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I took the kids to see Frozen 2 today and had an unexpectedly brilliant time. The film’s a ton of fun, particularly so in 4DX when your seats move and you get sprayed with compressed air and water. 4DX is ridiculously expensive but hugely entertaining. if you’re going to go, try and see it in… [more]
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This is Loving Me Is A Political Act, from our Bring The Good Times Back EP. I write a lot of autobiographical stuff but it tends to be quite oblique. This is unusually direct for me, and it’s about my experience of being out in the world. To be visibly different is to attract attention,… [more]
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I don’t normally link to The Scotsman, but I’m a big admirer of its columnist Laura Waddell. Today, she’s writing about the so-called debate over trans rights. For the sake of trans people, for women, and for the state of our public discourse, enough of the bad faith actions. The Women’s Pledges which have recently… [more]
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Time for another song. This is 1979, from our Bring The Good Times Back EP. If you think it sounds like late-seventies post-punk, that’s entirely deliberate: what we’ve tried to do musically is echo what I’ve done lyrically, which is to connect 1979 and 2019. The song is about political parties promising to make Britain… [more]
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It’s Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) today, the day when the trans community and our allies mourn the deaths of people killed because they were transgender or gender non-conforming. 2019 isn’t over yet but so far 331 trans people have been murdered, hanged or lynched. Those are just reported and recorded crimes; the real number… [more]
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Newsweek reports on the largest ever study of trans kids, which found that – surprise! – you can’t turn your kids trans even if you try really really really hard. This is not surprising to those of us who spent most of our lives trying not to be trans. [being] responsive to a child’s expression… [more]
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My band, Stadium*, is releasing two more EPs this month: one political, one festive. The various download links should go live in a couple of days. I’m very, very proud of these records. I think they include some of the best songs we’ve ever written, and some of the best lyrics I’ve ever scrawled, so I’m… [more]
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Sometimes Murdoch-owned news outlets manage to do something amazing: they publish something about trans people that isn’t untrue, isn’t malicious and doesn’t show us in a terrible light. In the same week The Sun is banging on about predators in changing rooms, The Australian is calling us dangerous extremists and The Sunday Times is no… [more]
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Have you ever wanted to swipe right on a dating app, or tell someone who makes your heart beat faster that you like them, but stopped yourself because you’re too scared of being rejected – not because of how you look, act or think but because of what you are? I have, and I think… [more]
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Mermaids, the charity for trans kids and their families, is trying to raise money to better help people. The video above does a really good job of demonstrating just how toxic things are at the moment: I thought I was pretty much desensitised to the constant barrage of anti-trans articles, but it turns out I’m… [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.
