Idaho

...it's more than just potato, you know

It turns out that today is the International Day Against Homophobia (and sometimes possibly Transphobia but that would make it IDAHOT which doesn't sound so good)

So here is a short transcript of part of an interview conducted by Anthea Page of Dialect Radio with Toni, of the Bristol LGB Forum, at the Becoming Drusilla launch in Bristol, where she makes some very good and more widely-applicable points

A: Do you think that it's (Richard) who has the problem rather than the public? -I mean a lot of people don't worry... if a man turns into a woman... I think people are quite broad-minded about that...

T: I think some people are, but if we're honest some people will have problems and all of us, in the privacy of our own heads, have to ask "Do I have a problem with that?" -because we'd all like to believe ourselves to be liberal and open-minded but actually.... the liberalism we anoint ourselves with is just a mask... I think a lot of us are prejudiced... there is an identity which you are supposed to conform with and if you do not you are a novelty, an amusement, but not 'somebody I would like my children to hang out with', not 'someone I would invite to dinner....'

The full program can be heard here, and the interview is about 45 minutes into the show

cis and desist

ooh, what's this down here?

Every now and then, as we know, there's something written about transsexual stuff in one of the papers. This one being a case in point. Quite a good article, actually, for the Guardian; a nice change from their usual Julie Bindel silliness on the subject.

And then, sure as night follows day, there will come loads of comments. And behold, it is ordained that, on occasions like this:

someone will object to the term "cisgendered"when applied to non-trans people, saying that "man" or "woman" (but usually "woman") is all the description needed for themselves thank you very much

someone will bring up the matter of womens' loos, and say that they don't want to meet men in there. Well, quite, and thank you for bringing that to the table

someone will say "Yeh but you is bloke in frock innit"

(and then someone will give a reasoned and cogent response)

"Yeh but you is bloke in frock innit"

(and then there will be yet more attempts to help troglodyte through Trans 101)

"Yeh but you is bloke in frock innit"

....and so time passes and nothing much changes, presumably. I must admire those who fight the good fight by engaging with these types, but it's kind of vertigo making, when you think of how many millions of people, some of them even capable of some rude approximation of thought, have ready access to the internet. You could spend every waking hour battling pondlife, but I suspect that you'll just end up with soggy wellies and duckweed down your best top. Life, perhaps, is elsewhere.

"Cisgendered" is a useful word when discussing trans/not-trans matters, since trans people are frequently not merely described but defined by their transness, and in discussion you need something to describe those people who are identified by their not-transness. It does seem odd that some folk object to its use when applied to them, but I note the fact that some folk do indeed object to it. So it goes. I am not entirely happy with 'transgendered', or indeed 'transsexual', as terms, but I accept their occasional utility. It's a language thing. We use it to get ideas across.

Here's an e-mail from someone whom I met the other day. She does reporting for a radio station, and we're doing an interview sometime soon. I have anonymised her. Indeed, she has rather de-personalised me: as you can see, I apparently feature in her address book as a trans exual (sic), although we have met and she knows my name.




What's the difference between an adjective and a noun? Well..... -are you, gentle reader, a cissexual? -and how would you feel about being introduced to someone as simply "a cissexual?" -maybe it's like having, say, a wooden leg. It's something you have, but not something that defines you. Well, hopefully not.

...I was having a bit of a laugh about this with Richard. As you do. You know.

R: That makes me think you should run an anagram program on words like this - see what the exuals might be up to these days

D: I suppose as a writer you might count as a textual exual?

R: I'm just a usual exual. While you're an ex unusual.

republic of bikeland

The City of Bristol woke up one morning a while back to find that it had become a Cycling City. The sun shone brightly and on College Green the happy citizenry came together for "bike related fun", involving, as it does, face painting and lashings of Vimto, crisps and those funny little sausages on sticks. We all then linked arms and joined the Mayor, resplendent in his (or her) chains of office, in a lively bout of Community Singing to herald in the new Golden Age and....

...blah.

So anyway I was cycling down Whiteladies Road yesterday and, as is so often the case, the cars elbowed their way past me only to slow immediately into the semi-gridlock that you always get around the Clifton Down area.

I moved out to occupy a safe zone and, as the cars ahead slowed further, I swung out to the right and overtook them.

