Fanny Whittington: why we need your help

Posted by Orlando and Galatea




Our editorial blog post is coming out a little early this week, but it’s for a very good reason: we need your help.

As you hopefully already know, we’re trying to raise the money to take our panto Fanny Whittington to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year. To make this happen, we need you.

I [Orlando] am still a relatively new Lasher, but I’m a long-time fan. I first saw a Lashings show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2010 - and I loved it so much I came back the next night. It was one of the first times I’d ever seen people talking on stage, in real life about things like consensual kink, heteronormativity, fat-shaming, and the stereotyping of queer women. It grabbed me by the gut and pulled me in. Lashings spoke to me in ways nothing else had. And I know for sure that I wasn’t the only one. At Lashings we get so much feedback saying how much what we do matters to you - how important it is for you to see people like you on stage, and remind you that you’re not alone. How important it is that we’re bringing our politics to people who haven’t thought about this stuff before, or haven’t been able to find the words for it. How important it is that we’re representing queer people, poly people, trans people, ace people, kinky people - and representing them as real and human, not just ciphers for an issue. Reading the reviews of our last pantomime still makes us a little teary-eyed.

Illustration by Marguerite; design by D. Gopal

And this time around, the show's concerns don't stop at sexuality and gender. By inverting the traditional story of 'Dick Whittington', by making our heroes the rats of London - the creatures that we're always told are dirty, dangerous and deviant - we've hit on some powerful ways of talking about what's going on in this country at the moment; about the ways in which some of us are scapegoated, exploited and blamed. The only problem we ran into while writing the show was that whenever we thought of something particularly egregious for the villainous Mayor to do, it usually turned out that the current government had already done it. Making jokes about anti-immigrant policies, bedroom taxes and DLA cuts is hard, but it's important too: as Max and Terry the pun-making, joke-cracking, 'Les-Mis'-filk singing rats point out to one another, if you don't laugh about this stuff, you just end up crying about it.

But to be able to keep doing this - we need your help. Everything that Sebastienne wrote last year is still true - more true than it ever was. Keeping Lashings going is really important, and keeping Lashings going is really hard. We’ve gone from being a tiny Oxford-based troupe doing shows in Oxford to an expanding collective with over 20 members, doing shows across the country. Almost every single show we do leaves us out of pocket, both as a collective and as individual members - charity gigs, student gigs, and academic gigs are never venues we make money. (Even with shows where the organisers are able to contribute to our travel expenses, we don’t turn a profit.) The two recent exceptions have been Lashings of Afternoon Tea Time in Oxford and Pirate Cabaret in London - both shows put together with the express aim of raising money for our Edinburgh run. This isn’t a complaint: we voluntarily do gigs in far-off cities for little-to-no expenses, because it’s important, and wonderful, and we love performing, and we love reaching new people. But also? It is hard, and draining, and it skews our shows towards being put together by those of us who can afford the time and money to travel all over.

Edinburgh is a different beast from all these shows. It’s somewhere where we can reach hundreds of new people - we can and do gain scores of fans, friends, and eventual collective members with every Edinburgh run. We rent a flat, and as many of us as possible spend a few weeks living in a blissful-yet-stressful queer-feminist bubble of singing and acting and flyering. The cost of Edinburgh is significantly higher than anything else we do, and it involves serious financial outlay. Currently, most of this is money that a few of us have been able to lend to the collective - there are Lashers who have put in several hundred pounds, such is their faith in the show. The only funding we have is us, and you.

We know times are hard, and money is tighter than ever with the government’s cuts that push marginalised people into further desperation. But now is the also the time that unapologetically angry, intersectional, feminist, queer, and left-wing voices need to be heard. We want to take vital political theatre to the Fringe this year. We want to skewer the austerity programme, make a show with real queer characters played by real queer people, and we want to make terrible puns while doing it. We hope you want us to do that too.

