We have a couple of very exciting events coming up for wormboys in a couple of weeks!
First, on Wednesday 20th August we will be playing a fundraiser gig at Hyde Park Book Club in Leeds. Themed around the film I Saw The TV Glow (which promises to be…weird) the event has been organised in support of The Hangout, a super awesome LGBTQIA youth project. We’ll be sharing a stage with oli reeves and Leeds Queers Against Fascism.
Secondly, for the weekend of 22-24 August we will be whizzing down to the countryside near Kettering for Greenbelt Festival! This will be my second time performing at Greenbelt, as I gave a talk about trans feminism in 2023. The whole event had thoroughly excellent vibes, especially the Rebel Rouser stage in the woods. I’m excited to be returning there with wormboys this time around for a full set of live music – including lots of material written for our forthcoming debut album. I can’t wait for us to share it!
Reminder that I am playing Wharf Chambers in Leeds as part of wormboyson Wednesday. We have written a lot of new material recently, and are excited to share it with a live audience. We’ll be supported by Tiger Island and Etheriel, with live visuals from Kit Watson, so it’s going to be a great night.
On Thursday 12 December I will be speaking at the University of Stirling for the Punk Scholars Network UK annual conference!
In-person bookings appear to be closed, but you can still register for free to attend online.
In my talk, I am planning to draw on the history of trans movements, trans studies, and trans punk to argue that we can and should be using creative DIY skills to change the world. Trans experiences show the power of genre-crossing, which can be applied to knowledge exchange within and beyond both universities and punk scenes. From gigs to zines to academic talks and self-archiving, trans punk pedagogy can help us work through our complicity, and build solidarity across difference.
I’m taking a much-needed break from *gestures wildly* many things in coming weeks, to spend some creative time with my friends in wormboys.
We’ll be playing several super cool gigs in England – you can catch us in Northampton, Oxford, Bradford, York, and Newcastle! We have a lot of new material to share, plus songs from our 2023 EP smalltime and our most recent single, mostly still.
I’m hugely honoured that my band’s song “mostly still” has been used in the trailer for Leeds Queer Film Festival this year!
Leeds Queer Film Festival is an amazing, affordable, non-profit community event, which every year shows feature-length films and shorts from around the world. I cannot recommend it enough!
This year’s event runs from 20-24 March, and you can find all the information you might need on their website.
Back in the day, I had another blog where I posted all my DJ set lists. That blog no longer exists outside of the Wayback Machine because it was hosted by the University of Warwick and universities hate to host websites for too long, it seems (see also: Leeds and Sheffield taking down the trans pregnancy project websites once that sweet, sweet UKRI money stopped coming in).
However, I still like archiving things, so for the sake of posterity, here is my headline set from last night’s amazing party for International Women’s Day at the Tin in Coventry, hosted by the awesome women at Boudica Festival.
Blondie – Atomic The Selecter – Missing Words Azealia Banks – 212 underscores feat. gabby start – Locals (Girls Like Us) 100 gecs – mememe Hole – Celebrity Skin The Cardigans – My Favourite Game Indigo Girls – Closer To Fine Dolly Parton – 9 to 5 Beyoncé – Texas Hold ‘Em Le Tigre – TKO The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name Miss Eaves – Thunder Thighs St Vincent – Digital Witness SOPHIE – Immaterial Annie Lennox – Walking on Broken Glass Wet Leg – Wet Dream Mitski – Washing Machine Heart Gloria Jones – Tainted Love Bananarama – Venus Belinda Carlisle – Heaven Is A Place On Earth Courtney Barnett – Pedestrian At Best Black Dresses – In My Mouth (request) Wargasm – Do It So Good Nova Twins – Antagonist Janelle Monae – Make Me Feel Billie Eilish – bad guy Aretha Franklin – Think Skunk Anansie – Weak Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill Evanescence – Bring Me To Life Nightwish – Over The Hills and Far Away
I believe this was my first DJ set in almost nine years and I will admit I was pretty nervous! Even worse, most of my old equipment is buried in a box somewhere due to multiple moves over the last few years, so I really had to wing it. At the same time, I used to play a lot back in the day. Between that, a usb stick stuffed with days’ worth of music, and some hard work in preparation, it all felt very natural once I was on stage in Boudica’s amazing home-made Iceni chariot booth. I really enjoy figuring out what an audience wants to hear and then taking them on a ridiculous journey with that, and once the adrenaline kicks in it’s one hell of a trip.
