Online Safety Act Update

~ Cheryl

Last year I closed comments on this site because I was concerned about the implications of the UK’s Online Safety Acy for bloggers. Ofcom has now published its official Guidance for how the Act will be implemented, and providers of Online Services have until July 24th to comply. Compliance is VERY EXPENSIVE, so you really don’t want to be caught up in this.

Helpfully, Ofcom have provided a 6-point online checker to help you find out if the Act applies to you. I have been going through it to see how it might apply to a blog, author website or other such thing.

I should note that the starting point for this is the question of whether you provide an “Online Service”. One of the categories of things that fall within that definition is “a website”. So if you have a website of any sort (outside of walled gardens such as Farcebook) then this is for you.

Question 1: Does your online service have links with the UK?

If you live in the UK then the answer is YES.

The answer is also yes if you sell products into the UK, or have a “significant number” of UK users, although Ofcom is less likely to come after small website owners based outside the UK because of the expense of doing so.

Question 2: Do you provide a “user-to-user” service?

As far as blogs and the like are concerned, if you allow comments, the answer is YES.

Question 3: Do you provide a search service?

This one is a bit tricky. If the search function on your blog only allows searching of the blog itself then you are OK. If it allows searching outside of your own site then you are not. But for most of you the answer here is NO.

Question 4: Does your online service publish or display pornographic content?

The answer here is probably NO, but there are a couple of traps for the unwary. Firstly, if comments on your site are not moderated, people could post pornographic content on the site. However, text-only content is exempt. You are probably OK, but I’d make sure that all comments are screened before going live, just in case. Second, while Ofcom does currently define “pornographic” in a fairly obvious way, any future implementation of a Section 28 type law by the government would automatically make any LGBTQ+ content “pornographic”. I would not put it past this government to implement such legislation.

Question 5: Do any exemptions apply to the content on your online service?

This question is the crux of the matter. I’m going to leave it for now and come back to it.

Question 6: Do any exemptions apply to your online service?

Probably NO, because to qualify you have to either a) limit access to members of your company/organisation; b) be a government agency; or c) be a provider of educational services.

However, this may provide a way out of the problem for conventions and clubs. If you run a Discord sever and limit membership to people who have bought membership in your organisation, I think you are OK.

OK, so let’s assume that your answers are YES, YES, NO, NO, ?? and NO, as outlined above. What about Question 5?

Well, this is all about whether users are only interacting with you, or if they can interact with each other. Here I am going to quote some of the explanatory notes:

A service is exempt if the only way users can communicate on it is by posting comments or reviews on the service provider’s content. Provider content is any content that is published on a service by the service provider or someone acting on their behalf.

For example, this would exempt online services where the only content users can upload or share is comments on media articles you have published, or reviews of goods and services your business provides.

This exemption includes features which allow users to share comments or reviews made on provider content on your service, onto another online service (for example, users sharing a review of a news article or an online game, made on your service onto a social media site).

It also includes expressing views on other users’ comments or reviews about provider content. These views can be expressed through “likes”, “emojis or symbols” of any kind, engaging in a yes/no voting or rating or scoring of the content in any way.

In contrast, user comments or reviews on user-generated content would be in scope of the Act. This includes user reviews or comments on third party sellers offering goods or services on online marketplaces.

As I understand it, this means that you are fine if you just allow users to comment on your posts, and your answer would be YES. But if your blog provides a facility for users to reply to other people’s comments (which WordPress blogs routinely do) then your answer must be NO.

Crucially, if your answers to the other questions are as I listed above, and you can answer YES to Question 5, then your service should not fall within the scope of the Act. But if you answer NO then it does.

There is a way with a WordPress blog to prevent users from replying to other users’ comments. In the Admin interface, go to Settings–>Discussion and make sure that “Enable threaded (nested) comments” is unchecked. Of course it is possible for a commenter to reply to another commenter in a comment on the main post. I don’t think Ofcom thought of that. If in doubt, you should turn off comments entirely, as I have done with this blog.

There is one other way in which you can fall foul of the Act. That is if you post a link to your content on social media for people to interact with it there. I’m not sure what the rules are there. Obviously social media companies should all be compliant with the Act, but some may not be (e.g. a small Mastodon instance) and some may not care (e.g. Xitter).

Finally Ofcom notes:

Please note that this result is indicative only and based on the answers you have provided. It does not constitute legal advice or an Ofcom decision. It is for providers of online services to assess their service and/or seek independent specialist advice in order to determine whether their online service (or the relevant parts of it) are subject to the regulations and understand how to comply with the relevant duties.

The same applies to my comments here. If in doubt, get legal advice.

Lies, Damned Lies and the British Press

~ Cheryl

So, Reform has won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election. Judging by what I am seeing in the news and on social media, this is a major defeat for Labour whose voters, we are told, are deserting the party en masse for Reform. The lesson for Labour is apparently clear: they need to double-down on their drift to the right and adopt even more draconian policies towards immigrants, the disabled, trans people and so on.

