Author: Cheryl

Let’s Talk About Sex

~ Cheryl

It seems to be a day for writing about things I am doing. As well as the story, I am delighted to announce that in September I will be a keynote speaker at an academic conference.

No, seriously, I will. The conference is called Sexualities in Popular Culture: Feminist Perspectives (PopSex for short) and is entering its second year. It is run by my friends Bethan Jones and Milena Popova, and takes place at the Watershed in Bristol. Last year was a great success, and hopefully this year will be as well. The call for papers is here. I’m looking forward to some great material.

Of course this does mean that I have to write a speech. No pressure, then.

New Fiction, by me

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Experimental Subjects art

Issue #8 of Holdfast Magazine has been published today. It includes a short story by me, and an essay on non-heteronormative characters by Jo Hall. So Jo and I are sort of doing a role-reversal thing here. Her essay is great. My story, well, you’ll have to judge for yourselves.

Anyway, “Experimental Subjects” is a tale about two young people from Bristol who get kidnapped by aliens. The fact that the issue is billed as a “Love, Sex and Romance” special might give you a bit of a clue to the plot. I love the illustration they did for it.

There’s lot of other good stuff in the issue too, including an interview with Aliette de Bodard (graced by her fabulous new author photo by Lou Abercrombie).

Thank You, Goddess

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Well that seemed to go well. I got several very kind comments about my paper on trans people in ancient Mesopotamia and Rome. For those asking, I have a bit of work to do on it, and may get some feedback from my trip to Canada. Once that’s all done I will post it on Academia.edu, probably around the end of March.

The Michael Dillon talk also went well, and most importantly I was able to grab 10 seconds with Tom Robinson to say thank you for all of the great music.

There were lots of other great papers at the conference today. Here are a few highlights.

Jonathan Shipe telling us abut same-sex relationships in the British Army in the Victorian Era. “The soldier was inebriated, m’lud, and as a good Christian I was kneeling down beside him to see if I could help.”

Chuck Upchurch on Byron, the Duke of Wellington and more military queerness. Apparently Wellington did have a soft side. Two of his friends got arrested (separately) on sodomy charges and he stood as a character witness for both.

Kit Heyam explaining how our views of famous LGBT people in history are critically shaped by how they are portrayed in fiction. Marlow has a lot to answer for.

Fiona McGregor on lesbian gangsters in mid 20th Century Sydney (who got away with murder because Aussie men would not admit that a woman could get the better of one of their mates).

In the evening I finally got to sample Manchester’s famous curry district, more than 20 year after reading about it in Vurt. I may have had a celebratory beer or two.

My City, My People

~ Cheryl

I am in Manchester for the final leg of this year’s LGBT History Festival. Tomorrow I am giving a talk and an academic paper, but today I had the pleasure of sitting through Susan Stryker’s film on the Compton Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco, and then listening to Susan talk about the film.

For those of you who don’t know, The Compton Riot took place at a diner in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco in 1966. It involved mainly drag queens and gay hustlers, and was a reaction to police harassment. It happened several years before Stonewall (though after a similar event in Philadelphia).

Two things stood out for me from the film. The first was that the riot was no accident. It was partly a result of the gay night manager at the cafeteria having died a few months previously and the new management being less friendly to the trans hookers for whom the establishment was a welcome haven from the San Francisco weather. But it was also a result of deliberate radicalization of the trans community by a militant gay rights organization called Vanguard which met at the cafe, and a result of self-radicalization by the trans community in the wake of Harry Benjamin having set up a gender clinic in the Bay Area. There’s nothing quite like being offered the possibility of legal supply of hormones and surgery to galvanize a bunch of street girls.

The other thing that I noticed was the reaction of San Francisco to the riot. Stonewall was, in many legitimate ways, the start of the gay rights movement, because it did actually result in a world-wide reaction. Compton did not get much notice. What actually happened was that a bunch of trans women complained about being badly treated by the police, the City shrugged it’s collective shoulders and apologized, and life got back to normal with the police promising to be nicer in future. Of course this was San Francisco at the height of the Hippy movement, and things didn’t stay that way, but it is kind of cool that it happened.

