Perhaps because there are other things to report on at the moment, the Guardian has only just published its obituary of Donald James West, author of the 1955 book Homosexuality, who died on 31st January this year. I don't know how many editions it ended up having, but as it happens I have the first three: the original hardback, the… Read more »
Ben Plaistow was a prison officer who started working at HMP Woodhill in 2014 after eleven years' service. He's bisexual and suffered direct and indirect discrimination when some other officers became aware of that. In the end, Ben ended up being unfairly dismissed within two years of arriving. (Link to PDF of the Employment Tribunal's report.) So what's the most… Read more »
There's a gushing article by Helen Lewis on writer Russell T Davies in this week's New Statesman. RTD, as he's apparently known throughout the magical world of the media, has done lots of things. CW: misogyny. There's Queer as Folk. It's been ages since I saw that, so we'll leave that for a bit. In 2001, he bounced from Queer… Read more »
A non-story in the Sunday Times, 'Yorkshire Mesmac charity allows sex with clients',* opens with: A charity for child abuse victims, sex workers and gay men given more than £2m by the government, councils and police has told its staff they are allowed to have "sexual relationships" with the often vulnerable people they meet through their work. It then says… Read more »
CW: spoilers and dubious consent, as well as the usual biphobia. The recently released game Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator by Vernon Shaw and Leighton Gray is described by its producers as: a game where you play as a Dad and your goal is to meet and romance other hot Dads. You and your daughter have just moved into… Read more »
After posting An epidemic of erasure, I remembered one of the stories I'd wanted to talk about that it didn't mention at all, despite the way that it features Channel 4 too. Its weekday nightly news programme, Channel 4 News, is one of the UK's flagship news programmes. Along with BBC 2's Newsnight, it tends to ignore the 'popular' stories… Read more »
I am beginning to think biphobia and erasure are in The Guardian's style guide. The worst – not the only, just the worst – example from today is titled, with no noticeable awareness of the irony, How the straight majority still silences gay people. That it'd be bad was obvious from the opening sentence: Two weeks ago it was Pride… Read more »
A couple of weeks ago, they published an article on actor Andrew Garfield talking about 'playing gay'. "The actor was criticised over comments he made about preparing to play a gay man, joining actors such as James Franco who've toyed with ideas of sexuality" says the subtitle. What he did was say comes down to that he thinks that, as… Read more »
With the fiftieth anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalising homosexuality (according to most of the media) / partially decriminalising some sexual acts between men in England and Wales (the reality), the BBC and Ch4 are both having seasons of 'gay' (sic) programmes. One of the most recent was Ch4's Epidemic: when Britain fought Aids. On the one hand,… Read more »
LGBT History Month is on us again and, as ever, there's a distinct shortage of the 'B' to be seen. Unfortunately, there isn't a shortage of biphobes being given a platform. This year, the main one is Julie Bindel who will be speaking at the Working Class Movement Library on the first Saturday. Unfortunately, Schools OUT UK, the creators of… Read more »