Get Real Zine : DISSECT by Get Real.

dissect is a zine by get real. the magazine of CUSU LGBT+ get real. is co-edited by Michael Davin and Emma Lenton and lives at getrealcambridge.com 2. DISSECT / A List of Bad Ideas for Bi Girls Having Identity Crises (Dispatches from the Brain Front, Summer 2015) Eleanor Smith 4.

Sad Machines: virtual reality and the myth of empathy Michael Davin

7. Fashion Shakes 10. purple1 / purple2 Paula Keller 12. Name Jay Degehardt 13. What are we doing about trans women dying in our prisons? Tam Blaxter 16. b o d y.jpg Claire Sosienski Smith 17. Excerpts from q***r culture Florence Oulds

cover illustration by Mia Finnemore illustration by Paula Keller design by Wil Cornish and Michael Davin 1

DISSECT Eleanor Smith

cw// eating disorder, self-harm

two summers ago now my skin grew fuzzy round the edges i lost the language of my beating heart so i took a scalpel to myself i think i thought that if exposed to the air they’d fossilize into numbers, every feeling i ever had so i could count them up but when i opened my skin it all dissolved i walked around liquid, beginning to evaporate begging for my skin back again my warm skin my sun skin the greek chorus followed me around crying PICK ONE YOU HAVE TO BE WRONG ABOUT YOURSELF IN ONE OF AT LEAST TWO WAYS SO PICK ONE DON’T YOU KNOW THIS IS A TRAGEDY (eventually i poured myself into the sea)

A List of Bad Ideas for Bi Girls Having Identity Crises (Dispatches from the Brain Front, Summer 2015) Eleanor Smith ➢➢ make lists of how many people of each gender you have liked and then make yourself feel bad about these lists and try and work out your own sexuality by numbers ➢➢ think about this stuff in the shower ➢➢ think about this stuff before bed ➢➢ open the mental door to the voice that says, For You In Particular, Bisexuality Is Not Even A Thing ➢➢ allow it and its cousin, Bisexuality Equals Indecision Always, to come in for tea ➢➢ let the baby, Potential Ace Identity Maybe, meet either of these people ➢➢ think about this stuff after dark ➢➢ think about this stuff at 2pm in the sleepy sun ➢➢ look at anything even vaguely relating to this on the internet at all ➢➢ let analytical brain get involved ➢➢ let guilt complex get involved ➢➢ stubbornly refuse to talk about this to anyone including your sister and your dearest friends ➢➢ attempt to submerge all feelings in buzzfeed quizzes and/or cracked.com ➢➢ abstain from having a Good Long Scream ➢➢ walk around in continuous circles instead of letting out restless energy in high-pitched screams ➢➢ think about this stuff while sitting very still in an armchair and not moving for several hours ➢➢ think about this stuff while obsessively scrolling through twitter ➢➢ feel too awkward to tell the brain jehovah’s witnesses to fuck right off and take the bi erasure they rode in on with them ➢➢ fail to consider knitting as a method of stress relief DISCLAIMER: No real Jehovah’s Witnesses were harmed/were implicated in any wrongdoing/actually appeared at all in the making of this list.

Sad Machines: virtual reality and the myth of empathy Michael Davin cw// disembodiment, colonialism Before living this life, have a pen or sharpie nearby, something that can write on skin. The invitation to live someone else’s life. What could be a more profound and intimate gesture? To sit down and cast your own self aside. To inhabit the body of another. Did we forget, at some point, that we have been playing pretend for eternities? From the imagination, via theatre stages, to our constructed online identities, we spend so much time and thought slipping our everyday representations and inhabiting different existences. It is something that, for all its metaphysical weirdness, is shockingly normal and mundane. Sometimes this is for our own pleasure and fulfilment projecting ourselves into elaborate fantasies. Sometimes, though, art aims to teach us something. Our media is constantly flooded with content which tries to extend the viewer’s understanding beyond themselves; hopefully, to places that would never otherwise be reached. The objective is empathy. We have collectively decided that empathy is a useful objective for media. There is a pervasive idea in our political discourse that regressive policies come about due to a lack of empathy. Any technologies at our disposal which can encourage people to be more empathetic are held up as a social good which should inevitably enter the mainstream of public consciousness. Virtual reality isn’t there yet. It’s too expensive, it requires too much computing power, it’s a bit clunky, the kit has been tested so little on anyone who isn’t a dude that anyone under 5’6” gets grotesquely motion sick whenever they try to use it. It is still one of the tools shaping the modern technology industry, however, aiming to become the primary platform through which everyone interacts with their digitised existence. The Machine To Be Another is an early example of one of those platforms of interaction. It is a set of protocols which allow two people, each with a VR headset on, to share their embodiments. Its most notorious and fully realised iteration is Gender Swap - two participants of different genders synchronise their movements to share the sensation of exploring a body that isn’t theirs.