So - if Lashings' work has ever given you hope, or helped you feel less alone, or been there for you in whatever way - here is how you can be here for us: share this post, share the link to our IndieGogo, and donate if you can.

2013: Reflections and Resolutions

Posted by Lashings of Ginger Beer Time

Last week we gave you a retrospective of what we’ve been up to in the previous year - this week, we’d like you to join us in some more personal reflection on the year behind and the year ahead. What was amazing? What was dreadful? What do we most want out of 2013 - as artists, as activists, as Lashers and Lash-friends? What will we let go of with a sigh of a relief, and what will we pursue with all the tenacity of a terrier hanging on to its favourite chew-toy?

A motley crew of Lashers respond below to a number of questions sent round - we’d love to hear your thoughts on our answers, or your own responses to the questions.

The high point of 2012?

George Osbourne being booed at the Paralympic medal presentation for for Men’s T38 400m. This communicates a lot of things to me, but the thing it showed to me was a pretty good demonstration of the lack of confidence in the current government. That crowd spoke for a lot of people not in the stadium that day (Teddy Bishop).

I was ecstatic when they announced the Democrat victory in the USA - the alternative was almost too horrible to contemplate. While Obama certainly isn’t perfect, the prospect of a Romney-headed America was genuinely chilling. Also, there were actual real-live queer women, disabled women, and women of colour elected to positions of power - amazing! My personal favourite was Mary Gonzalez, who identifies as pansexual and has spoken publicly about genderqueer identities. -Orlando

I’d say the high-point of 2012 for me was doing my first Lashings show. It was incredibly last minute and I had to learn the words during the preceding acts but it was a lot of fun and I’ve loved performing with Lashings since then. -Sasha Rocket

The low point of 2012?

The proposal to re-form Disability Living Allowance to the new Personal Independence Payment, effectively making yet another difficult and often unreasonable application process as a front to effectively reducing social welfare provisions and effectively make life unlivable for many disabled persons. (Bishop)

For me, the failure of the Church of England to agree on how to bring in women bishops was an unexpected low point for feminism - Isadora (Jenni agrees here!)

It’s hard for to pick a low point from a year that has been, in many ways, a constant drip-drip-drip of awfulness. Two constant sources of distress and dismay were the Tory attacks on the disabled and/or jobless, and the seemingly never-ending stream of disgusting comments about rape to emerge from the Republican party. -Orlando

Your favourite bit of activism from 2012?

Feminists coming together to denounce the transphobic entry police of RadFem2012 made me smile and squee. And had the conference not been cancelled, there was going to have been an amazing teach-in going on outside... -Orlando

Not as world-changing as some, perhaps, but the WorldPride 2012 Asexual Conference was a pretty big deal - it’s the first time something so major has happened, and it’s exciting that we’re now at that stage. - Jenni

The best ( or most impressively non-oppressive) bit of pop-culture you engaged with this year?

The game Mass Effect 3. Not just a story I find amazing (disappointing ending notwithstanding). I had a chance for my male protagonist Commander Shepherd to start a relationship with a man (Steve Cortez), after ending things with the genderless blue telepathic alien from my Mass Effect 2 game save. I don’t know how many games can say that and still be blockbusters. Nothing personal Liara T’Soni. Also a neat highlight of the game was the relationship between the artificial intelligence EDI and the mobility-impaired human pilot Joker. Sci-fi sextastic (Bishop).

The scene in Skyfall where James Bond can be seen to have said he’s bisexual. - Isadora

Strangely enough, Brave - I was very happy to have a film with the focus on a mother/daughter relationship, with both of them being genuinely strong characters (not the strong-flawless type) and to lack a romance subplot too! - Jenni

I don’t think there’s any one particular piece of mainstream pop-culture that I can think of from this year that I’d describe as ‘impressively non-oppressive’ but over the course of the year, I have been noticing a much higher ‘base level’ of engagement with feminism in a lot of pop culture. Parks and Recreation is an awesome show that is explicitly feminist (because Amy Poelher is just the best) and I think, particularly with Tina Fey and Amy Poelher hosting the Golden Globes, there’s a bit of a reversal of that whole ‘women aren’t funny’ nonsense. There are even some corners of the internet where this seems to be the case - can anyone imagine this article by Luke McKinney being posted on Cracked a year ago?

