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The Kirkcudbright Book Festival line-up for March 2026 has been announced, and it’s a typically eclectic and interesting selection. I’ll be appearing on the Saturday morning to chat about Small Town Joy and the liberating power of music. [more]
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The genital obsessed weirdos’ crusade against trans people is global, so there have attempts to bring in a UK-style “emergency” ban on puberty blockers for trans kids in New Zealand as part of the moral panic there. But unlike the UK, whose judiciary seems to be an easy mark for junk science peddled by dubiously [more]
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There has been a flood of despicable reporting around the Sandie Peggie employment tribunal, much of it by people who clearly didn’t let a minor matter such as reading the actual judgement get in the way of publishing their pre-written pieces. This, by Rivkah Brown, should make them ashamed of themselves. It won’t, because they’re [more]
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TransActual have published a document detailing people’s experiences of Britain’s EHRC-approved crotch cops. It makes grim reading, and demonstrates yet again that the piss police will be coming for anyone considered not sufficiently feminine enough. [more]
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The BBC’s coverage of the criminal Graham Linehan, who was convicted yesterday of criminal damage to a trans woman’s phone (but not of his years-long campaign of harassment against her, despite abundant evidence of that harassment), shows the reality of the supposed “pro-trans bias” of the corporation. The BBC news article about the court case [more]
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The EHRC, which hates trans people, has leaked its trans guidance to The Times, which hates trans people, in an attempt to bully the Equalities Minister into approving it. But no amount of positive spin can hide the fundamental point: the EHRC wants trans people’s rights to access spaces to be dependent on how they [more]
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Section 28, the law that prohibited the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools and libraries, was scrapped on this day in 2003 (three years after Scotland repealed the local version, Clause 2A). I’ve written about it a few times now, including in the anthology Twenty-Eight. Section 28 came into force just as I was leaving school, [more]
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I took part in this year’s Aye Write! book festival with a different hat on: I was there as a host rather than a panellist. I was asked to chair three very different events: with former pop star Anthony Kavanaugh, aka Kavana, to discuss his memoir; with Mae Diansangu, Louise Welsh and Lewis Hetherington to [more]
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There are some fascinating reports in the latest edition of the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, including a piece about the LGB Alliance’s Role in the UK Media’s Anti-Trans Moral Panic and this in-depth analysis of radicalisation on sites such as Mumsnet. It describes how posters attempt to reframe themselves as victims rather than victimisers, [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
