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Guess which newspaper is making a false distinction between children with special needs and school pupils, and suggesting that the former are harming the latter? Here’s a clue: it rhymes with “fuelling hate crimes”. We’ve been here before: in June, the Times wrote an awful article implying that care experienced kids were going to damage… [more]
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To paraphrase Mrs Merton: what first atttracted the Conservative government to voter ID, a scheme that would stop many non-Tory voters from voting? After an unsuccessful attempt to introduce it in 2017, voter ID is back! Back! BACK! This version is slightly more sensible than Theresa May’s version from two years ago (unlike May’s proposals… [more]
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Another weekend, another bunch of anti-trans stories in the Sunday Times (following on from four stories in the Saturday edition). Today’s selection includes a 3/4 page tale of a deeply troubled man who transitioned and then de-transitioned, something that’s incredibly rare but that does happen, usually because some trans people face terrible hostility when they… [more]
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I took the kids to see Abominable yesterday. I didn’t have high hopes: the marketing made it look like another school-holiday by-the-numbers animation, and I already knew it made extensive use of one of Coldplay’s worst songs. But it turned out to be a wee gem of a film, and my two loved it. It… [more]
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What does hate look like? In many cases, it looks just like you. When we think of hateful bigotry, we tend to imagine stereotypes: the bomber-jacketed skinhead, the spittle-flecked preacher and so on. We don’t imagine nice people: our neighbours, our friends, the mums on the school run. But the stereotypes are often wrong. To… [more]
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It’s National Coming Out Day in the US today. It’s often pitched as a celebration, but National Coming Out Day began as activism. For LGBT+ people, the personal is political – so coming out is a political act. Life is different if you’re LGBT+. The US Supreme Court is not currently discussing whether it should be… [more]
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Today is World Mental Health Day, and the theme is suicide prevention. Many politicians and commentators will say or write suitably concerned things about the importance of getting help, without acknowledging that they are part of the reason people need help in the first place. Mental health is political. The causes are often political. And… [more]
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I was given the flu vaccine the other day. I hadn’t really thought about it but since a lung cancer scare a few years ago there’s a flag on my medical records and I’m considered high risk for pulmonary infections and COPD, so I get invited to this stuff. As you’d expect, the vaccine didn’t… [more]
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I’ve written many times about useful idiots, members of minority groups who join anti-minority parties. One of the best-known examples is Winston McKenzie, the former Commonwealth spokesman for UKIP, whose presence in the party was used to prove it wasn’t racist. He ended up quitting the party because it was racist. Trans and gay people… [more]
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Jezebel has posted a very comprehensive analysis of one of the LGBT+ human rights cases in front of the US Supreme Court. Tellingly, a who’s who of anti-trans bigots have signed on in support of Rost, from the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan T. Anderson to the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, all of whom are attempting… [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.
