I was in charge of the Women’s Outlook show on Ujima again today. My first guest was Sara Zaltash who, like me, has performed at Sanctum. She’s one of those brave people who have been performing there in the middle of the night. And if you think that a trans woman reading science fiction stories is off the wall, just wait until you hear what Sara was doing.
Sara’s parents are Iranian, so along side discussion of her Sanctum performance we chatted about the issue of women’s rights in Iran. That was with reference to this article in yesterday’s Telegraph. I did rather like the idea that women in Iran are getting round laws about being their husbands’ property by refusing to get married. Of course personally I think the solution is to bring back Ishtar worship, but I can see that might be a bit unpopular in some quarters.
After Sara my next guest was Chris Hubley, a local artist who is staging an exhibition of work by trans artists as part of Trans Awareness Month (which November is). That includes a fundraiser party on the 13th at which I might be reading a bit of poetry. Chris and I talked a bit about the Trans Day of Remembrance (TDOR) and how we both want trans people to be known for things other than being tragic. You can find out more about the events Chris is organizing here.
You can listen to the first hour of the show here.
Chris had to rush off to catch a bus to London, but before he went we had a brief chat about the Tara Hudson case. Chris explains why he doesn’t have a Gender Recognition Certificate. If the Ministry of Justice were being consistent they should hold that, were Chris to commit a crime, he should be sent to a women’s prison. My guess, though, is that it wouldn’t happen. The trouble with the MoJ Guidelines is that they are based on the assumption that the primary goal is to protect the other inmates from the trans person, not the other way around. Trans women, because they are still seen as men by the MoJ, are deemed a danger to other women prisoners. Trans men are also seen as men by the MoJ, and therefore also deemed to belong in men’s prisons.
That only took up 15 minutes as Chris had to go, so in the next slot I brought in Paulette and our new colleague, Zuzana, who were just back from a trip to Calais to deliver supplies to the refugee camp there. They will have a much fuller report on the trip in tomorrow’s Outlook show. It sounds like it will be well worth a listen.
In the final segment of the show I ran a pre-recorded interview with Tade Thompson about his new novel, Making Wolf. Tade and I talk a lot about the background to the novel, which is set in an imaginary country carved off from Nigeria after the civil war. There’s a lot of great material in there.
You can listen to the second half of the show here.
The playlist for the show was as follows:
- Thieves in the Temple – Prince
- So Blue – Mahsa Vahdat & Mighty Sam McClain
- Pressure Off – Duran Duran with Janelle Monáe & Nile Rodgers
- Love will save the day – Koko Jones
- Appletree – Erykah Badu
- Lovin’ You – Minnie Riperton (dedicated to Kevin)
- Killer on the Rampage – Eddy Grant
- Jezebel – Sade
I am particularly grateful to Sara for introducing me to Mahsa and Sam. I was also very pleased to be able to music by a trans woman of color during our discussion of TDOR.
I’m going to be on Paulette’s education show briefly tomorrow morning. She’s interviewing Roger Griffith and I about performing at Sanctum was how/whether our various educational backgrounds prepared us for being writers. That will be between 10:00 and 11:00.