So, who’s up for a trip to Japan?
Leon Green
@leongreen
- 146 Followers
- 332 Following
- 83 Posts
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Anyone have an AirChat invite they want to offload?🤔
Have joined Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/leongreen.bsky.social
Say hello if you’re over there!👍🏽
Sarah BrownA little story.
In 2014, the UK charity, Stonewall, had a new CEO: Ruth Hunt.
Ruth wanted to make Stonewall trans inclusive. Up until that point it hadn’t been. Part of that effort was to recruit an advisory group from the UK trans community.
I was on that group. I ended up as its vice chair.
We spent the next year and a bit creating a document called “A Vision For Change”, which detailed what we thought the areas that trans equality campaigning should focus on in Britain.
Then the Brexit referendum happened and Cameron ragequit. Theresa May came in and it was apparent there was very little government apetite for the stuff we wanted.
But May, who was there when the same Sex marriage bill went through under the earlier coalition government had had something of a damascene conversion to LGBT rights issues. Stranger things have happened (but not many!)
So she wanted something from our list that was quick, easy, and uncontroversial. Obviously we were disappointed, but she was presented with bringing Britain’s antiquated Gender Recognition Act up to date, and in line with other European countries, as something simple. We honestly thought it was. It’s an administrative change of very little significant consequence, and actually no significance at all outside the trans community.
And it would have been simple, had an eclectic collection of unpleasant, obsessive arseholes with privileged access to the UK press not decided to start a culture war over trans people at that exact moment.
A culture war which, at least in England, they basically won. In part, this war was why I emigrated to Portugal.
Here we are, seven years later, and the result of Scotland finally wanting to implement a watered down version of the “easy win” we presented to Theresa May is apparently that the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is willing to end the Union between England and Scotland over it.
So that’s my story. I am part of a small, elite cabal of LGBT people who wrote a document that is poised to destroy the last vestiges of the British Empire.
Go me! If there are any other governments you want destabilising, my bank details are available on request. I provide reasonable rates.
In 2014, the UK charity, Stonewall, had a new CEO: Ruth Hunt.
Ruth wanted to make Stonewall trans inclusive. Up until that point it hadn’t been. Part of that effort was to recruit an advisory group from the UK trans community.
I was on that group. I ended up as its vice chair.
We spent the next year and a bit creating a document called “A Vision For Change”, which detailed what we thought the areas that trans equality campaigning should focus on in Britain.
Then the Brexit referendum happened and Cameron ragequit. Theresa May came in and it was apparent there was very little government apetite for the stuff we wanted.
But May, who was there when the same Sex marriage bill went through under the earlier coalition government had had something of a damascene conversion to LGBT rights issues. Stranger things have happened (but not many!)
So she wanted something from our list that was quick, easy, and uncontroversial. Obviously we were disappointed, but she was presented with bringing Britain’s antiquated Gender Recognition Act up to date, and in line with other European countries, as something simple. We honestly thought it was. It’s an administrative change of very little significant consequence, and actually no significance at all outside the trans community.
And it would have been simple, had an eclectic collection of unpleasant, obsessive arseholes with privileged access to the UK press not decided to start a culture war over trans people at that exact moment.
A culture war which, at least in England, they basically won. In part, this war was why I emigrated to Portugal.
Here we are, seven years later, and the result of Scotland finally wanting to implement a watered down version of the “easy win” we presented to Theresa May is apparently that the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is willing to end the Union between England and Scotland over it.
So that’s my story. I am part of a small, elite cabal of LGBT people who wrote a document that is poised to destroy the last vestiges of the British Empire.
Go me! If there are any other governments you want destabilising, my bank details are available on request. I provide reasonable rates.
Prof Christina PagelTLDR: One thing that didn't happen was the end of the pandemic.
Despite people telling you it's just like flu, Covid had far greater impact on illness, hospitals and deaths.
Prevalence:
Up to Dec 2021, it was very rare that more than 2% of population had Covid at any one time. 2022 blew that out of the water - for 38/52 weeks, prevalence was higher than 2%. We had 5 distinct waves and 3 waves where more than 1 in 20 were infected at peak.
Saielle DaSilvaBlack people will literally bring receipts and screenshots of #racism on this app and people will reply like “wait, what’s soo bad about that? I have the same predisposition to comments or questions like these, does it make me racist?”
YES. If you reply to a concern about racism by centering yourself instead of listening to the person affected, and trying to learn, yes.
Malcolm TuckerPeople who argue that it isn’t the time to deal with structural, constitutional issues because the country is in crisis never seem to consider that the country might be in crisis because we’re in desperate need of structural and constitutional reform.
George Takei 
🏳️🌈🖖🏽“I alone can fix it” didn’t work in the White House, and it didn’t work at #Twitter.
Prof Nisreen Alwan ☀️Using this platform made me realise how I came to accept exposure to cruelty & hostility as part of the deal of being able to talk to you. The clicks algorithm is not necessarily our connection master. How refreshing to be reminded of that.