that there are likely to be few occasions where exclusions are justified to ensure fair competition or the safety of competitors.

This is basically a warning shot across the bows of sporting bodies, and a useful weapon for trans activists.

I found the section on hate crime particularly interesting. Right up front the report states:

Legal changes are critical, but they will only bite if there is cultural change too—by society but also by those who enforce the law.

This is absolutely true. No amount of hate crime legislation will help if society, and the police, have no respect for those laws. The report recommends that:

The Government should introduce new hatecrime legislation which extends the existing provisions on aggravated offences and stirring up hatred so that they apply to all protected characteristics, as defined for the
purposes of the Equality Act 2010.

This is a direct criticism of the Law Commission which, a while back, said that specific protection for trans and disabled people was not necessary. This piece of evidence quoted by the report stands out:

Chief Constable Sawyers told us: if you are either transgender or disabled, how on earth can you ever believe that the law is fair in relation to you?

Think about that. A police Chief Constable told the report that trans and disabled people can’t possibly have any confidence that the law is fair in relation to them, as things currently stand.

Finally I want to look some of the ways in which the report fell short, starting with the infamous Spousal Veto, which is fast becoming a line in the sand that transphobes in government will defend with their lives if need be. There is all sorts of nonsense about marriage being a legal contract that can’t be changed. All this does is show that the government thinks that there are straight marriages and gay marriages, which are two very different things, and that the idea of turning one into the other is horrifying to them. We need proper marriage equality.

The report says:

We do take very seriously the evidence that we have heard regarding the scope that the spousal-consent provision gives for married trans people to be victimised by spouses with malicious intent. Where this occurs, it is, of course, deplorable and inexcusable. The Government must ensure that it is informed about the extent of this and ways of addressing the problem.

I interpret this as meaning that they want evidence of how the Veto is being used. If evidence shows that it is only used for abuse, or not used at all, then presumably it can go. Given the way the timing works, in that the Veto can only be applied after the trans person has undergone full transition, the Veto can only be possibly be used maliciously, so I am confident of the outcome here.

As far as young people go, the report asks for improvements in treatment, but only recommends legal recognition at 16 (as opposed to 18 as it is now). It says:

It is important that clear safeguards are in place to ensure that long term decisions about gender recognition are made at an appropriate time.

The trouble is that long term decisions are being made about people’s gender. They are made by doctors and midwives, and if mistakes are made they can’t be fixed for years. There is nothing magical or sacred about the gender people are assigned at birth, and we should not be afraid of correcting mistakes. Also, if Germany can allow an X gender to be assigned at birth, why can’t we?

The report spends quite a bit of space on the provision in the Gender Recognition Act that criminalizes the outing of trans people without their permission. It says:

we note that not a single prosecution has yet been brought under this Section. There is a grave danger that this provision will become (if it has not already become) a “dead letter”.

Sorry folks, but it is already a dead letter. Anyone who does get outed will probably be far too traumatized to go through the process of prosecution. Plus it will be very hard to prove, and will it cost a fortune to bring a case.

Another disappointing area is the reluctance of the report to embrace an informed consent model for treatment of trans people. It says:

However, we are unconvinced of the merits of the proposed informed consent only model. While there is a clear case for the granting of legal gender recognition on request, with the minimum of formalities, this approach is less appropriate for a medical intervention as profound and permanent as genital (reassignment / reconstructive) surgery.

I don’t think the Committee quite understands what it is saying here. Basically they are creating a situation where lots of people will be able to self-identify in a gender other than that which matches their body, but they won’t be able to get surgery because they can’t get medical approval. The idea of men with vaginas and women with penises horrifies most conservatives, yet here is a Conservative-run Committee saying that it wants lots more of them. I mean, good for them, but did they really mean to say that?

There are also a few places where the Committee seems to have failed to understand the issues. On the “real life test” they say:

The requirement to undergo “Real-Life Experience” prior to genital (reassignment / reconstructive) surgery must not entail conforming to externally imposed and arbitrary (binary) preconceptions about gender identity and presentation. It must be clear that this requirement is not about qualifying for surgery, but rather preparing the patient to cope with the profound consequences of surgery.

First of all they have completely missed the fact that some gender clinics were demanding that patients complete the “real life test” before they were even allowed hormones. That’s exceptionally cruel, and the fact that it was done should be recognized so as to prevent any of them backsliding.

In addition people wanting surgery are generally totally OK with the profound consequences, and can’t wait to get rid of the body parts they hate. The above statement is another example of cis people being terrified by the idea of losing beloved body parts and not being able to understand why trans people don’t suffer from the same existential horror.

