Lokifan

I was at the trans rights protest in London today, to protest the rollback of rights the government is moving forward on (despite 70% of people in their consultation saying they supported the move FORWARD that was being suggested then) and in favour of a move forward, including various policies.

The protest was very intersectional, and had some great speakers (esp Juno Dawson, a best-selling YA author in the UK, and some others whose names I didn’t catch). I met some nice people. There were great signs.

I’m just feeling rather emotionally bruised after it, and actually had a little quite a big cry just now.

The protest itself was great, I just… I mean, I’m cis, so the chants weren’t affirming for me - and I'm not there to get affirmation but to provide it - but the stories about how awful things are still got to me. And it’s not like I didn’t know, but...

One of the chants was Protect Trans Youth. And we can’t. ( cut for feelings about that )

I did really like the bit at the protest where the speaker spoke to the closeted people out there, saying everyone there was thinking of them and wishing them safe, and we all cheered and yelled maybe the loudest we did all day. And when a separate BLM protest march passed, we all cheered and screamed and did our best to loudly support them. Solidarity forever.

Okay so I wrote an enormous version of this post, which was rambling and long because I was trying to process, and also to be fair and use quotes where I could remember them/had them via WhatsApp.

But here's the 1500-word version.

CN: anti-Semitism





So my middle sister is going out with a HOLOCAUST DENIER.

Yep.

He also believes some version of the reptilian thing.

Under the cut for more deets about how this has gone down.

( well, he thinks it's been ~exaggerated )

This latest attack has hit closer to home than any attack before. I have students at Finsbury Park mosque; I have a student living on Seven Sisters Road; it’s two tube stops from me. There were friends-of-friends on Facebook whose mums go to that mosque and hadn’t heard from them yet; an old National Union of Students LGBTQ acquaintance goes there. Today has not been my best day ever. And given that both ISIS-inspired dickheads and Islamophobic terrorists seem to love attacking during Ramadan I am worrying a bit about Eid.

I keep thinking about the imam there, Mohammed Mahmoud. He’s just thirty years old, and he heard the crash and ran out. By then a group of men had the suspect pinned down, and they were beating him - incredibly scary, but understandable, given they’d just seen him mow people down. (And specifically mow down people who had circled round an elderly man having a medical emergency, wanting to help. I don’t understand.) And the imam yelled at them - don’t hurt him, just wait for the police. Then he and a group of others stayed there, protecting this person they’d just seen gleefully murder people they knew, for what must have been an endless eight minutes until the police arrived.

A few hours earlier I’d been watching Cursed Child again with two good friends.

HARRY: She’s a murderer, and we’re not.

HERMIONE: We have to be better than them.

RON: It’s really annoying but it’s what we learnt.

I’m still crushed. Heartbroken and furious and frightened. And it’s not only about having Trump as the US President. Clinton deserves to be the American president. She’s flawed, of course - as we all are, and certainly every president has been. I have plenty of friends who consider those flaws a bigger problem than I do and I truly do understand those concerns; particularly for the more doveish I see why you wished she weren’t the nominee, although I think the idea that Sanders (or Johnson or Stein, holy fuck) would be a better president in actual reality where compromise is necessary to be fairly ludicrous. Still it doesn't make me like anyone less. But I am crushed that she won't be president. She’s fiercely intelligent, works so hard, had so many great and detailed plans of how to improve people’s lives. She’s the reason American trans people can change their gender on their passports, did you know that? She and her team never publicised it at the time - or even in the campaign afaik - because of concerns about backlash.

And it’s not just that. Hillary Clinton, genius workaholic and half of a power couple to lead a superpower, with all the money and support and every newspaper endorsement, the most qualified candidate the US has ever had, running against the least. And it still wasn’t enough. She even got more votes! By a hair, and yet… never to be a President Rodham. I am so sad.

The first woman to be US president, the most powerful person in the world - is she even born yet? Am I going to be middle-aged before that happens? Am I going to be retired?

(That’s if I can retire. The US sneezes and Europe catches a cold; between Brexit and Trump’s mad protectionism I am truly afraid of the economic changes to come.)

You voted for a fascist? Are you that fucking scared of powerful women?

I mean. Wow there’s still a bunch more to talk about on that front. (I had the most depressing first date ever on Wednesday, which was drinks with a black guy from Oklahoma. I mean the date itself was pretty fun, but wow.) But I just had to have a sad about Clinton losing (as opposed to Trump winning). I was planning the post in the back of my mind. Various celebratory gifs; Buffy smiling at the end of Chosen; and a title. The second President Clinton (President Rodham if you’re nasty.)

MP Jo Cox, who campaigned tirelessly for refugees and against modern slavery, was murdered today by a man shouting “Britain First!”

I’m just in shock.

The guy stabbed her outside her constituency surgery. For those who don’t know what that means - she was a Member of Parliament, one of our elected representatives from the higher House, and she was doing one of the regular sessions MPs have where members of their constituency can meet them and ask for help.

