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Catherine Baker

@richmondbridge.bsky.social
2.6K followers 2.5K following 898 posts

PERFORMING QUEER NATIONS: THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST IN POST-COLD-WAR EUROPE due from Manchester University Press in 2027. She/her.

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Reposted by Catherine Baker
Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
“Over a three‑year period, across 382 public authorities in England - including local councils, NHS trusts and domestic abuse refuges - only four formal complaints were recorded regarding trans women using facilities such as toilets, hospital wards or shelters.” Transphobic panics are manufactured.
scenemag.co.uk
New data shows only four complaints about trans women in single‑sex spaces
A major Freedom of Information investigation by advocacy group TransLucent has revealed that concerns about trans women in single‑sex spaces are vastly overstated. Over a three‑year period, across 382...
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QueerAF @wearequeeraf.com · 10h
🚨 Breaking: New guidance from the Ministry of Defence, seen by QueerAF, sets out that Trans service members will be "accommodated in line with their biological sex" www.wearequeeraf.com/uk-trans-arm...
wearequeeraf.com
UK Trans armed forces personnel required to use single-sex faclilites based on 'biological sex'
The updated Ministry of Defence JSP 889 states that MoD Trans+ civil servants and service personnel may not use facilities of their affirmed gender that are designated as single-sex, QueerAF can revea...
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will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 20h
I can’t help it sometimes I see an old image and just think wow this must actually tell us something about what things were like. On being a naive visual historian and not even being sorry, sorry. 🗃️ williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2026/10/16/o...
williamgpooley.wordpress.com
On the Cards (Again)
A few years ago, I published an article on (commercial) fortune-telling with cards in France in the nineteenth century. It was meant to be a side project from the work I was doing on witchcraft, bu…
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Isn’t some of this also partly about racialised fears that enclosed stalls will let people use them to do drugs…? (Can’t source this but recall it from discussions in the Old Place, so anecdotal evidence point)
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CN Lester 🏳️‍⚧️ @cnlester.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Striking how ideologically-captured the BBC has become when looking at its reporting on trans hospital changes, and just how much heavy lifting 'biological sex' is doing. Explaining that a woman with a vulva, breasts, and typically female hormone profile should be put on a men's ward? Difficult...
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Usenet newsgroup archives are a possibility, depending on how easy it is to find UK posts Paul Hodkinson’s ‘Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture’ was published 2002 so could help point to places to look for sources from late 90s John Robb’s ‘The Art of Darkness’ might inspire some directions too
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
Any chance they can get to Leeds? If so, worth contacting Leeds City Museum as it’s part of local heritage Music weeklies were covering goth scene from own perspective (try metal magazines too), zines would be even more useful if they can find some
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
There must be people on my feed who can help with this 🦇 (Primary sources = first-hand historical evidence from the time, not research about it)
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Jay Todd 🏳️‍⚧️ @jaytoddgla.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
What happens when a court ruling suddenly throws your life into turmoil? My new paper explores how trans+ people dealt with the aftermath of the FWS judgement, the EHRC's response, and political antagonism, showing they remained defiant, finding space for joy alongside fear and rage. bit.ly/4jhvf96
tandfonline.com
Trans lives and defiance following the For Women Scotland UK Supreme Court ruling
This article explores responses and strategies of UK trans and gender diverse (TGD+) people for dealing with the immediate aftermath of the April 2025 UK Supreme Court judgement in For Women Scotla...
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New Lines Magazine @newlinesmag.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
In one of our current top reads, @lisang.bsky.social reviews two films that are unsparing in their depiction of Israeli attitudes toward the war: the documentary film “NAZA” and the satirical drama “Yes!”, both by Israeli directors.
f.mtr.cool
Two Films About Gaza and Why Some People Hate Them
The documentary film “NAZA” and the satirical drama “Yes!,” both by Israeli directors, hold up mirrors to Israeli society that most find too difficult to see.
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Abby Keating @abkeating.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
🎞️ 📺 Film/media scholars might be interested in this: Announcing our CFP - A Decade of Queer Screens: An International Conference 22-23 April 2027 | Department of Film and Screen Media | University College Cork For full CFP and more info, see: queerscreensucc.wordpress.com #cfp 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Four years later, Fado Bicha would sign on to No Music For Genocide’s call to boycott #Eurovision 2026, alongside 🇵🇹’s 2024 contestant Iolanda - at the sharp end of that year’s backstage environment - and one of 🇵🇹’s 2018 home entrants Cláudia Pascoal: www.theportugalnews.com/news/2026-04...
theportugalnews.com
Portuguese artists call for boycott of Eurovision Song Contest
More than a thousand music professionals are calling for a boycott of the Eurovision Song Contest in an open letter released days after another letter from the entertainment industry rejected attempts...
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Fado Bicha with ‘Povo pequenino’, in 🇵🇹 selection back in 2022 when their values and #Eurovision seemed a better match: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbnB...
youtube.com
Fado Bicha – “Povo Pequenino” | 1ª Semifinal | Festival da Canção 2022
YouTube video by Festival da Canção
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
It’s still not 100% clear how 🇵🇹 broadcaster RTP will approach #Eurovision 2027 after 13 out of 16 entrants in its long-running Festival da Canção selection said in ‘26 they wouldn’t go through to the contest, in continued controversy over 🇮🇱 participation. Luckily for RTP, one of the others won.
