Category Archives: Trans Inter Queer

Problematic terminology for the failure of normal. Trans, transgender, tranny, trans(s)exual, intersex, queer (of type not used as abbr for GLB), non-binary and all, identity. I can’t believe I used to have to put an * on this bullshit.

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I’m Published Cunt

Look at my name in print like I’m an author and all.

Last year I emailed Lambda Literary about their Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, and got told yes, me, as a not-American can apply to do the Fiction Cohort with the, the, fucking the Zeyn Joukhadar. I sent in the first chapter of my novel We’ll Never Be Remembered full of sexy trans femme Muslimah migrant sisters doing sex work and hooning cars, and a few months later I got accepted.

And the Retreat, which was online cos thanks ongoing epidemic, was fucking awesome. Which I never blogged about cos I’m a lazy cunt and pushing two years of slowly getting better chronic fatigue / burnout / Long COVID / Epstein-Barr Virus / or as I like to call it, chronic ijdgaf syndrome. And then Lambda Literary said we are publishing an anthology, send your best shit. Which is still the first chapter of my novel. At 10 pages or under that is, and contextually standalone. Some of the other chapters I fucking love too but the sisters, who moved into my head and apartment a couple of years ago, who all said write the stories we tell you and we’ll take care of the rest, said listen cunt it’s gotta be chapter one.

And then I got a copy in the mail and there’s my name in print.

Heaps big love to Vasiliki Lazaridou (who’s currently shooting their film and hasn’t slept for I dunno how long) and Gala Moody who both read the first readable draft, all 150,000 words, and provided excellent, and I mean fucking excellent opinions, criticism, advice, support and all. And to Zeyn Joukhadar who is the living embodiment of meeting your heroes and it being amazing and excellent. And to Lambda Literary for reading my very very niche shit and going yeah this is what we want.

Obviously I want you to buy it. Not only for me, also for the 50-ish other new queer and trans writers, many of whom are QTBIPOC. Their shit is gold. Support your local independent bookshops too.

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Eid Mubarak Bitches!

I did not expect that to happen. Vass, however did. Cheers bruh!

A month ago I was moaning to them about feeling stink ’cos I wasn’t going to do it. Then I said I’d do the first day for my granny and four weeks later was still doing the old “just do as much as you can, however you can,” when Eid rolled in a day early. Which was well confusing being on Sonnenallee on Friday and all the hijabis looking fine as fuck and the habibis too and all of them eating and drinking, during daylight what the fuck. Because Eid started Thursday night in most places west of Saudi Arabia, and started Friday night in Australia and most places east. Saudi Arabia using a high-powered telescope pointed something like 4 degrees above the horizon to even see the new crescent moon is a total other discussion about Saudi Islamic hegemony and bid’ah. And yes it was like always weird as fuck to drink water when the sun’s up, to scoff a bag of macadamia nuts, to taste while I’m cooking, to not go to bed with my guts full of water and a couple of hours later my bladder and then the toilet. To sleep in! It feels like finishing a big project or long block of training and the post-effort exhaustion arrives and I realise how much effort and focus and discipline a month of fasting requires. And it feels like a big offering to the universe and it replenishes me.

The trees turned green the last days. Dasniya, Yuri Niran, and Mark came over for an Eid feast of deer meat curry. Bluh! according to Yuri Niran, though they taught themselves to open the fridge for those delectable blueberries and Greek yoghurt, and I’m finding random pieces of flatbread with bites missing.

And I’m posting this late because I’m a thinking about it is the same as doing it procrastinating cunt, but anyway Eid Mubarak bitches, especially my trans and queer Muslim bitches.

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Fatimah Asghar — When We Were Sisters

A couple of days before Ramadan, finishing Fatimah Asghar’s brilliant When We Were Sisters. Fatimah, who I read If They Come For Us, and promptly bought everything of theirs I could get my hands on. So, this and Halal If You Hear Me, which they edited with Safia Elhillo. And the wrote and co-produced Ms. Marvel, which, Bro! Mashallaaaaah!!!

And this was me attempting to make khubz. Fun times, did it with a hot pan ’cos I do not have a working oven and whole place smelt like a pizza oven. And while I’m very comfortable in the kitchen, my baking skills are heaps rusty and no idea what I’m doing. Came out tasty as but not as good as shop-bought. No complaints with the hummus though, and the za’atar from Sunnah Shop is, like their dates, the best in Berlin.

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Ramadan 2023 🌙

Wasn’t going to this year. Last year I got about 2 1/2 weeks in and sawn on top of burnout / chronic fatigue / wtf ijdgaf syndrome left me shattered and pretty upset. I broke fast with my lifelong comfort food of peanut butter on thick bread.

Wasn’t going to this year. Even the thought of it got me stressy anxious sad.

Wasn’t going to this year. Told Vass that, they know what’s been going on.

Wasn’t going to this year. Day before convo with Vass:

“don’t reckon i’m fasting this year. kinda sad about that.”
“Yeah makes total sense”
“feels stink not to tho“
“I know 😒”
“still gonna try and fast the first day tho. do it for my granny”
“Ι knew you would 🥰”
“me, transparent as a window”

Got me the best Medjool dates in Berlin and a bag of Za’atar. First day was a bit hairy but found a way. Second day felt better. Third day. Still doing it for my granny. No pressure, can bail at any time, doing it lovingly and with care.

Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem. Alhamdu lillahi Rabbil ’alameen

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Georgina Beyer

Georgina Beyer, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Porou, takatāpui, wahine irawhiti, trans woman, sex worker, actress, politician.

Star of Jewel’s Darl way back in ’86. The first trans MP in the world. Responsible for getting the 2003 Prostitution Reform Act passed, decriminalising sex work in Aotearoa, and for the 2004 Civil Union Act which led to legalising same-sex marriage.

She did so, so much for us.

Ngā mihi, moe mai rā, whaea Georgie.

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Iain With And Without An M. Banks

I never know what to say when someone dies, even 10 years on. Gala and I joked my epitaph should be, “Fuck you looking at? I’ll knife ya.” Ten years ago, Iain Banks died. Shit joke. Unequivocally my fave author at the time. I’ve read a heap since then and in that specific genre only Tamsyn Muir and Ann Leckie have come close. Yeah, a lot of other writers are amazing and touched my heart, made me laugh, but this is the you can take a tote bag of books to a desert island kind of love and it’s those three with Iain forever first.

Like so many weird subculture scenes, Iain got the attention of way too many straight white dudes. And because he was a nominally straight white dude, with a love of fast cars, whiskey and drugs, he doesn’t get much attention outside that very mediocre bubble of dudes talking. Yeah, Excession is a banger of a space opera, but have you read Feersum Endjinn? Or Whit? That shit has radical, liberatory politics all the way through. He was writing Black, Brown, trans, queer liberation and love back in the ’90s. And he always seemed like one of those so rare, genuinely good, thoughtful, fun, caring men. The kind we need a whole lot more of.

Over the almost twenty years of this blog, I’ve written about or mentioned him in the low hundreds of posts. He even has his own tag, though for that number he should be a category. Here’s some of my faves, chronologically.

Which caused me to read some of my own writing from the last decade and I’m not as shamed or embarrassed as I feared. Which might be me lacking in self-awareness of what I’m missing, but whatever.

And what caused this — I was not paying attention and February 16th was his birthday and it’s 10 years since he died — was a thread by Assoc for Scottish Literature with a bunch of links to articles and interviews I’m going to remind myself of by putting here:

(Not including the Guardian one though. Fuck that TERF transphobe rag. Wouldn’t piss on it if it was on fire.)

Cheers, Iain. I’d have loved for you to scare the shit out of me in the passenger seat of a red F40 hooning the highland roads of Scotland.

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The Only Thing To Celebrate On February 14th

I’ve never celebrated str8 wyt valentine’s day but I always forget it was the day colonialist invader Captain Cook got himself murked for trying to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu on Hawaiʻi. This ten-year-old reminder comes from somos lobos, no ovejas. Fucked around, found out, bro.

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Länderdreieck From Görlitzer Brücke

I’ve lived in Berlin how long and never walked the old elevated train line from Görlitzer Park almost all the way to Treptower Park? Over the Görlitzer bridge on Treptower Kanal and it’s just all trees and unpaved paths. It’s an absolute gem and once again Berlin pulling up her skirts to show a bit of ankle it’s Berlin, upper thigh. Even in winter.

Fuck the Berlin and German political parties (allll of them) for ramming a massively expensive and useless dildo of Autobahn all the way through the east end. What this stretch should be is a connection over the Ringbahn line and into Treptower Park and Plänterwald, through to Königsheide and south through Wasserwerk Johannisthal and out of the city along Teltow Kanal, or east through the old rail yards of Johannesthal and out of the city along the Spree. That would be excellent. And would also end up with wild boars and foxes hanging out in Görlitzer Park.

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She-Male Trouble Relevant To The Ongoing Bathroom Panic

Continuing on from my last post on the early-’90s comic She-Male Trouble, the back cover of Issue #1 is highly relevant to all the cis hysteria about us pissing where they piss. #bitchesgottapiss #utijustsayno #washyourhandscunt

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Shemale Trouble

I was talking with a comic artist the other day and old ’90s language became a convo — shemale, tranny, chicks with dicks, heshes — and some of that connecting to transsexual sex workers in King’s Cross, Sydney back in the ’70s, where my elders tricked on the street, stripped in clubs, and worked in brothels. Which reminded me of a comic I think I got hold of in Sydney sometime in the late-90s, She-male Trouble. I think I saw an ad for it in Horny Biker Slut, where the degen sisters first appeared. Created by John Howard, published by Last Gasp, it’s pervy, exploitative comic porn, reminds me of Oglaf!, and is the direct but largely unknown ancestor of young trans femme tumblr artists from a decade ago. Would it get mercilessly shredded on the internet today? Yup. Was it actually one of the few representations of transsexuals (period more or less correct language there) which wasn’t vaguely TERFy and exoticising academic blaahs? Also yup, along with Grooby, Shemale Yum, Bob’s Tgirls, and that original world of equal opportunity internet trans porn.