Rachel Jennings

Backlash after trans books removed from children's library section KCC says the move came after a

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... A lovely, responsible book on Trans lives, co-written by one of my colleagues, is at the centre of this hate campaign in Kent. It was nowhere near the children's section.
Apparently the book simply existing is somehow a 'safeguarding' risk for children.
What on earth.

The embroidery threads from the photo above, now wound onto home-made cardboard bobbins and arranged into a plastic box in DMC number order.

After a tedious but satisfying evening of hand-winding thread onto bobbins made from a cereal box...

15 skeins of embroidery thread arranged on a table, with reds to the left and then in rainbow order with brown and cream at the right end.

And this is only HALF the colours I need for the pattern 🤦

Sometimes I don't feel very autistic. But then I'll be on the bus listening to the Stardew Valley soundtrack on my NC headphones, having just bought £30 of embroidery thread to make a Stardew cross stitch, and realise: I am a walking cliche of autism.

Just full on rolling out the trans discrimination on the back of a shoddy corrupt supreme court ruling bsky.app/profile/indi...

I am giving a talk tomorrow for the INH series online, where I am looking at the origins of the Aburi Botanic Gardens in the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) and the role that instructions and suggestions played in its management and early "success"

#botany #ghana.Bsky #HistSTM #aburibotanicgardens

The cover of Origin Africa: Safaris in Deep time by Jonathan Kingdon

A spread from Origin Africa, with an artwork on the left, and a chapter title "Translating Nature" on the right

A spread from Origin Africa

A spread from Origin Africa, with an artwork on the left and the title heafing "Import and Export of Primates" on the right

In 2019 I had the extreme privilege of curating an exhibition with Jonathan Kingdon - I've never met anyone with a mind like his, able to firstly conceive profound biological concepts, and then translate them with astonishing art. I've just finished his latest book, Origin Africa. It is brilliant.

Shoutout to Whitney Plantation, who has always BANNED WEDDINGS at their location and allowed the entire facility and its grounds to be an indoor and outdoor museum. It also houses the genealogical records for over 100,000 enslaved people.

You can search for your loved ones in its archives.

Choo Choo! I'm on my first train of the day, on the way to Manchester for #NatSCA2025 🚂

Pretty much everything that can go wrong in a museum has gone wrong this week, but I'm very proud of our brand new exhibition of elephant-inspired work by talented young artists!

As Morgan Page summarized it acidly, “apparently the Court will know women when they see them,” this being the litmus test for porn in the US Supreme Court in the '60s. The comparison to obscenity law is apt. “Deep in the judgment is an idea of trans people as moral contaminants,” notes Dave Renton.

Keir Starmer is simply wrong in law. A trans woman with a Gender Recognition Certificate is considered a woman for the vast majority of legal purposes, as required by the ECHR. One would expect a former human rights lawyer to have a better grasp of legal detail.

Boadicea and Her Daughters. Victoria Embankment, London SW1A 2JH 4.6 Sculpture g.co URGENT: Join Us in Parliament Square This Saturday 1pm- Stand for Trans Rights Dear Friends, We need your support now more than ever. This Saturday at 1:00 p.m. in Parliament Square, there will be a critical protest in support of trans rights, following the recent Supreme Court decision that threatens the recognition and dignity of trans people across the UK.

sure no one misses it!!! SHARE SHARE SHARE!!! I'll share some social media graphics soon for you to post. By 6pm Let's show up and show out for trans lives. See you in Parliament Square this Saturday.

Meeting Point: Boadicea and Her Daughters Statue - https://g.co/kgs /pkDwGp3 Trans women are women Trans men are men Non-binary people exist and deserve rights too UNISON branches are supporting this protest, and we are calling on every member, friend, and ally to join us in solidarity. We need a huge turnout to show that we will not stand by while rights are taken from our family. Please reach out to everyone you know- colleagues, friends, family, union members - and ask them to come along. Bring signs, bring energy, and most importantly, bring your voice. This is very last minute, so we need everyone to shout about this protest as loudly and widely as possible. Share it with your networks, post it online, tell your friends. let's make sure no one misses it!!! SHARE SHARE SHARE!!!

Planned action!

Protest planned at parliament square on Saturday at 1pm to protest supreme court ruling.

