Over in the United States of America, I read, there is eager work going on to come up with a more gender-inclusive term for first year university students than "freshmen".
Now don't get me wrong, those weird genderified words are throwbacks and moving on from them is all well and good. As the saying goes, "men and women: for when people is too short and too inclusive".
But the conclusion is that the shiny new term should be "first year students". It makes me wonder two things:
First: how the frack is that not already in use?
Second: what's wrong with the genderless "freshers" as used copiously over here and how come that has - by implication - not caught on over there?
Ah well. Two nations divided by a common tongue and all that.
Wednesday, 20 December 2017
Monday, 18 December 2017
10 years on from Clegg v Huhne
Let's have a little counterfactual fun this morning. All just because ten years ago a Lib Dem party leadership contest came to an end. It was very close:
Clegg had been seen as the front runner, with more support amongst the MPs and perhaps a bit because Huhne was defeated in the previous leadership contest. Huhne fought a bold campaign though, and nearly stopped the heir apparent to the top job. What if it had gone the other way?
The usual mark against Huhne is the speeding ticket farrago. Putting the morality of the incident to one side, it only ever became public knowledge as a result of his marital breakup.I imagine that in the party leader role Huhne would have felt more pressure to keep his marriage together and might have had less time for other relationships, so I tend to think that a swing of 256 votes would have seen him never face the driving related prosecution.
It's plausible that Huhne wouldn't have had quite the Cleggmania impact in the 2010 election; from that, we can assume the Lib Dem poll bounce would have been reduced. Prior to Cleggmania everything was pointing to a loss of around 30 Lib Dem seats at that election - leaving the party a mere 30 or so MPs, for which by summer 2015 the bird of liberty would have given its right wing. Most if not all of those seats would have fallen to the Tories, and so Cameron's May 2010 problem of being 19 seats short of a majority would instead have been his glorious victory with a majority of about a dozen.
We've seen where Cameron with a majority of twelve winds up. I wonder who would have become PM in the summer of 2012 after he resigned because we voted to leave the EU? The result of the referendum would be more in doubt, of course, as the chances are we'd've had a less pro-poverty Labour leader than Jeremy Corbyn.
But if we'd voted to leave, as negotiations sank into the mire we see today, Huhne would have then been the only major party leader to have fought a general election, leading a - or the - anti-Europhobe and pro-Brejoin party from a basis of 30 seats, rather than the slim team Tim Farron was at the helm of in the wake of the Brexit referendum.
How different would that 2015 election have been? Without the contraction of the Lib Dem council base we saw during the left-right coalition years, and without the ironic voter opprobrium of Labour-leaning voters who in 2015 were outraged at the Liberals for delivering Labour policies like the ATOS contract and the Bedroom Tax. With the support of student voters who had seen the Labour-Tory plan for unlimited tuition fees deliver an annual cost nearer £20k than £9k.
A greater loss of seats in 2010 could have made for a noticeably bigger parliamentary party by 2017 than in 2005.
Ah well. What might have been. But, as with any counterfactual, probably wouldn't've.
Nick Clegg 20,988
Chris Huhne 20,477
Clegg had been seen as the front runner, with more support amongst the MPs and perhaps a bit because Huhne was defeated in the previous leadership contest. Huhne fought a bold campaign though, and nearly stopped the heir apparent to the top job. What if it had gone the other way?
The usual mark against Huhne is the speeding ticket farrago. Putting the morality of the incident to one side, it only ever became public knowledge as a result of his marital breakup.I imagine that in the party leader role Huhne would have felt more pressure to keep his marriage together and might have had less time for other relationships, so I tend to think that a swing of 256 votes would have seen him never face the driving related prosecution.
It's plausible that Huhne wouldn't have had quite the Cleggmania impact in the 2010 election; from that, we can assume the Lib Dem poll bounce would have been reduced. Prior to Cleggmania everything was pointing to a loss of around 30 Lib Dem seats at that election - leaving the party a mere 30 or so MPs, for which by summer 2015 the bird of liberty would have given its right wing. Most if not all of those seats would have fallen to the Tories, and so Cameron's May 2010 problem of being 19 seats short of a majority would instead have been his glorious victory with a majority of about a dozen.
