Author: Cheryl

Today on Ujima – Football, Lesbians, Rhodes and Bowie

~ Cheryl

I was hosting the Women’s Outlook show again today on Ujima. We started off with an interview with some football (soccer) players from a local sports club. Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls are perhaps most famous for the fact that Banksy was once their goalkeeper, but they deserve to be far more famous for the wonderful work they do in the community, and around their world. They have a slogan, “Freedom Through Football” and they have done amazing things in places like Mexico and Palestine. The main reason that they were on the show is that the Cowgirls team has just got back from the West Bank and they are going to be showing a film about their trip. What the Palestinian footballers have to put up with is beyond belief.

The club is also very inclusive, taking players of all ages and abilities. They now have netball and cricket teams as well as football. And they are fully LGB and T inclusive, and multi-ethnic.

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

In the second half of the show I was joined by my lesbian author friend, Bea Hitchman. She’s doing a PhD about lesbians in fiction, in particular addressing the fact that their stories so often come to a sad end. I suggested that she talk to Malinda Lo. We were joined in the studio by my colleagues, Judeline and Frances, both of whom had seen Carol, and we talked a bit about the film.

For the final half hour we were joined by playwright, Edson Burton, and poet, Miles Chambers. They had some events to plug, and in return they joined us in discussing the legacy of Cecil Rhodes and the Rhodes Must Fall campaign currently being waged by students at Oxford University.

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

The music for today’s show was all Bowie, but many of the tracks were covers by black musicians. Here’s the playlist:

  • Let’s Dance – David Bowie & Nile Rodgers
  • Heroes – Janelle Monáe
  • Young Americans – David Bowie & Luther Vandross
  • Life on Mars? – Seu Jorge
  • Ashes to Ashes – Warpaint
  • Sound & Vision – Megapuss
  • Modern Love – The Sunshiners
  • Starman – Culture Club

There’s one cover that I wish I had included. The show before me played it. It is a ska version of “Heroes” performed by the Hackney Colliery Band. Here it is:

My February Schedule

~ Cheryl

It being LGBT History Month, I have a pile of public engagements. Most of you won’t be able to get to them, but I’m listing them here just in case, and because it will explain why I’ll be so busy.

That, of course, does not include the three training courses I am doing for different NHS organizations (in Minehead, Bristol and Exeter), the events in London and Manchester I’m attending but not speaking at, and the whole week of looking after Stuart Milk in Bristol. With any luck, I’ll get to meet Susan Stryker, Tom Robinson and Juno Dawson. If I am really lucky I might get to say hello to Gandalf.

100 Women Making Comics

~ Cheryl

That’s not a threat, it is the title of an exhibition opening in London this weekend. It is curated by Olivia Ahmad and Paul Gravett and will feature, to no one’s surprise, the work of 100 women comics artists. The women featured include Alison Bechdel, Audrey Niffenegger, Claire Bretecher, Katie Green, Posy Simmonds and Tove Jansson.

The exhibition will run from Feb. 5th to May 15th. You can find it at 2 Granary Square, Kings Cross, London, N1C 4BH. Further details are available here.

Le Guin Documentary on Kickstarter

~ Cheryl

Now this is a project worth backing:

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, a feature documentary, explores the remarkable life and legacy of the groundbreaking 86-year-old author.

It is serious stuff too. Seven years of filming is already in the can, and the project has a production grant of $240,000 available from the National Endowment for the Humanities. However, this is one of those matching funding type things, so they can’t get that money unless they raise and extra $80,000 themselves too, hence the crowdfunding.

This is so very much a film that I want to see. Hopefully you do too. If you are not yet convinced, watch this.

LGBT History Month Is Here

~ Cheryl

It is February. The insanity is starting. I am going to be so busy over the next four weeks.

I’ll have more about my schedule in a later post, but write now I want to draw your attention to a magazine that Schools Out UK has produced to send around the country. There’s an online version of it available here. Congratulations to my pal Adam Lowe for doing a fine job with the layouts.