The one area where I expected total failure is when dealing with the media. The report says:

Both the Independent Press Standards Organisation and Ofcom should consider what steps they might take to encourage more trans people to come forward with complaints.

I’m sure that they will consider this. For all of about half a second. They will then decide to do nothing. Because everyone knows that complaining is pointless. Also see Helen Belcher on how the IPSO responses to her complaints were deeply disingenuous.

That’s it for now. Sorry it is so long. But hey, this is an historic day. I’m glad I lived to see it.

Update: I knew I’d forget something.

There are (at least) two important areas that the report says nothing about. Firstly it says nothing about the plight of trans asylum seekers, who are treated appallingly by the UK border services. Secondly it says nothing about the increasing tendency to prosecute trans people for fraud if they have sex without revealing to their partner that they are trans. The latter was actually in my submission to the inquiry, and they have ignored it completely.

Also I have seen a lot of talk today about groups within the trans community not being left behind. We definitely do not want this to happen. As of now mostly what the Committee has said is that it doesn’t know enough to include everyone. When actual legislative proposals are put forward, that is the time to see if anyone is being left behind, and to make sure it doesn’t happen. The people are are specifically being left behind by the report are young trans people, and that’s something we can complain about.

Update 2: If anyone wants a good, 12-page summary of the 98-page document try here.

Hollywood Men in Dresses

~ Cheryl

I promised you a post about cis men playing trans women in movies. This is it.

Mostly when this issue comes up on social media it is portrayed in very simplistic terms. Certainly cis people (and some trans folk) defend the idea of cis men playing trans women with comments like, “it’s only acting, and any actor should be able to play any part”. Also some trans people don’t get beyond, “no cis man can ever play a trans woman well”. The issue is much more complicated than that.

I spent a fair amount of time helping cis people write convincing trans characters. It can be done, it just takes work. If a writer is good enough then I don’t have a problem. My issues (many of them aired here) are to do with when cis people write trans characters badly, and/or perpetuate harmful stereotypes.

If authors can get inside the heads of trans characters, I don’t see why actors can’t. I thought that Terence Stamp did a decent job in Priscilla, and I understand that Lee Pace did pretty well in Boys Don’t Cry Soldier’s Girl (sorry, brain fade there). I’m getting good reports of Eddie Redmayne’s performance from some people.

There is also the question of the visual match. With a film like The Danish Girl your actor is going to spend a lot of time presenting as a man. If they do spend screen time as a woman, it will be as a trans woman who is only just starting transition, probably hasn’t had surgery, and won’t have had time for any hormones to work their magic. Consequently the character’s body will look more male than female. That’s a (shaky) argument for having a male-bodied person play the part.

This is another reason why I hate transition narratives, because they back you into this sort of decision.

If your character is a trans woman who is a long way post transition it makes a lot more sense to have a trans woman play her. Or indeed a cis woman.

However, as I said, the issues are much more complicated than just who gets to play who. I try hard to avoid comparisons with other oppressed groups, but it is useful to look at the issue of blackface. There are two significant complications here (possibly more, PoC please enlighten me) beyond simply who gets to play what role. Firstly blackface is often used to caricature black people, rather than simply represent them. Secondly, the minstrel shows used blackface so that they didn’t have to employ black singers.

Hopefully we will eventually get past the stage where studios have a man play a trans woman solely for the purpose of mocking trans women, but we are not there yet. There is most definitely an issue that trans women actors exist, and they need work. Employing a cis man to play a trans woman very directly discriminates against trans actresses who might be expected to be first in line for the job.

Finally we come to the really important issue — the effect that casting has on the viewer. Every time a cis man is asked to play a trans woman in a film or TV show, that reinforces the idea that trans women are merely men who are dressing up and pretending to be women. You get “before and after” pictures, you get “isn’t he convincing!” articles in newspapers. You get the sort of nonsense that I understand appeared over the weekend in The Scum. That’s very harmful, and it needs to stop. The only way it will stop, is if studios stop casting cis men to play trans women.

(A brief note of thanks here to Shadi Petosky whose comments on this issue on Twitter helped me crystallize my own thinking on the subject.)

Trans People In Prison Update

~ Cheryl

The government’s Transgender Equality Inquiry is due to report on Thursday. I’ll doubtless be having something to say then. In the meantime a separate project is underway to examine how trans people are dealt with in the prison service. It is clear from what went on last year that an update to the official guidelines is badly needed.

Jay Stewart of Gendered Intelligence is involved in this process. He has a blog post here explaining what is going on and how people can get involved in the process if they wish to do so.

