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How has Wellington hurt me?

  • Writer: Amanda Riddell
    Amanda Riddell
  • Nov 19, 2023
  • 1 min read

Let's count the ways: 1. Laughing behind my back when I used to walk around singing.

I bet they're regretting that now that I'm a very good singer. 2. Parents turning their kids away from me on the streets since I came out as trans.

3. Treating me like a retard, and then pretending like they didn't. 4. Blaming me for all of the RP dramas, when my brother was largely in charge of that. 5. That Tory Whanau hui. I'll never forget that, and that is why I'm stubborn. 6. Presuming I was in love with Jake. I never, ever said that. He may have said it to me, but I never said it back, as I didn't really feel that way. 7. Telling me to be a guy after literally years of evidence that I researched and posted to explain my transness to those bigots. I refuse to do so again, as I shouldn't have to. Gay people don't walk around explaining their gayness, so why should I? 8. Punching down to mock me, and telling me I was a paedo, when there is no evidence of that.

9. Criticising my cannabis campaign, despite doing nothing at all to legalise it themselves.

That particularly hurts from my peer group who got high in the States while living it up on scholarships, then telling me 'I can't get high' when clearly I had a lot of other stuff going on in my life. If I hadn't stood up for the cause, I would have been the same happy stoner that I was for the several years that I was before 2018.

 
 
 

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2 Comments


Amanda Riddell
Amanda Riddell
Nov 19, 2023

To Tamatha: that arts hui in 2022 means I'll never accept or agree to doing Weeded Out. Frankly, the arts community that wants to do my show already has money and resources, and they're telling me that my ability to access those same resources is conditional on rewriting my very carefully crafted script to suit their needs. I used folk songs for damn good reasons, and that's not negotiable. My original songs are spoken for by my 2030 musical. I'm finishing that draft, and the Edgar song is the thing that I'm currently writing; that's why the songs aren't available for Weeded Out. My Man's Gone is a great song, and so are the other two that I used in that script. - I…


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Amanda Riddell
Amanda Riddell
Nov 19, 2023
Replying to

I'm not saying that I'm not going to do films, but I am saying that I really believe that my book comes first, and I'd really rather be putting that into it's final shape rather than debating why I won't consent to an idea that other people think is a winner. To me, Bullshit and Jellybeans was a great explanation of Shadbolt, and I'm very confident that my book would explain Amanda equally well. I think that the book will give potential producers a lot more material to look at, and that might take the sting out of me saying that my original songs are spoken for by a draft script that nobody likes except for me. I'm 100% committed to that 2030…

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