The magazine runs to 64 pages it in. Much of it is ads, which supports it being given out for free. However, there are lots of interesting articles. It includes messages of support from a bunch of VIPs. There’s some guy called David Cameron in it, and Jeremy Corbyn. And Nicola Sturgeon, of course. And then it gets down to the substances with things like a Bowie retrospective, an interview with Bisi Alimi, and an article by me about trans people and religion. I’m on pages 26 and 27.

Writing serious historical stuff for a magazine like this is a bit hard. I kept wanting to put footnotes in. I believe that there will be an HTML version of it available soon, with links and a recommended reading list. I’ll let you know when that goes up.

Cover Girl

~ Cheryl

Locus - February 2016So yeah, that’s the cover of the new issue of Locus. As you can see, it has my name on it. Obviously there are a lot of other names too. That’s because it is the Recommended Reading List issue, and a whole bunch of us who contributed to that list have been asked to write short “year in review” pieces. Mine is sort of an “Own Voices” thing, and yes I do talk about trans stuff. I also talk about Sami and Arabic fantasy, and as wide a range of other stuff as I could fit in.

You can find the whole Recommended Reading List here. If your favorite book isn’t on it, please don’t yell at me. Firstly, I can’t read everything, and secondly they don’t allow a book onto the list on just one person’s say-so.

Elsewhere in the issue I am delighted to see some good coverage for Carter & Lovecraft. Well done, Jonathan!

That Time of Year

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

It's Nominatin' Time - Ben Grimm
Somehow that seems like an appropriate image this year. If nothing else I guess it will allow certain people to claim that they are being horribly persecuted, which will make them happy. I’m all for spreading happiness.

So yes, the Hugo Award nominating period for 2016 is now open. Details here. You have until March 31st to vote, but if you don’t yet have nominating rights you need to get your supporting membership of Worldcon today.

I don’t have anything much that is award-worthy this time around. There is, of course, this. However, getting nominated for making jokes about John Scalzi is probably too meta, even for the Hugos.

On the other hand, there’s a book that I have a short essay in that I would like to see get a bit of recognition. That book is Letters to Tiptree, which is eligible in the Related Work category, and which is currently on sale in ebook formats so you can get it really cheaply (for example, via the piranhas). I note that should it get nominated the glory will go to the editors, Alex Pierce & Alisa Krasnostein, and not in any way to me.

Apropos which, I still occasionally get spam emails address to Mr. Hugo Pimpage. I have no idea why, but it always cracks me up.

There are lots of other things I think are nomination-worthy this year (Rat Queens!), but if I were to put a list of them here I’d probably get accused of running a slate. Instead I have filled this post with subliminal messages (Squirrel Girl!) that will compel you all to vote for my preferred works without realizing that you are doing so (Radiance!). I apologize for making you all my helpless, robotic slaves, but I was born EVIL and therefore have no choice in the matter.

While I am on the subject, I see that Mr. Scalzi had a lengthy post on the topic of Imposter Syndrome yesterday. I can assure you, from experience (and I suspect that John will back me up here), that by far the best way to get “found out” and be told that you are a worthless, talentless hack who has cheated their way to success is to win a major award or two. It helps a lot in this regard if you happen to be female, and being able to tick various minority boxes is also a bonus. So, dear readers, if there is a writer out there who you really hate, and who you think needs taking down a peg, why not considering nominating them. I’m sure you will find the reaction, if they win, deeply satisfying.

This post was brought to you by the meme, “Ye Gods, not more award drama!”. My sympathies go out to all of the people involved in Hugo Administration this year. Here’s hoping for a less bumpy ride this time around.

Science, Smarter Than TERFs

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

One of the interesting things about supposedly progressive newspapers like The Guardian and The New Statesman is that, while their politics pages are often resolutely transphobic, and quote “science” as proof that trans women are “really” men, their science pages are generally supportive of trans folks.

Why might that be? Well, possibly it is because the understanding of science possessed by the White Feminist clique that does all of the political stuff is seriously lacking.

