Author: Cheryl

This Week on Ujima – Pete Sutton, Hate Crime & Teenagers

~ Cheryl

Yesterday’s Women’s Outlook show was supposed to kick off with Sarah Hilary talking about her fabulous new crime novel, Tastes Like Fear. However, Sarah is not well, and Pete Sutton gamely stepped in at the last minute to talk about his debut short story collection, A Tiding of Magpies.

Special congratulations were due to Pete and Ian Millstead (both of whom are in Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion) because their stories in North by South West got honorable mentions in the latest Year’s Best Horror anthology from Ellen Datlow. I apologize profusely to Ellen for describing her as the Simon Cowell of the horror industry, but I did say that she’s a much nicer person.

Pete and I also talked briefly about the forthcoming Bristol Festival of Literature. We provided a sneak preview of some of the exciting events that will be happening.

Next up I talked to Jaya Chakrabarti and Paul Breedon about a Peace Picnic that they organized in Knowle West last weekend. There have been some fairly unpleasant hate crime incidents in south Bristol since the Brexit vote, and the community wanted to do something to stand in solidarity with the victims.

You can listen to the first half of the show here.

The second half of the show was given over entirely to a group of young people on a National Citizenship Scheme training program. We had them in the studio as a sort of work experience thing, part of which involved getting interviewed live on air by Paulette and myself. They did very well.

You can listen to the second half of the show here.

The playlist for the show was as follows:

  • Chic – My Forbidden Lover
  • The Pointer Sisters – We Are Family
  • Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Peace, Love & Understanding
  • The O’Jays – Love Train
  • Marvin Gaye – Abraham, Martin & John
  • Stevie Wonder – Superstition
  • Bob Marley – Get Up, Stand Up
  • Jimi Hendrix – Voodoo Child

It’s Snapshot Week Down Under

~ Cheryl

The lovely people of the Australian speculative fiction community have this great little tradition of The Snapshot. Every few years they post a series of short interviews with the movers and shakers of the community, so the rest of the world can see what they are up to. The 2016 Snapshot is being published this week, and lots of interviews have appeared on their website.

Possibly the best way to browse the material is via their Twitter feed. The website has a sorted index, but the Twitter feed contains photos of most of the interviewees and is currently more up to date.

I note that not all of the interviewees are wholly Australian. This year, for example, they added Julia Rios on the strength of her work on Kaleidoscope for Twelfth Planet Press. It is vaguely possible that they will also include a mouthy Pom who happened to live in Melbourne for a couple of years.

Book Review – Lizard Radio

~ Cheryl

Lizard Radio - Pat SchmatzHere is the last of the book reviews I promised you of books with trans characters in them. This one is a Tiptree winner, and oddly enough the one that I was least impressed with.

This review is fairly spoilery. It has to be that way, otherwise I could not explain the problems I have with it. So if you are spoiler averse, don’t click. To read what I have to say about the book, click here.

There will be more trans-related book reviews coming soon, but we are now into August and it is Women in Translation Month, so I need to swap obsessions for a while.

World Fantasy РPlus ̤a change

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Another year, another day of social media full of outrage about something the World Fantasy Convention has done. How tiresomely predictable.

For those who are late to the party, Sarah Pinsker has a lot of inside track on what went on, having tried to save them from their stupidity. Mike Glyer has a round of of Twitter reactions. And Foz Meadows has a lengthy blog post. An earlier blow-up about this year’s convention is reported by Jason Sanford.

You may also want to refresh your memory of some of the previous drama, because this convention sure has history.

Foz concludes her piece as follows:

But we know all that. We’ve said it before. What else is there to say?

I have much sympathy. We’ve been here before. I don’t doubt that we’ll be here again. Some people, however, are bravely trying to do something about it.

Some people have been busy contacting the up-coming WFCs in San Antonio (2017) and Baltimore (2018). This has some promise. The San Antonio event is being run by the people who run Armadillocon which does at least have a harassment policy. I’m hearing some good things on Twitter about the Baltimore event. However, this is only a short term solution. The World Fantasy Board appoints a different group to run each year’s event. They can, and will, continue to give that job to people who produce the sort of convention that they want, rather than the sort of convention other people might want.

