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There are two pieces in the Guardian about a growing trend: people arguing that criticism is “silencing”. First up, Jack Bernhardt on comedy. we witnessed another great moment in comedy this week, when the BBC’s head of comedy asked the question we didn’t realise needed to be asked: is comedy dying because the internet is… [more]
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The FT asks, “can you be a mother and a senior law firm partner?” It’s not asking whether women are capable of the job, thankfully; it’s a piece about the assumptions made about women that aren’t made about men. The generally accepted issue is the choice many women face between partnership — on call 24/7 and… [more]
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MP David Lammy is being lambasted by the right-wing press for comparing the Brexit-pushing European Research Group to Nazis and suggesting that the Brexit debate has helped spread far-right hatred. You can probably write the articles yourself: leftie commie, traitor to Britain, etc. Except he’s right. And he’s not the only politician saying so. Here’s… [more]
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It’s just another week on the internet, with yet another bunch of women experiencing massive campaigns of online abuse for having the temerity to say they don’t think trans women are monstrous predators. Singer Lisa Moorish is currently under siege and receiving dire threats and abuse from the “protect women” crowd, while comedian Janey Godley… [more]
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There’s an interesting piece in NY Magazine about the corrosive effects of highly partisan news. I heard from more than a hundred people who felt like they could relate to what they all seemed to think of as a kind of ideological brain poisoning. They chose Fox News over their family, people told me. They… [more]
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Writing for the NYT, Jennifer Finney Boylan compares anti-trans rhetoric to anti-immigration rhetoric. When members of the present administration claim that people like me should be “erased,†are they not saying, in so many words, “Build that wall?†Are they not echoing the cries of every xenophobic bigot throughout history in furiously demanding that I Go… [more]
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You can tell a lot about the UK newspaper industry by the people the Society of Editors chooses to garland in its annual UK Press Awards. This year, as if anointing the Mail on Sunday’s Sanchez Manning “specialist journalist of the year” for her ongoing campaign of anti-trans scaremongering and vilification wasn’t bad enough, the… [more]
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There is a lot online about gender dysphoria, the discomfort or even horror some trans people have about the gender they were assigned at birth. But there’s a flip side when you get to be your real self: gender euphoria, the feeling that at least for the moment, everything is the way it should be.… [more]
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Most of the discussions about trans people are about us and without us. That means the terms of the debate are set by people who aren’t trans, so misrepresentation, mischaracterisation and myths abound. This isn’t new, but two recently published pieces provide a good illustration of some of the more persistent tropes. Two of the… [more]
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In response to Transgender Day of Visibility yesterday, I saw multiple social media threads hijacked by cisgender straight man, many of whom demanded to know why we needed transgender visibility day but not straight pride days. They demanded to know: what rights don’t trans people have? How about the right to live free from abuse… [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.