It’s a project founded in hope. The collective behind it, BeAnotherLab, has a suitably techno-utopian slant to its mission statement - they see their instrument as a tool for generating empathy, which can therefore make the world a better place. In that context, the snappy tagline for the project bears considering: “If I were you, would I better understand myself?”. VR has two basic premises: firstly, that through imitation, we can generate empathy; secondly, that VR gives a greater fidelity of imitation. Each of these principles, at various moments, fractures or entirely breaks down. Every seam and stitch in the photograph, every jagged tripod leg sticking into view - each is a rift where the image peels itself apart and reveals its essential plasticity. No leap of imagination can repair a world in which the basic logic and physics has started to come undone. At the same time, the notion that seeing a faithful reproduction of reality will lead to a viewer developing empathy is flawed as well - the idea was always intended to describe a process of labour. Given that, it becomes obvious why Bertold Brecht described the facsimile engendered by cinema as “shallow, passive, weak-willed spectatorship”. Empathy is obsessed with superficial similarity and is devoid of physical embodiment. The idea that ever greater visual accuracy somehow offsets this doubles down on a faulty initial premise. Empathy is due for a value crash. No labour goes into creating it. And yet our most potent technologies are tasked with instilling it into us. VR allows for the most comprehensive simulation of reality, without demanding the viewer experience any of the emotional or physical consequences of it. The ‘strategic location’, as coined by Edward Said, of the viewer in a VR experience that of the creator’s camera. By technical necessity, that means the viewer is a disembodied presence, outside of the realm of presence and consequence - the embodiment of another simply cannot be sustained given how fragile the illusion is. It fully recreates the implicit social arrangement between the viewer and the spectacle. It is the ultimate voyeurism: a colonisation of emotions of others. So if you have an Empathy Machine, for who’s sake are you operating it? For us, the performers? And to quote Robert Yang, what if we don’t want your fucking empathy? Yang, a game developer and academic at NYU, creates super duper gay virtual vignettes that attract as much buzz as straight consternation due to their unashamed centring of queer, sexualised experiences. He diagnoses VR as a real

techno-capitalist utopian project, an ever-receding horizon that promises, when it finally dawns, a perfect fix to all of societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ills. The practical work that Yang thinks creators can do now is to seize small pieces of that project back. Achieving a queer utopia is just as powerful a dream as anything a techbro can come up with - more than the everyday, marginal gains of legislation and medical rights, a queer utopia is a wholesale rejection of being othered, of having others write our stories, of being the avatars in the Empathy Machine. We already have so many extraordinary examples of media by queers, for queers. The quotes at either end of this piece are from Porpentineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s text adventure game With Those We Love Alive, which pours itself through the cracks of a weird, body-horror, fantasy world, weaving a story of trans life and love into its fabric, and onto the skin of the player. When we want to connect to bodies of runes and medicines, what better way is there than to inscribe those marks on ourselves? When we have the capacity to create worlds, why bother making them for the people who already own this one?

Estroglyphs. Spiroglyphs. Identical to the ones on your body.

Precious.

Fashion Shakes

cw// assault, mental illness

4 lectures ago my lecturer asked me + Andrew + Kris why we were dressed as Ash Ketchum from Pokémon and as Goku from Dragon Ball Z and as what I can only describe as a hot-pink drag version of the girl from Lazy Town and I replied ‘FUN’. He was surprised that it wasn’t for a society or event or day ...except: today and: the event of having friends and: the society of this one. He told us we would be immortalised in the lecture capture video and I smiled unsurprised really because fashion is already *eternal* in me because it *is* me and I am the universe and the universe goes on forever!! so there ha. And everyone smiled and laughed at our exchange. And someone took a picture of us after. And lastly someone told me we had made their day. They say the best things in life are hard to do but that’s a lie I think because I made someone’s day and it was p easy :P I don’t know if I have a communication difficulty or a mental illness or ADD or OCD or autism or I got stuck at age 3 but! what I do know is that: if I were to visit a thousand doctors I would qualify for *a thousand* diagnoses and when they ask me in therapy how I show love I will say ‘fashion’ and when they ask me what I value dearly I will say ‘non-conformity’ Because style only talks to those who want to listen ...and it’s not silent, but it speaks without ever interrupting. Fashion creates an image but that image is projected like a map of stars on a naked body and when someone chooses to use their naked body as clothing, many people giggle and find it simply delightful. And when I chuckle and find happiness I find garments that can rest over my skin and soak up my experiences as if they are the world’s living memories. Patterns of fabric like maths in our minds as we visualise.

