Gender

The Way We Were

~ Cheryl

Over the past year or so I have been watching with interest to see what the stars of My Transsexual Summer have been making of their lives. Most of them were fairly newly into their transition, and I know from experience that a lot of personal development can happen after that. I certainly had no idea where life would take me.

One of the most interesting developments is that Fox and Lewis have set up a film production company that is making short documentaries about trans people. You can find out more about the project, and watch their films, here. The reason I am writing this post, however, is that I specifically wanted to share the new film that they released yesterday. It is called “Tranpa”, and it features a trans man who began his transition back in the 1960s. Some people, of course, did manage to make a success of it back then, but if you approached the medical authorities when you were still legally a minor things could get very bad indeed.

It is good to remember how far we have come.

Parliament Talks #LucyMeadows

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

Yesterday the vigil for Lucy Meadows went off so well, and so peacefully, that not even the Daily Mail could bring itself to talk about a “violent rentamob” — the usual tabloid reaction to any protest against their behavior. Of course it helped that there were two MPs present. Kudos to Graham Jones, in whose constituency Ms. Meadows lived, and also to Kerry McCarthy, MP for Bristol East, who went along to support the vigil despite having no direct interest. Stephen Williams, the Bristol MP who talked about our LBGT History exhibition in Parliament, tweeted his apologies to me this morning, and I do appreciate that not every MP is able to free the time for such things.

But things are happening. Mr. Jones has promised to raise the issue of the harassment of Ms. Meadows in Parliament once the coroner’s report into her death has been published. Meanwhile Helen Belcher has been making use of the contacts that she made during her time as a witness at the Leveson inquiry. She reports that Julian Huppert, MP for Cambridge and a known supporter of trans rights, has tabled an early day motion to discuss media harassment of trans people today. Which is why I am writing a blog post at past midnight when I’d like to be getting some sleep before I have to do live radio.

Mr. Huppert’s motion is specifically about the press, and it is certainly a very important issue, but given the amount of hot air and lack of action that has surrounded Leveson I’m not sure that much can be done directly to rein the media in. I’m not one of those calling for Richard Littlejohn to be sacked, for a variety of reasons.

Firstly he hasn’t acted alone. There are numerous people, including Burchill, Bindel and the editors of the Mail and Observer, not to mention other newspapers, all of whom have gleefully jumped on the trans-bashing bandwagon. They should bear responsibility too.

Secondly, firing him won’t change anything. He’ll walk into a new job with another newspaper, probably at a massively inflated salary after a bidding war for his services. As for the Mail, they’ll hire someone equally vile, and instruct them to go after trans people in particular. They’ll assume that as long as no one else dies there will be no repeat of the public outrage.

And finally the whole “get Littlejohn” thing seems to me to tap into precisely the same desire to have someone to hate on which Littlejohn’s career has thrived to date. We need to stop making people hate figures, not play the same game.

However, this doesn’t mean that there is nothing that Parliament can do. The reason that the tabloids continue to harass trans people is that they are group that society sees it as legitimate to harass. To some extent that’s a chicken and egg problem, in that society gets its views from the media, but it is also something where Parliament can take a lead, or fail to do so. Sadly, there are many areas in which Parliament has signaled, deliberately or otherwise, that trans people are not worthy of respect. For example:

1. The government’s promised Transgender Action Plan seems to have sunk without trace.

2. The concerns of trans people over the marriage equality bill were summarily dismissed in committee.

3. The Equality Act contains language that implies that a trans woman, no matter how early in life she transitions, no matter what medical treatment she has had, and no matter how long she has lived as a woman, can never “really” be a woman, and may, in some cases, be discriminated against on that basis.

These are things that Parliament can address. Perhaps if they did so, the rest of society would start treating trans people with more respect as well. I appreciate that there’s nothing that can be done tomorrow, because these issues are up for debate, but they are things that Parliament needs to think about. Giving leadership is something that Parliament is good at. Trans people would appreciate seeing a little of it done on their behalf, please.

This Would Be A Lie

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I am not afraid

On Monday a vigil will be held in memory of Lucy Meadows outside the offices of the Daily Mail in London. I won’t be there. Trips to London are time-consuming and expensive, and I have a busy week in the offing. Were I there, however, I might well be carrying a placard bearing the message above. It has been circulated to members of Trans Media Watch for use on the day. Were I to carry it, however, it would be a lie.

There may well be people at the vigil who are genuinely not afraid. A small number may be sufficiently financially secure, and have sufficient family support, not to be worried. Rather more will be so poor and lonely that they feel they have nothing to lose from being “monstered” in the press. Others I suspect, will be putting a brave face on things, and having nightmares about the possible consequences.

In my case, I don’t own my home, I rent. Were I to become a target of media interest, it would not be long before my lease was terminated. Rental companies are expert at finding excuses to get rid of unwanted tenants. And with a pack of paparazzi after me it would be difficult to find somewhere else to live. That, in turn, would make it difficult to work.