We've seen where Cameron with a majority of twelve winds up. I wonder who would have become PM in the summer of 2012 after he resigned because we voted to leave the EU? The result of the referendum would be more in doubt, of course, as the chances are we'd've had a less pro-poverty Labour leader than Jeremy Corbyn.
But if we'd voted to leave, as negotiations sank into the mire we see today, Huhne would have then been the only major party leader to have fought a general election, leading a - or the - anti-Europhobe and pro-Brejoin party from a basis of 30 seats, rather than the slim team Tim Farron was at the helm of in the wake of the Brexit referendum.
How different would that 2015 election have been? Without the contraction of the Lib Dem council base we saw during the left-right coalition years, and without the ironic voter opprobrium of Labour-leaning voters who in 2015 were outraged at the Liberals for delivering Labour policies like the ATOS contract and the Bedroom Tax. With the support of student voters who had seen the Labour-Tory plan for unlimited tuition fees deliver an annual cost nearer £20k than £9k.
A greater loss of seats in 2010 could have made for a noticeably bigger parliamentary party by 2017 than in 2005.
Ah well. What might have been. But, as with any counterfactual, probably wouldn't've.
Thursday, 7 December 2017
Bi Groups Back Then
It's 23 years ago today that I first went along to BiPhoria, then a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new meetup for bisexual people and today the oldest bi group in the country.
It wasn't my first time in bi space, but it was the first time I'd been in a bi space I hadn't had to lobby for and organise myself. And unlike those bi spaces I'd contributed to small conferences and events, this wasn't a one-off, but a regularly repeated chance to hang out with other bis. Rather than just meet people and talk here was a space to get to know people over time and make friends. So exciting!
Back then we met at the Sidney Street Lesbian & Gay Centre, whose name gives an honest reflection of where bisexuals came in the pecking order: every so often meeting rooms would be overbooked and upon arrival at the centre we'd find ourselves meeting in the kitchen. We were given use of a filing cabinet to keep bi resources in, but no-one had a key to it so what we really had was a filing cabinet we could perch a couple of cups of coffee on top of whilst talking.
It was technically not before the internet, but for all practical purposes it was. Communication was through postal mailouts, and people got in touch to know more about the group by writing letters to us at our P.O. Box address. As the person most likely to turn up first I was entrusted with knowing where the post went, collecting it, and doling it out ("we have a letter from someone wanting to know if there is a bi group near them in Liverpool, who wants to write a reply?")
But I think getting information through the post was much better for people actually coming to the meetings: rather than a vague "oh, I'll post it on the facebook group when I remember" you'd have a half-dozen flyers for whatever upcoming event might be of interest to pass around and be taken home by anyone interested.
Decision making was painfully slow. A side project, Bisexual Action Manchester, engaged the local council in debate about their policy of the non-existence of bisexuality. We'd meet one month and hammer out a letter; a month later, with a typed copy, we'd sign it and put it in the mail. Another month on we would meet and read the reply, and agree a rough wording for what we should say in turn. With no quick way of rounding people up, dates for meetings were set on a "they'll probably have written back by then" basis, and at least once we got to the bar to talk and the person with the typewriter sighed that they hadn't.
A simple discussion like that would go on for six months then and today would be over in an afternoon's worth of angry tweeting.
What's interesting is what hasn't changed. With growing bi visibility in public life, people are much less likely to write in asking: is this real, am I not the only one after all? But the moment of personal crisis when coming out to family, friends or partners still wants a human face and connection for support and advice. People who have come along for the first time to the group in 2017 describe being in a special space where you don't have to defend the existence of bisexuality or that your bi-ness is valid when you have a broad preference for this gender over those ones or are trying not to be erased into monosexuality whilst in a monogamous relationship is still just as real, the same way we did back in the 1990s.
23 years on for me, 23 and a quarter years of regular meetings for the group. The change all around us has been remarkable but BiPhoria being there is still surprisingly important.
It wasn't my first time in bi space, but it was the first time I'd been in a bi space I hadn't had to lobby for and organise myself. And unlike those bi spaces I'd contributed to small conferences and events, this wasn't a one-off, but a regularly repeated chance to hang out with other bis. Rather than just meet people and talk here was a space to get to know people over time and make friends. So exciting!