Something awesome you learned/discovered?

That I can be an influence on others! I’m used to thinking about other people who inspire me, but I have, to my astonishment, found out that the things I care about and take action on have been inspirational to some people I know this year. - Isadora

I came out as bi to my very religious mother at the end of 2011 and she’s since started talking about women with me in a way that is both weird and lovely. So I’d say I discovered a new aspect to my relationship with my mum. Also, that I’m more capable than I used to believe.

What was your 2012 Lash-career like?

I joined Lashings late in 2012 and joined in the protest to save the women’s library. I’m excited to newly be a part of Lashings! - Isadora

I did things I never thought I’d do: sung a cappella on stage, and even danced a little! As well as madcap travelling to gigs around the country, I’ve also been writing for Lashings regularly. I’m sad that circumstances prevented my joining the gang in Edinburgh, as I feel like my experience of Lashings can almost be counted in units of “Edinburghs”. I first met Lashings in Edinburgh 2010 (and ended up loving the show so much I saw them twice), and it was in Edinburgh 2011 when Annalytica first discussed the idea of my joining - so going and performing at Edinburgh 2012 would have been perfect. But onwards and upwards - hopefully I’ll be treading the boards in Edinburgh in 2013! It’s been an amazing ride so far - I’m so pleased to have finally joined. -Orlando

I joined Lashings this year and it’s been awesome. I’ve met really fantastic people and had a lot of fun. I’ve actually danced onstage which was surprising! Unfortunately, like Orlando, I didn’t get to go to Edinburgh with Lashings this year but hopefully that’ll be something I can manage in 2013. -Sasha Rocket

What do you want to see happen in 2013?

I'm looking forward to marriage law being equalised. For my younger (10-15 years ago) self this is a huge dream come true. I might not feel exactly the same about marriage anymore but this would have made my younger self’s year life.
In a more trivial area, as a dancer, I would love to see programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing have non-heteronormative pairings. It’s going to happen at some point. - Isadora

I am looking forward to (hopefully this year) seeing ‘Tropes vs. Women in Video Games’ a Kickstarter funded project by Anita Sarkeesian. This video series promises to address the sexist tropes that are present in games and gaming culture at large. Sarkeesian is famous for her highly enlightening Feminist Frequency series and the unfortunate hate campaign that followed when her latest project was announced. As a comic book reader, I would also like to see a better representation of female comic book characters with less sexual objectification following the ‘Hawkeye Initiative’ of Dec’ 2012. If the comic book writers can listen to fans and put meme jokes into the Deadpool serials, I would sure think they could listen about how objectification is damaging for audiences. Here’s to hoping for a less oppressive geeknerd culture (Bishop).

I’d like to tack my agreement onto everything that’s already been said but I’d especially like to see more non-faily pop culture and, like Bishop says, a less oppressive geekdom. -Sasha Rocket

^ Can I add in Escher Girls link, even though it’s been going longer? eschergirls.tumblr.com
I want to see more asexual visibility - we already had a massive surge this year, so it’s an exciting time for us! - Jenni

What do you want to MAKE happen in 2013?

Is it too optimistic to say 'bring about queer-feminist anti-kyriarchal utopia'? I guess so. In which case, keep on making safer spaces for the people who need them - and keep on working to change the world outside those spaces, one teaspoon at a time. -Orlando

I’m with Orlando here, but on a less optimistic scale - get the notion of ‘asexuality’ out there. And create a space for geeks that’s queer/female friendly (not at all a plug for Nine Worlds, I promise...) - Jenni

Every time I try to answer this question, my brain just keeps yelling ‘CHEESECAKE’ at me. So, I guess I want to make cheesecake happen in 2013. Plus, I’m really looking forward to certain lashplans that I’m also hoping to be involved in. -Sasha Rocket

What do you want to do in Lashings this year?