The Reform majority was just 6 votes. Labour activists are blaming the Greens for their loss. If only left-leaning people had all supported Labour, they say, they would have won.

It is easy to see why people come to that conclusion. Here is the swing data.

Party Swing
Reform +20.58
Labour -14.23
Conservative -8.83
Green +0.66
LibDem -2.20

The conclusions seem clear. Voters are deserting Labour, the Tories and LibDems for Reform. The Greens have slightly increased their vote. But, with all due respect to Jon Snow, swing data does not tell the whole story. Absolute numbers of votes matter too.

Here are the total votes for the main parties from both yesterday’s election and the equivalent contest in the General Election last year. I have omitted the minor parties and joke candidates so the totals don’t quite match up.

Party 2024 2025 Change
Reform 7662 12645 +4983
Labour 22358 12639 -9719
Conservative 6756 2341 -4415
Greens 2715 2314 -401
LibDems 2149 942 -1207
Total 42235 32655 -9580

This tells a very different story. The rise in the Reform vote can be almost entirely explained by people deserting the Tories for Reform. The number of people voting Green has gone down slightly, not up. The major story seems to be people deserting Labour in droves, but choosing not to transfer their vote to any left-leaning party. If all of the people who deserted Labour and the LibDems had voted Green instead, then the Greens would have won.

Obviously the lesson for Labour here is very different. Rather than moving further to the right to try to take votes from Reform, what they should be doing is finding out why people who supported them in the past no longer want to vote. Whether they will learn that lesson is another matter. They seem firmly wedded to drifting yet further to the right.

There is also a lesson for the LibDems and Greens. People who are disaffected with Labour are not turning to them. They need to think about why this happens. Presumably the voters assume that those parties have no chance of winning, or perhaps are totally disillusioned with politics.

Here in Wales we have a couple of advantages. Firstly large parts of the country are used to voting for Plaid Cymru as an alternative left-wing party. Secondly the Senedd elections use a system of proportional representation, so fragmentation of left-wing parties is not such an issue. Nevertheless, there is still a huge segment of the population in Cardiff, Swansea and south-east Wales who traditionally vote Labour and who may now not vote at all. How we engage with those people (both in Wales and England) will be vital to the future of the UK.

New Fiction – From Me

~ Cheryl


Yeah, there’s a rare thing. I blame Jo Lambert for this. She told me that Gwyllion was looking for a certain type of story, so I wrote one.

As Gwyllion is The Welsh magazine of science fiction and fantasy, my story is very Welsh. It is set in and around the area where I live. It features Merlin, a dragon, and a couple of teenage lesbians who are huge Taylor Swift fans. Roz described it as cozy, and I guess it is because there isn’t any furious action. One of the characters does describe the current British Prime Minister as an idiot, which I suspect he would characterise as an unacceptable level of violence.

Anyway, thanks to Roz Clarke & Jo Hall for the feedback, and to Laurie and the Gwyllion crew for buying the story. If you would like to read the story, an ebook of the magazine is just £3.50, and there’s a whole lot more fiction in there as well as mine. One of the stories is in Welsh, but they’ve provided an English translation.

While you are on their website, there’s a whole 9 other issues you could be trying as well.

Hello England

~ Cheryl

Do you live there? If so you probably have a vote in local elections tomorrow. Whether you vote, and how you vote, will be very important.

We all did a great job last year in getting rid of the Tories. Unfortuantely they have been replaced by Reform, who are even worse, and we have a supposed Labour government who are doing their damnedest to be more right wing than Reform.

A lot of people are telling me that they are totally fed up with politics and will never vote again. But if you do that it will just let Reform in. If they have control of your local councils they are likely to do a DOGE on them. They’ll strip money from your schools, your libraries, your roads, your refuse collection services and so under the pretence of “saving money”, and funnel as much of that money as they can into their own pockets.

Labour are banking on the assumption that, no matter how right wing their policies might be, all left wing voters will still back them because there is no alternative. That’s very foolish of them. Many parts of England have had LibDem councils. The Greens are by far the largest party on Bristol City Council. The world has not come to an end as a result. Also, having no party with an overall majority can be a good thing. It forces parties to work together and discourages extremist policies.

So please, do vote. But not for Reform, the Tories or Labour. And when you have done so, if you can take the time to write to Kier Starmer and tell him that you didn’t vote Labour because of his stance on trans rights (or immigration, the EU, social security, pensioners, copyright, online safety, or his craven bootlicking of Donald Trump) that would be very helpful.

Genre Creators for Trans Rights

~ Cheryl

The Supreme Court decision on trans rights was announced just before Easter, and so was fresh in everyone’s minds at Eastercon. In response Lauren Beukes and Jeanette Ng decided to run a charity auction to raise funds to fight for trans rights. As Lauren is involved, the money is being split between the UK (specifically The Good Law Project’s fundraiser) and South Africa (a group called The Triangle Project).