Over on Facebook, Tempest Bradford has suggested boycotting the convention. Again this has some merit. The problem is that, as a high profile professional networking event with a membership cap, WFC generally has no trouble attracting attendees. People, and especially aspiring young writers, feel that they need to be seen there. If going to WFC is important to people’s careers, and the only people who go are people who are comfortable at an event aimed primarily at straight cis white men, well I think you can see the problem.

Tempest suggests ghosting the convention (i.e. not buying a membership, but getting a hotel room and joining the bar conversations). She’s absolutely right that this is where all of the action happens. WFC programming has been crap for as long as I can remember, so most people don’t got to it. As a con-runner I’m always a bit nervous about ghosting because it can cause financial problems for the organizers, but if the event is sold out that’s a different matter.

Other people have been suggesting having an alternative convention, perhaps online. I’m certainly interested in that, but the networking really on happens at meatspace events. If you want networking and can get to US events, the Nebula weekend seems to have been going from strength to strength since people with an eye on the future took over SFWA. The Locus Awards weekend is also chock full of leading industry folks. Personally, of course, I would like something more international. Sadly this year’s Eurocon in Barcelona is sold out, otherwise I would suggest y’all come over here instead.

The only way we will get real change, I think, is if the people at the top of the field stop supporting WFC. The convention can only be good for your career if people you want to network with are going to be there. That means publishers, their editors, top writers and so on. We need those people to stand up and tell WFC that they will stop attending unless the event stops being an embarrassment to the industry.

Anyone?

Book Review – Every Heart A Doorway

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Every Heart A Doorway - Seanan McGuireContinuing my reviews of books featuring trans characters, today I am taking on what appears, at least in my little corner of the world, to be one of the most talked about books of the year. If you see someone raving about how good this book is, listen to them.

Oh, and it is a novella, so it is a nice, quick read. There’s not much pain on the “to read” pile.

I wouldn’t need to talk about it, except that it has a trans character so I have to. You can find my review here.

Fox Does Trans Pride

~ Cheryl

Fox Fisher has posted his video report on this year’s Trans Pride. I have embedded it below. I’m somewhere at the back of that huge crowd outside the Marly at the beginning, but otherwise the film is entirely Cheryl-free, so it is safe to watch.

Peace Picnic in Knowle West Tomorrow

~ Cheryl

For those of you in Bristol, there will be a Peace Picnic in Knowle West tomorrow. This has been prompted by a rise in hate crime in the community. Further details on Facebook. I won’t be there, but I will have Jaya Chakrabarti, and hopefully some of her fellow organizers, on the radio to talk about it on Wednesday.

Book Review – Masks And Shadows

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Masks And Shadows - Stephanie BurgisAs promised, I have posted another review of a book containing a trans character. This one is very different from The Fifth Season. Masks and Shadows is set in our world, in the 18th Century, and therefore has to navigate the actual social attitudes of the time. Stephanie Burgis has achieved this by making clear just how vile the behavior of rich aristocrats was at that time.

By the way, some of you might wonder at my inclusion of eunuch at trans, particularly one who still identifies as straight male. However, people of the time regarded eunuchs as a third gender, and they suffered social discrimination regardless of how they identified.

The book is also interesting because it is, in part, about the history of music. Burgis has played in orchestras, and studied music history in Vienna. The story is set in the Eszterháza Palace and Joseph Haydn is a major character.

I really enjoyed this book. It has a gorgeous cover too. You can find my full review here.

A Little Pop Representation

~ Cheryl

Tegan and Sara have a new video out. The song is called “Faint of Heart”, and the video features a whole lot of young LGBTQ artists cosplaying famous pop icons. Being an old lady, I don’t know who most of the kids are, but according to this post we have: Cooper Treibel as David Bowie, Tyler Ford as Prince, Ella Giselle as Madonna, Dominic Ravina as Elvis Presley, Olabisi Kovabel as Grace Jones, Eli Erlick as Sara, and Ni Ching-Marino as Tegan. Ella, of course, was on Season 2 of I Am Cait. I’ll have to check the others out.