Then maybe when we pass and recycle our articles around for sharing and hand-me-downs we will all absorb a little bit of each other slowly through the pores and matrix. And human eyes can only see visible light from about 400nm to 700nm wavelength in the supermassive spectrum of electromagnetic waves. Yet human eyes can try to pick out infinite gradations from 400.1 to 400.01 to 400.001 to 400.0001 ... And every human eye has fibres within them that diffract light uniquely when you squint. And for every ten squinting pairs of eyes as I walk down the streets I see a pair of wide hopeful eyes. So I really hope everyone knows it’s great to dress in as much vitality and expression as they want to because no one has to look a certain way and everyone is allowed to be creative and have fun. Feel happy within your look - curious - experiment without fear. And even I get a little bit scared because I get yelled at suggestively in the streets and pushed and beaten up and chased and shouted at with horrible words. But I pick myself up every time after. And once I have calmed down I always remember that if someone wants to attack me just for wearing pink or lipstick or a dress then it’s still important to wear what I want for those who can’t. And yes that has happened to me over and over and I couldn’t count by now but to be honest even though I know it will happen again it’s worth it and I would rather random people got angry at me and vented it out rather than just keeping it pent up forever or doing it to someone they know or someone who won’t speak back + I’ve never had to go to hospital yet or been killed so it’s okay really. Also I think bruises and blood look kinda cool and I work them into a cybergothic pastel zombie look so there ha. Daydreaming is free... and if we have no money we’ll scavenge in rubbish tips, sidewalks, forgotten drawers, Mum’s unwanted make up bag ... of course you can try that combo ... noooooooooo it’s not just for girls noooooo ... i think this would look great on you would you like it ? Keep it, you look fantastic! You are my best friend.

Ohhhh he dresses very plain but at the same time it’s so HIM..! Adorable :3 ... she dresses trashy and we all collectively marvel ... i am always wondering what next... Happy birthday! Now when you wear this present you can think of me :) first piercing ?.. tattoo ?.. hair colour ?.. wowzers I can never guess correctly ... bro level = 9001% when you go to get manicures together and swap nail polish I think we will look back on photos from this era and concede ‘we looked cool’... no regrets! no fomo! This was my Dad’s ... didn’t you wear this to a rock show once? that’s why it’s trashed :P ... it looks comfy, we should snuggle if you like ^_^ ... yesssss be different, why not :D ... there’s nothing wrong with YOU I want to be friends with that person.

DRESS HOW YOU WANT ! THERE ARE NO RULES WORTH FOLLOWING ! I LOVE IT ALL ! BE FREE XX

purple1/purple2 Paula Keller

Name Jay Degenhardt

cw// body horror, trauma, deadnaming

| you carved a cylinder through my flesh would do | or had done

And now this slippery | altered thing you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know | how to hold | and havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t | held

What are we doing about trans women dying in our prisons? Tam Blaxter cw// suicide, transmisogyny, misgendering, imprisonment, medicalisation of trans identities In early November of 2015, Vicky Thompson committed suicide in Armley, a category B men’s prison in Leeds. She had talked to her boyfriend about being bullied. In her trial, her solicitor had asked the judge to place her in a women’s prison, and she had told friends that she would kill herself if committed to a men’s prison. On the 27th November 2015, Joanne Latham hung herself in her cell in Woodhill prison in Milton Keynes. She was in a men’s prison. She had been identified as at risk of suicide the day before. On 30th December 2016, Jenny Swift hung herself in her cell at HMP Doncaster. She had been in prison for five weeks. During that time she had been denied access to her medication and had spoken to a friend of the deep distress that that was causing her. She was in a men’s prison. She was habitually misgendered by guards and had spoken of taunts from other inmates, and was waiting while the prison service considered moving her to a women’s prison. Of course, all of these women were trans women. There was an outcry following the death of Vicky Thompson, and public pressure was put on then-Justice Secretary Michael Gove to act. The DoJ responded by pointing to an ongoing review of the treatment of trans prisoners and committed to collecting figures on the number of trans people in the justice system. This resulted in published statistics and a new policy document in November 2016. The new policy came into effect on 1st January 2017, two days after Jenny Swift’s death. Is this a tragedy of timing, then? Should we lament those for whom the change did not come in time, but move on mollified that the problem has been addressed? I would argue not. Would this new policy have changed practice in Jenny Swift’s case? The document states that if someone is receiving medical treatment for gender dysphoria before entering prison, “it should be continued until the prisoner’s gender specialist has been consulted on the appropriate way to manage the prisoner’s treatment”. This seems to be encouraging: Jenny Swift had been undergoing HRT for years before entering the prison, and so under the new policy would be allowed to continue taking this