More on The Danish Girl

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

I’ve been a very bad blogger of late because I have been busy dealing with a bunch of things that are extremely annoying, some of which you will doubtless get to hear about in due course. In the meantime I also had to go on ShoutOut to do a “year in review” thing from a trans perspective. Because the ShoutOut folks are incredibly efficient that broadcast is already edited and available online. Hopefully being steaming furious about other things will have made my ranting about the evils of the Gender Recognition Panel and lack of recognition for non-binary people event more heartfelt.

As I’m probably not going to get much sleep tonight (Thursday), I might as well spend some time pouring that pent up fury into something else, though I’m going to publish this in the morning just in case the Internet falls on my head as a result.

I still haven’t seen The Danish Girl. I don’t have the time, for starters. And also to do a thorough deconstruction of the web of lies that the film weaves I need to have read the novel it is based on and Lili Elbe’s memoir, so that I can pin down what has been changed by whom. However, other people have seen the film, and this evening I came across this fascinating conversation about the film between trans author Casey Plett and Jonathan Kay from a Canadian website called The Walrus.

I think that Kay is genuinely trying to engage in discussion here. He does, after all, give Casey the last word, which is rare in such circumstances. However, he also comes across as rather clueless in places, and his blinkers are pretty clear for all trans people to see.

I’d like to start with the introduction to the piece as it sets the tone in a way that will inevitably get trans people’s backs up. Firstly Kay uses the term “transgenderism”. This is a TERF dog whistle term. It is intended to imply that being trans is a political philosophy, not anything innate to human beings. It is used to claim that being trans is something made up by trans people and the Patriarchy in order to oppress women. Please don’t use this word, people. Ever.

Kay also refers to Lili as a “biological man”. This is a rather more problematic term in that it does have some status as a scientific term. It can be used to mean someone with XY chromosomes. But being “biologically male” in that way has nothing much to do with being male in a practical sense. Humans are much more complicated than that. Someone who exhibits Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome is a “biological man” but will be assigned female at birth, will look exactly like people with XX chromosomes, and in some cases can even give birth. The phrase “biologically male” is often used to imply that trans women (and some intersex women) are “really” men, so it is best avoided except in specific scientific contexts.

On to the film now, and I want to focus on a few of the issues that Kay and Plett raise that illustrate just how distorted a picture of trans women the film gives.

Firstly there is the question of historical accuracy. As I have noted before, the film is not based on history, or on Lili’s memoirs, it is based on a recent fictionalization of Lili’s life written by a cis man, David Ebershoff. Apparently the film includes scenes of Lili writing her memoirs in a bid to make it seem more authentic. That sounds to me like a deliberate attempt to claim an authenticity it doesn’t have. Anyway, as Plett says, Lili’s memoirs are available. How much they have been edited before publication is uncertain, but they do provide a different, and far more contemporary perspective on what really happened.

One thing that Plett doesn’t raise in this regard is the fact the Lili claimed to be intersex. This is completely ignored by the film. I don’t know why, but I suspect that the producers wanted to avoid complicating the issue. Possibly the claim isn’t in the novel either. There is a definite tendency for cis people dealing with trans memoirs to assume that they are full of lies. After all, if someone claims to be a woman when they are “really” a man, then surely everything else they say must be suspect. You can’t believe what crazy people say about themselves.

Something that leaped out to me from the conversation was this comment by Kay:

Lili sometimes is shown to be unhinged, and can act callously to long-suffering Gerda—especially when Lili refuses to stand by Gerda just at the moment when her own paintings (of Lili, in fact) turn her into an artistic sensation. When an exasperated Gerda declares at one point to her sexually transitioning husband, “It’s not always about you,” she has the audience’s sympathy.

He later makes the seemingly reasonable point that this is good source of drama in the film, and it is. This is one of the main reasons why I hate transition narratives: the trans person can’t win.

If the trans person is married, the cis audience will have sympathy with the deserted wife (it is always a wife, never a husband). If she is not married, the cis audience will have sympathy with the poor, confused co-workers and the employer trying to cope with a seemingly impossible situation. If she’s a young person the cis audience with have sympathy with the parents and siblings. (See the book, Luna, for example, which is all about how awful it is for a teenage girl to have a trans sibling.)

Concern for deserted wives is precisely the justification used by the Home Office for imposing the infamous Spousal Veto.

Of course some couples do stay together through transition — Jan Morris and Sarah Brown have both stayed with their wives, for example — but movies and novels require drama so that can’t be allowed in fiction. The trans woman (it is always a woman) has to be shown as obsessed and selfish.