If you look carefully you can find Tegan and Sara in the audience shots. And if you know what you are looking for you can also find two fine trans actresses: Angelica Ross and Jen Richards (stars of the Emmy-nominated Her Story). The producer, Devon Kirkpatrick, gave them roles as two mothers helping their kids make the costumes. That is a wonderful thing to have done. Well done to everyone involved.

Update: The ever reliable Mey over at Autostraddle has done a post about the video. She knows far more about the young stars than I do. As I suspected, most of them are trans-identified in some way. Even the director is trans. Thank you again, Tegan & Sara.

Book Review – The Fifth Season

~ Cheryl

The Fifth Season - N.K. JemisinI have been reading books, honest. Quite a few of them, in fact. There are lots of books featuring trans characters being published right now and I need to keep up. Finding time to write reviews is another issue, but as I have an essay to write I should get some thoughts into electrons.

Today, therefore, I wrote four book reviews. I’ll publish them over the next week. Given the previous post, and the fact that the Hugo voting deadline is this weekend, I am starting with The Fifth Season.

I am happy but unsurprised that Jemisin has done some good work with trans characters in the book. She knows what she’s doing. Having read the book I am also unsurprised at how well it is doing in this year’s awards.

You can find my review here. I can haz The Obelisk Gate nao, plz?

Diversity: It’s Complicated

~ Cheryl

Lots of people talk about diversity these days but, as this famous Media Diversified essay notes, far fewer are willing to do anything about it. What’s more, the word “diversity” contains multitudes of issues. In the LGBT community we know that “diversity” often means “gay white men”. Similar hierarchies occur wherever you look.

Even so, I was shocked to see this article from Fireside Fiction that did the equivalent of a VIDA count for SF&F by black people. By “black” they don’t mean “people of color”, because that term includes a smorgasbord of ethnic identities. I’m not entirely sure what they do mean, but I have taken in to mean people of black African descent. The numbers are stark. Out of 2,039 stories published in magazines in 2015, only 38 were by black people. All of that talk about Afrofuturism, and we still only manage 2% of our fiction from a group that makes up 13.2% of the US population.

Of course the first thing I did was to take a look at Clarkesworld to see how we (I still think of the magazine as “we”) were doing. The detailed stats from the Fireside survey can be found here. In 2015 Clarkesworld apparently only published one story by a black writer. I’m assuming they mean this one. That’s out of a total of 56 stories.

I then did my own count. I did the last 12 months because that was quicker. I counted named authors rather than stories. And I counted non-black people of color too. The results I got were 58 white, 2 black and 21 other PoC.

This shows you one of the reasons why diversity is hard. On the one hand Clarkesworld has almost 40% PoC writers. Thanks to the deal with China it has at least one Chinese writer in every issue, plus some Asian-American writers. It has also had writers from Singapore, Malaysia, the Lebanon and Thailand. And yet it still does poorly where African and Afro-American writers are concerned.

The reasons for this, and the poor showing by just about every other magazine in the field, are complex. We don’t know what submission rates look like. A lot of the stories that Clarkesworld publishes are reprints and older stories may be more skewed white. It certainly isn’t that Neil doesn’t care. He wouldn’t have so many international writers (and artists) if diversity wasn’t important to him. But you do keep having to watch what you are doing, and ask if there is anything you are missing.

With that in mind, I note that I can still count on the fingers of one hand the SF&F authors I know of who have connections to the native peoples of places outside Africa whose populations Europeans have decimated. By this I mean native peoples from all over the Americas, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and Polynesia, the Sami and so on.

Diversity is hard. So we need to try harder.

Worldcon Site Selection

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The Hugos are not the only thing that needs to be voted on at Worldcon. There is also the small matter of deciding where Worldcon will be held in 2018. The two bids that have filed their papers are for New Orleans and San José.

Now New Orleans happens to be one of my favorite places to visit in the whole world. But not, I think, in August. And my reasons for visiting it are all to do with food and music, not to do with science fiction conventions. Besides, if you look carefully at the ballot paper you will see my name on San José bid committee list.