Back then we met at the Sidney Street Lesbian & Gay Centre, whose name gives an honest reflection of where bisexuals came in the pecking order: every so often meeting rooms would be overbooked and upon arrival at the centre we'd find ourselves meeting in the kitchen. We were given use of a filing cabinet to keep bi resources in, but no-one had a key to it so what we really had was a filing cabinet we could perch a couple of cups of coffee on top of whilst talking.
It was technically not before the internet, but for all practical purposes it was. Communication was through postal mailouts, and people got in touch to know more about the group by writing letters to us at our P.O. Box address. As the person most likely to turn up first I was entrusted with knowing where the post went, collecting it, and doling it out ("we have a letter from someone wanting to know if there is a bi group near them in Liverpool, who wants to write a reply?")
But I think getting information through the post was much better for people actually coming to the meetings: rather than a vague "oh, I'll post it on the facebook group when I remember" you'd have a half-dozen flyers for whatever upcoming event might be of interest to pass around and be taken home by anyone interested.
Decision making was painfully slow. A side project, Bisexual Action Manchester, engaged the local council in debate about their policy of the non-existence of bisexuality. We'd meet one month and hammer out a letter; a month later, with a typed copy, we'd sign it and put it in the mail. Another month on we would meet and read the reply, and agree a rough wording for what we should say in turn. With no quick way of rounding people up, dates for meetings were set on a "they'll probably have written back by then" basis, and at least once we got to the bar to talk and the person with the typewriter sighed that they hadn't.
A simple discussion like that would go on for six months then and today would be over in an afternoon's worth of angry tweeting.
What's interesting is what hasn't changed. With growing bi visibility in public life, people are much less likely to write in asking: is this real, am I not the only one after all? But the moment of personal crisis when coming out to family, friends or partners still wants a human face and connection for support and advice. People who have come along for the first time to the group in 2017 describe being in a special space where you don't have to defend the existence of bisexuality or that your bi-ness is valid when you have a broad preference for this gender over those ones or are trying not to be erased into monosexuality whilst in a monogamous relationship is still just as real, the same way we did back in the 1990s.
23 years on for me, 23 and a quarter years of regular meetings for the group. The change all around us has been remarkable but BiPhoria being there is still surprisingly important.
Monday, 4 December 2017
At last! Social mobility for those with ideas on social mobility.
The press consider the Prime Minister to be embarassed because all four members of her Social Mobility Commission quit over the weekend. They're not entirely wrong.
What this means and none of the papers have mentioned is that four spaces on a high-profile talking shop have just opened up and that's brilliant news for people who have hitherto been denied the opportunity to have that experience. Mobility alert! Stuck on the dole in the north with nothing to fill space on your CV for the last year? Why not put yourself forward, they've had experts in social mobility theory on the board up til now and we have had enough of experts.
It's actually fairly miserable a story, as the four have concluded that whatever policy proposals they put forward, no matter how friendly to a Tory-DUP agenda those plans might be, nothing will happen because what little talent there is in the government is already tied up in the horror of Brexit.
Social mobility has always been a bit of a red herring: a few people escaping up the socioeconomic slope doesn't change that for as long as any of us can remember the slope has been getting steeper and the summit ever further away from the bottom most of the time. As long as, to take a couple of examples, local councillors do not have to live in their wards and housing officers don't have to live in the social housing they administer, "mobility" for the few will be a fig-leaf.
What this means and none of the papers have mentioned is that four spaces on a high-profile talking shop have just opened up and that's brilliant news for people who have hitherto been denied the opportunity to have that experience. Mobility alert! Stuck on the dole in the north with nothing to fill space on your CV for the last year? Why not put yourself forward, they've had experts in social mobility theory on the board up til now and we have had enough of experts.
It's actually fairly miserable a story, as the four have concluded that whatever policy proposals they put forward, no matter how friendly to a Tory-DUP agenda those plans might be, nothing will happen because what little talent there is in the government is already tied up in the horror of Brexit.
Social mobility has always been a bit of a red herring: a few people escaping up the socioeconomic slope doesn't change that for as long as any of us can remember the slope has been getting steeper and the summit ever further away from the bottom most of the time. As long as, to take a couple of examples, local councillors do not have to live in their wards and housing officers don't have to live in the social housing they administer, "mobility" for the few will be a fig-leaf.
Thursday, 30 November 2017
United In Anger
Tomorrow is World AIDS Day.
