A quick follow-up to yesterday’s post about homophobic and transphobic bullying in UK schools. Pink News reports that the government is to add protection for trans kids to the forthcoming Equality Bill. However, as with all these things, it will take time for the change to have effect. According to the Pink News report, gay and lesbian kids are supposed to have been legally protected in schools since 2007. The report I blogged about yesterday makes it clear that many schools are currently failing to comply with those regulations.
Gender
What We Teach in Schools
One of the common themes I keep coming back to here is that having equality legislation is all very well, but if people’s attitudes don’t change then the legislation easily bypassed. In theory, the UK has an excellent track record on gay rights, but as today’s Guardian reveals, one place where that doesn’t apply is the nation’s schools:
Even primary-age pupils are taunted with homophobic language, say 44% of primary school staff. That small children don’t necessarily understand what they’re saying doesn’t diminish the fact that girls who aren’t “girly” and boys who don’t behave as boys are “supposed” to are regularly being made to feel unhappy about themselves.
Nor is there often a lot that teachers can do about this. Not only do they live in fear of angry parents, they may also get no support from their management:
At a secondary school in the north-east, another teacher paints a particularly bleak picture of his chances of management support. “Our headteacher and the governors are all bigots. I feel 100% sure the head would not care if anyone suffered from gay bullying. He has made it quite clear how he feels about gays and lesbians.”
What chance do we have of creating a diverse and understanding society if our schools are busily teaching pupils to be bigots?
On Future Sexuality
Wendy Pearson has set up a blog to continue the discussion about queer sexualities in science fiction that she began with the Queer Universes book. I see that Nicola Griffith has already signed up to contribute.
The opening post makes it clear that the blog is about sexuality, not about gender, and thus I don’t expect it to cover trans issues, excepting of course that trans people can obviously exhibit the full range of human sexuality. There may be the odd attempt to co-opt trans narratives as a sexuality issue, as there was in the book, but hopefully the blog will stay on mission. It is, after all, a good mission.
So Much for Data Protection
Whenever a government wants to set up a new, far-reaching database they always reassure the public that proper safeguards will be put in place to make sure that the data is not mis-used. In Europe we even have Data Protection legislation, making it a crime to share personal data without permission. Does that stop people doing it? Of course not.
Today British newspapers are reporting the case of a private investigator whose business specialized in selling personal data about people to companies in the building industry. The primary purpose of his activities was to allow construction companies to illegally vet potential employees for union connections before employing them. Some 40 UK companies who used his services, including big names such as Balfour Beatty, Sir Robert McAlpine, Laing O’Rourke and Costain, are currently being investigated for illegally purchasing this data.
This sort of thing would happen anyway in some form or another, but it will be made much easier by the existence of government databases. As and when a massive health service database goes live, you can bet that members of right wing and religious extremist groups will be scouring it for LGBT people so that they can target them. The fact that this will be illegal will not stop them.
LGBT Politics on Twitter
The last 24 hours or so has brought up some interesting LGBT politics on Twitter.
Continue reading
More on Transgender Fish
The very helpful Bob Hole points me at this article from World Zoo Today. The research is talks about is actually the same work I blogged about a while back, but it is good to see it getting more coverage.
Microsoft Defends Right to be a Bigot
Breaking news on Twitter today concerns this story from the Lesbian & Gay Foundation about a woman who was banned from Xbox Live because other players found the fact that she was an out lesbian “offensive”.
We hear a lot of whining these days from right wing and religious bigots about how their right to hate other people is infringed by human rights legislation. Microsoft appears to have taken this to heart. Their concern was not whether it is right to discriminate against someone for being a lesbian, but simply how many people wanted to complain about not wanting to have to play games with one.
Obviously Microsoft is a private company, and I don’t think that there are any US laws requiring it to provide services to lesbians if it doesn’t want to. On the other hand, I’m sure that it sells a lot of products to LGBT people. I suspect a certain amount of letter writing might go on.
Hat tip to John Couthart for the image link below.
Link Love Works
A while back I got asked to blog about an article on books for kids featuring gay and lesbian characters. I did so, but also used it as an opportunity to plug Marcus Ewert’s wonderful 10,000 Dresses. An lo, now the author of the original article, Brett Berk, has written a lovely review of Marcus’s book. I love it when things like this happen. It makes all of the slaving over a hot keyboard seem worthwhile.
Italian Sea Snails Go Macho
Most of the stories we see in the news about “sex change chemicals” in the environment focus on male animals turning into females, with the blame often being placed on the use of contraceptives by human women. But all sorts of things can happen in the weird and wonderful world of biology. Here is a story to redress the balance.
Murex is a genus of carnivorous sea snails with impressively spiny shells. Different species are found in many places in the world, but the Mediterranean varieties are particularly famous for being the source of Tyrian Purple, the expensive dye that was beloved of Roman emperors and other potentates of ancient times. While the snails are no longer harvested to make dye, they are still eaten by people around the Mediterranean. Sicily was noted for its fisheries, until now.
According to a study by Italy’s Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA in Italian), populations of Murex around the Sicilian coast face extinction because all of the female snails have turned into males. The culprit is apparently a chemical called TBT which used to be used in anti-fouling paints. It was banned in 2001, but has yet to be totally phased out. A report in an Italian newspaper explains:
The exact mechanism behind the transexual molluscs is still being studied. A handful of Italian researchers are at the cutting edge. One of them, Antonio Terlizzi of Lecce University, explained that TBT boosts the production of testosterone in the female murexes, making them sterile and eventually turning them into males.
