Upcoming Roundtable: ‘Planning Ahead: LGBT Issues at the End of Life’
by Lewis Brennen
Planning Ahead: LGBT Issues at the End of Life
The Universityâs Law School and Pulse LGBT+ Staff Network are pleased to invite you to a roundtable discussion on LGBT issues at the end of life taking place on Wednesday 26 April from 12:00 â 14:00, Room 1007, Building 67, Highfield Campus.
As the UK population ages, the availability and delivery of effective palliative care is becoming more important than ever, but what challenges do LGBT people face in accessing appropriate palliative care, and what are the legal and moral duties of healthcare providers to ensure that all patients at the end of life are able to die with autonomy and dignity?
Following the release of Compassion in Dyingâs booklet supporting LGBT people to plan ahead to ensure they receive care thatâs right for them, and a revealing new study by Marie Curie, this informal lunchtime discussion will explore the unique experiences of the ageing LGBT community, the law on end-of-life care, and the social and legal issues that these needs present.
This lunchtime conversation will open with a short presentation from Professor Hazel Biggs, Katie Hunt and Matthew Watkins (Southampton Law School), followed by a roundtable discussion in which there will be an exchange of questions, answers and concerns. Resources for understanding LGBT needs in healthcare contexts and facilitating end-of-life conversations will be available.
Attendees should bring a lunch with them, but tea, coffee and cake will be provided. The organisers look forward to seeing you on the day!
For more information, including how to book your ticket, visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/planning-ahead-lgbt-issues-at-the-end-of-life-tickets-33851015298. If you have any queries, please contact Professor Hazel Biggs:  H.Biggs@southampton.ac.uk.
Upcoming Seminar: ‘Queering Marxist [Trans]Feminism: Queer and Trans Social Reproduction’
by Lewis Brennen
Marxism in Culture Seminar
Friday, 28 April 2017
17:30-19:30
Wolfson Room, Institute of Historical Research
Senate House, University of London
Nat Raha (University of Sussex)
Queering Marxist [Trans]Feminism: Queer and Trans Social Reproduction
Despite the recent resurgence of social reproduction theory and Marxist feminist political praxis, the social reproduction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) lives remains under-theorised. While heterosexuality as a form of work has long since been considered as part of Marxist feminismâs analysis, the consideration of queer sexualities, and the reproduction of life and labour-power outside and beyond of the cis-, heteronormative nuclear family, have been sidelined in the canon of Marxist Feminism. Bridging the theoretical work of queer Marxism, Black feminism and trans studies, and the political praxis of LGBTQ groups Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries and Wages Due Lesbians, this paper will address the expanded definition of social reproduction necessary to understand the social reproduction of LGBTQ lives.
The paper will argue that the forms of caring labour that enable LGBTQ lives take place in spaces beyond the domestic sphere and within familial forms that exceed the nuclear family; and moreover that such labour includes the reproduction of genders, desires and bodies anchored in non-normativity â work that is often naturalised and not considered as labour. Furthermore, the continued failure of the capitalist socius to support the lives of poor trans women and trans femmes of colour and/or sex workers raises questions of how the politics of queer and trans liberalism(s) devalue and compound the conditions of queer and trans social reproduction under a racialised and gendered division of labour.
Nat Raha is a poet and trans / queer activist, living in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Sussex, working on a thesis titled âQueer Capital: Marxism in queer theory and post-1950 poeticsâ. Her poetry includes two collections: countersonnets (Contraband Books, 2013), and Octet (Veer Books, 2010); and numerous pamphlets including âÂŁ/âŹxtinctionsâ (Sociopathetic Distro, 2017), ‘[of sirens / body & faultlines]’ (Veer Books, 2015), and ‘mute exterior intimate’ (Oystercatcher Press, 2013). She’s performed and published her work internationally. Nat currently works as a Research Support Assistant for ‘Cruising the 1970s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures’ at the Edinburgh College of Art; and her essay âTransfeminine Brokenness, Radical Transfeminismâ is due for publication in the South Atlantic Quarterly this spring.
Free and open to allÂ
If you have any queries please contact Chrysi Papaioannou (papaioannou.chrysi@gmail.com).
Website:Â https://www.history.ac.uk/events/seminar/marxism-culture
Facebook:Â https://www.facebook.com/groups/176590486339/
Twitter: #MICseminar
Some earlier seminars are now available as Podcasts.
MIC Seminar organisers: Matthew Beaumont, Dave Beech, Alan Bradshaw, Warren Carter, Luisa Lorenza Corna, Gail Day, Steve Edwards, Larne Abse Gogarty, Esther Leslie, David Mabb, Antigoni Memou, Chrysi Papaioannou, Nina Power, Dominic Rahtz, Pete Smith, Peter Thomas, Alberto Toscano & Marina Vishmidt.