Author: Cheryl

My BristolCon Schedule

~ Cheryl

The programme for BristolCon has been released. I am doing panels. So is Kayla. And of course there will be a Wizard’s Tower dealer table. When we are not in the Dealers’ Room, this is where to find us. Cheryl first:

Saturday 25th October, 13:00 – Panel Room 1

SF As Activism – How can genre influence our attempts to bring change in the real world? What can we learn from SFF and how do we put it into practice? With David Cartwright (mod), Matthew (T.O.) Munro, Rosie Oliver and Stephen Oram.

Sunday 26th October, 14:00 – Panel Room 1

Two Genders? That’s All? – In many fantasy and sci-fi settings, the sky is the limit in terms of magic and creation – people can have wings, tails, pointy teeth, vampire fangs, fur, hooves; houses roam the fields and sailships soar through the skies; there are dragons, unicorns, monsters… And yet of all these things, everyone’s only male or female? What, no one could imagine anything more interesting than that? A panel exploring trans and nonbinary erasure and the limits of sex and gender binary imagination in SFF, With Pete Ellis, Zoe, Johannes T. Evans and Dr Bob.

And for Kayla:

Saturday 25th October, 18:00 – Panel Room 1

Location Location Location – What SFF sites would make great tourist destinations? And which might be better off redeveloped into industrial megasites? With Piotr Swietlik (mod), Gareth L. Powell, Joanne Hall and Kevlin Henney.

Sunday 26th October, 14:00 – Panel Room 2

Copyright And AI – Copyright is important to SFF creatives. The UK government have recently been considering giving access to original work to train AIs in addition to the existing large scale theft of works already undertaken by the tech giants. The panel will discuss the impact of this and any proposed legislation on SFF creatives and what it means for the genres. With Pete Sutton (mod), Ben Jeapes, Rosie Oliver and Matt Gibbs.

There is no launch event this year, but you will be able to get three new books in advance of the official publication data. They are:

  • The Green Man’s Holiday – Juliet E McKenna
  • Of the Emperor’s Kindness – Chaz Brenchley
  • Wiz Duos Book 3 – Ruthanna Emrys & Andrew Knighton

Sadly most of the authors won’t be there, but Juliet will be around on Sunday if you want books signed. In addition Ben Jeapes, Anna Smith Spark, Joel Cornah, Ben Mears and of course Roz & Jo will all be around. If you are thinking that the only Ben Jeapes books we well are electronic, well, we are going to have a few copies of paper editions of Ben’s books at the dealer table.

And finally, Jo is arranging a special memorial event for our dear friend, David Gullen. It is at 14:00 in panel room 1 on the Saturday. There will be cake.

See you there, I hope.

My World Fantasy Schedule

~ Cheryl

The final programme for World Fantasy has now been published. You can find it here.

I have one program item (that is fairly standard for World Fantasy which has way too many professionals in the membership to give people more than one slot). It is as follows:

Friday Oct. 31st, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm – Edinburgh Room

Fantasy and Horror in Translation: Fantasy and Horror stories are written all over the world. Our panel discusses works that have been translated into English, how those translations have been received and what more can be done to bring the rich narratives of the world to greater audiences.

Cheryl Morgan (chair) with Eliza Claudia F, Liliana Carstea & K.A.Teryna

I don’t know my panelists, but I’m pretty sure I know what we’ll end up talking about.

In addition there will be this.

Saturday Nov. 1st, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm – Balmoral Room

Launch: Wizard’s Tower Press: Wizard’s Tower Press are launching: The Green Man’s Holiday by Juliet E. McKenna, Of the Emperor’s Kindness by Chaz Brenchley and Wiz Duo Book 3 by Ruthana Emrys & Andrew Knighton.

Chaz can’t be there, but he will be ably represented by his agent, John Jarrold. Roz and Jo will be there as editors of the Wiz Duos series. And I’m hoping that EM Fauds and Juliet Kemp will be there too in case anyone doesn’t have a copy of Wiz Duo #2 yet.

There will be wine, obviously. And because it is an afternoon event there will be tea, cofffe and cake. Jo will be baking. I might too if I have time, but if I do it will have to be something like bara brith because I’m not going home after BristolCon.

I’ve done a little promo video:

A Kickstarter Campaign

~ Cheryl




So, here we go again. I’m trying to fund a new anthology with a Kickstarter campaign. There’s a good reason why I am doing this. I want to be able to offer authors a good rate for their stories. I can’t put the money up myself because the chances of getting it back are not good. Fight Like A Girl #2 has done incredibly well award-wise, but it has sold fewer then 150 copies. That’s a measure of how hard things are for a small press these days. Using crowdfunding will hopefully mean we sell more copies, and that we can pay the authors something closer to professional rates.

