mirella | Reading

We did finally meet with the university senior management on 10th June, over a month after we originally requested a meeting. It wasn't a complete success, but we did come out of it with assurance that the existing policy on gender reassignment was still in place, and trans people can continue to use the toilets that match their lived gender, that no-one should be challenging people in the toilets, and that any changes to the policy would not happen until after the EHRC guidance is published in the autumn, and would involve a proper consultation, and a full Equality Impact Assessment of the changes

We asked them to respond to the EHRC consultation as an institution, and gave them a deadline of 20th June to communicate the above facts with all members of staff, including information on how to seek advice and support (other than just the staff counselling service!)

Instead they published a statement on Sharepoint on Tuesday (24th June), which did not meet our requests. The unions have put out a joint statement today (drafted last week, but it took a while to get it online) as a result:

https://www.ucu.cam.ac.uk/joint-trade-union-statement-on-the-supreme-court-ruling-on-the-equality-act/

lnr

Finished my response and submitted at 11:30 last night, having had to start from scratch on Sunday because a browser refresh had lost my previous attempt. I copied and pasted my responses into a document before submitting, as I'd been warned it wouldn't save them or send them to me. Tired now, and too hot today too, but glad I got it done.

Not sharing it all here, but from the final question:

Overall, as a trans inclusive feminist woman, I find this Code of Practice to be incredibly upsetting. I want to be able to include trans people in my life. I want to accept them in their lived gender. I'm happier with women's places which include trans people than I am with ones which exclude them. I want to have advice on how I can do this, and it's completely lacking here.

The Code is unclear in many places not just on how trans inclusive policies can work, but also on how the suggested trans *exclusive* policies can work in practice. It relies too much on the idea that you can always tell which people are trans and which people are not, and it seems willing to change existing practice significantly even where this will disadvantage trans people.

I don't think this is what the ruling in the Supreme Court was trying to achieve. The changes here are so incredibly broad, and so much at odds with other legislation, that they seem to go far beyond what is necessary, and it feels like an ideological stance to exclude trans people. If this is not the intention than it needs re-writing considerably.

nineveh_uk

Fic: Third Lifetime
Fandom: 度华年 | The Princess Royal (TV)
Rating: T, CNTW
Length: 1244
Summary: Su Rongqing gets another life and another chance. Although this time, he'll need a different strategy.

*

That I watched all forty episodes of this drama earlier in the year can only be ascribed to the fact that I spent most of the winter/early spring feeling absolutely rubbish. It starts out with the potential for an intriguing story with imperial princess Li Rong reborn as an 18 year old after being murdered by her ex-husband, or so she thinks, and determined to manage things better this time. Fortunately/unfortunately for these intentions, the ex-husband she had murdered as revenge has also returned to his youthful body, as has her other love interest, who has spent almost the past two decades as a eunuch. Alas, the potential is wasted in overly-complex and yet rather shallow plotting that doesn't add up very well, and an increasingly nauseating romance that balances the premise of having an ambitious and intelligent female lead who wants power and is obviously the best-suited for it of any of the main characters, rather poorly with the apparent need for her also to be Protected by a Man who, for all his claims of respect and admiration for her, is basically Jack Maynard in hanfu. The second male lead's former status as a eunuch feels rather symbolic. don't Nonetheless, I did watch to the end, and having done so had to write fic.

Also, the title is suddenly making me think that it would be very entertaining to see a cdrama based on the House of Windsor. A sort of period drama/fantasy remake of The Crown...

nineveh_uk

I had an excellent weekend last week in Ilkley, watching the Saturday of the Lexus Ilkley Open Tennis Tournament (an early grass season event) with my sisters. They are more into tennis than I am, but live sport is always fun to watch, and we had a lovely day of sunshine that wasn't too blistering, and relaxing entertainment, punctuated with occasional bleating of the nearby sheep.

On the train, I read James Lee Burke's Two for Texas a novella that which has been sitting on my shelves for the better part of two decades. TBR piles never do get shorter. It's an early work by Burke, and lacks the depth of his later books, while showing that promise in his fantastic sense of place and descriptions, and ability to draw the reader straight into scene and character. However its compactness as a narrative was a problem for me because it was drawing on a lot of US cultural history/national mythology that I am simply unfamiliar with. I felt like someone reading a short novel about the trial of Anne Boleyn from the POV of a clerk, written for a British audience, while knowing nothing more about Henry VIII than his name. Sam Houston? Never heard of him, but the city must be named after him so presumably he wins something. Santa Anna? A name with no resonance whatsoever. David Bowie? I know he had a knife... But it was engaging nonetheless, and a reminder that I haven't read Burke for a while. It's time to pick some more recent Dave Robicheaux novels off the TBR pile.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
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7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Up eight flights of stairs to a basement flat

Sing with the choirs that surround you

Reading

Joint Union Statement

EHRC Consultation

Fic: Third Lifetime (The Princess Royal)

It's hard to remember the Alamo if you don't know what happened there in the first place

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October 2012

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