Naturally I jumped in early. There is a set of Wizard’s Tower anthologies on offer comprising Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion vols I and II, and Fight Like A Girl 2. All three books contain stories by trans authors. What I forgot to say when I put them on offer is that Roz, Jo and I will sign all three books. If you want to bid, you can do so here.

This was all put together in a screaming hurry, but the community rallied round magnificently. The auction also has lots donated by the likes of Roz Kaveney, Rhianna Pratchett, Charlie Stross, Mike Brooks, Tade Thompson, Juliet McKenna, Olivie Blake, Mike Carey, Aliette de Bodard, Wole Talabi, Lev Grossman and Stephanie Burgis.

We’ve also learned a lot. The things that make the best money are unusual things that don’t have an obvious price tag. Jo Hall has offered a full novel edit which is currently going for £225 and frankly is worth a lot more. Possibly the star lot is a personalised invitation to the 2nd Hellfire Gala from Emma Frost herself. Kieron Gillen is managing the donation on behalf of Ms. Frost. The lot has already raised £523.

A lot of other people have since expressed a desire to donate, and I would have put more in had I not been quite so busy over the past week or so. We are actively discussing a follow-up event. In the meantime you have until Friday to bid. Hopefully there is something that takes your fancy.

A Birthday Request

~ Cheryl

I don’t often do this sort of thing, and I am definitely not asking you to give money to anyone. All I want you to do is write a letter. Let me explain.

By now the chances are that you have heard of Wednesday’s ruling by the UK’s Supreme Court which, in a very limited sense, defined a woman as someone whose birth certificate says they are a woman. The Court made it clear in their ruling that this should not be taken as an excuse for a wholesale rollback of trans rights, but neverthless the UK media has been full of stories about how trans people in the UK no longer have any legal rights. In addition various organisations have immediately adopted transphobic policies, and the Equality & Human Rights Commission (which was stuffed full of transphobic staff by the previous Tory government) has promised to bring in statutory guidance to remove all trans rights.

Much of what is going on is a massive overreach given the nature of the judgement but, because this is being done by quasi-government organisations such as the EHRC, it is very difficult to challenge. The only way to overturn what the EHRC is saying is to challenge their rulings in the courts. As we know by now, the anti-trans lobby is extremely well funded and has the power to appeal any case up as far as the Supreme Court, who will find against any trans people, regardless of the merits of the case. So legal cases will only serve to strengthen the amount of legal precedent against trans rights.

The government is very happy about this. It means that they can sit back and watch trans rights being eroded without them having to actually do anything, and thereby avoid any blame. This allows Starmer & co to stay in the good books of the likes of Trump, Musk and Rowling. The media is full of articles about how UK politicians will be breathing a sigh of relief because the trans issue is now “over”. That is, they say, trans people no longer have any rights, and no one of any importance cares.

The only way that we will be able to challenge this is if politicians throughout the UK start to worry that things have gone too far; that their constiuents are actually angry about the way in which a vocal and wealthy minority has been allowed to wage a campaign of hated against a small and largely defenceless group; that constiituents are deeply worried about what these changes in the law will mean for them, even though they are not trans.

I’m busy working with Plaid Cymru to see what we can do from a Welsh Government angle. What I would like you folks to do is write to your MPs. Or, if you are not UK citizens, write to your local British Ambassador, because the UK does still get a lot of money from tourism. Here are a few things worth mentioning.

The new regulations are likely to be applied in a very discriminatory way, in that defining trans people by the sex they were assigned at birth will only be applied to trans women. Trans men will be mostly immune, because no one wants people with deep voices, beards and penises in women’s toilets or changing rooms. Nor does anyone want any excuses for predatory men to force their way into such spaces on the grounds that they are trans men. Goodness only knows what will happen with non-binary people. It will probably be quite random depending on what other folks assume is on their birth certificate.

Having said that, all trans people will suffer from withdrawal of medical services. Trans men may no longer be able to access necessary screening for cervical cancer (and goddess knows it has been hard enough for them already). Trans women may be denied access to breast cancer screening, because it is an article of faith amongst the anti-trans brigade that trans women cannot grow breasts naturally and therefore do not need breast cancer screening. The fact that this is medical nonsense will not stop the zealots at the EHRC from issuing discriminatory regulations.

More generally, trans people, and trans women in particular, will be terrified of having to go to hospital. I’d certainly rather die peacefully at home than be let die in the men’s ward of a hospital by transphobic staff who amuse themselves by abusing me while it happens.

Then there is the whole toilet issue. The EHRC has promised to make it a crime for trans women to use women’s toilets. It will probably also become a crime for an organisation owning toilet premises to allow a trans woman to use women’s toilets. Businesses all over the country will have to get into toilet policing. And doing so effectively will be largely impossible. Of course the transphobes insist that they can “always tell”, but everyone knows that they can’t.

