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d testosterone levels anyone whose gender presentation is insufficiently feminine black women anyone who doesn t conform to white western standards of beauty anyone who is sympathetic to trans people any celebrity of whom a random terf happens to be jealous the wife of the president of france and so on perceived sex the ehrc accepts that most people judge what sex other people are by how they look thus while a trans man might have an assigned sex of female he probably has a perceived sex of a muscled bloke with a bald head and a beard he will thus be perceived as male he cannot be allow into men s toilets because his assigned sex is female but equally he cannot be allowed into women s toilets because his perceived sex is male probably the best bet for trans men who want to go out in public is to dress as a cleaner because male cleaners are still allowed in women s toilets even though their assigned sex and perceived sex is male because the british hate talking about sex the ehrc suggests that it might be rude to ask someone their assigned sex when they enter a toilet the terfs are spitting furious about this they want chromosome tests administered to anyone who wants to pee such tests are expensive and take about a week to process personal sex which is the only one that really matters what sex do you think you are that will do nicely don t let anyone else tell you otherwise introducing small planet may 19 2026 cheryl the very wonderful and hard working rachel cordasco has started a new magazine all about speculative fiction in translation it is called small planet and you can find the first issue here pdf i am proud to report that the very first article in the magazine is about sf f in welsh as you may have guessed it is written by me though not without quite a bit of help from a couple of academics here in wales there is a lot of other great content too do please check it out and remember it in next year s hugos the åcon boarding school panel may 17 2026 cheryl at åcon i was honoured to be asked to be on a panel about boarding school novels alongside guest of honour emily tesh linnéa anglemark and moderator sari polvinen we were asked for a list of the books mentioned sari has provided them so here goes non genre thomas hughes tom brown s school days tangentially george macdonald fraser s flashman books elinor brent dyer chalet school books enid blyton mallory towers books genre naomi novik scholomance series jill murphy worst witch series mary stewart the little broomstick chaz brenchley crater school series katzuo ishiguro never let me go diana wynne jones witch week marvel comics the x men university works star trek academy tv series lorraine wilson the salt oracle not mentioned but on sari s list ursula k le guin earthsea seanan mcguire the wayward children series rainbow rowell fangirl and of course she who must not be named as an example of how to do the genre badly sari and i may have issed some i will check with emily and linnéa llandeilo lit fest april 14 2026 cheryl this post is probably only of interest to those of you in south wales getting to llandeilo is a bit of a trek from bristol but it is much more accessible from cardiff and very easy from swansea and carmarthen it is not too bad from aberystwyth either but it is pride weekend there so i don t expect any of you folks to turn up anyway the llandeilo lit fest is a long running literary festival based in the lovely little town of llandeilo which was once the capital of most of wales back in the days of hywel dda the town boasts a fabulous chocolate shop a lovely little donut shop and an independent bookshop there is also a big national trust property that boasts a roman fort sadly all underground archaeology these days hywel dda s castle a stately home and its own herd of deer whose meat you can buy from this excellent butcher obviously the easiest way to get there is to drive but there are buses from swansea or you can take the lovely heart of wales railway line though beware only 4 trains a day from carmarthen there is the newly opened tywi valley cycle path the festival website has some useful visitor info this year the festival runs over the weekend april 24 26 there s lots to look forward to half of the programme is in welsh but translation services are priovided so why should you come to see me of course together with roz jo and lou morgan i will be talking about the fight like a girl books that s on the sunday afternoon at 13 30 tickets available here there is lots of good queer content including the brilliant anthony shapland h from steps daf james of lost boys fairies fame the erudite norena shopland and even a book in welsh nor are we the only event with specfic connections there s efa lois talking about her new book on welsh witches and there is a talk about ufo sightings in wales sadly conflicting with my event and there is peredur glyn who writes lovecraftian cosmic horror stories in welsh if you have ever wanted to know what ph nglui mglw nafh cthulhu r lyeh wgah nagl fhtagn would be in welsh he s your guy hopefully some of you can make it a ray of hope april 13 2026 cheryl here in wales we woke up this morning to the news that the people of hungary had rejected viktor orbán at last that seems to be good news for the eu because orbán being a puppet of putin had long beeen a thorn in the side of attempts to provide aid to ukraine more specifically for us it means that nigel fauxrage and his cronies will no longer be able to command massive sums for speaking gigs in hungary the money for which it has widely been assumed was funneled through from russia personally i m not counting too many chickens just yet péter magyar is generally described as a centre right politician which in uk terms means the tories before they decided to turn into a more incompetent version of reform magyar has a massive majority possibly a supermajority and that is dangerous no matter who the people in charge are i remember how hopeful we were when starmer won a massive majority in westminster and that hope has been terribly betrayed the senedd election in wales is now less than a month away and the hope is that the downfall of orbán and the continuing descent into insanity of the tangerine tyrant in the white house will rub off on reform to their disadvantage certainly their stock seems to be falling in the opinion polls but that doesn t mean that we are out of the woods because we have proportional representation a good thing about pr is that it is highly unlikley that any one party will ever have a massive majority of the type enjoyed by starmer and magyar a bad thing about pr is that if a party has 20 support it will get around 20 of the seats which means that we are still looking at a significant number of reform people in the new senedd plaid cymru will have the most seats but probably not a majority reform may well end up as the official opposition because they are the second largest party and as such they can still do an enormous amount of damage they will for example get to appoint committee chairs which will allow them to gum up the process of government where i do have some hope is that where people are saying they will vote reform they are doing so not because the believe in fauxrage and his policies but because they are angry and want to stick it to the people in power in wales that means labour and to a lesser extent plaid cymru because they have been in coalition with