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Jess Brammar writes about another curse of the internet: reply guys. …alongside the straightforward abuse that is by now publicly acknowledged – and to the majority of the population, wholly unacceptable – there is something more complex, less offensive, but incredibly exhausting nonetheless. Sometimes it’s so subtle you barely notice it but it’s always there, always [more]
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Another day, another great piece on Longreads. This one’s by Laura Lippman, best-selling crime writer, in Longreads’ series about ageing. I think when life gives you petit lemons, you should make lemonade — and refuse to share it with people who treat you rudely. [more]
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This is a bottle of Rimmel’s Oh My Gold nail polish, which I’m currently sporting. My five-year-old son likes it too, because nail polish is fun and fun is important. So when he asked for some on his own nails last night I was happy to oblige. This morning, he asked me to take it [more]
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The heart always skips a beat when a famous person’s name appears in Twitter’s “trending” chart. It usually means they’ve died or been implicated in sex offences. So when Rod Liddle turned up the other night, my immediate reaction was to wonder whether he’d punched another pregnant woman in the stomach. Thankfully no: he was [more]
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One of the things anti-trans writers like to go on about is the spectre of “detransition” and surgical regret: according to them, trans-related surgeries are acts of mutilation that many people will go on to regret. As ever, the facts tell a very different story. I’ve mentioned previously that the NHS in England reported a [more]
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This is my daughter on stage with The Red Bricks, one of the bands formed at this year’s Girls Rock Glasgow summer school. She’s the one with arms aloft. Sorry about the picture quality, it’s from a video. The concert is the culmination of the nine-day event during which girls aged 7 to 16 form [more]
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Back in March, I wrote about the people protesting outside a Birmingham school over inclusive education and noted that while the protests were reported as Muslim, many of them were Christians. Also in March, I wrote that “US money is incoming and these protests will become more widespread.” Yesterday, INews reported that the protests are [more]
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Inviting organisations to talk about issues in schools can be a positive thing: for example, the Time For Inclusive Education campaign helps battle the bullying of LGBT+ kids. But what if the organisation has a track record of falsification and shock tactics? In an article about the tactics of anti-abortion groups, The Overtake notes that the [more]
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One of the things that characterises the anti-trans movement in the UK is its use of crowdfunding, essentially an online begging bowl. But unlike many women’s organisations, the anti-trans groups don’t seem to put much effort into promoting their crowdfunders; also unlike many women’s groups, they attract suspiciously large donations. For example, the Transgender Trend [more]
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The Guardian, and pretty much every other newspaper, reports today that acceptance of LGBT+ people is in decline. As The Guardian put it in a social media headline: Acceptance of gay sex in decline in UK for first time since AIDS crisis That’s not what the social attitudes survey, which the headline refers to, says [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.