Got a couple of hours to spare? Youtube has United In Anger here - a film I had the pleasure of watching on the big screen atthe Cornerhouse 70 Oxford Street
It's a fine documentary film about the rise and fall of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, a huge and high-impact campaign group which worked mostly in the USA in protest at state and corporate indifference to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. I remember - or I think I remember - ACT UP stalls at Flesh at the Hacienda circa 1992. They had some brilliant designers making powerful posters and other art.
It is well worth a watch though it makes me think I'd love to see something equivalent about the UK. Of course it'd be different - our government was somewhat more responsive to the issue ("Don't Die Of Ignorance") and while there was a lack of effective medication worldwide at that stage and a shared media hysteria at spending money on healthcare for people with HIV, I get the impression that the difference the NHS makes is huge. But like so many LGBT+ stories, and indeed those of other marginalised groups, the USA is not the same as the world and the tale here is a smidge different.
I get the impression that almost everything in the film is in New York or Washington DC, too, and I would quite like to have more of a flavour of what it was like elsewhere in the USA, what the other chapters of ACT UP were doing. Because as well as America not being the world, New York is not America any more than the bottom right-hand corner of our island is Britain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrAzU79PBVM
Got a couple of hours to spare? Youtube has United In Anger here - a film I had the pleasure of watching on the big screen at
It's a fine documentary film about the rise and fall of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, a huge and high-impact campaign group which worked mostly in the USA in protest at state and corporate indifference to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. I remember - or I think I remember - ACT UP stalls at Flesh at the Hacienda circa 1992. They had some brilliant designers making powerful posters and other art.
It is well worth a watch though it makes me think I'd love to see something equivalent about the UK. Of course it'd be different - our government was somewhat more responsive to the issue ("Don't Die Of Ignorance") and while there was a lack of effective medication worldwide at that stage and a shared media hysteria at spending money on healthcare for people with HIV, I get the impression that the difference the NHS makes is huge. But like so many LGBT+ stories, and indeed those of other marginalised groups, the USA is not the same as the world and the tale here is a smidge different.
I get the impression that almost everything in the film is in New York or Washington DC, too, and I would quite like to have more of a flavour of what it was like elsewhere in the USA, what the other chapters of ACT UP were doing. Because as well as America not being the world, New York is not America any more than the bottom right-hand corner of our island is Britain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrAzU79PBVM
Monday, 20 November 2017
Period poverty on Trans Day of Remembrance
It's good to see talk of 'period poverty' ahead of the budget. The suggestion is we provide free sanitary products to young people in schools.
Compared to the amount of money we are taking out of the economy through Brexit, the cost of ensuring young menstruators who need sanitary products is a piffling sum that could make a lot of lives a lot easier.
And I say menstruators rather than 'young girls' as most of the coverage of this issue does, because period poverty is also a big issue for young trans guys and many young nonbinary people. As if puberty wasn't stressful enough for everyone else it is a time of additional personal challenge if you're trans.
As a trans teen years ago, I remember how puberty feels as though your body is in open rebellion against you, doing all the wrong things and just getting worse with every passing - no pun intended - day. As a very short-sighted teenager I tried to only look in the mirror with my glasses off: I looked more like myself if things were blurry.
For trans guys, for all that it's the particular pubescent hell I didn't live through, I am sure that if you talk about having periods to anyone there's the feeling it undermines their sense of who you are as well as your own. And that can be such a hard-won recognition from others, if you have it at all.
Doubly so in the current climate where barely a day passes without a newspaper story inciting transphobic hate.
So on Transgender Day of Remembrance, please voice your support for tackling period poverty. If you aren't already doing it for the girls: do it for the boys.
Compared to the amount of money we are taking out of the economy through Brexit, the cost of ensuring young menstruators who need sanitary products is a piffling sum that could make a lot of lives a lot easier.
And I say menstruators rather than 'young girls' as most of the coverage of this issue does, because period poverty is also a big issue for young trans guys and many young nonbinary people. As if puberty wasn't stressful enough for everyone else it is a time of additional personal challenge if you're trans.
As a trans teen years ago, I remember how puberty feels as though your body is in open rebellion against you, doing all the wrong things and just getting worse with every passing - no pun intended - day. As a very short-sighted teenager I tried to only look in the mirror with my glasses off: I looked more like myself if things were blurry.