The inevitable result of toilet policing (and similar activities in changing rooms in shops, sports facilities and so on) will be that large numbers of cisgender women, predominantly lesbians and women of colour who do not conform to Western standards of feminine beauty, will be subject to abuse, denial of access to facilities, and even arrest, because they have been mistaken for trans women.

It is worse than that. The British Transport Police have already decided that anyone suspected of being a trans woman must be strip-searched by male officers. Given the shameful record of convictions for sexual abuse by male police all over the country, I’m sure that this will be expanded to other forces. This is effectively providing an excuse for male police to sexually assault any woman they take a fancy to. And because you cannot tell whether a woman is trans by looking at her (even looking at her naked), cisgender women will find themselves having to carry their birth certificates with them everywhere.

Talking of ID, the Gender Recognition Act allowed trans people to obtain driving licences and passports in their acquired gender. The EHRC has vowed to put a stop to that. This will make it impossible for me to travel overseas, because my passport will appear to belong to someone very different from the person I appear to be.

Over the coming weeks we will doubtless discover additional issues that this ridiculous judgement has caused, and I haven’t even begun to touch on the implications for intersex people who are innocent parties in all this. But hopefully you have enough to be going on with. The UK government is relying on the fact that no one cares about trans rights except trans people, and there are too few of us to matter. Please help prove them wrong.

My Eastercon Schedule

~ Cheryl

The programme for this year’s Eastercon has been announced. Here’s what I will be doing.

Friday, 18 April 2025

Looking Back: Harmful Legacies in SFF – Hilton – Boardroom – not streamed – 18:30

SFF has a history of engaging with its own past, but that past isn’t always good. How do we engage with the legacy of John W. Campbell’s editing, and the shape it forced science fiction into? Lovecraft’s racism shaped his cosmic horror, which has gone on to influence writers to this day; how do we tackle that? The Hobbit is so male that Peter Jackson felt compelled to create a female character for his film trilogy. How do we tackle the legacies of science fiction and fantasy of the past in the present day? With: Liz Bourke (moderator), Helen Gould, C.L. McCartney & Jeannette Ng.

Sunday, 20 April 2025

The Ties That Bind: Found Family in SFF – Hilton – Lagan B – 9:30

Fandom is a family, and speculative fiction is full of found families, from quest groups to spaceship crews. We will talk about the attraction of found families, the pitfalls of writing them, and the best examples of found families in fiction… as well as those we’d love to be adopted into. With David Green, Juliet Kemp, Everina Maxwell & Caroline Mersey (moderator).

Monday, 21 April 2025

Who Runs The World? Feminism in SFF – ICC – Hall 1 A – 11:00

Women have been part of the SFF field since it was invented, whether by Mary Shelley or Margaret Cavendish; but often they have been sidelined, especially retrospectively. Now we are seeing another range of rediscoveries of female writers who have been pushed into obscurity, but what could this continual process of obscurity and rediscovery tell us about feminism’s progress in SFF? With Juliet E McKenna, Caroline Mersey, Jeannette Ng & Virginia Preston (moderator).

Queerly Triumphant – Hilton – Lagan A – 12:30

For years, queer narratives were written in the shadow of tragedy, from the formal legal discrimination to the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. Throughout that time, though, there have been narratives of queer triumph and queer joy, and in the face of a resurgent anti-queer backlash, we’re seeing a renewed need for such stories today. Our panel discuss the history of queer narratives, the way the spectre of queer tragedy has historically erased the reality of queer joy, and the best queer triumphant writing today. With Sandra Bond, Trip Galey, SJ Groenewegen & Mairi White (moderator).

And not forgetting the BSFA Awards ceremony, which starts at 18:30 on the Sunday night. Come and see if Fight Like A Girl 2 wins an award, and if so whether I can remember how to make an acceptance speech.

You can still buy a virtual membership for just £20. Click here.

A Local Rugby Story

~ Cheryl

As those of you who follow the sport will know, Welsh rugby is pretty shit at the moment. One of the few good things about the national team is the captain, Jac Morgan (no relation), whom even the English accept is a world class player. Before the Scotland game yesterday, the BBC ran a little feature on Jac. You can find it here (though you probably need a UK TV licence to watch it).

I live just south of a town called Rhydaman (Amman Ford in English). Jac is from further upriver: the village of Brynaman (Amman Hill). You may remember me enthusing about the wonderful old cinema they have there. The team that Jac played for as a boy is in the neighbouring village of Cwmtwrch. That means ‘Valley of the Boar’. Specifically, of course, it refers to the giant boar called Trwyth who has a starring role in the Second Branch of The Mabinogion. He’s something of a local hero in these parts. A wild boar is, of course, the perfect mascot for a rugby loose forward.

