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Sam Rutherford (he/him)

@echomikeromeo.bsky.social
5.5K followers 1.2K following 619 posts

Lecturer in LGBTQ+ History/History of Sexuality, University of Glasgow. I wrote this book: global.oup.com/academic/product/tea…

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Reposted by Sam Rutherford (he/him)
Dylan Lewis @iamdylanlewis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Another year of Queer Bibliography— please share widely; we are looking forward to this!
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Chris Millard @chrismillard83.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
the number of ethical, privacy-based, and practical problems with feeding grant applications into LLMs for triage without human confirmation is dizzying “a machine can never be held accountable, so a machine must never make a decision” has never been more apt
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Gina Gwenffrewi @ginagwenffrewi.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Solidarity to UCU staff at the University of Edinburgh as they fight to save jobs against a relentless senior management 'downsizing' crusade.
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University and College Union (UCU) @ucu.org.uk · 30/09/2026
Our members at Nottingham University commence strike action today over threats to hundreds of jobs and course closures. Please show them solidarity as they head onto picket lines this morning.
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University and College Union (UCU) @ucu.org.uk · 29/09/2026
Colleagues at Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow Caledonian are all on strike today over job cuts. Please show your solidarity as they take to the picket lines to defend jobs and education.
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UCU Edinburgh @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Day 2 of the UCU workers' strike at the University of Edinburgh. The 1,800 jobs UCU estimates will be cut is unprecedented in Scottish higher education. It is happening in the wealthiest Scottish university, and the third richest in the UK, currently sitting with over £3billion reserves.
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Karie Bookish @kariebookish.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I can only second this. If you are in Glasgow, visit Category Is. It's much more than a bookshop. It's a community hub, a place of active resistance, and a big fucking hug.
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QueerAF @wearequeeraf.com · 26/09/2026
The service said the review will begin with patients whose surgery was due to take place between August and December 2026, and "no decisions about individual patient care have been made at this stage." www.wearequeeraf.com/nhs-wales-ap...
wearequeeraf.com
NHS Wales apologises for withdrawal of trans healthcare, admits "urgent review" still hasn't begun
NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee apologises for "distress" caused by a withdrawal of care but admits its "urgent review" had still not begun nearly a month after hundreds were denied care
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Gwrach Gymraeg @cherylmorgan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The thing to remember about the TERFs that the Tories and Streeting have put in charge of the NHS is that they believe that all gender transition is, by definition, ‘harm’.
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beaumontsociety.bsky.social @beaumontsociety.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This is gross negligence and appalling cruelty by NHS Wales. Those responsible should be punished for this - but, of course, it’s only trans people affected. Shocking!
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History Workshop @historyworkshop.org.uk · 24/09/2026
Can the ideas of a controversial trans Marxist be recovered? Rebecca Jane Morgan on Rachael Webb's (1940-2009) class-based coalition politics.
historyworkshop.org.uk
Rachael Webb: The Forgotten Trans Marxist
Can the ideas of a controversial trans Marxist be recovered? Rebecca Jane Morgan on Rachael Webb's (1940-2009) class-based coalition politics.
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Orion Rummler @oriion.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Transgender voters in Kansas! I want to talk about your plan to vote this November — are you not voting, out of ID/safety concerns? Voting by mail? Getting registered to vote? Doing in-person advance voting? Text me on Signal @orionr.80 or DM me! I'm a trans reporter working at The 19th News.
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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Will keep boringly saying this (no disrespect to OP): it's not a health surcharge. It's not hypothecated to the NHS; you can't choose not to pay it and thereby eschew healthcare. You could equally call it an education or roads surcharge. It's using the NHS's sanctified status to rip off immigrants.
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Sam Rutherford (he/him) @echomikeromeo.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Thanks to Katherine A. Hubbard for a lovely review of Teaching Gender in the Journal of Family History! journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... I was esp interested to see the connections Kat makes between the historical claims of Teaching Gender and their many echoes and resonances in our present.
journals.sagepub.com
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
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UCU Scotland @ucuscotland.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
5 week strike at Edinburgh University at start of new academic term. Incl UCU branch co-president quote: “...UCU members are prepared to take action for our colleagues and our students – want to safeguard students’ education not just for five weeks in autumn but for the future." #StopTheCuts #SaveHE
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
'Analysis by the British Academy last year showed that students in parts of the north, south west and east of England, as well as large areas of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, are losing access to social sciences, humanities and arts courses amid the closures and layoffs.'
thebritishacademy.ac.uk
Cold spots: Mapping inequality in SHAPE provision in UK higher education
This British Academy report reveals that many parts of the UK are becoming subject cold spots – areas with no provision in a subject within a commutable distance. These are often in rural, coastal or ...
