Sinners’ Oscar triumphs show that Black cinema is now a vital and valid part of Hollywood Its wins are a testament to Ryan Coogler’s vision. His highly personal film foregrounds the Black experience and its essential humanity is a lesson for us all

Sinners’ Oscar triumphs show that Black cinema is now a vital and valid part of Hollywood

Hello Bluesky 👋

#ChooseOurFuture is this year’s #WorldRewildingDay theme – and with an election approaching, it couldn’t be more apt.

Before Scotland heads to the polls, join us on 20 March at Pitlochry Festival Theatre for our #HopeForNature hustings .

Free tickets: bit.ly/4smwwgr

New event!
📆17th March
🕞3:30pm

At Southern Illinois University a screening of "Thabyay: Creative Resistance in Myanmar" followed by discussion w/ Lar Say @gbutensky.bsky.social & moderated by @lisabrooten.bsky.social

Film is definately worth a watch.

Details:
www.wsiu.org/community-ca...

Award show highlights of 2026: Kpop Demon Hunters teams were not given air time to voice their thanks on TV, while a person with Tourette's Syndrome shouted out the N word as Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo stood at the podium. These show editors didn't care about representation, or ableism.

Rerunning this. Not sure if I am right.

I am very sad and angry about the rise of #transphobia in the UK. I consider myself a genderqueer person (and in a sense, a trans too). If I were still living in the UK now, my very long hair would turn me into a potential rapist in a transphobe's opinion. #uk

2026 Conference – CfP Queer Ecologies Across Socialisms 15-16 October 2026 University of Regensburg, October 15-16, 2026 | CfP deadline: Feb 15, 2026Organizers: Martyna Miernecka, Paweł Matusz In literary and arts resea…

#CfP alert! “Queer Ecologies Across Socialisms" – conference in Regensburg on Oct 15-16, 2026. Deadline: 15 Feb 2026 queersocialism.net/2026-confere...
#queerstudies #envhum

#EnvHist Worth Reading: December 2025 Find eco-fascism, maple syrup battles, and moldy insects in the latest list of environmental history worth reading from Jessica DeWitt.

Our editor-in-chief, @jessicamdewitt.bsky.social, is back with her picks for environmental history worth reading from December!!

niche-canada.org/2026/01/13/e...

#envhist #envhum

Isabelle Gapp, A Circumpolar Landscape: Art and Environment in Scandinavia and North America, 1890-1930. Cover of book with northern lights over arctic scene on right.

Our 1st #envhum #book talk of 2026 is on Monday, 19 Jan, 16:00 CET/15:00 GMT.
Join us to hear Isabelle Gapp @issygapp.bsky.social discuss her book A Circumpolar Landscape: Art and Environment in Scandinavia and North America, 1890-1930.
All are welcome!
newnatures.org/greenhouse/e...

Science, Religion, and the Human Future: Conflict, Collusion, and Consequences Abstract. Science, Religion, and the Human Future: Conflict, Collusion and Consequences demonstrates that the myth of an inevitable conflict between scienc

New and important:

academic.oup.com/book/61786?l...

Can’t wait to read this - thanks @brookenewman.bsky.social

japanese feel to this Turner in Manchester's Whitworth Gallery? 1799!

General reminder that the Immigration Act of 1924 that set immigration quotas and established the Border Patrol was the crowning political achievement of the Klan

Washington may ban sales of farmed octopus • Washington State Standard A bill to ban the possession and sale of farmed octopus in Washington advanced out of a House committee on Wednesday.

A bill to outlaw the sale, possession, transport, and distribution of farmed octopus in Washington advanced out of the state's House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday. washingtonstatestandard.com/briefs/washi...

Many women who appeared masculine, as I have seen in Victorian fictions, are married to a cis-man, or else are foreign monsters, such as Victoria the devil’s wife in Venice, Carmilla the Vampire from Styria, the sapphic Miss Wade from Little Dorrit, and Ayesha, with her “serpentine belt”, in She.

Female impersonators, drag queens, and transwomen were then heavily sexualised and threatening, while British women were still on the sacred pedestal of purity and passivity. On male impersonators, drag kings, and transmen, I have to do more research (especially in Halbestam’s Female Masculinity).

That probably led to the Labouchere Amendment Act, which does not require the proof of sodomy to be evidence of “gross indecency”. This Act of course led to Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment and Alan Turing’s. In a few Victorian po*nographic stories, male prostitutes were dressed up as a woman.

Secondly, female impersonators and drag queens were often associated with sex. You might have heard of Boulton and Park, or Fanny and Stella, a case which the police arrested two AMAB cross-dressers (they did not identify as women, as far as I understand) for buggery. They were acquitted. (Cont).

If women are not going to be mothers and men are not going to be fathers, their British imperial world is doomed. This patriarchal Empire also denigrated un-English versions of femininity, masculinity, and gender variants. It is not weird to see how many white women (and men) were transphobic.

Women and transpeople were oppressed by transphobia. At the time when suffragettes and suffragists started their campaigns for women’s rights, the imperial apologists were afraid of the transformation of Victorian family ideal, because they were afraid of the extinction of the British (cont).

What many TERFs forgot is that the first wave of feminism is mocked by transphobic images, mocking women dressed up like a man. Even wearing a necktie and a pair of trousers seemed laughable at that period. Also, in these images, men dressed up as a housewife were perceived as degraded. (Cont)

So it’s easy for white women in the Empire to be programmed to feel threatened by something weird and consider their womanhood holy, by not looking into the social structure which creates the threat itself. Imperialism turned women into boys (trans metaphor intended) who cry wolves (cont.)

you should not identify as and cannot become a man, or at least masculine. It seems the British Empire clang very much to an image of gentlemanly British imperialist and his feminine and strong white wife. Women in these fictions became victims to racialised, monstrous, unidentifiable beings

…the female protagonist does not only have to protect her children from snakes in Australia, but she has to also read women’s magazines, so that she appears feminine. If she’s too strong, she’s going to be too masculine. You can see something here, can’t you? If you were assigned female at birth, …

For example, in Harriet Jacobs’ incident, we can see Mrs. Flint both as a victim and an oppressor. Slave narratives often expose intersectional violence, showing nuances of victimhood as well as oppression. Imperialist fictions, however, fix roles. In Henry Lawson’s “The Drover’s Wife”, (cont)

In various fictions in imperial times, not only are the racialised subjects demonised, white women were turned into their victims, in need of rescue. As white women became victims in these fictions repetitively, especially under the time of strong patriarchy, they forget they are also oppressors.

In many imperial events, such as 1857 Indian uprising (what the Victorians called The Mutiny), the rumour that British women were harassed by the Indian rebels became an imperialist message of control, and concealment of British violence against Indians, especially Indian women.

My take on British #transphobia: I have my guess as a person interested in nineteenth-century literature and culture. Firstly, The British Empire turned white women into victims from a sexual harassment from the racialised subjects in order to justify its violence and white gentlemanliness. (Cont.)

Happy holidays, everyone!

25....
Dagoshinaan neyab, endanakiiyaan. – I return back, to my homeland.
Zhingwaak, zhingwaak nos sa! – The pine, the pine my father!

- "To the Pine Tree" Zhingwaak gaa-ozhibii’aan Bamewawagezhikaquay
translated from the Anishinaabemowin by Margaret Noodin