Women’s World Cup – Matches Underway

~ Cheryl

July sees the Women’s Cricket World Cup being staged in England. It is being contested by the 8 top test countries, and played at a variety of venues around the country. Australia are, as usual, the favorites, but England as the home side should do well too.

Matches began yesterday in Derby with the hosts taking on India. Things did not go as planned. England won the toss and hoped to take advantage of their superior pace bowling by putting India in to bat. The Indians powered to an opening stand of 144 and ended on 281/3. Smriti Mandhana (80), Punam Raut (86) and captain Mithali Raj (71) all contributed. England got off to a terrible start losing their first three wickets for 67, but a strong stand between captain Heather Knight (46) and Frances Wilson (81) steadied the ship. Sadly it was not enough, and three run-outs during the latter part of the innings show that panic had started to set in. India won by 35 runs.

Meanwhile in Bristol Sri Lanka took on New Zealand. The Kiwis won the toss and, like England, put their opponents in to bat. They restricted Sri Lanka to 188/9 in their 50 overs, and then proceeded to knock off the required runs with ease. Suzie Bates (106*) and Amy Satterthwaite (78*) provided the bulk of the runs in a 9-wicket victory.

Today Pakistan took the field against South Africa in Leicester. This provided the closest match of the tournament thus far. South Africa won the toss and once again chose to field. Pakistan managed 206, thanks mainly to 79 from Nahida Khan. It should have been a fairly easy chase, and SA were looking good on 143/2. However, a sudden collapse reduced them to 177/7. There were some nervous moments at the end with SA needing 14 off the last two overs. However, their star bowler, Shabnim Ismail, having had a frustrating day with the ball, took charge in the 19th over clubbing 14 off the last 4 balls to finish the game.

Australia play their first game against West Indies at Taunton tomorrow. Sadly I have to be on my way to Plymouth for work, but I’ll be cheering the WIndies on.

England play Pakistan in Leicester on Tuesday and will be hoping to get their campaign back on track.The next game in Bristol is Australia v Sri Lanka on Thursday, and the first one I’ll be able to get to is Australia v New Zealand in Bristol next Sunday.

All of the matches are being shown live, though often on Sky which many people don’t have access to. Hopefully some of you will be able to watch or get to games. If not follow @CricketHer on Twitter for reports.

WEP Trans Policy

~ Cheryl

Yesterday there was a bit of a kerfuffle about a particularly nasty trans-hating blog post. I’m not going to dignify it with additional traffic, but here are some choice examples:

They rapidly take on the prettiness of femininity – the shoes, the makeup, the clothes, and the hair – yet leave aside other traits commonly associated with the gender: empathy, compassion, nurturance, receptivity. Those aspects of the gentler sex are discarded because they don’t fit in with the behaviour of men

There is more embedded in gender than a change of outfit.

A frightened child in a rape crisis centre isn’t going to look at a transwoman and see trans-inclusive ideology. She’s going to see a man in a dress

They attempt to both devalue and claim for themselves all that is female

None of this is particularly new or unusual. What got social media excited is that the author claimed to be a member of the Women’s Equality Party. Inevitably people were asking whether this post represented official WEP policy. No, it doesn’t. The official party policy is on page 5 of the recent manifesto, which includes this:

WE also recognise that the binary words “woman” and “man” do not reflect the gender experience of everyone, and support the right of all to define their sex or gender or to reject gendered divisions as they choose.

And here is a tweet confirming that policy.

As WE have, to date, only had one party conference, WE haven’t had a chance to have a public debate on trans issues as yet. There is an awful lot of areas that WE need to over. But I am hoping that a trans motion will be put before conference sooner rather than later. In the meantime I’m grateful to the party management for continuing to stand behind people of all genders.

Equality is better for everyone

Locus Award Winners

~ Cheryl

This year’s Locus Award winners were announced yesterday. As they are fan-voted, they are an interesting indicator as to how the Hugos might go, and of course are a major honor in their own right. The full list of winners is here. I’d like to highlight a few things.