In view of which, here, from last weekend, is a little history of the concept of “sex chromosomes”. I was pleased to discover that the fact that the whole X/Y thing is simplistic nonsense was known right from the start. What’s more, the idea that X and Y chromosomes are vital to determining sex gained currency because it was championed by a man, whereas the more nuanced view was championed by a woman scientist. Which makes it even more ironic to see anyone who disputes that a Y chromosome is the ultimate arbiter of masculinity called a Dupe of the Patriarchy.

It also makes perfect sense that the sex chromosome idea was favored by eugenicists, because like the TERFs they have an obsession with biological determinism.

All of this comes from a book called Sex Itself: The Search For Male And Female In The Human Genome, by Sarah Richardson, which clearly I need to read. I was particularly amused by this observation from the New Statesman article:

Richardson points to several different groups as responsible for digging genetics out of its chromosome-determining rut: criminal psychologists, clinical physicians and, above all, feminists, whose interrogations of gender and sexuality (often from outside the scientific academy) created an important body of empirical evidence.

Feminists, responsible for persuading scientists to have a less essentialist view of gender? Oh dear. Anyone would think that TERFs aren’t very good feminists.

The Mind LGBT Conference

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I spent yesterday in Bristol at a conference run by Mind, the mental health charity. It was specifically aimed at reducing suicide among LGBT people. There were a lot of local activists there.

The morning session was basically talking heads, including a prerecorded video from Stephen Fry. My colleague, Berkeley Wilde, from The Diversity Trust got to do the local people bit. The headline speaker was a young lad called Owen Jones. He was very good, even if he did look to me like he ought to be in a boy band.

The main messages that came out of the morning were that LGBT people suffer mental health problems at a far greater rate than straight people; that bi and trans people have it worse that LG people; and that austerity measures are significantly reducing the amount of money available to tackle this. Not only that, but services to LGBT people (and other minority groups) are being reduced proportionately more than for other groups. The government apparently has a policy of “mainstreaming”, by which they mean closing down specialist services for minority groups and incorporating that coverage in general services, which then fail to provide the specialist treatment that minorities need, and may be actively hostile to them.

All of the big shots and much of the audience evaporated after lunch, but the best point of the day was made in the final session by Alessandro Storer, Mind’s Equality Improvement Manager. He noted that because LGBT people suffer mental health problems at a much higher level than the bulk of the population, they are actually a core constituency for mental health services. Dropping services for them, while keeping services for people who need them less, makes no sense.

Of course, as Berkeley never tires of saying, we need good academic studies to make this point. Thankfully a lot more work is being done in this area these days. I particularly recommend this study done by Scottish Trans in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University.

One of the things I had been interested in was how inclusive the event would be. The speakers made an effort to mention bi and especially trans people, so the awareness was definitely there. However, the event was very white, and we didn’t get to an actual trans speaker until late in the afternoon. A brief shout out to my new pal Jacqui here, of whom more later, but the only speaker to get a standing ovation all day was Erica from Ystradgynlais Mind. Welsh trans girls FTW! What a shame half of the audience had gone by then.

For me the highlight of the day was the workshop on reducing stigma. It was run by a group called The Outsiders who specialize in human libraries and the like. You may remember that I did a human library thing last year.

The subject of the workshop was an idea called SoMe. That’s short for Social Media, but also works as a thing about identity. What happens is that you get a bunch of volunteers, each of whom produces a SoMe Profile about themselves. Attendees at the event can then choose to have a one-to-one chat with one of these people.

The idea here is to make a personal connection between the attendees and someone who represents the group whose social profile you are trying to improve. In our case that was people who had suffered mental health issues. The point of the SoMe profile is that, as an attendee, you can choose to talk to someone who sounds interesting to you, possibly someone with him you have a lot in common. That makes it much easier to get into a conversation with them, and to sympathize with them. I got to talk to Peter, who is autistic and a science fiction fan, and to Jacqui who is a young trans woman.