Worse still, however, would be the effect it had on those near and dear to me. The people who hounded Lucy Meadows didn’t just go after her, their besieged her family as well. Kevin might escape, being 5,000 miles away, but there are other people that I take care to protect. The thought of what would happen to them should I become a target of the tabloids worries me far more than what would happen to me.

And, of course, there would be no recourse. We have seen time and time again that the Press Complaints Commission will find convenient excuses to permit continued harassment of trans people. The new, post-Leveson arrangements may be better for some people, but I don’t expect them to make any difference to me. To have the protection of those in authority, you have to have the respect of those in authority, not be regarded as some sort of disgusting, sub-human freak.

I guess you are probably asking, “Is there anything we can do?” Some people have been pointing me to a petition to have Richard Littlejohn fired. I don’t see any point in that. The chances of it happening are ridiculously small, and even if he did go he would just be replaced by someone even worse. The Mail pays him very well for what he does, so clearly he’s important to their business. Besides, he doesn’t act in a vacuum. He gets direction from editors. Indeed, as I recall, when Julie Burchill first turned in her infamous Observer column, her editor sent it back and told her it wasn’t vicious enough. This recent blog post makes the point very well:

Above all, we need to recognise that papers like the Daily Mail exist because their brand of hatred is popular and people buy it. The same goes for Littlejohn, he has — and continues to have — a glittering career because editors see value in writing populist myths as fact and in attacking the disenfranchised.

What you can do, of course, is not buy the Mail, or any newspaper like it. And not support companies that advertise there. Remember also that every time you link to a Mail story in social media you bump up their web stats and make them a more attractive prospect for advertisers. Please don’t do it. If you must, take a screen shot of the article that has offended you and link to that instead.

More practically, there are things that can be done to help people like Lucy Meadows. This article in Pink News is by one of the authors of a study of the mental health of trans people conducted by a number of UK organizations. It surveyed 889 trans people in the UK and Ireland. This is the key finding:

Statistics on suicide

The statistics on suicide amongst trans people are jaw-dropingly awful, yet no public health organization shows any interest in doing anything about them. The NHS certainly isn’t interested. After all, every time they try to do something for trans people, the tabloid newspapers run stories about it, fantastically inflating the cost, and complaining about the waste of money. So trans people and their allies have to organize and get things done themselves. Here you will find a fund-raiser set up by some of the authors of that survey. This is an excerpt from their project plan:

We want to build a repository of hope, so that we and our allies can tell others that they are not alone and that they are loved, and so that trans people who are feeling isolated can turn to them when the world feels like it’s all too much. We’ll have video messages, self-help guides and daily affirmations from some awesome people. This is being built with the principles of positive psychology in mind – that by re-focussing on community, connections and resillience we can help each other stay strong when it feels like the whole world is against us.

In time, I hope, social attitudes will change. The Richard Littlejohns of this world will grow old and retire. Those who replace them might be more like Laurie Penny. But until that time us trans folk need to look after our own. Your help would be gratefully appreciated.

Freedom From The Press

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

'Chocolate teapot' by Dru MarlandBack in January The Observer published a “comment” piece by Julie Burchill which was basically one long piece of hate speech against trans people, full of inaccurate and abusive stereotyping. Many people were deeply offended by it. Over 800 people wrote to the Press Complaints Commission to say so. That includes some of you. I know, because you told me that you did. Personally I didn’t waste my time because, as Dru Marland’s fine cartoon states, the PCC is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Helen Belcher has an analysis of the judgement here, but the guts of it can be summarized in three simple points.

1. The Burchill article was not offensive because it talked generally about a class of people, not an individual, so on one was actually demeaned by it.

2. The article could not be regarded as misleading because was presented as Ms. Burchill’s personal opinion.

3. Newspapers could not be seen as harassing trans people because the complaints were only about a single article.

That may seem like a pile of dishonest weaseling to you, and you would be absolutely right. Take the first point, for example. Back in December the tabloid newspapers, led as usual by the Daily Malice, picked upon an individual Manchester trans woman who worked as a primary school teacher. Richard Littlejohn, as usual, was particularly obnoxious and demeaning. I’m sure some people will have complained about what Littlejohn wrote, and I’m equally sure that the PCC would have defended it as being in the “public interest”.

That teacher’s name was Lucy Meadows. On Tuesday, the day before the PCC ruling on the Burchill case was released, Lucy was found dead at her home. The police say that there are no suspicious circumstances. Friends say that she had talked of contemplating suicide.

As soon as the news broke, concerned members of the media took to the Internet to ask how this could have happened and how further tragedies could be prevented… Wait, no, that was David Allen Green. He’s a lawyer. Concerned members of the media took to the Internet to remind us that we could not know how Ms. Meadows had died, nor was there any obvious connection between her death and what they had done. Don’t people know that wearing dresses while male causes cancer? She could even have been abducted by aliens. In any case, it is far more likely that she would have been distressed by the actions of her neighbors, or parents at the school. None of those people are likely to have decided that she was a disgusting, dangerous freak from reading the Daily Mail, are they?