The non-fiction award went to Kameron Hurley’s The Geek Feminist Revolution. I imagine there will be a fair amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth in Puppydom over that.

Ken Liu won for Collection with The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, and the VanderMeer’s The Big Book of Science Fiction (which contains a number of translated stories — 30 if I have counted correctly) won Anthology.

All three short fiction awards went to women: Amal El-Mohtar, Alyssa Wong and Seanan McGuire. I am particularly delighted to see Every Heart a Doorway win.

There are five novel categories. Two were won by trans authors (Charlie Jane Anders and Yoon Ha Lee), one by translation (original by Cixin Liu), and one by a Welshman (Al Reynolds). And I don’t think that Joe Hill is exactly the sort of white, American male that the Puppies would want to win.

Special congratulations are due to Charlie Jane Anders and Yoon Ha Lee. Caitlín R. Kiernan has won a Locus Award before with a short story, but as far as I can see no openly trans person has won for a novel before. (Tiptree also won a couple of short fiction awards, but of course that’s complicated.) And if you haven’t read Ninefox Gambit yet, why not?

New Book, Contains Me

~ Cheryl


This is a new book from Luna Press’s Academia Lunare imprint which will be out on August 9th. It is titled Gender Identity and Sexuality in Fantasy and Science Fiction and covers a wide range of topics within that. My essay, fairly obviously, is about trans representation in SF&F. Juliet McKenna has written about the problems women face as authors, all the way from getting an agent to getting your book stocked and reviewed once it is published. There’s a whole bunch of other essays too that I don’t know much about. You can pre-order a copy here.

Luna will be doing a number of promotional posts about the book over the next few days, each one focusing on a different author. I’m due up on Sunday. I’ll tweet links to them as and when they appear.

Non-UK readers, you’ll be able to get copies at Worldcon.

Janet Mock Interview

~ Cheryl

One of my favorite trans writers, Janet Mock, has a new book out. Surpassing Certainty picks up where Redefining Realness left off and takes her story from transition through to the point where she felt safe and confident enough to come out publicly as trans. Because she has a book to promote, she’s doing a lot of media work, and in particular there is an interview I have just listened to that I really liked. It is on a podcast called Politically Re-Active. To get to it you’ll need to navigate to Season 2, Episode 1, as there are not direct links.

Janet covers a lot of ground in the interview, but I was particularly struck by her description of how growing up trans in Hawaii was very different from doing so in the mainland USA because Hawaii has a thriving native trans culture that European missionaries failed to wipe out. Her thoughts on the Women’s March on Washington, and on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s comments about trans people, are also very illuminating.

Catch-Up

~ Cheryl

As people on social media may have noticed, I have been traveling a lot of late. To add to that, I had no wifi in my hotel room in Germany, so I was online a lot less than usual for a convention. Consequently catch-up is required. I owe you folks a post on the Eurocon, and I still owe you one about the British Museum’s LGBT History Trail. I’ll be at home for a few days, so hopefully I can get those done. In the meantime you’ll get some quick posts just so you don’t forget me entirely.

Fringe Tonight

~ Cheryl

I’m back from the Eurocon in Dortmund and have much to report, but I have to dash off to Exeter for work today. This evening I will be hosting BristolCon Fringe, featuring Peter Newman and Kate Coe. Full details here. See some of you then.

Feminist SF Book Launch in Bristol

~ Cheryl

By Thursday evening, assuming all goes well, I will be in Dortmund. However, the lucky Bristol people can go to the launch of a new YA science fiction book at Waterstones. Virginia Bergin’s Who Runs the World? is one of those post-apocalypse things. Here’s the blurb:

Sixty years after a virus has wiped out almost all the men on the planet, things are pretty much just as you would imagine a world run by women might be: war has ended; greed is not tolerated; the ecological needs of the planet are always put first. In two generations, the female population has grieved, pulled together and moved on, and life really is pretty good – if you’re a girl.

