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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]
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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]
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.