And the decision of the Mail to remove the offending article from their website was not in any way an admission of possible culpability. They just wanted to give Toby Young an opportunity to re-publish it so that the discussion could be moved on to outrage about how the press is being hounded and censored by a powerful cabal of trans people.

Then they all went off to a well earned lobster and Bollinger dinner and started work on articles for today’s papers in which they could further demean and insult Lucy because, after all, now she’s dead she can’t complain, right?

Sarah Brown said on Twitter today that she’s often asked how she managed to survive being trans. She said she points out that she’s white, middle class, Cambridge educated and well off, which helps a lot. Some of the ways in which privilege works in the UK work for people like her and me. But then again, Lucy Meadows was white, middle class, was well educated and had a full-time job that pays more than I earned in my last tax return. That didn’t help her.

Being outed publicly clearly doesn’t do you any good. What happened to me was very public, but equally far less so than what happened to Lucy. Had I not had Kevin to comfort me, I would have been in a dreadful state. Somehow, I got through it.

For Lucy, as David Allen Green noted, the problem will have been exacerbated by having it happen while she was starting transition. When you first start taking estrogen it messes you up mentally. It’s like having to go through all of the angst of puberty, except as an adult. It would be good if there was a way to protect people during that vulnerable time, but the press much prefers to target people who are just starting transition because that’s when they look most like the he-she stereotype. After a year or two, when the hormones have done their work, trans people are much less interesting to photograph.

I have no idea what was going on in Lucy’s mind, or what persecution she experienced. I can only speak for myself. What I find is that the low level danger is survivable. You get used to the idea that strangers may come up to you in the street and ask intrusive questions, or yell abuse at you. You get used to the fact that you may be randomly mis-gendered or refused service in a shop or restaurant. What gets to you is not the fact that some people are arseholes, because some people will always be arseholes. What gets to you is the idea that you probably have no recourse, because no one cares.

So, for example, when a marriage equality bill is put before Parliament, it is just a bill for lesbians and gays. Amendments to address the problems it will cause for trans people get thrown out without explanation or excuse. And when trans people are vilified in the media nothing will be done, because vilifying trans people makes money, and is fun for the journalists doing it.

Helen Belcher noted on Twitter yesterday that if we ever do get freedom from the press we need to make sure that it isn’t at the expense of another minority group. She’s right, but sadly it is probably the only way it will happen. Trans people may disappear from the front pages for a day or so, because the news coming out of Parliament at the moment is that it is time to stop hating on the queers, and to stop hating on supposed “benefit scroungers”, and start hating on brown people instead.

I might have had my troubles with the US immigration people, but that’s nothing to what the UK Border Agency is doing these days. Students who applied for visas and had them legitimately granted are being told that those visas are being summarily cancelled mid-term because the UKBA no longer approves of the college that supported the visa applications. I’m sure that somewhere in London a concerned journalist is having a lobster and Bollinger lunch with a UKBA press officer and being also fed a shock story that can be used to justify this.

Update: Jane Fae has a wonderful article at the New Statesman. She has been given access to emails that Lucy wrote to a friend over the past few months. This comment is particularly pertinent:

Lucy writes of how parents themselves complained that their attempts to provide positive comments about her were rebuffed. The press gang, it seems, were only interested in one story: the outrage, the view from the bigots. The stench of money hangs around – it’s widely believed among those connected with the case that money was being offered for these stories.

Not Bad, Radio 4, But Could Do Better

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Last night Radio 4’s Analysis show ran a half hour program entitled “Who decides if I’m a woman?”. It features a number of interviewees, including actual trans people, the senior doctor from the Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic, and inevitably Julie Bindel. Star quality is provided by the delightfully genderqueer Richard O’Brien, who talks about his own issues with gender here.

All in all, I was pretty impressed. Trans people got a far better hearing than I expected, and the host, Jo Fidgen, saw through some of Bindel’s tricks. Even Dr. Barrett, who isn’t exactly flavor of the month with the trans community, was fairly sympathetic (though still very paternalistic).

That said, the tone of the program is quite breathless. The narrative that Fidgen spins is one of “Oh My God, Parliament has re-defined what it means to be a man or a woman, and no one told us, what does this mean?” Despite the supportive comments from most of the guests, your average Daily Mail reader may well come away from the program fearing a world full of bearded rapists in dresses, simply because people hear what they want to hear, and the tone of the program does encourage panic at times.

In addition there are specific issues raised by Bindel that could and should have been challenged. To her credit, Fidgen sees right through Bindel when she claims that trans people are supporting the gender binary, because Fidgen has been talking to a bunch of non-binary people, including O’Brien. Bindel, in fact, is obsessed with maintaining the binary, by insisting that people can never be anything other than the gender they were assigned at birth. What Fidgen misses is that Bindel simultaneously claims that trans people are obsessed with wanting to conform to gender stereotypes, and presents trans women as being obvious men in dresses using their newly granted rights to facilitate raping cis women. These claims are mutually contradictory.

