Five things you can learn from Eurovision about referencing

I originally created and shared this as a Sway presentation, but I suddenly remembered I had a blog and thought it might suit the blog format well and perhaps be more easily shareable than Sway.

It has been quite popular in academic and library networks this week and I feel like it is a timely and important reminder that Eurovision, citation practices, and libraries are political (not neutral!) and provide some suggestions I’ve come across for navigating these politics.

Five things you can learn from Eurovision about referencing

I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which I prepared this and pay my respect to them and to all Aboriginal Elders, past and present, and recognise that their sovereignty was never ceded.

If Eurovision is really committed to the message of peace, unity and love that it builds itself around, they should stop pretending to be neutral and consider whether it is appropriate for countries like Israel, Russia, Belarus and Australia to continue participating. I express solidarity with Palestinians.

Palestinian artists and broadcast journalists: “Boycott Eurovision 2019!”

Knowledge, Access, and Resistance: A Conversation on Librarians and Archivists to Palestine with Vani Natarajan and Hannah Mermelstein

Librarians and Archivists with Palestine

Palestine and Praxis: Open Letter and Call to Action

Hatari Flew the Palestinian Flag at Eurovision

1. Both Eurovision and citation practices are political

Despite having rules against political messaging, Eurovision is always political.

Similarly, although you might have been told citation is neutral, it is impossible to avoid politics and this myth of neutrality perpetuates the unequal status quo.

Check out this discussion on citation politics featuring La Trobe academic Dr Yves Rees (they/them) alongside Professor Sandy O’Sullivan (they/them) and Dr Rico Tabor (he/him):

Some questions you can ask you can use to help you consider the politics of citation from Netolicky’s (Jul. 11, 2018) Reference lists as sites of diversity? Citations matter blog post include:

• “How does this list situate my work in the field? With what kind of scholarship am I aligning my work?
• From what nations, cultures and classes do my references come? To what extent do they represent Euro- or Anglo- centric ways of knowing and being?
• What is the gender mix of my reference list?
• Whose voices are silent? Whose scholarship have I ignored or excluded?”

2. Question power and privilege and amplify diverse voices

Five nations put more money into Eurovision than other countries and so automatically make it to the Eurovision finals, but most of them (especially the UK) hardly ever do very well.

On the other hand, acts celebrating LGBTQ+ communities and visibility and more diversity have been increasingly popular and Eurovision is alternatively and affectionately often referred to as ‘gay Christmas’.

As Sara Ahmed illustrates in the Introduction to and throughout Living a Feminist Life:

“Citation is how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before; those who helped us find our way when the way was obscured because we deviated from the paths we were told to follow. In this book, I cite feminists of color who have contributed to the project of naming and dismantling the institutions of patriarchal whiteness”.

Perhaps it’s time to rise like a phoenix and question whether you should keep citing the same privileged old white people who always get cited or not and try to cite more academics from marginalised groups and non-Western countries instead.

Some resources and keywords you can use to find more diverse voices to cite include:

Check out Democracy in difference: Debating key terms of gender, sexuality, race and identity by Dr Carolyn D’Cruz

Use other Gender, Sexuality and Diversity Studies resources at La Trobe and beyond

If you’re searching in JSTOR, add Gender Studies and Feminist and Women’s studies under Journals

If you’re searching in SocIndex, Anthropology Plus, Political Science Complete or Criminal Justice Abstracts, add LGBTQ+ Source

If you’re searching in Informit Complete, select the AIATSIS collection.

Add keywords and phrases like feminism, queer, intersectionality, decolonise, anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti- carceral, and critical race studies to your search strategy (but critically evaluate been how these terms have been used and avoid pinkwashing and appropriation – don’t be like Israel!)

Look for research found in non-Western journals: The Journals Online Project is aimed at providing increased visibility, accessibility, and quality of peer-reviewed journals published in developing countries.

Use this resource list curated by Sandy O’Sullivan as a gateway to finding works by Black authors

Find and listen to First Nations academics in this Blacademia podcast and look up their academic work

Follow the Cite Black Women Collective and their guiding principles:

” We have been producing knowledge since we blessed this earth.

We theorize, we innovate, we revolutionize the world. We do not need mediators. We do not need interpreters. It’s time to disrupt the canon. It’s time to upturn the erasures of history. It’s time to give credit where credit is due.

#1 – Read Black women’s work

#2 – Integrate Black women into the CORE of your syllabus (in life & in the classroom).

#3 – Acknowledge Black women’s intellectual production.

#4 – Make space for Black women to speak.

#5 – Give Black women the space and time to breathe.”

3. Prioritise quality over quantity and focus on content over style/staging

As 2017 winner Salvador Sobral from Portugal somewhat controversially argued in his victory speech:

“We live in a world of disposable music — fast-food music without any content…. I think this could be a victory for music that actually means something. Music is not fireworks. Music is feeling.”

Similarly, I encourage you to focus on why referencing is important and the quality of your sources more than how you’re referencing (which varies across disciplines and publishers) or how many sources you’re citing.

Historian, Tom Griffiths, eloquently illustrates that referencing is about much more than just punctuation and pedantry:

“Footnotes are not defensive displays of pedantry; they are honest expressions of vulnerability, they are generous signposts to anyone who wants to retrace the path and test the insights, they are acknowledgments of the collective enterprise that is history. Historians feed off the power of the past, exploiting its potency just as historical novelists do, but historians also constantly discuss the ethics of doing that. To whom are we responsible – to the people in our stories, to our sources, to our informants, to our readers and audiences, to the integrity of the past itself? How do we pay our respects, allow for dissent, accommodate complexity, distinguish between our voice and those of our characters? The professional paraphernalia of history has grown out of these ethical questions” (p.74.9).

To find the best quality and most relevant sources, look for peer reviewed journal articles in discipline specific databases.

However, as the following Eurovision fails illustrate, appropriate staging is important to learn and get right, so if you do need help with the staging, check out our Academic Referencing Tool for your relevant style and do not hesitate to contact your librarians if you have further queries.

4. Record and back up sources/performances so you can learn from the past

The footage from Eurovision in Copenhagen in 1964 is rumoured to have been lost in a fire in the 1970s or possibly simply not recorded.

This is a good reminder to use some kind of system (spreadsheets, scrapbooks or specialist software) to save and manage your references systematically, which is particularly important when working on a research project or a thesis.

