With the piece on Cucumber finally posted before the premiere of It's A Sin.. has the representation of bisexuality in Russell T Davies's 'gay life in the UK' dramas improved in the past six years? Let's just say that, once again, the acting is great, the direction, camera work and editing are great, and the soundtrack is great too. The… Read more »
As It's a Sin, Russell T Davies' new series, is about to be broadcast, I thought it was about time I did the rewatch of his previous GGGay series, 2015's Cucumber. If you haven't seen it, it'll have plenty of spoilers. Cucumber was described as a "spiritual sequel" to his earlier Queer As Folk series, and would be looking at… Read more »
I was on the team for BiCon 2013, held at the University of Edinburgh's John Macintyre Conference Centre (sessions) and Pollock Halls (accommodation in surrounding blocks). Pollock Halls is, looked at from one perspective, a large hotel that just happens to have students in it for much of the year. Over the summer, the demand for accommodation in Edinburgh is… Read more »
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 »