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One of the tricks the far right likes to use is phony science. They claim “facts don’t care about your feelings” while putting their feelings above actual facts, such as how human biology works. Scientific American has had enough of their shit and their “facts don’t care”. these “protectors of enlightenment†are guilty of the… [more]
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I went to see the comedian Frankie Boyle last night. As ever, he said many terrible things because he’s a really bad man. I laughed so hard for so long I’m actually a bit sore today. I don’t go to as much comedy as I used to, even though I love live comedy: I got… [more]
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Sorry about the title. My mum reads this blog and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make her spit out her coffee. I mentioned this study before: it asked around 1,000 people about the genders they would consider dating. It wasn’t brilliant news for trans people. The study gave respondents a list of five types… [more]
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Another beautiful NYT piece by Jennifer Finney Boylan, this time to mark the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. As a young trans girl, I could only assume that the odds against me were long. What would happen, I wondered, if I spoke aloud the thing that was in my heart? Even worse: What would happen if… [more]
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I’m writing about some really horrible things today so let’s start with something beautiful instead: here’s Swedish group Erato covering Robyn’s Call Your Girlfriend. Okay. Let’s talk about hate. Writing in Buzzfeed, Patrick Strudwick speaks to a man whose name should be more widely known. Terry Sanderson was a lone voice against the media bullying… [more]
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Today, in The Guardian: That’s the same Guardian that’s printed inflammatory drivel about trans people for months now. The same Guardian whose US staff were so outraged by its promotion of “transphobic viewpoints” that they took the unprecedented step of writing an open letter damning their UK colleagues. Maybe their UK colleagues should read it… [more]
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This is a powerful and important piece by Katelyn Burns, one of very few trans journalists, on the problem with mainstream reporting on LGBT+ issues: the lack of dedicated LGBTQ media is a disaster. It begins with something depressingly common: a major newspaper highlighting the views of a website crank as some kind of expert,… [more]
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It’s no great secret that anti-trans bigots tend to be bigoted in other ways too; they just hide it. The ongoing hate-fest over the NSPCC working with and then dropping trans woman Munroe Bergdorf is a vivid demonstration. The NSPCC has apologised for dropping Bergdorf, but its employees aren’t happy: 148 of its employees have… [more]
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Today is the third anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in which 49 LGBT+ people were slaughtered. It was the single deadliest lone gunman mass shooting in US history, the worst terrorist atrocity since 9/11. To commemorate it, a number of US Christian fundamentalists will hold a rally in Orlando. The rally… [more]
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I’m going to resist the temptation to make too many obvious jokes about The Pope’s latest damnation of trans people; you can come up with your own variations of “…says a man in a dress who thinks his boss lives in the sky”, I’m sure. I’d rather talk about yet another survey that shows growing… [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.