You may also like to try experimenting with reference management software like Zotero or EndNote for assistance with staging and citing while you write, but don’t let it distract you from why and who you’re citing.

Use these guides to help you find the reference management tool or system that works best for you:

• Reference management for researchers guide
• Zotero
• Guide to Getting started with Zotero
• ZoteroBib – a gateway to Zotero

5. Inspired by this year’s Eurovision theme Open up, support open scholarship

Subvert the exploitative academic publishing system and find more open research using the following resources:

• Open at La Trobe (OPAL) – a gateway to open research and more resources at La Trobe
• Australasian Open Access Repositories – a gateway to research repositories in Australasia
• DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals – Over 10,000 quality peer-reviewed OA journals from all disciplines
• JURN – Search free academic articles, chapters and theses
• CORE – Search for openly accessible content from repositories and journals
• Humanities commons and Open Library of Humanities – search for openly accessible research from humanities disciplines
• Add Unpaywall to your browser to easily access open access versions of journal articles online

Reference List

Ahmed, S 2017, Living a feminist life, Duke University Press, Durham.

Are citations political? 2020, viewed 19 May 2021, <https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWAaEZx0-MA&t=283s>.

Austlit 101 Links to Black Writers and Voices – Compiled by Dr Sandy O’Sullivan June 2020 | AustLit, viewed 19 May 2021, <https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/19577014>.

Conchita Wurst – Rise Like a Phoenix (Austria) 2014 LIVE Eurovision Second Semi-Final 2014, viewed 19 May 2021, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaolVEJEjV4>.

D’ Cruz, C 2020, Democracy in difference: debating key terms of gender, sexuality, race and identity.

Daði Freyr (Daði & Gagnamagnið) – Think About Things (Official Video) 2020, viewed 19 May 2021, <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=VFZNvj-HfBU&t=1s>.

Eurovision: All Eurovision Fails | Best Moments 2021, viewed 19 May 2021, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxGI2kSgPnw>.

Jessica Mauboy – We Got Love – Australia – LIVE – Second Semi- Final – Eurovision 2018 2018, viewed 19 May 2021, <https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=yizRoV7uPKo>.

Pollapönk – No Prejudice (Iceland) LIVE 2014 Eurovision Song Contest First Semi-Final 2014, viewed 19 May 2021, <https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5ZG378DH1c&t=1s>.

The politics of Eurovision 2018, viewed 19 May 2021, <https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2bkmDG3buk>.

The winning performance of Salvador and Luísa Sobral from Portugal 2017, viewed 19 May 2021, <https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=z5VUti3kVIo&t=1s>.

Copenhagen 1964, Eurovision.tv, viewed 19 May 2021, <https:// eurovision.tv/event/copenhagen-1964>.

Hatari Flew the Palestinian Flag at Eurovison, viewed 19 May 2021, <https://www.icelandreview.com/news/hatari-flew-the- palestinian-flag-at-eurovison/>.

Griffiths, T 2009, History and the Creative Imagination, History Australia, 6:3, 74.1-74.16, DOI: 10.2104/ha090074.

Netolicky, D Jul 11 2018, “Reference lists as sites of diversity? Citations matter”, the édu flâneuse, viewed 19 May 2021, <https:// theeduflaneuse.com/2018/07/11/citations-matter/>.

OUR PRAXIS – Cite Black Women., viewed 19 May 2021, <https:// www.citeblackwomencollective.org/our-praxis.html>.

Palestine & Praxis: Scholars for Palestinian Freedom, Palestine and Praxis: Open Letter and Call to Action, viewed 19 May 2021, <https://palestineandpraxis.weebly.com/>.

Palestinian artists and broadcast journalists: “Boycott Eurovision 2019!,” BDS Movement, viewed 19 May 2021, <https://bdsmovement.net/news/palestinian-artists-and- broadcast-journalists-boycott-eurovision-2019>.

Rules, Eurovision.tv, viewed 19 May 2021, https://eurovision.tv/about/rules

‘Talk:Eurovision Song Contest 1964’, in Wikipedia, , viewed 19 May 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Talk:Eurovision_Song_Contest_1964&oldid=989252908>.

Vuletic, D May 14 2019 ‘Opinion | Eurovision is political this year. As it is every year.’, Washington Post, viewed 19 May 2021, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/13/eurovision-is-political-this-year-it-is-every-year/&gt;.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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On failure and experimentation (and learning from it)

A few years ago I worked on an elearning project with a great team of colleagues across all campuses (with lots of remote working via Zoom before everyone was doing it!) but a few things happened during it and other elearning projects going on at the time that left me feeling burnt out and filled with fear and anxiety related to elearning work ever since, which held me back a bit. Not really being able to debrief (and being told that this was because it would be too negative) was one of the hardest things as it meant there wasn’t really a chance to move on and learn from it.

Then the pandemic hit and I was forced into it again along with almost everyone else.

It finally felt okay to experiment and make mistakes, to get things out there before they were ‘perfect’, and learn from what worked and didn’t work, which is definitely how I best learn to use technology. Everyone was getting used to new ways of teaching, learning, and working, and generally very understanding and forgiving.

We also had an excellent new elearning advisor join us in the Library at the start of the year and their short and sweet sessions around different educational technologies during the pandemic gave me energy and hope as well as ideas for experimenting with online teaching and learning activities. More recently they’ve been running great sessions on accessibility too.

I even started to kind of love making videos and have a bit of fun putting my own character/style into it (Although I do shudder a bit thinking about some videos I made in the first week of lockdown in March!). Inspired by a few lecturers, I’ve also started to love using Sway – and don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back to PowerPoint.

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Fun with Zoom and recording videos

On gender euphoria, disrupting the gender binary, and not being invalid, undetermined or unspecified

My first thoughts when seeing the Invalid theme for GLAM blog club were very similar to the Transgressive Archivist’s ones in their excellent “Your Data Is Invalid: Collecting Data On Sex, Gender, And Sexuality” post and I have had a long and ever growing draft blog post on a related topic for months, but I’m trying to keep this short and rough inspired by this micro essay challenge… although again it’s still not quite micro!

The theme also makes me of the brilliant Sandy O’Sullivan’s recent talk The colonial project of gender: Thinking through museums, creative representation and research imperatives:

Everyone must watch the whole talk several times, but some of Sandy’s comments from the talk that particularly struck me in relation to this theme were “universities share a great deal with the Creation Museum (Kentucky). They’re constantly defining groups according to the gender binary” and “I’m determined, and I’m not unspecified” – reflecting on having to select ‘indeterminate’ or ‘unspecified’ as a trans and non-binary academic.

