Stella Duffy
@stellduffy.bsky.social
Pākehā Londoner; Dr (not the medical kind), existential psychotherapist, supervisor, doctoral research in postmenopause; writer of 17 novels/70+ stories/15 plays, yoga for writing workshops; 2 x breast cancer; knee, hip, & some brain mended with metal
Short-sighted, stupid cuts to the UKRI budget include shutting down Jodrell Bank, the icon of British astronomy. (Many other cuts too, including 20% to our brand new @vrubinobs.bsky.social). Interesting politically to shut down a major facility in...um..Manchester 🔭 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands
Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.
bbc.co.uk
On not dying three years ago today. And existential psychotherapy & philosophy, choosing what we do have rather than what we don't, being honest about how hard it is AND keeping going anyway. stellduffy.substack.com/p/on-a-nearl...
On a (nearly) death-iversary
or 3 years today since my brain exploded ...
stellduffy.substack.com
Berlin Pride. THAT’s why Pride matters. That’s why we ‘go on about being gay’ all the time. That’s why we’ll keep talking about it. It’s not fixed yet.
Wrote a piece on the latest round of meno-infighting. Redux: patriarchy is scared of women, terrified of old women, and believes we can control ageing and death. We can't. substack.com/home/post/p-...
Meno-infighting detracts from the real problem ...
Patriarchy is scared of change, scared of the uncontrollable, scared of women's ageing.
substack.com
Fucking bollocks to it, what a shag wanking disaster. (Also, Argentina are very pushy, aren’t they?)
Pre-order link for Being the Change - Thriving in #Postmenopause (other bookshops also available): uk.bookshop.org/p/books/bein...
Being the Change: Thriving in postmenopause
We live between a quarter or even a third of our lives in postmenopause. But although there's been a welcome focus on perimenopause and menopause recently, postmenopause often remains ignored, misunde...
uk.bookshop.org
COVER!!! 8 years in the making - 5 of the doctorate & thesis in the embodied experience of #postmenopause and another 2 years rewriting to make it accessible, non-academic, developing the writing & creative exercises in the book, and LOTS of editing. Out with @viragopress 4 Feb 2027.
Great conversation with @LucyCavendish about all the things - writing, cultural democracy & the myth of creative 'genius', life, death, existential therapy, infertility, cancer, internalised misogyny & pronatalism & ageism, AND thriving in #postmenopause! open.spotify.com/episode/2zaE...
Being The Change; making meaningful choices about how we live with existential therapist Dr Stella Duffy | S6 E2
How to have Extraordinary Relationships · Episode
open.spotify.com
A little post on my coming book on postmenopause & sharing Kathleen Riach's great (short!) paper on menopause as a socioeconomic experience, affected by gendered ageism, caring responsibilities, the gender pay gap ETC open.substack.com/pub/stellduf...
Being the Change (coming soon)
sharing juicy research around post/menopause
open.substack.com
For all of June I shared a thought each day about #Pride - here they all are together. 30 reasons we still need Pride. 30 reasons it's not fixed yet. open.substack.com/pub/stellduf...
30 days of pride
For the month of June I posted a new image and thought about the importance of Pride every day. When I started I wasn’t sure I could find 30 things to say. I needn’t have worried ...
open.substack.com
30 days of #Pride. Day 30. My wife and I rarely kiss in public. After 36 years together, our early unsafety remains AND those before us made change that helped us anyway. I am excited for the hope the new lot of LGBTQIA+ folk will create. And I remember our forebears. Without them, we are not.
Jared Kushner wants Albania's protected wetlands. The government obliged. Protesters said no. 29 days later, they're still saying no — with flamingo cutouts and flags, in the streets, every single night. Europe is watching. Is anyone else?
30 days of #Pride. Day 28. Gym, swim, gardening, freelancing admin & attempting marmalade with the tiny bitter oranges from our little back garden. Days off count too.
30 days of #Pride. Day 27 Being in any or every way gay or queer or gender-expansive is not a choice. It’s embodied, emplaced and temporal. It’s an honesty to life. For some of us it’s everything, for others of us it’s some of everything. All good. The rainbow has many more colours than 7.
30 days of #Pride. Day 26 Pride started with a riot. It did not start with acquiescence. It did not start with hiding. It did not start with complacency. Pride was - and is - the fight back. And it was always #LGBwiththeT
#OnThisDay: Olive Morris, Brixton revolutionary activist, born, 1952. Member of the UK Black Panthers, and a founder of Brixton Black Women’s Group wp.me/p74yfw-11k
Spotlight on London’s radical herstory: The Brixton Black Women’s Group
The Brixton Black Women’s Group emerged from the Black Power movements that evolved in Britain in the 1960s-1970s, initially as an angry response to racism and police attacks. Black communiti…
wp.me
30 days of #Pride. Day 25 “When will we get straight pride month?” When straight people need to check state/national laws to be sure they’re safe to visit somewhere.
30 days of #Pride. Day 23 23 years today without this one. What she said when I came out in my late teens: “I saw a lot of it in the army” & “You’ll get a lot more companionship from a woman than from a man.” Supportive of and for me in every facet of my life. Be more Peg.
30 days of #Pride. Day 23. Same/different: we are and we’re not “just like anyone else”. No one who has to worry about the reaction to them holding their lover’s hand in public is just like anyone else. Some of us have thinner skin through hard-won experience. Go gently.
30 days of #Pride. Day 22 I’m sure your LGBTQIA+ cousin, daughter, brother, mother, workmate, etc is lovely, but that doesn’t mean we’ll get on. I don’t see straight people being told, “You’ll LOVE my straight aunty!” We’re as different as my lovely flowers.
I would find it much easier to be hopeful about Burnham’s impending coronation if he hadn’t become equivocal on trans rights. I doubt he’s the inclusive socialist many hope he’ll be. And I doubt the country at present would vote for him in a GE if he turns out to be as radical as some seem to hope.
30 days of #Pride. Day 20 There are no out football players playing in the Men’s World Cup. 48 teams. 1248 players. Yet it seems football doesn’t feel safe enough for any of the men to be out?
30 days of #Pride. Day 19 In London watching Jools Topp’s life celebration and SO grateful for the political, passionate, decades-long lesbian heroes the Topps, who made such a difference to newly sexuality-aware me and so many of my generation. Ngā mihi, Dame Jools. Moe mai rā.
For the benefit of the US: the man in the middle just won an election against an alien called @countbinface.bsky.social, a fox, 2 fascists (not pictured) & some normal politicians in suits. He is now odds on to topple a sitting prime minister & lead the country. You could learn a lot from this.
Ian Dunt@iandunt.bsky.social · 2mo agoGod I love this country. We're just so ridiculous.
