Solstice Shopping

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Uffington Hare - Dru Marland
This morning I popped over to Bradford-on-Avon where the canal folk were holding a floating Christmas market. (It will still be on tomorrow if you are local and want to go.) I did so because the Daily Malice‘s War on Non-Christians has made it almost impossible to buy a solstice card in a high street shop. If I want cards to send to friends and family I have to get them from small businesses. Thankfully I have the fabulous Dru Marland to rely on. The above is the card I used last year. If you like it, and want to guess which card I’m using this year, you can see more at Dru’s Etsy shop.

I also discovered SkyRavenWolf, on whose products I could spend an absolute fortune.

At the House of The Speaker

~ Cheryl

speakershouse
Every year Schools Out runs a launch event for the following year’s LGBT History Month festivities. The actual month is in February, but the launch event usually happens in November. This year, because 2017 will mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalization of male homosexuality in the UK, the launch event was held in Parliament. I was one of a small group of people lucky enough to have an invitation to an exclusive soiree in the House of the Speaker, which is inside the Palace of Westminster.

It really is the Speaker’s house, by the way. He does live there, though he wasn’t able to be in attendance that evening. As you can see from the photos, it is a rather splendid residence.

It was lovely to catch up with Stuart Milk and have a brief chat with him about the situation in the USA. I have no doubt that he and his Foundation will be doing everything they can to protect LGBT+ Americans from Trump, Pence and their ilk. I also got to have a brief chat with Ben Howlett, the MP for Bath, who told me of his plans to speak in the trans equality debate the next day.

A special hour out is due to my pal Adam Lowe who looked absolutely stunning for the evening and read a great poem. Adam tells me that he’ll shortly be shopping around a couple of science fiction novels. I know his short stuff is great and I’m looking forward to seeing what he produces in the longer form.

fireplace
Photo by Janna Funke

The only sour note of the evening came from Anna Eagle who had the cheek to try to claim that all of the LGBT+ rights legislation passed by the Blair & Brown governments were Labour initiatives. The Gender Recognition Act was only passed after years of fighting the government in the courts, and finally getting a European court ruling in our favor. Thankfully Christine Burns, who got an OBE for her part in getting the Act passed, got to make a speech later in the evening, and she politely but firmly put the record straight.

Christine was also very candid about the current political landscape. She, like Stuart, noted how all LGBT+ rights are currently under threat in the USA, and noted that the same could happen here. “None of my life’s work is safe”, she said.

Probably the best speech of the night was made by Lord Michael Cashman. As well as being a Labour Peer and former Member of the European Parliament, he’s also an actor. He’s been in Doctor Who, but he’s most famous for his time in Eastenders during which he was one half of the first gay kiss on British television. He talked about the importance of the Human Rights Act, and the fact that human rights are intended to be universal. What little we know of the Tories’ oft-aborted attempts to replace the HRA with a “British Bill of Rights” suggests that those replacement rights will not be universal, and in some circumstances will only apply to British people. Trump’s threat to revoke the citizenship of anyone who burns the US flag is a reminder of where such selective rights can lead us.

lordcashman
Me with Lord Cashman

It was a splendid evening, and many thanks to Schools Out for the invitation. It’s a shame that not all of the LGBT History Month hub organizers could be there. (Missed you, Jen and Kit.) However, I did get to meet some lovely people from London museums. That led to my visit to the V&A which I wrote about yesterday, and may lead to things happening in Greenwich in the near future.

mirrorme
I loved this mirror, though judging from the non-Euclidian angles in the photo I may have consumed too much of The Speaker’s nice red wine by the time I took it.

Records and Rebels at the V&A

~ Cheryl

Thanks to meeting some lovely people at the Speaker’s House in Parliament on Wednesday night (more of that some other time) I got to spend yesterday afternoon as a guest at the Victoria & Albert Museum. I was there to see a new exhibition titled, “You Say You Want a Revolution: Records and Rebels 1966-1970”. It really was a remarkable period in Western history. It saw the flower power movement and anti-war activism, the start of the gay rights movement and the black power movement, the burgeoning of second wave feminism, the birth of the environmentalist movement and the first Moon landing. We got a lot wrong back then, primarily because we didn’t talk to each other, but there was much right too.

As the V&A recognizes, music was key to much of what went on. Pop music was a relatively new thing, and musicians were at the forefront of many of the political movements. If you take the headphones around the exhibition you get treated to some of the finest anthems of the era along the way. Cleverly the V&A is selling an album based on the exhibition. It has no Beatles, because they are still very protective of their output, but most of the other important songs are there.

