Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

I am delighted to announce that I will have an essay in Gender identity and sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction: do we have a problem?, forthcoming from Luna Press later this year. There are 10 authors altogether in the book, the full list being available via ( Read more... )

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Today is the international Trans Day of Visibility. I’m spending the day in London at a Trans*Code hackathon, kindly hosted at the offices of CapGemini (whom I used to work for many decades ago). I’ve spent the day working on an app for the Twilight People project. This is ( Read more... )

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Some of the talks from the conference I attended in Barcelona in February have been put online. The full playlist is here (including one on Nefertiti, Egypt fans), but I just want to highlight one here because it demonstrates that trans and intersex issues are being taken ( Read more... )

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.


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Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

My colleague Russell Thomas has asked me to participate in a series of lunchtime discussions that he is running at his Bristol cafe, Ground and Burst. I’m doing one this Friday (17th), the title of which will be Gender Identity around the World. Basically I’m going to be ( Read more... )

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Don’t blame me for that title, it is what the conference I spent the weekend at was called. It was, of course, the annual LGBT History academic conference. This year it took place in Liverpool. I had a great time, despite the ongoing disaster at Lime Street station which ( Read more... )

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

I’m way too busy to spend a lot of time deconstructing the latest furore over the realness or lack thereof of trans women. However, I did want to post part of the speech I made at the Women’s Equality Party event in Bristol a week ago. Here you go:

Related to that, I want to ( Read more... )

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

One of the events in LGBT History Month that I am sad I was unable to attend is CN Lester’s lecture at Oxford University. Like me, CN takes a keen interest in trans history, and they have made a particular study of the later 19th and early 20th centuries. I’m expecting to ( Read more... )

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

One of the issues that cropped up during this week’s insane event schedule is the issue of brain sex and the idea that being trans has been proved to be “real” because trans women have been found to have “female brains”. I do a lot of trans awareness training these days, and ( Read more... )

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

A couple of the talks in Bournemouth yesterday required people to talk about the “sex” of trans people, as “discovered” after their death. This tends to get people (including me sometimes) into trouble over lack of clarity, because sex too is something of a social construct ( Read more... )