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.

Star Trek & Representation

 Posted by Astra

I don't remember when I saw my first Star Trek episode. I've loved it as long as I can remember thanks to being raised by parents who loved it first. I watched reruns of previous seasons of the different shows every day after school, and whichever season was currently airing had my whole family on the edge of our seats every week. Somewhere in an old family album there's a picture of me, aged 10, dressed up as Jadzia Dax, spots and all. One time I was the star letter in Star Trek Monthly and it was one of the proudest achievements of my young life.

I'm a pretty big Star Trek fan, is what I'm saying. And you know what, I loved the 2009 reboot film. It was huge amount of fun, it had a great cast, and seeing the Enterprise soar across the big screen was a huge hit of fannish glee. Similarly, I can't wait for this summer's offering of Star Trek: Into Darkness. I look forward to the characters, old and new (though never mind Cumberbatch, it's Noel Clarke's casting that had me fangirling), and the chances of me seeing it multiple times in the cinema are pretty high.

And yet. They're fun films, and have reinvigorated enthusiasm for the universe in a way that's really gratifying, but in a lot of ways the tone feels like Star Trek Lite - naturally I write this without having seen Into Darkness, but given the way it's being marketed as an action film, I'm not expecting a vast departure from the first film with the exception of the added Darker Tone TM that seems requisite for sequels these days.

Star Trek isn't just phasers and transporters and warp drives and starships. That's what Star Trek needs. What Star Trek is, is a vision. Unembarrassed, unbridled hope for the future, a dream of a perfect world, in which all people are equal.

In the world of Star Trek, the Earth of the future is a place with no wars, no poverty, no inequality, and no hardship. There's no concept of currency -- resources are essentially infinite, and people work to better themselves and their society. Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision frequently lacks a certain critical engagement, and it has its problems, but the wholehearted earnestness that drives that vision has a real charm to it.

And a key part of the vision of Star Trek, right from the start, has been equality and respect for all people regardless of race or gender  -- or species, for Star Trek is a show fond of tackling equality issues via metaphorical alien races, bless its heart.

[the cast of the original series of Star Trek] 

 The casting of the original run of the show in 1966 comes with kinds of stories. There are a lot of famous anecdotes surrounding Nichelle Nichols' role as Lieutenant Uhura, communications officer and breakout role for an African-American woman on US TV at the time. The stories range from Martin Luther King himself urging Nichols to stay on despite her concerns due to the impact her role was having on US popular culture, to Whoopi Goldberg seeing Uhura on TV and being overwhelmed by the site of a black woman who "ain't no maid" (Goldberg would herself later appear on Star Trek: The Next Generation as the mysterious Guinan, wearer of the greatest hats in the galaxy), to Shatner and Nichols' efforts to keep a scene where they kissed in an episode despite network protests -- they succeeded, and it became the first interracial kiss on US TV.

In addition to Nichols, there were George Takei and Walter Koenig as Sulu and Chekov, Japanese-American and Russian characters piloting the Enterprise side by side in the 1960s, during the Cold War and with Japanese internment camps on US soil still in living memory -- Takei himself having been sent to one such camp with his family during WW2.

Many episodes dealt with issues of racism and sexism, frequently in ways that were heavy-handed or missed the point altogether. There are a lot of things about the original run of the show that sit uncomfortably with a modern audience. But it cared about diversity and representation, and it really did try, and it really did make a difference.

When Star Trek came back with twenty years later, The Next Generation followed by Deep Space Nine and Voyager, that philosophy remained. (I admit that I haven't watched enough of Enterprise to be able to comment -- sorry, ENT fans!) There were absolutely problems -- none of the main casts ever achieved gender parity, Jewish actors were cast to play an alien species that embodied anti-Semitic stereotypes, disability was frequently portrayed as a 'flaw to be fixed', and much else besides.

And still the overall feeling that I'm left with is a show that cared and a show that tried.