Obviously the exhibition very much caters to people like me who were kids or teenagers at the time. Nevertheless I think it is hugely important right now. We need to recapture that spirit of revolution, and this time we need to do it right.

A Good Start to the Month

~ Cheryl

Yesterday was quite spectacular.

First up we had the first ever debate on trans rights in the UK Parliament. (The debates on the Gender Recognition Act were limited solely to legal recognition, and were forced on an unwilling government by the European Court.) It was a huge thrill to be able to be in the public gallery of the House of Commons to watch the debate unfold. I’ll have more to say about that when I have more time, but it was a very special day. I note also that the majority of the speakers in the debate were women. Given how badly outnumbered we are in Parliament, that is quite interesting.

While I was in Parliament I heard from Juliet McKenna that the EU has thrown in the towel over VAT on digital products. Juliet has more details here, but the short version is that at some point in the next year or two digital trading by micro-businesses will be back to normal. It is worth noting that this is an issue that primarily affected women-owned and women-run businesses, and the work to sort it out was done almost entirely by women.

Finally we had the Richard Park by election. On the one hand we had a male candidate backed by the Tories and UKIP who was pro-Brexit and had run a vile campaign in trying to become Mayor of London. On the other we had a female candidate who was anti-Brexit and anti-hate. She was a LibDem but was backed by the Greens and WEP. The woman won.

If only all days could be like that. (And apologies to Farah and Edward whom I know had a very stressful day.)

On The Road Again

~ Cheryl

Well, guess who wasn’t home for very long?

I headed off to London this morning, the main reason for which was that it is time for me to be declared sane again. The NHS, bless them, are convinced that trans people are constantly on the verge of suffering massive regret and begging to be changed back to their “real” gender. Fat chance. But I need to go through the hoops to get the medication that I need. It is also good to have regular blood tests to make sure my estrogen levels are OK. I have to pay for all of this privately.

Anyway, it seems that I am still sane and female, so I am spending the night in Camden. I have tomorrow to see people in London, and in the evening I am going to the launch party for next year’s LGBT History Month. This year it is in a little place called the Palace of Westminster. I’ve not been there before so I thought I should check it out. If it is nice I’ll take a few pictures.

Reporting In

~ Cheryl

OK, so I was planning to write up the whole WEP Conference thing yesterday. But then I got invited out for a night on the town in Manchester and my brain was so fried that comedy and booze seemed infinitely preferable to thinking.

Huge thanks therefore to Hazel for the invitation, to Tracy for being great company, and to all of the lovely Mancunians we ended up hanging out with, including Andrew (Happy Birthday!), Rob, Mel and Hannah. Apologies for forgetting lots of names. And a special shout out to Colin, the engineer at the Frog and Bucket, whose taste is music is superb.

Should you happen to be in Manchester on a Sunday night do check to see if Laughing Cows has a gig scheduled at the Frog and Bucket. It is an all-woman comedy show and well worth checking out. If you are very lucky then Bethany Black might be on. And frankly anything that Hazel organizes is probably worth a visit.

I made a start on writing up the WEP thing on the train on the way home. I am by no means finished yet. Tomorrow I am off to London for a few days. Normal service may be resumed by the weekend.

WEP Conference – Day 2

~ Cheryl

That was a long, and in many ways very inspiring day. Also it is past midnight, I’ve just got in, and I have had rather a lot of prosecco. So you are just going to have to wait until tomorrow for a report. Sorry.

WEP Conference – Day 1

~ Cheryl

I was up bright and early this morning to begin my journey Up North. Team WEP Bath, all six of us, were taking the train up to Manchester. The journey was blessedly uneventful, despite a tree on the track near Plymouth earlier in the morning, and there was plenty of room on the train.

The conference venue is the Victoria Warehouse in Trafford Park. There’s a big sports stadium just down the road and lots of things are painted red. I gather that some sort of soccerball thing is happening on Sunday evening, but right now the area is given over entirely to a bunch of feisty feminists.

The Warehouse has a brickwork and steel girder aesthetic, by which I mean that the bare minimum of renovation has been done. It works well enough as a venue, however, and parts of it have a pleasantly steampunk feel to them. The street food is good and reasonably priced. The bar is crap and over-priced. As conference venues go, that’s not bad.