UK Supreme Court Rules That Trans Women Aren’t Women under the Equality Act 2010 The legal definition of a woman in the UK now excludes trans people: This is what it means for Trans+ rights in the country

My analysis of today's UK Supreme Court judgment.

The UK Supreme Court Rules That Trans Women Aren't Women Under the Equality Act 2010

www.wearequeeraf.com/uk-supreme-c...

when the law says you cannot exist, the truest and best weapon at your disposal is to defy it and survive regardless. In the face of meaningless cruelty, defiance is all there is, really. For as long as it takes.

Obviously things have got dramatically worse in the US recently, and I don't want to diminish that, but I've been at *so many* conferences in the UK on topics like empire, humanitarianism and development where multiple speakers from the Global South have been denied visas or held at the border

Sadiah Qureshi in conversation with David Olusoga about extinction Manchester Histories presents an 'In Conversation' event marking the launch of 'Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction' (Penguin 2025)

Book launch tickets on sale today at 10! Absolutely delighted to be in conversation with David Olusoga at Manchester Museum on 6 June, 6-8:30pm. Join us for a launch celebration among amazing ways of being!

Free, but limited places so register here. Pls share.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sadiah-qur...

To be clear, the Nazis tried this. Lutz Heck thought it would be cool to resurrect aurochs (a type of extinct cattle) and other creatures from the Reich's mythic past. It was a bait and switch then, it's a bait and switch now.

I have tariffed
the penguins
that are on
Heard Island

and which
you were probably
assuming
did not export goods

forgive me
they were taking advantage of us
so cunning
and so cold

The New Yorker value for shareholders cartoon, crudely photoshopped. A man in a tattered suit sits around a campfire with three children and says “yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we really kickstarted economic growth.”

I mean. This is where we are, right

One way the mainstream "over" (or "under") diagnosis discourse is misleading is the assumption there is some natural, correct number of neurodivergent people. But there is no natural number, as disability is relationally, materially, and socially produced.

Museum people really are the best people! Just had a lovely chat about natural history data management with a colleague from another museum. #MuseumDocumentation

A deep green background on which white lettering reads "The society for the history of natural history - call for papers", along with historical botanical illustrations of red, purple and pink flowers.

📢Calling all natural historians!

This year our Summer Meeting is exploring the ✨senses✨

So we want to hear from you! We're looking for papers that explore the intersections of the senses - including sight, sound, smell, taste and touch - with the history of natural history.

Audiobook cover, white background with black text reading "Empire of Normality: neurodiversity and capitalism, Robert Chapman, Elliot Fitzpatrick". There is a silhouette of a sideways face, with an image of birds instead of a face.

Comrades! Now the audiobook's finally out, I have five codes for free audible copies of *Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism*. If you want one just like and share/quote this post. After 48 hours I'll pick five sharers at random to send the codes to.

Moral panics and legal projects: echoes of Section 28 in United Kingdom transgender discourse and law reform A grounding in the queer history of the legal system in the United Kingdom reveals striking parallels between the moral panic leading to the enactment of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, a...

So thrilled to say that my new article on the echoes of Section 28 in the moral panic around trans people in the UK is out now, along with the rest of the first issue of @genderandjustice.bsky.social !

doi.org/10.1332/3033...

“Analyst reports suggest that advanced technologies—such as AI or machine learning (ML)—have the potential to increase fossil fuel yield by 15%, contributing to a resurgence of oil and potentially delaying the global transition to renewable energy."

urrggghhhh

Three thylacine skins from the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge. They are narrow light brown skins with darker brown stripes, laid out in a row with their tails at the bottom of the image and their heads at the top.

A black and white studio photograph of a hunter seated on the right with his gun in his lap, looking at a dead thylacine hung from above by its ankles on the left. Its tail hangs down in an angle from its body.

Big event coming up: I'll be in conversation with an amazing panel exploring the uncomfortable history of where our #thylacine specimens came from, & how their #extinction was linked with colonial violence in #Tasmania.
AND we're launching a podcast about it.
www.museum.zoo.cam.ac.uk/events/hones...

British Museum trying to tell us they've changed and are changing ... but they're still taking £50m from oil companies to make it happen though 😬🙅🏻⛔👎🏻

Anyway. Fuck the Home Office. A good reminder that the institution is irredeemable -- it's easy on the left to pretend that it was just nasty Theresa May who corrupted the department, but it has always, in fact, been bad. Abolish it.