Category: Media
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“How come you never thought it before?”
There’s an article in today’s (Glasgow) Herald claiming that a ban on conversion therapy will “criminalise parents”, throw psychotherapists in prison and have you arrested if you question your child’s gender or sexuality. It’s nonsense, and it’s based almost entirely on baseless claims by the Christian Institute – the same Christian Institute that the same […]
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Flip your wig
Here’s a photo from the GRR Bill debate in the Scottish Parliament yesterday. The response on Mumsnet, aka Prosecco Stormfront, was swift. “They can’t help themselves,” one poster wrote. “…it’s typical male pattern aggressive sexualised behaviour”. Others agreed, until they realised that the protester isn’t a trans woman; she’s an anti-trans woman, Elaine Miller of For […]
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Hate Mail
After writing a very honest and often horrific account of her teenage experiences online, a trans woman I know was approached by a sympathetic journalist who wanted to share her story: amid the “debate” over banning conversion therapy, the journalist wanted to make her readers aware of its horrors and lasting damage. My friend was […]
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Things that are different are not the same
A typically incisive piece by Parker Molloy on the censorious clowns who claim that legitimate criticism of what they say and write is the same as the attempted murder of Salman Rushdie. That is the problem people have with the “cancel culture” discourse. It’s selective, it flattens important distinctions between horrific acts (beheadings and physical […]
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T time
I was delighted to be a small part of BBC Scotland’s new podcast, The Rise and Fall of T in the Park. It’s about more than just the festival itself; it’s about the impact it had on the Scottish music scene and on Scotland as a destination for touring bands. I’m in there talking about […]
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Leopards
With crushing predictability, the faux-feminists in the UK press have decided that the real villain in the decades-long plot to overturn Roe vs Wade en route to establishing a Christian theocracy is… trans women. The argument, if you can call it that, is simple: trans men wanted to be included in discussions of reproductive healthcare; […]
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Here, always
There’s a really nice piece in National Geographic about historians documenting the lives of trans people, and in addition to being really interesting it’s a much-needed corrective to the oft-spoken belief that trans people were invented in 2015. There’s ample evidence of gender variance throughout human history. Among the earliest are accounts of galaand galli, […]
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Oh lord, it’s hard to be humble
I enjoyed this post by Max Rashbrooke on writer James Patterson and podcaster Joe Rogan, both of whom claim to be oppressed by woke activists. These are perilous days indeed for a near-billionaire author who outsells Stephen King and Dan Brown combined, and for his fellow victim, the host of a podcast downloaded 200 million […]
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Not cancelled
Earlier this week, the singer Lizzo released a record containing a word she didn’t realise was a slur against disabled people. When disabled people told her on social media that it was derogatory, she effectively said “Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” and re-released the song with the word changed. If you believe the endless […]
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Turning back the clock
LGBT Youth Scotland has published its latest survey of LGBT+ young people, Life In Scotland For LGBT+ Young People in 2022. And while some things have got better – people coming out to their families and friends are more likely to receive a positive response than ever before – some of the most important things […]