Tag: Activism

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Blog Game Dev Plays Trans Activism

Update

The last 7 months have been quite trying, hence my website being quite. In a nutshell my partner and I agreed to be in a documentary about trans issues, we had a lot of distress over this decision as we were worried about the final content of the show (which we haven’t seen yet), we also didn’t want to make a commodity of trans day of remembrance for other people’s entertainment but felt the desperate need to do what little we could to try and stave off the waves of hate trans people face. We, ultimately, didn’t want to be in it at all and have been plagued by anxiety and distress. The final outcome of the show remains uncertain for us, and channel 4 have been grossly misrepresenting it’s contents in publicity statements.

This was followed by an attack by far right extremists in the park during an art rally I held against section 35, which resulted in my getting a broken nose and concussion trying to pull an attacker off of an innocent by-stander. There has been no justice on that matter, only polite words of concern.

This has lead me to take a step back from several facets of my life while I nurture my mental and physical health.

Not everything has come to a halt however – I’ve been working on a few creative projects! The first is a book called “Irreversible Joy” which is about finding happiness from the perspective of someone who’s gender diverse (spoiler alert, there’s a lot of it to be had!) and a card game called “See Creatures” which is a bright and lighthearted game about making creatures for points and to inconvenience the other players with their effects – another update coming soon!

I also have been working on a thriving theatre life, I started a new protest singing group which has become a tightly knit group and we also do writing and acting – our current project being around the history of gender diversity, which crosses thousands of years. I also have a (thankfully small!) part in a community theatre production in a nonbinary role, which is on during late June and early July.

Hopefully going forward things will continue to improve!

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Blog Plays

SOHAP

The official run of Songs Of Hope And Protest ended mid June, but we’ve continued to perform scratch performances at a couple festivals, all to raving reviews – even the one where last minute doesn’t quite cover it! The cast played into the mistakes and the audience loved the authenticity. There are murmurings that SOHAP might continue to do one off shows, mostly condensed to just the songs, and I’m hopeful it will continue!

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Blog Pride Trans Activism

Pride Appearence

At Norwich Pride this year I conducted an interview for the Natasha Curson talk, a memorial event commemorating a woman in the trans community who helped start up Norwich Pride. It was my pleasure to conduct an interview with Adrian Sweeny, an up and coming social media influencer who has been recording his transition for roughly ten years. The interview was translated through BSL and there were graphic story boarders who have recorded the talk – it was a fantastic and fascinating experience, and hopefully I will be the regular interviewer from now on!

The Graphic Notes of the event
Following the interview was a 4 way panel discussion!
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Blog

Protest In The Papers

The Protest against the exclusion of trans people from the conversion therapy ban went very well, roughly 200 people turned up – twice the amount of the last protest which also went extremely well – and there were some amazing speakers there, both trans people and cis allies. The run up to the event was somewhat draining for me and so I feel like my speech as chair of Norwich Pride’s Trans Advisory Group could have been a little better, but it still seemed to go down well. We had a fantastic song performance on acoustic guitar, and some fantastic on the fly speeches during the open mic session. Charlie and I also did interviews with Amy from BBC Radio Norfolk which will be coming out soon and I’m excited to share.

My Personal quote: “The government’s exclusion of trans people from the ban is deliberately malicious, but acknowledging that people deserve to be protected, they’ve admitted that they either don’t care, or want us to be mistreated with torture and abuse.”

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Blog

Conversion Therapy Protest

I’m working with Norwich Pride in my role as the chair of the Trans Advisory Group to put together a protest this weekend, we’ll be protesting the governments complete lack of regard for trans welfare and their propensity for lies. Having agreed to ban all conversion therapy they then decided they wouldn’t (not the first time they’ve decided to renegade on a promise), eventually relenting to protect Lesbian, Gay, and Bi people under pressure – but having publicly admitted that it’s a torture that needs eradicating they refused to protect trans people despite them having a higher chance of being subjected to it. It’s clear, then, that they either have such disdain for trans people that abusing us is either a good thing in their view, or that we don’t qualify as humans and therefore it doesn’t matter if we’re horrendously treated.

There have been a lot of protests lately around this subject, huge ones that have real impact and I only hope that ours will uplift and inspire our local community, and assure everyone that there are people out there dedicated to equality and human rights.