Of course running a Kickstarter campaign isn’t easy. A lot of them fail to meet their targets. And as soon as one goes live you are absolutely deluged with emails from scammers trying to sell you their expertise. Many of them claim to be associated with Kickstarter. They are not. One offered me a $30,000 investment if I paid him $300. I’m only trying to raise £5,500. It is bizarre.

However, the scammers will get victims because doing a successful Kickstarter campaign is hard. It was difficult enough when Twitter was useful, but now that the social media environment is so fragmented, and so many people are terrified about the rise of Facism, it is massively more so. I don’t expect to succeed without effort.

But there is a plan. Because the anthology will be about Welsh history and legend, we will be running regular updates showcasing how weird that stuff is. Most days I will post an update, either written by me or by someone else associated with the campaign, about some person or creature that might feature in a story in the book. I am hoping that these updates will draw people to the campaign page just to read them, and that some of those people will decide to pledge.

That’s the plan, anyway. But I will also be begging people to pledge on a fairly regular basis, because that is absolutely necessary. You can do so here.

Queer Lit Quarterly

~ Cheryl

The lovely Pete from Gayberystwyth Books runs a quarterly literary event for queer writers at Aberystwyth University. This quarter I am one of the guest authors. (Yes, I know, I will mostly be talking about the queer people I publish, but I might read something too.)

The chances are that most of you will not be able to be in Aberystwyth next week, but I do know a couple of people who teach at the university, so a blog post is in order.

Full details of the event are available here.

And yes, that is the 10th, which is the day before Octocon. This month is a bit crazy.

My Octocon Schedule

~ Cheryl

October is very convention-heavy, and the programme assignments are starting to come in. On Sunday 12th I will be attending Octocon (virtually). Here’s what I will be up to:

11:30 – Historical Myths and How to (Not) Use Them

When writing a story based on a myth or legend or on ‘true’ history, how do you resist the temptation to pull it forward to the current day in the hope of making it new and fresh? And when you do want to set your story in its original time period, how do you make it your own while keeping it relevant and interesting for a modern audience, at the same time as staying true to the source?

With Jean Bürlesk (moderator), Finn McLellan and Gillian Polack

16:00 – Small Press, Big Books!

Often the most beloved and most surprising works come from small press publishers. These are the folks who bring forth unique books in some of the hardest to find subgenres. Join us as we celebrate the tiny mighty publishers of the world.

With Francesca T Barbini, Catherine Sharp (moderator), Khan Wong and Jo Zebedee

Online memberships for Octocon are still available at a mere €20. Full details here.

Two New Books

~ Cheryl

I’m not going to be at Worldcon. Frankly it wouldn’t be safe for me to travel to the USA these days, even if I was allowed to. However, had I been able to be there, I would have had two new books available. Instead I have been targeting Carmarthen Pride, where I will have a small stall. Not quite the same audience, but hopefully I will sell a few books (and it costs me a lot less to be there).

What new books?, you may be asking. Well, if you haven’t been following the social media, here’s a quick introduction to The Jicker Man and The Sea-Stone Sword, both of which are currently on pre-order.

Speculative Insight Seeking Pitches

~ Cheryl

Alex Pierce has been in touch to let me know that, in September, Speculative Insight will be open to pitches from authors of Indigenous, Asian, Maori, Pacific Islander, Latinx and Black heritage. Any essays purchased will be published from March 2026 onwards.

Alex says:

How to pitch

Between 1 and 30 September, email editor[at]speculativeinsight.com with:

  • the subject line “Pitch for Speculative Insight;”
  • your name;
  • a 150-200 word pitch, explaining your essay’s focus;
  • a brief explanation for why your idea is a fit for Speculative Insight (see this page for further details about the journal); and
  • a statement confirming that writing your pitch did not involve the use of LLM / AI, and that if accepted your essay will likewise not use LLM / AI.

What we are looking for:

  • essays that focus on science fiction and/ or fantasy;
  • essays about specific books, authors, or themes across a number of books;
  • thoughtful, rigorous, and analytical essays (footnotes not compulsory but welcomed);
  • including a personal response is welcomed, within an analytical framework

We are not looking for:

  • essays about television, films or comics;
  • an essay entirely about your own work.

Other vital information:

  • finished essays will be 2000-3000 words in length;
  • payment is AUD 5c/word up to AUD$150, via PayPal;
  • deadlines are negotiable;
  • we aim to respond within a month of receiving a pitch.

An Academic Paper

~ Cheryl

I have been attending quite a few academic confderences this year. Several of them have been queer history events, at which I have been talking about a project I have been undertaking in collaboration with my friend Professor Margarita Vaysman who is a lecturer in Russian Literature at Oxford. The work concerns the life of the 19th Century Russian trans man, Aleksandr Aleksandrov. Last year I wrote about some amazing third party accounts of Aleksandrov’s life which make his self-identification as a man abundantly clear. English translations of those accounts were published on the queer history blog, Notches.