Further reading/watching/listening from Sandy O’Sullivan:

ERA and gender equity-ish (blog post)

Transgender Warriors interview (audio)

Museum Queeries Queerstories talk (audio)

Are citations political? discussion hosted by Monash University Library featuring Sandy, Yves Rees, and Rico Tabor (video)

See also this piece on moving academia beyond the gender binary from JJ Eldridge.

This theme also made me think of Euphoria Kids by Alison Evans and their note to the reader at the start of the book on gender euphoria and why they have written this excellent book:

“I want people to know about gender euphoria. I want them to learn about it before gender dysphoria. I want the young trans kids that will read this book to be proud of who they are, and imagine wonderful, magic lives for themselves.”

Dear Reader extract from Euphoria Kids by Alison Evans

Elliot Page’s very recent post coming out as trans also beautifully and powerfully illustratesthis gender euphoria as well as the dangers -the joy, dreams, and courage, and the risks, fears, and violence:

“I love that I am trans. And I love that I am queer. And the more I hold myself close and fully embrace who I am, the more I dream, the more my heart grows and the more I thrive. To all trans people who deal with harassment, self-loathing, abuse and the threat of violence every day: I see you, I love you and I will do everything I can to change this world for the better.”

Trans Awareness Week s(h)elfies collection 2020 featuring my post lockdown long overdue haircut and subsequent gender euphoria!

I’m still reflecting on how good it felt to be Reid Marginalia at work and it’s been a little hard to go back to Clare.

Being Reid Marginalia

See also this incredible Adventures in Time and Gender podcast and website – an excellent and creative gaytway or portal to trans and gender diverse histories. We have always been here.

On slow librarianship and scholarship, union slow downs, and creatively and collectively resisting neoliberal time

I intended this to be a micro essay as part of this GLAM blog club challenge, but once I started writing on the theme of Lessen for GLAM blog club, I couldn’t stop… I guess words were one thing I couldn’t lessen, which is a bit of a common theme in my writing, and even though this isn’t exactly micro, I think it might be a bit shorter than my usual posts.

Lessen makes me think of a certain questionable framework deal our university and union executives came up with in an attempt to protect jobs that means we’re all currently doing more while getting paid less and being forced to reduce leave too.

While I am very happy for those who’ve escaped, lessen also reminds me that voluntary redundancies are still redundancies and they have already started to have pretty devastating impacts on morale, culture, technical systems, and workload for those who remain. It sounds like there have been forced redundancies in areas that started restructuring before the framework period began and several more seem highly likely after it ends. Additionally, so many casualised workers have lost work and even more have experienced wage theft and I expect things will get even worse for our casualised comrades so we must stand and work in solidarity with them and try to lessen the impacts.

Workloads have certainly not lessened and I don’t know how anyone could think that they would during a pandemic. The “wellness days” off we’ve been given are like “cram five days of work into four days” (or work on the weekend) – an individualistic and token ‘solution’ to systemic problems.

However, lessen also makes me think of slow librarianship and slow scholarship movements to resist neoliberal time and the cult of productivity and focus on process before product, cooperation before competition, facilitating connection and deep listening, critically evaluating assumptions and power structures, “wasting” time, reflective practice, and building learning cultures, and ways colleagues and I have been trying to do this.

It reminds me of reading How to do nothing: resisting the attention economy by Jenny Odell at the start of this year and learning from diverse disciplines (from ecology and philosophy to IT and creative arts and beyond) that this was not about doing nothing at all but rather about doing ‘nothing’ or ‘unproductive’ work according to capitalism. If only more people in power in universities and government had read this when planning ‘reset’ after the pandemic – then perhaps they wouldn’t have proposed such short sighted and damaging cuts to arts and education, particularly at regional campuses, in an effort to please our very short sighted and harmful government.

This in turn makes me think of union slowdowns or go slows – an arguably less risky form of industrial action than strikes – which could be quite a powerful way to resist workload increases, demonstrate the impact of job losses, and build worker solidarity and our collective power. It seems similar to ‘work to rule’ actions but appeals to me more as feels like there is more room for creativity, collective reflective practice, and even some joy.

Some reading and resources on and ideas related slow librarianship and scholarship:

Resisting Achievement Culture with Slow Librarianship by Meredit Farkas

Wayne’s world: How universities are crushing academics by N.N. Trakakis

Mountz, A., Bonds, A., Mansfield, B., Loyd, J., Hyndman, J., Walton-Roberts, M., Basu, R., Whitson, R., Hawkins, R., Hamilton, T., & Curran, W. (2015). For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 14, 4, 1235-1259.

Saved by slow scholarship by Ali Black  

librarian, read thyself by Lynne Stahl

Sloniowski, L. (2016). Affective labor, resistance, and the academic librarian. Library Trends, 64(4), 645-666.

Intersubjectivity and ghostly library labour by Leo Settoducato:
“Libraries are haunted houses, constructed sites of possibility inhabited by ghosts. As our patrons move through scenes and illusions that took years of labor to build and maintain, we workers are hidden, erasing ourselves in the hopes of providing a seamless user experience, in the hopes that these patrons will help defend libraries when the time comes. But I ask that we think deeply about what it means for libraries to be under attack, and why the attachment to that narrative persists…. Library workers at all levels, but especially those who have institutional power, must care for one another and prioritize community wellbeing. Individual actions will not solve structural problems, but they can improve people’s immediate material conditions: that’s something to start with.
Haunting is a complex and rich lens through which we can explore what it might be like to be fearless, or to harness fear in a way that is creatively powerful. If we think like ghosts, we can experience time creatively and less urgently, better positioning ourselves to resist the demands of neoliberalism; to imagine and enact positive futurities.
When a ghost speaks, those around it are compelled to listen.”

GLAMorous Play in a Pandemic ~ Becoming you: an incomplete guide, Small Town Queer, and Adventures in Time and Gender

The GLAM blog club theme of Play makes me think of the new Becoming you: an incomplete guide exhibition at the Immigration Museum– my first physical GLAM experience since the pandemic hit.

I spent a good two hours or so there listening to, reading and sitting with as many of the powerful and moving diverse stories reflecting on growing up as possible. 