I must admit that the idea seemed a bit mad to be at first, but it worked really well. So well, in fact, that I want to talk to Berkeley about doing this sort of things as a trans awareness exercise in Bristol. Obviously we’d need a bunch of trans folk as volunteers, but that’s a good thing because the trans community is massively varied. I’m painfully aware that I’m something of a stereotype.

All in all, it was a good day, even if most of the messages coming out of it were somewhat negative. At least there were a lot of people there determined to do something about that. Also the chocolate brownies were superb.

The Cis Gaze at Work

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Bad toilet signage
Today The Guardian has an article titled, “Top 10 books about gender identity”. It is written by a cis person, for cis people. Here’s why.

Let’s start with that photo, which gets bathrooms wrong in just about every way possible.

No, wait, let’s start with the fact that it’s a picture of a bathroom being used to illustrate an article about books. OK, so I have been guilty of reading on the loo from time to time, but surely books and toilets are not that closely related, are they? No, of course not. Trans people and toilets, on the other hand, well there’s your word association test right there. Mention trans people and what comes immediately to mind for way too many cis people? Toilets. That’s what we are about: threatening their toilets.

Next up, why is this a combined trans and accessible toilet? Accessible toilets are there for a reason, because some people need them. Putting a trans sign on the accessible toilet will mean lots of able-bodied people using that toilet when they don’t need the special facilities.

And the sign, what does it mean? As far as I can see it says, “this is the toilet for trans people, because we don’t want you perverts in our toilets.”

Look, I have been using women’s toilets for over 20 years. No one has complained. I have not sexually assaulted anyone in the process. I do not appreciate being told that I now have to use a different toilet because trans people are suddenly in the public eye and loads of people have become obsessed with bathroom panic.

Of course there are some trans people who do identify outside of the binary, and would prefer a separate toilet. That’s fine, but that’s not what that sign says.

It does of course say “inclusive”. As far as I can make out that means “inclusive of all the icky people we don’t want in our toilets”. I am only mildly surprised that there wasn’t a little picture of a woman in a hijab along with it.

On now to the article. Top ten books on gender identity, eh? Are any of them written by trans people? Well if they are there are no names that I recognize. Those books I do know about are written by cis people. I’ve only read one of them, but it is #1 on the list, and it is a book I absolutely do not recommend as being good about gender identity.

There is a trans person in Luna, by Julie Anne Peters, but the book isn’t about her. It is about Luna’s sister, Regan, and how hard it is on a girl to have a trans sibling. There’s no question that Regan is the character we are supposed to sympathize with, and given Luna’s behavior at times that’s not hard to do. Thankfully for Regan, the book has a happy ending. Luna comes into some money and is able to leave home. Great.

Looking at the descriptions of the other books, most of them focus on how awful trans people’s lives are. Which of course they are at times, but the message I’m getting here is that trans people are pathetic individuals whom we should all pity because they are so tragic. Could we maybe have something a little bit positive?

This is probably a good point to give another recommendation for Vee’s great article on the “acceptance narrative” that informs so many books about trans people. That narrative is popular because it allows cis people to feel squicked out by trans folk and tells them that’s OK. That’s the sort of book about trans people that cis people seem to want to read. It is certainly the sort of book that publishers want to publish, which perhaps says rather a lot about the attitudes of commissioning editors.

That’s really what this is all about. In the same way that many men won’t read books about women, many white people won’t read books about non-white people, and so on, many cis people don’t want to read books about trans people. They might want to read books about cis people having to come to terms with the existence of trans people. That’s what The Guardian means when it talks about books being good on the subject of gender identity.

Oh, and to all of those people thinking, “but we must have an easily understood sign for a toilet that can be used by anyone,” what’s wrong with a little picture of a toilet?

On Adding Diversity to Events

~ Cheryl

Last night I spotted a tweet from Juliet McKenna linking to this article about the pressure on people to do things for free. Although the article is ostensibly about the tech industry, much of what it says applies to publishing too. The current discussion in the UK about paying authors to appear at literature festivals is an obvious connection.