The rape allegation is the part of the program that was most damaging, and it went totally unchallenged. It plays into all of the worst stereotypes about trans women: that they are “really” men; that they transition for sexual purposes, and that they are a danger to cis women, whom they will inevitably seek to rape. Bindel uses it in two specific settings.

The first is the possibility of a trans woman being convicted of rape of a cis woman and being sent to a women’s prison. Yes, it could happen. It is also true that all sorts of violent cis women get sent to prison. Some of them might be lesbians. And in any case, how prevalent is this going to be? The idea that all trans women are potential rapists only makes sense if, like Bindel, you believe that all trans woman are “really” men. If you no longer have a penis, no longer have testosterone flooding your body, and are sexually attracted to men, the idea that you are a potential rapist of cis women sounds desperately silly.

The other example concerns a sanctuary for sex workers where Bindel claims to have seen a trans woman (whom she describes in classic “man is a dress” terms) making a nuisance of herself and acting aggressively towards the cis women there. What Bindel does here is the classic tabloid tactic of saying, “here is someone from a minority group doing something bad, and there’s nothing that can be done because such people have ‘rights’ which make them immune to the law”. Well, actually, no. First of all if someone is making a nuisance of themselves then is doesn’t matter who they are, they can still be dealt with. The trans woman in question would only have had her rights breached if she was thrown out because she was trans. And actually the Equality Act makes specific exceptions in such cases. The example it gives is of a rape crisis center, where it is legal to throw a woman out solely for being trans, even if she has just been raped and is in obvious distress. Bindel and her friends campaigned for this sort of thing. I don’t believe that she doesn’t know about it.

Another area I want to address is that of trans kids. The program here is fairly balanced, but Bindel does get her oar in and as usual attempts to sow confusion. It is entirely true that many kids who exhibit gender confusion grow up to be gay or lesbian. It is also true that for best results from the treatment it is essential that hormone blockers be provided between the ages of 12 and 16. All that these do is delay the onset of puberty. They don’t cause cross-gender effects. Bindel’s contention is that the effect of this treatment will be to make kids who would otherwise have grown up gay or lesbian grow up trans instead. I’m highly dubious about this, but I don’t know enough about the medical issues to refute it, so I’m going to talk to my friends in Mermaids to see what they say. I certainly don’t fault Fidgen for not picking that up, because it is cutting edge of gender science stuff.

Finally one group of people who were totally left out of the program is intersex people. This is unfortunate, because they provide a very clear case for biological sex being on a continuum, not a binary condition. I find it disturbing to hear trans people arguing for the rights of the genderqueer and not standing up for intersex folks as well.

And while I’m here, Jane Fae has an article up at Gay Star News about the New Look story I blogged about last week. It sounds like lessons are not being learned.

How To Fail at PR and Lose Customers

~ Cheryl

As many of you will know, one of my favorite things in life is shopping for clothes. I do it lots, and probably have far more clothes than I actually need. I have been very fortunate in life in that I have never been challenged in a shop. I just go in, select stuff, try it on, and if I like it I buy it. Apparently I have been doing this all wrong. What should have happened to me is what happened to this poor girl.

Now it so happens that I’m quite fond of New Look. I have bought a lot of clothes from them in the past. However, I’m also not very good at getting up in the morning, and I really don’t see why I should have to, just because I am “trans-gendered”. Nor do I see why the poor staff should have to open up early so as to prevent me from frightening their regular customers, as presumably I have been doing for years without realizing it.

What I think is going on here is a great deal of flailing around by corporate PR people who haven’t got a clue what they are dealing with. And who can blame them, given how the UK media portrays trans people?

If you happen to read this, New Look, and you will be doing so if you are paying attention on Twitter, what you guys need is some training. I know it would be difficult and expensive to train all shop staff, but people at your head office need help. I know people who can provide it. Get in touch.

Oh, and can I keep shopping in your stores without making a special appointment? Pretty please?

Gender Difference Follow-Up

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

Further to my remarks about gender earlier today, you may find this article interesting. Part of me wonders how anyone can get any academic credit for stating something so obvious, but of course what these people have done is get data, and that makes a world of difference.

The issue is very simple. Most of these statements of the form “men are better than women at X” (or vice versa) tend to be based either on anecdata, in which case they are worthless, or they are based on studies that quote averages. What the averages don’t tell you is how much overlap there is. So it may well be correct to say that men are better than women at tennis, but Serena Williams can still thrash anyone except the top male professionals. What this means is that appointing a man to a job because “men are better than women” at that work is a nonsense because your list of applicants may well include women who are better than all of the male applicants. And vice versa, of course.

The researchers went further and looked for correlations between characteristics. They did find some in physical traits. For example, if a man is taller than a woman, it is highly likely that he’ll have broader shoulders than her as well. But when it comes to abilities and attitudes there’s no such effect. A man may be better than a woman at math, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be better than her at repairing cars, or less empathetic, or less interested in fashion than she is. And vice versa. In other words, gender stereotypes are a nonsense.

So the question now is, why are we so fond of them?