The main event of the day was the opening ceremonies in the evening. There were speeches from various people who would be Party Grandees if we had been a party long enough for anyone to become Grand. Sandi Toksvig, of course, will never be Grand, she’s far too irreverent for that. However, there are definite advantages to having a senior party member who is also an accomplished comedian used to doing stand-up shows.

Having said that, my favorite performance of the evening was from poet, Justina Kehinde. She made an impassioned plea for exactly the sort of intersectional feminism that I want to see from WEP. The other speeches mostly backed her up, though they all failed to use the word intersectionality.

After the official speeches the party management opened up the floor to contributions. I was interested to see how this went, and a little worried that people might try to talk back against the inclusive nature of the opening speeches. The first speaker was anti sex work, which worried me further. Thankfully most of the other people who got up were just so happy to be there, and to have a political party that addressed their concerns, that they were not interested in trying to steer policy.

Team Bath was very proud of Emily, our young social media guru, who got up and talked about the pressure put on young women in social life at universities.

I didn’t have a lot to do today, other than say hi to various people. I found the Bristol branch, who have 19 members here. I also caught up with Stella Duffy whom I haven’t seen in ages. Sadly we are scheduled against each other tomorrow. Jack Munroe doesn’t appear to be here yet, but I am very much looking forward to their talk tomorrow.

The membership is very white, but not exclusively so. There were two women of colour officially on platform today, and at least three more who spoke in the open mic. There is a nice mix of ages, and of gender presentations. There are even a few men, because party membership is open to everyone.

Tomorrow I have workshops to deliver, so if you’ll excuse me I am going to rehearse once more.

In Which I Do Politics

~ Cheryl

I’m going to be offline a lot over the next few days because I going to Manchester for the weekend. There I will be attending the first ever national conference of the Women’s Equality Party. In addition to participating in the main work of the conference — policy debates — I am also giving some workshops. WEP currently has trans-friendly policies, but they have come under sustained attack from the usual suspects who want them the denounce trans women. Hopefully I can do something about that. More generally I hope I can help WEP stay a party for women, and not become a party that is just for well-to-do middle class cis straight white women who live in London.

Along the way I should get to meet Jack Munroe, who seems a lovely person. There will be several more well-known people there too. I’m hoping a few of them turn up to my workshops, because some of them need to.

I have, of course, taken a good look at the Standing Orders for conduct of party business, and am once again struck by how good WSFS is at this sort of thing.

Thunderbirds, the Board Game

~ Cheryl

Last night a bunch of reprobates – Cavan Scott, Jonathan L Howard, Stark Holborn and myself, descended upon the Chance and Counters board game cafe in Bristol. For our entertainment for the evening we chose the Thunderbirds game, mainly because Jonathan has been playing it a lot and therefore we had someone who knew the rules well. I was pleased about this because I had backed the Kickstarter and thus own the game, but haven’t had a chance to play it yet.

Thunderbirds was designed by Matt Leacock, who is best known for Pandemic. Like Pandemic, and Forbidden Island which Kevin and I got a lot of enjoyment out of on the train to Barcelona, it is a collaborative game. That means that the players work together to defeat the game scenario. Either everyone wins, or everyone loses.

Obviously these things have to be fairly difficult so that you don’t win all of the time. We played on the lowest difficulty setting, and we lost all four games we played. A lot of that seemed to be down to luck. It’s not like any of us are novices at board games, and Jonathan has a lot of experience with this one, though we did consume a pint or two each in the course of the evening which might have hindered us. (The cafe has an interesting selection of craft beers – I tried Wiper & True’s Plum Pudding Porter, which is rather nice.)

The game proceeds with a succession of disasters unfolding around the world. The players, as members of International Rescue, have to mount rescue operations. Successful rescues mean that you acquire abilities that help with future rescues and also allow you to defeat the machinations of the evil Hood. The most obvious ways to lose are to be overwhelmed by disasters that you can’t fix, or you fail to foil one of the Hood’s plans in time.

Luck comes into the game in three main ways. The mix of disasters you are faced with is random, and you may not have the right characters and equipment in the right places to mount rescues in time. A successful rescue requires a dice roll, and while you can weight the odds in your favor you can still fail. The Hood’s plans also proceed at random, based both on card draws and dice rolls.

Each player takes the part of one of the characters from the TV series, though there is no requirement that they must use use the correct iconic vehicle. Obviously each character is different, and some are more fun to play than others. John has some very useful special powers, but to use them he has to stay stuck in space on Thunderbird 5 most of the time. Cav spent a lot of time playing Lady Penelope, and sadly Penny seems fairly useless as character. The basic game does not allow you to play Brains, Tin-Tin or Parker, but there is an expansion set which adds them to the mix.

