Category: LGBTQ+

  • “With the gender clinic, your answerphone messages are prayers”

    (Content warning: suicidal ideation) I was asked by LGBT Health and Wellbeing to speak at an event about LGBT+ mental health yesterday: the three other panelists and I were asked to share our own experiences of mental health provision, where it falls short and where it might be improved. This is a slightly more coherent version…

  • Hack comedians are not the heirs of Lenny Bruce

    (Content warning: extreme violence) Writing in The New Republic, Osita Nwanevu offers a recap of legendarily offensive comedian Lenny Bruce’s demise. Over the course of a six-month trial, critics, academics, psychiatrists, and even a minister spoke in Bruce’s defense—none more beseechingly than Bruce himself. “Don’t finish me off in show business,” he pleaded before his…

  • How to ensure your LGBT+ child hates you

    Right-wing shite-peddler The Federalist has printed a piece urging parents of trans and gender non-conforming kids to cut them off from the internet and their peers and beat them daily until they renounce transgenderism and its Satanic ways. I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. The latest in a string of similar pieces misrepresents research, makes unsubstantiated…

  • Damned lies from statistics

    The National Catholic Register has published a terrifying article implying that there have been thousands of deaths from puberty blocking. Is it bullshit? Of course it is. Even if you didn’t know that the National Catholic Register is a right-wing religious rag that really hates trans people, the use of the phrase “transgender industry” in…

  • You can’t trust The Times

    The Sunday Times published its usual collection of anti-trans scaremongering at the weekend. One story in particular managed to demonstrate everything that’s wrong with the former paper of record: it was based primarily on the comments of an anti-trans activist, and it presented fake science as fact. This is the same newspaper that told its…

  • This hateful ignorance costs lives

    Anti-trans bigots are the climate change deniers of gender: despite overwhelming scientific evidence that they’re full of shit, they continue to lobby against life-saving action and push long-discredited pseudoscience. One of their favourite conspiracy theories is the idea that being trans is contagious, that it’s a conscious choice and that you can be persuaded to…

  • “This unholy alliance”

    Writing for Vox, Katelyn Burns describes how a primarily English anti-trans lobby is fuelling anti-LGBT+ sentiment and anti-women legislation here and in the US. There’s a long MetaFilter thread about it here. It’s a long read but a worthwhile one. TERF ideology has become the de facto face of feminism in the UK, helped along by…

  • “Where is the child that you loved?”

    I’ve sung the praises of Heather Havrilesky on this blog before: the agony columnist for New York’s The Cut is an interesting, insightful, compassionate and sometimes uncomfortable read. This week, she responds to a parent who’s deeply upset that her child is non-binary. The parent writes: My darling girl, my only child, is now a…

  • The Tories are just as toxic as before

    Yesterday, I blogged about right wing parties deliberately stoking anti-LGBT+ sentiment for political gain. Last night: ‘According to one insider, Number 10 has been polling “culture war” issues, such as transgender rights, to see whether they can be weaponised against Labour in northern working-class constituencies.’https://t.co/5iB7AAMVhn — Aditya Chakrabortty (@chakrabortty) September 2, 2019 The Conservatives deny…

  • Straight Pride isn’t about sexuality or gender. It’s white supremacy

    I’ve written before about Straight Pride and how it’s a front for the far right. The much-hyped Boston event took place this weekend and proved that – surprise! – it’s a front for the far right. To all intents and purposes it was a Make America Great rally, complete with police pepper-spraying counter-protestors. David here…