Some Progress on #TransDocFail

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I spent much of yesterday at a conference in London dedicated to the health issues of trans people. (Thanks to the Bristol LGBT Forum for sending me as their representative.) One of the main things to come out of the conference was an update on the aftermath of #TransDocFail.

For those of you who missed it, I blogged a lot about this back in January. This post talks about the Twitter hashtag, and this one talks about the Guardian article that started it all. It all ended up with my vagina making an appearance in the Guardian (though only in text, thank goodness). That’s explained here.

In the wake of the controversy, Helen Belcher, who also presented the Trans Media Watch evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, started to collect actual data of instances of medical abuse. She recognized that complaints on Twitter would not be believed. What we needed was sound evidence with names, dates and details. Having got a mountain of feedback, including some absolutely horrific tales, she anonymized all of the data and sent a report off to the General Medical Council (copied to various politicians). There were 98 cases in all, including two from me.

Recently the GMC got back to Helen. They were horrified, and they have picked 39 particularly egregious cases to follow up. They might not all end up in full investigations as some of the cases are from a long time ago and don’t have sufficient detail to be sure of the perpetrators, but 24 are definitely getting the full treatment. That’s a lot more than Helen expected, and 24 more than I expected.

Some of the statistics around these 39 cases are interesting (I hope I have these right, Helen, please correct me if not). 24% of them referred to instances where the patient was not seeking treatment for trans issues, but was abused by the NHS staff because they were trans. 10 of the cases relate to sexual abuse and/or inappropriate contact. Two of the cases resulted in suicide attempts, and one in the patient refusing to go back to hospital even though he was in great pain.

The appalling thing is that we believe this is only the tip of a very large iceberg. Helen also collected data on people who started to enter data about a case and stopped for some reason. The 98 cases that went forward to the GMC represent less than a quarter of the people who found Helen’s survey and started to use it. Then there will be all of the people who didn’t know that the survey existed, or who were afraid to complain least they lose what little access to health care that they have.

One of the cases involves a patient being directly threatened with withdraw of treatment if they complained.

Talking to the GMC taught Helen a thing or two about the process of investigating doctors. In the week that Richard Curtis was put under scrutiny, 40 other doctors received similar treatment. Such cases are almost never reported in the national media. The Curtis case was only deemed newsworthy because Dr. Curtis is a gender specialist, and the story could be spun as an attack on trans people.

Jane Fae has an article on Gay Star News about Helen’s work, and the GMC decision. She also sent the information to every mainstream newspaper, most of whom will run a trans story at the drop of a hat. Not one of them has picked it up.

Female Invisibility – Some Numbers

~ Cheryl

Yesterday’s tweet stream was full of this article by Alison Flood at The Guardian, which is based on the 2012 data from VIDA regarding male domination of literary review magazines. I wish I could say I’m surprised that no progress has been made in the three years VIDA has been collecting this data, but I’m not.

I’m also rather more interested in this article from Forbes which looks at the gender of people asked to give their opinions in the American media during last year’s Presidential election. The article focuses on data from National Public Radio which clearly demonstrates the problem. Overall men were quoted 68% of the time and women 23% of the time (the remainder being quotes from corporations and the like, not gender-free persons). However, looking at gendered persons only, female journalists only quoted men 52% of the time, and women 48% of the time. Male journalists, on the other hand, quoted men 80% of the time and women 20% of the time.

So, do male journalists mostly talk only to other men, or do they think women’s opinions are much less interesting? I guess it is a combination. I can only speak for myself, but I’m pretty sure that most trans women will be able to report, from personal experience, that being brought up male means you are taught to discount women’s opinions. Until we stop that, the data reported by VIDA will not change.

New From Aqueduct

~ Cheryl

Fresh from their triumph in the Tiptree, our good friends at Aqueduct Press have sent us four new books. They are:

Necessary Ill looks particularly interesting to me. The idea of deliberately spreading plague to reduce the human population sounds disturbingly Tepper-esque, but the book moves beyond that. There’s an enthusiastic blurb from Suzy McKee Charnas who notes, “…the reader finds an in-depth exploration of what a human society minus sex hormones might be like”. Personally I’m rather partial to my estrogen, but I do have an essay on the future of gender to write, and consequently this book has flown to the top of my To Read list.

Tiptree Winners Announced

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

In my email this morning was the announcement of this year’s Tiptree Award results. There are joint winners: The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan, and Ancient, Ancient by Kiini Ibura Salaam.

As you probably know, I love The Drowning Girl. It will be on my Hugo ballot and my World Fantasy ballot. I’m absolutely delighted to see it pick up this award. You can find my review here.

I read Ancient, Ancient for the Crawford Award. It is a fine book and I was delighted to see it on the short list. I haven’t had time to review it myself, but here is one from Martha Hubbard. The book is published by Aqueduct so it is available from my bookstore.