And yeah, I relate to it. Almost everything I do outside the day job I am expected to do for free. And, as I noted to friends on Twitter the other day, I can’t even do things for “exposure” the way authors can. I am expected to do things for “the good of the community” and not take any credit for it, because taking credit would be exploiting the community for my own selfish ends.

But I’m not here to whine. I’m here to talk about one specific point that the article makes. It says, “We know that not paying speakers and not covering speaker expenses causes events to become less diverse.”

Now that’s true, and the article links to this lovely X-Men-themed post to make the point. However, it is very easy to come away from that thinking that paying speakers will make your event more diverse. In fact it might get you into even more trouble. Here’s why.

Once you get to the point of paying speakers, you start having serious budget issues. You have to get that money from somewhere, and that somewhere probably means your attendees. The only way you can get people to pay more to come to an event is to put on speakers that the public will pay a lot of money to see. That means having speakers who are famous, which in turn leads to having more straight cis white men, and paying them more than you pay the other speakers. Before you know it, you end up like UK literary festivals and are spending all of your money on celebrities and politicians who haven’t even written the books with their names on the cover.

So no, paying speakers alone will not make your event more diverse. The only way to do that is to have a specific policy to implement diversity by encouraging the sort of speakers you want to attend, and helping them financially if they need it. And you have to be prepared to swallow the drop in attendance and revenue that may bring. Because when it comes down to it, this is the real problem.

https://twitter.com/tadethompson/status/692073206321123328

Job Security While LGBT, Lack Thereof

~ Cheryl

Yesterday a story that I have been following for some time finally broke so I am able to talk about it. My friend and colleague (via the Translation Awards), Rob Latham, has been fired from his job as a tenured professor at the University of California Riverside. His dismissal was against the recommendation of the UCR Faculty Senate, and is based primarily on charges which almost everyone involved appears to agree were fabricated.

Obviously I only have Rob’s side of the story, which you can read here. However, even if the charges are true, they are considerably less serious than things that straight professors just get a rap on the knuckles for.

The point here is that Rob is by no means the only person to be a victim of this sort of thing. It used to be the case that you could be fired just for being gay. In many parts of the US you can still be fired just for being trans. These days we are supposed to have employment protection. All that means is that now your employers have to go through the effort of creating trumped up charges of misconduct as an excuse for firing you.

There are many reasons why I am self-employed. This is one of them.

Radio 4 Does Women & Science Fiction

~ Cheryl

There are few things that can persuade me to listen to the BBC’s Radio 4, but this just might be one of them. Tomorrow (Thursday) at 11:30am they are airing a documentary called Herland which will feature ten female science fiction writers. They have an excellent line-up (though the blurbs do not inspire confidence). Thankfully the show has been put together by Geoff Ryman, who can be relied upon to know what he is talking about and avoid the sort of breathless nonsense that the BBC normally brings to coverage of SF.

Anyway, it will be on iPlayer, so if you are at work tomorrow morning and can’t listen you can catch up here. There’s also a taster in the form of a short clip involving someone who I expect to be a big star of the SF field in the future, Laurie Penny.

Juliet Is Busy

~ Cheryl

As I mentioned over the weekend, Western Shore, the latest Juliet McKenna novel from Wizard’s Tower, is now available in the usual shops. Meanwhile Juliet, bless her, has been very busy.

First up on her own website she has posted a fascinating article about the worldbuilding process that was necessary to create the book. Lots of geography research was involved.

Also, on SciFi Fantasy Network, she has an article about the need to get feedback on your novel during the writing process.

Finally, if you happen to be anywhere near Lancaster University on Thursday evening, Juliet will be giving a talk:

I do love those Ben Baldwin covers, and I see that Juliet has a new author photo. Yes, that’s Lou Abercrombie at work again.

So That’s What Fury Road Was All About

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Watching Max Max: Fury Road left me rather puzzled. I couldn’t work out what the scriptwriters were trying to do with the plot. It could have just been a two-hour car chase with lots of explosions, but generally Hollywood likes a bit more than that. What passed for a plot didn’t make any sense to me, given the supposed feminist ethos of the film.