December Fringe Podcasts

~ Cheryl

I have got another set of BristolCon Fringe podcasts online. These are from the December meeting.

First up we had Simon Kewin who read a short story about strange goings on in Westminster and the opening chapter of a fantasy novel set in Manchester.

Next we had Sarah Ash, who read us an extract from her 2003 novel, Lord of Snow and Shadows. The book was full of snow and danger, whereas Bristol was being unseasonably warm.

Finally we had the traditional Q&A. We were keen to know which member of the Cabinet is so demonic as to have inspired Simon’s story. Sarah confessed her love for Russian and Finnish classic music. There were suggestions that Christmas might be just around the corner.

Now that the LGBT History Festival is over I might be able to find the time to get up to date on this stuff.

Training the NHS on Trans Issues

~ Cheryl

Today I did trans awareness training at Southmead Hospital in Bristol. Tomorrow I will be in Exeter doing the same thing for Healthwatch Devon. It is great to be able to do this stuff, but the classes are very small in comparison to the number of people who work for the NHS. Last month we had to cancel a course in Frome for Heathwatch Somerset because only one person signed up. Right now I am only reaching the people who want to learn, not those who need to learn.

The biggest need for training is for GPs, but reaching them is very difficult. Like everyone else in the NHS, they are constantly being asked to do more with less resources. Training is at the bottom of their list of priorities. Besides, many of them are old and set in their ways. I’m therefore concentrating on trainee doctors. I did some work with Bristol University Medical School last year, and am talking to them about doing more this year.

That means I reach a few hundred trainee doctors each year, which is great, but it is only one school. Others may not be so forward thinking. We need to keep up pressure on the General Medical Council to make this sort of thing mandatory. I recently became aware of this petition about that very subject, and am delighted to see that it now has over 30,000 signatures. Please consider signing it, and share it widely.

My Manchester Schedule

~ Cheryl

There are two things I am going in Manchester this week. One is giving a paper about trans people in ancient Mesopotamia and Rome at an academic conference. You have to sign up for a ticket for that, but if you are keen to go I believe that there are one or two cancellations so you might be able to get in cheap.

The other one is a repeat of the Michael Dillon talk that I gave in London and Bristol. I have just looked at the publicity for the public talks and…

Manchester LGBTHM flyer

OMG! OMG! OMG! I am on the same bill as Tom Robinson.

Teenage Cheryl flails wildly.

You can see the whole flyer here.

Fringe Tonight – Will Macmillan-Jones & Gareth L. Powell

~ Cheryl

There being no rest for the wicked, I will be off to Bristol again this evening for the February Fringe event. It is an all-Welsh affair, featuring Will Macmillan-Jones & Gareth L. Powell, and me doing the introductions.

Further details are available on Facebook, and on the BristolCon website.

I uploaded the audio from the December event this morning, but I probably won’t have time to do the posts until tomorrow.

Conventions: Do Not Do This

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Hello world, it is me. Have you missed me?

The LGBT History Month thing in Bristol is over, though I still have the Manchester event to attend. Bristol seemed to go rather well, if I say so myself. But then I have been involved in running Worldcons, I know how to do this stuff. Other people, it seems, have a lot to learn about conventions. On my way home I checked Twitter and found this utterly horrific tale of one person’s experience as a Guest of Honor at a convention in the States.

I have seen some pretty bad treatment of GoHs in my time, most famously George RR Martin at the 2003 Worldcon. However, I can’t recall anything as bad as this. It kind of makes me wish that I was still doing Emerald City so that I could have a good rant where lots of con-runners would read it. I guess that Mike Glyer will be all over it.

Please folks, do not do this. Abusing GoHs makes us all look bad, and that makes it much harder for everyone else to run a good convention.