The stories were great and I loved the use of mirrors to help people literally see themselves in the museum and the way the mirrors were often partially obscured in an attempt to illustrate the messy/incompleteness. However, the experience felt a little clinical and passive, especially given the theme of experiences of growing up and coming of age lends itself so well to something messy, experimental and playful, and I’m sure the curators had exciting pre-pandemic plans, but, of course, that’s so hard to do while being covid safe. There’s been so much work in the GLAM sector in recent times to make experiences less passive, and I know my own teaching was just starting to become less passive and more student centred and interactive when the pandemic hit. It feels like the pandemic has undone much of this work given its no longer really safe to encourage people to interact with displays or other people in the physical space.

I feel like there is potential to bring some of the messiness and playfulness online and connect the online and physical space, perhaps particularly with social media (although not limited to social media). It looks like they are doing some interesting work with school students around this Becoming you exhibition.

The following recent online queer and trans history iniatives that have come out of the pandemic may provide playful inspiration:

Small Town Queer uses almost all of my favourite interactive digital history techniques and more!   They appear to have a physical presence in their museum too and recently hosted a drag tour.

Adventures in Time and Gender
I particularly love the way they’ve used ‘wormholes’ to facilitate meandering through the past and help encourage people to dig deeper and learn more in a playful and ethical way. Perhaps the physical Immigration Museum exhibition could use QR codes to link to online wormholes as well as for covid safe tracking. (Is this finally the moment for QR codes in GLAM?!) The suitcase is also an important object (character even) in Adventures in Time and Gender and this could be such a powerful device in the Immigration Museum too.

Micro Essays – GLAM blog club

Inspired by Nathan Sentance’s Aus GLAM blogs micro essay challenge, which was inspired by this month’s GLAM blog club theme ‘lessen’, I thought I’d try something similar.

I’m not sure I’ll manage 11 posts in 11 days and I may not always stick to the themes, but my mind has been running a little wild with critical GLAMorous thoughts on a few things I’ve been reading, watching, listening to, and doing lately and I’m keen to get them out of my head and discuss them, and this could be a springboard to such discussions.

These posts may take the form of micro reviews or recommendations as well as essays.

a micro me (extract from my first book)

Finding hope and trans support, solidarity and liberation in the archives

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, including She Who Must Not Be Named and a certain NTEU branch president and convenor of the NTEU queer unionists caucus have been quite vocal and I’ve found myself retreating to the Australian archival material most easily accessible online and thought I’d travel back in time and share some hope I’ve found and help me and others construct a kind of archive armour that Archie Barry describes:

“It seems I’ve now naturally fallen into a role that many queer and gender-­diverse people fall into: that of informal researcher. We silently horde content – URLs, zines, ads, pamphlets, stickers, mp3s, books, posters – to build a personalised buffer, a kind of archive armour, between the self and the ­cis-hetero world.”

Trans erasure, trans visibility: History, archives, and art by Archie Barry Nov 6, 2018, Archer Magazine

Transsexual Liberation in Lesbianon

Foreman, Ben & Lewis, Susan, ‘Transsexual Liberation‘, Lesbianon, no. 5, Lesbian Anon [This scan courtesy of the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, Melbourne], Perth, 1975, p. 3.

From Transsexual Liberation by Susan Lewis and Ben Foreman

“In response to our oppression, and the need to organise against it, a number of us,
all transsexuals, have come together under the name of The Transsexual Action
Organisation… We extend our full support to the gay and women’s movements because we are all fighting the same oppressor – a society which decrees that a person born male should behave one way and that a person born female in another. We also see ourselves in solidarity with the struggles of mental patients, blacks, prisoners and all other oppressed groups – for the liberation of one can only be achieved by the liberation of all.”

There was a piece in Camp Ink on transvestite and transsexual liberation in the US in 1971, p.6.

This photograph of  Roberta Perkins speaking at the Australian Transsexual Association (ATA) and Gay Solidarity protest in 1982. Find out Robert Perkins via the Roberta Perkins Law Project which I attended the launch of in lockdown.

Boys Will Be Boys Newsletter from Digital Transgender Archive

This has been one of my favourite collections, particularly the letters from subscribers.

Alex,  and Jasper.  “Boys Will Be Boys, No.1 (February, 1992).”  Newsletter.  1992.  Digital Transgender Archive.

“… Eight F2M boys have come to my attention within the last two months. Though seemingly a small number, compared to knowing only a handful previously and having met no-one before my gender change, this is quite incredible and only goes to show that there are more of us out there than we may well have imagined.
Naturally, this is only the tip of a very isolated iceberg. Many of us are still feeling
alienated or unsure of our decisions. Most of us lack sufficient information,
especially medical, to better aid our decisions. All of us need support. For those of
you on this mailing list please consider writing something of yourself and your
experiences for others to read. Only first names will be used and naturally no
addresses or phone numbers unless specifically given ·for publication will be printed.
It’s important that we share our thoughts, insecurities, excitement fears and
knowledge. This group can only work if each individual is prepared to participate,
even just a little. Don’t leave this newsletter up to a dedicated few. This support
group can have a far reaching impact on the quality of our lives and the education of
the community at large. You don’t have to already have changed yourself physically
yet, or ever intend to, to be involved. Your awareness of your male gender is all that
is relevant…”

Jasper.  “Boys Will Be Boys, No.6 (August, 1992).”  Newsletter.  1992.  Digital Transgender Archive.

“Dear Jasper,
Thanks very much for the newsletter-It’s great to know there are others going through similar experiences that I am and I find it all very encouraging….”

“Well, I’ve noticed in recent overseas newsletters and in some local literature also, that we transsexuals are now referring to ourselves as”transgenderists”. The change in terminology certainly makes sense, as logically, we are not changing our sexuality but our physical gender. I don’ know who coined the new label but it certainly feels better than the previous one, although it takes a little getting used to. I’d be interested to see if the new term will be used within medical circles.“

Jasper.  “Boys Will Be Boys, No. 5 (July, 1992).”  Newsletter.  1992.  Digital Transgender Archive.

“With a little trepidation, much thought and a lot of self analysing, I took a deep breath, then a giant step forwards. Forwards into the world of tranny boys and adopted the new persona of being a man. Now, here I am, a new kid in town. But is this what I really want for my now, my future? Emphatically, from the rooftops of my mind, body, heart and soul I yell. YES! This is what I want. YES! This is where I want to go. YES! YES! A thousand times YES! … Hear I would like to say a very big THANKS JASPER, for making your arduous trek as public as you have. Your doing so has paved the way ahead and made It easier for myself and the others that follow.”