As always, the Tiptree jury produced an honor list as well. The books on it (with links to my reviews and the bookstore where applicable) are:

  • Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts
  • Roz Kaveney, Rituals
  • M.J. Locke, Up Against It
  • Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312
  • Karin Tidbeck, Jagannath (buy)
  • Ankaret Wells, Firebrand
  • Lesley Wheeler, “The Receptionist” (in The Receptionist and Other Tales buy)

I’m delighted to see Roz, Stan and Karin on that list, and Bear’s book is one I’d already noted as interesting. But each year the Tiptree jury finds wonderful books that I have managed to miss. I’m particularly interested in Firebrand which is apparently steampunk.

Fanny & Stella – A Review

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Thanks to the excellent Sam Jordison I was sent a review copy of this year’s hot LGBT history book, the biography of the Victorian cross-dressers, Fanny Park and Stella Boulton, written by Neil McKenna. While I could have posted it here, I felt the review would get more eyeballs over at Lambda Literary, and I’m delighted to say that they have agreed to run with it. Most reviews of the book I have seen have treated the book as a tale about two gay men. As you might expect, I have looked more closely at the gender identities of the two young persons concerned. Regardless of how you see them, however, Fanny & Stella are delightfully outrageous, and McKenna’s book is a lot of fun to read.

You can read my review here, and if you are interested in the book I see that the publishers have it on sale: Fanny & Stella: The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England. Non-UK readers, there are ebooks available.

Jack Wolf On ShoutOut

~ Cheryl

I have been catching up with all sorts of things since I got back from Exeter. Included in that is the Shout Out Bristol LGBT radio show. Part of that is ego boo, of course. I get mentioned a couple of times in the Feb. 21st show. But those are very short mentions and should not put you off listening.

And I do hope you listen, because the show includes a long interview with my new friend, Jack Wolf. Jack talks about his debut novel, The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones. His influences include Neil Gaiman and Van Gogh. The book has had a rave review in The Guardian, and is eligible for next year’s Crawford. It sounds very interesting.

Jack also talks about the subject matter of the LGBT History Month talk he did last Saturday, which is based on a PhD he’s doing on gender-variant people in history (mainly the 17th Century).

You can find the episode here. You’ll need to scroll down a bit to get to the February 21st show. Jack’s interview begins around 33 minutes into the show. Or, with any luck, this is a direct link to the mp3.

Trans, Bodies and Art

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

Over the past few days I have encountered several references to the use of trans people in art. Firstly there is this article, referencing the LGBT History exhibition, which appeared on Unmaking Things, a blog that is a joint production of the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum. We’ve also had a request, following on from the exhibition, to find trans people who are willing to be photographed for an art project. And finally, some asked on Twitter if I thought it was reasonable to claim to have gained an understanding of trans people through reading science fiction.

What these all have in common is that they involve the representation of trans people in art, probably by cis people. In her blog post, Lauren Fried notes that in the exhibition, “There is very little imagery which pertains to the (re)design of bodies here; instead, the histories of these bodies are referred to through objects and archival documentary sources.” This was very deliberate on our part and Fried, though her academic interest is in the design of bodies, understands why we did it. (I’ve since corresponded with her on Facebook.)

All too often, images of trans people, both factual and artistic, are intended to other the subjects. We get the notorious “before and after” shots that the newspapers are so fond of running (and that trans celebrities are automatically asked for, even when an article featuring them has nothing to do with their transition or history). And we get gender-bending art displays that either revel in androgyny or present “you can’t tell” images.

Of course there is a place for such things. The exhibition does contain a portrait of a trans woman, local theatre director, Martine Shackerley-Bennett, who allowed her artist friend, Penny Clark, to chronicle her transition. You can learn more about the work Penny did in this YouTube clip.

There is also a long and honorable history of performers such as David Bowie, Boy George, Tilda Swinton and Andrej Pejić who delight in presenting an androgynous appearance. That is their right, and the questioning of gender boundaries that results from their actions is to be welcomed as it has done a great deal to advance public acceptance of trans folk.

Where problems arise is when people start with the gender-bending image and conclude, “this is what trans people are.” As I hope regular readers will be aware by now, the truth is much more complicated. While there are many trans people who would love to be as famous, good-looking and as brain-exploding as Swinton or Pejić, there are many who do not. Very few want to be the subject of “freak show” imagery.

So how does this fit into learning about trans people from SF? Well, if you’ve read my essay on the subject you’ll know that most 20th Century SF featuring trans people was written by cis people who seemed to have very little idea what actual trans people were like. It also tended to make the trans folk “issue characters”, by which I mean that their otherness was the significant thing about them, the reason why they were in the story. Respectful or not, it tended to be the literary equivalent of the freak show image.

The other thing about 20th Century SF is that it often features gender transition as a choice rather than as something the characters need to do in order to be themselves. The assumption is that future technology allows such essentially cosmetic surgery, and so people will opt for it. Iain Banks, to his credit, has always acknowledged that such choices are predicated on a society that has achieved gender equality. Few people would choose to become a member of an oppressed group in society. In our current society, where women are still second class citizens, and trans people are often barely accepted as human, the idea that transition is a lifestyle choice is deeply offensive to many who undergo it.