This should not come as a surprise. Back in 2002 we ran ConJosé, and Kevin (my Kevin) co-chaired the event. My job was primarily keeping him sane through the process, though I did a whole lot of other things as well, including persuading a chap called Gaiman to attend the Hugo ceremony even though he was convinced that American Gods had no chance of winning.

All things considered, I think ConJosé went pretty well. Obviously a few things did go wrong (yes, I know the Restaurant Guide — we will not make that mistake again!), but I think we did a decent job. Since then we have done a World Fantasy Con and a variety of other conventions. The facilities have got better (including a lot more local restaurants) and I think we’d do a good job again.

Kevin and I won’t be so heavily involved, should we win. In all probability I won’t even be able to attend. But we are still on the Board of Directors of the parent organization so it is down to us to make sure that the job is done well. That includes making sure that we run a safe, welcoming and diverse event.

One slightly non-diverse thing that we have done is keep up the tradition of having the event chaired by someone called Kevin. No, not this one, this one:

tikidalek

Er, the one on the right, not the one with the eye stalk. And there is no truth in the rumor that the chap with the eye stalk will be the Head of Security.

Our con chair, should we win, will be Kevin Roche, who is a master costumer (including making costumes for daleks) but also has a day job doing really cool science. He and his husband, Andy, have been responsible for some truly spectacular parties at conventions down the years. I have every confidence in Kevin’s ability to put together a team that will deliver an excellent event that will appeal to a wide range of fannish interests and be a lot of fun.

Vote for us, please.

More Trans Pride Reportage

~ Cheryl

The very talented Kate Adair, who has a regular slot on BBC Scotland’s The Social, has produced her take on this year’s Trans Pride. I have a brief interview with Kate in my audio collection from the weekend. Large parts of it involve Kate and I still giggling over this.

Look Ma, I’m On TV

~ Cheryl

Or possibly not. But I am on video interviewing Sophie Cook, who is the new anchor for The Latest TV, the community TV station in Brighton. Whether any of Sophie’s coverage of Trans Pride, including her interview of me, will make it into a broadcast is unclear, but my interview of her was filmed, and Sophie has kindly put it on her YouTube channel.

Sophie has also posted this report including interviews with other attendees of Trans Pride.

Hugo Voting Time

~ Cheryl

There’s an awful lot bad going on in the world at the moment, and much of it we can’t do anything about. However, those of you who have a membership in this year’s Worldcon can do one positive thing: you can give everyone’s least favorite disease another kick in the teeth. Yep, it is Puppy Clobbering time again.

Many of you will have already downloaded the Voter Packet, though I don’t blame you if you haven’t read it all. If you need a quick guide to which items on it got there because of the Puppies, Mike Glyer has a comprehensive guide.

Having said that, not everything on the Puppy slates is awful. Last year VD and his drones claimed “victory” because one of their picks took out the Dramatic Presentation: Long Form category. That was for a film about a multi-racial crew of misfits who saved the galaxy from a racist, religious fundamentalist bigot on behalf of a government with a female head of state. It says a lot about the fragility of VD’s ego that he has to claim such things as victories.

Of course you should come up with your own philosophy as to how to vote. Mine is that I only place things below No Award if I think that they genuinely do not deserve to be on the ballot. I have done that occasionally in years past, long before the Puppy Plague, and I’ll continue to do it now. Most years very little of what was on my nominating ballot makes it to the Finalist stage, so I’m very used to voting for things put on the ballot by other people. And as far as I am concerned, works by the likes of Al Reynolds and Neil Gaiman deserve to be on the ballot whether or not the Puppies put them on a slate.

This year most categories appear to have at least one Finalist that deserves a rocket, though Related Work looks to be a disaster zone which is sad because Letters to Tiptree surely deserved a Hugo.

You have until the end of the month to vote. Get in early, just in case the final rush causes the MidAmeriCon II servers to melt down under the last minute rush. You can always update your votes later if you want to.

There is also the Business Meeting to come, and the question of what we do with the Hugo rules. That deserves a post all of its own.

Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

This evening I took myself off to see one of the most controversial films of the year. The sheer oceans of man-tears that have been shed over the Ghostbusters remake would drown entire solar systems. Goodness only knows what movie they think they would see if they were to actually go and see it. The real thing is pretty darn good.

The showing didn’t get off to a great start because the cinema insisted on putting on a bunch of trailers “specially selected” to go with the main event. So yes, there were trailers for some really bad comedy films that looked at if they had been written by men with the intention of appealing to very drunk women. There was one piece of genius by Celia Imrie, but otherwise the trailers were even more cringe-worthy than the one for Ghostbusters.

Thankfully the film itself is nothing like the trailer. To start with, Leslie Jones’ character, Patty, is much smarter than the trailer gives her credit for. OK, she’s not a scientist like the other women, but she has plenty of brain. They could have done better, but it wasn’t as bad as I had expected.

The film isn’t a continual laugh-fest, and that’s probably just as well, because that sort of thing gets wearing. There are bits that are not as funny or clever as the scriptwriters probably thought. The section at the heavy metal concert, in particular, felt very flat for me.

However, there were many good jokes, and all four main actresses did good jobs. Chris Hemsworth isn’t nearly as good without Loki to be the straight man for, but then again he was only there as eye candy, a job he fulfilled admirably.

Some of the best jokes came after the credits started to roll. I cannot understand why modern cinema audiences get up and leave before the end. Do they not pay attention to anything written about other films?

I am tempted to complain that there was too much of other people’s music and not enough of Ray Parker Jr.. However, if there had been more of that song I would probably have had to get up and dance, which would have been embarrassing for everyone.

As many other people have noted, Kate McKinnon steals the show. As I said earlier on Facebook, if you don’t come out of this film a lesbian then my name isn’t Mrs. Holtzmann.

Thankfully for my straight reputation there is also Mr. Hemsworth (swoon), and his character is called Kevin (double swoon). Now all I need to do is avoid getting the two of them confused…

Most importantly, however, I cannot for the life of me understand what all of the fuss is about. Dan Ackroyd has writing and production credits on the film, and it would be hard to find any other film with such obvious respect and affection for its predecessor. The cameos are brilliant, especially the final one, the one after the credits have started. And if you stayed to the end you will know that there really needs to be a sequel. I’m hoping that Holtzmann’s mentor gets a bigger role in that one.

That Was Trans Pride

~ Cheryl

TransPride2016
Photo by Sarah Savage
That’s another Trans Pride successfully concluded. Well, concluded for me, anyway. Lots of people are still enjoying the evening gig, but my feet have given up on me as I spent all day wandering round the event talking to people and getting interviews.

The photo above is from the march. Having outgrown yet another park, this time we were in Brunswick Gardens. For those of you who know Brighton, that’s the park just off the sea front which is surrounded by a huge Georgian terrace, just west of the Metropole. It was a great location, and it meant that we got to march a long way along the sea front in full view of lots of tourists. Everyone seemed either bemused or was very supportive.

I got a lot of great interviews with people, including a group of Buddhist trans people who are from the same order that Michael Dillon joined all those years ago.

As usual there were lots of stalls, mostly promoting support services for trans people. However, we are starting to see more celebratory activities as well. My favorite new stall was E-J Scott’s Museum of Transology, which bills itself as, “A mobile museum that collects and exhibits trans peoples’ stuff.” E-J is encouraging trans people to donate things that have a personal connection to their lives. Of course he’ll end up with the biggest collection of used fake boobs in the world, but hopefully he’ll get other stuff too.

This year the music was interspersed with spoken word performances, which meant we got a full set from the amazing Alice Denny. However, my favorite bit of the stage entertainment was Ren Stedman. He’s a great singer-songwriter in the classic tradition of the angry young person with a guitar. And he’s a lovely bloke too — gave me a great interview.

Also on my interview list is the fabulous Sophie Cook who is the news anchor for Brighton’s community TV network. I consider myself now well and truly out-classed in terms of trans local media stardom. Hello, Made in Bristol TV, we are behind the curve. Get yourselves a trans presenter pronto.

