Cheryl's Mewsings

Some of you will remember that I was due to present a paper on trans characters in SF&F literature at ICFA this year, but could not do so due to being denied entry to the USA. In view of some of the panels it appears I may be on at Au Contraire and Aussiecon 4 [...]

A blog called The Rejectionist is having a Feminist SF Week. They already have interview up with Liz Hand and Nnedi Okorafor, but my favorite piece to date is the introduction which contains stirring stuff like this: Speculative fiction offers us human beings something different: not “common sense” but a sense we have in common [...]

So Prop 8 is dead, at least for a while. Of course there will be appeals. Doubtless there will be all sorts of rumblings in Congress. Many words will be written. I just want to highlight two things. Firstly the State of California defended the case because it was legally obliged to do so. Now [...]

I have been pointed (thanks Kate!) at a transcript of discussions in the committee stage of the Identity Documents Bill currently going through Parliament. In particular note the comments of Dr. Julian Huppert, MP (LD, Cambridge): There are a number of different circumstances: there are people who are neutrois and inter-sex people—there is a complicated [...]

Today’s good news is that the UK’s supreme court has firmly told the Home Office that if someone comes asking for asylum because they have been persecuted in their home country for being gay (or lesbian, bi, trans, etc.), telling them to go home and be discreet about their activities isn’t very helpful. Whether this [...]

Over breakfast this morning I caught bits of a documentary on Sky Arts about the history of the pop video. I was astonished to discover that MTV had initially refused to air the video for Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” (1983) on the grounds that the artist was black. Kudos to Walter Yetnikoff of CBS who, [...]

Today’s Guardian has an article about a new resource produced by Stonewall for prospective university students. As thousands of young people make final decisions about where to spend the next few years of their lives, many will be asking, “which institution will allow them to feel comfortable about who they are?” The article goes on [...]

Mention forced marriages and the image that immediately springs to mind is some poor teenage girl being traded like a prize cow to a guy she’s never met. Today’s Guardian, however, has a rather different take on the issue. The UK now has something called the Forced Marriage Unit, which aims to help people being [...]

A quick round-up here for those interested in such things. At Feministing Queen Emily explains why outing trans people can be so dangerous. What she fails to mention is that it is not only dangerous for the trans people in question — anyone who is a member of their family, or who has helped and [...]

The weekly podcast by Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe had a guest conversationalist last weekend. Amelia Beamer was on hand to talk about her debut novel, The Loving Dead, and join in the general flow of conversation. I now very much want to read that book, but the part of the podcast I want [...]

While I was out and about it Bath yesterday much outrage was being vented on Twitter about female genital mutilation being performed at Cornell University. Given the people who originally raised the issue, I thought this was probably something to do with cultural issues and the bizarre tradition of “female circumcision”. However, having looked into [...]

Via the National Institute of Medical Research I have learned of a major breakthrough in the understanding of how mammals (at least, but remember that other types of animals have very different sex systems to ours) develop major sex characteristics. We have known for a long time that physical sex is much more complex than [...]

Most of these internet memes are deeply embarrassing to me because I can only check a few of the items. But via Mary Robinette Kowal I discover that the Periodic Table of Women in SF is now a meme. This one I can do! (The list is behind a cut as it is long).

Herewith, a bunch of things that I have been meaning to post about. – If you are in the UK, and have the bandwidth, please download Paul Cornell’s Pulse from the BBC iPlayer. The BBC will be counting downloads when deciding whether to commission a series. – If I’d been more alert yesterday I would [...]

If you live in or near Oxford you may be interested in an event on Monday night (June 7th). It is called Trans-Script Oxford, and it is part of the 2010 Oxford Pride festival. The event promises “A night of poetry, stand-up comedy, Monologues and drinks!” In particular my good friend Roz Kaveney will be [...]

There’s been a lot of talk of late in my corner of the blogosphere about how the Tory – LibDem coalition will just lead to the same old Tory policies we would have got with a Tory majority. In some cases, of course, that may well be proved true. But not, apparently, in every case. [...]

Last night on Twitter various people starting linking to a “periodic table” of women in SF (PDF). Apparently it had been circulated at WisCon. That seemed a nice thing to do, but being on the iPhone I thought no more of it. Then I discovered I was on it! (Thanks Susan!) Let me put that [...]

Jed Hartman has an interesting post up titled “Privilege and allies” in which he links to a number of useful articles about how to be a good ally to marginalized and oppressed groups. This is good stuff. There’s a depressing tendency of people on the left to claim to support all sorts of oppressed groups, [...]

Seriously, if you have any interest at all in writing, or writing about, science fiction and fantasy literature, you should listen to the podcast conversations between Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan. The latest one, which includes discussion of feminist science fiction and China Miéville, can be found here. Jonathan says they are planning to [...]

Here’s some gender material I have been saving up. – A while back I linked to an interesting set of questions about trans people in the New York Times. That was just Part I of a series. Here’s the whole thing: Part I, Part II, Part III. – Pauline Park give some interesting information about [...]