 [the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation]

  There was Geordi La Forge, the black, blind Chief Engineer from TNG, and Tasha Yar and Deanna Troi and Beverley Crusher creating a trio that showed there was no wrong way to be a woman. Worf, who started out as the gruff Klingon Security Officer and grew over time to gain complex multi-season stories over both TNG and DS9, eventually appearing in more episodes than any other Star Trek character. 

[the cast of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]

  On DS9, there was Jadzia Dax, the Science Officer whose understanding of gender and sexuality was decidedly queer and decidedly wonderful. Ben Sisko became the first (and still only) non-white lead of a Star Trek show. DS9 is particularly notable for having not a single white North American character amongst its main ensemble cast. There was Julian Bashir, played by Sudanese-British actor Alexander Siddig, as the gung-ho wet behind the ears adventurer who spent a lot of his spare time roleplaying as James Bond and other dashing, traditionally white heroes, and Kira Nerys, world-weary freedom fighter who wanted nothing better than to tell her well-meaning Federation colonial interferers where to shove it. There’s also the acclaimed episode ‘Far Beyond The Stars’, a metafictional story set in the 1950s, about a struggling black writer dreaming of being able to publish a sci-fi story with someone like himself as a hero.

 [the cast of Star Trek: Voyager]

  On Voyager, it was women who drove the show, passing the Bechdel test on a regular basis. The dauntless Captain Janeway surrounded herself with strong women like the adventurous and compassionate Kes, the fiercely logical Seven of Nine, and the cynical and brilliant engineer B’Elanna Torres, not to mention their archnemesis the Borg Queen -- the major conflicts and plots of the show usually originated from the conflicts and cooperation between those characters, who demonstrated the many different ways that there were of being a woman in space. Torres’ plots also tackled issues of biracial -- by which I mean bispecies, because it's Star Trek -- identity. Here, Tom Paris is the only white male human character, the other white male actors of the lead ensemble playing an alien and a hologram respectively.

By virtue of the nature of long-running ensemble shows, each character got rich and rewarding storylines over time. And that matters. The women of Star Trek were hugely influential to my growing up, because I constantly watched them achieve anything they set their minds to, often without any reference to their gender. And the central message of the show was brought to bear over and over again, perhaps best summarised by Roddenberry himself in a lecture he gave in 1973:

“The whole show was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but to take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. We tried to say that the worst possible thing that can happen to all of us is for the future to somehow press us into a common mold, where we begin to act and talk and look and think alike. If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there. And I think that this is what people responded to.”

With all of that in mind, a reboot of the original series seems to rather miss the point. For all that the 2009 film was fun, and this year's outing looks set to be just as entertaining, it is missing that key component. It's great watching personal favourite actors of mine like Zoe Saldana and John Cho take on the iconic roles of Uhura and Sulu, and with Uhura in particular it is gratifying to see her role in these films become so central, an issue discussed wonderfully by rawles in her essay examining the simple yet crucial truth that Nyota Uhura is not a white girl.

And yet. And yet. This Enterprise crew no longer has the same impact it did back in the 60s -- and that's a good thing! But by looking to the past, Abrams has failed to embrace Star Trek's key vision of pushing boundaries and expanding our understanding of ourselves and of others. There's nothing wrong with a nostalgia trip but I want more from my Trek than a loving homage.

I want a vision of the future that looks forward again, that tackles our foremost modern day prejudices. I want more racial diversity, more gender diversity, more nuanced representations of disability, more queer visibility, maybe even trans or genderqueer characters who are, gasp, human and not othered aliens. I want a Star Trek that challenges the mainstream, one that overshoots and falls flat sometimes and then picks itself up, dusts itself off and tries again, fails better.

I want a Star Trek that reaches out to those of us who don't see ourselves elsewhere in pop culture, who are erased from the mainstream narrative of what heroes should be. I want a Star Trek that tells us that all of us have a place in the future, just as we are.

There's really nothing all that bold about going where we've all gone before. 

Liminal space, language, and me

Posted by kaberett


Hello: my name's kaberett, and English is my second language.