”It’s a little bit like all those women shot-putters with moustaches you used to see a few years ago,” he said.
Um, quite. So eating Sicilian sea snails might not be a good idea right now.
More Credit Where Due
If only The Guardian could have more people like Phil Beadle writing for it, and fewer people like Julie Bindel.
Too Many Books
OK, so it appears that I need to read Alison Goodman’s Aurealis-winning novel, The Two Pearls of Wisdom. But I also want to read Peter Murphy’s book, John the Revelator. I picked up a copy in Chapters and one the basis of the first few pages is every bit as good as Neil said it was (and no, I didn’t doubt him for a minute). I’d use the excuse of not being able to get hold of a copy, but I have actually seen copies of Alison’s book here in Darkest Somerset – the publishers are giving it a very heavy push, which I am absurdly pleased about. It also looks like it is being marketed as YA, so I’m slightly relieved that I’m not going to ICFA because I would have to read it before then and re-write part of my paper if I was.
Blocked!
Christine Burns has a quite alarming post up about LGBT charities in the UK and why they can’t get much traction. Here’s the money shot:
Most public authorities have electronic ‘firewalls’ and email filters that are programmed to bar any communications or web site traffic with words such as ‘lesbian’ or ‘gay’.
Yes, that’s right, public authorities. Many of them apparently refuse to even accept an email containing the words “lesbian” or “gay”. And that means that if your organization’s name contains one of those words you can’t communicate with many UK-based public bodies.
Read the whole thing here. It is mind-boggling.
Pigs Do Fly
It is rare that I have anything good to say about the Daily Mail, and this is probably an accident, but it is rather amusing. As some of you may remember, Russell T Davies thinks that Doctor Who can never be a woman because it would mean that fathers would have to explain sex changes to their children. Well, the Mail, ever in search of salacious news, has discovered that Matt Smith, the young man who is to take over the role of the Doctor after David Tennant, has appeared on stage in drag. Oh horror! Will fathers now have to explain transvestism to their children? Should we ban the Daily Mail to save our kids?
Those of you who want to see what Mr. Smith looks like in drag can click here.
Kids’ Books with Gay Characters
I continue to get email in an interesting way. This time it is from a web site called Babble, which bills itself as, “The magazine and community for a new generation of parents.” They want me to plug an article that looks at books for kids that include gay characters. It is by Brett Berk, and you can find it here. Overall I thought it was pretty good. I’m not an expert on the field, but it is good to know that those books are out there. I knew about And Tango Makes Three, but not the others. Obviously there are more such books around, and the article does welcome comments if you want to suggest some.
I would have liked to see mention of Ten Thousand Dresses, by my good friend Marcus Ewert, which as far as I know is the only young children’s picture book about a transgender child.
Court Rules DOMA Unconstitutional
Via Nicola, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional:
The denial of federal benefits to same-sex spouses cannot be justified simply by a distaste for or disapproval of same-sex marriage or a desire to deprive same-sex spouses benefits available to other spouses in order to discourage exercising a legal right afforded them by the state
Sleeping With The Enemy
In today’s Guardian, Julie Bindel (yes, her again) urges all women to take up “political lesbianism”. And no, that doesn’t mean having sex with women while on protest marches. It just means that you don’t have to, you know, actually have to do anything icky like have sex with women. Just as long as you don’t do anything with men. OK?
Next week Julie will encourage us all to shave off our hair, lay eggs and grow to enormous size. And also pick a nice spot where we can be fossilized for the amusement of future generations and the general befuddlement of creationists.
Hat tip to a friend-locked LJ posting.
NYT on Female Sexuality
Thanks to Ellen Kushner for spotting this one yesterday while I was on the road. It is a long article, and one I’m not entirely sure what to make of, especially as one of the psychologists interviewed in a former associate of J. Michael Bailey. However, a number of things did leap out at me.
Firstly, if you want to understand female sexuality, you need to get women to study it. Men and women think about sex very differently and men, being men, will tend to impose male thought patterns on their female subjects, and therefore get things hopelessly wrong.
Secondly, this brief quote, which everyone who studies gender should take into account:
“The horrible reality of psychological research,†Chivers said, “is that you can’t pull apart the cultural from the biological.â€
And finally, the simple medical fact that female genitalia react to penetration, regardless of whether it is desired or not, as a simple act of self-preservation. The phrase “Arousal does not imply consent” should be burned into the retinas of every judge and jury that ever hears a rape case.
Iceland Goes Lesbian
Having got fed up with a having their country run by a bunch of apparently arrogant and stupid men, Iceland is now to get a lesbian Prime Minister. This isn’t the result of an actual election, but rather of political wheeling and dealing in the aftermath of the collapse of the previous government. (The sort of thing that hyperactive Canadians call a “coup”.) However, congratulations are most definitely due to Johanna Sigurdardottir, who will doubtless strike terror into the hearts of religious fundamentalist leaders the world over for a few years.
Hat tip to Bob Hole who also pointed out that The Independent‘s headline was an absurd exaggeration.
Bizarre Gender Science
Who would have thought it? Apparently estrogen makes you susceptible to finding babies cute. And you can check for that by including post-menopausal women in your test sample, including some on HRT and some not. Amazing. But I suspect the research may also be in line for an IgNobel.
Just for the record, I thought the differences in the photos were blindingly obvious, and yes, I am under the influence of estrogen.
It is a New World, Alright
From the new White House web site:
President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.
There’s lots of other LGBT stuff there as well, including this:
President Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Got votes, Congressman Frank?