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When I was a kid, I used to devour apocalyptic fiction: give me a shattered society trying to survive in a nuclear winter and I’d be all over it. One of the most frightening ones I read was Nevile Shute’s On The Beach, which truly terrified me. Â It’s set in Australia in the aftermath of [more]
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The Guardian: Almost 800 libraries have closed since the Conservative government implemented austerity in 2010, new figures reveal. That’s nearly a fifth of the UK’s libraries gone in a decade. One of the awful things about this, and there are many awful things about this, is that savage cuts to library services reduce the number [more]
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Cyclist, academic and trans woman Rachel McKinnon writes for the New York Times: People are angry because I’m a transgender woman, and I race in the women’s category. Soon after my win, Donald Trump Jr. threw a Twitter tantrum about me. I’ve seen a huge uptick in the volume of hate mail I’ve received in the [more]
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In the 2014 referendum campaign for Scottish independence, I was a proud Yes supporter. I wore the badge with pride, attended rallies, and felt part of something important: we had the opportunity to make a better, more tolerant, more inclusive country. In 2019 I wouldn’t attend an independence rally because I’d be scared for my [more]
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If you’re considering donating to a charity this year, please don’t give to the Salvation Army. The charity says it’s dedicated to helping all people in need irrespective of their sexual orientation or gender identity, but it has a long history of discrimination against LGBT+ people. Here in the UK, the Salvation Army lobbied against [more]
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Christmas can be tough if you’re not partnered or part of a nuclear family: the ads show a family life you don’t have while every shop seems to be playing It’ll Be Lonely This Christmas on a loop. As Owl Stefania writes in Metro, it can be particularly hard for LGBT+ people. Stefania’s writing specifically [more]
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I wrote the other day that many bigots are stupid. So it was just a matter of time before they combined multiple flavours of stupid, as they do here. Is a new trend that isn’t a new trend caused by something that doesn’t exist? Hoo boy, we’re gonna have to get our thinkin’ caps on [more]
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The thing about bigots is that often, they have no idea what they’re talking about. Sometimes that’s because they’re stupid. But all too often it’s wilful stupidity, where the information is widely and easily available but they either don’t look for it or refuse to believe it. Here’s an example from this morning. Over on [more]
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All good things must end, and that includes me blogging about our Christmas EP. I hope you’ve found it interesting; I like reading other people’s explanations of how they come up with stuff because we’re all so different in how we work, how we approach things and how we end up with a finished product. [more]
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Let’s compare two numbers. In a typical year, the UK Gender Recognition Panel will grant around 320 gender recognition certificates to trans people. Over the last year, the UK press printed more than 6,000 articles about trans people, most of them negative, many of them scaremongering about the imagined dangers of letting trans people get those [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
