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I’m taking part in a special event to remember my friend Billy Samson on Saturday night (27 April). It’s at The Old Hairdresser’s in Glasgow and will feature many of Billy’s musical friends, me (and my glamorous assistant Kenny, bass player in our band) included. Entry’s free but we’ll be shaking buckets for the Help… [more]
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Between 2017 and 2018, the Scottish Government consulted on proposed reforms to the gender recognition process to make life slightly less shitty for trans and non-binary people. The public response was overwhelmingly in favour of the proposed changes, with women’s groups dealing with some of the most vulnerable women in society offering very clear and… [more]
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Glasgow Life has issued a statement regarding the scaremongering articles about its changing rooms policy. You will be shocked to discover that the articles weren’t true. Glasgow Life’s staff guidance on accessing sports facilities and services by transgender people was produced and distributed in 2015. Since then, we have had more than 20 million attendances… [more]
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In my previous post I wrote about the easily debunked claims used against trans people. I should probably provide some evidence. First up, here’s some actual stats on detransitioning among trans people. The source is the NHS in London from 2016 to 2017, the sample size 3,488, the detransition rate 0.47%. Not 80%, the figure… [more]
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There’s an interesting piece in The New Republic by Josephine Livingstone, who analyses the idea that debate is always a good thing. She begins by looking at a US journalist called Jesse Singal, who’s notorious in LGBT circles for what appears to be an ongoing campaign of damaging misinformation about trans people and trans teenagers… [more]
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Last night I knowingly and deliberately broke the law. It wasn’t quite Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with a lead pipe; it was me and my best friend in Kelvingrove Park with a nice bottle of red wine. In Glasgow and the surrounding area, drinking in public has been illegal since 1996 under sections 201-203… [more]
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Today’s Glasgow Herald has an offensively framed, scaremongering article about trans people in council swimming pools causing an invasion of “cross-dressing males”. It’s labelled new and exclusive, but it’s neither. As Duncan Hothersall put it on Twitter: Not exclusive. Not new. Simply the result of an active anti-trans campaigner seeking out the most scaremongering situation… [more]
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The ever-inflammatory A Thousand Flowers has made SNP politician Joan McAlpine their Wanker of the Week. ATF’s language, as ever, is robust – but it’s tame compared to the stuff McAlpine’s fellow travellers say and do on Twitter to trans people and any woman who doesn’t think trans people are demons. One of the points… [more]
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This is Garnock Academy, the secondary school (high school for my American friends) I attended in the 1980s. It’s near a town called Beith. Like all schools of the era, there were no LGBT pupils or teachers. Or at least, there were no openly LGBT pupils or teachers; the ones who were LGBT kept their… [more]
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It’s not surprising to see yet another anti-trans op-ed in The Scotsman; once again it portrays all trans people as abusive internet trolls in killer heels, trampling on the anti-trans women who are just lovely people who care about all kinds of stuff. But even by those low standards, it’s galling to see the horrific… [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.
