Author: Carrie
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Overreacting
From the very beginnings of the war on trans people, we’ve been accused of overreacting whenever we report what anti-trans groups and politicians say they want to do to us – which in many cases is the complete elimination of trans people by any means necessary. Most UK anti-trans groups and key anti-trans figures have…
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Who pays
The newsletter publishing platform Substack has a Nazi problem: specifically, it publishes, promotes and makes money from actual Nazi newsletters as well as the more media-trained faces of far right propaganda. As ever, trans people have been trying raise the alarm about the platform for years: it’s where some of the most vicious, abusive and…
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Handsome devils
I bought myself a coffee table book as a present. Marr’s Guitars by Johnny Marr is a lavishly photographed guide to some of Marr’s 132 guitars, including some very iconic instruments that played a key role in the sound of The Smiths. If you love guitars like I do, it’s absolute filth. Some of my…
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Calling Scots writers
Are you an early-career queer writer based in Scotland? Then you really need to know about the Queer Words Project Scotland, which is now open for applications. It’s a programme designed to help you with your writing, and with your writing career. Funded by Creative Scotland, it matches five emerging queer writers with five established…
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How we got here
Jude Doyle is always worth reading, and his latest piece for Xtra Magazine is a good analysis of how a handful of powerful people have effectively destroyed US media’s ability or inclination to battle the far right. It’s written from the perspective of a trans person because, as is so often the case, trans people…
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Papers please
The right-wing press wasted no time in starting 2024’s Tory-fuelled attacks on trans people: on New Year’s Day both the Mail and the Telegraph ran scaremongering articles supporting Kemi Badenoch’s desire to roll back trans people’s rights by several decades. This time the target is our passports, which the Telegraph claims have a “loophole” that…
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Rectal research
A new report by Policy Exchange, the right-wing think tank whose job is to give the Telegraph and Daily Mail some scary headlines and rubber-stamp whatever hateful policies the Tories want to bring in, is a great demonstration of what I’ve seen described as “rectal research”: the report’s supposed facts have clearly been pulled out…
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Islands in the streams
Most of my tech writing these days is news reporting, but from time to time I get to write something a little more reflective. Here’s a piece on how streaming services have persuaded me to get back into buying music I can touch. I think streaming is like a fast food drive-through, serving up cheeseburgers…
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Let the light in
Due to a calendar quirk, here in the UK the winter solstice is a day later than usual. But now it’s here, so today is the shortest, darkest day of the year and the beginning of the road back to summer sunshine. I’m writing this at 8am and it’s still pitch black outside; it’ll be…
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Just the facts
Since around 2017, it’s been very clear that if you hate trans people you can make up any old shite and have it printed or broadcast without anybody fact-checking it before, during or afterwards – and as a result, many anti-trans activists have taken full advantage of that to spread absolute bullshit with impunity. So…