Going back over the video before writing this post, I noticed that the BBC had changed the background music, probably to avoid having to pay more royalties. The music that they used for the broadcast was a song by Adwaith, the single off their debut album, Melyn. The song is called “Fel i fod”, and has apparently been adopted by the Wales Women soccer team. I have no idea who chose it for the feature on Jac, but it was a very Carmarthenshire thing to have done. I like to think that Jac chose it because he’s a fan.

“Fel i fod” is an unusual track for Adwaith, being much slower and more melodic than most of their fare, but it is lovely. Here are the girls doing a version as promo for the 2018 Green Man festival which, incidentally, takes place in Crucywel (Crickhowell) in the Bannau Brycheiniog a little way east of here.

I see that Adwaith are playing there again this year, along with Tristwch y Fenywod and Gwenno, but tickets are sold out and anyway I’m much too old for camping in a field.

I’m not too old to watch rugby though. I spent part of today at Parc y Scarlets watching our local women’s team. The men and boys national teams might have lost to Scotland this weekend, but Brython Thunder won a closely fought game against Glasgow Warriors. If you want a job done, get the women to do it.

That Time of Year

~ Cheryl

You might not think it, but it is LGBTQ+ History Month, at least in the UK. It certainly isn’t in the USA, where the Fascist Coup is busily trying to erase queer people from history, but here we can at least do some events.

Last weekend I headed down to Llanelli for their first ever such gig. My friend Norena Shopland did a great presentation of the Carmarthen Timeline. What is that, you ask? Well, a while back Norena was charged by the Welsh government to do some training for museums, libraries etc. to encourage them to make queer history more visible. The trainees responded that this was absolutely great, but they had no time, and no money, and were likely to have even less of both in the future. So Norena and some friends set about producing a queer history timeline for each county in Wales that could be used by local authorities with minimum effort by their staff. We believe that Wales is the only country in the world to have such a thing. Cool.

This weekend sees the annual OutStories Bristol event at M-Shed. I’m not speaking at that one, and I suspect I won’t have time to get to it either, but it looks like being a great day.

At the end of the month I am off to Abertystwyth to do an actual talk. The poster for the event is shown above. My talk is the one on Trans Celts (freshly updated with a bunch of new stuff). I am really looking forward to the one on The Mabiniogion. I know that for many of you Aberystwyth is at the arse end of nowhere, but if you can make it booking details are here. It is a great venue. The town museum is housed in a restored Edwardian theatre. Sadly I won’t be on stage, but I can guarantee an excellent audience.

I hope to take advantage of being in town to visit the National Library and do some research.

Just prior to that I will be spending a couple of days in That London, partly for things I can’t talk about yet, and partly to take advantage of being there. The lovely people at Strawberry Hill House are doing a candlelit open evening on the Wednesday (26th), and before going home I plan to take in the Mediaeval Women exhibition at the British Library. They have material by Christine de Pizan and Julian of Norwich, and most amazingly a letter signed by Jean d’Arc herself. Wow.

All of this travel means that Salon Futura may be a day or two late, but I’m not worrying about that.

Solstice Watch

~ Cheryl

This is your regular reminder that the Solstice is tomorrow, and for us in the Northern Hemisphere the very best way to watch it from home is in the wonderful company of Dr Clare Tuffy and Dr Frank Prendergast live from Newgrange on RTÉ. Those of us not in Ireland can follow along on a number of platforms, including YouTube. Full details here. The broadcast starts at 8:40, Irish time (which is the same as the UK).

By the way, English Heritage are warning about fake broadcasts from Stonehenge being advertised on Farcebook. Do check that you are following the real thing, and don’t pay anything.

Comments Closed

~ Cheryl

Thanks to discussions elsewhere I have become aware of problems with the UK’s new Online Safety Act. In theory this legislation is designed to protect children from unsafe material on the internet. It does things like require social media companies to actually enforce their age limits, and to have active moderation policies. In practice it is a poorly-thought-out piece of legislation that will catch a lot of innocent people in its net.

People who run various fora and bulletin boards for volunteer and hobbyist groups have already started taking their sites offline because they cannot afford to comply with the legislation, and can’t afford to ignore it. (You can be fined up to £18m if found in breach of the act.)

My guess is that, much like HMRC puts a lot of effort into prosecuting individuals who might have made a mistake in their tax return, while letting the wealthy and corporations get away with massive tax evasion, the force of this law will fall mainly on private individuals and small companies. There have been suggestions that SWATing-like tactics will be used by internet trolls whereby they seek to place dubious content on sites they have taken against, and then report those sites to the authorities.

In theory, blogs like this are exempt from the law on the grounds that they are not bulletin boards, but rather simply people commenting on things the blog owner has said. However, when the Act was drafted, it did not occur to anyone that it is possible for people to reply to other people’s comments on a blog. And that makes it functionally more like a bulletin board. There is no means in WordPress to prevent that from happening without closing comments altogether. As people hardly ever comment here these days anyway, I have taken the decision to close them entirely. Should things change in the future I can always open them up again. In the meantime, you can always reply to posts via social media.