For trans guys, for all that it's the particular pubescent hell I didn't live through, I am sure that if you talk about having periods to anyone there's the feeling it undermines their sense of who you are as well as your own. And that can be such a hard-won recognition from others, if you have it at all.
Doubly so in the current climate where barely a day passes without a newspaper story inciting transphobic hate.
So on Transgender Day of Remembrance, please voice your support for tackling period poverty. If you aren't already doing it for the girls: do it for the boys.
Sunday, 17 September 2017
Off the fence: Bi Vis in the Village
I had an idea last month, and after a bit of prep work like finding out who at the council you have to get permission from to do this sort of a thing, I made a banner and - with a gaggle of people from BiPhoria - today we went and hung it on the side of the park on Canal Street.
In a city - and especially in a gay quarter - that has often struggled with the B in LGBT, hopefully this banner will last the next couple of weeks, and maybe garner a few tweets and conversations along the way.
With bars that only display in the rainbow and trans flags, I think this is the most visible we've ever managed to get things in the gay village!
In a city - and especially in a gay quarter - that has often struggled with the B in LGBT, hopefully this banner will last the next couple of weeks, and maybe garner a few tweets and conversations along the way.
With bars that only display in the rainbow and trans flags, I think this is the most visible we've ever managed to get things in the gay village!
Monday, 10 July 2017
Learning from Positive mistakes
Body Positive North West are organising a conference on older LGBT people's needs and experiences later this week. It's £75 a head and no doubt very swish. Attendees will get a "six hour CPD certificate" (me neither, but I guess it means something in the public sector or somesuch) and "an exclusive preview of the online training programme for LGBT friendly service delivery".
Hurrah for that. For a long time talk of such things was just about the LG, when there are I suspect a whole heap of unexplored questions about the experiences (not least healthwise) of older trans people. And older bi people may face very specific challenges too.
So what does this conference offer us?
- A guest speaker on older trans people's experiences
- A guest speaker on older gay men's experiences
- A guest speaker on older lesbians' experiences
- And refreshments.
You can probably guess what I've noticed is missing. Doubly so when one of the speakers has a strong track record of erasing bisexuality and marginalising bi voices that I and many other Manchester queer activists are only too familiar with.
So, I dropped the organisers a line. Hello, shiny event, seems to be no "B" though, am I missing something or do you need help with that.
After a long gap and with little time left before the event they came back to me. If I'd like to bring along a table of resources about older bi people that'd be welcome. Now, as it happens, I do have some of exactly that kind of resources. The exhibition is noted in the programme at 4pm, before the building closes at 4.30pm but after the final round of speakers at 3. But... for a start, I've run lots of stalls at conferences like this. The ghost slot at the end of the day as the people who did not leave already work out how to get to a pub is not the greatest of opportunities for engagement.
Let's consider the hierarchy that Body Positive North West are telling me they have:
- L gets a guest speaker with (it's fair to assume) travel expenses and (quite possibly) a speaker fee in the budget. A chunk of the day in the main hall will be focused on the issues you need to raise about your strand.
- G gets a guest speaker with (again, I figure) travel expenses and (quite possibly) a speaker fee in the budget. A chunk of the day in the main hall will be focused on the issues you need to raise about your strand.
- T gets a guest speaker with (we can guess) travel expenses and (quite possibly) a speaker fee in the budget. A chunk of the day in the main hall will be focused on the issues you need to raise about your strand.
- B meanwhile - the offer is: give up a day's wages, pay for your own travel and sit quietly in the corner being grateful for the chance to be there while going unmentioned at the podium, and maybe get a couple of polite nods from attendees on their way out.
On balance, I think I'm washing my hair that day.
There is a thing to reflect on there as event organisers though in how we react to equivalent challenges. I'm not pretending I've always got it right.
To me - assuming there wasn't room in either time or budget to add to the agenda - the sensible thing to do would have been to have made that offer with a clause about how the budget (perhaps) didn't stretch to coping with additional speaker costs, and looked to find a way to include the missing element in a future event such as by inviting collaboration on forming a panel on bi inclusion for the next such event.
I'll be watching for their next big bash and wading in earlier next time... Though I'd rather a slightly older bi took the lead, I'm not quite yet their magic five-oh.
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