#gender

See tagged statuses in the local Rambling Readers community

As Frances Ryan says:

'The exclusion of disabled women is not simply representational – disabled women are, quite literally, physically shut out of everyday life'!

But....'Disabled women are by far the biggest minority group in the world but we are still the least visible. Where are our voices? Why aren’t we part of the conversation?'

This excerpt from her book suggest we need to do more to support disabled people do what they want to do!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/09/im-still-sick-im-still-disabled-but-im-proud-of-my-body-frances-ryans-manifesto-for-disabled-women

replied to Assoc for Scottish Literature's status

The feminist SF web-novel Mars Needed Women is complete! 23,300 words in 31 chapters, one chapter posted each day throughout March, the last posted 23 minutes ago as I write this. Check out the cover art.

To read, either use the hashtag or this link to the first chapter: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114088945266387178 The full novel is in the thread. Just scroll to read.

I'll leave it up for you to read for at least a week. After that, I'm revising it for later secondary publication.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

fiction

The March Writever Prompt Card I used for ideas for each chapter of the novel. In March, as the fight for gender equality continues, let’s write it. 1 day 1 word 1 story science fiction🚀 fantastic👻 or fantasy 🗡 Ideally in one thread and with the #writever hashtag 2503.01 — Women 2503.02 — Rights 2503.03 — Housewife 2503.04 — Glue 2503.05 — Mirror 2503.06 — Equality 2503.07 — Consent 2503.08 — Struggle 2503.09 — Ceiling 2503.10 — Exploit 2503.11 — Walk 2503.12 — Emancipation 2503.13 — International 2503.14 — Veil 2503.15 — Freely 2503.16 — Cook 2503.17 — Strike 2503.18 — Abortion 2503.19 — Mental load 2503.20 — Shelter 2503.21 — Empower 2503.22 — Manifest 2503.23 — Intersectional 2503.24 — Work 2503.25 — Echo 2503.26 — Night 2503.27 — Voice 2503.28 — Feather 2503.29 — Matriarchy 2503.30 — Wave 2503.31 — Sorority
The cover art for Mars Needed Women. The background is of the Mars surface with rover tracks, big rocks, sand, and a greenish sky. There is a triskelion image of Mars, which is a tattoo in the story. Credit NASA and ESA for the photos. The back cover reads as follows: Shanghaied May Ri struggled when the EM goon clamped an aromatic wet rag over her nose and mouth... Waking weightless and nauseated—stuffy head pounding, being floated somewhere—despite grogginess, she eyes-closed punched someone, spinning away to bounce off a wall. The click of cartilage, the thump off a bulkhead, the blare of a warning horn, and "Rig for ring spin!" rang in her ears. A tech clapped a bag over her mouth before she vomited up her last meal, while enduring the blonde's glare as blood beaded around her nose. May Ri glowered back. Sitting on the wall, dragged on her butt, her inner ear then her innards soon informed her the wall was becoming the floor. From the author: “A hopeful deeply-dystopian feminist SF story, with thinly veiled jabs at our current world's bad actors making for a bad future. Please note the past tense in the title: Mars Needed Women. The story's women are going to work to bring down the system, at least that part that's oppressing them, in a massive unscheduled disassembly.”

(Self Promotion time.)

I invite you to read my light novels - Trans writer, Trans characters.

For Love of a Konbini Idol: I Face Her Onryo Lover
For Love of a Konbini Idol: I Braved the Otherside
For Love of a Konbini Idol: I Searched for the Kudan

No good deed goes unpunished. As Umi discovers when she rescues Shiomi. Neither Shiomi nor the jealous, vengeful ghost that stalks her appreciates the act. Something they both make clear. As for Ume’s partner, Tomo, he is less than thrilled at the intrusion of an unpleasant third into their relationship. “I know I told you to find someone who would appreciate your advances, but I really question your taste.”

At: https://www.pixiv.net/novel/series/11417104
https://archiveofourown.org/works/52770025

Artist: https://bsky.app/profile/maisart.bsky.

Three book covers. 1. Two women chaced by a ghost 2. Two women flee a ghost emerging from a ambulance 3. Four people study a paper with a mountain that looks like a moth in the background.

