“‘When I walked into the National Gallery in Dublin I just broke down crying,’ Jane* says, overcome by the freedom to go into a public space without the constant fear of harassment and abuse which she suffers back home in the UK.” https://goodlaw.social/iy8l

Important new #OpenAccess article on how slavery in Britain was ended, and who ended it. Taken Not Given: The End of Slavery in Britain by Simon Newman www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #History #EnslavedHistory 🗃️

‘For 69 years, Eurovision has sought to bring nations together through music and to build bridges in the aftermath of wars and divisions. Its values are founded on peace, equality, and respect. […] RTV Slovenija questions whether Israel’s participation is consistent with these values’

I’ve been struck by how the British far right is using deepfake technology — less to deceive about specific events, more to tap into fascistic affects & desires. This is really frightening. My dispatch from grim corners of the Internet, for @lrb.co.uk online. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...

Excellent piece by @notrightruth.bsky.social about trans community as the antidote to trans despair. ruthpearce.net/2025/09/25/r...

‘Fifa and Uefa have the power to take action. Although admirable, the burden shouldn’t be on star players like Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah to ask tough questions about the killing of Obeid or for Norway to donate the profits from its qualifying match against Israel to Gaza relief’

There we go.

🇵🇱‘s Strictly/Dancing with the Stars has its first same-gender couple - 🏳️‍🌈 Olympic rower Katarzyna Zillmann (who came out after winning 🥈 in Tokyo) and dancer Janja Lesar www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2i8...

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 culture secretary Angus Robertson tells 🇬🇧 government that BBC shouldn’t do #Eurovision if 🇮🇱 takes part: news.stv.tv/politics/sco... Says Eurovision ‘is a celebration of culture and diversity, but it cannot be separated from the responsibilities that come with international participation’

This is from three of 🇮🇹 broadcaster RAI’s seven directors. Trade unions held general strike across 🇮🇹 in support of 🇵🇸 yesterday.

Adds a layer of 🇦🇹 state interest in 🇮🇱 being there in Vienna next year into everything else that #Eurovision is now having to weigh up. www.reuters.com/business/med... EBU wasn’t impressed when a host state (🇺🇦) wanted another contestant (🇷🇺) barred in 2017. What about a govt insisting one stays in?

📣🏳️‍⚧️ Call for Papers We are inviting papers for our special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.” The issue will be dedicated to trans-inclusive feminist legal analysis that addresses attacks on trans rights & lives. Details below. Please share.

I wrote something quite personal about what use trans history In These Times:

This is how workers face down the far-right. Collectively.

So Baz Luhrmann’s next film is this decade’s Joan of Arc, and if it’s out next year, that’s 30 years since his Romeo & Juliet confused all kinds of baby queers in ‘96. www.vogue.com/article/isla...

Confirms ‘contractual agreements prevented contestants from making political statements’ this year. Tighter control than #Eurovision 2024 when 9-10 contestants, including winner Nemo, published what was probably a very heavily negotiated statement. This year not even that.

#Eurovision experts Dean Vuletic and Paul Jordan (neither on here as yet I think) are both in here talking about how the contest’s atmosphere has changed. news.sky.com/story/could-...

I re-read Letter from a Birmingham Jail the other day and I was struck by just how stunningly brilliant it was not just in writing but strategic thinking. Like, not news, it's a modern classic for a reason. It's just a remarkably clear vision of a strategy to achieve change.

A lot of different concerns from broadcasters and fan media are wrapped up here.

‘What do you do when the place that provided you solace and comfort from the world’s ills is now, in your mind, perpetuating them?’ The latest fans reassessing their attachments in the present crisis: Disney adults. www.glamour.com/story/the-ji...

Revisiting this piece I wrote in April 2025. "State Terror: A brief guide for Americans" snyder.substack.com/p/state-terror

A very good article by a man who knows his Eurovision. Worth reading given the ongoing furore about (and borderline existential threat to) Eurovision itself. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

‘I do not assume that this silence stems from indifference. In many cases, it reflects complex pressures: reputational risk, external scrutiny, internal disagreement, legal advice. But intention does not cancel out impact’

Really thoughtful piece on 'The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival' and a larger conversation about the rule of music in the camps and how we talk about it today.

‘For Ukrainian civil society, security requires all three dimensions – military capacity to resist, freedom from authoritarian control and preservation of cultural identity – because each addresses a different facet of colonial domination’

Queer 🇵🇸 designers Trashy Clothing (fashionstudiesjournal.com/Queer-Fashio...) nearly worked with 🇮🇸‘s Hatari for #Eurovision coloured carpet in 2019, did work with 🇵🇹’s Iolanda in 2024, now with Bambie Thug (🇮🇪 ‘24) for last night’s Together for Palestine fundraiser.

