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[Content note: homophobia and transphobia] Last year, a group of anti-trans bigots delayed the London Pride march. This year, the march was led by trans-inclusive women. I’m quite sure the above image, from Picadilly Circus during the march, caused a few bigots’ mouths to froth. In the same week, a YouGov poll investigated people’s attitudes [more]
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It’s not a great day for news about trans people. In Antwerp, a teenage trans woman was gang raped by three men on her very first day presenting female. Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, no doubt upset some of her transphobic members by tweeting about it: Important to remember that – far from being responsible [more]
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Frances Ryan, in The Guardian: Medics often use life expectancy as a barometer of the health of a nation and by official measures, Britain is getting sicker. For the first time in 100 years, Britons are dying earlier, leading a team of specialists to meet at University College London this month to investigate it. The [more]
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Let’s post this picture again. Everybody in this photo is trans, and it’s important that you see that. Because conventionally attractive trans women are the last thing the anti-trans bigots want you to see. One of the things the “reasonable debate” crowd really like to do is to scour the internet to find photos of [more]
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I start lots of things I don’t finish. I had a go at being a novelist for a while and made a bit of money doing it, but I lost interest after publishing the first one and writing half of its sequel. I’ve got a huge non-fiction book on my hard disk that’s almost but [more]
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The Scottish anti-trans group For Women is currently putting anti-trans leaflets through Glasgow doors, trying to whip up fear and hatred of trans women. Do you want MEN changing with your daughter? Do you want MEN in the same toilet? That kind of thing. The photo above is of people they want you to be [more]
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Glastonbury’s over for another year. Music writer Pete Paphides has been going there since 1992, and he noticed some important, positive differences this year. He listed them on Twitter, noting things such as the move away from plastic bottles and the provision of extra helpers on-site. But the main difference was diversity. The main thing [more]
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There’s a great interview with the equally great Ruth Hunt, departing CEO of Stonewall, in Buzzfeed News. Ruth hasn’t just had a hard job. She’s had to deal with constant online abuse, some of it criminal, and has been the target of bigoted pundits in the media too. “Mainstream newspapers running consistently transphobic articles, day [more]
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As I mentioned yesterday, one of the most common reactions to the news of increasing hate crimes was denial: the crimes are just touchy snowflakes going to the cops about the slightest thing on the internet. To put it mildly, that’s a complete misunderstanding of what hate crime is, and what minority groups experience. Something [more]
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Yesterday, the BBC reported a massive increase in hate crimes against trans people. The online response was utterly predictable: the anti-trans faux-feminists decided that Stonewall had managed to infiltrate every level of every police force in the UK in order to churn out fake statistics; in slightly less unhinged circles a very worrying number of [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.