It’s not so great if you’re a boy, but fourteen-year- old River wouldn’t know that. Until she met Mason, she thought they were basically extinct.

Why yes, I have suggested that the rest of the Tiptree jury reads this one. How did you guess?

If you can’t make that event, Virigina will be one of our guests at Fringe in July.

Monthly Hugs Launch Party

~ Cheryl

There are plenty of things I could be doing in Bristol this evening, and an Amanda Palmer concert in London, but instead I will be packing to go to Eurocon. One of the things I am not attending is the Monthly Hugs Launch Party being run by the lovely people at No More Taboo. Monthly Hugs is a new, fun and innovative way to tackle period poverty by making that time of the month something people will look forward to on account of the box of goodies that will be arriving. It is a fabulous initiative and if you’d like to know more, or help the project, there is a crowdfunding thing here.

Historical Fiction at the Zoo

~ Cheryl

As a kid I was addicted to the Animal Magic show on children’s BBC, fronted by Johnny Morris. As the older readers among you may remember, it was set in Bristol Zoo. Little did I imagine that I would one day end up being on display in the zoo myself.

No, don’t worry, this is nothing to do with my having cat genes. Nor do I expect to be put in a cage. Rather I will be speaking at Creative Histories, a conference on the intersection of history and fiction. My paper is going to be on “Challenging Colonialism through Steampunk”. Also on the programme is my OutStories colleague, Andy Foyle, who will be talking about telling LGBT history through maps.

The conference is at the end of July (and I’ll be going straight from there down to Brighton for Trans Pride – yes, I know, I’m mad). I’m looking forward to it. If anyone has any recommendations for anti-colonialist steampunk besides Everfair, Buffalo Soldier and Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion, please let me know.

Mad Week

~ Cheryl

Yeah, I know, I have been quiet for a while. Things have been busy.

I left you folks on Wednesday last week after having done a radio show. On Thursday morning I did training for a bunch of PHSE teachers in Bristol, then got on a train for London.

I accidentally ran into Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer on Thursday evening, which was lovely, but my main purpose for being there was to spend Friday at the Stonewall offices being trained to do role model events at schools. It was a lot of fun, and I met some really great people, all of whom will be fabulous role models.

After the training I spent a couple of hours in the British Museum checking out their LGBT History exhibit. There is some good material in there, but it could be a lot better. When I get time I will do a proper post about it. Then I spent a whole lot of money in Forbidden Planet, as one does.

I was up early on Saturday and off down to Egham where I was speaking at a conference on Rethinking Gender at Royal Holloway. I got to meet Justin Bengry, the mastermind behind the Notches blog. People seemed entertained by my tales of queer Romans, even the Italians. Then it was back home.

On Sunday I was in Bristol for Borderless, a one-day event put on by the feminist cooperative, See It From Her, which exists to improve the ways that women and non-binary people are portrayed in the media. I got to chair a panel on Identity, which had some amazing participants.

It would have been nice to get home in time for the Canadian Grand Prix and collapse in front of that, but instead I got home rather later and fell asleep.

June is going to be like that a lot. I know, it is entirely my own fault.

Election Tomorrow

~ Cheryl

I’m doing training in Bristol tomorrow morning and traveling to London in the afternoon for a couple of events on Thursday and Friday. That means I’ll be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to get to the polling station to vote.

My constituency is about as dark blue as it gets. The results last time around were:

  • 1st – UKIP wannabe
  • 2nd – Official UKIP
  • 3rd – Labour
  • 4th – LibDems
  • 5th – Greens

Ordinarily in such circumstances I’d be voting Green to get their share of the national vote up. This time, however, I’ll be voting Labour for the first time in my life. Not only is Laura Pictor the only woman on the ballot (and therefore the candidate of choice for WEP members), she’s also the candidate with the best chance of depriving the Tories of a seat. I’m not a Socialist, and there are Conservative MPs that I have a lot of time for, but their current leader not only doesn’t believe in human rights, she has staked her entire campaign on a promise to repeal human rights legislation. Not to mention the whole disaster of her relations with Europe, her sucking up to Trump, the selling off of the NHS… Need I go on?

