-
Sky News, prop. R Murdoch, has given strange prominence to the launch of a new charity. Let’s start with a question. Detransitioning from what? What do you think transitioning means? To most, it’ll mean hormones and surgery. And as the article makes clear, to Sky it definitely means hormones and surgery. But that’s not what… [more]
-
There’s been an interesting discussion on Twitter among some trans folks on the subject of transition and bravery. Did we have to transition? Are we brave to have done so? Here’s Emmy Zje: “Do you really HAVE to transition tho?†Yes. The horrific certainties of not transitioning eventually eclipsed the certainties transphobia was sure to… [more]
-
Scotland banned smacking yesterday (and because it was National Poetry Day, it blocked fracking too. You’ve got to get your laughs where you can in the current climate). Smacking bans are a culture war issue, so with crushing inevitability the BBC in England got Brendan O’Neill from Spiked to talk about it – which is… [more]
-
I mentioned recently that there was yet another junk science story doing the rounds about trans people: it claimed that thousands of deaths were linked to puberty blockers, when the actual number of deaths from puberty blocking were zero. The figures were based on the fact that the same drug is prescribed to help terminally… [more]
-
Here’s a simple question. What’s the purpose of anti-discrimination legislation? Is it (a) to protect vulnerable people from discrimination, for example in employment, education or health care? Or is it (b) to enable people to be howling arseholes to vulnerable people? If you answered (b), you may be a religious extremist. I’ll preface this with my usual… [more]
-
I caught this by accident today and absolutely adored it: the final episode of Between Ourselves With Marian Keyes, featuring the author reading some of her non-fiction and chatting with Tara Flynn. Some of it was deadly serious, some of it had me laughing like a drain, some of it was the sound of nails… [more]
-
I sometimes wonder if a master satirist has seized control of parts of the mainstream media. How else to explain the Telegraph’s video that asks us to consider the plight of poor, marginalised, oppressed… Tories? I’m not joking. The video tells us that the only safe space – a term the Telegraph despises, yet uses… [more]
-
Yesterday, Home Secretary Priti Patel threw immigrants under the bus. With obvious delight, she vowed to “end the free movement of people once and for all”; in a deeply sinister dog-whistle she added: “this daughter of immigrants needs no lectures from the North London, metropolitan, liberal elite.” The phrase “North London metropolitan elite” (also expressed… [more]
-
One of my friends wasn’t born in the UK. Despite having lived here for a very long time, paying lots of money in tax and marrying the love of her life, a lifelong UK citizen, she does not currently know whether she will be allowed to stay in the UK post-Brexit. As you can imagine,… [more]
-
Step 1: don’t buy headphones on eBay. Step 2: there is no step 2. I did a very un-me thing last week after losing my beloved Sony headphones: I bought a replacement set on eBay instead of paying a little more to get them from somewhere reputable such as John Lewis. Inevitably, they turned out… [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.