Of course it would not surprise me if, sometime soon, the UK government decides that all discussion of trans issues is “pornographic” and therefore must be behind an 18+ screen. The Online Safety Act will be the vehicle through which they attack online discussion of trans rights. But I’ll deal with that as and when we get there.

A Little (Trans) History

~ Cheryl

The anti-trans brigade loves to claim that trans people are a modern invention (so much so that I am apparently much younger than my calendar years as I hadn’t been invented when I was born). When you provide them with examples of gender diversity from history they will claim that you can’t really know how people from the past felt about themselves, and anyway being trans would have been illegal back then so they would have been killed if they were really trans.

But what if there is evidence? Not autobiographies, because they can be unreliable, but evidence from independent witnesses who knew the person in question and can testify to how they behaved.

This is the subject of a new post that I have up on Notches, in collaboration with my friend Margarita Vaysman who is a professor of Russian Literature at Oxford. Having discovered the story of Aleksandr Aleksandrov, she started doing some digging. As a Russian speaker (she’s Ukrainian, as was Aleksandrov) she has been able to look at archives written in Russian and she has turned up some remarkable articles by late 19th century Russian historians. These two men were keen to know more about the famous hero of the Napoleonic Wars – allegedly a young woman who abandoned home and family to fight as a man for her country. What they found was clear evidence that Aleksandrov – a name he was given by the Tsar, alongside a Cross of St. George – continued to live as a man for decades after the end of the war.

She was always in male attire: a long black frock coat and narrow trousers, a tall black hat on her head and a cane in her hands, on which she leaned. She endeavoured to walk as upright as her years and strength would allow and had a firm step. She always conducted herself as a man and was offended if she were addressed as a woman; if this happened, she would get angry and respond harshly.

As you’ll see, there is a fair amount of misgendering going on. The learned gentlemen were not quite sure what to make of this strange person, but they were quite clear about Aleksandrov’s sense of self, and also that most of the people in the town where he lived were happy to accept him as a man.

I’m writing this because there is not a lot of background in the Notches articles. The two translated articles are quite enough material for one blog post. They are also rather too long for a typical paper in an academic journal. However, Margarita and I are working on papers, and we want to be able to cite these two pieces. We can’t do that unless they are published somewhere. Justin Bengry and the Notches team kindly agreed to put them online for us, for which we are deeply grateful.

The academics amongst you can look forward to a paper or two in due course. And hopefully I’ll be appearing at one or two conferences on queer history.

Community Action in Practice

~ Cheryl


There has been a lot of talk on social media of late about how communities need to work together to fight the onrushing tide of austerity policies and Fascism, but there has been little idea of how that might be achieved in practice. Well, here in West Wales we have something that is rather special.

My friend Deri Reed runs a top quality restaurant in Carmarthen called The Warren. (I took Kevin there after Worldcon if you need a less biased recommendation.) More recently Deri has founded an initiative called Cegin Hedyn (that’s Seed Kitchen for you English-speakers). This provides a “pay what you can afford” service which aims to ensure that the people of Carmarthen and the surrounding area have “access to nutritious, delicious meals, regardless of financial means.” The service is run by volunteers and relies on donations of money and food from the local community.

Recently Cegin Hedyn has been named as one of the finalists for the Community Food Champion award in this year’s BBC Food and Farming Awards. Consequently it was featured on Saturday’s edition of BBC Morning Live. If you have access to the BBC iPlayer you can watch the segment here (fast forward to 44 minutes). The winner will be announced at a ceremony in Glasgow on December 2nd.

While it would be lovely for them to win, the point I want to make here is that this is very much a grass roots initiative that was set up to benefit the local community in a sustainable way. It is something that we could all learn from. If you would like to help out you can do so via the LocalGiving website.

By the way, Cegin Hedyn serves all of the local community. The BBC video features a couple of people I know from the local queer community. And if you check out the organisation’s website you will see that one of the Directors is my long-time friend, Frank Duffy. Frank provides all of the graphic design for The Warren and Cegin Hedyn. They have also done quite a bit of work for Wizard’s Tower over the years.

It’s That Day Again

~ Cheryl

Yes, today is the annual Trans Day of Remembrance. Indeed, it is the 25th anniversary of the founding of the event by Gwendolyn Ann Smith. It became a global phenomenon, and now it seems it is dying. I’m certainly seeing a lot less interest in it his year, and especially a lot less support from outside the trans community.

From my point of view it is a bit of a relief to not have to spend this evening reading the names of people who have been murdered, often brutally, simply because they were trans. But they are still dying. Indeed, the official figures suggest that there has been an increase of around 10% in the total in the past year. I expect next year to be much worse, especially in the USA where a small segment of society believes that the election result has given them the freedom to harrass and kill anyone they don’t like.