I’m pretty excited to newly be a part of Lashings. I’m looking forward to being in a pantomime. And challenging dance stereotypes as much as I can in any performances :) - Isadora

Keep on blogging! - Jenni

I might die of joy the first time Lashings performs a song I’ve written. (Sebastienne and Zim are both ready and waiting for the one I’m working on right now, but it’s still not complete...) Aside from wanting to write a lot of songs and sketches (and having grand ambitions of them becoming Lashings classics), I want to develop as a performer myself and become confident with a wider range of Lashings numbers. And of course, I’ll continue blogging - I have quite a few topics lined up! -Orlando

I’m hoping to get better at dancing as that’s something I feel less confident about, and I want to write stuff. -Sasha Rocket

… so those are the thoughts of some Lashers on the year behind and the year behind. How about you?

A Year in the Life of Lashings: “I’m so glad I live here in twenty-twelve...”

Posted by Lashings of Ginger Beer Time

Well, the new year is beginning to settle upon us, and the hustle and bustle of the festive season in its various forms has all but slipped away. (And because capitalism is apparently relentless in its pursuit of holiday-based profit, shops are replacing chocolate tree-decorations with the earliest Easter eggs we've ever seen.) Many of us, Lashers old and new, rung in the new year at a party that also celebrated Lashings’ fourth birthday - that’s right, on December 31st 2012, Lashings became exactly four years old. We can hardly believe it! As our gracious host Galatea said, “If it were a human being, it would be old enough to eat bread covered with colourful sprinkles and throw its own tantrums by now...” We’re also fast approaching the second birthday of this blog - January February 18th - so that’s two milestones within a month a month -and-a-half!

So, for our first long-form blog entry this year, and In the spirit of last year’s round-up post, ‘A year in the life of Lashings’, let’s have good long look at the year behind.

Lashings began 2012 with a bang, with two performances of ‘Cinderella: A Queer Sort of Pantomime’ in Oxford and London. Scripted by writer extraordinaire Galatea, positive response to the show was overwhelming! (For those who didn’t manage to see it or get the DVD, we give a synopsis in this interview.) ‘Cinderella’ also marked the Lashings debut of Cleopatra, who has since become invaluable to the collective.

March saw us performing at Linacre College’s queer feminist cabaret ‘Gender Rebels’, where we gave our first airing to an early version of Josie Long-inspired number “80s Tribute Government” as well as a sensual butch/femme dance number set to CN Lester’s cover of “I’m Your Man”. Clearly not at all tired out from our work on the panto, we also announced our plans for another show with an over-arching concept: Alternative Sex Education. An ambitious project riffing off a line from an Edinburgh review - “if only Lashings could end up on the national curriculum” - we set ourselves the task of exploring what we wish we’d been taught about sex and relationships in school (and what we really wish we hadn’t). We began fundraising online for alt.sex.ed, offering prizes such as mp3s, zines, and the recording of the panto - and surpassed our £1000 target!

In April and May we were busily working behind the scenes - and were also joined by three new Lashers! kaberett and Valentina had encountered Lashings via the London panto and fallen in love with our brand of queer-feminist joy, while long-time Lashfriend Orlando finally took the plunge several months after being invited. The run-up to alt.sex.ed saw us trialling a new way of organising rehearsals, splitting the show into distinct London and Oxford sections to allow for easier co-ordination before weaving everything back together in a weekend of brainstorming and dress run-throughs.