by default. But this was already the policy: the previous document, from 2011, also states that a prisoner’s existing medical regimen should be continued automatically while waiting for specialist medical advice. In either case, her access to her medication relied on the willingness of the Serco prison staff to recognise that her existing medical regime was valid, and so obey the policy. The main change heralded for the new policy was a greater focus on self-identification. The old policy focused on ‘legal gender’ as indicated by the prisoner’s birth certificate or Gender Recognition Certificate: trans prisoners with GRC had to be treated exactly like cis prisoners, while other trans prisoners were not to have their gender recognised. It went so far as to say that if it was later established that a prisoner’s ‘legal gender’ was different to what the Prison Service had assumed, they must be transferred immediately: if a woman was only later outed as trans, she would be transferred to a men’s prison, or vice versa. The new policy claims to replace this focus on ‘legal gender’ with reference to the prisoner’s own gender identity. So surely the new policy would have treated Jenny Swift better? The reality is murkier. In the document, space is spent emphasising that not all trans people seek surgery or GRCs, and that these people’s genders should still be respected. Yet the policy dictates that people be placed in prisons in accordance with their ‘legal gender’. For a trans person without a GRC to be placed in a prison in accordance with their gender identity, they must submit a request, and a Transgender Case Board has to convene to make a decision. This board collects ‘evidence’ about whether the prisoner is living in the gender they identify, and categorise the strength of their case. So, even under the new policy, Jenny Swift would have had to wait in a men’s prison for weeks or months for a board to convene and evaluate whether she was ‘really’ trans. This approach, of course, reflects the dark heart of the way our society views trans people. There is a pattern here: the medical establishment, the legal establishment and the prison service all view trans identities with deep suspicion. They all require that trans people provide ‘proof’ that they are ‘really’ trans in order to be treated with basic dignity and afforded access to services. Disgusted and scared by the very existence of trans people, they focus conversation onto the straw man of ‘fake’ trans people merely acting up for attention. This creates an excessively high bar which trans people have to pass to get access to the respect and resources they need. Even those

who pass this bar are never afforded quite the same respect as cis people. In court, Vicky Thompson’s solicitor argued that she should be placed in a women’s prison because she was “essentially a woman”. This pattern is also reflected in the media coverage of these incidents. Vicky Thompson’s case was covered widely and was commented on by members of parliament. Tara Hudson’s case received so much media attention that she was moved to a women’s prison. Jenny Swift’s has received less coverage; Joanne Latham’s barely any at all. The difference between these cases? Vicky Thompson and Tara Hudson fit society’s stereotype of trans people: they came out as teenagers, they passed well. Jenny Swift had come out only recently, as an adult. Joanne Latham had come out only recently, and had expressed doubts and changes of identification over time. This period of doubt and confusion, common to many trans people, was used as clear evidence against the reality of their identities. The crimes these four women were convicted of also played a role. Joanne Latham, whose death received media attention, was convicted of the most serious crimes. Tara Hudson, who’s story is most positive, for the least serious crimes.

clearly the least violent was convicted

These women’s deaths are a shameful indictment of the prison system and how it treats prisoners who are trans women. Prisoners are some of the most vulnerable and disempowered people in our society – those gaoled for longer sentences and for more violent crimes which remove public sympathy especially so. Where this intersects with other oppressions, as in the case of trans women prisoners, the state has a particularly strong duty of care. Yet by putting them in hostile environments and refusing to respect a fundamental element of their identities, the state killed these women. We should be critical too of the society that legitimises this treatment. Complaints of misgendering, microaggressions and transphobic jokes are sneered at by the right as the hurt sensibilities of precious millennials. These deaths unequivocally give lie to that view: the transphobic attitudes that are expressed and perpetuated in these ways are what allow the Prison Service to take such a blasé attitude to the mistreatment of trans women in its care. Without a fundamental culture change, new and improved policies will not filter down into actual practice, and the mistreatment of trans people in custody will continue.

b o d y.jpg Claire Sosienski Smith

from q***r culture Florence Oulds

cw// HIV/AIDS, death, trauma

last year— this time last year—

she said ‘in your community— how many older gay people do you know?’

i was writing an essay on The Well of Loneliness and was being supervised by a woman— an older lesbian— who knew about such things.

