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(Content warning: suicidal ideation) I was asked by LGBT Health and Wellbeing to speak at an event about LGBT+ mental health yesterday: the three other panelists and I were asked to share our own experiences of mental health provision, where it falls short and where it might be improved. This is a slightly more coherent version [more]
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(Content warning: extreme violence) Writing in The New Republic, Osita Nwanevu offers a recap of legendarily offensive comedian Lenny Bruce’s demise. Over the course of a six-month trial, critics, academics, psychiatrists, and even a minister spoke in Bruce’s defense—none more beseechingly than Bruce himself. “Don’t finish me off in show business,†he pleaded before his [more]
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Right-wing shite-peddler The Federalist has printed a piece urging parents of trans and gender non-conforming kids to cut them off from the internet and their peers and beat them daily until they renounce transgenderism and its Satanic ways. I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. The latest in a string of similar pieces misrepresents research, makes unsubstantiated [more]
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The National Catholic Register has published a terrifying article implying that there have been thousands of deaths from puberty blocking. Is it bullshit? Of course it is. Even if you didn’t know that the National Catholic Register is a right-wing religious rag that really hates trans people, the use of the phrase “transgender industry” in [more]
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Danah Boyd has long been one of the smartest voices in tech, and in her recent awards speech to the Electronic Frontier Foundation she must have made a lot of people uncomfortable. In it she talks about the tech industry’s sheltering of terrible men, and how its technologies can have terrible consequences. Tech prides itself [more]
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As a rule of thumb, if Spiked columnists, billionaire Brexiters and Toby Young are against something you can be pretty sure it’s a good thing. Guess who really, really hates Greta Thunberg, the young woman who sparked today’s global climate protests? Jennifer O’Connell in The Irish Times elaborates. Even for someone who spends a lot [more]
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Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast reflects on the latest person to lose a high-profile job for having said terrible racist things, comedian Shane Gillis. If you’re not familiar with the story, a recap. It’s about: Saturday Night Live’s firing of comedian Shane Gillis, of whom videos surfaced showing him telling blithely racist jokes that [more]
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Writing in the Globe and Mail, Cory Doctorow has a nuanced take on the rise of beliefs such as flat-Earthism. The modern way of knowing things for sure is through formal truth-seeking exercises. …For these systems to work, they need to be fair and honest. But 40 years of rising inequality and industry consolidation have [more]
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With all the drama lately I completely forgot to mention my band. Now a three piece, the first EP by Stadium* – Some People Are Inconvenient – is out now. Here it is on Spotify. Here’s the EP on iTunes. And here’s the link for Apple Music. Google Play is right here. Do you [more]
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I mentioned in a previous post that my son has been in hospital. It’s been a very long couple of weeks: he was misdiagnosed twice before his atypical symptoms led to a correct diagnosis and treatment, which included surgery. He’s home with me now, recovering. My head is a mess of thoughts just now, but [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.