Wait: that's misleading.

My name's kaberett, and English is my primary language.

To give you the full story needs a bit more than a one-sentence introduction in the style of twelve-step programmes. Let's try again: my name is kaberett, and I'm a third-generation immigrant. I was born and raised in the UK; I spoke only German until I was about two and a half; and for complicated and tedious reasons I wasn't allowed to speak any German at all between the ages of six and about eleven.

I don't sound Austrian when I speak English; I don't sound English when I speak German. My proverbs and my nursery rhymes and the stories of my childhood are all in German, up until you run abruptly up against Robin Hood and the Hobbit. But my grammar, and my abstract thought, and my pronouns? They're in English.

My life is bilingual, liminal; my adulthood is, ignoring food, English. It is RP; it is university-educated; it is a disguise, but it does not ring hollow; it is only half the truth, but it is not a lie.

In English I am they; I am genderqueer; I am trans* and queer and I am assertively - aggressively - ungendered, or rather: I am gendered, and it is neuter.

I don't know how to occupy that space in German. I don't even know how to translate queer, with its reclamation and its political charge and its I'm-here-get-over-it, with its oddity and slyness and gentility.

Auf Deutsch I can be sie or er. I don't know how to occupy the space of they: of it, of es: I could, perhaps, refer to myself as mann - one - and force every descriptive noun, every adjective, into the neuter. Not der Lehrer, die Lehrerin: das Lehrer, the teacher, perhaps? But even there, I'm norming the masculine form of the noun.

I don't know how to navigate these waters.

But here is something I can say, can say loud and clear: I might not know how to occupy neutral space in my mother tongue, but at least it is honest about gendering within a binary. At least it is upfront.

No subliminal associations with teacher, doctor, engineer, nurse; no (s)he, no hero(ine): no. We will not relegate the feminine to a parenthetical adjunct to the masculine, an afterthought or grudging concession. Our noun classes are gendered, to be sure, but we have a choice in how to express that. Is the feminine marked? Yes: it is, with suffices to the masculine, but they are not parenthetical.

Schau mal, see here: die LehrerInnen; die Lehrer/innen. The teachers. Women need not be relegated to the position of cramped marginal notes: the feminine can occupy equal space, equal time, on the page. We need not soften her, nor encircle her in chains.

I don't know how to describe myself in German, but here's something I can ask you to do in English: if you must use language that asserts a binary of gender, please don't give the masculine primacy.

Instead, take a leaf out of a cousin's book: s/he, not (s)he. Hero/ine, instead of hero(ine).

If - when - we're pushed into the margins -- we don't have to stay there. We can take out our fountain pens, our marker pens, our spray-cans, our crayons, and we can say:

We are here. Get over it.

As a battle cry, it is perhaps true that librarians and book-herders miscellaneous are the only people likely to be taken faint with horror. But: we can fight this on our own terms, quietly, one by one and word by word.

Let's try it.

An Incredibly Frivolous Post In Which I Like River Song

Posted by Sasha Rocket

Let me start off by saying I actually don’t understand a lot of the flack Steven Moffat gets for apparently not being able to write well-rounded female characters. That’s not to say he’s in any way feminist, or that he always gets it right (seriously, what the hell did he do to Irene Adler?) – it just means I find many of his female characters believable, relatable and likeable, at least to the same extent as most mainstream pop culture. Heck, Amy Pond (along with Han Solo) is the love of my life. And if there’s one person I want to be when I grow up (there’s many), it’s River Song.

Rarely have I seen the Whovian community so enduringly split as it seems to be on the issue of River Song. Is she impressively strong and independent or simply a vessel for devotion to the Doctor? Charming, sophisticated badass or cleavage with a gun? She’s undoubtedly capable, intelligent and remarkably self-assured – all things I like in my fictional women. She’s even regularly shown to be more skilled than the near-Godlike Doctor. River was actually one of the few female characters that briefly came into my head when I was reading Sebastienne’s post ‘Paging Doctor Sherlock House’. She certainly fits at least a fair few of the archetype’s characteristics: she is significantly more intelligent than almost everyone else around her, she’s self-sufficient (‘financially’ is a tricky word when one’s technically in jail), she doesn’t follow social norms, takes charge of situations, etc. So far, it looks like we have a pretty awesome character.