Fans of the TV series will be interested to know that most of the disasters are based on actual TV episodes. Jonathan tells me that the designers had to add a bunch of space-based disasters in order to give Alan and John more to do.

We very much enjoyed playing the game, though based on Cav’s experience you may want to not have anyone playing Penny. I want to beat the damn game at some point, but for our next trip Stark and I want to introduce the boys to the delights of Arabian Nights. What better game for a bunch of authors to play?

Introducing #Piracity Music Week

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

What ever else you might say about pirates, I think we can all agree that they love to sing. With that in mind, I’ll be spending this week tweeting links to songs for and about pirates. Hopefully you folks will join in too. Just tweet a link to your favorite pirate song, using the #Piracity hashtag, and I’ll include it in the final round-up.

To kick things off, here is one of my favorite bands, Dreadzone, with “Captain Dread”.

Fringe Tonight

~ Cheryl

seastoneswordThe next BristolCon Fringe event will take place tonight (7:30pm, Shakespeare Tavern, as usual). The readers will be two fantasy authors currently signed to the fabulous Kristell Ink: Joel Cornah and Jessica Rydill. Their adoring editor will doubtless be there to cheer them on. I will be hosting as usual. I hope to see some of you there.

I know I am horribly behind on getting the podcasts done. We are making some changes to how Fringe is run for next year. Hopefully that will improve matters.

For Books’ Sake Does Ghost Stories

~ Cheryl

The lovely people at For Books’ Sake have announced a new anthology call, and this time it is one that us genre folks can participate in. They are looking for ghost stories (max 7,000 words) by Feb. 26th. You do have to identify as a woman to submit, and pay is minimal, but they are looking for diversity in both authors and subject matter. Further details are available here.

Book Review – Wake of Vultures

~ Cheryl

Wake of VulturesIt is sad but true that when cis people tell me they have read a really great book about a trans character they are often wrong. Cis people’s understanding of what it means to be trans is often way off base. Wake of Vultures appears to be a classic example. It was recommended to me, and the author seems to be convinced that she’s writing about a trans character. I don’t see it that way.

In one way this is sad, because the book could have been a good portrayal of someone struggling with their gender. Later books in the series may get there. I’d like that to be the case but I’m not hopeful.

Trans stuff aside, Wake of Vultures is a really fun fantasy Western that you will probably enjoy. Native Americans may find some of it uncomfortable and/or appropriative. White supremacists will doubtless see it as Politically Correct. Not belonging to either group, I’ll leave other people to make the judgement on those.

You can read my review here.

TDOR in Bristol

~ Cheryl

bristoltdor

Photo by Tom Renhard via Facebook

Bristol’s TDOR event took place on Friday evening. However, I’d like to start much earlier than that. I was in town by lunchtime because I had been invited to attend a “Corporate Strategy” event at City Hall. Like many councils across the UK, Bristol is facing a massive funding gap as central government withdraws support. The Council is limited by the government in its ability to raise revenue through taxes, so it has little choice but to cut services. Friday’s meeting was an attempt to brainstorm ideas with the voluntary sector as to how the effect of those cuts on minority groups can be minimized.

The meeting took place in the Cash Hall which is in the newly refurbished part of the building. It is on the lower ground floor as you see things from College Green, but there is street-level access at the back. The refurbishment has been very nicely done, but the thing that stood out to me was that all of the toilets in the new section are gender neutral. As far as I know, the Council has made no announcement about this. They just did it, because it seemed an obvious thing to do.

At my request, Mayor Marvin Rees opened proceedings by making mention of the Trans Day of Remembrance events taking place later in the day. It’s not perhaps the level of mayoral enthusiasm for trans support that we saw in Bath, but is good to be recognized.

There’s not much more to say about the meeting because it is very clear that the City Council is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It is very upset about what is happening, but any attempt to push back against government will only result in Bristol being treated more harshly than other major cities who would be seen as more compliant. (Ideally they should work together, but there are 10 “core cities” and I suspect that some of them have Conservative-run councils.)

At 4:30pm we had a flag raising ceremony outside City Hall. Bristol has been doing this for a few years now, but it has got much more complicated to arrange such things since the cuts forced reduction in staff levels and hours. We may have to abandon these in future and just settle for getting the flag up when staff can manage it. At least that will mean we won’t have to stand out in the cold and wet. My thanks to the Lord Mayor for standing patiently while I wittered on about the importance of the event, and to the chap from the Council’s LGBT staff group who helped do the actual flag raising (which isn’t as easy as it looks).

