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The Stand comedy club is one of my very favourite places, and I’m going there again on the 9th of July – but this time I’m going to be one of the people on stage rather than one of the people in the audience. Don’t worry, I’m not becoming a stand-up comedian: I’ll be there… [more]
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Last week, when the Women and Equalities Committee grilled the head of the EHRC over her unlawful and misleading interim guidance about trans people’s legal rights, two people followed a trans woman into the ladies’ toilet, yelled about there being a “biological male” in there and demanded security intervene. The two people were the co-founder… [more]
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If you only read one article about the UK human rights watchdog and its sham consultation over removing trans people’s human rights, make it this one by Ian Dunt. The consultation exercise is a joke. And the EHRC, far from trying to communicate the law, is attempting to rewrite it so that it is as… [more]
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I’ll be doing not one but two events at this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival on the 10th and 11th of August. First of all there’s 1995: Grrrls Aloud where I’ll be joining Emma Pollock, Cora Bissett and Chitra Ramaswamy, with a soundtrack by Hen Hoose’s Cariss Crosbie. We’re going to be talking about the other 1995:… [more]
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The Guardian reports* that Akua Reindorf, the Equalities Commissioner, has claimed that trans people “must accept a reduction in their rights” because we “have been lied to over many years” about what our human rights are. The Equality Act and the EHRC’s guidance on it, Reindorf essentially argues, were really a bathroom ban that nobody… [more]
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Multiple Scots LGBTQ+ organisations have published a joint statement about responding to the EHRC consultation regarding its Equality Act guidance, and having read the consultation documents in detail I think they’re right: the proposed guidance is focused exclusively on segregating trans people, makes no attempt to protect their human rights or dignity, provides no useful… [more]
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A new report in the International Journal for Equity in Health says that transphobia in the UK is causing a public health crisis. The paper identifies multiple issues: limited or non-existent access to appropriate healthcare; social exclusion; policy-driven discrimination; and “minority stress”, which leads to adverse health outcomes including cardiovascular disease and risk behaviours such… [more]
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It’s hard to imagine now, but the Daily Telegraph was once envied for its news reporting. Now it’s a comic for angry old people who want to be lied to – and it can’t even be bothered to do that very well. Today’s front page trails a big news report on the revelation that the… [more]
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One of the hallmarks of the genital-obsessed weirdo movement is to claim that there’s not enough research about trans healthcare, and to then ignore any research about trans healthcare because it doesn’t support their lurid claims. And there’s a great example of that in Utah where the Republicans commissioned a Cass-style report to justify their… [more]
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I do like it when people get righteously angry, and Sean Morley is righteously angry about “Britain’s Grotesque Obsession” with trans people. You will recall that the presence of trans people in the public eye was a non-issue until the mid-2010s, when suddenly it became the cause de jour for every entertainer, journalist or social… [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.