“As a lover of a transsexual (F/M) I feel that there may be others in my position out there who may benefit from my contribution. To start with, Jamie and I have been together for nearly two years. We have celebrated a spiritual union in the presence of our friends and are therefore “married” by our community… To all the transsexuals out there, as a lover of a transsexual, I think I can say there is someone out there for you. I know I am happy with Jamie most of the time and to Jamie the transition to masculinity is the step which will give him peace in this world. To see my lover attain this peace will make me happy for him.”

Jasper.  “Boys Will Be Boys, No. 10 (December, 1992).”  Newsletter.  1992.  Digital Transgender Archive.

“How many years have we fought alongside the gay community for their rights and dignity? Where’s the thanks? Trannies are victims of violence too and certainly have even fewer rights than gays. It was quite ironic that the entertainment for the day included three ‘drag’ shows and was hosted by two men in frocks! I am pleased to say that local drag superstar, Cindy Pastel, took to the stage with a placard declaring “Trannies and Bisexuals are Queer too!”. Good on her. Jasper.”

Jasper.  “Boys Will Be Boys, No. 15 (August-September, 1993).”  Newsletter.  1993.  Digital Transgender Archive.

“Dear Jasper,
The contact and the newsletters have given me the hope to keep going after hitting another very low spot after being told that I would not be supported in my belief that I am a Transsexual after 2 years in therapy struggling with depression trying to stay sane and looking desperately for a million “other” reasons why I feel the way I am; a male in a female body which came to light in previous few years of therapy by feeling safe and allowing myself to ‘feel”, stop denying and to think about “me” for the first time in my life…”

I found some hope in Lesbians on the loose from the 1990s, including the following in a letter from 1990, but also quite a lot of hate, so I’ve stopped reading for now:

“It’s a time to look at our differences and similarities not a time for them to put a halt to the possibility of our space. So often I see internal politics destroy a movement, an idea, a vision far more effectively than the perceived enemy ever can.”

There was a brief piece on Julie Peters running as a Federal election candidate in 1996:

“Julie Elizabeth Peters [pictured] is believed to be the first endorsed lesbian transsexual candidate for a major political party…. A director of photography at ABC TV, Peters, 44, concedes her chances of beating Labor candidate, ACTU president Martin Ferguson, are slim. But she says her candidature for the Australian Democrats is an important step for tranys.”

Listen to Julie Peters on the Archive Fever and Transgender Warriors podcasts.

Julie Peters political endeavours reminded me of Georgina Beyer and I found her landslide New Zealand local council campaign victory reported in the Canberra Times, which made me want to revisit this episode of the One From the Vaults podcast on her and the art of the possible. While thinking about New Zealand trans history, I revisited this Trans Past, Trans Present: The Making Trans Histories Project from Te Papa Museum in which:

“Trans people from their teens to their 70s were asked to identify objects of personal importance and to share the objects’ stories. What emerged was a quirky collection that is a testament to the diversity of trans experiences, and which disrupts established (and cis-written) narratives about trans lives.”

This project was inspired by the Museum of Transology in the UK whose founder, E-J Scott, grew up in Australia, which you can find out more about in the following pieces:

Trans masculinity on the record

The Museum of Everyday Objects That Makes Transgender Lives Visible

A Collection Devoted to Intimate Trans Stories

Museum of Transology Online exhibition via Google Arts & Culture

One of my favourite articles and quotes on trans history by E-J Scott:

Where can trans people call home in history?

“The Museum of Transology shows that the social agency of museums can be used to foster social cohesion. This show needs to go on the road because its everyday objects help people accept the everydayness of being trans. If it were to tour, community collecting and archiving workshops could run as an engagement programme alongside the exhibition. This would skill trans communities everywhere to build their own museums of transology collections, leaving an imprint on collections throughout the UK and halting the erasure of transcestry. The process would also encourage trans people to enter the museum sector. This is vital, because without them becoming heritage workers, trans narratives will continue to remain unrecognised and unspoken.”

I am so happy I managed to visit and find home in 2019:

Finding home at the Museum of Transology

In the beforetimes earlier this year, I had a chat with E-J Scott and some museum and academic comrades about bringing the Museum of Transology on tour around Australia. It’s pretty hard to imagine doing anything like that in the near future, but perhaps we’ll be able to do something online like the Te Papa Museum project while we wait.

I also found a bit of hope that things could be different in Pat’s story in Daylesford Stories from 2016 which is quite aligned to my increasingly frequent thoughts of running away to the country and starting or joining an art library.

Student newspapers might also be a good source of trans solidarity and liberation and quite a few seem to be getting digitised and made available online lately, so I think they’ll be my next archival step. Find out more about Australian academic library student newspaper holdings in this paper.

Another thing I did in the beforetimes earlier this year, was visit the University of Newcastle and learn about their GLAMx Lab and work with the Hunter Rainbow History Group and other community history groups. Their work gave me so much hope which has been so necessary in these times, and has led to me embarking on a small project with special collections at MPOW this week (and dreams about special collections cataloguing all weekend!).

My retreat to the archives in the middle of a pandemic echoes my post on my response to a certain 2017 postal survey and it’s probably not surprising that I am feeling similarly in lockdown (I have included archives in my killjoy survival toolkit which has certainly been needed in this times):

“I have been doing even more thinking about this topic than usual in the last month in with much related reflection on inclusion, self care and emotional labour in a risk adverse industry. For a variety of reasons, mostly related to a certain voluntary, non-binding postal survey on Australian marriage law in some way, I have been feeling less safe and a lot more exhausted than usual… so I am going to play it a bit safe this month and share some archival adventures that have helped me find safety and solidarity at a time when I have needed it more than ever.”

You may like to listen to some more library and archival adventures in this podcast interview I did with Anne Rowlands at the beginning of lockdown 1 and check out our pretty extensive reading and other media recommendations list too. See also: Anne’s Transgender-related materials Trove lists.

Queer career cocooning and reflections

Earlier this year, I volunteered to do a queer career profile for students at MPOW.

