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The Guardian is in trouble this week for an editorial about David Cameron in which it suggested that while the death of his son was tragic, Cameron’s pain was somewhat reduced by his privilege. The editorial, now removed, suggested that Cameron’s experience of the NHS would have been considerably worse “had he been forced to [more]
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The Sunday Times published its usual collection of anti-trans scaremongering at the weekend. One story in particular managed to demonstrate everything that’s wrong with the former paper of record: it was based primarily on the comments of an anti-trans activist, and it presented fake science as fact. This is the same newspaper that told its [more]
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Anti-trans bigots are the climate change deniers of gender: despite overwhelming scientific evidence that they’re full of shit, they continue to lobby against life-saving action and push long-discredited pseudoscience. One of their favourite conspiracy theories is the idea that being trans is contagious, that it’s a conscious choice and that you can be persuaded to [more]
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Writing for Vox, Katelyn Burns describes how a primarily English anti-trans lobby is fuelling anti-LGBT+ sentiment and anti-women legislation here and in the US. There’s a long MetaFilter thread about it here. It’s a long read but a worthwhile one. TERF ideology has become the de facto face of feminism in the UK, helped along by [more]
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I’ve sung the praises of Heather Havrilesky on this blog before: the agony columnist for New York’s The Cut is an interesting, insightful, compassionate and sometimes uncomfortable read. This week, she responds to a parent who’s deeply upset that her child is non-binary. The parent writes: My darling girl, my only child, is now a [more]
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Nesrine Malik writes in The Guardian – a publication guilty of some of the things she talks about in her article – about how a mythical free speech crisis has normalised hate speech and silenced minorities. …challenging the myth of a free speech crisis does not mean enabling the state to police and censor even [more]
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Yesterday, I blogged about right wing parties deliberately stoking anti-LGBT+ sentiment for political gain. Last night: ‘According to one insider, Number 10 has been polling “culture war†issues, such as transgender rights, to see whether they can be weaponised against Labour in northern working-class constituencies.’https://t.co/5iB7AAMVhn — Aditya Chakrabortty (@chakrabortty) September 2, 2019 The Conservatives deny [more]
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I’ve written before about Straight Pride and how it’s a front for the far right. The much-hyped Boston event took place this weekend and proved that – surprise! – it’s a front for the far right. To all intents and purposes it was a Make America Great rally, complete with police pepper-spraying counter-protestors. David here [more]
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Jessica Valenti, a consistently superb writer, describes a Twitter spat that went out of control. It’s about a New York Times columnist called Bret Stephens, a fierce advocate of unfettered freedom of speech. When a university professor made a mild joke about him, he attempted to get the professor sacked and then wrote a column [more]
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My band’s debut EP is released today. Unless I’ve mucked something up, Some People Are Inconvenient by Stadium* should be available on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Amazon Music and even TikTok. It’s also available on Bandcamp, where you can order it on CD or as digital downloads in the format of your choice. [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.
