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The New Yorker has published a lovely essay by Emma Rathbone, Before The Internet. Before the Internet, you could move to a new state and no one at school would know anything about you. You’d have no online history. You could be anyone. You would lean against the lockers with a faraway expression on your… [more]
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This case could be very significant. Former Times night editor Katherine O’Donnell’s employment tribunal raises an interesting question: does the content that newspapers publish fall under their duty of care to their employees? O’Donnell alleges multiple counts of illegal behaviour towards her after she transitioned to female, and her claims lift the rock to show… [more]
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[Content note: vicious transphobia, racial epithets and trauma] This is a photo of Tyra Hunter. She died in 1995. Hunter, who was 25, was injured in a car crash. When first responders arrived on the scene, they cut off her clothes and discovered that she was transgender. Instead of treating her they verbally abused her and… [more]
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When Michael Phelps, who is a straight white man, became the most decorated Olympian of all time he was hailed as a “legend” and greeted with glowing newspaper profiles on how “a biomechanical freak of nature” had a competitive advantage over other athletes because he had a “body made to swim”. When Caster Semenya, who… [more]
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A picture tells a thousand words, especially this one. For me at least, most of the thousand words are swears. [more]
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Many newspapers have based their digital strategy on lazy clickbait: contrarianism, hyperbole and trivia. There’s just one problem with that. It’s a road to nowhere. Writing in The Irish Times, former Sunday Independent editor Anne Harris describes the new media operations of Ireland’s beleaguered Independent News & Media group. A decision was made to prioritise… [more]
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The writer Aidan Comerford, who’s ended up getting a lot of online abuse for being supportive of trans people, asked women who support trans rights to share their photos so he could put them in a collage. The collage was to show that the anti-trans crowd are not acting in their name. In just a… [more]
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Today’s stupid ideas: rape victims should hand over their phones to police or have the investigations dropped. There are two big problems with this. One, it’s victim-blaming: the number of false allegations is incredibly low and massively overshadowed by the solid, evidence-backed allegations that don’t lead to prosecution. The idea that a victim’s communications history… [more]
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Although I’m a musician, I haven’t performed in public for 15 years. It’s not about lack of opportunity; even if you aren’t in a band there are plenty of open mic nights around if you want to grab an instrument and play. It’s mainly because of crippling stage fright, something I used to address with… [more]
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This, by artist Alison Wilgus, is wonderful and terribly sad at the same time. It’s a comic about “mourning the versions of ourselves that will never exist.” There’s a narrative you hear a lot about people who come out: they always knew. And that’s true for many, but not all. Some of us take a… [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.