Do any of these cis writers ever pause to consider that trans people might actually care about their families and friends? That we might actually worry about what transition does to family relationships? That we might spend years, decades even, making bad decisions about our lives because we don’t want to hurt our families? That we might start to take seriously the advice that we get that we would be better to kill ourselves than bring shame upon our family? That some of us might act on that advice?

Even when trans kids are thrown out on the street to fend for themselves there will still be people who will tell them that they should be ashamed of the pain they have caused their families.

Also I can assure you that, even as recently as the 1990s, psychiatrists working in gender services would tell patients that if their families were causing problems then they should abandon their families and make new lives for themselves. I can tell you that because it happened to me. I refused, and that was a big risk because I could have been denied further treatment for refusing to do what the psychiatrist said.

I have no idea what actually went on between Lili and Gerda. I’m sure they had different views on the issue anyway. But I do know that the obsessed, selfish trans woman is a dangerous meme that I would like writers to avoid.

Then there’s the scene where Lili gets beaten up. As Plett notes, this is entirely fabricated. It never happened. Someone, either Ebershoff or the scriptwriters, felt that a film about a trans woman wasn’t complete without a scene of her getting beaten up. Why do you think that might be?

I don’t think the issue here is whether the book, or the film, is written by cis people or trans people. I don’t even think it is whether Lili is played by a cis person or a trans person, though that’s a question that deserves a whole separate blog post. The issue is whether or not the people writing the story deal honestly with it. Unfortunately far too many cis people writing about trans characters do so by playing into cis people’s negative expectations of trans people. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the film’s ending.

SPOILER ALERT

You all know that Lili dies at the end, don’t you? The film has to conform to the Tragic Trans Person narrative. Lili can’t be seen to live happily ever after.

And actually she did die, but not as it is portrayed in the film.

In the film Lili dies as a result of genital surgery: something that I and thousands of other trans people have lived through, and did so even back in the early 20th Century, including Lili.

Lili did not die from an operation to give her a vagina. She died from an attempt to give her a womb, through transplant surgery, which was being trialed decades before any surgeon understood the complexities of tissue rejection. It was an operation that was doomed to failure at the time, and has never been attempted since (though a few successful operations on cis women have now been undertaken, which gives us hope).

The film, and possibly the book, changed Lili’s story to have her die from a perfectly safe operation. It did so in order to make Lili’s life fit another meme about trans people.

I do trans history. I spend a lot of time reading about eunuchs. For thousands of years, large numbers of eunuchs were involved in government bureaucracies, armies and choirs in many countries around the world. And yet if you read history books you have to wonder how this was possible, because whenever eunuchs get mentioned the historians, especially the male historians, start going on about how dangerous the surgery was, and how many people died from it.

The Danish Girl is lying about Lili’s death, and it is doing so because it wants to make the point that for a man to lose his penis is to lose his life.

This is the problem with cis men writing about trans women. Far too many of them simply cannot accept our existence, because the whole idea of losing one’s penis fills them with terror. They have to pretend it is deadly, even when it manifestly isn’t.

It’s OK, boys, really. No one is asking you to cut your dicks off. Lots of trans women, on the other hand, manage very well without one, and go on to have long and happy lives having got rid of theirs. Lili could have done so too, had her doctors not been completely ignorant about the risks of organ transplants.

So that’s one of the main reasons why The Danish Girl makes me so angry. It doesn’t just want you to believe that trans women’s lives are tragic, it wants you to believe that they are wasted. How they can be any more wasted that they would be if we killed ourselves, which was the prevailing recommendation when I was young, is a mystery to me. In any case, transition makes trans people happy, and many of us go on to have very successful and fulfilled lives as a result.

The other thing that really annoys me is the whole forced feminisation narrative. This encourages viewers to see trans women as mentally ill, and to believe that psychiatric cures for trans people would work. It also blows a huge hole in the deserted wife narrative, and turns the film into a bizarre re-working of Frankenstein in which we are expected to accept that the monster is to blame both for coming to life when Victor asked him to, and for abandoning his poor father after having done so. However, I really need to see the film to make a full case for that one.

History, Not Hollywood, Please

~ Cheryl

I haven’t been to see The Danish Girl yet. I probably won’t until it comes out on DVD because I don’t want to be ejected from the cinema for throwing things at the screen. Whatever it’s qualities as a film (and I understand that it is very good indeed), it also has an obligation to do right by its subject, and by the minority group it purports to represent. Hollywood, sadly, has very little interest in telling true stories.