I am pleased to report that those tranlsations have now found their way into the first ever issue of a new Academic Journal, Slavic Queer Studies. It is an open-access journal, and you can find the article, plus links to the rest of the issue, here.

While Notches is peer-reviewed, it tends to get a little less academic respect than actual journals, so I am very pleased to this actual publication to my name.

Assuming all goes well (and who knows what craziness the Tangerine Tyrant will come up with next), Margarita and I will also have a paper in Trans Studies Quarterly in January.

Gender Stories in Bristol

~ Cheryl

Bristol Museum is currently running an exhibition called Gender Stories. The blurb says:

Challenging rigid definitions and binary narratives, Gender Stories dives deep into the intricate connections between sex, gender, sexuality, and identity. Discover how these fluid, and multifaceted ideas have been mythologised, stereotyped, expressed – and sometimes concealed – through art, history, politics, and daily life over time.

The exhibition includes work by David Hockney, Rene Matic, Zanele Muholi, Catherine Opie, Grayson Perry, and Del LaGrace Volcano.

In addition the fabulous Jack Shoulder is hosting LGBTQIAP+ tours of the museum. Jack and Mark Small are the team behind the wonderful Museum Bums book, so you can be guaranteed an entertaining tour. Dates are listed here.

And why am I telling you all this? Because on September 24th I will be appearing on a panel associated with the exhibition. The panel is titled ‘Gender, Identity, Culture, and Future – a frank panel discussion’. Appearing with me will be Sid Boyner (artist), Sacha Acheson (former England women rugby player), Ben Akers (CEO of a men’s mental health charity) and Dr Sarah Jones (historian of sexuality and gender, University of Bristol). Tickets are a mere £5, and you can buy them here.

The Doctor Thing

~ Cheryl

Yesterday Kevin and I spent the day at the University of Exeter where I was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws. Obviously I have known about this for some time, but the university asked me to keep it very much under wraps until the award had actually been made. I’m sure you can understand why.

The staff at the university took incredibly good care of us, including first class rail travel from London to Exeter, and then Exeter to Swansea. This made Kevin very happy. We had the Sunday in Exeter to relax, and then a day of being fêted. The graduation ceremony itself is a little mediaeval, in that everyone gets dressed up in academic robes, but other than that isn’t much different from an award ceremony. I did have to make a speech. It seemed to go down well.

I must admit that, when I first got notification of the award, I assumed that they had got the wrong person. But they insisted that they did mean me. I do have a few friends who are professors at Exeter whom I have worked with, and this may have had some influence on the decision.

I do know that there are many people in the trans community who deserve such recognition far more than I do. However, much of my trans activism has been done in an academic environment, which I guess is how I got noticed. Hopefully other folks will get recognised too in due course.

Somewhat to my disappointment, you do not get your own sonic screwdriver, or a second heart, just for becoming a Doctor. You do get a fancy certificate, and some letters after your name. I won’t be using my title much, except at academic conferences and when harranguing government over trans rights issues.

Anyway, my huge thanks to everyone at Exeter for what was an amazing day. I’m not sure if it has entirely sunk in yet, but I guess I will get used to it.

If you want to see what they said about me, I have a mention in this year’s Graduation Brochure (alongside Caroline Lucas, whom I got to meet again yesterday). And if you really want to see the ceremony itself you can find it here. My bit starts at about 79 minutes in.

My Archipelacon 2 Programme

~ Cheryl

The programme for Archipelacon 2 is now online. Here’s what I am doing.

Thursday 26, 17:00 – Main Auditorium
On Writing – I am chairing a discussion on the craft of writing with Guests of Honour Emmi Itäranta, Jeff VanderMeer & Mats Strandberg

Friday 27, 10:00 – Ramso
Strange Women Lying in Ponds – my contribution to the Fafnir Anniversary Symposium, an expanded version of my talk on lake ladies from the AWWE conference earlier this year.

Friday 27, 13:00 – Rysso
Worldbuilding with Queer Animals – a new and revised version of my talk on queerness in nature, and how it can be used to inform our worldbuilding.

Friday 27, 14:00 – Kapten
Indie Publishers Unite – a discussion on publishing translated works through small presses, with J.S. Meresmaa & Saara Henriksson

Saturday 28, 15:00 – Small Auditorium
Myths & Marvels: Scandinavian Influences in Fantasy and Sci-Fi – a panel with Saga Bolund, Rimma Erkko, Ada Palmer and special guest star, Fenris Puppy

Sunday 29, 10:00 – Small Auditorium
Ann VanderMeer Publishing Q&A – Ann and I talk about being a small press publisher and how to get published.

An Online Event

~ Cheryl


The lovely people from the Chalk Scribblers writing group have invited me to an online event this coming Wednesday evening (UK time). You don’t have to be a member of the group, and it is free to attend. So, if you would like to hear me burble on about Wizard’s Tower, you can get a ticket here.

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.

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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.