We premiered alt.sex.ed at OxFringe in June, featuring a plethora of new songs and sketches. Our energetic opening number, “Twenty-Twelve”, is an impassioned debate (set to the tune of West Side Story’s “America”!) about whether the modern world is a good place to be queer - with a fast group dance that has us all gasping! Carlotta’s “Bad Romance” - a critique of the relationship models in Twilight, in the key of Lady Gaga - has since proved a perennial hit, while Galatea’s hilarious “Kink Scouts” sketch was popular enough for people to request the Scouts as characters for the annual Yuletide fanworks exchange! Other fantastic new acts included Annalytica’s bittersweet satire “Don’t Know Why” (a song about the way sexual (mis)communication is encouraged in popular narratives), the educational and tongue-twisting Professor Galatea’s Eurocentric History of Western Queerdom, and Lilka’s powerfully emotive performance of two Lashings classics (a biting political version of “Acceptable” leading directly on to the dance “Our Daughters Will Never Be Free”).

July brought our second preview showing of Alternative Sex Education at the Pirate Castle in London, with a different set list. The emotional peak of the show came in linked songs about queer youth suicide “It Breaks My Heart” and “It Gets Better (Tomorrow)”, spoken and sung by Lilka and Annalytica, and accompanied by Florestan’s rich and soaring cello. Audience members (and several Lashers) were left in tears, and your correspondent on this blog is choking up just thinking about it. As the Oxford and London showings dealt with some powerful and distressing subject matter, these were the first nights where we provided trigger warnings online and on the door - which we now do for every one of our shows!

June and July were also months of travelling beyond our usual haunts -  we performed at two more Cutlery Drawer fundraisers in Cambridge and Brighton, as well as the Trans Tent at Nottinghamshire Pride. We were lucky enough to be alongside the fabulous CN Lester for the first two, and Nottinghamshire was the first time we performed with trans-feminist punk band Not Right. Not Right were due to play at Cambridge too, but unfortunately they had to drop out - which, on the plus side, led to our now-somewhat-legendary extra set MC’d by Sebastienne as Margaret Thatcher, and the best complaint we’ve ever received (“creating an unsafe space for Tories”)! New Lasher Sasha Rocket also performed for the first time when Lashings appeared at Gendered Intelligence’s fundraiser, CampOUT at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

We took alt.sex.ed to Edinburgh Fringe festival, in a long run of 3rd-17th August, performing at the now ex-Bongo Club on Holyrood Road, and spending most of our spare time advertising the show on the High Street (or “Royal Mile”). We kept the alt.sex.ed format, but played with the content. Some new things which started in Edinburgh were:
- Debuting Rob & Zim’s “Bad Touch”, which turns a filthy tune by the Bloodhound Gang into a duet about the joys of asexual relationships. (“You and me baby we’re both asexual / when I invite you up for coffee there is nothing subtextual”)
- Re-focussing “Vagina Dentata” to open the show. We removed the Disney rant and instead talked about the kind of people who say “I don’t need feminism, I have equality now”.
- After we moved that to the beginning of the show, we needed something else for our puritanical stage-invaders to object to; Sebastienne came to the rescue with two-and-a-half verses of “Wanking at Lunchtime” (to the tune of - you guessed it - “Walking on Sunshine”), a filthy-funny song about a relationship between two people with mismatched sex drives.

We lived in a top-floor flat (I don’t understand the spatial geography, but somehow, in Edinburgh, all flats seem to be top-floor-flats), 10-15 of us a night spread across 4 rooms. We were round the corner from an amazing alt pub where we ate a lot of veggie nachos, drank a lot of plum sake, and stroked a lot of dogs.

We were so excited when Galatea came to visit - she’d been responsible for kick-starting the alt.sex.ed format, and writing the first through-scripts, and we are so grateful to her for that. However, she was really ill for the duration of her stay, and was not able to perform with us once. Despite this, and despite midnight hospital trips, she managed to write us a whole new through-script for our final five shows!