From there we went on the Bristol University Students’ Union, where the amazing Jamie Cross had once again secured a fabulous venue for the TDOR ceremony. Sarah Minter from LGBT Bristol once again provided food and drinks for the attendees, and also provided me with transport for which I am deeply grateful.

Special thanks are also due to a number of people who helped out massively this year. Charlie Oxborough did the work of collapsing the official document from Transgender Europe into something more manageable for printing and reading. Alfie Green helped me read the list of names of the departed. Al, a trans person from Devon who happened to be in town for the day, came and sang a lovely song. And the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence added a splash of color to the event.

We had around 75 people at the event (folks were coming and going as I was reading so it was hard to get an accurate count). The University people, and Henry and the kids from Freedom Youth, made up a large proportion of that. One person (thanks Katie!) came all the way from Portsmouth, and of course Brother Bimbo came all the way from Edinburgh.

As always at these things I want to make clear that the day is not about me. If other people want to take more of a leading role I’ll be happy to hand over to them. In particular I would love to be able to stand aside and let a trans woman of color take charge. My primary qualification for being the public face of the event is that I’m sufficiently hard-hearted to be able to stand there and read all of those names without cracking up.

Normally I try to keep the event fairly sombre, but a conversation with the Lady Mayoress of Bath on Thursday made me realize that I needed to end on a message of hope, given how worried trans people are about the potential effects of Brexit and Trump. I can’t print my speech because it was all off the cuff, but essentially what I said was this.

Back when I transitioned, in the 1990s, trans people had no civil rights. There was no Gender Recognition Act, and no Equality Act. I still transitioned, because I had to, but I had no expectation of fair treatment and my family expected me to be dead within a few years. I survived. Not because I am “brave” or “inspiring” or any of the ridiculous epithets that the media likes to label us with, but because I had friends, and because there were plenty of people who were happy to accept me for who I was. Even if May and Trump take away all of our hard-won rights, we will still have the community that we have built over the past two decades, and we will still have many friends and supporters. We need to remember that in the days to come.

TDOR in Bath

~ Cheryl

bathtdor
On Thursday I was honored to attend the first Council-sponsored Trans Day of Remembrance event in Bath. In previous years ceremonies have been held at the Metropolitan Community Church, but this is the first secular event, and the first to be officially recognized by the City Council.

The way in which the Bath event came about is very different from what happened in Bristol. When we started doing public events in Bristol it was very much a grass roots effort. It happened because of efforts by LGBT Bristol and by the Rainbow Group of LGBT staff at the City Council. We had a room in City Hall, and 18 people attended. A good proportion of them were cis – people from LGBT Bristol, the Rainbow Group and my friends from OutStories Bristol.

In Bath things came from the top. The current Mayor of Bath, Paul Crossley, is using his time in the job to promote diversity in the city. He told his staff that he wanted to hold a TDOR event, and that they should make it happen. Members of the Council’s LGBT staff group, CHaT, then worked with SPACE, the local LGBT youth group, to organize the event. Special thanks are due to Louise Murphy who did most of the work.

One of the advantages of doing official things in Bath is that you can put them in the Guildhall, a ridiculously posh building which normally only comes into its own for things like Emma Newman’s fairy ball. As you can see from the photo, we looked very official. The Council also put some money into the event, bringing Rebecca Root and Jay Stewart into town to speak at the event. They did a fine job.

On the downside, the event was run primarily by cis people and there were not that many trans people present. Inevitably in such circumstances there were a few faux pas. In particular I think that the Bath folks have learned that TDOR is a very solemn event and you can’t try to cheer it up. If you want to do a more positive thing aimed at younger trans people you need a separate Trans Awareness Week event.

Hopefully this is just the first of many Bath Council events aimed at the local trans community. They are very keen to do the right thing, and that’s usually more than half of the battle.

Yesterday on Ujima – Art, Books, Steampunk

~ Cheryl

It was a busy Women’s Outlook show on Ujima yesterday. It started with a full studio as three artists came to tell me all about this year’s North Bristol Arts Trail. SF&F readers will be most interested in the work of Lou Gray who is a set designer, costume maker and puppet maker. I’m very sad that I’ll be out of town the weekend of the Trail because I would love to see her work.