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Yes, queer anticolonial duo Fado Bicha - part of 🇵🇹’s #Eurovision 2022 selection in what might feel like a very different time - are in here.
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
*stepped up researching the politics of Eurovision in 2022-3 and has been feeling this ever since…*
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Mike (They/Them) 🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @mxmike.co.uk · 11/10/2026
Bethany wore a “Protect The Dolls” t-shirt during rehearsals. The BBC posted it on their socials then quietly deleted and reposted it without showing her from the front. On TV last night they actually blurred the message #Strictly
Bethany Antonia rehearsing for Strictly Come Dancing in a Protect The Dolls t-shirt Bethany Antonia rehearsing for Strictly Come Dancing in a Protect The Dolls t-shirt that’s been edited to look like a plain white t shirt
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Celeste Ng @pronounced-ing.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
"...Little public things—like designing postage stamps or National Park Service photographer stipends or spending the pittance of pre-DOGE NEA dollars on public programming—did something to cohere a nation. Everyday aesthetics made place."
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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
“Classrooms up and down the country need to prepare young people for the wider world – an ever complex and changing world – and that only happens if their classrooms, their learning materials and their discussions reflect the diversity of experiences in that world.” LGBT lives are not “ideologies.”
wearequeeraf.com
Forcing 'impartiality' in classrooms is a Trojan horse for bans on queer lives
Under the guise of ‘impartiality’, right-wing forces are increasingly focused on restricting which topics and perspectives young people have access to
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Talis Kimberley🇪🇺 @taliskimberley.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
For clarity, you send these to friends you do NOT want to get eaten by a giant folkloric cat. If you have the other sort of friends, we can't help you, I'm afraid. The Yule Cat will be more than happy to do so!
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History Workshop @historyworkshop.org.uk · 09/10/2026
After three brilliant years, @beckierutherford.bsky.social's fellowship is coming to an end. A historian of health, gender, and activism in modern Britain, Beckie has edited a selection of incredible articles focused on the experiences and ideas of disabled people.
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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Dónal Hassett @donalh.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
If you are looking for some good analysis of what has been happening in France, please read this thread from an actual expert. Of course plenty of other opinions are available...
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
‘Here was a figure that the Portuguese called “woman”, sexually exploiting the bodies of the unfree, draping their own body in male attire and engaging in the brutality of war … To them, this African flouting their civilised values of feminine morality was inherently deviant’
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
‘The challenges of academics from the peripheries to be present in the centres of knowledge production are numerous, layered & diverse, including navigating belonging & non-belonging, (in)visibility, borders, visas, the salience of documents & the colour of passports’ www.bisa.ac.uk/members/work...
bisa.ac.uk
On participation, presence and absence in hierarchies of knowledge production at times of academic precarity- South East Europe (SEE) | BISA
- South East Europe (SEE) Working Group
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Kate Law @drkatelaw.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Although @uniofnottingham.bsky.social seem determined to destroy the humanities, here's my latest article, 'Bassey’s blunder: Shirley Bassey, Welsh anti‑apartheid activism, and the cultural boycott against South Africa' published open access. www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....
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John Sabapathy @jwwsabapathy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
A triumphant outcome for UK higher education policy, regional economic development, and internalized market mentalities. Three cheers for the Minister for Universities. [Checks notes] There is no Minister for Universities.
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Nancy Kelley @nancymk.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
This government has made life dramatically harder for trans children and their families. The human costs are enormous. Cal is not the first parent I know that has made the gut wrenching decision to leave the country. Read this then start fighting for a world where trans kids can live and thrive.
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Astronomy must be the other one. Which moons are where, why are they like that, why can’t aliens live there, what are all the constellations, who were they in Greek mythology, is that star going to explode yet, can aliens live *there*?
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
There is a microgeneration of baby millennial sapphics whose lives were never the same after this came out.
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Larisa Aitch @llarisah.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
“What’s perhaps most striking about these pictures of trans people is just how mundane they are. The person looking at them, cis or trans, sees these images and realizes, however much they didn’t before, that trans people are not mythical creatures, or monsters, but people.”
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
As expected, 🇸🇮‘s new right-wing government is strategising to take political control of RTVSLO - which would remove leadership who have backed #Eurovision boycott, as well as everything else balkaninsight.com/2026/10/01/w...
balkaninsight.com
With Jansa’s Return, Slovenia’s Media Landscape Is Being Reshaped
A free press in Slovenia is at risk from the return to office of the populist Janez Jansa and media ownership changes that are shaking up the sector.
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__________ @jenbren.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
September 30 October 1st
Siobhán Fahey from Bananarama circa 1985Siobhán Fahey from Shakespear's Sister circa 1992
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ESC Discord @escdiscord.com · 30/09/2026
🇮🇸 RÚV's board wants Iceland to continue its #Eurovision boycott. In a board meeting today, 6 of the 9 members signed a statement urging RÚV's Director General "to notify the EBU that RÚV will not participate in Eurovision 2027 unless Israel is barred from the Contest".
