Ruth Pearce

Encores aren't usually expected in underground scenes. I think I've maybe played around 50 gigs with my current band, wormboys, and we've played two encores in that time. On both occasions they were completely unplanned, and played in response to a particular audience vibe (demand!) on the night.

I'm not a massive fan of encores, so am not too bothered about their decline. I've always respected big bands like Manic Street Preachers who long refused to do them.

I think encores can make sense at small gigs, in response to a really hyped audience. But at big events it feels like empty theatre.

Is the encore dead?

I've seen five bands headline to audiences of 30 to 2500 over the past three weeks, none of which played an encore. One band, Ratboys insisted they had no intention of "playing peek-a-boo" with the audience. Wet Leg just left the stage to a wave of noise.

You might not like it, but this is what peak male performance looks like

Nothing about us, without us.

And with things like the puberty blocker trial, that doesn't simply mean involving trans adults - it means listening to young people and being led by their experience.

TERF Wars “A powerful, exciting and much-needed salvo in one of the most urgent battles against bigotry.” – Sandy Stone The emergence of trans-exclusionary movements raises many questions for feminism …

Regular tapping of the sign: please, please read ruthpearce.net/books/terf-w... by @notrightruth.bsky.social and amazing collaborators. Particularly if you haven't read the source materials. Particularly if you haven't lived as an out trans person through the the times of Raymond onwards...

this skeet aged like a fine wine

Pictured: scan of four colored Polaroid photos. Top left: empty bottles lined in an oblong shape, with flowers piled in the middle. Top right: three people crouching next to the memorial with their heads bowed. Bottom left: person bending at the waist and arranging the flowers, while three people lean against a parking barrier in the background. Bottom right: two people crouching next to the memorial with another person standing nearby and another leaning against a parking barrier in the background

On Transgender Day of Remembrance, we honor the lives taken by transphobic violence. This day is credited to Gwendolyn Smith, who started the tradition in 1999 with a vigil for Rita Hester. Pictured is an earlier vigil for Marsha P. Johnson (1992).
Courtesy of NYC LGBT Center.
#TransHistory #TDOR

Writing History in a Time of Genocide Anne Irfan asks, what does it mean to write the history of a place as it is being destroyed before our very eyes?

I've been thinking about this quote all day

"Every university in Gaza has been destroyed. The mass killing of Palestinians has also extinguished the knowledge, memories, experiences and indeed the histories that they carry as individuals. Genocide targets a people’s past as much as their present."

Black and white photo of a white man holding a baby leopard. A wire fence and an old car are in the background.

So what you're saying is you're the new Reed Erickson?

I had literally no idea F1NN5TER was funding Anne Healthcare. Which, I suppose, was the whole point.

Anyway, huge respect to trans people everywhere. In the face of huge normalising pressures, we continue to make the field of trans health thoroughly weird.

TDOR has really snuck up on me again. This year I'm remembering my two friends who died in September, plus many more whose lives were taken around the world - especially sex workers and trans women of colour.

This, re: the Times piece. You need to understand this before you understand the obsession with confinement of trans lives.

it is almost as if accommodating and conceding to far right ideas legitimizes them and signals to voters that the far right is a legitimate choice for governance

When white people react with hostility to sharing space with Black and brown folk, they don’t care if those folk were born here, migrated legally, or are “illegal aliens.” They only see non-white faces who “don’t belong in their space.” This is why “ordinary concern” about migration is basic racism.

love each other. hate the state.

This feels like a real, are we the baddies, moment for the people in the Labour Party who still consider themselves soft left

your dead AI mother loves you so much ❤️

Denmark asylum: The Syrian refugees no longer welcome to stay Denmark is criticised for becoming the first European country to revoke residence status for 200 people.

If you think I'm exaggerating, just look into how Denmark has treated Syrian refugees - including in years prior to the end of the civil war.

Refugee status set to become temporary in radical asylum reforms Copying the Danish model, the UK is expected to make refugee status temporary and subject to regular review, while tighter rules on family reunions may also be on the table.

If this disgusting racist policy had been in place in the 1940s, I literally wouldn't exist. The British government would have just carted my grandmother back to Germany once the war was over. I'm sure that would have been very "safe" immediately post-Holocaust.

collective memory is something you have to work at constantly, and the persistent drumbeat of land acknowledgements is an extremely valuable way to produce widespread consciousness of basic material fact of dispossession and genocide

Wheeling and dealing

Photo of an envelope being posted by a white person's hand with blue nail polish.

That's my UCU strike ballot in the post. Happy Friday!

To me this matches lived experience perfectly.

"While screen time and technology use..appear to be important predictors of bullying victimization for cisgender students identifying as boys/men & girls/women, they did not predict bullying victimization for transgender or gender nonconforming youth."

Moreover, the people (mis)using her name to crack down on phone use deflecting from the fact that it was transphobia that killed her

The article on radicalisation on Mumsnet is *really* good.

Text-based image detailing questions and responses about the Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) for the Code of Practice. Key points include the EIA not being finalized and lack of recorded reasons for omissions to the Minister.

FOI reveals the EHRC couldn’t even be bothered to finish an impact assessment for their new code of practice. When Bridget Phillipson asked for it on 8 October, all they managed to hand over was an unfinished “working draft”. 1/