The weather was good. Early on it was bright and sunny, and I was a bit worried it would be another day of heatstroke and sunburn. However, it had misted over by midday and the sun didn’t get out again until late in the afternoon. I got a light touch of sun walking back to my hotel because I was going east and there are bits of my back that I can’t reach with the sunscreen, but it was much better than it might have been had the sun been out all day.

Sarah Savage tells me that numbers are up at least 50% on last year. They should be OK in Brunswick Park for another year, but after that they might have to move again. I bumped into a friend from Bristol who is now living in Essex and she told me that Brighton’s Trans Pride is a bigger event that Essex Pride, which caters for the whole LGBT spectrum.

Mostly the day was very positive, but the reality of trans lives is never too far from the surface of the party. While I was having lunch two women came and sat next to me on the bench. At first I thought they might be mother and daughter, but it soon became clear that they were therapist and trans girl. You try not to overhear, but emotions get loud and it soon became obvious that this was a conversation involving family abuse and self-harm. At least one person had come to Trans Pride looking for help. I hope she found what she needed.

National Diversity Award Shortlists

~ Cheryl

Ujima’s time as a reigning National Diversity Award champion is coming to an end. In 8 weeks time new winners will be crowned for 2016. The shortlists have just been announced and once again I know some of the people involved.

In LGBT Role Model we have Lee Gale, who is a fantastic trans awareness trainer. Lee works much harder than I do, traveling all over the country to do training. He’s a lovely bloke too.

In LGBT Organizations we have Mermaids (who are awesome), Gendered Intelligence (whom Lee works for), and Trans Pride Brighton, which is the event I am attending this weekend. Lee is here, of course, and he’ll doubtless be helping with the GI stall tomorrow. It’s all happening here.

Finally in the Multi-Strand Organization category we have Off the Record Bristol. They are the people who run Freedom Youth, our LGBT youth group. My friend and colleague, Henry Poultney works for them. Of course they do other stuff for young people too, which is why they are multi-strand. I can’t comment on that, but their LGBT work is awesome.

Best of luck to everyone.

Activism is Work

~ Cheryl

A lot of people these days think that “activist” means someone who sits at home monitoring social media all day and making angry tweets about the state of the world. Of course a lot of good activism can be done online. The campaign to get Tara Hudson moved to a women’s prison was done mostly that way (plus a lot of phone calls), and it was a lot of hard work. But you also have to get off your arse and do things occasionally.

Case in point. Last night, after the radio show, I attended a meeting at the offices of Bristol City Council. It is part of an ongoing initiative in Bristol and surrounding areas to draw up what is currently being called an “LGBT+ Manifesto”; that is a statement of the particular needs of LGBT citizens, and ideas as to what should be done to meet those needs. Along with a couple of other trans folks (hello Henry & Lexi), I have been asked to be on the steering committee.

This morning I headed into Bristol and gave a trans awareness course to teachers at a local school. They were lovely people, very keen to help trans kids. Berkeley and I have been invited back in September to do some more work with them.

Immediately after the course I went back to Temple Meads and took a train to Brighton, where I am now. Tomorrow I am attending a conference run by Brighton & Hove City Council. This will report on their groundbreaking Trans Needs Assessment, which grew out of Trans Pride and has now been going for a couple of years. We’ll hear how the city is responding to that survey, what various agencies like the local police and health services are doing, and where it will be going next. I’ll be bringing all of that information back to the LGBT+ Manifesto group in Bristol.

And on Saturday I’m attending Trans Pride, which for me means doing interviews, and chatting to various people about ongoing projects. Hopefully I will get time to hang out with some friends too.

Two Magazine Crowdfunding Campaigns

~ Cheryl

Two magazines that I am very fond of are currently doing fund raising campaigns.

First up there is Holdfast Magazine. I have a personal interest in this because some of the money raised will go towards paying me for my story, “Experimental Subjects”. Of course there are lots of other fine people who will benefit as well. You can donate to Holdfast here.

Also there is Uncanny, which has been remarkably successful in its short life. Given how well they have done in just a few days I suspect that most of you space unicorns out there have already signed on for year three, but just in case you haven’t you can do so here.