Stuart Milk on Ujima

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I’m sat in the bar of a Bristol hotel waiting for Stuart Milk. We were hoping for a little bit of downtime for him today. However, the Democratic primary race is in full swing back in the USA and as someone who campaigned strongly for Obama Stuart’s opinion is in demand. Stuff is happening in Asia too. I have no idea if Stuart is involved in Panasonic’s decision to back same-sex unions in Japan — he doesn’t share details of his work with me because it is often sensitive — but it would not surprise me. It is the sort of thing he helps make happen.

What I did do is get Stuart into my radio studio for almost 2 hours on Wednesday. That was yesterday, wasn’t it? I have trouble remembering what day it is at the moment. He was a bit late arriving as I had to leave him answering emails and make his own way to the studio while I got the show set up. We were joined by my producer, Paulette, who is a retired teacher, and by Lisa Middle who runs the local branch of the National Union of Teachers. The first half of the show was taken up with discussion of oppressive initiatives such as Proposition 6 in California (which Harvey Milk helped defeat) and Section 28 in the UK, both of which were intended to prevent children finding out the truth about same sex relationships. We also talked about what sort of government initiatives we needed to build a fairer society.

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

The second half of the show was given over to talking about Stuart, his uncle, and the great work that he and the Milk Foundation do around the world. We also talked about some of the people Stuart had met in his work, such a the Obamas, and Maya Angelou.

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

The playlist was all LGBT:

  • Diana Ross – I’m Coming Out
  • Little Richard – Tutti Frutti
  • Janelle Monae & Erykah Badu – QUEEN
  • Amada Lear – I Am What I Am
  • Labi Siffre – So Strong
  • Vinyl Closet – Jailhouse Rock
  • Tracy Chapman – Baby Can I Hold You Tonight?
  • Village People – YMCA

Next Week – Expect Blog Silence

~ Cheryl

Next week is Bristol’s turn to be one of the hub cities for the 2016 National Festival of LGBT History. I’m going to be spending the entire week effectively doing Guest of Honor wrangling as I will be escorting Stuart Milk around various engagements in Bristol and Bath. As a result I will be away from my computer most of the time and bloggage is likely to be very limited. I will try to update you on everything the following week.

Meanwhile if you happen to be near Bristol and want to catch some of the public events, full details are available here.

Time Out Of Mind News

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Regular readers will remember that back in 2014 I posted some episodes of a BBC series called Time Out of Mind on YouTube. The programmes were interviews with prominent science fiction writers, and I’d been supplied with digitized copies of VCR recordings made when the shows aired back in 1979.

Today YouTube wrote to me to say that the episode featuring Michael Moorcock had been taken down due to a copyright violation complaint. This was nothing to do with the BBC. Rather it was a specific complaint about that episode which contained clips from a film of a Jerry Cornelius story. I thought at the time that one would be at risk, even though the clips are quite short. Still, at least it was up there for over a year. Hopefully you all got to see it.

When I get time I will do an edit that removes all of the Cornelius clips, because the interviews with Moorcock and M John Harrison are priceless.

I continue to entertain hopes that one day the BBC will make the original series available somehow. Their copies will be much better than the ones I was given.

LGBT History Festival – Got Programme?

~ Cheryl

Bristol LGBT History Festival Programme
With Bristol’s leg of the 2016 National Festival of LGBT History happening next week, it is time for some more publicity barrage. Above is the electronic version of our flyer (designed by the incredibly talented Ceri Jenkins). Of course shrinking it down to fit in a page does nothing for readability, but click ye to embiggen and all shall be revealed.

For more details of the events, see the OutStories Bristol website.

Booking links for the ticketed events are as follows:

It is all free to attend.

Trans People and Names

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I’ve updated my post on the Twilight People project to register a name change for the director to Surat-Shaan Knan. I’ve always known him as Surat before, but he’s changing the name he goes by, as many trans people do. Both names are male-identified in Hebrew. However, the Shaan has personal religious meaning for him that I won’t pretend to fully understand but am happy to respect.