Here in the UK the violence is less obvious but no less cruel. The government has launched an inquiry into health care for trans adults along the lines of the infamous Cass Report. Everyone knows what the result will be. In defiance of international medical best practice, the inquiry will report that transition care for adults is experimental and dangerous, and must be stopped. I’m hearing reports of GPs in England stopping providing hormones to trans patients in anticipation of the inquiry’s findings.

Whether this will extend to Wales or not is unclear, but I have other things to worry about in the coming year. One of the things that the incoming government in the USA has threatened to do is define all discussion of trans issues as ‘pornography’. They will then use that to pressure media companies to stop producing films, TV, books, comics and so on that have trans themes. Discussion of trans issues on the internet is also likely to be defined as pornography. One of the things I have on my to do list for December is to find alternative hosting for my websites in case my US hosting service is forced to shut them down.

Anyway, I intend to keep publishing work by trans writers until such time as the UK government decides to lock me up over it. Tomorrow is release day for Fight Like A Girl 2, which includes three stories by trans women. Two of those, plus one story by a cis writer, are overtly trans positive. It is a small act of resistance, but every little helps.

My Fantastika Schedule

~ Cheryl

Another weekend, another convention. I’ll be off to Stockholm shortly. Here’s my programme schedule.

Friday November 1st, 20:00 – Strong Female Characters
How have gender roles changed over time in SF and fantasy? Female characters take on ever-greater roles in fantastic fiction. Have strong female characters displaced male ones? Is it because women play an ever-larger role in society generally? Do female characters play a more significant role in science fiction and fantasy because more women are writing and creating fantastic worlds? How do changing gender dynamics affect how one reads, or how viewers appreciate what they watch?
With TL Huchu, Elin Holmerin, Jukka Halme and Åsa Lundström (m)

Saturday November 2nd, 16:00 – 50 years of The Dispossessed
2024 marks the 50 year anniversary of Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic science fiction novel The Dispossessed. One of the few books to win the Hugo, Locus and Nebula Awards, it is widely considered a defining work of SFF literature. What made the book so beloved and what keeps people reading it to this day? Does it read as a political manifesto, a character study, a speculative thought experiment – or all of the above? What themes resonated with contemporary audiences, and what can we take from the novel when rereading it 50 years on?
With Joachim Björk, Saga Bolund, Jerry Määttä and Markku Soikkeli

Sunday November 3rd, 13:00 – “Herding cats” – how to moderate a panel
The success of a panel naturally depends on the subject and the participants, but the moderators impact could be crucial as well. But how do you prepare to moderate a panel? How do you handle a discussion that has steered away from the subject or if one panelist is about to take over the conversation? When should you let the audience in and how do you interrupt an audience question that just goes on forever? This and much more will be discussed in this panel of experienced moderators.
With Johan Anglemark, Jukka Halme, Timothy Johansson (m) and Britt-Louise Viklund

Sunday November 3rd, 15:00 – The State of Publishing: A Conversation
Juliet McKenna and Cheryl Morgan discuss the state of publishing today. This wide-ranging exploration will be between an author and her publisher, between a defender of authors against unjust legislation and a champion of translation and intercultural dialogue. It is likely to cover anything from copyright protections to e-books, publishing corporations to self-publishing, editing to translation.

Book and Convention Schedule

~ Cheryl

This weekend will be BristolCon, which is a two-day event for the first time. The programme is still being worked on, but as far as I know this is what I will be doing:

Saturday, 12:00: Creating A Culture – Building A Working Fantasy / Sf Society

Sunday, 11:00: Book Launch

Sunday, 13:00: Cli-fi – subgenre or necessity?

Of those the most important thing is the book launch. I’d hope that we would have at least 2 books for that, maybe as many as four. As it turns out, the only new book we have since WorldCon is Resurrection Code, and Lyda won’t be at the convention. Both The Green Man’s War and Fight Like A Girl 2 have been hit by life happening. Juliet has written a little more about this on her blog.

So there will be no paper copies of either book at the convention. But I will be taking pre-orders, and I will be selling ebooks because those are ready. If you pre-order paper, you get a free ebook. Those advance ebooks sales will only be at BristolCon. Well, maybe, except.

When I get home I have a couple of days to get turned around and then I am off to Stockholm for Fantastika where Juliet is a Guest of Honour. There’s no way I can get boxes of books to Sweden, but a local bookstore has promised to have some Juliet books available. They may also take pre-orders for the two new ones. I would like to have the ebooks available there as well, but that is complicated as there is VAT on ebooks in Sweden and I don’t want to have to register to sell them. But, remember all that good work that Juliet & Co did back before Brexit in getting the EU to have sensible tax thresholds? That might just allow me to sell stuff. Funny how these things come back around.