Inside the drawer of my nan’s kitchen table was one pamphlet about the flood risk from the local river and another about nuclear alerts.

Pikachu turned up in the Belgrade student protests as well.

In writing a history of East Germany, I really tried to stress the complexity of creating a dictatorship beyond just coercion and violence. You need was a vast array of organizations and institutions that control access to economic and social goods to produce overwhelming incentive structures.

Meanwhile in Malta, this shadow culture minister is also known as one half of Julie and Ludwig, 🇲🇹 ‘s #Eurovision entry in 2004. newsbook.com.mt/en/julie-zah... Not sure anyone would have expected we’d be in current situation 21 years later when they watched that.

Some people in the #Eurovision chain of command must be watching this Vuelta debacle closely. What @jonathanliew.bsky.social says here about fans channelling a broader sense of disenfranchisement by protesting an event which used to be a refuge from traumatic politics is probably quite resonant too

‘There is a basic dissonance here. You can sell your event as a unifying force, a tool for peace. Or you can allow it to become an advertising space for a regime that has (according to a United Nations commission) committed a genocide. But you can’t do both’ www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/s...

🇳🇴‘s NRK is the broadcaster that said before this #Eurovision it couldn’t boycott over 🇮🇱 as that would affect news arm’s ability to report from Middle East, which has more strategic weight for it as public TV. Senior leaders now on record with views on current situation eurovoix.com/2025/09/17/n...

‘The EHRC is a relatively obscure body responsible for the promotion and enforcement of anti-discrimination law. An odd place, you might think, for the origin of the most serious rollback of minority rights in my lifetime’

Trans rights are not the rights of a tiny minority, trans rights are everyone’s rights to self-determination, control of our bodies, and a society where opportunity and aesthetics are not restricted by sex assigned at birth You should support and defend trans people because trans people are people

I wrote something about feeling like a guest in a country that is my home. bestforbritain.substack.com/p/my-place-o...

On the logic of the scapegoat, and how trans ppl became it. www.frieze.com/article/scap...

All other current broadcasters’ statements on 🇮🇱 and #Eurovision 2026: eurotrippodcast.com/2025/09/16/l... Hopefully will keep on being updated too. 🇪🇸 making headlines today, but this action likely wouldn’t be happening without 🇸🇮‘s lead this summer.

Fantastic work here by @transsolidarity.bsky.social, highlighting the ridiculous burden the EHRC’s new Code of Practice would place on UK business, forcing them into trans-exclusionary practices that are “incompatible with modern business values”. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

As expected: 🇪🇸‘s RTVE is the first big 5 broadcaster to pull out of Eurovision 2026 if 🇮🇱’s broadcaster takes part. bsky.app/profile/torn... Follows months of tension between RTVE and EBU which even led to 🇪🇸 commentators speaking about Gaza before 🇮🇱‘s semi-final.

Some big news: the University of Birmingham is launching a new MA in Gender & Sexuality. It's interdisciplinary, with a focus on combining theory & practice. It's going to be amazing. I'm convening it: message or email with questions. www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/postgr... @unibirmingham.bsky.social

This is exactly what organised transphobia has been doing for years. Endless and ever more oppressive filibuster of trans people’s right to exist in public.

Broadcasters invested in impartiality always have to say this. And then we always have to say the very idea of countries competing against each other involves politics by nature. So round and round we go. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Just before all the heads of delegation are about to meet 👀

Over the last year, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Joan Scott. It was clear how much the experience of her father -- victim of McCarthyism -- shaped her as a scholar and person. This essay is a powerful testament to that. www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-g...

I’m 40+ and still only just appreciating how formative it was that a parent was a massive fan of this team. (And before even knowing how their kids would turn out)

Thinking about this as even supposedly 'left wing' legacy UK media (Guardian) does the breathless live updates breaking news thing for a far right march on London - but crickets for the same numbers of peaceful trans marchers in July. They're creating and maintaining a fake narrative of the world

This is very probably true

‘But while displays of flags are common around royal events and major sporting occasions, it is more exceptional to see them put up in reference to political issues. This appears more coercive as an action. There is a sense of territory being marked’ theconversation.com/ive-research...

‘The standoff comes as the EBU faces mounting pressure to balance its membership rules, which entitle all active members to compete, with calls from broadcasters to uphold principles around human rights and press freedom’ variety.com/2025/tv/news...