Obviously many trans people change their names on transition. Some are lucky enough to have names that work for more than one gender to begin with. Others being non-binary see no need for a name change. But if you are going from an obviously male name to an obviously female identity you’ll probably want to change. What many people don’t realize is that this isn’t always the end of it.

I was chatting to Shaan about the name change at the V&A on Saturday, and Fox Fisher happened to be stood nearby. He got in on the conversation because he too has recently changed his name. In his case, he told me, it is because his family has come out as supporting him and he wanted to go back to using his family name again. That’s wonderful. I changed my last name on transition to protect my family from association with me. I’m still doing that, because for some people being associated with an out trans person is still dangerous.

There are many other reasons why trans people might change their name a second time. If you pick a name without having tried it out much you might find that it doesn’t suit you. (I was using mine for years before going full time as female.) Or you may settle on a nickname or diminutive of the name you adopted.

Cis people do this too. Women may change their names on getting married, and may change them back again after separation. People become known by nicknames all the time. So hopefully it is fairly easy for people to cope with trans folk changing names. I think it is mainly newspapers who insist on knowing what our “real” names are. And as the Trans Equality Report succinctly put it, there is no such thing as a “legal name” in the UK. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Before Stonewall – Compton Cafeteria

~ Cheryl

Ask most people when the gay rights movement began and they will say the Stonewall Riot in 1969. This is bollocks, of course. Things were happening in Germany in the 19th Century. But Stonewall wasn’t even the first such event in the USA. In 1966 there was a riot by trans people at a place called Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco. It probably wasn’t the first either, but it is the subject of an Emmy-winning film, Screaming Queens, written and directed by Victor Silverman and trans historian, Susan Stryker.

At the end of February, Susan will be in Manchester as one of the headline speakers for their part of the LGBT History Festival. There will be a showing of the film on Friday, 26th February 2015 from 2pm to 4pm. Susan will be present to answer questions. I’ll be there. Hopefully I will see some of you there too. This is a rare opportunity to learn about a key moment in LGBT history, and meet an expert in the field. Tickets available here.

Schools & Families Day – Museum of London

~ Cheryl

Sir Derek Jacobi learns his lines
The final part of my weekend in London was the Schools & Families Day put on by Schools Out at the Museum of London. Whereas on Saturday I had been mainly supporting trans friends, and speaking myself, on Sunday I got to see new stuff. I had a fabulous day.

One of the first thing I noticed on arrival was a book stall. It turned out to be run by Letterbox Library, who specialize in books for children that have equality and diversity themes. I immediately encouraged them to get in touch with Fox and Sarah about stocking Are You a Boy or are You a Girl?, but I was delighted to see that they had 10,000 Dresses and I snapped a picture to send to Marcus Ewert. The day sort of took off from there.

Stuart Milk was due to read from the children’s book about his uncle, so I wandered along to say hello and ended up doing gopher work as he was expecting some people to come to interview him. I was passing through the museum lobby when I spotted a familiar looking gentleman looking a bit lost. So I introduced myself and took Sir Derek Jacobi up to where our event was taking place. He was due to read some children’s books later in the day, and to my delight he picked Marcus’s book as one of the ones to use. I snapped the picture above and sent it off to go viral, which it duly did.

Then it was back to the lecture theatre to catch up with Juno Dawson. I’d not read any of her stuff before, but having now heard some of it I can thoroughly recommend it. She’s also lovely. We had a bit of a chat about transitioning in the public eye.

Sir Derek was up next, and I managed to get a quick chat with him. I told him how his old friend Claudius had been responsible for making the Rites of Attis part of the official Roman Religious Calendar. (There’s even an official Castration Day, when Roman trans girls got their op done.) His readings of the kids books were fabulous. There was video taken, so hopefully one day I’ll be able to share his reading of 10,000 Dresses with you.

Little did I know that Chris Riddell was also in the audience. He did a few sketches, including this one (thanks to Marjorie for the link):

Next up I went to see a great presentation by Subodh Rathod about gender fluidity in Hindu religion. Vishnu has a female avatar called Mohini who is, naturally, incredibly beautiful. She has a famous dance. Obviously Mohini is of great interest to the hijra community. Subodh was assisted by Kali Chandrasegaram who performed the dance at the end of the talk.

