Across the Green Grass Fields launches today. I adored working on this book and I encourage you to check it out even if you are new to the series.

I also want to talk about being intersex (a thread) and Regan

I worked as a sensitivity reader for this book. Regan’s experiences were modeled in part after my own, though our diagnoses are different (my intersex variation is so rare my endocrinologist could only find one other reported instance).
This book is beautiful to me. Regan is a girl, an intersex girl. Just like I was. She’s different. She has to mask and play along to fit in and happens to have one hobby girly enough to be accepted by other girls. This is also luxury I barely got.
When the world comes crushing down, Regan gets to escape to a world of magical talking equines who do not give a flying fuck what her body is doing or what her chromosomes are.

She gets a gift many of us in the intersex community never do—a chance to just BE
I don’t know how to adequately describe what this experience would have meant for me.

Being intersex isn’t like being nonbinary or trans, though these things are often conflated. Every doctor I see I must disclose my condition to because medications affect me differently
Every form I fill out for therapy or work is asking me for an answer they haven’t provided space to give, an answer that has medical and legal consequences.

There is no closet when you are intersex. There is nowhere to hide.
And to allow Regan a chance to go through puberty in a place where she just IS? What a gift. What escapism. Forget sci fi and fantasy with their body morph aliens and Trill hosts and whatnot. This is pure acceptance through doing what I can never do in life—
Exist without ever EVER having to explain anything about my body. To anyone.

And yes, that it’s informed by Seanan’s My Little Pony childhood is an added bonus (we are both avid collectors. Perhaps rabid collectors. Where is that line anyway???) but even if
Regan had gone to a land of metal lathes and steel automatons, being allowed to exist without declaration and without question is EVERYTHING

Buy this book. Buy this little piece of dream that allows an intersex girl a moment of something most of us will never get to experience

More from Culture

. THREAD 1/x

David Baddiel is getting lots of coverage and feedback on his book which again focuses on so called 'left wing' antisemitism.

I will start by saying that I have seen antisemitic comments made by Labour members and some genuine cases.

However, I have huge concerns.


2/x

Let's look in detail at this article written in April 2019 in the @Guardian - and I will explain the concerns.

The areas highlighted guide you to believe this was all Labour - IT WASN'T.

It also occurred before 2015! Detail follows...

https://t.co/cK59FP83aG


3/x

So as you see the writer of this rather deceitful piece starts with

"THAT CHANGED IN SEPTEMBER 2015" 🙄

This was done to point the timeframe as Corbyn's leadership. Yet the article goes on to describe things that are not even related to Labour, which occurred in 2014.


4/x

So... What in fact the @Guardian writer is discussing here is this case - where a group of Neo-Nazi's spent months inflicting abuse on Jewish MP Luciana Berger

All the detail is in the Court Notes when Bonehill-Paine was sentenced by the judge.

https://t.co/wAyo6Yro5Q


5/x

The Justice sentencing remarks to Neo-Nazi explain the previous cases too. See the date 2014.

Yet the Guardian writer refers to this NON LABOUR case to effectively make her article a lie.

"Star of David" - this was Garron Helm another neo-Nazi..

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First thread of the year because I have time during MCO. As requested, a thread on the gods and spirits of Malay folk religion. Some are indigenous, some are of Indian origin, some have Islamic


Before I begin, it might be worth explaining the Malay conception of the spirit world. At its deepest level, Malay religious belief is animist. All living beings and even certain objects are said to have a soul. Natural phenomena are either controlled by or personified as spirits

Although these beings had to be respected, not all of them were powerful enough to be considered gods. Offerings would be made to the spirits that had greater influence on human life. Spells and incantations would invoke their


Two known examples of such elemental spirits that had god-like status are Raja Angin (king of the wind) and Mambang Tali Arus (spirit of river currents). There were undoubtedly many more which have been lost to time

Contact with ancient India brought the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism to SEA. What we now call Hinduism similarly developed in India out of native animism and the more formal Vedic tradition. This can be seen in the multitude of sacred animals and location-specific Hindu gods