Elsewhere I’d like to wish the very best of luck to Helen Belcher (LibDem), Sophie Cook (Labour) and Aimee Challenor (Green) who are trying hard to get a trans person into Parliament. Good luck also to Molly Scott Cato, Thangam Debbonaire and Stephen Williams in Bristol West. I’m so sorry that two of you have to lose.

And finally a huge cheer and masses of luck to Sophie Walker, Nimco Ali, Harini Iyengar, Sharon Lovell, Sally Carr, Celine Thomas and Kirstein Rummery who are the first ever parliamentary candidates for the Women’s Equality Party. You are making history, ladies.

Today on Ujima – Dinosaurs, Afrofuturism, Psychology & Feminism

~ Cheryl

It was radio day again today. I think I had a great bunch of guests on Women’s Outlook. Hopefully you do too.

We began with DB Redfern from the Bristol Museums Service telling us all about the fabulous new dinosaur exhibit they have open this summer. Actually it is not strictly a dinosaur thing, because the star attraction, Doris the Pliosaurus, was a sea dweller. She might have eaten dinosaurs, though. Anyway, she was a magnificent monster: as long as a bus with teeth the size of bananas. Doris would have eaten great white sharks as snacks. DB and I had a great discussion, covering important topics such as dinosaur poop and whether Nessie exists. Kids of all ages will love this one.

After the news I was joined by Zahra Ash-Harper and Edson Burton to discuss the Afrofuturism event, Afrometropolis, that I attended a couple of weeks ago. We had a great chat about what Aforfuturism, and an African-centered future, might mean. I got in a plug for Worldcon 75, Nalo and Karen. I do hope we get more events like this in Bristol.

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

For the second hour I was joined my a new friend, Clare Mehta, who is a psychology professor from Boston. She’s doing some really interesting work on human ideas of gender and how they are affected by social settings. This all harks back to some of the things that Cordelia Fine was talking about in Testosterone Rex. Fascinatingly, your social environment, and the sort of things that you are doing, can affect your hormone levels. And yes, women do have testosterone in their bodies, and men have estrogen.

Also in that segment I had a pre-recorded interview with Nimco Ali that I did when she was in town doing a talk on the campaign to end Female Genital Mutilation. One of the things she talks about in the interview is having to leave Bristol because she was getting death threats. Ironically today on Twitter she was talking about getting death threats for standing as a Women’s Equality Party candidate. Hopefully once the election is over I can catch up with her again and talk about her experiences as a candidate.

To go with the interview I played the wonderful song, “My Clitoris”, produced by a local charity. I had to check the OfCom regulations carefully for that, but apparently it is perfectly OK to say “vagina” and “clitoris” on the radio. Thank goodness for that, because if we can’t talk openly about this stuff then we are never going to put an end to FGM.

My final guests were Byrony and Liza from See It From Her, a wonderful new group that exists to promote women and non-binary people in the media. They are putting on a one-day event called Borderless on Sunday, and it is sort of a Women’s Outlook co-production because both Yaz and I are on the programme chairing panels. Yaz is doing the one on racism, and I’m doing the one on identity. It is a free event, but you do need to book via Eventbrite so that they can keep an eye on the numbers. Even if you are not interested in what Yaz and I are doing, do come anyway because food is being provided by Kalpna’s Woolf’s amazing 91 Ways project. There’s lots of other stuff too. The full programme is on the Eventbrite page.

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

The playlist for today’s show was as follows:

  • Whitney Houston – Love will save the day
  • George Clinton – Walk the Dinosaur
  • Janelle Monae – Dance Apocalyptic
  • Sun Ra – Blues at Midnight
  • Integrate – My Clitoris
  • Michael Jackson – Human Nature
  • Meet Your Feet – World Party
  • O Jays – Love Train

And because the video is so good (and we had to cut the song a little short) here is the You Tube version of “My Clitoris”.