Just before writing my responses I came across this queer and careed: practice career cacooning article about how this time of job uncertainty and anxiety might also be a time to prepare and reflect on your career path:

“Inspired by the caterpillar’s process, cocooning describes a time in your life in which you are strongly encouraged, or more likely forced, to wait — to sit, get comfortable, pour yourself a cup of tea, and prepare for the transformation that is taking place in you. Many of us are being forced to deal with career cocoons right now: cocoons of job loss or career anxiety or general helplessness as we navigate working from home or virtual job searches for the first time.”

It reminded me that COVID-19 had brought similar feelings of grief, loss, uncertainty and anxiety to ones I had following the death of an amazing supervisor and mentor around the time of a large restructure that led to much reflection and soul searching and creativity.

I was reminded of this time in my life again even more recently when another amazing supervisor and mentor I had who helped me through it, Leesa Wheelahan, co-wrote this article on the future and history of higher education and work with Tamson Pietsch. This particular extract from the article reminded me of conversations I had with Leesa that helped inform my decision to become a librarian:

“People need to live in safe, inclusive communities and they need to be able to have a say in the kind of society we share. People, after all, are more than job seekers. People study and go to work so they can sustain themselves and their families and because they find these activities meaningful. They do not study and go to work because it contributes to the creation of markets. This may be the outcome of their activity, but for most people it is not the purpose of their lives. An education system focused on skills misses this bigger picture, in which the whole person is developed for an occupation, which is part of a broader network of occupations in society. Occupations are composed of many specific jobs. They are underpinned by both theoretical and practical knowledge. Occupations have histories, face ethical dilemmas and are part of a complex web of other occupations that work with each other.”

It connects to my queer career experiences and responses (slightly edited) and I thought I would share them here in case it helps anyone in the sector or in another sector navigate COVID-19 induced job (and life) uncertainty and anxiety.

I think they also relate to this month’s GLAM blog club theme of risk and the wonderful Jenny Scott’s thoughts on the topic and offering of inspiration to our sector:

“It is a risk if we don’t promote diverse stories, if we don’t address the less-than-savoury pasts of our institutions, if we don’t produce exhibitions and texts that actively engage with the manifold, nuanced, and often dark histories of this country.“

You can listen to some related thoughts (and reading/listening/viewing recommendations) from me and Anne Rowlands in this Transgender Warriors interview.

I feel like librarianship, particularly the people I’ve met, studied and worked with since becoming a librarian, helped me emerge from a cocoon, find my (genderqueer butterfly) self and community, and given me resources, confidence and connections to take risks, think creatively, share diverse stories, and challenge the status quo and fight for a more fair, just and inclusive society. There’s much more work to be done! ALGA has been like a beautiful queer cocoon that I retreat to when the mainstream GLAM sector (and world) becomes too much, recharge, and then re-emerge to join the fight again with renewed hope.

How has your queer identity influenced your career path?

Growing up with a gay dad and later realising my own queerness helped me discover the power of stories, information and online communities and I’ve found a career where I spend my time helping connect people with stories, information, and communities, and advocating for social justice and inclusion. I first studied psychology and sociology as I knew I wanted to help people and understand, question and change systems in some way, but wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to do that for a long time after I finished studying. I thought about going down a social work or teaching path, but after some grief-induced soul searching in which I connected with librarians and others at work, I realised that librarian jobs sounded like a good combination of those two paths, my interests and experiences. So I started studying a Masters of Information Management where I found a wonderful community of information management students and future librarians and archivists.

It feels like starting my librarian career was very intertwined with realising my nonbinary gender identity as once I’d largely stopped questioning what I was going to do with my life, I started questioning everything else, particularly gender. Studying to be and working as a librarian has not only helped me find my community, but also helped me feel more comfortable in my own skin than I ever have before.

I am also delighted that I get to work with so many of my trans and queer academic heroes (or queeroes) by day and some of this work has led to my volunteer work with ALGA by night where I’ve met and worked with even more queeroes (and found some in the archives).

Have there been any challenges in your career related to having a queer identity? If yes, how have you approached these challenges?

The biggest challenges relate to the many systems we use in libraries and the large bureaucracies we work in and with that make any change in them very slow. In particular, many libraries use a number of classification systems that were developed many years ago in the US and attempt or claim to be universal and neutral but they have extremely problematic legacies of heterosexism, cissexism, sexism, racism, and more discrimination. I’ve also come across many people in the profession who argue that librarians are and have to be neutral and therefore shouldn’t challenge discrimination or fight for social justice but all that this myth of neutrality does is perpetuate the unequal and discriminatory status quo.

However, there are also many queer and trans people and allies in the sector who have been challenging that myth and advocating to change the systems we use (and improvements have been made). Connecting with these people in archives/from history, on Twitter, and in real life has helped keep me going. It’s also been very empowering working with ALGA as our collection is of our communities, by our communities and for our communities and items are described in our own words. Our collection is more diverse than our name suggests and we’re working on changing the name.

One of the things I am most proud of doing at work is how I’ve helped make time and space for critical, creative and collective reflection with colleagues on our practices and sector. I also enjoy creating book displays in the library and sharing shelfies on social media to amplify LGBTIQ+ voices that sometimes get lost in the stacks due to inadequate and sadly sometimes harmful classification.

Do you have any advice to other queer people interested in starting a career in your industry?

Librarians can be found working in local communities, schools, universities, government departments, law firms, hospitals and state libraries or using their skills outside of libraries in a diverse range of roles from children’s and youth services to research data management. The thing that tends to unite us is not that we love books and reading, but more that we help people in whatever communities we are part of connect with information, stories and each other in different ways. So any experiences you have related to customer service, events management, teaching or tutoring, media and communications, creative work, academic skills support, research assistance, student advocacy, and activism will be extremely helpful for work in libraries.

I also highly recommend connecting with ALGA – I am a bit biased but think it would be an excellent gaytway to the field and a good opportunity for you to see if you like doing this kind of work at the same time as connecting with queer people working in the field.

Finally, I’ve also always been a union member, but only relatively recently started to get actively involved in union organising and it’s been great and empowering, so I highly recommend it. Building solidarity and caring and fighting for workers’ rights is more important than ever in these times.

Solidarity Forever

The theme for GLAM blog club this month is ‘Forever’ and, while the prompts were mostly related to preservation and there’s a lot I could write about that, I’ve taken inspiration from the song Solidarity Forever instead and thought I’d write about unionism and solidarity during this time of physical distancing and hopefully offer a little hope in the dark.