For the second segment I welcomed Rebecca Lloyd, whom some of you may remember was a World Fantasy nominee last year for her collection, Mercy and Other Stories. Her latest book is Oothngbart, which is one of those delightfully uncategorizable novels. Hopefully the interview will give you some idea of the flavor of the book. I’ll try to get a review soon, because it is a lovely story.

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

Next up were Kate and Tina, two fabulous ladies who are setting up the Bristol Steampunk Museum. They are looking for all sorts of fun steampunk things to exhibit and sell. They plan to have an online shop as well, so steampunk fans around the world will be able to order from them. The major interest from my point of view is that they also want to host readings of steampunk stories, and I happen to have an entire anthology full of them. I may end up buying some clothing and jewelry too.

Finally I had a pre-recorded interview with Tade Thompson about his newly released novel, Rosewater (which I warmly recommend) and other forthcoming work. We also discussed the newly-formed African Speculative Fiction Society, and there was brief mention of Piracity.

There’s a lot more of that Tade interview. Some of it has been badly mangled by the Internet, but I hope to be able to post a much longer version on Salon Futura in due course.

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

The playlist for yesterday’s show was as follows:

  • Get Up, Stand Up – Bob Marley
  • Expression – Salt ‘n’ Pepa
  • You Gotta Be – Des’ree
  • Working Day ‘n’ Night – Michael Jackson
  • Night Train – James Brown
  • The Ascent – Ren Stedman
  • Automatic – Pointer Sisters
  • Loving the Alien – David Bowie

I’d like to draw your attention in particular to the new Ren Stedman single. It is a charity record. All proceeds are donated to Hesten Lodge Activity & Wellbeing Centre to raise the money to build a sensory room for adults with severe learning disabilities. You can buy it for as little as £1 here.

TDoR 2016

~ Cheryl

The usual date for the Trans Day of Remembrance is November 20th. As that falls on a Sunday this year, lots of people are having their events earlier or later. I’ll be attending one in Bath this evening, and the Bristol event (which I am again hosting) will be tomorrow evening. Bristol will also have a flag raising with the Lord Mayor outside City Hall at 4:30pm tomorrow.

The usual reminders apply. TDoR was starting in by Gwendolyn Ann Smith in San Francisco 1999 following the (still unsolved) murder of Rita Hester in Boston in 1998. It is now a worldwide event. The vast majority of victims are trans women of color. This year there are 295 names on the list. That’s a record, and while we should remember that increases can occur due to better reporting the tenor of world politics suggests that things will get much worse in future. You can find the full data here.

You’ll note that one death has been recorded in the UK this time. It is Vikki Thompson, one of the trans women who took her own life last year while being held in a men’s prison. Suicides are not normally included, but presumably the folks at Transgender Europe felt that Vikki’s multiple unsuccessful attempts to get herself moved to a women’s prison amounted to culpability on the part of the prison service. I am very relieved that the Ministry of Justice has finally got around to issuing new guidelines.

Suicides of trans people are under-reported, in part because of an understandable desire not to cause further distress to families. Nevertheless they happen. There have been two in Wiltshire in the past month. In this article Fox Fisher highlights the terrible effects of the recent US election on trans youth. Back in April I met a lovely young trans woman in London. She was delighted to have a good job in IT and be able to go through transition here, because she came from a part of Europe that was much less welcoming to trans people. She took her own life the day after the Brexit vote.

It has apparently become fashionable in right wing circles to claim that all of these reports of death are lies; made-up left wing propaganda. I’m sure that you can guess what I think of people who say these things. Don’t expect me to be in any way polite to them.

Book Review – Dreadnought

~ Cheryl

dreadnoughtI suspect that I am probably a little too close to this book to be fully objective about it. A superhero novel about a trans girl, written by a trans woman? Of course I lapped it up. But it is a fun book, and it does also make some fine and sharp political points.

Dreadnought, by April Daniels, will not be published until January. I got a copy off Net Galley. I’m publishing the review now for two reasons. Firstly I needed to read the book now as I have an essay on trans-related speculative fiction due at the end of this month. Secondly it is Trans Awareness Week and I wanted something light-hearted to go along with all of the doom and gloom of the Trans Day of Remembrance.

Mention of Trans Awareness Week reminds me that The Gay YA is doing a whole series of posts on trans characters in YA this week. By fortunate coincidence the first one is by April, and she says all the things in it that I would expect her to say having written a book like Dreadnought.

In the process of writing the review I managed to do a brief history of trans characters in YA, which may also be of interest.

If, after all that, you want to read the review, you can find it here.