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.
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.
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.
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
235 years of nothing to celebrate. No pride in genocide.
Always was always will be.
And some I gave their own posts to ’cos they were utter bangers, and some I might even give their own posts, ’cos also bangers. So many books. I can only take one fiction and one non-fiction with me? Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s Rehearsals for Living, and Tamsyn Muir’s Nona the Ninth. And one book of poetry? Fatimah Asghar’s If They Come For Us.
Having absorbed all the “Go Piss Girl” memes for years without context, I finally bailed into Gossip Girl at the start of season 2. And shortly after devoted half a day of hours to season 1. Is it terrible? Kinda yes. Is it transfixing? Also kinda yes. Do the teachers let down the whole show? Very yes. Do I care about the spoilt rich students? Some of them ambivalently yes. Is the slow growth of the relationship between Aki, Audrey, and Max beautiful? Yes. Also messy, but still beautiful. And is Zión Moreno as Luna La someone I want to binge everything she’s been in? Totes heaps yes. Does her aloofness resemble ’90s desexualised gays who never kissed or had relationships? Fucking yup. And when she ran off with – was carried off by farm boy Rob I was “Yes bitch, finally get some!” Because she’s beautiful and sensitive and feminine and has the power of creation like one of the old Goddesses and I know it’s not one of those shows but letting this part of her grow is something I want to see.
One of my all-time fave races. I love the sand chaos of Koksijde and I love the intense racing period over this time of year. And I also love deeply Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado slowly coming back to her best after a very long illness and injury. With all the young ones coming up, she does not get enough love. UCI World Champion, European U23 Champion, Netherlands Champion, 1st in DVV Trophy and Superprestige, and 2nd in UCI World Cup, all in the same year and all when she was twenty-one.
P-Valley Season 2 is damn! those bitches are messy damn! the lighting damn the camera work damn! the music damn! the poledancing the poledancing the poledancing damn! the hair makeup eyes shoes heels costumes hips butts tits skin flesh Black femininity gushing flooding drowning anyone too weak for its power (me. I am too weak) damn! Uncle Cliff she every time and damn if I did not need to sit down after all that every time Diamond’s tight fade and soft lips and eyes.
Another in the small pile of books out of Aotearoa I’m getting all up in my memories about reading. I haven’t thought about Witi Ihimaera for decades. Same with Peter Wells. Old names in an anthology of mostly young Millennial and Gen Y poets and writers. Some of the other old names I can’t read past knowing they were rad-fem-les-sep transphobes back in the day. Cool if they’ve grown from that, but irrelevant to me; they did the damage then and I don’t need to read them now.
Dasniya said, on Thursday when their nohinohi little one was all big eyes and focus as I sung old Māori songs I seem to have remembered for them, she was seeing a show as Sophinesaele by Pelenakeke Brown and I said that name sounds familiar, reckon I’ve just been reading them. And I had. Her writing, A Travelling Practice, one of the couple of non-fiction pieces, and one of the couple that really stuck with me out of all the writers. The other was Jessica Niurangi Mary Maclean’s Kāore e wehi tōku kiri ki te taraongaonga; my skin does not fear the nettle, not the least for reminding me te Reo Māori is grammared but gender neutral, ia, tāna, tōna … like all the best languages. I photographed Pelenakeke’s piece and sent it to Dasniya before she saw her performance.
I should have marked all the writers I really liked. Forgot to do that with my usual oh I’ll remember of course I won’t and now I spose I could go back through. Almost finished my most recent stack of books and the upcoming pile is heavy on Māori Pasifika and I’m very fucking happy about that.