I’m hugely grateful to Boudica for inviting me back to Coventry and providing such a supportive environment. It was exciting to dance to brilliant sets from new DJs before stepping up myself, reflecting Boudica’s commitment to supporting women and non-binary people in picking up new instruments and skills. Most of all, I’m thankful to everyone who turned up to party.
In recent years I have co-authored numerous peer-reviewed essays for edited collections. I have just made three of these freely available, from books originally published in 2020 and 2021.
Why is this happening now? Well, it’s basically due to moves toward so-called “open access” within the bizarro world of academic publishing. I try and publish my work in places that will also let me share my work for free. For book chapters, publishers usually impose an embargo period of 2-3 years, after which authors are allowed to share the post-peer-review version on our own website. The essays I have recently uploaded have all had their embargo end, so I’m excited to now share them more widely.
You can download the essays by clicking on the links below.
Queering Community Development in DIY punk spaces Also published in the book: Arts, Cultureand Community Development (Policy Press) Written with my long-running collaborator Kirsty Lohman, this essay looks at grassroots community organising within queer, feminist, and anti-racist punk spaces. We argue that this organising is often prefigurative: that is, it actively models and enacts the changes that punks want to see in the world. Looking at events such as First Timers and Decolonise Fest, plus bands such as Big Joanie, we explore what happens when marginalised people create their own cultural spaces, and seek to facilitate access to these spaces for others who are often denied artistic and political expression.
Men transmasculine and non-binary people and midwifery care Also published in the book: Midwifery Essentials(Elsevier) I contributed to this essay as part of the Trans Pregnancy research project team. Our project spoke with over 50 men, transmasculine, and non-binary people who experienced pregnancy and childbirth in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, the UK, and the USA, plus a handful of midwives who have supported people from this group. In this short essay, we briefly outline the positive and negative experiences that trans birth parents reported having with midwives, plus challenges reported by midwives themselves. On this basis we make 8 recommendations for developing best practice with trans people in midwifery services.
Depathologising Gender: Vulnerability in Trans Health Law Also published in the book: A Jurisprudence of the Body (Palgrave Macmillan) I co-wrote this essay with Chris Dietz, a scholar of Law at the University of Leeds. Drawing on feminist and trans critiques of human rights models, plus an analysis of gender recognition laws in countries including Argentina, Denmark, and the UK, we argue for a new approach to understanding the fight for depathologisation in law and medicine.
These three essays are just some of the many peer-reviewed academic publications I make freely accessible on this website. For more work on a range of topics relating to trans studies, feminism, and/or community development, see my publications page.
Last month my band wormboys released a new three-track EP, titled “smalltime”. It’s the second wormboys release I play bass on, after our 2022 single “weird“. I’m so impressed by the breadth of my bandmates’ songwriting: by turns sexy, beautiful, haunting, moody, and oppressive. As a self-taught, DIY musician, I was also excited how learning and refining these songs helped push the boundaries of what I can do.
We collectively created a zine as a physical artifact to accompany the digital EP. It contains artwork, lyrics, and advice on building a guitar effects pedal. I also wrote an exclusive new essay, titled “START A BAND”.
The zine comes with a download code, stickers, and a badge (which doubles as a circuit board for anyone who fancies following the advice on building a pedal!) You can buy a copy for £5from our bandcamp page.
Here are some nice things people have said about “smalltime”:
Beat In My Bones “Everything about this EP is worthy of your time and attention- the songs are just effortlessly slick, and that lo-fi sound, and that DIY ethic attached to it really comes across.”
Gina Maya “The three songs that form Smalltime (2023), the new EP by Wormboys, reverberate with the darkened sweat-soaked cellar sound that made their pre-release of the song Tree so attention-grabbing back in 2022.”
Get In Her Ears “The EP shows off a huge range of skill in just three short tracks, showing off both a mastery of popular styles as well as an undeniable talent for creating altogether new sounds.”
Rockambula “Questa nuova uscita è una conferma di quanto il il quartetto inglese possieda un ventaglio sonoro piuttosto ampio da cui attingere”
Dr Ruth Pearce 