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Daniel C. Blight @danielcblight.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
***URGENT PLEASE SHARE*** University of Brighton management have announced today that they ‘give notice of termination of all collective agreements’. This is a fundamental erasure of workers' rights. Management have announced the termination of all contractual documents, which includes:
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Sarah Clarke - Not your doll @damselindystopia.northsky.social · 15/09/2026
We know that clinicians currently working within the NHS see a conversion practices ban as a threat to their preferred model of healthcare when it comes to trans people. Providing them with this exemption is literally just allowing them to continue to do conversion practices on vulnerable youth.
transsafety.network
'Nothing to offer': Training materials for new NHS CYP gender services raise serious questions, concerns about conversion practices
Slides and video transcripts for the new NHS Children & Young People’s (CYP) Gender Dysphoria services seen by Trans Safety Network raise serious concerns about the new service.
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Sam Rutherford (he/him) @echomikeromeo.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
This article highlights the 'postcode lottery' - uneven impact - of these new transphobic policies. That was the case for S28 also. It's uneven because some are finding the agency to push back. We all have a responsibility to do this in the spheres in which we have leverage and influence.
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Margaret Killjoy @margaret.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
this week's post dissects why naive optimism and fatalistic pessimism are not fundamentally less embarrassing responses to climate change than outright denial and then offers examples of actions we can take margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/beyond-cli...
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
“Family planning services played a role in the stabilisation of the vision of the modern reproductive subject, [in which] modernity was based on White middle-class values of responsibility & rationality, in which married women controlled their fertility according to their economic situation”
cambridge.org
Race, Population and the Family Planning Association in Britain (1950s–1970s) | Contemporary European History | Cambridge Core
Race, Population and the Family Planning Association in Britain (1950s–1970s) - Volume 35
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Sam Rutherford (he/him) @echomikeromeo.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I'm so grateful to Seth Koven for this smart and incisive review of Teaching Gender in @womenshistoryrev.bsky.social! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Teaching Gender, The British University and the Rise of Heterosexuality, 1860–1939
Published in Women's History Review (Ahead of Print, 2026)
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Without detracting from the failure of UUK's efforts, what would it mean if UK universities 'won over Reform'? What compromises would that entail? Binning the arts and humanities? Rejecting duties mandated by the Equalities act? Agreeing that only 30-ish universities should have funded research?
ft.com
UK universities fail to win over Reform
University leaders have spent months on a charm offensive aimed at gaining the support of the populist rightwing party
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History Workshop @historyworkshop.org.uk · 10/09/2026
The Radar Key grants access to public toilets and is a small but crucial part of the history of disabled people demanding rights and independence in modern Britain. Kirstie Stage explores the little-known history of this radical object.
historyworkshop.org.uk
Radical Object: The Radar Key
The Radar Key is a small but crucial part of the history of disabled people demanding rights and independence in modern Britain. Kirstie Stage explores the little-known history of this radical object.
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Elden Bling @lunarscope.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
honestly some of my favourite, most cherished people own this place and it truly is one of a kind. please consider donating if you can. ✨
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D Franklin @dlibris.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
It really sucks that the amazing Category Is Books are having to add these security measures, but right now it's needed. Please help these awesome people
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Dot @dotmaetrix.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
On a personal note, I cannot even begin to say enough how important this place is to me. Category Is was an indispensable space for me keeping my head together early in my transition, and for finding community and dear friends. Also the books are really good
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Sam Rutherford (he/him) @echomikeromeo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The window of my local queer bookshop was smashed last week. They're fundraising to install shutters so they can keep themselves and their community safe. Support this one-of-a-kind place, its one-of-a-kind proprietors, and the whole Glasgow queer & trans community: www.gofundme.com/f/categoryis...
gofundme.com
Donate to Help Category Is Books Get Shutters!, organized by Category Is Books
For the past eight years, Category Is Books has been able to comfortably oper… Category Is Books needs your support for Help Category Is Books Get Shutters!