Recommended listening while you read:

This pandemic has exposed some of the worst things about the higher education sector – particularly increasing casualisation and marketisation (not to mention the extremely high Vice Chancellor salaries)- but it’s also helped me see and consolidate some of the best things about it. There’s a lot of uncertainty and anxiety at the moment but one thing I’m certain about is that we need to listen to our most precarious colleagues and collectively reshape the sector. I work with academics, many of them on casual and fixed term contracts, and students across disciplines and I’ve seen the different ways academics from legal studies, criminology, history, gender, sexuality and diversity studies, creative arts, literary studies and beyond have been responding to COVID-19 and helping their students contend with the current and future implications of this crisis on their studies, lives, and careers.

I know how essential casualised workers are to the higher education sector, how hard they work, and I’ve heard from students who have said they would probably not still be enrolled if not for the support received from these workers. I have been listening to and working with many of these casualised workers and they have been saying that the Job Protection Framework deal between universities and the NTEU National executive, which is now no longer national, will not help them or many (if any) of us and kind of sells us out.

If you work in the sector, I recommend listening to this conversation about university workers, precarity and unionising, lessons from history on past deals between employers and union leadership that have excluded their most marginalised workers, and utopian ideas for the future of the sector: Uprise Radio – Episode 18 – Universities, Unions and Utopia.

I also recommend reading this response to the Jobs Protection Framework from the National Higher Education Casuals Network , this piece from the UNSW casuals network, and following the National Higher Education Casuals Network @NHECasuals.

For more lessons from history, The false promise of a national universities deal by Elizabeth Humphrys and Amy Thomas explores past deals between employers and union leadership (including very recent past) that haven’t worked out so well for workers and illustrates the power of organising in the workplace.

I’m normally more of an idealist, but this Realism for optimists: debating the university Jobs Protection Framework piece (and longer pamphlet) by Mike Beggs and Beck Pearse eloquently illustrates many of the conclusions I have come to about the framework and the power of workplace organising. I’m not completely opposed to the idea of some kind of framework and process to help keep employers accountable to their workers, but there’s sadly very little evidence that the NTEU have listened to their rank and file members, particularly their most precarious and marginalised ones, when coming up with this particular one, and in fact there’s evidence that they’re ignoring and silencing us. There appears to be a slight chance that the framework in its current form might help protect jobs and the the status quo in the short term, and therefore protect those in the sector who are most privileged and have benefited from the status quo. I’m not convinced that it will even help them very much, particularly in the long term, and want to help change the system.

During this crisis, I have had more discussions with colleagues about solidarity and collective care and wellbeing being more important than productivity and efficiency, and I’ve probably been part of more critical and collective reflective practice and acion than ever before in the sector, which gives me much hope. I have always strived to facilitate collective and critical reflective practice and support wellbeing in the workplace in various ways, partly inspired by excellent bosses and mentors in higher education sector like Jack Keating and Leesa Wheelahan who have done so too, and I’m pleased that more of these conversations and practices are happening now even while when we can’t meet and connect in the same physical space. I’ve also been looking at feminist, queer, decolonial, and slow theories and practices to explore how we can work towards creating more collective, cooperative, caring, thoughtful and reflective universities rather than the increasingly competitive and corporate ones that have led to the situation we’re in now.

I believe that library workers and our spaces have the potential to play a huge role in connecting academics and students with each other and knowledge across disciplinary and methodological divides and helping them collectively reflect and create and share new knowledges with communities, but we have many of our own silos, hierarchies, and biases to work through to ensure we do so without perpetuating discrimination and inequalities – some of them illustrated by Alissa in this excellent post on the martyr complex in our sector:

“Honestly, when all this is over, I don’t want to go back to normal. Normal was boring. Normal was unjust. Normal was killing me softly. Now is our big chance—our free space—to design a new normal, both within and beyond librarianship. Now is the perfect opportunity to deeply consider why we do things (not just the what and the how). Now is the time to imagine what kind of world we want to live in. The first step towards great change is believing that such change is possible.”

Extract from Alissa’s post on The Martyr Complex

Shortly before the pandemic hit and we started working from home, I attended NTEU delegates training and started working with some excellent fellow delegates in the library and across the university to help improve conditions for workers. Since the pandemic, many of us along with a large number of other members (including many library colleagues, have become very angry at NTEU leadership, but we’re building something great together as illustrated in this powerful and moving speech by a library unionist comrade:

“Long, intense story short, this all came to a head when an entire branch meeting was actively suppressed on Zoom like a Black Mirror techno-dystopian episode and it was transformed into yet another one-way lecture to hard sell the Framework to us. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back and triggered the entire branch into an explosive state of fury which decisively turned the tide for us. This upheaval opened the door to us organising an unprecedented mass rank-and-file meeting, which we chaired thoroughly democratically in a way that we were previously denied and built the basis for our victory today.

The achievements of our La Trobe NTEU Fightback group shows that from little things, big things grow. From humble beginnings with two or three of us, we became five, ten, then twenty determined and active campaigners.

Now our group is expanding every day and we’ve effectively formed a new rank and file caucus in our branch. It has taught me that even in desperate, defensive situations you can start building something new and breaking with the past, however difficult that past may be …

This kind of organised collective action and mutual trust is literally what unionism is. We ARE the union. The only question is how organised and active we are.”

An extract from the speech of the week shared on NTEU Fightback – No concessions page

I think becoming a delegate and working with these colleagues might be one of the most empowering things I’ve done in my work life so far and we have fun working together too with a messenger chat dedicated to sharing pictures of companion animals, puns about animals and unionism, and friendly reminders to rest and take care of ourselves (and I look forward to having a beer with them when we can safely do so):

My yelling at my comrades to relax and take time for themselves over the weekend cause we're in this fight for the long haul pic.twitter.com/SNg3oPWfTT

— Anastasia Kanjere (@a_kanjere) May 23, 2020

Cheers to the Dazzling Unionists Caring for Knowledge workers (DUCKs) against cuts, Casuals and Allies Together in Strength (CATS) caucus, and Librarians Leading Activists in Marvelous Anti-Capitalism (LLAMAs).

