More history revision with a trans activist …

‘I like to think of myself as a historian and I don’t feel like I’m doing history,’ Brandy told us, which turned out to be the truest thing she said. What she meant though, was that history of was repeating itself, ergo the West was repeating what happened in Germany in the 1930s all over again. Transgender issues were not new, they stretched all the way back in time. She wanted to tell a narrative story with this book and is also a fiction writer.

Film Review: Afterlives

Normally I only write about the transgender issue, but in the case of Afterlives I’ve had to make an exception, because, although it might have its heart in the right place, its head in so many wrong places, it’s mind blowing.

On a positive note, director Kevin B. Lee, chose an interesting aesthetic for the film, using his desktop to interact with film clips and his chosen talking heads, which works. What doesn’t work, however, is his piss-poor analysis of why violence indoctrinates. He starts in the right place, looking at the example of ISIS’s ‘blockbuster’ recruitment video – Flames of War – analysing it frame by frame, creating entries in a spreadsheet.

Little Rose

Darren, who I knew a tiny bit from the pub, was always neat, wearing crisp white shirts, tucked into creaseless jeans, hair short back and sides.  One day, while saying goodbye, he casually asked if I fancied going out with him.  I must have screwed my face up, as he quickly added: “Please, I really really fancy you and I’d really like to get know you better.”  Really? My god!  So, of course, I agreed, feeling ashamed of my reflexive aloofness.  

In conversation: Nathan Lents, author of ‘The Sexual Evolution’

Nathan H. Lents is a professor of biology at the John Jay College of criminal justice in New York. Yes, you read that right. John Jay was set up, according to its website, ‘in the mid-1950s in response to the increased complexity of administering and operating the New York City Police Department and relations between police and the community’ and is a ‘Hispanic- and Minority-Serving Institution’ which wants to ‘educat[e] traditionally underrepresented groups and [is] committed to increasing diversity in the workforce’. You don’t get more social justice warrior than that. The science department naturally has a bias towards forensics, toxicology, etc, though you can do a Cell and Molecular Biology Bachelor of Science.

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