The programme for Fantastika is not public yet, but I have some interesting panels, and because I don’t have a dealer table I can do more of them.

As for books, The Feast of the King’s Shadow, the fourth Outremer book from Chaz Brenchley, is waiting on Ben Baldwin to have time to do the cover. That will probably be out in December, followed by the second Helen Brady book, The Elfstone, in January. After that, exciting things are in store, but I can’t tell you about them yet.

My FantasyCon Schedule

~ Cheryl

FantasyCon is only a couple of days away. Here’s where you can find me.

Friday, October 11th 9pm (Baba Yaga Room)
Fantasy In The City – Urban or second world, the city is fertile stomping ground for fantasy. Why? And how do we treat the city like a character? Panellists: Cheryl Morgan, Ella Summers, Liz Cain, David Green, Sandra Unerman (m).

Saturday, October 12th 7pm (Kraken Room)
Queer Role Models in Fandom – There’s nothing quite like the thrill of discovering someone like you in your favourite book, TV show, or movie. What characters are queer role models done well in genre? Panellists: Cheryl Morgan (m), Susan J Morris, Tej Turner +1.

Sunday, October 13th 1pm (Kraken Room)
Demystifying the Editing Process – Every editor is different. Here, they share their methods of working, from developmental editing to line edits, and what writers can expect. Panellists: George Sandison, Claire Cronshaw, Jonathan Oliver, David Thomas Moore, Cheryl Morgan (m).

I will not have a dealer table. If you want to buy a Wizard’s Tower book, let me know tomorrow and I’ll put it in the car before leaving.

My Octocon Schedule

~ Cheryl

This weekend I will mostly be at a writing retreat in Llandybie along with Roz, Jo and various friends. However, I have to rush home on the Saturday evening because I need functioning internet. I am doing one virtual panel at Octocon, as follows:

Saturday, 5 October 2024; 20:30
Stop Passing the Buck: Consent in Historical Fantasy: So often in historical fantasy, we are bombarded with violence we didn’t ask for, particularly sexual violence against women. When this concern is raised, the authors frequently hide behind “I want to stay true to the time period” and “we can’t judge the past by today’s standards”. But why are authors bound to a period that didn’t exist when they’re creating a new society? Why do they hold to this, instead of creating their own? And why does the adherence to the past only seem to show up in violence against women and not to the beauty standards of the time? Why is assault more palatable to an audience than unshaved armpits? How do we go about demanding that this change, or do we have to abandon a genre we otherwise love? – with Faranae, Kat Dodd, Nick Hubble and MaryBrigid Turner (m).

Juliet McKenna is also attending the convention, and she has a panel at 13:30 on Sunday about exploring lesser-known fairy tales. That sounds like something where she might talk about the research she does for the Green Man books.

Full details of this year’s Octocon (and you can still buy a virtual membership) are available here.

Worldcon Ho!

~ Cheryl

In a few days time I will be packing the car with books and heading up to Glasgow. Most of the time I will be in the Dealers’ Room, so I should be easy to find. I have precisely one panel. Here it is:

Sunday, 11 August 2024 – 11:30 – Gods and Faith in Fantasy – Forth, Duration: 60 mins

Faith and the divine have played a huge role in fantasy, from Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods to N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow. This panel will discuss the presentations and representations of the divine in fantasy, the ways writers put faith on the page, and the role of gods in story.

With: Ehud Maimon (moderator), Meg MacDonald & Wole Talabi

My Finncon Schedule

~ Cheryl

It is almost July, and that means I will be heading to Finland for Finncon. This year the convention is being held in Jyväskylä, home of my dear friend, Irma Hirsjärvi. I will be on programme. The convention website is here, but to read it all you will need to know a bit of Finnish. In the main menu: Ohjelma = Programme. In that menu: Perjantai = Friday; Lauantai = Saturday; and Sunnuntai = Sunday. The programme grids for each day describe the English-language items in English. My assignments are:

Friday 5th: 15:00
On Writing, in which I interview Guest of Honour, Ursula Vernon (a.k.a. T. Kingfisher) about her writing practice.

Saturday 6th: 14:00
Wales in the Time of Arthur, in which I talk about Welsh history in the 5th and 6th centuries, CE.

Saturday 6th: 17:00
Masquerade – Ursula and I will be among the judges

Sunday 7th: 10:00
Queer Fantasies, in which a panel of queer-identified folks talk about their favourite fantasy books with queer elements.

Following the convention, I will be attending Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at the University of Helsinki. And because my life is a bit mad, on Saturday 13th I will dialing in to the Marginalised Writers’ Day at Abertystwyth University, from the Finnair Lounge at Helsinki airport.

Talking of that day, my pals at Inclusive Journalism Cymru now have a blog post up about it. Two of my colleagues will be attending in person and reporting on social media: one in English and one in Welsh.