But, hold your horses, some viewers are saying. Moffat entirely undermines all this by being so wholly in love with the Doctor. Her devotion to him weakens her, they say, because it lessens her agency and reasserts the importance of the male protagonist. And, OK, there is a point here. ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’, anyone? Without wanting to give spoilers, lest the irony takes bodily form and attacks me, River has a pretty damn sharpish change of motivation and makes a huge sacrifice to save the Doctor’s life, in a fairly weak and unconvincing plot twist that exists no doubt to simply reiterate how central our male Doctor Sherlock House is to, just, everything. In many ways, the fact that River Song held so much promise is what makes this treatment of her relationship with the Doctor so galling; Moffat gave us the possibility of something wonderful, which makes it feel almost like a betrayal when he inevitably fails to deliver. As Cleopatra said of Moffat’s development of River, “I’m not angry, just disappointed”.

The other main criticism of River, as far as I can tell, seems to be that she’s little more than a twist on the ‘femme fatale’ trope or, as she’s referred to in The Wedding of River Song, “hell in high heels.” In fairness, this seemed to mostly come up following The Angels Take Manhatten, in which River/Melody Malone can definitely be read as a play on this stereotype. I actually struggle to see this as a fair criticism, since it seems to centre around the fact that she sometimes gets ‘dolled up’ (I’m not sure if I meant that phrase ironically or not), but we more often see her in pretty darn practical clothes by the standards of feminine heroes – the first two times we meet her, she’s wearing, first, a spacesuit and then combat gear. What’s more, she is actually always appropriately dressed (unlike the time Moffat inserted “I’m dressed for Rio” as a contrived excuse to get my beloved Amy into particularly skimpy shorts). Honestly, though, regardless of what she wears, River Song is always first and foremost a badass. A traditionally feminine or sexy look needn’t detract from that.

The point about River’s character being undermined by her love for the Doctor is trickier, because it points to a real trend of female characters being used to make it really obvious how super-amazingly-awesome the male protagonist is. Wow, we’re meant to say, look how much everyone loves this guy – he must be super-amazingly-awesome! Firstly, though, let’s remember, we’ve so far seen a relationship in which River has known the Doctor for a long time, whereas we’ve watched him get to know her. It’s understandable that her devotion to him is often shown as stronger than his devotion to her. Secondly, yes, she goes to extraordinary lengths to see or contact the Doctor – she breaks out of jail to go on a date and invents graffiti by desecrating priceless ancient artefacts to contact him, but on the other hand, she breaks out of jail to go on a date and invents graffiti by desecrating priceless ancient artefacts to contact him. It’s never played as River doing these things because the Doctor’s so special, but because she can. That’s the important thing – these actions say more about her than they do about the Doctor. She’s definitely not ‘plot flesh’* and actually never loses her agency – despite her devotion to the Doctor, she never acts out of character or loses control of the situation (with the exception of that one time in Let’s Kill Hitler). In fact, she regularly uses guns, which the Doctor famously disapproves of and it’s actually him that seems to bend his opinions in Day of the Moon, when he says, “this is my friend, River. Nice hair, clever and, unlike me, she really doesn’t mind shooting people. I shouldn’t like that. Kind of do a bit.”

I’m not at all trying to vindicate Moffat for all the times he’s been (intentionally or otherwise) pretty damn misogynistic, or trying to say that the context of how female characters are so often used isn’t relevant or doesn’t matter. Even so, River Song actually stands out in mainstream pop culture as an example of a self-assured, badass woman who’s in control of herself. Yes, Moffat’s let River down in some ways, but (irrationality alert), I still feel like that’s not her fault. The fact that she's pretty cool seems to have made her a bit of a figurehead for a much wider trend, in the same way some parents will be extra disappointed when their 'good kid' goes off the rails. Separating the character from the context is tricky business but, with current representations of women in pop culture, I feel a bit like I have to take what I can get while still trying to find better.