That was at least 2000 years of living trans history right in front of our eyes.

Sir Derek Jacobi learns his lines

I also got to meet the fabulous Juno Roche, got to hear my new pal Laila El-Metoui talk about the amazing work she does on diversity in adult education, and saw the Gay Men’s Choir perform. All in all, it was a pretty fabulous day.

Huge congratulations to Niranjan Kamatkar and his team for putting on a great weekend, and to Sue Sanders for the fabulous work that she does making these things happen. Bristol has a lot to live up to. No pressure, eh?

Crawford Award Results

~ Cheryl

I’m a bit late with this — sorry Gary — but the results of this year’s Crawford Award (for a debut fantasy book) have been announced. The winner was The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson which is indeed a very fine book. With so many books to cover these days, not all of the judging group gets to read every book, but I can also recommend The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (Natasha Pulley), The Grace of Kings (Ken Liu) and The Traitor Baru Cormorant (Seth Dickinson). The Devourers (Indra Das) was only published in India but will apparently be out in the USA this year so I’ll snap up a copy. I know nothing about The Daughters (Adrienne Celt), but those who read it spoke highly of it so I’ll look for that one too.

Maybe this year I can get started on the reading list early. Hmm, what’s this All the Birds in the Sky thing…

LGBT History Festival, Up and Running

~ Cheryl

The London Hub of the 2016 National Festival of LGBT History is well and truly underway. On Friday night we were at Islington Town Hall for the Civic Launch. It was splendidly municipal bling. Roz Kaveney was a star for reading a poem rather than giving a speech, therefore helping get the event back on track after various political people had droned on a bit. The rendition of Labi Siffre’s “So Strong” by the Diversity Choir that closed the evening was superb.

Today we were at the V&A. I attended talks by Stuart Milk, Sabah Choudrey, Fox Fisher and Bisi Alimi, all of which were very good. My apologies to Jana Funke and Travis Alabanza, both of whom I would have loved to see, but they were scheduled against each other and that was the only time I had to sit down with Stuart and go over plans for his visit to Bristol.

Fox had an amazing piece of film with him. If you have seen the My Genderation films you may remember one about an young trans lad called Ruben who was filmed just before he stared on testosterone. Fox has now done an update a couple of years later. The contrast is amazing, as is what has been done with the footage.

By the way, I understand that Sarah Savage will have some previously unseen film footage in her talk at Bristol in two weeks time.

I did my Michael Dillon talk. It wasn’t the best talk I have ever done, but it seemed to go down OK. Also I got some really exciting news about Dillon after the talk which I hope to be able to share soon.

Tomorrow I’ll be off to the Museum of London where I will hopefully get to meet Juno Dawson. Sadly Gandalf appears to be off the bill, but the Emperor Claudius will be there instead.

Launching Twilight People

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Twilight People collage

I am in London, for their leg of the 2016 National Festival of LGBT History. The first event was last night at Islington Museum. It was the opening of Twilight People, a photographic exhibition of trans people of faith.

The show has been put together by my friend Surat-Shaan Knan, who is amazingly good at magicking up funds and volunteers for this sort of thing. The photography is really good, and it is fascinating to read all of the stories about the intersections between gender journeys and journeys of faith. If you happen to be in London, do pop in and take a look.

The people in the exhibition come from a wide range of backgrounds including Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Paganism. There are, of course, a lot of faiths missing, but Surat-Shaan can only work with people who offer themselves as volunteers. Hopefully he can add to the mix in time.

I am particularly impressed with Liberal Judaism for all of the support that they give to Surat-Shaan in his projects.

I managed to snag a couple of interviews while I was there. One is with Christina Beardsley who is a Christian minister. The other is with the Deputy Mayor of Islington. Shaan dear, you owe me an interview, and I owe you coffee.

Tonight is the Civic Launch of the London weekend. Roz Kaveney is one of the guest speakers.