Over at The Conversation, Clare Tebbutt, whom I had the honor of meeting at a conference in trans history last year, takes a look at how the film stacks up. Clare is an expert on trans life in the 1930s (there was a lot of it) and she’s not impressed. She notes that, rather than being based on Lili Elbe’s life, the film is actually based on a novelized version of Lili’s life published in 2000 and written by a cis man. That’s a much more serious issue than the casting, because it means that the whole story is being viewed through a cis male gaze. It also means a lot gets left out.

Sadly, Clare only scratches the surface of the problems with the film. If the reports I’ve been seeing from trans women who have seen it are correct, there are lots of subtle messages in the film that encourage viewers to come away with incorrect and harmful views of trans women. So I guess I am going to have to see it at some point.

Queen of the Jungle

~ Cheryl

Mmamoriri


This is Mmamoriri. She’s a rather unusual lioness. As you can see, not only does she have a full mane, but it is quite dark which is indicative of high testosterone levels, even for a male lion.

The media has managed to make a right mess of this story. My favorite is the piece in the Independent which manages to suggest that this is an evolutionary adaptation, states that Mmamoriri is probably infertile, but adds that she will probably be able to pass on her unusual features to her offspring.

Fortunately they link to a report by an actual scientist in Africa Geographic. This dispenses with all the nonsense about evolution and mutations, and instead focuses on the much more likely explanation of an intersex condition. Chromosome testing has shown that Mmamoriri is XX, but as the article notes there are other conditions well documented in humans that could explain such features in lions.

Interestingly the researchers monitoring Mmamoriri’s pride have noticed other lionesses with similar features in other groups. They think that the relatively isolated nature of the lion population on Chief’s Island in the Okavango Delta, Botswana may be part of the explanation for this.

Some of the reaction I have seen on Twitter has praised Mmamoriri for adopting male gender performance, but a mane is not clothing; she had no choice in this. Human women who have beards get bullied rather than praised. Thankfully lions don’t appear to be so obsessed with biological essentialism. There’s no suggestion in the scientific reports that Mmamoriri has been in any way ostracized by her pride because of her appearance. Obviously lions are much more sensible than humans.

TSA Ramps Up War on Trans Travelers

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The introduction of “porno scanners” that show nude pictures of airport users have provided all sorts of unhappy experiences for travelers. The TSA has tried to change the way the scanners work so that staff have less fun looking at nude pictures of pretty women, but it has been the impact on trans travelers that has caused the most heartache.

Put simply, if the way your body looks under the porno scanner didn’t match the TSA agent’s view of your gender presentation, then you got flagged as an “anomaly” and were required to undergo extra screening. For trans women and non-binary people with penises this generally involved having your genitals groped by some random TSA guy. Because clearly the obvious way for a terrorist to smuggle a bomb onto a plane is to disguise it as a penis which would be detected by a porno scanner. If all of the extra scrutiny caused you to miss your flight, well that was your problem for being weird.

This policy has resulted in a number of deeply humiliating experiences for trans travelers, most notably for Shadi Petosky who is a well-known TV director (her animated kids show, Danger & Eggs, has just been picked up by Amazon for a full season).

So the TSA decided to take action. No longer will the presence of an unexpected willy generate an “anomaly”. Instead it will generate an ALARM!!! Because apparently characterizing trans travelers as dangerous rather than odd is an improvement in the way you treat them, according to the TSA.

All of which makes me rather glad that I’m no longer allowed to travel to the USA. In theory, of course, my body won’t produce any unexpected results under the porno scanner. However, I am pretty sure that the records being held for me by the TSA state that I am trans, and I therefore expect I would be subject to extra scrutiny, just in case. As I’m not a US citizen, I would have no rights whatsoever in such situations.

There’s more on the story at The Advocate, but I note that Shadi has said on Twitter that she has been mis-quoted in the article so please take that into account when reading it.

International Trans Studies Conference

~ Cheryl

Next September (7th-10th) the University of Arizona will be holding an international transdisciplinary conference on gender, embodiment, and sexuality in Tucson. I can’t go, of course, because it is in the USA, but it does look very interesting. I was particularly intrigued by this comment in the announcement:

It is our hope that this conference will help launch an international transgender studies association; the conference schedule will include a business meeting to discuss this possibility, and to entertain proposals to host future international conferences.

Oh yes please! And can we have the conference sometimes held in countries that I can travel to?

Anyway, if you are interested in going, the information on submitting papers is on Facebook.

Fortunately one event I can go to is Moving Trans History Forward, which is taking place in Victoria, BC in March. That should be seriously cool. And I get to see Vancouver and Victoria, which I have never done before.

I spent much of day scouring bookstores in Glastonbury for books on Mesopotamian history and religion. I got some good stuff too. Trans history FTW!