Alternative Sex Education was also the last run for two of our beloved long-standing Lashers, as both Florestan and Annalytica parted ways with us to focus on their own projects. Florestan has been incredibly active in the world of music: arranging the score for the Better Strangers Feminist Opera Collective production of Dido (and playing Aeneas in it!), conducting a number of choirs including British Humanist Association Choir, singing with Diversity (an LGBT chamber choir), teaching music in private lessons and workshops for children, and still having time to write and arrange music for concert, theatre, and film! Annalytica has set up incredibly useful website Feminist Performers, which provides reviews, recommendations, and a calendar of feminist performance events. She has also been developing a solo stand-up act, which debuts very soon in London on January 29th at the Progressive Women Funny Fundraiser. We wish both of them the very best, and should they choose to work with us again, they will of course be welcomed with open arms! “Once a king or queen sovereign in Narnia, always a king or queen sovereign in Narnia...”

At our September AGM, we resolved on a first for Lashings: an active recruitment drive! We ran three taster sessions in different cities where we invited potential Lashers to come and meet us for some drama games, friendly conversation, and a chance to learn more about what it’s like to work with Lashings. The response was enthusiastic, and we began training up a new crop of Apprentice Lashers - some of whom are already making their mark on this very blog!

In October Lashings headed over to Revolt, a punk / riot grrl night in Coventry, organised by Ruth of the above-mentioned Not Right - we lampshaded our totally non-punk sound by beginning with acoustic happy-clappy number “Join The Fight With Me”, but ended on as loud a note as we could muster with “80s Tribute Government” (video here - sorry about the missing sound in the first verse!).

November 29th was the first gig for many of our Apprentice Lashers (affectionately nicknamed “the Lashlings”), as we led an acoustic sing-along set at a protest organised by Save The Women’s Library - featured in this video of the night.

Our final gig of the year, Lashings of Afternoon Tea Time, was a cosy and friendly Sunday at our much-loved East Oxford Community Centre, with (as you might expected) lots of tea and home-made cakes, and a chance for many of the Lashlings to show off their skills. Debut numbers included “Wannabe” (a Spice Girls parody - never let it be said that Lashings aren’t topical...) and new government-policy-themed songs “Bare Necessities” and “A Spoonful of Bullshit” (examinations from Patch and kaberett on how the welfare state is being attacked, and how those in power make such cuts palatable in the media, respectively). We also added an Avengers section to our Sci-Fi Skits, and premiered new version of “Everyone’s A Little Bit Privileged” which replaced Stephen Fry with Amanda Palmer in the position of “person we love(d) and admire(d) who failed to apologise for a hurtful privileged statement/act”.

So that was our 2012! We have a very exciting 2013 ahead, with work behind the scenes on loads of new acts, plus another big project that you’ll hopefully be hearing about very soon! We at Lashings wish you all the best for the coming year, and look forward to sharing it with you. :)

- Orlando and Sebastienne

Trans identities and essentialism

Posted by Orlando

“Gender is socially constructed.”

“Trans identities are real and valid.”

So. I’m a feminist and a trans person, and I believe both of the above statements. These two positions are sometimes held to be in opposition, whether by feminists who believe trans people are buying into patriarchal gender roles or trans people who denounce non-binary trans identities as ‘transtrenders’ (have a look at the ‘transtrender’ tag on Tumblr if you want to see examples - I’m not linking because some of the stuff on there is really hateful). In this post, I’d like to show how an understanding of gender as socially constructed and a recognition of trans identities are not mutually exclusive, starting with some analogies.

What's in a name?

Posted by Lashings of Ginger Beer Time

This week's blog post is something a little different - below, a number of Lashers share the story behind their Lashings names! We figure that regular readers might find it interesting, and that potential new Lashers might be find it useful when it comes to thinking of their own stage names...