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There are whole books theorising soft power that put it less clearly than this 😀
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Katherine Alejandra Cross @quinnae.com · 30/09/2026
Recently, I did a wonderful interview with the indefatigable @emilystjams.bsky.social about trans people's online information environment and why there are very strong incentives to spread panic. It was a wide-ranging discussion that I think is more relevant than ever.
episodes.ghost.io
What's the matter with trans panic media?
Scholar Katherine Alejandra Cross on why it's so profitable to "sell panic to trans people."
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Once alarmed transatlantic colleague during one or other lockdown on a slow Zoom call by coughing and clutching throat. Had yet again failed to properly digest a piece of hard boiled egg…
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Mark Watson @watsoncomedian.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
My son's history course this year includes a paper called 'Britain Transformed, 1913-1997' which means the events of 'history' for him include 'me doing history GCSE'.
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
‘This is a footballer with a future, and in a climate where billionaire stadium owners notify artists that they won’t perform if they say “Free Palestine,” taking such a stand puts that future at risk’
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Juliane Fürst @jcaf.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This much for academia being somehow above or outside the war: this is the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and these are our colleagues, engaged in the same work we do. This is also late punishment for the instrumental role the Academy played in the late 1980s in the struggle for independence.
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Also in things 🏳️‍🌈 venues have been working out since #Eurovision 2024: 140+ 🇮🇪 pubs didn’t screen the football when they always would have bsky.app/profile/jule... One club’s pro-boycott commercial officer compares this to Ed Sheeran/Macklemore 🇮🇪’s Bambie Thug on their own in same circs 3 years ago
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
13-14 here, but the number of times in those couple of years I must have played this…
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The two things I’ve most worked on are the post-Yugoslav region and the politics of Eurovision and *every single time* I speak off the cuff about the Belgrade contest in 2008 (which had significant 🏳️‍🌈 rights angle) I’m liable to say 2007 ie the year that Serbia won…
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
‘It almost sounds absurd to even have to say it - in the context of all that's wrong in world right now - but we will not report on the sporting action this time around’ www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-n... Mainstream 🇮🇪 sport media now working through same decisions as #Eurovision fan media 3 yrs ago
irishmirror.ie
Israel v Ireland - the Irish Mirror's coverage will be different... here's why
The big decisions can sometimes be the most straightforward
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
In the meantime, Let 3’s antimilitarist, antiauthoritarian satire at the displaced #Eurovision 2023 is probably as near as the contest will come to a Laibach entry, for the foreseeable at least www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_tm...
youtube.com
LET 3 - Mama ŠČ! | Official video | Eurovision 2023
YouTube video by DallasRecordsTV
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Supposedly this Laibach single with 🇬🇭‘s Wiyaala might have been in contention as a 🇸🇮 #Eurovision entry, if not for the boycott campaign www.youtube.com/watch?v=erR5... Or maybe that’s just what they’d like us to think (it is longer than contest’s limit of 3 minutes)
youtube.com
Laibach - Allgorhythm (feat. Wiyaala) [Official Video]
YouTube video by Laibach
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
‘Laibach insist they have “always been a pop group — even if we have not always looked or sounded like one.” Which is a bit like a Dalek saying it has always been a warm and approachable presence at children’s parties’ morningstaronline.co.uk/article/popa...
morningstaronline.co.uk
Popaganda
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Lee Hurley @hleehurley.com · 26/09/2026
The Ireland game v Israel looks like it will be going ahead with the Irish players wearing black armbands in memory of the victims. Players have also asked to be excused from any further media duties. Donations will be made. Just one player is refusing to play. The majority voted to play.
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Robin Hayward 🌳 🏳️‍⚧️ @canopyrobin.com · 25/09/2026
We're publishing new guidance to support trans people who do fieldwork (any work outside the office)! Now we need your help to get them seen so please share! inclusivefieldwork.leeds.ac.uk/trans/
a cartoon of three fieldworkers. One has a small trans flag. The logos of the university of leeds, research england, and canopy robin are shown, as well as the URL: InclusiveFieldwork (dot) Leeds (dot) AC (dot) UK (slash) trans
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Back-up 🇮🇪 goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu has already indicated he doesn’t want to play - now other players may be joining him www.independent.ie/sport/soccer... Echoes of chaotic day before #Eurovision 2024 grand final - when pressure fell on 🇮🇪 contestant too
independent.ie
Gavin Bazunu indicates that he doesn’t want to play in the Israel game - what happens next?
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Catherine Baker @richmondbridge.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
🇮🇪 men’s ⚽️ team drawn vs 🇮🇱 in Nations League, may be deciding now whether to take field: www.theguardian.com/football/202... 🔹🇮🇪 FA wants 🇮🇱 suspended from international competition 🔹Team’s 🇮🇸 coach has said they’d be ‘playing against genocide’ 🔹Irish Sport For Palestine calling on team not to play
theguardian.com
Israel’s match with Republic of Ireland will be an eerie occasion as political debate rages on
Despite fierce opposition to the Nations League encounters across Irish society, a boycott has not materialised
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