I was passing a well-dressed young woman in a little car and was a little put out to hear her shriek "Fucking bike!" (her window was open, and she was a bit loud you know). I wasn't sure if she was talking on her mobile or just raging to herself, but the former seemed likelier.

Not a nice thing to say about my lovely bicycle, I thought. Unless what she said was actually "Fucking dyke!" ...in which case, well....

So I gave her the finger and a big smile, and swung off up Cotham Hill, where I had business at the Post Office. After signalling, of course. Toujours la politesse.

There do seem to be some unhappy motorists around. Over at Bristol Traffic, another cyclist describes a bit of a barney with a White Van Man who seemed to think that driving something potentially lethal gives you right of way. Not that he'd be the first motorist to think that...

Here's a funny story from the archives: August 2006, in fact

I'm cycling up the Cheltenham Road. There's a lorry parked on the cycle lane. A bus passes me and stops level with the lorry, impeding my progress. There are road works ahead.The lights are on red.

I wait. A shower of white gravel falls on and round me.

I look round. There are four chavs in the car behind me.

I look away. The same thing happens again.

This happens a few times. Finally I see the bloke in the back behind the driver doing the throwing.

The lights change, and we move off. I swing out wide to stop them trying to get past until we're past the narrow bit of the roadworks. I then move closer to the pavement, and allow them to pass.

As they draw level, I brake hard in anticipation of something happening. The spit that they gob at me passes ahead of me. They drive on, laughing.

Further along, they've stopped at another set of lights. The one who'd done the throwing has his head leaning out of the window. He's looking ahead. Obviously he thinks I'm history.

I swing into the middle of the road and speed up. As the lights change I reach him. I smack him round the back of the head, hard.

He squeals like a piglet.

I dive through the oncoming traffic, as the shouts of abuse come at me, and disappear down a side road. They're stuck in the forward-moving traffic, and can't pursue even if they wanted to.

Five minutes later, I'm shaking.

O well, maybe they've learned not to mess with stroppy bluestockings on bicycles.

the Bristol reading

For me, Friday's reading at the Tobacco Factory in Bedminster, Bristol, was The Big Gig, as I'd been responsible for the publicity and there was no Richard around on the day. It felt a bit like the way I used to feel sailing my Mirror dinghy in the Solent; the difference between having someone else at the helm and taking the helm myself, with a dark sky and a squall heading my way. Try not to funk it and keep on sailing.

It was all right on the night. James Russell gave a very good performance of the Richard bits. And there were lots of nice people there. If you were one of them, then thank you!




photo by Chris Bertram

Becoming Drusilla - the reading, originally uploaded by Chris Bertram.

pause for breath

So what with Richard coming down with the Black Death, we had to cancel the Birmingham City Uni gig, as his presence would have been essential. We tried to change the various tickets for the various journeys that would have seen us go to Birmingham, then Bristol, then in Richard's case to Mitteleuropa. And found that the flip side of travelling on the cheap is that you can't change things cheaply.

So we got to Birmingham, then hopped onto a train to the city centre and made our way to the coach station.

"When is the next coach to Bristol?"

"Oh, you've just missed one. There isn't another till 6:30 this evening"

Damn. We sat and conferred. In the background the Tannoy was listing the various departures. We both heard "....for Paignton, calling at Bristol...."

A sharp dash to the coach. I asked the driver, "Can you take us to Bristol?"

"If yeh had a ticket ah could," he said in a very Geordie accent. "But ah'm just about to go. And ah'm no waiting."

Richard put all that rugby training to good use, dashing over to the ticket desk as I stood outside the coach trying not to look reproachful.

We made it, and the driver cheered up no end when we presented him with the tickets. Well, cheerful for a Geordie anyway. He even called me 'love' when he helped get the bag in the hold.

Home again, Richard got on with finding a Richard Substitute for the Friday reading at the Tobacco Factory. His old college friend (Richard seems to have old college friends absolutely everywhere), James Russell, who lives in Bristol, agreed to do it. James has just done a very nice book about Eric Ravilious, one of my painter heroes. And he wrote How To Turn Your Parents Green, which earned him the honour of being described by the Daily Mail as an"eco-terrorist". High praise indeed.

Richard and James confer

So all that was left to do was to drop Richard at his mum's at a secret location in the South of England, and catch up with the paperwork.

