Category: Media

  • We are trickster gods

    This superb piece by Niko Stratis is a must-read about the no-point-in-reading news stories telling you that some old rich guy or other thinks trans women are icky and probably murderous. We are trickster gods, barbed and poisonous, waiting to rip the seams of the tender fabric of this gentle world. But we are never…

  • A century of “contagion”

    I’ve written many times about the entirely fictional phenomenon of “rapid onset gender dysphoria” which, despite not existing, is being used by right-wing politicians to justify their hateful assaults on trans healthcare as well as by UK culture warriors online and in newspaper columns and comments sections. This, in Scientific American, is yet more evidence…

  • Bottom of the barrel

    Following in the ridiculous footsteps of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, The Spectator is the latest publication to get in on the manufactured outrage over the supposed censorship of Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls. According to the article by noted thought leader Richard Madeley, what we’re seeing is “neopuritanical cultural censorship”. For the benefit of…

  • Words as weapons

    A new study from Germany adds more evidence that violent online speech leads to violent attacks in the streets. The Economist: A paper by Karsten Müller and Carlo Schwarz of the University of Warwick finds a strong association between right-wing, anti-refugee sentiment on German social-media sites and violent crimes against refugees. For every four anti-refugee…

  • Red flags

    On Friday, 27-year-old Travis Ikeguchi murdered a 66-year-old mother of nine, Lauri Carleton, because he took exception to her shop’s Pride flag. According to US police he tore down the flag and hurled homophobic slurs before killing her in cold blood. Ikeguchi’s social media is still available to view, and it’s interesting to see how…

  • “Oh, you know the ones…”

    Graham Linehan, the comedy writer who sacrificed his marriage and his career so he could hurl abuse at trans people and their allies on the internet all day, has been all over the press in recent days. But the only piece worth reading is this one, by Caitlin Logan in The National. Some of the…

  • To know me is to love me

    One of the things I write about in my book is that transphobia largely relies on people not knowing, or not thinking they know, any trans people. I make a very good joke about it that you’ll need to buy the book to read. And the same point is made in this report from LGBT…

  • Eat your vegetables

    There’s a great piece by Parker Molloy about the “eat your vegetables” argument over social media: the idea that if you use social media, you should be compelled to read or hear views you disagree with. Like Molloy, I disagree. People get to pick what they watch on TV, right? And they get to decide…

  • Bye, BBC

    I’ve been a regular on BBC Radio Scotland for three decades now: I first went on Good Morning Scotland in 2001, and by the time I moved to the suburbs in 2005 I was a weekly guest on MacAulay & Co; I think I started regularly appearing there in 2003. To give you an idea…

  • “Powder room pigs”

    I do love a good, righteously angry column. This, by Patrick Lennon in The Shot, gives anti-trans bigots both barrels: The toilet police are here and they want you to know they are very serious. They want you to think they’re asking important questions about women’s rights (despite overwhelming evidence that most cis women support…