So does reading 20th Century SF actually help you gain an understanding of trans people? From one point of view, clearly not. I’ve had earnest people tell me that they know all about folk like me because they have read John Varley’s Steel Beach. This makes me want to put my head in my hands and weep. If that’s what you get out of your reading then you are in deep trouble.

On the other hand, what SF has always done is usualize the idea of gender transition. (Yes, “usualize” is a made up word. That’s because the word commonly used in a sentence like that would be “normalize”, and “normal” has all sorts of connotations beyond the mathematical.)

What I mean by this is that if you read SF (and to a lesser extent fantasy) then the idea that someone might change their gender is not strange and frightening. SF readers are accustomed to reading about things that might not (yet) be real, whereas those who do not read SF often excuse themselves by saying that they can’t accept things that are not real, even in a work of fiction (which is, by definition, unreal). If you can’t accept the possibility of a changing world in fiction, the chances are you won’t be too keen on actual changes in the real world.

So I do think there is a way in which reading SF can help people to accept trans people. Of course it isn’t foolproof. While there are some people for who reading SF as made them eager and willing to encounter aliens, there are others who feel it has taught them that the only good alien is a dead alien. I’m also aware that there are SF fans who are perfectly OK reading about people with green skin and tentacles, but can’t cope with ordinary humans who have brown skin, or breasts. Art does not affect all people in the same way. However, I can see how reading SF may have helped people to be more understanding about difference. Whether those people would have been as understanding without it, I can’t say, and neither can they. If they want to credit their reading as being formative, I’m happy to let them.

The Minister and I #girlslikeus

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

This morning I was up early and off into Bristol to the M-Shed for an important meeting. As you may recall, the LGBT History exhibition that I have been involved in organizing was mentioned in Parliament by local MP, Stephen Williams, during the marriage equality bill second reading. That bill is being shepherded through Parliament by the Rt. Hon. Maria Miller, MP, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Today she was in Bristol, and having heard Mr. Williams wax lyrical about our exhibition, she asked to see it for herself. I was there, partially because I’m self-employed and can take a day out at the drop of a hat, and partially because (largely by accident), I’m one of the co-chairs of the charity staging the exhibition, Out Stories Bristol.

Being involved in a Ministerial visit is a strange experience. The thing it reminded me of most was when Paramount parachuted Patrick Stewart into the San José Worldcon. In that case I was able to leave Kevin to deal with the drama and run away to hide (I went for dinner with Sean McMullen), but this time I was right in the firing line. Thankfully I had my colleague, Charlie Beaton, with me. He’s the secretary of OSB. (My fellow co-chair, Andy Foyle, who is the person who deserves all of the glory, was unavoidably elsewhere today.) There was much waiting around at the exhibition. No one knows exactly how long anything will take, and while the Minister was in town everyone wanted a piece of her. When she eventually turned up, we got about 10 minutes with her. I gather that was quite a long time. Normally at such events the people responsible for the thing the Minister is coming to see get elbowed out of the way by local politicians. But no one seemed keen to take credit for an exhibition about LGBT lives, so there we were.

I’m pretty cold-blooded about public speaking these days. (I’ve interviewed Neil Gaiman in front of 1,000 people — an audience of 40 like I had on Saturday is a piece of cake after that.) This, however, was another matter entirely. I would only have a chance to say a few sentences to Ms. Miller. I had to use those as best I could to represent the LGBT cause, and in particular the cause of trans people. What if I screwed up and she went away thinking that trans people were awful? That’s responsibility.

I think I did OK. I have, of course, been kicking myself for the rest of the day. It is easy to think of things you could have said after the event. But you do need to let the conversation develop naturally. It doesn’t do to seem pushy, and babbling nervously can seem awfully pushy.

There were a number of thing we talked about. One of the most important was emphasizing how many people came together to help produce the exhibition (we have a volunteer list of over 90 people). From a political point of view, however, the very clear message was how far we have come in a very short time. Wandering to the center of the exhibit, Ms. Miller’s eyes lit on a large police record book dating from 1960. Two of the crimes recorded in there were incidents of buggery. A copy of the 1967 act abolishing buggery as a crime sat in the display case next to it. Now here was the Minister in charge of a bill allowing gay people to get married. It was pure history.

Inevitably there’s a case of how far we’ve got, and how far we still have to go. I couldn’t resist a mention of a certain notorious newspaper column, and got what I’m pretty sure was a look of sympathy in response.

I can’t remember much of what was said, and of course any successful politician has the skill of making people feel listened to and valued. Nevertheless, I came away with the impression that Ms. Miller genuinely supportive of what we were doing. She did specifically say that she’d been moved to tears by one of the speeches on the marriage equality bill. From our point of view, I hope she went away knowing how much that bill (and other legal recognition such as the Gender Recognition Act) means to us.

And hey, when I took the plunge and decided to transition all those years ago it was still the case that trans people were treated as social pariahs. Had you told me then that one day I’d be shaking hands with and chatting to a Secretary of State I would have laughed at you. Trans people have come a long way.