In The Papers

~ Cheryl

The nice people at Bristol 24/7 have a new featuring up and running in which they interview interesting people who have a connection to the city. This week said “interesting” person is me. You can find the article here.

Obviously I’m very grateful to Caragh and the rest of the B24/7 for this. Caragh’s job at the paper is community outreach, so I’m expecting to be working a lot more with her in the coming months, both on LGBT issues and through Ujima. (For the benefit on non-Celtic readers, her name is pronounced “Kara”, like Supergirl.)

Normally I try to go easy on the egoboo stuff here, but I’d be grateful if the article got a lot of traffic because that will help make the case for B24/7 having more LGBT+ content.

Accidental Birds of Prey

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

On my way home from Hay I chanced upon some signs directing me to the International Centre for Birds of Prey. Well, you have to stop, don’t you. And I’m delighted that I did. There was no wedgie, of course, so the eagles looked a little small to me, but there were lots of splendid birds on display, including Moccas the condor who has her own Twitter feed.

There are, of course, live flying displays. The one I sat in on lasted about 45 minutes, though they can run longer if the birds decide they want more time on the wing. I got to see a variety of birds including an eagle, a burrowing owl, a peregrine and some harris hawks.

The staff know their stuff. I learned quite a lot about the birds. One of the more interesting bits of information is that a peregrine and a harris hawk are about the same weight. The hawk looks much bigger, but the peregrine is solid muscle with tiny wings built for diving at speed. The hawk has much bigger wings designed to allow it to turn on a sixpence so that it can hunt the insects that it preys on. While a peregrine is an awesome sight, I must admit a certain fondness for a bird that might eat mosquitoes by the score.

A Morning in Hereford

~ Cheryl

One of the things I had planned to do on my trip to Hay was take some time out on the way home to see more of Hereford. It is a lovely little city with a whole heap of history. In particular, it has one of the best Cathedrals in the country. But to start with I’d like to put in a recommendation for the place where I stayed: No. 21. Here are some photos.

It was very comfortable, the staff were very friendly, the breakfast was good, and it was cheap. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Meanwhile, out in the city, there is plenty of olde Englande stuff to keep the tourist happy. The bull is, of course, nothing to do with stock markets, and everything to do with Hereford’s most famous product.

Finally we get to the cathedral itself, which is quite spectacular regardless of what it contains. If you are there in the summer, try to make it at lunch time on a Tuesday as they have a weekly series of organ recitals. Sadly I could not stay, but I caught some of the rehearsals which were amazing.

The building, however, pales into insignificance compared to what it contains. First up, there is the Mappa Mundi, the largest mediaeval map in existence.

Alongside the map itself there was an exhibition of art inspired by the map. Grayson Perry was the best known artist featured, but I preferred the work of Genevieve Belgard who picked up on some of the fabulous creatures shown inhabiting remote parts of the world. All of these creatures are, of course, featured in Cat Valente’s Prester John trilogy.

Alongside the map, the cathedral has a surviving mediaeval chained library, a relic of times when books were so valuable that you had to chain them up to make sure no one stole them. The library has 16th century copies of works by famous classical authors as well as religious texts. The exhibition is also an excuse to talk about how mediaeval books were made.

May Fringe – Emma Newman & Piotr Åšwietlik

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Huzzah, we are up to date!

Our first reader for May was local author and sometime radio show host, Piotr Åšwietlik. He read part of a science fiction story set in Pennsylvania (but not that Pennsylvania).

Our headline guest for May was Emma Newman. She read the first chapter of her novel, After Atlas, which is a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. This introduces us to the main character in the novel, Carlos Moreno. He is a detective, but also the son one of the passengers on the Atlas, the colony ship from Planetfall. This story takes place many years after the Atlas left Earth.

When introducing Emma, I mentioned some top secret news that I couldn’t divulge at the time. I can now reveal that Emma will be the Guest of Honour at Ã…con 9 in Flnland next year. The piece I wrote about Emma can be found here.

