Outer Alliance Spotlight #57: Put This on the Map November 26, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : Uncategorized , 10commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #57. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week brings us another group project aimed at changing the experiences of queer teens (and adults and everyone else, too) for the better.
Reteaching Gender & Sexuality
Another group has started a project to try to make things better now instead of later. Put This on the Map urges us to rethink the way we teach gender and sexuality. They’ve made a documentary exploring this topic with 26 teens in Seattle, Washington, and they’re launching a national tour to get their message out and open dialogue in different communities.
This is a good thing to think about, both generally, and in the context of our reading choices. How do our favorite books inform our ideas of gender and sexuality? Speculative fiction is a good avenue for alternative views of gender and sexuality, from Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness to Lauren McLaughlin’s Cycler and beyond. What are some of your favorites, and why? What would you like to see more of, or less of? In light of all these projects, I can’t help wondering how can we, as an alliance of LGBTQI-friendly fans, writers, artists, reviewers, editors, and activists, make things better?
That’s it for this week. A short post, but one which will hopefully make us all think. Please share your thoughts! We’d love to hear them.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #56: Make It Better November 19, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : events, links, news , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #56. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week brings us The International Transgender Day of Remembrance, and some more updates on the anti-bullying projects floating around the internet.
The 20th of November, 2010 is the twelfth annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance. On this day, people all over the world come together to remember people who were killed because of anti-transgender bias. If you are interested in attending one of these vigils, transgenderdor.org has a list of events and locations.
This brings us to a sticky point that’s come up recently on the Outer Alliance Google group. We’ve talked about the It Gets Better Project and the We Got Your Back Project before (here and here, respectively), both of which are projects intended to give hope to teens in rough situations. The problem is, for some people, it doesn’t get better. For too many people, being part of the LGBTQI spectrum means facing violence, verbal abuse, and despair. There’s a list of people being memorialized this year–people who were killed in the last twelve months because other people didn’t like the idea of transgender people existing–and it’s horribly long. It would be too long if it were one person, but it’s much worse than that. Faced with cold hard truths like that, some Outer Alliance members wonder how we can say It Gets Better? They worry that urging kids to wait out the rough times isn’t enough. And they’ve got a point. That’s why our next two items for this week explore other messages.
*Hal Duncan made a spectacularly sincere (and sweary) It Gets Better video. On the Google group, a lot of the positive reactions to this video commend Hal for acknowledging that 1) things really suck and being told to hang in there doesn’t always help a whole lot when you’re in the middle of that suck, and 2) the reason it can get better is not just because the world will change while we sit in quiet misery, but because we can make it better. By waiting, maybe, but also by refusing to accept things as they are. Click here to watch, but be advised that we’re not kidding about the swear quotient. It’s massive.
*The Make It Better Project encourages people to work toward fostering acceptance. They have suggestions for ways that teens and adults can take action to protect LGBTQI kids in school and out, including a YouTube campaign, and a letters to school principals campaign.
Thanks for reading. Join us again next Friday for more queer speculative fiction related goodness. We’d love to see more ideas for how to make things better, and more videos from Outer Alliance members. If you’ve got any of those, please let us know!
Outer Alliance Spotlight #55: Sarah Ettritch November 12, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , 4commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #55. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is Sarah Ettritch, author of The Salbine Sisters.
Sarah writes science fiction and fantasy stories featuring lesbian protagonists. Her Rymellan stories (about space pilots on a distant planet) are available online at the Rymellan Stories website, and she started Norn Publishing earlier this year in order to also put her books out in print and e-book format. The Salbine Sisters, her fantasy novel about lesbian magic users, came out in October.
In addition to writing, Sarah enjoys reading and playing computer games. She’s also the Web Maven for Broad Universe, an organization which exists to promote and support women who write speculative fiction. Sarah lives in Toronto with her partner and four cats.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #54: Introducing the Outer Alliance Podcast November 5, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : announcements, events, interviews, Outer Alliance Podcast , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #54. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week we’re pleased to launch the Outer Alliance Podcast!
We’ll put up a new episode each month with news, events, interviews, listener feedback, and possibly even other forms of LGBTQI speculative fiction related audio goodness. You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.
Below are some links to sites and events mentioned in the first podcast episode.
For information about OutlantaCon, Gaylaxicon 2011, and this weekend’s Outlantacon game day, visit outlantacon.org.
Sara M. Harvey’s Dressed Just Write event will be held at the Two Roads Cafe in Lebanon, Tennessee on Saturday the 13th of November from 3:00-5:00. Her Spotlight interview is here.
OryCon 32 is also happening next weekend in Portland, Oregon, and OA member Craig Laurence Gidney will be in attendance along with some other awesome guests.
Hadley Rille Books is giving away a Kindle 3G. Register once for free, and get another entry each time you order (or pre-order) books like Aether Age: Helios.
Edward DeGruy is president of the Atlanta Outworlders, and a member of Starfleet International. He is the guest liason for Outlantacon, and consuite director for Chattacon. He also works Dragon*Con, and may be working MidSouthCon in 2011. His band has music for you at hyperdrivemusiconline.com.
If you have any ideas for great podcast material, or want to send feedback, let us know. Comment here, send a message via the Google group, or e-mail me directly. My address is julia@juliarios.com.