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The Matrix, a fun if daft bit of sci-fi, is 20. Lots of publications are running retrospectives on its impact, which was significant: among other achievements it introduced the world to the concept of “red pilling”, where you take the red pill and finally see reality. Red pilling is a trope among far-right goons and [more]
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OpenDemocracy previously reported the dark money being used by US evangelists to finance “grassroots” pressure groups. But the story is much, much bigger. US Christian right ‘fundamentalists’ linked to the Trump administration and Steve Bannon are among a dozen American groups that have poured at least $50 million of ‘dark money’ into Europe over the [more]
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I think what I hate most about bigots is their laziness. The stuff they write about trans people is just the stuff they said about gay people, with “gay” Tipp-Exed out and “trans” scribbled in its place. The Implausible Girl on Twitter has some examples. First, the silencing of people by a sinister lobby (2000): [more]
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This is wonderful. Fed up with the difficulty of finding decent stock photography of trans and non-binary people, Vice/Broadly commissioned its own – and it’s made the photos available for free under a Creative Commons licence, so pretty much anybody can use them. The Gender Spectrum Collection is online here and features 180 photos covering [more]
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My friend drew this in the pub last night. I got a bit emotional. For the last 10 days I’ve been in enforced boy mode: because I’ve taken on quite a lot of extra electrolysis sessions to remove my facial hair, I haven’t been allowed to shave. You can’t zap and pull stubble out if [more]
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The Cancer Act 1939 is one of the few pieces of legislation that outlaws pseudo-scientific medical bollocks. As Cancer Research explains: At its heart, the current incarnation of the Cancer Act is designed to protect cancer patients and the public from being bombarded with adverts for cancer treatments, from any source, including medical professionals, pharmaceutical [more]
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The Christchurch killer wrote about “the great replacementâ€, a racist conspiracy theory that effectively says the other – in this case, Muslims – intend to take over the world by having so many children they outnumber the white Christians. According to this theory, feminists are part of the problem: they aren’t doing their duty to [more]
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Last year, anti-trans rabble-rouser James Kirkup wrote an article in The Spectator about the terrible rise of trans rights. Today, IPSO forced The Spectator to admit that the lurid claims at the centre of the story were complete and utter bullshit, invented by the writer. This happens an awful lot with trans stories: many of [more]
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Writing for the Association of Independent Professionals and Self Employed, Ben Capper wants to share his hard-won wisdom: when it comes to freelancing, there’s no such thing as luck. His tale of nine months freelancing reads very much like a tale of luck: his ex-boss had moved to a new gig, giving him his first [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.