Over the weekend I spotted a tweet from Hiromi Goto pointing at this article. Suddenly it all makes sense. And my opinion of the film has gone down a few notches.

Our Stories, Our Lives

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Because even I need a break sometimes, I just binged on a TV show. All six episodes. Don’t worry, though, they were only about 10 minutes each. It didn’t eat my entire evening, though I may need a bit of time to calm down.

Her Story is a show put together and starring a bunch of queer women, principally — least from my point of view — Jen Richards and Angelica Ross. You may remember me nagging you about the Kickstarter campaign. It is a short series about the love lives of two trans women: Violet, a waitress with a controlling boyfriend; and Paige, a high-powered attorney. Jen and Angelica take the lead roles. Given how short it is, much more detail than that risks spoilers, but along the way the show tells you a great deal about the reality of trans lives.

The operative word there being “reality”. This is not some exercise in cis gaze, putting the weird trans folk on screen so that “normal” people can see how tragic and pathetic we are. This is actual trans people condensing lifetimes of hurt into an hour worth of TV that they hope will educate people. Whether it will or not, I don’t know, but it sure is real.

It took me a while to get up the courage to watch it. Watching Tangerine made me nervous, but Her Story scared me a lot more. I’m way too privileged to completely see myself in Sin-Dee and Alexandra. Vi and Paige, on the other hand, are both women that I could have been. They do things I have had to do, that scared me horribly at the time. Watching the show simultaneously reminded me how lucky I have been, and how much I miss Kevin.

I could put my critic hat on and pick a few nits with the show, but I’m not going to. Firstly, for what it is — something produced on a shoestring, many of whose crew are new to the business — it is damn good. Secondly it gets the important bits right. And, as I’ve just been saying to someone on Facebook, the show totally makes you care about the characters and want things to turn out well for them.

Here’s hoping something bigger happens as a result. I note that Eve Ensler has an Executive Producer credit, and in fact Laura Zak who co-wrote the show with Jen, and has a major role in it, is Ensler’s campaign manager, so there’s contact to influence there. Her Story isn’t going to win awards. Those are reserved for cis white people, it seems. But it is helping change the world, which is a much more important thing.

You can watch the whole of Season 1, for free, here.

Oh, and that taking a break? I lied. I needed to watch this show for a talk I’m doing later in the year.

Two Academic Conferences

~ Cheryl

OK, so I have quite enough to be doing right now. But here are a couple of calls for papers that I am considering responding to.

First up is the academic track of this year’s Finncon. It has the advantage that I am already planning to be there. The theme this year is, “Fantastic Visions from Faerie to Dystopia”, and I have an idea for something to write about. I just need to get my arse in gear and write it.

Secondly there is Fantasies of Contemporary Cultures, a one-day conference at the University of Cardiff. This has the advantages that a) I can get there and back in a day, and b) the keynote speakers are friends of mine (Cathy Butler and Mark Bould). Also the subject matter is right up my street. And it is an good excuse to visit Wales.

No rest for the wicked, as my mother was fond of saying.

With Enemies Like These…

~ Cheryl

There used to be a time when trans people had a decent class of enemies. If we did get mentioned in the media those quoted would be highly respectable. Psychiatrists would explain how we were mentally ill and in need of incarceration. Chief Constables would explain that we were a danger to public decency. Politicians would ask why no one would think of the children that we were so obviously endangering. And archbishops would pray for our endangered souls.

Those days, it appears, are gone. These days we have the TERFs, whose submission to the Transgender Equality Inquiry was so bizarre that it left the MPs in no doubt as to who was unhinged here.

Fortunately for the TERFs, they do have allies. G*merG*ate loves them. And now, apparently, so does Jeremy Clarkson. All they need is Donald Trump and they’ll have a full house.

No wonder people are saying that being trans is a fashion. Who wouldn’t want to be hated by such people?