( a sad, shameful day for the UK )

So the letter read by the survivor of the Stanford assault case is all over my various social media feeds. Which it deserves to be; it’s important. (Although man, I cried when reading it and wince every time I see a link now; I hope the various survivors I know are tougher than me.) It sparked a couple of thoughts.

Because I’ve seen quite a few people talking about how he should be locked up forever. This reminded me of a ( realisation I had the last time I was talking about a shockingly lenient sentence given to a convicted rapist and athlete )

Here is the other post I mentioned. Apologies, it's not the most cogently written thing you'll ever see.

So the college had four teachers when I started, one of whom had started the week before me. She was charismatic and beautiful to an extent I found intimidating (not something that generally happens to me) so I was kind of relieved when she quit after two weeks to move to the south of France with her boyfriend.

A was hired to replace her. I instantly felt far more sympatico with her. She's a nice middle-class girl from the Home Counties who went to a Catholic girl's school and likes poetry and Victorian novels, and therefore has a potted biography that reads like a combination of mine and several of my closest friends'. I think A pretty much felt the same way about me, plus we really got on. That sense of a similar worldview based on similar experiences became sort of ironic just before Easter, when it came out that she's an evangelical Christian.

( Came Out being an ironic phrase )

Last night, I found out that my favourite author of all time, Diana Wynne Jones, died late on Friday.

I wanted to write her a fan letter, saying how much I loved her books and how comforting they were at uni and now it’s too late.

This makes me very sad. Particularly since, you know, shallow but... she stopped writing for years, and started again a few years ago, and it still felt like a miracle seeing a new book by her. Earwig and the Witch comes out in June; after that, no more.

This is insufferably long, but I really don't care. This is... she was seventy-six and she lived a good life by all accounts, but this is still my creative role-model and the creator of so many things I've loved. This is where I truly understand crying over Kurt Cobain.

Diana Wynne Jones’ novels - and short stories - are absolutely wonderful. There is a distinct voice, in terms of both prose and moral outlook, in every one; every character is vibrant, real, their dialogue perfectly suited to them; there is fun and flavour and interest, and on occasion those stories are absolutely devastating. The scene in The Lives of Christopher Chant where Tacroy confesses upsets me every time I read it. She used archetypes, and subverted them; what shows even more talent is when she didn’t subvert the archetypes and still made you care for the individual characters.

( Teach me to hear mermaids singing, or to keep off envy’s stinging )



Rest in peace, Diana Wynne Jones. I look forward to your very last book.

Still ill... and all this sleeping has screwed with my schedule, which is why I’m posting now! Violet’s ill too, she might have given her girlfriend glandular fever, and Miss Godfrey’s got an old-man cough going on. EVERYONE IS ILL. And the campus medical centre has a horrible receptionist – she’s one of those people I could deal with easily on a normal day, only because walking to campus had made me wanna die I was all *wibble*. Plus she snarled about how I needed the BCG (the TB vaccination) even though I have natural immunity. I was tested! My body said DEATH TO YOU, VIRUS! without me ever getting the injection! I don’t want the horrible pain-y injection, it’s totally unnecessary because I was obviously exposed to the disease in Ghana!

I did, after all, go to the hospital twice in the three weeks I spent in Ghana. Because my father has many wonderful qualities but he is also a fool who let his ten-year-old daughter have lobster curry when she wanted to try it, despite being in a land-locked African country.

So! Today is National Coming Out Day. Happy NCOD, everyone! It’s a lifelong process but a good one.

So... this is a bit weird, but something my uni’s Pride is doing is putting up people’s coming out stories around campus: We're looking for anonymous stories about your coming out, a single incident or an arcing plot. However short you'd like, but not longer than about 200 words, please. You don't have to just give us happy or funny stories, either. We'd much rather everyone be able to tell their true story than feel like their coming out isn't funny enough for public consumption.

We don’t have as many as we’d like, and the idea isn’t to have student ones specifically... so would any of you care to email/comment/pm me with your story? Obviously your confidentiality will be entirely respected – no names, no sources, no nothing. But I know I have a lot of queer people on my flist, who probably have interesting stories to share. And I would love you forever!

I’d actually like to hear your coming out story even if you don’t want it to be shared – which is more than fine. Just because I’m curious – who did you tell, how did it go, what did you come out as?

Personally? I told my best friend I was bisexual first. She responded positively at the time but got freaked out over months, and the revelation was a big part of why our friendship ended. It was like breaking up. She’s got a girlfriend now.

I have to take some pills, attempt sleep, and hope I don’t drool in my seminar tomorrow. See you soon, lovelies.

Being ill at really inappropriate times. And sleeping a lot, when you're used to being able to stay up late with very little in the way of ill effects.

/whine

Er... I should say something else so this isn't just the Grumpy Ill Post that I'll cringe at in a few days. Have a limerick.

There was a woman, name of Narcissa,
Her husband did love to kiss 'er,
The Aurors didn't aim to please,
So she kicked 'em between the knees,
They cried, and all the hexes missed 'er!

...I'm tired.