The author is dead: on boycotting creations because of their creators

Posted by kaberett

Here is my premise: I exist.

Over the past few months, there has been ongoing discussion of Orson Scott Card, his vile views on queer people and equal marriage, and the upcoming release of the film adaptation of Ender's Game. Over and over again - as in the most recent such article I've stumbled upon, by John Scalzi - people say:

Personally speaking, I have a pretty high tolerance for artists and creators being obnoxious/offensive/flawed/assholes/otherwise seriously imperfect. This is partly because I believe art is a highly composed, refined, edited and intentional end result of a process that takes place in a mind which can be almost anything. The only thing creators fundamentally have in common is the ability to create, and to shape their creations to speak to others.

[...]

So, yeah, I can put up with a lot when it comes to creators. It’s not usually  the art’s fault the brain it came out of is directly connected to an asshole.

To be clear, in fact I think Scalzi is generally competent, and I've deliberately pulled out the most unpleasant part of the article: but it's representative of a broader idea, the idea that a creator's reprehensible views don't affect the art they create.

They do.

It is one thing for me to consume media that doesn't contain queer people, trans people, just because we've been forgotten and overlooked.

It is quite another to consume media from which we have been actively erased.

My boycott isn't about material created by an author who holds irrelevant views. It's about my unwillingness to give money to people who deliberately erase me as an active political position.

I. Exist.

Alternative Sex Education

Posted by Sebastienne



So, the OxFringe programme is out, and it's official - Lashings are performing a show called "Alternative Sex Education" on the 8th and 10th of June. It's at the Old Fire Station, an incredibly central & accessible venue which we are totally chuffed to have secured - ten minutes from Oxford train station and one minute from Oxford bus station. (Londoners: by train you can get from Paddington to Oxford quicker than you can get from Ealing to Barking.) See more details & book tickets here.

Development is well underway for the show that we're calling "alt.sex.ed" - bouncing off from a review we got which said "if only Lashings could end up on the national curriculum", and also the desire that many of us have to do a schools' tour one day, we're developing a show that's based around the types of sex & relationship education that we wish we'd received.

We're super-excited about some of the things that this is going to let us talk about! Titles are being thrown around like "The Consent Song", "Bad Romance", "Professor Galatea's History of Eurocentric Queerdom"... (by the by, Professor Galatea would love to hear your suggestions for historical figures to be included on this list, particularly in the 1550-1850 bracket).

But it's also tough.

On Stonewall

Posted by Sebastienne



OK, so, everyone's heard of Stonewall, right? They are the leading queer rights organisation in the UK. They're the ones who put up billboards everywhere saying "Some people are gay.. get over it!". They've been around since 1989 and have had a hand in everything from the abolition of Section 28 to the creation of Civil Partnerships.

So why, when Lashings got offered a charity gig raising money for Stonewall a few weeks ago, did we seriously consider turning it down?

This Song Is Not About You

Posted by Galatea

As shocking and startling as it may seem to you and me (she says, only somewhat facetiously), Lashings does get a bad review every now and then. Personally, I tend to pay much more attention to these than I do to positive feedback: as a nervous perfectionist, I like tweaking the corners of our shows to try to make them the best shambolic journeys into QUILTBAG anarchy that they can possibly be...

There is one line of critique, though, that gets not only my goat, but my chickens, my Shetland pony and my small herd of heritage-breed long-horned cattle, too. It's the variations that we occasionally hear on the theme of 'Awww, their hearts are in the right place. But it's 2012 (or 2011, or 2010...). Is there really a need for a whole cabaret show about gender and sexuality?'*.

*  [Unspoken subtext: 'You ladeez and queers is equal now, plz to STFU about teh oppresshionz']

Tell you what, boys and girls and everyone else: I would take this criticism so much more seriously if I'd ever heard it come out of the mouth of a queer person.

On Being A Christian

Posted by Jenni

Today, I’m going to discuss something I’ve mentioned in passing before – the fact I’m a Christian. This is a very important part of my identity, and it’s also the part that gets questioned most – even more than my being asexual. You see, to many people being Christian, queer, feminist and liberal is a contradiction. I’m not going to go into lots of detail for you all, and I’ll try to keep the bible-talk to a minimum (references will be given if you want to look up the verses in question), but I’m just going to share how the Christian part of my identity fits in with everything else. And maybe give you a view of a Christian you might not have seen before.

Erasure and Identity

Posted by Jenni

This post began life as a discussion of the ‘I’m-more-oppressed-than-you’ game. There’s been a spate of posts on various sites recently discussing whether asexuals have a ‘claim’ to the queer community, and one argument is that we aren’t oppressed in the same way. Rather than argue this out, I’d much rather share with you my experiences of one particular kind of oppression, one I’m sure many of you are familiar with – erasure.