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Compulsive, essential reading, though the absence of the eugenics connections and Jason Arday context is surprising. Should be read in conjunction with the pioneering @bylinetimes.bsky.social reporting (linked in 2/2). With a sharing link for 3 non-subscribers. 1/2 giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
giftarticle.ft.com
James Orr and the gospel of the new British right
Reform’s policy head is a Cambridge theologian with an enviable contact book and a belief in ‘faith, family and flag’
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Cwiar Cymru @cwiar.org · 05/09/2026
Just 426 people were referred for gender-affirming surgery in Wales last year. This compares to: - 8,213 hip replacements - 7,851 knee surgeries - 25,633 cataracts surgeries Until NHS Wales publishes its reasoning, patients will be left in the dark about the future. It's time for answers.
• • Cwiar
Cymru
Cymraeg →
It's time for answers from
NHS Wales.
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Marianna Dudley @dudleymarianna.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Huge. Huge testament to the power of organising. Huge relief for Exeter friends and colleagues. Huge waste of time and resources. Huge reputational damage done. Huge warning to universities who want to treat their staff like they don’t matter.
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Sam Rutherford (he/him) @echomikeromeo.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I continue to find this from 2020 to be a really bracing intervention into the (esp North American) methodological debates in trans studies/history of recent years: read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article/...
Screenshot of 2 paragraphs from the article:
'We desire a trans studies that yearns toward collaboration and solidarity, orientations that demand practices of care and communal cultivation. That is, we see the ideal trans studies as primarily a collective practice, not necessarily tethered to a telos of novel theory (although novel theory should certainly be welcome). We
desire the creation of a space in which trans thought can unfold, in which trans students might learn ways to live as trans in the world, and in which disagreement occurs, but not for its own sake. Such cultivation is complicated when the people doing the work are so dispersed, consumed, crushed (and, of course, also doggedly persistent) in so many small ways that their contributions go unnoticed or forestalled. Yet that complication is not, in the end, sufficient to dismiss hope as “a critical affect and a methodology” of field formation....
'In our utopian turn toward an alternative meaning of “field,” we also
desire modes of scholarship that turn away from the contextless battle of independent hero-scholars to the more fragile and multiplicitous work of growing trans life. We emphasize the care involved in sustaining community, including communities of thought, as we work alongside one another and challenge each other to do better rather than allowing the inequalities of the academy to be obscured. We align ourselves against any model of trans studies, but also trans activism and trans “representation” more broadly, in which a select few, not in
conversation with or dependent on larger communities, are given a false mantle to define or even “save” all other trans people. We believe that emphasizing care in this context calls us to be more attentive toward our dependency on others, our responsibilities to each other in the context of material differences, and the important but devalued work of supporting friends, building spaces, teaching, and cultivating connections."
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alyson “end journalism” greaves @badambulist.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
UK governments love Section 28s, they can’t get enough of them, when there isn’t a Section 28 in force they get really sad. You wouldn’t want the UK government to be sad, would you?
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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 01/09/2026
Language like this implicitly frames transness as a harm, as a contagion that can be spread. The UK government is utterly captured by and enthralled to conspiratorial anti-trans and anti-queer ideologues.
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History of Parliament @histparl.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Peter McLagan, Scotland's first Black MP, died on this day in 1900. Our colleague @martinspychal.bsky.social explores McLagan's life and career, as well as the wider history of Black political participation in 19th century Britain.
historyofparliament.com
Peter McLagan (1823-1900): Scotland’s first Black MP
This is the first article in a new series for the Victorian Commons on Peter McLagan (1823-1900), by Dr Martin Spychal, Senior Research Fellow on our House of
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Ruth Pearce @notrightruth.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Addendum #2: Trans Aid Cymru and Trans Partnership Wales are asking people directly affected by the cancellation of surgeries to contact them - details here.
transaid.cymru
Hundreds of surgeries suddenly cancelled following a ban on NHS Wales referrals
Hundreds of surgeries suddenly cancelled following a ban on NHS Wales referrals A large number of gender-affirming surgeries have been cancelled in hospitals across the UK following the NHS Wales …
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Charlie Lynch @charlielynch.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Let’s try again: I’d like to hear about new research from Scottish historians. Especially ECRs whose work may not get much attention. This is because I have a newspaper column where I publicise new work by Scottish historians! Tell me about your research!