*A super useful phrase for a female character who exists only in relation to the male protagonist and whose personality and abilities changes to fit the whims of the plot, coined by a particularly charming gentleman friend of mine.  

Trans*, queer, disabled: pick one (1) only

Posted by kaberett

CONTENT WARNINGS: cissexism, misogyny, suicide



... or that's what This Is Cabaret seem to think, anyway.

At least according to a review in which they misgender me and assume that my participation in a song about LGBT+ youth suicide... means that it's a song about sexuality and disability.

Well, let me just tell you, it gets better.

Because it is difficult, and because it is joyful: living, relating and performing with a visibly imperfect voice

Posted by Valentina


Most people I have met are afraid to sing. Though I loved to do so, I was terrified to sing for many years, having been told by various people close to me that I sang badly. An epiphany came when I saw the Lashings panto last December. The members of Lashings sang well, though many did not sing perfectly - I think the image of 'perfect' I have in mind is something like that in Glee, where people can burst into perfectly-tuned, soaring and completely-backed songs at the drop of a hat, and on screen, it all just *works*. The Lashers sang well, and confidently, and they didn't sound as though they had just stepped out of Glee - they sang authentically, and in a relatable, un-autotuned way. Occasionally one would miss a note, or another would start a line a little late, and yet they were up there, singing loudly and confidently to an audience who had travelled and paid to see them perform - the Lashers knew they were good.

This was a staggering realisation to me. I realised that my own singing voice might not be perfect, but it was fine: it could even be good enough to perform with. I decided that I wouldn't mind missing notes or singing too quietly - why was it that I'd been working hard on fiercely loving the rest of my body image for years, but had allowed myself to berate my singing voice? I went and spoke with Lashings after the show, and a few weeks later, sang confidently and happily in a room of houmous-eating queers at my first rehearsal.

I'm still working on my fear of singing badly, but there's something else that's even scarier. I have a visible speech impairment. And now I'm doing cabaret that doesn't just involve singing, but speaking as well.

Alternative Sex Education - Oxford, 8 & 10 June

Posted by Lashings of Ginger Beer Time



So, we did it! Thanks to the great kindness of many people, we successfully achieved our target over on WeFund¹. (We've sent out emails to all our donors - if you haven't had one, check your spam folder!)

Now, what are we going to do with your money (apart from sending you awesome rewards, of course)? The next show, as you'll know if you read kaberett's post on Friday, is called Alternative Sex Education.

In a lot of ways, this feels like the show we've been building up to, or dancing around, for some time. It's still a sketch show, but it's been pulled together and is presented like a play, rather than a cabaret variety show. It's still full of witty and insightful parodies of popular culture, but it's also much more in the business of offering alternatives.

Along with all your old favourite acts, there's plenty that's new: and where else could you see Lady Gaga mashed up with Twilight, hear a song about carnivorous vaginas, or join the Kink Scouts?

You first chance to see this exciting new show is coming up next week, during Oxford Pride and the OxFringe festival:

Alternative Sex Education
Friday 8 & Sunday 10 June
10pm - 11pm

It's taking place at the Old Fire Station, at 40 George Street, central Oxford. If you live outside Oxford, never fear - this venue is right next to the coach station, and only 500m from the train station.

Buy tickets - see trigger warnings.

And now, we're off to spread some more posters around town! Hope to see you there...

---

1: We didn't exactly have a bad experience with WeFund, but we wouldn't necessarily recommend them to other groups looking to raise money, either - we've had to put in a lot more behind-the-scenes work than we expected, and they have worrying IT practices like emailing out people's passwords in plain-text emails.