“They have taken untold millions
That they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle
Not a single wheel can turn
We can break their haughty power
Gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong

Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
Solidarity forever
For the union makes us strong”

From the song “Solidarity Forever” written by Ralph Chaplin (1915)

Queerying performance and pedagogy, going feral, and introducing Reid Marginalia

I read and thought quite a lot about librarianship, particularly the teaching aspects, as a performance last year, and started the year by going to circus 101 performance workshops which included drag, and participating in feral queer camp at Midsumma. As  semester 1 approaches, I am thinking about lessons I’ve learned from performance to apply to teaching, and taking them outside the academy (or going feral). I am writing this while sick and watching Mardi Gras and was delighted to hear someone being interviewed say they were a “teacher librarian by day”!

The article on performance and librarianship that has resonated the most is Unpacking and overcoming “edutainment” in library instruction by by Sarah Polkinghorne as I am similarly quite critical of edutainment in the context of the marketisation of education, and some of the alternative lessons from performance resonated with the lessons from the performance workshop and feral queer camp. Polkinghorne illustrates that many of us feel like we are performing when we are teaching, and reflects on aspects of performance that can help librarians create more engaging learning experiences while resisting edutainment. One of those aspects was physicality and this was the main focus of the performance skills workshop I did to help us become aware of and comfortable with our own bodies and voices and I really think it is going to help with my performance/teaching in the library classroom and move beyond “solely cognitivist instructional strategies” and do less over-preparing  like Polkinghorne suggests it can.

Physicality is a broad term encompassing the ways in which we communicate with our bodies, through our postures and movements, expressions and gestures… Our presence in the classroom is embodied. Even webinars are embodied, because we use our voices to deliver them. Comfort with our embodied presence is as fundamental to effective face-to-face teaching as it is to any performance.”

Improv was another aspect Polkinghorne suggests we can learn from, particularly for responding to questions in classes, and as I’ve become more confident and experienced this has started to become one of my favourite aspects of teaching. Polkinghorne’s advice is Don’t block, say yes. Make a choice, don’t wimp. Listen.

Possibly the idea that resonated the most with me has been using scores rather than scripts. We use scripts a lot to assist with teaching across campuses and I struggle to follow scripts I haven’t written as it does tend to increase my anxiety, and when I do write a script and bring it with me for comfort and security, I’ve found I increasingly rarely look at it. I am keen to work on developing scores for colleagues to use across campuses as well as scripts to help them tailor the scripts to local student needs and to their teaching style.

“Have you ever enjoyed seeing different actors play the same role? If performances were interchangeable because they use the same script, why would we bother making new ones? We could just watch Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet and call it a day. The answer is that a script is a fraction of a performance. Actors, within the context of a production, contribute the rest.

Non-acting performers are in the same situation: even where there is a script, it could never be the totality of the performance, or enforce “consistency” across performances. Engagement problems arise when the script is prioritized and the performer is overlooked…

In creating a teaching score, you can predetermine your goals and intentions, while also identifying how students will contribute important choices. For example, they might choose areas of emphasis and the order of the discussion. In this way, students are acknowledged as co-creators of each instruction session. This can help to create an environment where more engagement becomes possible.”

Polkinghorne’s final lesson was inspired by Goffman (one of my favourite theorists from my undergrad days) is in ‘defining the situation’ and I’ve started to introduce who I am more (my positionality) and admired other teachers who do this as well as talking about why we’re here, and what the library is and can do for students:

“Unlike teachers and professors, who have ongoing interactions with students within institutional settings and power relationships that are familiar to all involved, librarians are often asked to just show up to class. We often have no pre-existing relationship with the group of students whom we’ve been tasked to teach. It’s our responsibility to define that situation. Doing so can help to acknowledge and to address the fact that students, teaching faculty, and librarians often have diverse ideas about libraries and about what we teach. Here are some things that I regularly choose whether or not and how to define for students in my instruction sessions:

• what the purpose of my presence is,
• who I am,
• what I do for students,
• what the library is, and
• what the library can do for students,

If we’re reflecting honestly on how to convey this information and bring everyone in the classroom into shared common understanding, we will encounter the tension that exists between honesty and idealisation. This is what Goffman, generally put, called “back stage” and “front stage” personae.

A lecturer I’ve been working with over the first month recently mentioned that they are aware that much library work is invisible and that they were very keen to really clearly acknowledge my labour this semester and make it visible to students and we’ve been discussing ideas for guest performances – bringing the back stage to the front stage.

Some of my favourite parts of feral queer camp perhaps not surprisingly involved the ACT UP teach in and ACT UP in conversation events at Hares and Hyenas where we learnt about and discussed the powerful ways ACT UP used street performance as a protest to raise awareness about the treatment of people with HIV/AIDS and discrimination against queer communities. Performance is emotive and can help make experiences, knowledges, theories and information accessible to broader communities, outside academic institutions and help people understand experiences different from one’s own lived experiences.

When discussing queer performances with fellow campers, Gender Euphoria came up as an incredible joyful example and needs it’s own blog post (that I’ve been trying to write for a while). I also want to give a shout out to colleagues in the UK using performance as pedagogy for queerying the museum – particularly through tours (see blog posts on Reading/making the margins and queerying GLAM spaces and Queering collections: Lessons from Leprechauns, Liverpool and London for a little more). I love the way queer communities have historically and continue to use humour – there are so many puns like my favourite bifocal one:

Speaking of which, I have also come up with a new drag name: Reid Marginalia as Marginalia sounds more GLAM (and glam) than Moore & I love marginalia as a way to connect with a text and its community of readers. I feel this is more on brand for me than simply getting people to read more (although I’m quite good at that). I am slightly regretting not having given my talk on queerying classification earlier this month at Melbourne Free Uni as Reid Marginalia, but there may be more opportunities for that! It felt like my talk at Melbourne Free Uni was my first attempt at going feral” post feral queer camp and I am keen to do more like it.

Inspired by all of the above, although with a little less time to prepare than I would have liked, I am organising a cardiParty on queerying the GLAM sector next month (on Friday the 13th) and queerying the cardiParty format a little bit using ‘teach in’ techniques (registration will open very soon).

I am inviting everyone to contribute resources, questions and ideas for action to this Google Doc before, during and after the event, so please do so.

I’ve been struggling to write a response to the KINQ manifesto since it launched and think I’m going to try to queery that too and perform a response as Reid Marginalia (similar to the way Foxxy ‘99’ Peel (Craig) and Maxwell ‘the Saint’ Steed-Powers (Nikki) launched KINQ as agents of KINQ) so watch this space!

Follow @ReidMarginalia