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Sam Rutherford (he/him) @echomikeromeo.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
More panicked teaching prep questions: is there a US LGBTQ+ history primary source reader?
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Sam Rutherford (he/him) @echomikeromeo.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Does anyone have a scan of Roberta Cowell's Story (1954) that you might be willing to share?
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Ruth Pearce @notrightruth.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Addendum: when complaining or protesting stuff like this, it's helpful to consider who is *directly* responsible for the harmful decision. In this case it's not the Welsh Gender Service - it's various individuals and bodies within NHS Wales, as noted below.
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Ruth Pearce @notrightruth.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Reddit user pkunfcj has collated advice on what people in Wales can do to fight back against the trans surgical ban:: - writing to Senedd members and the First Minister (with an example email) - complain through patient advocacy services - complain to the health board - organise protests
reddit.com
pkunfcj's comment on "Welsh Gender Service Review - Cancelled surgeries"
Explore this conversation and more from the transgenderUK community
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Ruth Pearce @notrightruth.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
This is the most fucked up and immediately harmful policy decision I think I've ever seen in adult trans healthcare in the UK, and that's saying something. The Welsh Gender Service is one of the best in the country. It is widely praised by the patients it helps. That is why it is being targeted.
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Sam Rutherford (he/him) @echomikeromeo.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Crowdfunder to provide essential support for students from Gaza arriving at Glasgow uni: www.gofundme.com/f/help-gaza-...
gofundme.com
Donate to Help Gaza Students Being Evacuated to Glasgow, organized by Ibrahim Alghorane
Hi, it’s me Ibrahim Alghorane, a 20-year-old Software Engineering stu… Ibrahim Alghorane needs your support for Help Gaza Students Being Evacuated to Glasgow
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Stacy Fahrenthold @sfahrenthold.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
AHA could and should be working to speak up for member historians of the region who are experiencing challenges, violations to their academic freedom. But the record doesn't show that. I'm disturbed by AHA's acceptance of that TRP report characterizing my whole damn field as a threat to the org.
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Stacy Fahrenthold @sfahrenthold.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
The American Historical Association hired a lobbying firm to help silence member advocacy on Palestine. In this essay, Adam Rzepka covers @historians.org's relationship w/ Thorn Run Partners, its deep ethical conflicts, & the advocacy crisis AHA has thrust upon us. www.chronicle.com/article/a-sc...
chronicle.com
Opinion | A Scholarly Association’s Secret Washington Playbook
Did the American Historical Association ask a corporate lobbying firm for advice on how to silence its members?
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Dr Mary McAuliffe @drmarymcauliffe.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
‘We Were Always Here’: Ireland’s first permanent LGBTQ museum exhibition opens in Cork Congrats to Orla Egan and all who worked in this fantastic exhibition www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...
irishtimes.com
‘We Were Always Here’: Ireland’s first permanent LGBTQ museum exhibition opens in Cork
‘Too often the history of the LGBT community has been invisible, ignored or erased,’ said curator Orla Egan
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Serial Bookseller @serialbookseller.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
What a brilliant, necessary, and inspiring piece. Especially as the the back to school clock ticks down. I can’t wait to meet my new crop of English students and dig into this stuff.
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Rachel Moss @menysnoweballes.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
All very good - here's an important paragraph to single out - "Under this model, teaching evolves into a form of mass pedagogy increasingly divorced from the needs of society and the cultivation of critical thinking, reduced to a box-ticking exercise on the road to a depleted job market
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M a r c u s 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇧 @marcusjdl.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
This 80s style policy isn’t going to work on account there are visible queers EVERYWHERE
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Working Class History @workingclasshistory.com · 21/08/2026
#OtD 21 Aug 1981 140 mostly women workers at the Lee Jeans factory in Greenock, Scotland returned to work after winning a seven-month occupation of the plant against closure, having won their jobs back. Learn more in our tiktok: www.tiktok.com/@workingclas...
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