Finally for May, Piotr and Emma are put to the question. Emma and I go off on a bit of a feminist rant and we more than earn our explicit tag on iTunes. Piotr explains where Pennsylvania is. There is some discussion of tea, jeopardy and mild peril.

Tom cheekily asks a question that Emma used on a guest during a recent Tea & Jeopardy episode: what science fiction trope would the panel most like to see the back of, and which one would they be happy to see more of?

Peter Newman reveals what he will be reading when he headlines Fringe in June.

The full schedule for the rest of 2017 is now fixed. You can find it here. And with any luck we’ll now have each month’s podcasts up shortly after the event.

Mother of Invention

~ Cheryl

Nope, this is nothing to do with Frank Zappa. It is an anthology from Twelfth Planet which is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter. The theme is that it will feature diverse, challenging stories about gender as it relates to the creation of artificial intelligence and robotics. It will be edited by Tansy Rayner Roberts & Rivqa Rafael, and will include stories by Jo Anderton, John Chu, Kameron Hurley, Rosaleen Love, Sandra McDonald, Seanan McGuire, E.C. Myers, Justina Robson, Nisi Shawl, Cat Sparks, Bogi Takács & Kaaron Warren. There will be on open submission period too. I have a story I want to write for it, but I doubt that I’ll have time to actually write it and the thought of being in that sort of company is frankly terrifying.

Just back it, OK? It’s gonna be awesome.

Neil Gaiman, Stephen Fry & Chris Riddell do Mythology

~ Cheryl


Yesterday at the Hay Literary Festival Neil Gaiman and Stephen Fry did an event about mythology. Neil talked about his hugely successful Norse Mythology book, and Stephen about a forthcoming book on Greek Myths. As a special bonus, Chris Riddell sketched live during the event. The 1700 audience (which included Tony Robinson) was enthralled.

Neil read the story of how Fenrir Wolf was chained by the gods, and Tyr lost his hand. Stephen read the story of how King Midas got ass’s ears. I’m assuming that you are familiar with both of these.

What you might not know is that the legendary Midas was said to be king of Gordium, the same city where, years later, Alexander the Great cut a great knot. Gordium is in Phyrgia in central Turkey, which is also the home province of Cybele.

At the end of the event Amanda read Neil’s poem, “The Mushroom Hunters”, which is about how women invented science. This was apparently a request from Stephen who had seen the original reading on Brainpickings.

Neil did a four hour signing after the event, which meant that he missed Amanda’s concert. I went to the gig, which was great. More of that another time. After Amanda had finished, I managed to catch up with Neil who was finally getting time off to eat. As we were chatting, Chris came up with his stack of sketches from the talk. I asked if I could photograph them. The light wasn’t great, and all I had was my phone, but if you’d like to see the sketches you can find them all here.

Welcome to Afrometropolis

~ Cheryl

Last night I was at The Arnolfini for an event curated by my friend, Edson Burton. Afrometroplis was a multi-media experience inspired by Afrofuturism. The idea was to create a futuristic and funkadelic city state inspired by African culture. I tried hard not to think of Rosewater, because I’m not sure that I trust Tade’s aliens.

There was a lot of stuff going on, including a preview of a short film by Ytasha Womack and a very impressive jam session. You can learn more of what went on from the website.

I spent much of the evening in the Manifesto Development session. The idea was to come up with a political manifesto for life in Afrometropolis, and in theory we were supposed to be inspired by writers such as Octavia Butler. I was rather hoping to have a discussion of Earthseed, the religion that Butler developed for the Parable books. As it turned out, the rest of the people there were more interested in discussing what African identity meant, and whether Bristol was a successful multi-cultural city, which is perfectly fine. I’m hoping I can lure Zahra Ash-Harper onto my radio show to talk about how the discussion went (and about our shared love of Black Panther).

My thanks to Edson and the team at Come The Revolution for a great evening. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay for the party.