Galatea
When I’m feeling particularly dangerous, I perform under the full stage name ‘Galatea Gorgon’. I acquired the first part of the name from an appallingly creepy story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which we’ve performed as a dance piece from time to time -- the sculptor Pygmalion, disgusted by the lewdness and crudeness of human women, decides to make himself a perfect girlfriend out of ivory and sleep with that instead: a bit like an Ancient Greek version of a RealDoll. He ends up falling in love with this beautiful inanimate statue which never talks back, and eventually the goddess Venus makes it come alive so it can marry him. Bleargh. I think that in 21st century culture, a lot of women are encouraged to be our own Pygmalions, shaping ourselves into perfection for other people’s benefit while keeping as quiet as possible; shoving any inconvenient messiness or imperfection out of view. The Gorgons, meanwhile, were completely the opposite -- they’re female monsters from very early Greek mythology, and so outrageously fierce and ugly that one look at them will turn you into stone! Put together, I think these two names speak to a really interesting tension, particularly since most of my performance is dance-based and I rarely speak directly to the audience. I like the idea of playing around with the gaze, looking and transfixion -- when I dance for you, is it about beauty or about horror? Who is being brought to life, and who is being turned to stone?


Sebastienne
This is a name I’ve been using for at least ten years, now. It’s a feminised form of Sebastian, as in Saint Sebastian, who’s been a site of deeply queer and kinky imagery for some centuries. He’s generally portrayed bound at the wrists and bleeding, pierced by phallic objects. Ahem. Anyway. After leaving prison, Oscar Wilde used the name ‘Sebastian Melmoth’, in what I’ve always considered to be a nod to posterity - to the idea that he might be (as he now is) considered a queer martyr. “Sebastienne” was only ever meant to be one half of my psyche, the other part being designated “Alia”.. but we don’t hear from her much, any more. (That’s not quite true; I’d say there’s been a reintegration. Alia’s still around in my gender identity and my politics; but I have Sebastienne’s sexuality and sense of style.) The divide was a necessary consequence of my adolescent inability to reconcile my belief in social justice and the importance of truth (Alia) with my Wildean conviction that “pleasure is the only thing one should live for” and the importance of artifice (Sebastienne). Lashings is where I learnt that it is entirely possible to embody both these things.

Goblin
at some point in my anorexic early 2000s, i dropped to 2 1/2 stone and ended up in hospital, in starvation psychosis. seeing my reflection in a hospital mirror in my delirious state, i thought i was a goblin. And then, as i recovered, it kinda stuck - still, a significant proportion of my friends call me Goblin. Like a number of anorexic girls, i used to adore the symbolism and images of angels and elves, their effortless perfection - for me, referring to myself as Goblin, implying all my skinny gawky pudgy glory, is part of embracing my many imperfections instead of striving for impossible perfection. Also, it suits me, and i think the ears are cool. ;-) 


kaberett
I’m a singer; my first language is German; and I’m decidedly political. And the deliberate misspelling of the German “Kabarett” - a word that is suggestive of cabaret as political satire? Well, that’s for reasons to do with my wallet name & a slightly unhealthy love of anagrams: so my stage name comes from the handle I invented for commenting on political blogs. In news that will surprise no-one who’s ever met me, I am indeed entirely too delighted by my own cleverness, at least when it comes to multilingual puns.


Orlando
I took my stage name from the eponymous hero of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando. It was actually CN who suggested I use it, after reading an essay I wrote about the novel, but it fit so perfectly that I now can’t imagine using anything else. The character Orlando is born a boy in the Elizabethan era: the book follows them through a surreal and dreamlike version of history, during which they age very little over several hundred years, undergo a mysterious change of sexed morphology, and begin presenting as female, male, and neuter in different contexts. Orlando is openly gender-fluid and bisexual - they ‘changed far more frequently than those who have worn only one set of clothing can conceive… and enjoyed the love of both sexes equally’. The book has a lot to say about the cultural construction of gender, and I feel that the gender-fluidity of the main character speaks a lot to my experiences, despite the fantastical nature of the story.


Valentina
I turned my surname, Valentine, into my stage name! Valentine came from my looking for something that sounded awesome that also went with my blog’s name, Silicone Valley, and is extra-excellent because it’s also the name of the villain in Mortal Engines, which is basically one of the greatest books ever. Yay! My name rocks.