labour in the past there are also people who are planning to vote reform because they see themselves as british or english and can t stomach voting for plaid these people now have an alternative they can vote green i m still not entirely convinced by the polanski phenomenon but i worked with carla denyer during my days in bristol so i know the greens have good people in senior positions also there is increasing evidence that disaffected voters in england who want to stick it to starmer are now looking to vote green rather than reform because they can get what they want without having to hold their noses while voting if that effect can be replicated in wales it can significantly reduce the number of seats that reform wins here and that will be good for everyone it may even result in the next government being a plaid green coalition rather than plaid labour personally i would still prefer people to vote for plaid i am a party member after all but if you or someone you know is planning to vote reform in wales please condsider voting green instead it is just as much a punch on the nose for starmer and it is as polanski is fond of saying a vote for hope not hate a pilgrimage to rome march 31 2026 cheryl in february i was in rome for a conference and i took the opportunity to visit a couple of ancient sites of interest to trans folks i was planning on doing and lgbtq history month post but i ran out of time so i am doing one for trans day of visibility instead there s a lot of photos in this one bear with me we start with a visit to the archaeological park at ostia this roman settlement is less than an hour away from the city by train and while it is not as well preserved as pompeii it is certainly impressive ostia was the port of ancient rome so much of the wealth of the empire would have flowed through its docks the photo above shows a row of shopfronts on the main road into the town this is the temple of zeus which is very imposing but i was there for a very different religious shrine i was in ostia to visit this place the field of the great mother it is an area sacred to the goddess magna mater or cybele no one quite knows why the goddess needed this big open area in addition to a temple but clearly there were ceremonies of some sort taking place here the guidebook suggests that they were orgies because of course it does the field was almost certainly used for the megalesia festival though exactly went on in it is the subject of much debate in one corner of the field you can find this shrine dedicated to the god attis she and i m using female pronouns deliberately here is said to have been the first person to become voluntarily castrated in the service of the goddess again why this happened is unclear there being many different explanations for it in ancient writings but there is no doubt that many people followed attis s example on joining the cybele cult these people were known as galli here is the statue of attis in the shine the sculptor carefully arranged her clothing so that you could see her smooth crotch whether many of the actual galli opted for full castration is another matter removal of the testicles was a well known and frequently practiced medical operation in roman times and was compartively safe it also had all of the hormonal effects that an ancient trans woman might have desired removal of the penis was more dangerous but by no means necessarily fatal the bearded head on which attis reclines is probably a representation of the god of the river gallus after which some sources say the galli are named the statue in the photo is a replica the original is in the vatican museum goodness only knows what they have done to the poor girl there at the foot of the gates closing the shrine i noticed a pine cone it looked far too carefully placed to have been an accident and i assumed that someone probably another trans woman had placed it there as an offering we know from the iliad that pine trees were common on mount ida the mountain near troy where cybele is said to have lived as i started to walk away i felt something move under my foot i figured that i had stepped on a pebble but looking down what i saw in the grass was another pinecone i can take a hint there are now two offerings at the shrine nearby is a strange and rare religious site in the later roman empire the practice of castration particularly of boy slaves became frowned upon but the day on which initiates to the cybele cult received their surgery was known as the day of blood it was march 24th should you want to celebrate it next year clearly something needed to be done we understand from the sources that a new rite was developed that involved the initiate standing in a pit underneath a metal grating an animal supposedly a bull though that would have been expensive was sacrificed and the blood allowed to flow down through the grating onto the initiate romans horribly gruesome at times anyway the next photo shows what is believed to be an actual blood pit across the field from the attis shrine is the temple to cybele herself the steps leading up to it are good quality stone which tells us a lot about the wealth of the temple and here is the sanctuary at the top of the stairs where the statue of the goddess would have stood in roman times there would have been walls a roof and an entrance with columns the park s museum contains a statue of the goddess her head is missing but we can see the two lions flanking her throne which allows us to identify her also in the museum is this statue which is described as either ares or a corybant the corybantes were young men who were part of the cult of cybele they are believed to have taken part in the megalesia celebration by dancing in armour waving their weapons about ostia was of particular importance to the cult of cybele because back in 204 bce a black stone representing the goddess was brought from phrygia modern turkey to rome ostensibly to help protect the republic from hannibal black stones probably meteorites were commonly used to represent gods in the ancient near east cybele arrived by ship and would have sailed up the tiber to the city from ostia the emperor claudius is said to have made some important changes to the cult including making the day of blood a public holiday and instituting the post of archigallus the chief gallus this was probably a way by which a wealthy roman could have a well paid job at the head of the cult presumably without being castrated because that would lose him his citizenship ostia has a number of representations of archigalli here are a couple of plaques and here is a tombstone a couple of days later i took myself off to the main archaeolgical park in the centre of rome you can see the colosseum the cirus maximus the forum and various other famous spots but i wanted to see something on the palatine hill this is where augustus built his palace when he founded the empire augustus was a big fan of using roman history to bolster his claim to a throne and he built on the palatine precisely because this is where romulus the fabled founder of the city is said to have lived the palatine is also host to a number of temples including the one built for cybele when she arrived in rome back in 204 bce it is right next door to augutus s imperial palace here it is italian archaeologists have done a lot of excavation work on this site they have found the remains of an iron age settlement on the hill and while there was nothing to identify it as the ho...