Great win at the today!

can’t demand proof of gender assignment to correct an Iranian ’s status, the ’s top court ruled today.

The ECJ ruled that an EU Member State "may under no circumstances make the exercise of the right to rectify incorrect subject to the production of evidence of sex reassignment surgery," as it would undermine the "essence of the right to the integrity of the person and the right to respect for private life" [1/2]

FREE community , please BOOST!

Everybody welcome, just turn up!
LIVE @UCLAnthropology and on ZOOM

🌔Tues Mar 11, 6:30pm (London UTC)🌕
Chris Knight on
'On women and jaguars: why perspectivism got it so wrong'

Across Amazonia, myths hold that in early times it was the jaguars, parrots, tapirs and other animals who first invented bows and arrows, cooking fire, ceremonial buildings, religious ceremonies and other complex cultural accomplishments. Then humans stole these things from the animals, elevating themselves above all other creatures – but at the cost of losing their former ability to engage in easy conversation with the animal world. This mythic view of our origins is the reverse of the Darwinian narrative which our own culture holds up as science.

In this talk, will introduce a recent trend in social anthropology – known as ‘perspectivism’ – and discuss whether such radically different ways of …

A Piro girl emerges from her Kigimawlo seclusion, body painted and wearing beautifully crafted organic decorations on her head, breast and arms

2503.01 — Women

Mars needed women.

May Ri bought into the hype and the spiel, not realizing it was the last gasp of a long dead oligarch's dream. When the money dried up, nobody would finance the supply missions. Who cared about the ten thousand up there when you could outrage the millions down here with something less expensive? Earthers returned to their petty games of slavery—that wasn't called as such—and empire that ate nations.

On Mars, colonists were pushed to their limits: The terraforming mission, the domes, the spinlauncher and Deimosbase, the raising the first and second generation martians. Men died disproportionately. In the end, a few strongmen attempted to corner the growing "female resource" to their benefit and to the benefit their sons, working to crush the whisper of the half-forgotten promise of democracy that had followed May Ri to the planet …

"In mainstream discourse, it's become standard to blame the excesses of the right on liberals, the left, feminists, Black Lives Matter, affirmative action, environmental protection, and BIPOC and LGBTQ people. It's a way that the right is granted masculine prerogatives and the left feminine responsibilities for the right's behavior."

~ Rebecca Solnit


/1

https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/the-she-made-him-do-it-theory-of-everything-2/

Content warning Call to Action, Defend Trans People, US

Content warning uspol transgender state department passport

2025.19. Do you find creative work therapeutic? If so, do you do it for that reason, or is it more of a side benefit?

Therapeutic to me means restoring to health, so I can't state that it is. I do find cooking and photography fun, relaxing and diverting. There's also the improving of skills, which makes spending time on the activities worthwhile. As for writing, that's a zen experience. I become the character. I live their lives. That's special, when it happens.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

and



69 — Is jealousy a gender role in your stories? Does it affect one gender or certain sexual preferences?

My characters express love in my stories in many ways, but jealousy (as most of the world seems to see it) is not one of those ways. In the most recent story where jealousy could have been a factor, the MC's two male lovers agreed that any bad behavior on their part might make her give them the boot. In reality, that part was too minor an issue to be addressed further in the story.

In that case, jealousy affected the males in the story, but it's a flaw built into the species. Any gender or preference can feel it when they see another as a personal resource, and fear losing that resource. It's simply a type of anger used to keep a bearer of a resource from straying …

59 — Could you write or have you written a positive story with toxic masculinity as an element? Why or why not?

Having encountered it in real life, it would be difficult for me to write a positive story with it as an element. It would be dark and difficult. I do have a story that has a man so afflicted, who in grasping for power realizes the MC (the main series antagonist in the reluctance series) has talent that were he to control it, he could conquer nations. He tries trapping her into marrying her, and when that fails, drums up charges that if convicted, would allow him to buy her as a slave. Any more would be spoilers, other than to say that in a possible sequel they must join forces and he doesn't like ending up being the one used. Not saying that a woman …