None. i felt like i was being shamed but maybe we both knew what had done it.

the essay was about the problems of the naïve and desperate language of the book, and so, to figure out what that meant we talked about a lot of things, talking in that way it is to talk like two people monologuing at each other, but two people who meet over something—

*** the hidden thing you saw at the start but that i don’t know how to start talking about happens when i go onto amazon.com and type in ‘aids’ Sort by |Relevance

arms poised over a table, working separately to solve the same jig-saw.

\/|

here is the first result: AIDS: Don’t Die of Prejudice 10 Jun 2014 by Norman Fowler

in this talking we talked about community— it’s a little sad, i think i said, not being raised by those before us, trying to plan out our lives with no model for how, taking hard trying to think what survival is.

here is the second result: And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic 3 Nov 2011 by Randy Shilts here is the third result: Best Seller Rayovac Hearing Aid Batteries Size 312 – 10 Packs of 6 Cells by Rayovac

i said ‘in the community…’

it’s almost funny isn’t it?

NOT EXPECT IT TO COME OUT OF MY MOUTH

and absence of things to talk about the absence it made in our culture, our history, our community.

I CANNOT WAIT TO DIE CAN YOU TELL CAN YOU TELL CAN YOU TELL *** paintings (erotics, nudes, small things owned by Elton John)

because of this we have to raise ourselves without parents and there is no one to warn us when we learn about the knife they took to us

poems (Frank O’Hara invites you out to lunch)

or didn’t— let the thing rot let the bodies on the streets on steps of the F.D.A. in private rooms away from the rest of the world the TV on i am taking my clothes off when i hear your breathing stop and i know the landlord knows but i know they would never let me see you in the hospital or kiss your corpse on the cheek.

hair cuts (my barber once said people often have very different ideas about what an ‘undercut‘ is) *** ‘AIDS has severed the link between these twin concepts’

MY BODY IS WRONG AND I AM CONSTANTLY UNCOMFORTABLE AND MISUNDERSTOOD

Daniel Goldstein’s ‘Icarian’ series the sweat stained seats, leather loved on workout machines, bodies striving to be other bodies either look, i can keep on weight or look, im not losing it you won’t lose me i won’t die on you

CAN I NOT SAY MY NAME RIGHT OR DO PEOPLE JUST

but who is holy who is sanctified who is pure

*** A-I-D-S H-I-V

who is remembered ‘metal staples and stigmatalike holes that allude to the passions of martyrs and saints’

was it the last generation who died to not be around to complain about ‘ q *** r ‘

No romance no sexiness But a star-filled night Cremate me after you cum on my lips Honey boy place my ashes in a vase Beneath your workout bench

or or or or

No romance no sexiness But a star-filled night

was it was it was it was it or the

the the the the one

one before one before one before one before before?

i suppose we were both wrong & right because any language associated with us becomes toxic, infected, inflated, a hatred.

‘a signifier of normality in the face of a frighteningly abnormal condition’ *** i argued once with an ex that ‘queer’ was not more correct to use than ‘gay’

this is the paradox: we’ve always been around, but we have no history. *** when Moonlight came out there were a few inflammatory articles accusing it of ‘gay washing’

she said ‘queer’ to her was holdable, but ‘gay’ was what they called her in school

‘gay washing’ can you fucking believe it‘gay washing’?

‘and besides, that was the last generation who got called that it’s silly for us to pretend those are our problems’

frankly, i’m too annoyed about it still to look up the articles to write about them

and sure, maybe there is desire too for a desexualised film, maybe we shouldn’t be laughing at the desire for a lack of desire,

i understand that we must stay vigilant, but, God, at least now let them live and love and fuck.

but still, but still, that’s just fucking awful and ignorant and angry-making;

***

there is this fallacy that now gay men have ‘rights’ they’re just like anyone else, like now you can be on a poster that sits outside a bank or carry their pride banner for them, we can pretend that your body still wasn’t only just recently made un-illegal on the streets you march, or the house you stay at home in with your husband.

here is a small space for myself that i wrote as an ending a while ago: you broke up with me nearly a year ago but i haven’t stopped collecting these things for you because with you for the first time i didn’t feel just in waiting,

i read recently someone saying a black gay man is more likely to be assaulted in the street than a white trans woman and so maybe there must always be contrasts for things to be understood by some focused solely on themselves but still it is hard to any longer endorse groups where people get actually angry at progress.

but queer, a verb.