Cleopatra
This is my full real-life name. Natch. I’ve almost never used it in English-speaking day to day life, it feels a lot like a best Sunday dress, too much for everyday use. Plus, it’s a mouthful. (In GREEK it sounds fine.) I’ve wanted to be on stage for basically for ever and at some point my best friend and I coined the idea of keeping my full name for a stage name, so when people started telling me to pick a Lashings name there was never really any other choice. (Plus, I am a Classics nerd so it has that going for it too. Galatea was rooting for Patroklos based on this. ;))

Nigel Newt
I'm a Nigel - that friend, relative, partner or other close acquaintance, who seems to understand enough of the principles of feminism to not be completely unbearable.  I make some contribution for the easy stuff, like the housework, or generally progressive causes.  But I also get something of a free pass - I'm shown more patience when I inevitably show my privilege. Newt is a female character in "Aliens", who gets to talk to Ripley (another female character) about monsters - fulfilling all three requirements in Dykes To Watch Out For's "The Rule" .  As my first role in Lashings was the increasingly grumpy recipient of all the token female roles from popular sci-fi & fantasy, this seemed an appropriate aspiration.

Florestan
   It has two famous uses as a name for characters in classical music. First, it is the surname of heroine, Leonore, and her imprisoned, starved husband, in Beethoven's opera Fidelio. She disguises as a man (called Fidelio) and rescues her husband from political prison. I like having a name that belongs to both male and female, being somewhat genderqueer, with the female displaying strength. 
   It is also a name used by Robert Schumann, a brilliant composer who experienced quite complex mental health issues in his short life. He often wrote words and music signed with the names Florestan and Eusebius, who represented contrasting aspects of his personality. Florestan was the exuberant, passionate and - in my imagination - slightly out of his own control side.
  So we have a heroine/boi, a man she saved (both all-singing), a fictitious wisp of borderline personality disorder and a source of wild, imaginative music and musical philosophy; Florestan.


... so there you have it! Readers who have chosen their own names, whether for the stage, the internet, as a new legal name, or in any other venue: is there a story behind yours? We'd love to hear it!

Genderqueer, dress codes, and the world beyond the bubble

Posted by Orlando

It's ten minutes before the taxi leaves. My guest room is a mess of unfamiliarity. A figure-hugging red dress with a plunging neckline. Leather high heels I've never worn before. Accessories I don't know how to use - gel inserts for my shoes, 'tit tape' to keep my dress straight. My face, tear-streaked and puffy in the mirror, bare of make-up with bushy eyebrows that haven't seen tweezers in years - and even less acceptable, the pelt of dark hair on my legs and under my arms. "I can't do this," I sob down the phone at a friend. "They'll know I'm a fake."

"So you're a fake? Be a drag queen. Femme fatale from a film noir. Femininity as artifice. Calculated masquerade. Ice queen." My friend rattles off the words she knows help make sense of this.

I am heading out to a very formal party, and I am learning - once again - that gendered dress codes are really fucking difficult.

RadFem 2012: uniting feminists against transphobia

Posted by Orlando.

[Trigger warning: transphobia. Neither this blog nor the linked posts are transphobic, but they do engage with and discuss transphobic ideas, and it is possible that linked blogs which don't share our safe space policy will have transphobia expressed in their comments section.]

We told you on Monday that our weekly post was going up early because of the urgency of the topic - but now, with another pressing topic begging to be written about it, this week you get a double-dose of Lashings bloggery! Aren't you the luckiest things? So, I'm Orlando - named after the gender-fluid Woolf character, rather than any popular actors - and I'm a newly-ascended fan of Lashings who is still somewhat breathless about joining the team here. Hello!

In mid-May, a London-based 'radical feminist' conference called RadFem2012 was announced, and parts of the internet began to rumble. A few days later, that rumble on Twitter became a roar on the blogosphere. Why all the attention? The website stated that entry was restricted to 'biological women living as women' - later edited to 'women born women living as women' - and renowned transphobe Sheila Jeffreys was billed as a speaker. A week later, and I'm - actually, kind of elated.