Category: LGBTQ+

  • I know I can never be that idealised girl

    There’s a superb piece in Vox by Emily Todd VanDerWerff about the costs of being a trans woman. I found myself nodding in agreement with a lot of it. I’ve done exactly this, albeit not quite so expensively: I’m more of a Boots No.7 person. The thing about self-acceptance is that when you’re just getting…

  • If this is the fast track, I’d hate to be on the slow one

    The BBC has discovered that many trans people are stuck on waiting lists for so long they have to buy their own medicine from overseas. The report, while accurate and worthwhile, also serves to demonstrate that the BBC clearly doesn’t have any trans people or experts on trans healthcare anywhere near the newsrooms it so…

  • “Take a long hard look at your bullshit shock jokes”

    [Content note: suicide] Last night I stepped off a stage and ended up in 1971. My brother and I were the featured act at an open mic night I’ve played at many times before, a mix of musicians and comedians. It’s fun, although inevitably you have to put up with the odd person whose pub…

  • Stuck in the Middle with You is warm, wise and sad

    I’ve written before about my admiration for the writer Jenny Boylan, aka Jennifer Finney Boylan: her memoir, She’s Not There, is warm, witty and often desperately sad. I didn’t realise she’d written another memoir, but when I found out about it I suspected it might also be warm, witty and desperately sad. It is. Stuck…

  • The right to swing arms

    There were two trans-related court verdicts yesterday, although only one of them has received significant coverage. In the one you’ve probably read about, Harry Miller had a partial victory in his case against Humberside Police, who turned up at his work to quiz him about his anti-trans tweets. The verdict chimes with what most people…

  • “Death threats to gay people didn’t breach their guidelines”

    The anti-violence charity GALOP has published its latest online hate report, based on a sample of 700 LGBT+ people. It makes for grim reading, with social networks and newspaper website comment sections leaving even clearly illegal abuse untouched. As you’d expect, almost all of us are used to being insulted online. But the prevalence of…

  • “An increasingly hostile environment”

    Hate crimes against trans people in Scotland have doubled since 2015, the Daily Record reports. It’s almost as if having almost all of your country’s newspapers and high-profile social media users constantly portraying you as perverts, paedophiles and rapists has an effect. I’ve written before about the false claim that the rise in numbers is…

  • “It is an aged strategy, pitting one disadvantaged group against another”

    Dr Rebecca Crowther writes in the Scottish Review about Scotland’s women’s movement and the vocal attempts by a tiny minority to turn back the clock. Opposition to trans people is voiced almost daily in many newspapers and online. It is frequently featured on the radio and on television. It is an illusion that there are…

  • Deception

    The reaction to 57-year-old TV presenter Philip Schofield coming out as gay has been interesting. Interesting because it’s been a very different and much more positive reaction than the reaction to Jameela Jamil coming out as queer the day before, which says a lot about the racism, misogyny and intolerance queer women of colour have…

  • Adult kids say the funniest things

    I’ve written before about dubious “the sinister trans cult stole my children” articles: all too often they turn out to demonstrate that some parents find it easier to blame sinister, shadowy forces than their own shortcomings when their grown-up children cut all contact. But I’ve rarely seen an example as downright awful as this one.…