Here are some bits and pieces left over from Dublin, which seemed too good to waste.

Saint Stephens Green

Regan at the Winding Stair

...and some choice quotes:

"The aircraft is not due to land until 0740, due to the late arrival of the aircraft"

"Toilets for this flight are two, and they are situated at the rear of the aircraft"

..and my favourite of all the Dublinisms I heard. This is Y, describing a dress with a sort of bustle on it that she saw in a shop and really quite liked: "...with a fecking great bow on the arse... it's the dog's..."

"Becoming Drusilla", the Dublin reading

(this post edited 4 Aug 2019, in light of John Boyne's recent book on trans matters. See postscript below)

The essential elements for a good expedition ( I just made up this list a moment ago, and will almost certainly be changing it as the mood takes me):

• Thorough planning
• Serendipity
• The kindness of strangers
• The kindness indeed of friends
• A bit of unscheduled misfortune to liven things up
• actually, now I come to think of it, thorough planning can just get in the way, so scrap that one

Dublin Airport, Tuesday morning. The engines of the Ryanair 737-800 were still winding down, and there was a great chirping of mobile phones being switched on. Followed, in some cases, by the beeps announcing messages that were coming in.

In my case it was a text from Richard, who'd arrived in Dublin on Sunday.

He'd come down with chicken pox.

This was not a good start to the day, especially not for Richard.

He was standing there waiting outside Trinity College, when the airport bus dropped me. And so was Barbara, who was both putting us up and putting up with us. She looked a lot more cheerful than Richard. And why not?

We discussed plans over coffee.

The show had to go on, but Richard didn't want to spread his germs, and the spots were popping up and proliferating even as we watched. Something Had To Be Done.

Richard's old UEA contemporary, John Boyne, whose new book, The House Of Special Purpose, is published today, was coming along to the reading anyway. Richard phoned him.

"Have you ever had chicken pox?"

Apparently not. So John bravely agreed to read Richard's bits in the reading we had planned. He came round and we did a rehearsal. Word perfect, first time.

John gives Richard a lesson in What The Well-Dressed Writer Is Wearing

And so away we went to the Winding Stair bookshop, a lovely place on Ormond Quay, and I buried myself in my notes to try to quell the rising sense of panic and Regan opened the wine and John and Barbara went off for a coffee.

The Winding Stair bookshop, Ormond Quay, Dublin: Regan Hutchins, prop.

And the reading went really well.

photo by Laura

...and after much chatting and finishing off of the wine, we sloped off to the Stags Head, a very Dublin pub. And stayed up very late indeed.

Thank you, Barbara, John, Regan, Laura of Lady List, the nice folk from TENI, and indeed everyone who came along and made it such an enjoyable evening!

Postscript in light of John Boyne's recent publication of a book 'My Brother's Name is Jessica' and the furore over his article in the Irish Times claiming to support trans right but reject the word 'cis'...

it was really disappointing to read that article, and see John's trajectory after its publication. I haven't read his new book and have absolutely no intention of doing so, so cannot comment on any possible merit it may contain, literary or otherwise. But John's attitude, as displayed over this business, leads me to suppose that it might not be very good. I did talk about it with Richard; he said that he'd met John very shortly before John's book came out, and John never mentioned it; which, given the subject matter, seems rather surprising. 

Anyway, a sad postscript. When Richard and I collaborated on Becoming Drusilla, it was very much with the aim to represent the trans experience as truly and authentically as possible; and it is generally agreed that we succeeded. Appropriating that experience by a don't-call-me-cis man seems very much a retrograde step.

true hope is swift and flies with swallows' wings

Neither swifts nor swallows, but martins.
Illustration from Wildlife Rescue

I haven't yet seen swallows over Bristol, though we saw them in Pembrokeshire last week. But the swifts arrived a few days ago, and occasionally you can hear their screams as they zoom around the houses. I thought that it is usually the swallows who get heree first, and wondered if there is any weather lore that relates to their relative arrival times.

If in doubt, make something up. So:

Swifts before swallows
Sunny intervals with scattered showers to follow
Swallows before swifts
You'll probly get snowdrifts

Easy, this folk wisdom lark.

I am all packed up and ready to go to Dublin. Not with swallows' wings, but with those of Ryanair.