Mission Accomplished, Almost

~ Cheryl

Well, yesterday seemed to go quite well. We had around 40 people in the audience, and judging from the comments I got afterwards, both at the venue and on Twitter, people appear to have enjoyed my talk. The downside is that, despite having taken my voice recorder with me, I totally forgot to record it. Fail. I think I am getting old. I need a minder. Well, I need Kevin anyway. Sorry folks.

Still, as I said, people enjoyed it. Also I got to meet someone interesting. In the audience for the talk was Somerset writer, Jack Wolf. Jack’s debut novel, The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones, has been published by Chatto and Windus in the UK and will be coming out from Penguin in the US later in the year. It has also been sold to France and Spain. The folks at Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights have been enthusing to me about it.

The descriptions of the book suggest that it might not be for the squeamish (like me), but it does have faeries in it, and it is a fantasy debut so I’ve marked it down for Crawford reading.

Next Saturday Jack will be giving a talk at the M-Shed. The synopsis is as follows:

Jack Wolf explores characters and writers who were (probably or possibly) transgender and discuss his research into real life 18th/19thC women who chose to live as men. He will also discuss the challenge of writing a trans character in a historical novel whose experiences are as real as possible yet still make sense to modern readers.

I’d love to be there, but of course I have to be at Microcon. However, Jack has recorded an interview for ShoutOut which will be broadcast on Thursday. I look forward to hearing that (on podcast because I’m going to this).

Forthcoming Appearances

~ Cheryl

I have a busy few weeks coming up. Here’s a brief rundown.

Tomorrow I will be at the M-Shed in Bristol giving a talk about trans pioneer, Michael Dillon. That’s a 2:30 start. It is a free event, but if you are coming please sign up on Eventbrite so we have some idea of numbers in advance.

On Wednesday (20th) I’ll be on the Women’s Outlook show on Ujima taking about Karen Lord’s The Best of All Possible Worlds. If the tech works, we’ll have an interview with Karen on the show.

The following weekend (23rd/24th) I’ll be in Exeter for Microcon where I’m giving a talk about ebooks. I can’t find any public web presence for this (there is a page on Facebook, but you have to log in to see it), but Kari Sperring will be there too, as will Emma Newman and Jo Hall.

On Wednesday 27th the Ujima Women’s Outlook show will be about getting boys to read. I’ll be talking about Ian McDonald’s Planesrunner, and we’ll have Tim Maughan as a guest in the studio.

And on March 6th BristolCon is taking over the Word of Mouth event at the Thunderbolt in Bristol. Emma Newman and Jo Hall are the guest authors, and I’ll be introducing them.

Germany Recognizes Intersex

~ Cheryl

Some very interesting news came in my email this morning. The Bundestag has passed a law that allows for the gender of newborn babies to be left indeterminate, effectively creating a third gender. However, this was swiftly followed by concerned emails citing the unhappiness of German intersex activists with the new law. They have issued a press release. I don’t read German at all, but I’ve run the text through Google Translate and this is what I think it says:

  • The law does not provide a choice, it makes registration as intersex a requirement in certain conditions.
  • The parents will have no say, it will be up to doctors to determine if the baby is intersex.
  • Even if the baby qualifies, doctors may be reluctant to use the new category because of the social stigma they fear would result for the family.
  • The majority of intersex people won’t qualify, and therefore can’t benefit from the law

These are all reasonable points. It would have been much more sensible to allow parents, and eventually the intersex individuals themselves, a say in the decision. And, as with other forms of social stigma, passing laws alone can’t fix the problem. Intersex rights still have a very long way to go, and in many ways the recent UN decision to condemn “normalization” surgery is more important, but this is a very interesting development, especially as the British Parliament is currently debating gender issues.

Talking of which, a number of trans-friendly amendments to the marriage equality bill were submitted today. Zoe O’Connell has an explanation.

If anyone out there reads German and has corrections to my understanding of the press release, please let me know.

In The Papers

~ Cheryl

We have some media coverage of the LGBT History Exhibition today. The Bristol Post‘s website has a general article up, and a more specific one about Michael Dillon. I understand that there will be coverage in the print edition today as well.

I’m quoted in both articles, mainly because I’m one of the co-chairs of Out Stories Bristol. Credit for the news coverage goes to my good friend Eugene Byrne.

Nature, It’s “Not Natural”

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

With the marriage equality debate going through Parliament in the UK (and France) right now we are hearing a lot of people complain that certain practices are “not natural”. I’m sure you all know by now that there are loads of species in which homosexual behavior has been observed in the wild, but to stretch your minds a little further here is Deep Sea News with a list of “10 Ocean Species That Challenge Gender Role Stereotypes”. It includes sex changes, hermaphrodites, transvestism, a species that has been reproducing by cloning for 80 million years and my favorites, the Loriceferans, whose gender identity is very clearly dependent on what food they eat. Goodness only knows what our bishops would make of all this depravity. What was God thinking when she made these creatures?