Research studies

Posted by Lashings of Ginger Beer

Participating in research studies can be a way to give policy makers and others in power greater awareness of marginalised perspectives. Here are some studies that readers may be interested in participating in:

LGBT Community Research

The terms ‘LGBT community’ and ‘LGBT communities’ are often used, but how much do we know about how these are understood – or experienced?

A new UK research project aims to address these questions, and explore the impact on lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) health, wellbeing and ‘quality of life’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the ‘Connected Communities’ programme.

For further information please see the project website: www.lgbtcommunityresearch.co.uk.

Watching Women's Films

Do you identify as a feminist?  Do you like watching movies?  Watching Women's Films is a place for feminists who consume popular culture to share their views, thoughts and feelings about "Women's Films" today.

Please take a look at the website and take part in discussions on the forum: http://watchingwomensfilms.tumblr.com

Enduring Love?

The Enduring Love? project is a mixed methods study on long-term adult couple relationships. The findings will add an important dimension to understandings of personal and family lives in contemporary society.


Increasing knowledge on how long-term relationships work and the emotional and practical relationship work that goes into sustaining them, will facilitate more effective points of intervention, informing the improvement of policy making, governance and support services, and relationship education.
http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/enduringlove/

The Curious Case of the Multiplicity of Watsons

Posted by Sebastienne





The internets have been roused, and they are very angry.

What can have caused this, you might think - has the US senate passed SOPA, legislation which could destroy the World Wide Web as we know it?

No - the unthinkable has happened.

Some TV execs in the US have decided that what the world needs now is another take on the Sherlock Holmes mythos... and they've cast an Asian-American woman in the role of Watson.

So obviously, the comments under every news article are full of the vilest kinds of misogyny and racism. It's even been summed up in Impact font: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jpmoore/a-note-to-cbs-on-casting-lucy-liu-as-watson-in-the

Ah, Doctor Watson. Sherlock Holmes' "one fixed point in a changing age". A solid and stoic counterpart, sometimes mistakenly represented as unintelligent, but always as devotedly faithful. As the narrator of most of Conan-Doyle's stories, he is the audience identification figure, the "everyman" who provides us with a window on Holmes' unique world.

Of Labels and the Notion of 'The Other

Posted by Jenni


One of the most common arguments I see regarding asexuality is “Why does everything need a word?”


Whilst there are many people who could identify with a label such as gay, queer, or similar, but choose not to, the fact remains that a lot of people who have non-heteronormative sexualities, and non-standard gender identities use labels. And so there must be a reason for it.

The Girl Who Is A Lot More Than Her Physical Characteristics, Actually [rape triggers]

Posted by Goblin

So, further to Sebastienne’s frankly brilliant post t’other day about concepts of self-belief, self-doubt and the fantasy of understanding in Paging Doctor Sherlock House, let’s talk about what happens on the rare occasions when the supercharacter in question is female. As Sebastienne has already discussed the case of Holmes’ former nemesis and now (apparently) sap Irene Adler, I won’t go into that, but believe me it’s tempting – instead, let’s talk about Lisbeth Salander, the eponymous Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (It seems important to point out here that The Young Female Defined By A Notable Physical Feature wasn't actually the original title of this book: the literal translation of the Swedish Män som hatar kvinnor is 'Men Who Hate Women', which is going to be relevant in due course.) Apologies to those who haven't seen the films or read the books - this post contains spoilers.

Lashers in the news!

Posted by Lashings of Ginger Beer

Not one but two of our favourite queer people have been featured in national news in the last week!



Lashings' own Jenni was interviewed for the BBC documentary "How Sex Works" in which she talks in her usual articulate way about being a romantic asexual. The video will be available on iPlayer for another 11 days. Jenni's section is at 17:30. Her story is also discussed in this article.

Meanwhile, Lashfriend Ariel Silvera was interviewed in the Irish Independent for a feature on transgendered folk, where she successfully challenged some of the interviewer's narrow ideas about trans women.


Lest the excitement of this post should detract from yesterday's news.....did we mention we're putting on a PANTO?

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.